New Friends and Care Package #7

A wonderful bonus to this adoption process are all the awesome new friends I have been making that are in the same boat as we are- waiting for our son to come home!  Through the magic of facebook I have been able to connect with parents from our agency which has an east and west coast office.  Me and the ladies that I've become closest to have been able to meet for several happy hours the past few months since we all live or work in northern VA.  With the exception of our west coast friend who was awesome enough to stop through the DC area on her last flight to the east coast.  Since she was in town all the couples were able to go to a nice dinner in Arlington.  It was great to get the husbands together too and spend time with friends that are on the same rollercoaster of a journey that is the Korean adoption process.  We all can't wait to take the same picture with all of our sons home one day.  And how amazing that Grant will grow up having friends that are also adopted from Korea and in transracial families...this is invaluable. 

Here we are after dinner at an Arlington Frozen Yogurt (and sorbet!) place:-) 

Care package #7:

I decided not to send clothes this care package because it sometimes takes two months to get to Korea via our agency and I couldn't bring myself to send fall clothes yet.  So, I went with a little laptop with lots of fun music, shapes and words when you press the buttons.  Maybe he'll get used to some english words:-)  We included a stuffed animal Elmo and a cute little wind-up frog that does flips (thanks to cousin Lana for giving it to Auden last week).  Also since I saw that Grant has his four top teeth in his last update picture I decided it was time for his first electric toothbruth.  I'm a big fan of electric toothbrushes and every dentist I've talked to is as well.  Auden loves his electric toothbrushes so hopefully Grant will get used to them too.  The crayola one came with fun stickers so I could spell out his Korean name Joon Hyeok and Grant on it with other decorations.  Lastly, we threw in some toddler toothpaste so his foster mom doesn't have to worry about getting it.   

Care Package #6

Last week we sent our 6th care package to Grant.  As for clothes, we sent him three cute graphic t-shirts, two pairs of shorts and a bathing suit.  I was on the fence about sending a bathing suit in the last care package because I didn't know what kind of access he would have to any kind of water since he is living 20 minutes outside of Seoul.  However, a family that met their new son in Korea this past month had a meeting at a spray park/fountains in Seoul where lots of kids could enjoy the water so I decided to go ahead and send one.  I also sent sandals that Auden never fit in during the right months, hopefully Grant can get some use out of them. 

Cody had a good idea to take close up pictures of ourselves individually (as unflattering as they may be, ha) to put in a kid friendly album since those are the kind of pictures we get of Grant.  So, I found an adorable album on Amazon to put six pictures in: close-ups of Me, Cody, Auden, outside of our house, our family room and the playroom.  We are hoping that if Grant looks at these pictures often they will be familiar to him when he sees them in real life for the first time, ourselves included:-)  The last thing I included was a bit of an experiment to see if I get "in trouble" haha.  We are told that we shouldn't include gifts for the foster mother in our care packages.  However, other agencies are encouraged to send small gifts.  This bothers me that different agencies have different rules.  Anyway, I was talking with a new friend I made at our agency and she said she's been able to send small things without getting in trouble so I decided to try it to:-)  So I threw in 6 packets of the Starbucks VIA instant coffee...I've been told that Koreans love their Starbucks.  So, we shall see what happens:-)  Oh, and my high school friend translated a nice letter that I included to Gran'ts fostermom regarding his wonderful professional birthday pictures. 

In other news, we unexpectedly got Grant's 14 month update pictures very fast last week!  Looks like he got his first haircut because his bangs are shorter.  He is sitting on his fostermom's lap with a big grin in one of the pictures:-)  He seems like such a happy little soul all the time, I can't wait until I can hear the sound of his laugh one day.