Happy Birthday Jin-yeong

Jin-yeong's birthday is Christmas Eve. He was born at 11:55 am on 12-24-2009 in Seoul, South Korea. He was 41 weeks 2 days' gestation and weighed 3280 grams at birth, which is 7.2lbs. Seoul is 14 hours ahead of American EST, so his time of birth would have been 21:55 on 12-23-2009 in our neck of the woods. I was on call at the hospital delivering babies at this time. The girls were home asleep, and Sheref was packing our suitcases as we left the next morning (Christmas Eve) to drive to Murfreesboro TN to visit my sister for Christmas.

This year we were also at my sister's in Murfreesboro for Christmas, and also for Charlie's birthday. Shannon (my sister) was so sweet and planned a party for Charlie. She arranged 2 cakes and lunch from our favorite barbeque place in Murfreesboro, the Slick Pig. We ate barbeque, potato salad, and cake. We toasted with (really crappy $2.99) soju that we had bought at H-mart, a Korean grocery store, in Atlanta the previous day. Charlie wore the hanbok his foster mother had given him, and looked so handsome!

What? A party for me?

All the kids at the party table. My nephew Cooper is next to Ella, but you can only see the very top of his head!

Charlie's super cute cake

The "smash cake," which was thoroughly enjoyed by Jin-yeong. He actually cried when I took it away after he had eaten probably 1/5 or so of the cake...

So cute! I thought he might be bothered by the hat, but he didn't seem to mind it at all. I think he knew he totally rocked his hanbok:)

Charlie with Mama

With Dadda

Pop (my dad) was making faces and noises off to the side, which is what Charlie is so entertained by in this picture

What a beautiful little guy

Love this kid!

We plan to send photos of Jin-yeong in his hanbok to Holt, one packet for his birth mom and one for his foster mother. His foster mother will get the photos for sure, but we don't know about his birth mom. Holt keeps a file on each child for the birth mother, who can, if she desires, come look at the file at any time and get whatever the adoptive family may have sent. We have no idea if our birth mom will ever go to Holt again, but if she does, we certainly want to have photos and keepsakes of Jin-yeong for her.

There is a concept in Korean adoption of "Third Mom," meaning that the "forever mother" (adoptive mother), even though she is the child's real and final mother, is really his or her third mom. First he had his birth mom, then his foster mom, and finally his "forever mother." We want Charlie always to be aware of his first two mothers, who provided him such a healthy, loving and wonderful start to his life.