Care Packages

Sometimes you get to bloggin' and you just can't stop. And by "you," I mean " me."

I thought I'd share some pictures of the care packages we have sent Brady. We sent this first one right after we got approval to adopt him in February.

The second one we sent in mid April just as we were finalizing our travel plans.

They are created by a wonderful woman over there who specializes in putting together care packages and getting through the red tape to get them to children cared for by orphanages.  We know he received both packages.

Cuteness

Shots

So I got three needles in my arm today, a polio booster, typhoid vaccine, and a blood draw to ascertain my immunity to various other illnesses.

Apparently the CDC believes I'm going to contract typhoid from one of the 5 star hotels in which we are staying, located in modern cities.  According to the fact sheet I got today, you get typhoid from drinking contaminated water. This should not be a problem, as I am not planning on drinking any liquids during our stay so as to avoid the bathroom situation.

Helpfully, the pamphlet informs me that the vaccine is not 100 percent effective, so I should still avoid contaminated water. Thanks for that tip, who knows what I could have done without it.

K

The Room

So apparently the peeps are clamoring for pictures of Brady's room. Well, wait no further folks...

What's In A Name?

Quite a few things if you are the young Master Wu. Brady's current name is Wu Wen Hong. It's a name that was given to him by the orphanage in the hope of a bright future. Typically, several characters can be said the same way, but have very different meanings. Hong, the name he goes by, means great and vast. Wen means culture and literacy.

Wu is a surname given by the orphanage as well. Many orphanages in his country give the same surname to all their charges, to indicate they come from that orphanage. This puts kids in a tough position as they are marked as orphans for life. Orphans have a low social standing. But Wen Hong's orphanage director gives all the children one of the ten most popular surnames-not an orphanage name.

And now for Brady's American name. Brady is an Irish name which means broad shouldered. Since he's two, and about to embark on a great journey, I think it's a more figurative than literal name. It's also the name of my uncle, and comes from his grandmother's surname before that.

Wells is Brad's middle name, and was his grandmother's surname before that. It means dweller at or near a spring or stream.

Johnson is of course one of the most popular names in America (second only to Smith). It means John's son, referring to John The Baptist. It means gracious gift of Jehovah.

Brady Wells WenHong Johnson. That's quite a name!

What size is Brady?

That's a good question.  According to some online charts, his weight puts him at the top of the 2T or the bottom of the 3T, but his height is about 24 months.  So I guess he's gonna need convertible-type clothes that can be rolled up some how.  I'm thinking his chest measurement isn't right, because according to these charts, his chest would need a boys 5-7 :).  Brady does mean "broad shouldered," but...

It looks like his shoe would be a kids 8 or 8.5.

Judging by the new pictures we have, it should be fairly easy to pack for him.  It looks like we can put all of his clothes on him at once.  If you look carefully, in the orange stripe sweater pictures, he appears to have three shirts on:  the blue and white collared shirt, the blue and white Mr. Rogers sweater thing with sleeves and the orange striped sweater.  It was 70 there this week.