Hi All,This morning we travelled to Garrett's orphanage; the Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute. We had been hesitant to go, not knowing whether or not it would be good for him, but our guide assured us that most kids do fine going back for an hour or so and saying goodbye. Our 3 days with him have been really fine. He has been mostly quiet, moreso around Alan. He can be grinning and giggly with me, and when Alan (or any other male) approaches, he immediately gets shy and quiet. We have been fine with this, knowing that eventually he'll come out of it.... and hey, we have 3 loud children, so 1 quiet one is not a bad thing.
So we go to the SWI today, and as soon as we walk into the toddler room, he is immediately running around, chattering in Chinese (what? he speaks???) smiling at his friends... if he was 16 he would be doing high-fives and saying, "whassup???". We came at the end of naptime, so as we stood there the nannies proceeded to get each child out of their beds, add one MORE layer to the three each child is already wearing, so that some of them were the living embodiment of the younger brother in A Christmas Story ("I can't put my arms down!!").So our sweet, quiet son starts digging his new toys out of his little bag and showing them to his friends... HIS friends... if another kid tried to get in on it, he would turn around and pop them!!! And if another child tried to get a hug from Alan or me, or show us any attention at all, he would also pop them or drag them away from us. (big talk, defending Alan from other children, when he will barely give Alan the time of day!) But the best was snack-and-potty time... the nannies pulled out a bench and lined all the kids up (including ours) against the wall and handed out a snack and a drink. Then the nannies pulled out a stack of plastic potty seats from a closet, hauled each child up on their laps, yanked their cloth diaper out of their split pants (don'
t know what those are? kind of like chaps.... which is funny that they put 4 layers of clothes on, but since they're all split pants their legs are exposed down to their knees...) and plunked them all down on the potty. Now, Garrett was wearing his swanky Target jeans and a disposable diaper, so he wasn't included in this ritual.... but you could tell that he was well-informed on the process, because he was walking around to each child, directing them on how to place their legs for optimal potty-ing. (a sidenote: as we lauged about this, our guide was talking about the potty-seats... however, in her Chinese accent it sounded like "party-seats"... Party Seats... WOO HOO!!) But back to Garrett micro-managing his friends... he literally walked around to each child and pointed at their feet so they would move them backwards, and if they didn't comply he applied to the nannies for backup. Alan asked the nanny (through our guide) "does he do this all the time??" and she replied: "All the time." And Alan said softly, "don't fear, kids... we're taking him away... he'll never manage your potty time again."We were amazed at his TRUE personality, and glad we went to the SWI today so we could see it in action. He's loud, bossy, micro-managing, and a bit of a ring-leader for trouble... what can we say? He's a Bowling after all!
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There was a sweet side-note to this day, I will post it separately.