What's in a name?

Ah, a free day! The first word we heard this morning was "swim," and then he went back to sleep again. We had told him we could go swimming today since we couldn't go to the pool yesterday.....he definitely has a good memory! We went swimming in the morning and then ventured to the park in the afternoon, hoping to help burn off some of his boundless energy 😁. 

Bedtime has been a little tough, but we were caught by surprise when he had a complete meltdown in the afternoon while we were playing with his remote controlled car. He cried for over 45 minutes and couldn't be comforted. We were finally able to catch (through the translation app) that he wanted to go home. We felt so helpless and inadequate! He finally calmed down, thanks to some cartoons, and we were able to feed him dinner and then let him watch cartoons until he feel asleep. I remember in one of our trainings they said to be thankful for this as it means your child has formed previous attachments which would help them form attachments with us. Please pray that we would be able to comfort our son during these times of homesickness!

As James and I were talking later about everything that had happened, we realized that mama and baba are just names HouLiang knows for us. We all have some perception of what mom and dad mean based on our experiences with our parents growing up, but he has never had that. As we become a family, we hope he comes to associate mama and baba with unconditional love, comfort, acceptance, and security—just as our Heavenly Father provides these things for us.