All About Owen

Well, today is day 3 of life with Owen. I haven't had a lot of chance to write things down, but we only have one thing planned for today (lunch with Robert), so this gives me a chance to write down some things about Owen.

He LOVES his backpack! He's very attached to it and if we try to take it from him he can get quite upset. He carries a couple matchbox cars, a magnadoodle pad and his camera in it. He has worn out the batteries in the camera, mostly just playing with it, but sometimes intending to take pictures. I need to charge the batteries when we get a chance.

He can be quite insecure. We think that he's worried that things will be taken away from them and he'lll never see them again, so once something is given to him it takes a lot to get it back.

Occasionally he will show frustration with Cackie. She is having pretty rough time with all this. If Baba or I show too much attention to him she has to jump in and try to get us to pay attention to her. Sometimes when she does this Owen can get testy and will try to push her away.

He does not like cats or dogs. We recieved a letter from his foster family that said this, but we saw it in action last night when we went out for a walk. A cat jumped down from a brick wall and ran under a car about 30 feet away and he started to pull back and wouldn't walk forward. Then, later we were walking past a shop that had a dog sitting out front and she screamed and pulled away. (this is going to make life at home VERY difficult!)

He knows who MaMa and BaBa are and can point to us both in person and in pictures.

He's pretty tiny. He is tall and has a big belly, but his arms & legs are very skinny. On Monday we changed him into some shorts that I had from Walmart that said 24 mos, but they almost fell off of him. We had some other shorts that were 3T with elastic waist and they fit him a lot better. Unfortunately he had two messes and we had to make a trip to Walmart to get some extra drawstring shorts for him. So, we may need to do some shopping when we get home.

He has the cutest little dimples!

He is not fond of the bathtub. Monday night we tried to give him a bath and it ended up in a screaming match. Last night tried again, but he had his backpack on and wouldn't give it up.

He is a very neat little boy. If he takes something out he puts it away when he's done. If I open a drawer to put something away he does not like it if I leave the drawer open, he immediately comes behind me to close it. He also tries to close the doors at the hotel entrance whenever we go in or out.

He LOVES to eat! The only things so far that we could not get him to eat are soup and some broccoli at breakfast this morning. So far he has eaten corn, spare ribs, shrimp, asparagus, spinach, lamb, chicken, pork, eggplant, rice, noodles, eggs, watermelon, potatoes, carrots, snow peas, apples, bacon, sausage, steamed bread... pretty much everything we give him. He eats so much at one time that his belly is rock hard by the time we leave the table.

He is extremlely careful when walking around, especially on stairs. He probably hasn't had much exercise and his muscle tone is low, but that shouldn't take long to correct.

He likes cars, crayons, coloring and playdoh. But he really doesn't like things that make too much noise and this morning he freaked out when I brought out some light up balls that have tentacles like an octopus. He seemed to like the light part, but once all the tentacles came out he started screaming.

He has a VERY loud scream! This morning we went to wake Cackie up and something in the dark room scared him and the scream was ear piercing! A few minutes later someone from the hotel came walking around the floor and we had to wonder if it was because of his screaming.

He is a very sweet and loving little boy! He will walk up to us and and hold up his arms wanting us to hold him. He's even started giving us the cutest little kisses.
Yesterday we had to wake him up suddenly from his nap to go and take care of some paperwork. We thought we were going to do that today, but things changed and we had to move quickly. He was such a good boy, didn't cry, scream or anything. He just went with the flow and wanted to explore everything he could.

All our paperwork is now done. He's officially ours, we're just waiting in Tiajin for his passport to be issued. We should get that on Friday and then on Saturday we will head to Guangzhou to get his US Visa.

Here are our pictures from yesterday. The camera battery died, so we didn't get too many.