I couldn’t believe it at first when I heard his little voice from the other room.

Just try to tell us his little accent is not the cutest thing ever. I dare you.

We’ve decided that Uno is one of the best relationship-building tools we got here.

He’s incredibly camera shy and hides whenever he notices my lens. One of these days I’ll be able to get a picture of his smile that shows off his adorable dimples.

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We are currently hosting until mid-July to advocate for this sweet child. If you feel the nudge that he may be your son and you would like to learn more about him, email me and/or the social worker at Madison who is working hard to find him a family too.

As much as I would have loved if this entire house had hibernated this morning, it did not. Instead, we were up making fried rice and eggs and playing Uno. When M.Y. suggested Ashlyn’s next move by pointing to a card in her hand, he officially won this crowd over if he hadn’t already.

But, his pleasure in the applause was short lived. Not long later, this sweet boy started crying again. Ashlyn’s limited Chinese couldn’t touch the need here so the on-call program translator was brought in via a phone call.

I just told her to tell him he was safe, that we’d take care of him, that he’d see his friends soon. I put the phone on speaker while she spoke. Every now and then I’d catch a word I recognized. She’d speak and then he’d look right at me as I held the phone in front of him. Then, she’d speak and pause and he’d look right at me again. She asked him if he understood; he said he did. She asked him if he’d like her to translate any questions to me; he said no. We hung up. He didn’t cry again.

He was doing so well that we made a little visit to a playground where we met up with this guy.

He seems to kinda get what we’re saying to him somehow. But, man, it’s hard to not get what he’s saying when he tries to speak a little. But, we’re going to be just fine.

And, when we aren’t feeling so fine, we’ll have ice cream.

_____________________________________

We are currently hosting until mid-July to advocate for this sweet child. If you feel the nudge that he may be your son and you would like to learn more about him, email me and/or the social worker at Madison who is working hard to find him a family too.

I’d so love to write a coherent account of the last 24 hours. But, that’s not going to happen tonight. I’m running on less than 5 hours sleep and, apparently, I need a whole lot more than that to function after 12 hours of being awake…and playing a lot of charades.

There was a whole lot of smiling and an equal amount of awkward when the crew of 5 kids and 2 chaperones arrived past midnight to greet a bunch of people anxious to catch the first glimpse of them.

One of the three buddies seemed quite content to walk close to his new host family. These two, however, stayed pretty tight.

All seemed happy when they caught on that we were all leaving together.

Until they were not happy. The emotions of it all and sheer exhaustion overcame “Jasper.” The boy who was a ring leader and firecracker at the airport was in a heap. M.Y. (“Brett” for advocating purposes) remained stoic in the car even after we dropped “Jasper” and his host mom off at their house. And, he remained that way as we quietly walked with him around our first floor and then invited him upstairs to the room he will share with Drew. As he stood in the middle of that room, standing strong, he started to sniffle a little and then started crying.

There is nothing quite like the cries of a child who feels entirely alone in his heartache.

I eased him onto my lap where he was able to sit with me without having to look right at me. There he remained and watched Drew and Mark play with Legos, the two of them thinking aloud for his benefit, knowing full well that he could not understand a single word but hoping that he’d hear their voices responding to each other, sense the relationships and safety, and be comforted.

He was.

We soon had this.

And, then we had this. He was brave enough to take his shoes off.

At 4:00am, Drew suggested that the two of them try to go to sleep. With every layer of clothes still on, M.Y. climbed into that bottom bunk and closed his eyes.