The long journey home

It's been 3 days since we arrived home and we can't believe how well Jin-Ri has adjusted so far. She's been quite a handful, but such a joy to have in our lives. She's having so much fun exploring and touching everything in the house. Since she's so mobile, but wobbly, and likes to stand up and pull herself up on everything, we can't let her out of our sight for a single second. It's quite exhausting keeping up with her!

We put her to bed tonight at 8 pm after a bath, bottle and a book...and so far, so good. We're still getting the hang of things, and definitely needing to tag-team since she requires constant supervision and lots of night-time parenting as well. So far, we've barely unpacked our suitcases, we've been so busy with her.

So, a brief flashback to the day of the handover. It was Thursday morning, the 19th of March. We ordered a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the hotel florist to bring to the foster mom, and took a taxi to the Holt office for our 10:00 am appointment.



The appointment was originally scheduled for 3:00 pm, but the foster mom had a scheduling conflict, so we had to do it in the morning instead. I felt very sad that the foster mom was going to miss out on 5 precious final hours with Jin-Ri.

When we arrived at Holt, we went upstairs and pretty much saw Jin-Ri and her foster mom right away. We were all led downstairs to the medical office and met with the social worker and the nurse and doctor, who did one final, quick medical update of Jin-Ri.



Then we all moved to another room where the foster mom changed Jin-Ri into a brand new outfit, provided by Holt. We gave her the flowers and received some clothes and things from her. Then the social worker gave us the Holt baby bag with the immigration paperwork and her medical file and extra formula, bottles, diapers, wipes, medicine, clothes, a baby carrier, etc., and a small gift from Holt, traditional Korean rubber baby shoes. I received these same shoes when I arrived from Korea so many years ago, so it was neat to see the same ones again.









Then it was time. The foster father, son, and daughter weren't able to come, so it was just the foster mom, the social worker and us. Since we had spent so much time together all week getting to know each other and the needs of Jin-Ri, there wasn't that much left to say except for goodbye and thank you. We were escorted out to a taxi, and the foster mom was crying as she said goodbye to Jin-Ri. It was very difficult for her, and we can't imagine how much pain she must have been in, and is probably still in. It must be the most difficult job taking care of a baby, loving her as your own, and letting her go into an unknown future. Jin-Ri was their 7th foster baby. But we do plan to stay in touch with them and bring Jin-Ri back to visit them, so we hope that provides them some comfort. We don't consider this a final goodbye.

In the taxi back to the hotel, Jin-Ri was ok at first because she didn't know what was happening, but soon started wailing and sobbing really hard for her foster mom. She was inconsolable, and we could only do our best to comfort her. Since the taxi ride was about 35-40 minutes (that poor taxi driver!), her angry cries eventually softened to quiet sobs and she finally fell asleep in the taxi. We were very relieved she was quiet when we walked through the hotel lobby and went back upstairs to our room.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon were very difficult. Jin-Ri cycled through her grief and we took turns holding her and trying to comfort her while she sobbed. Since we were in a traditional style room, it was pretty uncomfortable not to have any chairs or beds to sit on. We made a makeshift chair by sitting against the mirror with cushions, but it was still back-breaking by the end of it.





By the early afternoon, Jin-Ri was lightening up and started smiling and being playful and cheerful. This lasted a couple of hours, and we were so relieved she was starting to recover a little. But when it got dark out, she was having a difficult time again. She was anxiously watching the door to the room, and every time either of us turned our backs or had to leave the main room to go to the closet area or bathroom as we were packing, she would cry and crawl to the door. It took us till about 3am to get her to sleep, and we had to wake up at 4am to get ready to leave. So needless, to say, we were pretty exhausted. She slept restlessly on the floor mats between us, and kept tossing and turning and flailing about in her sleep. I think she finally got into a deep sleep for only the period from about 4:00 am to 5:30 am, while we were getting ourselves ready to leave.



But we were so impressed with her on the trip home. From the taxi ride to the Incheon airport, all the way back home to Cleveland, she was so easy-going. She was relaxed, smiley, and laid-back. We couldn't believe it. She even provided in-flight entertainment for the passengers and flight attendants on our trip from Seoul to Tokyo. She was being her silly, charming self, jumping in John's lap for the people behind us, giggling, smiling and bowing for everyone in our section. The flight attendants remarked what a happy baby she was.







By the time we got home, we had been travelling for about 27 hours, after layovers in Tokyo and Detroit. It was a long, long trip, and quite a new challenge learning how to take care of an infant in airplanes and airports, but we managed it quite well. Luckily, we had a chance to practice diaper changes and bottle feedings in the hotel.

Jin-Ri zonked out in the car ride home from the Cleveland airport, but when we got home, we purposely made sure to wake her up so she was conscious when we brought her into the house. We showed her all around the family room, kitchen and her room. She was really lively and curious, and enjoyed jumping and playing in her new crib. She was amazed by the high ceilings and the moving ceiling fans and couldn't stop looking up. She also had never seen carpeting before so it was interesting to see her stop and check that out, too.

Our first couple of nights and days home, we've had to hold her as she cries herself to sleep. We've been taking turns holding her, since it can get pretty tiring. I didn't get a wink of sleep the first night home since I had to rock her in the glider chair all night. She likes to take long daytime naps on John, which has left him incapacitated for many hours every day. At night, when I try to move her to her crib or even shift positions in the glider chair, she cries again, so I end up having to carefully hold and comfort her all night. But each day and night is getting better and better.

During the day, she's a real joy. She's so playful and funny. She's doing all the things we saw her doing in Korea; bowing at us, dancing to music, jumping, playing with all her toys, cruising around furniture, babbling, shrieking, screeching, etc. So we are very optimistic that over time, she will come through this transition just fine. She's making great progress every day.

Check the link to the right for Jin-Ri pics of her first days home. We have about 90 pictures on there so far.

We're home! Updates to follow...

We made it home safely, but haven't had time to post yet since Jin-Ri is keeping us pretty busy. We're all sleep deprived and jet-lagged, but so happy to finally be home with Jin-Ri.

The Calm Before the Storm

This morning, we met Jin-Ri and her foster mom at Holt for her pre-flight medical check. It lasted all of 5 minutes and then we got some time alone there with Jin-Ri. She was smiley and cute but definitely trying to keep an eye on her foster mom's whereabouts.




We decided that we should probably not force things today with her. We didn't want to stress her out again since she's definitely starting to figure out that something's up. Her foster mom says she's becoming even more anxious lately and won't let her out of her sight or even let the other family members hold her. So our strategy today was to keep the visit short and not to ask too much of her. Even with all this careful planning, it's inevitable that this abrupt change in caregivers is going to be very painful for her, so we decided it's probably best at this point to just give her one more easy, relaxed day before her whole world turns upside down.

We drove back to our hotel and Chi-Yong met us there. We hung out in the room for a while, where Jin-Ri was being her cute, funny, entertaining self.





After spending some time there, we decided to go out for lunch, and we ended up at an Italian restaurant in the hotel since the Korean restaurant was too busy. She seemed pretty nervous when we left the room since she wasn't sure what was happening, and lately she's on edge when we're on the move. We noticed she is much more at ease in the room and we're glad she's getting used to this setting so when we bring her back here tomorrow, it will be familiar to her.



After lunch, we just had a short visit in the room and then it was time for her to go home. We wanted to give them the rest of the day to spend together. Our thoughts are with the foster family tonight. We know this must be a really sad and difficult night for them. Tomorrow will be a really painful day for everyone, especially Jin-Ri. We'll do everything we can to get her through it.



Chi-Yong and the foster mom decided to take a separate elevator down to the hotel lobby after us, and John managed to carry Jin-Ri without her protesting, and luckily, right when she started frantically looking around, her foster mom re-appeared. What an accomplishment after the other day!



Since this is our last night in Korea for a while, we hit the town with Chi-Yong. We decided to go to the Myung-dong area since we spent a lot of time there on our last visit. We walked around Lotte Department store and we checked out the baby department and the food hall in the basement. The baby stuff in these stores here is so beautifully displayed. They have such nice quality things here. And that food hall is one very impressive, upscale grocery store. People probably thought I was weird to be taking photos there, but I always love getting these interesting travel shots.
















After that, we walked around the streets of Myung-dong, had some delicious Italian ice cream at Cafe Pascucci.





And we retraced our steps back to the little, tiny Japanese-style business hotel I stayed at for a while during my last trip while I was alone and scheduled to appear on the KBS Achimmadang search & reunion TV show. The little hotel looked exactly the same, but those nice people I remember from then are probably no longer there.



We had an awesome dinner at Nam Po Myun Oak, a quaint, rustic, traditional style Korean restaurant where we sat on the floor at low tables to eat. We're getting used to that on this trip. Chi-Yong took us there during our very first trip to Korea 7 years ago and we remembered it was really good and wanted to go again. We had the exact same stuff...something called Abok jengban, bin dae duk and mandu. Delicious!






Anyway, that was pretty much it for today. It was a nice, easy day, and we figure it will probably be our last day of freedom and peace and quiet for a very long time. In less than 12 hours, we'll have Jin-Ri for good! Wish us luck!

Nobody said it was going to be easy

Today, we spent another 7+ hours with Leah Jin-Ri and her foster mom. Thank goodness we have our friend Chi-Yong available to help us communicate. Our foster mom and Chi-Yong have been so generous with their time during our visit, we are so grateful for that.



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.