Adios, S.!

Yesterday we were surprised to hear that S. would be leaving us this morning. He arrived back in November 2014 on a "one night only" placement. One night turned into 6 months, during which time we realized that he would not be returning to family. As you can read from the blog post, he had a really rough transition. I'd forgotten just how bad it was until going back to read that post. He is super smart and very talkative, and he has grown a lot during his time with us. We've started noticing recently, however, that he is really outgrowing the baby house. As kids do when they're ready to move on, his behavior has really become difficult to deal with at times. He has started screaming at us, spitting/hitting/kicking us, and just not listening or obeying at all. It's been hard on everyone. 

When he arrived, he and his two older siblings were put into three different orphanages (it was late at night and there wasn't any place prepared to take all of them). Back in February, an orphanage agreed to take all three. Immediately his brother and sister moved in. They had also had hard transitions at their other orphanages and it was difficult for everyone when they moved to this particular orphanage together (neither had been in school before and his older brother was already nearly 7 years old). The orphanage agreed to take S., but asked us to wait a month or two until his older siblings were doing well before sending him over. We took him there for visits with his siblings and all was going well. When it was time to request the transfer for S., there were many problems, the main one being that his paperwork somehow got lost! We kept waiting and waiting for word that he could move, and were surprised to hear yesterday that this morning he would be leaving!

He has known for some time that he will be moving to another orphanage with his siblings and has been so excited! When he heard it was time to go, he didn't care about telling us goodbye… He was ready to head out! He has had such a difficult past month with us that it truly was a relief to hear that his transfer was accepted. Being with his siblings and older children (he'll be the baby of his new orphanage) is what he needs. He will have a lot more one-on-one attention there and will get to go to pre-school! We'd like to go visit him in a couple months and are sure he will be doing GREAT!