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!