The Best Month Ever

One month ago today, we met our sweet son for the first time.

At 9:30am on November 6th in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, thousands of miles away, we walked into a plain looking office and there, stretched between two chairs, was our sleeping son.

After taking a late night train ride from Wenzhou to Hangzhou, his first time outside the orphanage walls since 3 months old, the night he was left at their gates by his birth parents, he was finally here.

The moment had come to meet the family (us!) that had promised China to do anything and everything to provide him life and medical opportunities that his birth parents knew probably would not exist for him there.

Since that day, so much has changed with Ian already. When we met him, his legs were jelly and he wasn't walking or crawling. Within 24 hours, he was happily cruising around the bed in our hotel room, and by the end of the first week, he was pushing away his bottle and reaching for a sippy cup. Before we left Hangzhou, he was responding to Ian, saying 'Mama' and 'Dada', and getting lots of walking practice with our help.

By the time he had been with us two weeks, he had taken his first plane ride, become a US Citizen, and rode in a car seat for the first time. He was sleeping through the night in his very own room, learned all about Spongebob, and was becoming conditional buddies with the pet he will someday consider his first childhood friend.

By the three week mark, he had become a Toys R Us kid, started hand feeding himself chicken, cheese, and cooked vegetables, and played in the snow for the first time (play is a stretch... we sat him in it and he cried).

Here, at the one month mark, he has met countless new people (all with an easy smile), gotten at least 5 new teeth, weaned himself off the bottle, embraced the highchair, called a truce with the floor (about 75% of the time), and survived his first doctor's appointment.

Although we feel like we were just in China, we also feel like Ian has been with us much longer than a month. Although there are some things we miss about our old "Double Income No Kids" life, it has been wonderful despite our lost freedoms. I can't think of anything I would do differently. Every day continues to get better and we are having a blast with Ian.

Thank you so much to everyone who has followed our journey and a double thank you to those have been unconditionally supportive. I know not everyone wants to hear about the lows along with the highs, but I feel like this would just be one more "hearts & rainbows only" blog and that's pretty unhelpful to those looking for real life information about this process. As our story shifts from adoption journey to anecdotes about Ian, Polli, doctors & life in the Mrzena household, bear with us while we try to keep it interesting (those who know us know that won't be too hard!).

Below are some pictures from the past month that might not have made the blog entries:

Laying eyes on Ian for the very first time

Making it official

Moments after waking... Ian meets his dada

Only hours after meeting us...he's already hamming it up for the camera

Happiness is an evening with my gang: Tivo, Polli, and Ian (and my glass of wine, which is just out of camera shot...just kidding)

The "show his first girlfriend" picture

Dad + Ian + Alone time + Access to my hair products

The kind of thing Mrzena guys think is funny

Another invention of dad's: The salad bowl sit & spin

Ian figures out that feeding himself can be fun

A glimpse of a typical afternoon at my house