Looking Back: Our First Night as a Forever Family

Thinking back to our first night as a forever family always makes me smile! It was honestly the best feeling in the world to be able to drive away from our agency's transition house with Truman in our arms, knowing that we would never have to be separated again!

As I mentioned on an earlier post, when Truman's nannies handed him to us for good, they warned us that he had a bad case of diarrhea and gave us some powder with electrolytes in it that we were supposed to mix with water and give to Truman after every bowel movement. Well, luckily Truman slept the entire van ride to the hotel in his sling. As soon as the car stopped, however, he woke up bright-eyed and confused. He knew our faces a bit at this point, but obviously did not know that we are a staying presence in his life!

We quickly separated from the WACAP group and went up to our hotel room to try to settle in. I think Shea and I smiled more that night than we ever have before - there was just so much joy and peace in our hearts! Our first order of business was to prepare a bottle. When you are a first time parent, everything is an experience - and we were excited to mix our first formula! What we didn't realize was that the plane ride made everything kind of settle, so when we opened the can of formula we could not find the scoop in it. There were a few moments of panic before we decided to open another can. Once again, no scoop! We realized we were going to have to dig our hands in and find it - then this mess occurred :-)

Truman happily ate his first bottle (he still loves his food!) and then we spent some precious moments playing.Before we knew it, a few hours had gone by and Shea and I were getting hungry. We decided that Shea would run across the street to an Italian restaurant and grab a pizza - couldn't take long, right? Well, minutes after Shea walked out the door our calm little angel started crying and screaming. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but soon discovered that the terrible diarrhea we had been told about was back in full force. I quickly changed his diaper, but within seconds he was at it again. And every time he went, he cried and screamed. I was soon regretting the decision to let Shea leave the room! And I had no way of contacting him so I just had to buckle down and try to make T feel better. I was so wishing that I could call his nanny, Hana, for advice, but this was obviously not a realistic option (first, because I didn't have a phone number for the transition house - just for Ato Teklu - and second, his nanny didn't speak English). Anyway, it ended up taking Shea over an hour to come back (we learned our lesson about getting take-out!) Within that hour I changed about 8 diapers and my arms were very sore from rocking Truman the entire time. Still, without a doubt, one of the best nights of our life!

Soon after Shea came back Truman settled down and started feeling better (yay!). We ended up having a fantastic night filled with many firsts for us. We made this video showing some of the firsts we experienced - by the way, can you hear the giddiness in our voices?? :-)


And here are some pictures from our first night and morning together!