Home At Last...Safe and Sound

Hello-

We arrived home safely from Korea last Tuesday and are slowing getting adjusted to our new life. Our departure from Korea was very bittersweet...we were so excited to be taking Claire home, however, we were grieving for her foster parents who were so incredibly sad to have to say, "goodbye" to her. It was very, very emotional. There are special places in heaven for foster parents everywhere.....

Our flight home was a challenge. We had been told that it usually goes one of two ways...the babies either completely shut down and sleep the entire 18+ hour journey or they cry. Our trip home was more of the latter. Claire was very scared and very quickly starting grieving the loss of her foster parents. There were 5 other babies on our flight to Chicago and Claire was definitely the most vocal one (much to the dismay of all the passengers near us). She's definitely got a good set of lungs on her! Ben was a such trouper the entire trip and had a great time! We are so glad that he made the journey with us!

Having been home nearly a week, Claire is becoming more and more adjusted each day. She's getting close to being on a manageable US schedule (although she's consistently waking up between 1-2 AM and wants to play....hopefully we can get her to put herself back to sleep soon!) and she is more comfortable in her surroundings. For the first few days, the only time she wasn't crying was when I (Christa) was holding her. I couldn't even put her down for a minute without huge crocodile tears. Now, she can be content sitting on the floor and playing with some toys or playing with Ben and I can leave the room for a minute without her being scared. She's also becoming more comfortable with Dave holding her (it's very, very common for them to gravitate more towards women than men because foster mothers do the majority of the childcare...some of the families that we traveled with are experiencing the same thing). She giggles and smiles a lot and puff up her cheeks and blows when she's mad...it's pretty cute! I even took her to Target today to pick up some things and she loved riding in the cart! All in all, we think we're all doing great!

Here are some more pictures:Calm before the flight took off...

A rare moment on the flight....asleep in the bassinet

Playing together our first night home

Asleep in her crib her first night home

There's her grin!

She likes the johnny jump up!

Such a big helper!

She's finally home!

Dave, Christa, Ben and Claire

A Message to Mr. Kang and Mrs. Lee (Claire's Foster Parents)

Hello, Mr. Kang and Mrs. Lee-
We hope you received our message from Ms. Oh that we arrived home safely. Se Jin is adjusting well to her new life, but we know that she is still missing you. We wanted to take this opportunity to thank you, again, for taking such wonderful care and, most importantly, for loving of our beautiful daughter. Words could never express our grattitude. We will commit to you that we will make sure Se Jin knows about you and her homeland and we hope that some day when she is older, we will travel back to Korea to show Se Jin her homeland and to meet you again. We also promise to continue to post pictures of her (and the rest of our family) on this blog and will be checking your blog often. We wish your family peace and good health.

Dave, Christa, Ben and Claire

We Have A Rock Star Among Us!

Hello, again, from Seoul-
It didn't take us long to figure out that Seoul is truly a beautiful, safe and clean city with wonderful, friendly people! Having spent quite a bit of time in China and Hong Kong, I was expecting Seoul to be similar, but it's not at all. It's SOOOO much cleaner, the driving is so much more civilized (we never feared for our life and they don't honk at each other), and the people go out of their way to greet you and help you. We've spent the last couple of days sight seeing (and shopping) and wherever we go, people (especially school aged children) say in broken English, "Hello. Nice to meet you!" We were forewarned before we left that Ben would get quite a bit of attention here, but, holy cow, we feel like we're with a rock star! Everywhere we go, Koreans come up to him and talk to him (usually in Korean) or they'll yell from down the street to him. One morning we were waiting for a coffee shop to open and a group of school aged girls were gathered on the corner looking at us and, obviously, admiring Ben and then one of them yelled to us..."Hello, You baby is bootiful!" and they all giggled as they crossed the street. It's so endearing, but it pretty much freaks Ben out. He's been riding on Dave's shoulders when we're out. Dave's going to need one really long massage when we get home.

We were at a Korean Folk Village with 2 other couples from the US and I heard some commotion behind me and a very large group of kids had surrounded the other 2 couples and were talking to them in broken English and wanting their picture taken with them. It was so funny!

We had a situation in the subway this afternoon where a Korean gentleman went out of his way to help us. We didn't realize that the route we took was a slightly higher fare (literally 10 cents each) than what we were used to paying (it was a longer ride), but we didn't realize our mistake until we tried to exit at our stop. The machine kept spitting back our tickets and the turn styles wouldn't move so we could exit. We realized we needed to pay more, but couldn't figure out how to do that...the ticket offices were on the other side of the turnstyles. This gentleman was wearing a St. John's sweatshirt, so we asked him if he spoke English, and he did a little. We were able to communicate the problem to him and he didn't know how we could pay the difference, so he told us to stay there and he ran to find someone to help us. We were finally freed after paying our 40 cents. I've heard of similar stories from other families....the Koreans and just good, friendly people.


We've seen some really cool things...we visited a royal palace yesterday that was built in the 1300's. It's weird...here is this ancient palace right in the middle of a bustling city and is surrounded by modern sky scrapers. We watched a changing of the guard ceremony, which Ben really enjoyed. We also visited the world's largest book store and found some cool books that we can give to Claire that are in Korean and English. Ben was excited to get a Spiderman coloring book where all the writing was in Korean. Today, we visited the Korean Folk Village which a huge complex that really gave us a sense of all facets of Korean culture...how they live, what they eat, how they make a living, how they are entertained, etc...it was really cool to see so much in one place. We watched a group of folk dancers and musicians perform, we watched them perform some acrobatics and we watched a traditional Korean wedding ceremony. It turned out to be a full day adventure, but it was worth it.


We still have a few more places that we're going to try to see on our last couple of days here. The other 3 families that are staying at our hotel (who we now call our friends) are leaving for home really early Monday morning, so they get to pick up their babies tomorrow night and bring them to the hotel. I volunteered to go with them to the agency for their pickup to video tape it for them. That should give me a sense for what our pickup will be like. I'm planning to have lots of tissue on hand.


That's all for now....both Dave and Ben are crashed and I'm ready to join them.


Christa, Dave and Ben

Hello, again, from Seoul!

Hello, again, from Seoul!

It's now Friday here...hard to believe how quickly this week is going by!! We got to spend some more time with Claire yesterday and it went well! Her foster mother (her name is Mrs. Lee, Hyeon Shil) continues to amaze me. She brought some food that Claire likes to eat and got it all out and motioned for me to feed her, knowing this could help Claire start to trust and rely on us. She kept pointing to me and saying "Umma" (mama in Korean) and pointing to Dave and saying "Appa" and telling Claire that Ben was her big brother. Her foster father (also an amazing man!) brought us a box of CD's of all the pictures they've taken of her, along with a DVD of videos of her and a CD of her favorite music. He had also had another book of photos made and he included the photos we sent to her of our family. Claire will be so fortunate to have these priceless memories of her time here. We couldn't express our gratitude enough! They also gave us a large bag of stuff to help Claire with her transition....her favorite pillow, her favorite toy, some clothes, formula, diapers, her favorite lotion....unbelieveable!

They also gave Claire a beautiful hanbok, which is the traditional Korean dress. It is absolutely beautiful. It's customary on a child's first birthday to dress them in the hanbok and set objects in front on them. Koreans believe that whatever object they pick up first determines their destiny (pencil means she would be a scholar, a thread means long life, money means you will have wealth, etc.). Can't wait to dress her in this beautiful hanbok and see what she grabs! Oh, and Koreans also celebrate a baby's 100th day of life. Many years ago, many babies didn't survive to their 100th day, so it is now customary to make a big celebration of that day. They had that celebration for Claire and gave us the hanbok that Claire wore on that day. Her foster mother also wrote her a letter, which we can give to Claire down the road. We truly hope to maintain contact with her foster family. We told them at our first meeting about this blog and yesterday, her foster father pulled out his lap top and brought up the blog (which he had figured out how to translate everything into Korea) to show us he would keep watching for updates there.

This second meeting took place at the playroom of the agency (instead of a conference room), so we were all sitting on the floor with some toys. A truly priceless moment happened when Ben was taking a stuffed toy and putting it on Claire's head and letting it fall off. Claire kept squealing in delight at this and Ben was on cloud 9 that he was able to make his sister laugh! Oh, a few more tidbits about Claire, she now weighs about 20 lbs, has at least 4 teeth and just started to crawl (although we haven't seen her crawl yet). The next time we will see her is on Tuesday, when we pick her up on the way to the airport. It's going to be an incredibly hard and emotional day for all of us.

Here are some more pictures from our second meeting.

Group shot that includes Claire's foster parents and her social worker (Ms. Oh, Ji Young)

Prior to our meeting with Claire yesterday, we were invited to lunch at the agency with all the other families who are picking up their children this week. The agency is nothing short of amazing. It was founded by Dr. Kim, Duk Whang 36 years ago. I think he said they've placed over 45,000 children from his agency in 36 years. He is now 95 years old and still comes in every day and makes a point of meeting each and every family who is adopting a child to express his grattitude. He has published many books and he presented each of us with a copy of one of his books, which he signed for us. He is an amazing man who has devoted his life to helping children and others in need. His daughter, Dr. Kim, Jin Sook, is now the president of the agency, and she also met with us to express her grattitude. It was so very humbling...we are so incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to have Claire become a part of our family and they are so incredibly grateful to us for doing it. Check out their website: http://www.eastern.or.kr/.

Now, we have some time to sight see. We're going to check out the palaces today and are going to the Korean Folk Village tomorrow with some of the other families. Seoul is a very clean and beautiful city and everyone is so very friendly! It's also very safe and we've already figured out the subway system, which is very easy. We're looking forward to seeing more of it.

Christa, Dave and Ben

Hello from the Land of the Morning Calm!

Hello from Korea!

We made it here safe and sound last night and had our first meeting with Claire and her foster parents this morning. Wow...where do we start? She's even more beautiful in person than she is in the pictures! She's, obviously, grown quite a bit since December and is still quite the little chunk! (She had her pre-flight physical after our meeting, so we will find out how much she weighs-I'm sure she's bigger than Ben was at this age!!).

She was very enamoured with Ben and couldn't stop staring at Dave. I can't imagine what was going through her mind. She was okay with me holding her at first, but it is clear she is very attached to her foster parents. They left us in the room alone with her for a few minutes and Claire was okay at first, but then, she got really upset (which is very common). Once her foster mother came back in the room, she stopped crying. We are going to meet with her again tomorrow, so, hopefully, she won't be as scared as she was today.

We were completely overwhelmed by the care she's gotten from her foster parents. Claire is their first foster child and it is very clear that she is very, very special to them. They've gone out of their way to document her first 10 months of life for us. Her foster father created a photo album that captured her time with them and he gave it to us. They've also loaded videos onto a website for us to access. At one point, I asked the foster mother how she comforted Claire and she said that she loved music and pulled out her cell phone to play a favorite song. At that point, her foster father spoke and said he would go home tonight and burn a CD for us of her favorite songs. They already had given Claire's social worker a detailed list of her sleep schedule, feeding schedule (how much, when, etc.), bath routine...you name it. The social worker is translating that into English for us. Oh, and get this, car seats are not required in Korea and very few people use them however, they knew she would need a car seat in the U.S., so early on, they put her in a car seat so that would not be a new experience for her when we bring her home. We will be forever grateful for the care and love they have given her. It's going to be a difficult transition for all of us. We told them that we wanted to maintain contact with them and promised to send them updates and photos.

Okay, now what you really want to see some photos....

Here are Claire's foster parents bringing her into the room to meet us.

Here, her foster mother was having her wave to us.

Claire and her foster parents

She was scared, as you can imagine, so we had to really take it slow

She was very enamoured with Ben.


Finally, I got to hold her! She was fine with me holding her, at first, as long as she could see her foster mom.

That face!

Family photo!

Proud Papa!


Mama's Girl!