A little piece of heaven

After a rocky start, things are going great in Singapore. Nate was great on the plane, but didn’t sleep at all the first night. Needless to say Owen and I were a wreck. But then we got a good night’s sleep the next night and now we’re pretty much caught up and our schedules switched to the time here (15 hours ahead).

Nate is having a WONDERFUL time. He just loves being out all day, seeing people and places, eating different foods. So far he hasn’t seen much that’s different. We are staying in Downtown Singapore and spending most of the day at the convention center. Basically, it’s just a massive (and I mean massive) mall. So it feels like we haven’t left the States. It’s a very westernicized place and everyone speaks English, and they sell all the same stuff they sell at the States. So it’s been pretty easy and normal, nothing different or unique. The only thing different has been the food, it’s awesome!! We’re trying out all kinds of stuff and enjoying it, the stuff here is much healthier.

Other than that…mostly we wake up, shower, go to the convention center for teachings, walk around in the mall, eat, and go to sleep. Things should change once we go to Thailand, but for the moment, everything’s good!

I added some pictures of our trip to DC and New York here, and a few other miscellaneous pics:

Miscellaneous pictures

Just a 2 second update to let everyone know we made it to singapore okay!

Nate was absolutely perfect, he didn’t even cry once! He slept for part of the first flight, then watched TV, ate, and hung out. Then he slept for ALL of the second flight. Now he’s in baby heaven looking at everything and getting overstimulated which he loves.

More later, we’re just at the airport.

We got home Monday morning and we are still a little jet lagged but happy to be home. It was a great, informative trip and we are thrilled to have had the opportunity to go to the NIH. We also had a good time in New York. I’ll add more picture later, but for now, I wanted to share this one:

Cute or cute?

The summary of the trip is – we are on the right track with Dorje’s care. We have a few changes and adjustments to make, but generally, we have a great team of people working with him and we’re doing a good job making sure all of his needs are met. On the one hand, it was a difficult trip because it was all about Dorje’s DISabilities. Yet we enjoyed showing him off and he was the star of the medical center, wherever we went people wanted to say hi to him and we got so many positive comments about his personality. Owen and I sometimes felt like we were carrying around a little celebrity. He just has this magical way of drawing people out and connecting with them.

Oh, and some great news! We got a call today that Nathan can start doing Hippotherapy (Therapy on horseback) at Carousel Ranch! The city will sponsor him! So we are excited about that. We were doing 2 days a week at Head Start, but it was a big expense for us, so now we can continue w/ twice a week, one at each of the ranches, but we only pay for one out of pocket.

Oh, and best of all. Today he mastered how to press a button to get a ball out of a little dispenser! It was so cute to watch him. He did it about 5 times. He had to lift his hand against gravity and press down. It’s the first time I see him do something like that. Then, later in the day, during vision therapy, he was able to reach into a bag, grab some links, and pull them out of the bag. Our little guy is starting to play with toys! We are so proud of him.

We will share more pictures later, but for now, just wanted to add an update.