41 days

It has been 41 days since we returned to the Netherlands. quite a lot has happened in those 41 days. Too much to mention, but I will give a try to mention it.

We returned on the 24th of May 2012, which was a Thursday. Lots of friends and family had come to schiphol to welcome us. It was heartwarming to see, that people travelled for over 90 minutes to come and see us. We all had a drink at the airport and proud as we are we introduced ZiXuan to everyone.

When we returned home, we saw that our hous was decorated with all kinds of lovely banners, flags, parrots, fake flowers and stuff. It was great to see. My mother, sister and niece had really done their best.

Well, and then you are back home and have to pick up 'normal' life again. Which is hard, because we had no clue what normal life is. Now we think we have pieced it all together, what normal life is, but you can never be 100% sure.

Sleeping
Nina and I had one week leave left in which we tried our best to make ZiXuan feel as comfortable as possible. We took turns in sleeping in ZiXuan's room for about 2 weeks and then decided it was time for him to take a big step and sleep alone in his room. This went well for a couple of days, but then he woke up at 4.30 in the morning fully awake. Fortunately we set up a bed every night (even though we did not use it most of the time), just in case. So one of us who was on 'duty' went downstairs and stayed downstairs to sleep there. Over the last few weeks ZiXuan has surprised us by not waking up so many times (used to be 3 to 4 times a night), over the last week he slept through to 6.00 am or wakes up 1 time a night. This is quite an achievement and makes us very happy.

Eating
It seemed that Congee (Riceporridge) was the only food ZiXuan wanted to eat. If we tried anything else he simply refused to open his mouth, or he just spat it out. Over the course of the three weeks in China he did eat some bread and some weet-bixporridge, but still not much else. So at first we thought it would be a real struggle to get him to eat our food. But in the last 41 days he has only refused to drink real mint tea, anything else we put near his mouth, went nicely into his mouth directly to his stomach. We tried all kinds of food. He even likes fish, much to his daddy's disliking.......

Playing
ZiXuan did not know how to play, when we were in China. We feel he never had learnt how to play, we even feel he was never stimulated by anyone in the orphanage. So we have to take it upon us to teach him how to play. And over the last 41 days he is gradually improving on his playing skills. He can sit by himself for about 10-15 minutes and play with all kinds of toys, but after that he will seek for Nina or myself and we need to entertain him. He loves playing with cars, balls and climbing on anything and everything.

Walking
ZiXuan loves to walk. I think it is his favourite thing to do. He loves it so much, that Nina and I get sore backs from benging over to help him walk. ZiXuan can walk perfectly as long as he has some kind of support. Nina or I help him by reaching out with a finger, or he helps himself by holding on to the table or the bars alongside our staircases. Nina and I both feel that ZiXuan can walk by himself without any form of support, but he lacks the confidence to do so. If we only can teach him to have the confidence......

Talking and understanding Dutch
ZiXuan can say Papa and Mama (daddy and mummy) in Dutch. He understands when we say no, sometimes he pretends he does not know what the word means, but we can see in his eyes that he does understand....... When we ask where is papa or where is mama, he looks and points in the right direction. When we ask where is the ball, he looks around and points in the right direction, when we say go get the ball, he immediately goes to the ball.

Bonding
This is the most important part of adoption. Bonding, means that ZiXuan needs to accept us as dad and mum. He needs to feel that he is secure with us, that he can trust us and that he feels safe with us. We feel that gradually we are going strong in the right direction. We have still got a long way to go, but we feel confident in the way we go forward. When we went to an open day of the child-daycare (pre-kindergarten), one of the people working there wanted to hold him, but he did not want to and turned his back to the lady. This is a good sign of him attaching himself to us. We still have a long way to go, but this was a good sign. We are fortunate both of us, that ZiXuan wants to spend equal time with Nina as well as with myself. He is not only focussing on one of us. He is equally sharing his time with Nina as well as with me.

It is a long road to go......