We Met Alex!

And he is wonderful and amazing and precious and adorable and I just love him so much! 

Our first meeting went very well, especially since we were told right before we met him that, "He never goes to strangers!" The updates we received over the past year had always noted "stranger anxiety" so we were prepared for him to be a bit wary of us. 

He cried for the first 5-10 minutes or so, but then he calmed down and started to play with toys. His favorite thing was this bucket of balls. He would take them all out and then put them all back in again. And he did this over and over and over. 

Eventually he started to hand me the balls and take them out of my hands. Soon after, he started doing this with Ryan too. At that point we knew he was beginning to warm up to us. 

Throughout the play time, we inched closer and closer to him as his foster mom tried to inch him towards us. Every once in a while he would realize what was happening and cry to his foster mother. But the cries got shorter and shorter as he became more comfortable. 

Eventually, his foster mom just picked him up and sat him on my lap. To my surprise, he stayed there and continued playing with the balls. After he got up to pick up some stray balls, he came back and sat on my lap all on his own! I couldn't believe it! We tried to get him to sit on Ryan's lap as well, but he was taking a bit longer to warm up to him. We think that if we had just another 30 minutes or so, it would have been long enough for Alex to feel comfortable sitting on Ryan's lap too. 

Okay, now that I have the gist of our first meeting out there, I should probably back up to the beginning of our day. 

Despite our nervousness and excitement, we did manage to get some sleep last night, but we woke up pretty early. By 8:45am we were ready to go meet Alex, so we left our hotel to make sure we could find the agency in time. LOL, as if five hours wouldn't be long enough (our meeting was at 2pm)! 

So we found the subway and rode down one station. We felt like we were on the right track so we stopped at a coffee shop for some jo. We sat there for awhile trying to kill some time, then we went and found the agency. So easy. We were, like, four hours early at that point so we decided to go in and drop off the care packages we had taken with us from other families waiting to adopt. Then we went back to a DIFFERENT coffee shop and sat for a couple hours. Then we went back to the FIRST coffee shop for lunch and to kill the rest of the time. FINALLY, FINALLY it was time to go meet ALEX!!!

As it turned out, the foster mom was running a bit late, so we got a tour of the agency. We saw the room where all the pictures are taken. We also saw the nursery and the many, many babies that were available for adoption. Babies usually spend the first 1-3 months in the nursery while they wait for a foster home to become available. Our social worker told us that there is always a shortage of foster homes. 

When we came down from the nursery, there he was! SO FREAKING CUTE! If you can even believe it, he's even CUTER in person! He just stared at us, unsure of what to think. Then he turned to his foster mom and started crying, and that was the beginning of our first meeting together. 

Here are some more things we learned about Alex today:

• Books are his favorite toy. If his foster dad is reading the newspaper, he'll grab the newspaper out of his hands and hold it as if he was reading the newspaper, mimicking his foster dad. 

• His favorite color is red (according to his foster mom).

• He misses his foster brother, Silas (soon to be reunited!). 

• He's good at running "errands" for his foster mom. 

• He's a total mama's boy. If he's playing, he'll stop, go and give his foster mom a kiss, and then go back to playing.

• When his foster mom asks, "Where's Mommy and Daddy," Alex points to our pictures!

We will meet Alex again on Monday, and he'll be in our arms forever next Wednesday! We can't wait!!!