my first visit......

well the moment of truth has finally come. I have been dreading this first visit. Totally afraid of a tsunami of uncontrollable emotion. I had been discussing this visit all week with Guy and he gave me some great advice.

He said sometimes you just have to rip that band-aid off and get it over with.

And so, we did.

I charged into the house and found Spence in his room playing on the computer. He gave us some excited noises and then turned back to his playing. Until the next moment when he announced: "car please".
I was really nervous to leave the house with him anticipating a tantrum somewhere along the way or worse, a tantrum when we pulled back into the driveway.

But the band-aid metaphor came back to mind and I summoned the nerve to give it a whirl.
We climbed into the mini-van and set off for sights unseen. i forgot to mention that Ty was with us as well.
The drive was lovely and 15 minutes into it we heard the familiar: "In N Out pweese" along with a host of sounds that I hadn't heard for two weeks. I kept thinking in my mind, "wow, I don't miss hearing that one. I really don't miss that one. Was he really that loud before? "

I kept looking at him during our visit and waiting for him to stare at me and then say something significant. I showed him some family photos on my itouch and he remembered his brothers' names. He remembered I was "mommy".

But there was no flood of emotion. He wasn't overwhelmed with remembering where he was before. He wasn't missing everything that he had before. In fact, I thought I could see him trying to calculate just how much better things are at his new home. ( It didn't hurt that I had brought over his favorite phonics DVD and he was jonesing to play with it again).

I figured it wouldn't hurt to stack the deck in my favor.

And then it was time to go. We told him goodbye and had him give us hugs and kisses. Ty surprised everyone by making all of us do a group hug together. And then Spence asked for the car please again. He had this look on his face that showed he was aware that something was happening. He looked like he was trying to figure out if he was supposed to stay or go.

The fun thing about non verbal children is that you can only guess what they are thinking!

To make things easier, I redirected him to sit down at his computer and play again and he complied without a problem. That was it. We were done.

Turns out TY had the biggest problem with our visit. He tantrumed the whole way HOME!!! And since he can't tell you what he wants either, our best guess is that he wanted to keep stimming on the giant bag of crayons back at Spencer's house.

Who knew?

After all was said and done, except for Ty's rotten behavior, it was a lovely visit. We enjoyed tickles and playing chase, swinging on the porch swing and a mountain of fries. I got to hug and squeeze and kiss my baby and see his mega-watt smile.

This placement has been, without a doubt, THE most difficult challenge of my life. And it is one of the best. It still hurts and stings. I still feel like I'm going to die sometimes. But that is going to take some more time.