7 years ago half way around the world

a little girl was born.  We had just had our homestudy completed and sent to Korea just days before she was born and when we received her referral in January of the next year, we knew she was meant to be ours.  Kaelin (HaeBin) has been home for 6 1/2 years now and we love her!  On top of today being her birthday, she lost her 5th tooth....after many weeks of wiggling.  :)

Happy Birthday Binah!



Kaelin wanted to try on Jaemin's Reds bandana.

So sweet

I just got all the kids to bed and Jaemin rolled right onto his side as he always does and hugged his puppy as he slept.  It's just so cute!

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.