Lunch with Dr. Kim and 2nd meeting with Grant

This morning we had our lunch with the President of the adoption agency with other families that are here this week.  We watched a little movie about the history of the agency and all the services they provide for unwed mothers, children and the disabled.  Then we had a traditional Korean meal which was very delicious.  It is so nice that Dr. Kim takes the time to meet with families each week and have lunch with them.  You can tell she cares deeply for the children and is very sad about the lack of government support for unwed mothers and domestic/international adoption in Korea.  And unfortunately with the new law it is just getting worse, more children needing families and less families that are able to adopt.

Then on a brighter note we had our second visit with Grant this afternoon!  It was amazing.  He was wearing Auden's old overalls we sent last year and actually matched the shorts Auden had on today.  They looked so cute together.  Auden did better today and we did a better job of not giving Grant all of our attention and praising Auden for when he did a good job.  We were especially proud of Auden when Grant had a fall off of the slide and was crying and Auden gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek to comfort him.  

Cody and I are SO smitten with this little guy!  He is such a smart, fun and adorable kid!  He makes us laugh so much and we honestly feel like we hit the jackpot!  His personality is amazing.  He seems like such a happy and cool little dude.  And again, we can't get over how smart he seems in the only two hours we have spent with him.  

Our social worker confirmed that she hopes to hear of our preliminary approval by the end of this week and hopefully we can take custody of Grant on Monday or Tuesday of next week!  Gosh, we hope that is reality!  It would be amazing if he was ours forever a week from today.  I know it's going to be rough the first days, especially because he definitely still prefers Cody over me...but we can't wait to get on with our new life as a family of four.  He is such a perfect addition.  We can't wait for everyone to meet him, we know you will all fall in love with him too!  We feel so incredibly lucky and blessed!  

Grant loves hiding things from us and then asking where they are with his hands out like this, it is the CUTEST!  Here he hid the yellow balloon in the play refrigerator door and he was asking us where it went!  He is such a fun, smart, adorable kid!

In Korea, before toddlers can start saying phrases, they teach them to say "I love you" by putting their arms over their heads in the shape of a heart.  His foster mom tells him to do this and on cue, he does it....so adorable!  She said every night after she snuggles him in bed he does this sign to her before he goes to sleep, aweeeee!  

    

I wanted pictures of us with his foster mom because every toddler adoption book says you should do a "three picture story" from the very beginning to show to the child.  The first picture will be of him and the foster mom, the second picture is of our new family with the foster mom (showing her approval of giving him to us), and the third picture will be our new family of four.  Some people laminate it to show the child within weeks of getting home to help them understand what happened and that their foster mom didn't abandon them.  We got some fun shots below:-)

Baseball Game

Today our adventure was a Korean baseball game.  Last month I met a nice woman that was using our same doctor for the psychological testing we had to do (she was with another adoption agency in MD).  Since we were going to be in Korea the same time and both had 4 year old boys we thought it would be fun to meet up in Korea.  She was able to get baseball game tickets for us for today through a friend that lives here in Seoul so we decided to get our families together for a game.  Baseball games are really fun in Korea because the crowd really gets into it- chants, songs and up until the ferry accident last month even had cheerleaders that danced on the dugouts and led the crowd. 

Unfortunately it was our first day here that the weather wasn't beautiful and rain was in the forecast but we decided to do it anyway since we already had the tickets.  It actually held out for the most part (until the 7th inning) so we did pretty well!  Auden and my friend's son Gabe had lots of fun together.  Despite the weather, it was a great time! 

 

 We took the subway there, it was about a 45 minute ride and Auden loved crossing the river above ground.

 

 

 There was a lot of traditional Korean food (see squid and octopus below) as well as some American chains like KFC and Burger King outside and inside the stadium.

From the baseball stadium you could see the stadium from the Olympics from the summer games when they were held in Seoul in 1988.  Right now that stadium is used for a variety of things like soccer games and musical concerts.

 

 

 

 We were at the home team of the Doosan Bears, go Bears!  They played the Hanwha Eagles and we ended up sitting in that "visitor" section:-) 

The stadium hasn't heard yet of charging a premium and somehow the beer (my favorite Hoegaarden was only $3)!  To the above right is Auden and his friend Gabe, both soon to be big brothers! 

Here comes the rain, surprisingly people used umbrellas in the stands, so we did too:-) 

 

What a novel concept, to sell beer from a backpack so you can just fill cups with a tap.  Certainly beats lugging around a cooler!

Here is a picture of our crew- my friend Shawna with her family on the left and then her friend that lives in Seoul with his girlfriend on the right.




 


This is the point Auden falls asleep without a nap!  We let him snooze for a little bit on the subway home.  It was hard to wake him up but we need him to do another decent bed time to prevent 4:30am wake up calls:-)  It is so hilarious to hear him beg for bed for the first time in his life. 

Insadong and Changdeokgung Palace

Well, we have air conditioning now in our guesthouse room, we are all just about on Korean time and Auden's cold is getting better- so all in all we are doing good!  We spent the entire day today out and about.  We went to a big famous shopping area called Insadong, then did a river walk around that part of town.  We had a Korean lunch in the Lotte Department Store food court that Cody found yesterday.  It's a beautiful place but you can end up buying $20 black cherries by accident (ask Cody!).  

After lunch we went to the Changdeokgung Palace and its Secret Garden in the afternoon.  This palace was originally intended to be the secondary palace to Gyeongbokgung (which we saw on Thursday) but it served as the residence of many kings and later became the main palace.  After all the palaces in Seoul were destroyed during the Japanese invasion in 1592 this palace was reconstructed in 1610 and served as the main palace for about 270 years until Gyeongbokgung was finally rebuilt.  It's amazing how beautifully this palace is arranged with the topography surrounding it.  Really cool that there are these woods and grounds in the middle of the city. 

 It was a full day that rewarded Auden (and okay us) with TGIFridays at the end:-) 

There were big fish in this water that Auden enjoyed watching.

Weekend at Burnie's shot:-).  Auden was asleep for the first half of the palace tour but woke up in time to see the beautiful secret gardens in the back of the palace. Perfect nap that finally got him to go to bed at a reasonable hour:-)

Sleeping quarters

"Secret garden"

Auden woke up!

Fresh seafood two blocks from where we are staying.  Auden wanted to watch the sharks all day (but not get too close!)

Court hearing completed!

This morning we had our court hearing.  We left the agency at 9am with an agency rep in a van provided and got a little tour of the city on the 40 min. ride to the courthouse.  Auden has been fighting a cold and with the jet lag he actually fell asleep in the van on the way there.  Cody carried him into the courthouse.  We were the 4th family on the docket, everything went like military precision, every 10 minutes a family would be called in to see the Judge.  Our interpreter told us to just leave Auden asleep for the hearing, the Judge would understand, so that's what we did, ha.  Of course he woke up half-way through the hearing, looked around, was dazed and confused and thankfully just sat on Cody's lap in a daze. 

The judge asked us a variety of questions, many based on our home study report.  Her first question was why I came to South Korea 10 years ago and if volunteering in a orphanage during that trip made me want to adopt a child one day.  So my best friend Aimee got a shout out and how I was visiting her in Mokpo after college.  She asked about our careers, if we wanted to adopt more children some day, Cody's Chilean heritage, and what we would do if Grant had self identity issues one day and wanted to search for his birth mother.  I did most of the answering because I was next to the interpreter and Cody could barely hear her with Auden's heavy breathing in his ear.  Luckily the Judge understood English because the interpreter was very poor and I think many things would have gotten lost in translation otherwise!  For whatever it's worth the interpreter said the Judge seemed to like us and we did a great job. 

So, what happens now?  She knows we plan to do one trip and we gave her our return flight plan of 6/25.  Most Judges have been making the process faster for families choosing to do only one trip instead of two (since we are rare).  But there are a lot of factors at play here and we don't really know if she is one of the judges that would do this.  The thing that makes our process more complicated is that the Court was unable to locate Grant's birth parents to sign re-relinquishment papers.  So, that means our case will have to go to "public posting" on a website for public legal notice.  Sometimes this takes a while but it doesn't have to if the Judge issues a quick preliminary approval and then goes right to public posting for 2 weeks.  Unfortunately, we just have no idea what this Judge is going to do and if she will take her sweet time or give us a faster process because we told her we planned to stay in country.  If we don't hear of preliminary approval 7-10 days from today we will have to consider coming home and turning it into two trips because there is no reason to stay here without preliminary approval since we need that to take custody of Grant.  So, please send positive thoughts for us to get great news next week! 

                     

                           

After we came back we explored the university that is nearby to where we are staying.  It was a pretty cool campus and Auden got lots of smiles and attention from the students.

                 

 

Then in the afternoon Cody and Auden went on a little exploration while I went back to volunteer on the 3rd floor of the agency where the nursery is.  It is so heartbreaking that the babies are so old in there now, which is a result of a lot of things- the new law, nobody wants to sign up for the program now that they changed it to two trips or one long one (too expensive), etc.  The ladies that work there are doing their best but there are so many babies that they all get fed by a bottle propped up on a blanket on their side so even two month old babies are feeding themselves.  I was trying to work on muscle tone, sitting up, and tummy time with some of the about 5 month olds there.  They were so precious and I couldn't help but look into their eyes and wonder what their future was going to be and if they'd ever be matched with a family:(.  I'm so thankful Grant only spent his first 2.5 months of his life here but as I looked around it still could bring tears to my eyes.  Every baby deserves a parent's love from day one, not confined to an institution.

Here are two little love bugs that I got to snuggle and play with:-)