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