No scratching

Jaemin has scratched at his ears since day one.  Now he pretty much just picks on his left ear.  It was looking pretty bad behind his ear this morning and today, so we've mittened him.  He has medical tape around his mitten so he can't scratch for a day.  I'm hoping he'll forget about his little habit since it's so hard for him to do now and quit all together.

It hasn't stopped him from playing, just makes it a little trickier to crawl fast on the hardwood without his arm going out from under him.  :)  He's really not doing bad though.

We're getting some birth stuff!

I emailed our agency and asked them to ask Korea if the agency outside of Seoul had any pics of Jaemin prior to 5 months old.  They told us theydoubt it because they generally do not take pictures on intake.  All the other Korean agencies do, but oh well, I guess.

We had a message today from our US agency that Korea didn't have any pictures, but do have his footprints from the hospital.  How awesome!  With adoption you have to be excited for every little thing you get and this is GREAT!  With Chelsi, we actually had feet molds her foster mother had done and framed for us.  Beautiful!
Lisa

What a great day for email!

About a month or so after Jaemin came home, I was going through his photo album and found something written in Korean in the very back at the bottom.  When I had it translated, I found out it was the foster family's address.  I wrote them a letter and sent a couple of pictures and had it translated and mailed it off as quickly as possible.  Today, we had an email from the foster family.  It was so sweet and they sent pictures of him from his time with them, that we didn't have.

Apparently, the reason he's so infatuated with remote controls is that he was already playing with them in Korea.  They sent us a picture of him with his remote.  :)

Hoping for constant contact with them in the future.

Lisa

She's married off, finally

:)

So my sister is married.  They day was BEAUTIFUL as was she...and my girls.  I was really nervous about 5 kids making it through such a big, long day.  The girls and I started getting ready at 8:00 am and we got home from the dance at 11:30 pm.  Brian and the boys kind of came and went so Jaemin wouldn't be too overwhelmed.  He did AWESOME!  He even fell asleep in church.  By 10:00 pm, both of our youngest were out and we put them in the portacrib at our table.  Kaelin was really into dancing, so she and I did some dancing when we could.  Miss M had so many snacks at the reception and Chelsi ate so many Skittles that, after we got home, she started throwing up, so we were up until almost 2:00 am with her.  She felt fine the next day.  Poor little girl was just so excited to be in that pretty dress and have her hair done, I think the day was just a lot for her.

After M gets me actual pictures from the photographer I'll post some of the beautiful wedding photos.  All I have are some snapshots I was able to take.  I couldn't really take any since the girls and I were in the wedding, so I snapped some while we were getting our hair done and then again at the dance.

Oh my boy Jaemin

He's truly a blessing.  A few months ago our lives were turned upside down and we were unsure if we were ready to have another baby in the house again.  Now, he's been home almost 3 months.  The first month was terribly hard.  He cried hard at bedtime and scratched and pinched and hit me every single night.  The naps we pretty much let him decide so he wouldn't have to go through that during the day too.  Every night we were up 3-6 times patting his back or giving him a bottle.  We needed to make sure he knew we were there no matter what.  We pulled him closer when he hit and stayed through the crying.  Don't get me wrong, there were moments of hesitation when you think, what did we do.  I know I wondered if we were really up to this more than once.  Now that we're getting into our new routine it feels like a normal life again.  He's really making progress.  Attachment  is a process, so we're not there yet.  I think most adopted babies that are not newborns when adopted are not there by this point either.  They have to learn to trust an adult again.  They've been taken away from the other adults they've grown to trust, 1 or more times.

He doesn't just dive in and give us hugs or kisses to often yet, but I slowly see it coming now.  I can sit on the floor with him and he'll crawl over, now, and lay his head on my leg and pat me. He doesn't gaze at me while I feed him a bottle, which worried me a bit at first, but when I take him to his room and rock him to sleep each night we can just stare at each other.  He smiles behind his paci and sometimes he smiles so big it drops out.  He's so sweet at bedtime.  He's not his usual, 100 mile an hour self then. He's my baby boy that I love more than anything in this world.

Blessings come in so many different packages, situations and experiences.  He is definitely one of my many blessings in life.

Our trip to Korea

Yeah, so it's 3 or 4 years away.  It will take a ton of planning to afford and get 7 people to Korea and meet 3 different foster mothers at 3 different agencies scattered throughout Seoul.

We have the account set up.  We got some money from Dell for a PC we had several years ago that went bad.  Then, today I sent our Discovercard rewards to that account.  We now have a whopping $350 for Korea.  Doesn't sound like much, but hopefully we'll get there.

I'm figuring we'll need around $13,000 for us to go.  I'm estimating; $300 for cabs, subway and incidentals fees, $2100 for hotel ($300/night for two rooms for 7 nights will hopefully squeeze all seven of us in), $8,750 for airfare ($1250 each if we're lucky!), $300 for food (this is one of the cheapest things we did travelling), $500 for shopping (new hanboks and all the other things from Korea we'll want to bring back) and last and very least is about $90 or so for parking while we're gone.  This only comes to $12,000 or a little over, but I'm sure we're not going to get airfare for that price in 3-4 years.

So, let's say we now have our food money!  :)

Just $12,650 to go and we'll get to go to Korea with the kids!   Please pray for the rest to come.

Lisa

Little Man's Outing

It was a nice cool evening, so I took Jaemin out.  The boys and Brian were already out.  The girls were already dressed for bed, so they stayed in.  Poor Kaelin realized we were out for a bit, but I don't think she was too sad.  She was just watching.  We had just finished our movie night, so it wasn't real early anyways.

Jaemin did a lot of crawling through the yard and could get away quickly.  Brian had to interrupt big brothers' baseball game for the baby interference.  He wanted to play too.  :)  Then, he really decided he liked my rock garden and eventually found the fountain.  Quicker than I could grab in he just about took a dip.  But, Brian was right there too.  He got pretty wet.  We told him to find the dog and he knew exactly where Frisky hung out and quickly crawled the sidewalk to him.  But, when he licked him, he wasn't quite as impressed.  :)



















And, I just had to throw this one in.  Cole wanted to rock Jaemin to sleep for his evening nap.  He didn't nap long, but he did go out.