One Year Ago . . . January 11th

Today we were off to see Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City before taking the train to Jinan (where we would meet Kellin!). Both Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City were impressive, and busy! I enjoyed seeing these sights, but I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering to the plans for the evening – to meet my son!!

This kind of sight was common in China – bicycles carrying huge loads.

After leaving the Forbidden City, our guide took us to a restaurant for lunch. It appeared to be more of a genuine, local place. 

This was in front of the restaurant

The menu was huge – page after page of choices, each one numbered. The reason for this, we discovered, was because the waiter carried some sort of handheld device and just entered in the numbers for the food we ordered. We ordered several dishes for all of us to share (Dad, our guide, and me) rather than each ordering our own meal as you would in the United States. As with the meal yesterday, the food was delicious! One thing I found interesting was that we had ordered a fair amount of food (at our guide’s insistence) and when there was still food left after eating, he kept trying to persuade us to eat more, mentioning it over and over. I’m not sure if he was offended that we hadn’t eaten more? When I chose to drink just water, our guide insisted on ordering a drink for me – warm coconut milk. I did not enjoy it and managed only a few sips.

Before leaving the restaurant to head to the train station, I went to use the bathroom – and got to experience the “squatty potty” for the first time. I had been warned about this, and I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had feared it might be. I survived!

We were early to the train station but it was kind of fascinating to people-watch for a while. The train was very comfortable with nice seats and a bathroom with a Western-style toilet (thank you very much!). The train ride was only a couple hours – at high speed.

When we arrived in Jinan, it was getting dark. Our guide met us at the train station and escorted us to a car that took us to our hotel. During the ride, our guide informed me that my son was already in town and would be waiting at the hotel!!

Once we arrived at the hotel, the guide spoke to someone on the phone and then told us that we would check in first and Kellin would be brought up to the room. We checked in at the desk and made our way upstairs. We had two rooms with an adjoining door. I had just enough time to put my things down and take off my coat before there was a knock at the door. I opened it – and there stood our guide, another man, and two women, one of whom was holding Kellin.

They came in and Kellin was handed to me. He was bundled in several layers of clothes. I held him, talked to him, touched his face. He did not show any emotion at first, good or bad. He simply allowed me to hold him. After a few minutes, I tickled him and was rewarded with smiles (I would learn in the next few days that smiles were not easy to get from him – so that moment was truly a gift). I started to become aware of how warm it was in the room and I was concerned that he was overheating. But I had heard about how Chinese people tend to dress children much more warmly than we do, and I was worried about offending the adults if I started to undress him. Thankfully, in a few minutes, one of the women suggested we take off his coat. I started to do the mom thing – hold him in one arm while pulling his coat off with the other. This was when I realized how “floppy” and weak he was; there was no way I could support him with one arm and pull his coat off with the other. I eventually had to lay him down on the bed like a young infant to get his coat off.

At this point, my dad called me over the desk where our guide was translating Kellin’s “schedule” (from the orphanage) and explaining the supplies the staff had brought. They had brought one bottle, a can of formula, a package of some sort of hard biscuits that they crushed up and added to his bottle, a few diapers, and the toy and blanket we had sent to him months earlier (still wrapped in plastic so I don't think he had ever used them). I listened to the schedule, which included meal times (and foods they fed him), nap times, and “therapy”/play time. It only took me a day or two to realize that this schedule could not possible be accurate, based on Kellin’s behavior (more on this later).

I signed the 24-hour guardianship papers, and the adults left. My dad disappeared into his room, and I was alone with my new son. I undressed him further to change him into some light pajamas (it was stifling in the room!) and saw for the first time his skinny little body. He was so skinny that I could easily get my hands around his waist, and the diapers I had brought from home (size 3 – what my other children wore as BABIES) were way too big. The one positive was that he was clean, his hair was nicely cut and no sign of lice, his skin was clear without any rashes or scabies, his fingernails were trimmed and clean. He did smell kind of funky, which I think was mostly because his hands and face were generally covered with spit (his favorite “toy”) and his teeth were covered in yellow build-up and his mouth didn’t smell too great.

Kellin was too weak to sit up; when I tried to sit him up, he slumped over on the bed. I tried to hold him, play with him – but he couldn’t handle being held or touched for very long and he didn’t know how to be held – most kids learn how to wrap themselves around another’s body when held, but Kellin either went completely limp or stiff and didn’t hold on at all, so holding him was difficult. It was clear that he was not at all used to being held or touched (thus my feeling that there was no way he received “therapy” and play time with others every day).

This first day, he did not cry at all. You would think this was a positive thing but actually it’s a negative. Crying is a normal, healthy reaction of a young child to a major and confusing life change. It indicates that the child recognizes something is different, is grieving, and is perhaps missing familiar people. Kellin only wanted to curl up on his side in the bed and use his fingers to flick spit around while poking his other finger into his eye. I was overwhelmed with sadness at how neglected he clearly must have been. I will say in all honesty that there were moments when I wondered what in the world I had done and how we were ever going to be able to parent this child.

After a while, I got on the computer so my family could “meet” their new son/brother. It was a short conversation but enough for them to see him.

As I prepared to head to bed, I began to realize that there was no way I would be able to co-sleep with my son, one of the bonding experiences I hoped we could share. He would not tolerate me laying next to him on the bed and would become much more restless and push at me. So with both a happy and sad heart, I went to the other bed and slept.