A first for our house...and random musings...

I did something today that I have never done before. I washed, dried, folded and put away a load of little baby boy clothes. We have gotten so many clothes for Charlie from other people, that we honestly haven't bought him any clothes ourselves beyond the few things we sent over in his care package. Our friends the Williamsons just had their 4th (and apparently final) baby, a girl, a few weeks ago. Their only son is now 3, so they have kindly given us all his 12+ month clothes. I say their new daughter is apparently their last child because Bridget told us very firmly that she does not want the clothes back...

Anyways, I've always thought that little girl clothes are so much cuter and more fun to buy than little boy clothes. That may be true, but there is something so...I don't know...fun about PJs with monsters on them, little t-shirts with applique trucks and fire engines, soft little sweatpants with football logos. Today I am enjoying boy clothes. And waiting for our little boy, who right now has likely just eaten his breakfast in Seoul and has no idea that he is going to have to switch languages, cultures, continents in just a few weeks. As excited as we are to bring Charlie home, we have to acknowledge that Charlie is likely quite happy where he is. Although Sheref and I, his foster parents, and all the social workers and adoption personnel realize that he cannot stay with his foster family and there literally is not a family for him in Korea (we know this because each Korean child is held for adoption in Korea for 6 months, after which time, only if no family has been found in South Korea, the child is released for international adoption), he doesn't know this. As much as people say that kids and babies are resilient, changing your whole life, sights, sounds, smells, touches at nearly 1 year of age is a big deal. I'm not really worried. I think in the long run Charlie is meant to be with us, and that he will adjust and be a happy kid (did you see the joyous kid in the new picture below?). But he is about to undergo a life-changing, stressful event. He is not an abandoned orphanage-dwelling child. He is a happy, well-cared for, and loved child. And he will not for one second stop being that, but his little world is about to be turned upside down. We are praying for a smooth transition for him, and if anyone reading this would like to do the same, that would be, in the words of Lucy Unal, "totally rockin'."

Rose & Lucy's Birthday Party

Rose & Lucy's birthday party was last Sunday. We invited all the girls in their class, plus 3 girls from last year's class. After much discussion about where to hold the party, and what sort of party to have, Rose & Lucy decided they wanted a dress-up party at our house. To which I, surveying our cute but small 1800 sq ft house and imagining it filled with fourteen 4-5 year olds, their parents, and dress-up parephernalia, said, "Uhh, no way." I casually suggested a local park with a playground (which just happens to be free), Rose & Lucy liked that idea, and so our non-themed park birthday party was born.

My mom came for their birthday, and made this doll cake. She used to make similar cakes for my birthday. In fact, I'm pretty sure we have pictures of my fifth birthday and a remarkably similar looking cake. My mom said she found this Barbie doll at her house, so I'm guessing this might even be the same poor legless doll.

Anyways, the cake turned out beautifully and all the girls loved it.

Barbie's close up...

Rose & Lucy had SUCH a great time at their party. In fact, they are not generally hyper kids, but they were so thrilled and excited at their party to the point of bordering on hyper. Of course, it could have been the 6 juice boxes they each had...or the cake...or the candy...

Anyways, the only part of the party that got out of hand was the gift-opening. Rose and Lucy were so excited that I was unable to slow them down enough to make note of which gift came from which friend. Oops. Another lesson I learned is that when you invite 14 kids to a twin birthday party, that equals more presents than is decent and healthy for 5 year olds who already have a teeny little tendency to be materialistic (Lucy has already told me about 50 times what she wants for her next birthday). I'm pretty sure if I received an invitation to twins' birthday party, my first thought (yes, terrible to admit, but this would be my first thought) would be "ugh, I have to buy TWO presents?" If Rose & Lucy's friends' parents had this thought, you couldn't tell by the gifts -- really nice, generous gifts for each of the twins from each friend. Picture of the loot below. We only let them open about half the gifts so far, and will dole out the remaining ones slowly. We are working hard on (really nice, hand-made, but generic -- did I mention I'm a horrible party hostess and can't remember who gave them what gift?) thank you notes!

I have a lot of really cute pictures from the party, but since the pictures all include Rose & Lucy's friends and I'm guessing the friends' parents don't want their kids' pictures posted on the internet, I'll refrain. Suffice it to say it was a gorgeous day, all the kids had a great time, and I vastly overestimated the amount of goldfish, grapes, and baby carrots 4-5 year olds consume...

Emigration Permit

Last Thursday we were notified that Charlie's EP (Emigration Permit) was approved on September 15th. His visa physical is scheduled for this Wednesday. Once the visa physical is done, it takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to get the "Travel Call." The travel call is notification that we are allowed to go to Seoul to meet Charlie and bring him home. Due to a few scheduling issues, Sheref will not be able to leave until late October, so we're tentatively expecting Charlie to be home shortly after Halloween. We are very grateful that our process from match to travel has been (thus far) relatively smooth and quick. Although there are a few families whose process has moved quicker than ours, there are also many families who have been waiting quite a while and continue to wait. For all those families we are wishing some good news very soon.

We are so excited to meet Charlie and bring him into our family.

Happy Birthday Wondertwins!

Rose & Lucy are our Wondertwins. Based on many obstetric issues, they are not supposed to have been born as far along in gestation as they were (still not quite 34 weeks and just a little over 3lbs each, but even that was far better than expected), or healthy or "normal." Despite all that, they were and are "normal" and, in fact, far better than "normal." These two are special. They like to call themselves "Wondertwins" (anyone recall the cartoon "Superfriends"??? Yeah, embarassing, but I watched it, umm, A LOT as a child), and they truly are our little Wondertwins. Wondertwin powers, activate. Happy Birthday, sweeties!

Got somethin'

Although I was greatly looking forward to repeatedly posting "ain't got nuttin'" ad nauseum until we got somethin', I am happy to announce that we did indeed get a little somethin' today. It was not the EP approval I was hoping for, but these pictures are pretty d*mn good.

I'm sorry. I know I am biased. But how d*mn cute is this kid? Oh. my. goodness. I am not a touchy-feely, swoon over pictures, gushy type of person, but these pictures just tickle my heart. What a sweetheart.

These pictures, however, do make me wonder who the heck the kid is in the only other picture we have received of Charlie since his referral pictures (striped shirt being held by his foster mother -- shown in a previous post). These pictures look like the referral pictures, whereas the second picture looks like some other child entirely. Mystery!

I just cannot look at these pictures without smiling. Once again, how cute is this kid?

Ain't got nuttin' Rewind Post

Since we still ain't got nuttin' (not to harp on this grammatically incorrect theme or anything:), another rewind post to chronicle a few things from the pre-blog era. Most families adopting internationally, once they are matched with a child, send care packages to their new son or daughter. We found out that we were matched with Charlie on Friday, June 25th in the afternoon. I was at work, but Ella, who had the day off school for some reason, had gone to work with Sheref. Sheref works only until noon-ish most days, so he and Ella were having lunch when they got the call from Jessica at Holt that Charlie was ours (he was a photolisted waiting child, and we thought we were going to have to go to committee for him, but Jessica called to tell us we were allowed to skip the committee part and Charlie was ours!). More specifically, they were having lunch at Olive Garden. I really don't like Olive Garden (more because I hate waiting -- have you ever noticed how busy Olive Garden always is?? -- than because I dislike their food, though I don't think the food is all that great either). Anyways, so now Ella, who loves Olive Garden, tries to tell me that Olive Garden is part of our family history and we therefore need to frequent Olive Garden a lot more.

But I digress. The point of this story is that the day we found out we were matched with Charlie, Sheref and Ella were at Olive Garden, which is very close to a large mall as well as Babies R Us. So they went out and bought Charlie a bunch of cute clothing, toys, blankets and a "lovey." All of us took turns sleeping with the froggie "lovey" one night, theorizing that it would make it smell like us. I'm not sure if this works for human babies, or if that theory only applies to animals (I grew up on a farm, and I have an applicable, yet probably not really appropriate, story about sheep...I'm just going to stop there), but it makes sense and makes us feel like Charlie might feel more comfortable coming into our home because of the lovey.

The one gift that I sort of agonized over a little was the gift for his foster mother. I wanted something generic enough that most women would appreciate it, unique enough that it would be clear we spent some time thinking about what to get her, and obviously small enough to easily ship to Korea. We live in a fairly large, resort-type town with a lot of local artists and a fantastic downtown farmers' market which runs from April-December. I bought this necklace there. It is prettier than it looks in the picture. The pendant is glass, with splashes of color that are mainly orange and greenish "earthy" tones. The chain is tiny very pale orange glass beads. In the package is a small card explaining the artist's work and our region. I know Charlie's foster mother is unlikely to understand the artist's card, and may not truly like the necklace, but hopefully she appreciates the thought behind it.

We know Charlie and his foster family received the package, because Holt sent us a photograph of Charlie and his foster mother with the package contents. The photo is posted somewhere in one of the earlier blog posts. We hear that very often the care package items are not given back to the adoptive family, which is totally fine with us. I'm assuming that the foster families keep the items for use with future foster children. I actually really love the idea that future Korean babies waiting on their adoptive families will be wearing the clothing and playing with the toys we bought for Charlie. Just hopefully not the lovey:) Since it smells like us and all...

Ain't got nuttin' Part II

I'm considering posting this same thing every day until we get some news from Korea. Ok, not really.

I had a great day today at work and have the weekend off, so I'm overall in a pretty good mood. Still, I'm a little annoyed that we heard no news at all from Korea today, or any day for that matter since August 10th. And I will admit that I'm being bratty about this, but really, I just don't understand why it is difficult to get paperwork done and forwarded on in a timely fashion. I originally typed a bunch of whiny details right here about what exactly isn't getting done in a timely fashion, then thought better of posting lots of tiny little whiny details, so suffice it to say, things aren't going as efficiently as I think they should. I have high standards, but still.

Ok, changing gears, this weekend is "Girls' Weekend" at our house. Sheref is going to SF to a conference, so it is just the girls at home this weekend. Rose and I went to the grocery store tonight and spent (gulp) a lot of money on mainly junk food. Stuff I normally do not buy, do not eat, and do not let my children eat. We will, however, be eating it this weekend! Rose was totally shocked when I kept saying yes to ice cream, cookies and chips. Her initial request when I asked her what she wanted to eat this weekend was "fresh fruit and celery" (seriously?), but she quickly came around when she realized I was open to a much broader definition of "anything you want." Also, pretty much every weekend I have off, I still work -- reading, studying, writing, working on projects. This weekend, for the first time in a really really really long time, I will not be doing any work at all. Pure spending time with the girls, eating crappy food, and being mad about lack of movement on the adoption front (just kidding).