Nathaniel Paul Congxin

I decided to send another picture so you could see how cute Nathaniel is in his little Chinese outfit. He is doing great. Yesterday he did his first sign for "more" and today he added the sign for "eat". We are going to try and use sign language as best we can with him because of his palate. He is also using his pincer grasp more. Today was the first time he fed himself by picking up food and putting it in his mouth. I'm fairly certain he fed himself bottles at the orphanage but I don't think he was ever allowed to feed himself anything else. He is like a little bird. He opens his mouth up and wants me to dump the food in as fast as possible. I'm trying to work on some of these orphanage feeding issues. This morning he did refuse to eat something by turning his head away. This is great because I want him to be confident that there will always be something to eat and he doesn't have to fill up as much as possible because there might not be another meal for awhile.

He is also so strong. We've noticed that his legs are much stronger than the first day with him and he is just starting to be interested in climbing things. There's not much to climb here but I'm sure he will love our stairs at home. He is busy, busy, busy and wants to see and feel and experience everything.

Something else I've noticed is that when he gets hurt he will now come to me for a kiss. Before he would just whimper and look down kind of sad and then toddle off. He is starting to come to me when he wants something versus crumpling into a pile on the floor and throwing a tantrum.

Just some observations.

Love to all,

Katie