They visited us in our Korean-style hotel room, which was a perfect setting since the furniture in the room is very small-scale and low to the ground, and we could all slide around on the floor. Leah Jin-Ri is so active, she never stops moving. She free-stands for a really long time without support, and we noticed she can even go from sitting to standing without needing furniture or anyone to help pull herself up. But you do have to watch her very carefully because she's still pretty wobbly, especially since she likes to turn all the way around to see who's watching her. She's actually getting callouses on the top of her big toes from standing on them like a ballerina as she tries to get her footing.
We had fun again, observing her, playing with her, feeding her, making her laugh, all while trying to give her more time to get used to us. We had lots of toys here in the room, most of which were the ones we sent her beforehand. She loved the tall mirror in the room, and it was fun watching her look at herself and play in the mirror, grinning and smiling at our reflections.
But after lunch, we made the mistake of trying to take her out for a test-drive in our new Beco baby carrier. We thought it might be useful to try to take a walk and get out of the room for a while. So I put it on and we strapped her in, but she totally freaked out and screamed her head off immediately. Red face, tears running down her face, it was horrible. There was no way around it...we quickly switched the baby carrier from me to her foster mom, and she was still upset at first but calmed down a bit while we all took a walk through the hallways. Once she seemed somewhat calm again, John wanted to give it a try, so we switched her to him, and she protested a little less this time but he was able to calm her down by whispering in Dutch. She actually fell asleep for a while in the baby carrier and we were all quite impressed!
Later on, back in the room when she was totally zonked out, he tried to lay her down in the crib, but she immediately woke up and started screaming again. He tried comforting her using the same technique but it didn't work this time. Reality set in and we all realized that there is not going to be any easy way around this, even with all this advance preparation. She's an intense, active, expressive little girl who is so attached to her foster mom and family, after having already lost her first foster family, so she's definitely not going to take this separation lying down.
Well, once she was calm again, she was back to herself again, laughing, smiling and entertaining us for the rest of the day. Around 6:00 or so, her foster mom had to head back home to avoid rush-hour traffic. Jin-Ri was really tired and it was an emotional day for her. I'm sure she fell right asleep in the car ride home.
After they left, we went out to dinner with Chi-Yong. We decided to go to COEX mall, where we'd been many times in the past to watch movies. We were craving more Korean food, but we forgot that it's kind of hard finding Korean food at COEX. There were mostly western chain restaurants there. That's definitely the place to go if you are craving anything BUT Korean food. We ended up finding a small place and having yet another bibimbap, but that's never a problem for me and I could eat that every day. We checked out a big bookstore and picked up a new Korean drama to watch, too.
Tomorrow morning, we'll see Jin-Ri again at her pre-flight medical check at Holt. Since it was a difficult day for her, we all decided we should probably meet up again for a while tomorrow to see how it goes. We'll hang out a bit with her and her foster mom and have lunch together. Then we want to give the foster family the rest of the day to spend with her alone. And after that, at 10:00 am on Wednesday, we'll take custody of her and spend the rest of the day and night in Korea before we fly home. It's going to be one long, difficult trip home, we're afraid.
You are doing everything you can do for Leah Jin-Ri, including anticipating and accepting how difficult this will be for her (and her foster family, and you). Hopefully you will continue to find those little tricks that comfort her as she transition into your family.
ReplyDeleteThis may not sound very good...but it was helpful...the Dr. at Holt gave us a mild sedative that we gave to our son because he too was very attatched to his foster mom. He still cried a lot, but slept some too. (We were worried about all the other passengers on the flight). We also carried him on our back as much as possible and he got used to our voice without seeing our face. I think that helped. We let him sleep with us some...we all slept better that way. Just follow your instinct, you'll do great! Our birth babies screamed and cried too and we had trouble comforting them at times. We just cried along with them! I tried to convince myself that the crying/screaming was a good work out for his lungs! :-)
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