China Trip Day #6 - The Day We Met Matteo

This morning felt surprising normal given that one of the most important moments of my life was going to occur just hours later.  I finally slept past 5:00 a.m. and actually slept later than I had planned.  I had this vision of having everything ready to go and as is typical of me, instead, I was making a mad dash at the end to get out the door with everything we needed for the Civil Affairs office.

We arrived shortly after 9:00 a.m. and were escorted into the Marriage Registration Room of all places.  We sat for a little over an hour and watched as couples came in to get marriage licenses.  Our guide appeared every now and then with paperwork we needed to sign or review, or updates on Matteo's whereabouts.  The three-hour trip from Fuyang to Hefei was taking longer than anticpated and Georgiana kept reassuring us Matteo was on his way.

So we sat and waited some more.  We wrote out our questions to ask the nannies about Matteo's routines, likes and dislikes and so on.  Chris really wanted to know, "Vikings or Packers," but we would get none of our questions answered since the two people who brought Matteo to us actually didn't really know him.

An American family across the hall from us was adopting their fourth child from China and had brought the entire family.  They had already met their son when we arrived.  As we watched the boy's older siblings play with their new brother, we wished Oliver and Soren could be here too.  In reality it would not have been practical to bring them, but as we nervously awaited Matteo's arrival, it would have been so comforting for us all to have had Oliver and Soren there. 

Two families from Italy also waited for their sons and the boys were very upset.  The older boy quickly settled down, but the younger one who looked close to Matteo's age just wailed on and on and his sad cries filled the hallways as business was conducted around him.  His new mom tried comforting him the best she could and I almost burst out crying when the little boy's cries were punctuated with calls for "Mama".  My heart ached for how sad and confused he was and I was also so scared for a similar reaction from Matteo.

Around 10:15 a.m., a woman carrying a very bundled up little boy burst into our room.  She was calling out "Chen Tao, Chen Tao," but even without this introduction, I immediately recognized our Matteo from the pictures we had gazed at for months.  I was relieved he looked exactly as I had pictured and hadn't grown up so much in the preceding months to the point of being unrecognizable. 

Chris and I had talked about how we wanted to approach Matteo when he arrived and agreed we'd try to let him warm up to us first.  When the woman set him on the ground, Chris slowly approached with a peace offering of a Matchbox car.  Matteo stood there stoically.  He looked at us with those serious eyes of his, but didn't show any interest in anything as we tried to interest him in the cars or the bottle of bubbles we brought.  The woman he arrived with (she worked at the orphanage, but was not his nanny) gently pushed him towards me while presumably telling him "Go to your mama."

All this while, couples sat around us filling out paperwork for marriage licenses.  One young woman was there with her parents, who looked on adoringly at Matteo.  The father got down on the floor with Matteo and quietly chatted with him like a loving grandfather would do.  He encouraged him to play with the cars and showed him how they could roll across the linoleum floor.  For that brief time I saw some curiously peak in Matteo.  He was otherwise completely shut down.  

Before we left, we were ushered into another room where a man with a really nice camera motioned for us to sit on two chairs in front of a red backdrop.  To our right was an alter, so I presumed this was the room wedding ceremonies before a justice of the peace were performed and the backdrop we were sitting in front of was typically used for wedding photos. 

When it was time to go, I offered Matteo my hand and I was surprised that he so willingly took it.  We walked out the door to our waiting van.  Against our predictions, he had not shed one tear.  He sat quietly on my lap during the short ride back to our hotel and clutched a Matchbox car in each hand.

As soon as we stepped inside our hotel room, Matteo started to cry.  He cried crocodile tears.  This went on for over an hour while we tried feeding him, offering him something to drink, playing with him and so on.  He never showed interest in anything.  Just like at the Civil Affairs office, he was shut down, but at least he was showing some kind of emotion even that emotion was utter grief.  It's sad to think about what was possibly going through his mind and how scared he was. He eventually fell asleep in Chris's arms and probably would have slept for a long time if the knock at the door for room service hadn't woken him.  It was past lunchtime by the time we made it to our room, but with a terrified little boy on our hands, we couldn't leave to go find lunch.

Awake, Matteo's tears resumed when he realized where he was and who he was with.  It was heart-breaking to witness how sad he was!  Out of ideas on how to cheer him up, we decided to go for a walk.  Before we could leave though, we had to make a decision.  Diaper or no diaper.  We were surprised to learn that he's completely potty-trained, but our guide explained that he'd probably never used a toilet before.  He's from a more rural area, where squat potties or simply going outside somewhere, is more the norm.  We tried sitting him on the toilet, but he was terrified, so as a precation before going out, we put a diaper on him.

Taking a walk ended up being a great idea.  Matteo actually stopped crying when we started putting on his coat and shoes.  We think he spent a lot of time outside and just like our kids and little kids the world over, like being outdoors.  Although it appeared as if Matteo had never ridden in a stroller before, he tolerated it.  Once we made it the couple of blocks to the park, we got him out and he really enjoyed walking around looking at everything and everyone.  Not surprisingly, we got a lot of stares, but everyone looked on lovingly at us.

The thing with adoption is that you celebrate even the smallest "wins" and we were so exited to get a couple of those on our walk.  Matteo had refused to eat or drink anything until that point, yet suddenly let me feed him snacks (since his fists still clutched those Matchbox cars) and once back in the stroller, he started to eat on his own from the snacks we put on his tray.  And the when he needed help getting down from a step, he reached for Chris.  Slowly we could see him letting his guard down.

After walking every foot of walkway in the park, we walked over to the pedestrian mall we had visited yesterday afternoon.  I really wanted to find that department store again.  Matteo arrived in clothes very typical for young Chinese children, but that is considered outlandish to Americans.  Not only were his shoes not my taste, but they were very difficult to get on him.  So we went in search of shoes.  We spent way too much money considering we're in China where shoes are supposedly cheap, but given that the store we bought his shoes from was next door to Armani Junior, I think we got a deal.  And he looks so darn cute in his new shoes.  

We stumbled upon the FANCIEST Pizza Hut we've ever see and after only six days, succumbed to the temptation of American pizza.   What was so wonderful about dinner, besides the pizza, is that Matteo started opening up.  We discovered he likes to color (even though we're not sure if he's actually ever colored before) and he played peekaboo with us by ducking his head under the table and popping it back up.  But what was the best is that we got his first smiles out of him.  The sad news for me is that because he was sitting on my lap, I didn't get to see!

As soon as we set foot back in our hotel room, Matteo started to cry again.  We're not sure why he's so sad here.  Maybe there aren't many distractions or maybe it's a reminder that he's no longer going back to the only home he's known. 

Chris left to go to the supermarket for some more water and to find something for Matteo to color with, and I started the bedtime routine with him.  Of course we had no idea what his routine was in his foster home and it's hard developing our own routine when we're living out of a hotel room.  To kill time and because nothing else was cheering Matteo up, I decided to give him a bath.  When I took his clothes off, I discovered his diaper was still dry.  The little guy hadn't gone in probably 10 hours!  I sat him on the toilet and held onto him and although he whimpered, he went!  I plopped him in the bathtub and he loved that too!  Once I got him to sit down and showed him out he could scoop water with his stacking cups, he happily sat there and scooped water for the next half an hour. (Like many things, we're not sure if Matteo has ever been in a bathtub.)  Again, I was celebrating these wins.

When Chris was back, we got him out of the bath and started getting him ready for bed.  He was not happy about getting in his pajamas and wouldn't let us brush his teeth.  Chris got out the markers he had bought and that stopped the tears.  We had no idea what his bedtime is, but it was getting late in our minds (well after 7:00 p.m. and he'd had a long and emotionally exhausting day) so we got in bed and read a bedtime story.  He was not interested in the book and played with his cars while I read.  After I finished reading, I turned out the lights to the room and Chris and I laid in bed with him.  The crib the hotel provided is tiny, very old and rickety-looking and we couldn't imagine Matteo actually sleeping in it.  By us all sleeping in the king-size bed together, we could at least lay with him and comfort him as he drifted off to a (Melatonin-aided) sleep. He was out in probably two minutes. 

We gazed at our sleeping boy lying between us, and I still couldn't believe he's ours forever and ever.  Matteo's first day with us was one of the toughest of his life, but we're in awe of his bravery and his budding trust in us.  We have some hard days (weeks, months maybe) ahead of us, but also so much reward in being able to call Matteo our son.