Our luggage seemed to take forever, and I was standing there praying that everything would arrive with us, while Jock stood at the shiny carousel watching for them. They did arrive, and then we stood inside the exit for a bit watching for a guy with a sign with our name on it. It took a bit but then we saw him - the same guy that came to get us in May. He showed us to Ernst's truck, we loaded up and headed towards GLA. Ernst made a stop at the grocery store on the way back, and picked up a bunch of chicken and powdered milk.
We probably got to GLA around 2:30 pm, and James was downstairs with Melissa and Susie, waiting for us. He walked over and held his arms up for Jock to hold him right away - so sweet! I don't know if he reemmbered us but he still had the photo book we'd sent to him with photos of us and him together in May. They say he liked looking at it, so perhaps he did remember us.
We were told that we'd be having supper at the guest house, so we would be leaving around 3pm. Holli (Dixie's daughter-in-law who also works in the office at the main house), and Brandon (GLA pastor and guest house operator with his wife Nikki) take turns picking up their youngest kids at school, so that was our ride. I think Ernst had already dropped our bags at the guest house on his way out on more errands.
James was running a fever, so we gave him some Tylenol when we got to the guest house. He also had major sniffles/runny nose, so we know he wasn't feeling good. He was pretty mellow and not very smiley - probably also combination of not feeling well and confused/scared about what was going on.
He did warm up to me a little bit with some cheerios snacks, and playing ball.
He also had fun learning how to scroll through photos on the iPad, playing with toys, looking at books, and snuggling a bit with Jock.
Around 4:00, the generator turned on, and sounded a little like a loud vehicle out the window. James immediately wanted to go somewhere, and kept saying "an ale" (let's go). He has a very high-pitch voice that we hadn't heard before, so that was fun. His speech was very clear too, although he did do some just grunting or pointing and saying, "da". Because we weren't up for going anywhere, we just took walks from the bedroom we were assigned in the back of the house, to the balcony in the front of the house, and that seemed to appease him until supper.
Just before supper, the mission team that was also staying at the guest house arrived back from their day's work - all 12 of them! James recognized one of them, as they had spent some time with the babies the previous week. He held his arms out for him to pick him up, but Nikki had asked them ahead of time to not try to play with or hold James so we can have the bonding time we need. They were great the whole time we were there.
Supper was a yummy chicken/noodle casserole and a fresh salad. James took a few bites of the pasta, but wasn't very hungry. Jock tried to get him to take a bite of strawberry cake/frosting, but he wanted nothing to do with it - even when I put some frosting on his lip.
After supper, back in our room, we just sat and tried to relax a bit. I did some reorganizing of our suitcases, because we had packed it with everything mixed up in the carry-ons and checked luggage in case something got lost in transit (luckily nothing did). Jock took one of James' shoes off, and he had a little melt-down, so he put it back on. But then we decided we should try to keep his bedtime routine similar to what it had been in the orphanage, and do a little bath.
Nikki brought up a basin, a teapot of hot water, and a pitcher of cold water for us to bathe James right on the floor of our room. She said, "Do what you need, let him scream, don't worry about us." And scream he did! He did NOT want us to take off his clothes, even after showing him his PJs. We stood him in the water and pretty much just rinsed him off, not taking extra time to find soap. We dried him off, and got on a clean diaper and PJs. We thought it was close to 8:00, and he was still very warm, so we gave him some more Tylenol (it actually was before 7 still - oops!), and I "rocked" him to sleep.
He slept with me that night. We didn't want to even try the pak'n'play, since he was so clingy to us. We figured he needed some Mommy bonding time, and bedtime was a good time for it, so Jock went out of the room for a bit so he would be more OK with me. He mostly slept quite well, although he did wake up (sort of?) briefly, crying out, but went back to sleep. One time he woke up for a bit longer, but after I sat up and rocked him for a bit, he let me lay down with him and he fell back to sleep.
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