Full Disclosure

I am at a medical conference right now. Whenever you give a talk as a medical professional, you always have to sign a disclosure agreement. You also have to verbally mention this disclosure during your talk. The disclosure is intended to reveal any conflicts of interest you may have with any medical products or medications. The point of this is so that if you are predisposed to favor or recommend drug X because you have stock in the company that makes drug X, then at least your listeners are aware of it.

So in the interest of full disclosure regarding our adoption, let me just say that Charlie is a fabulous sleeper.

Yeah, IN THE DAYTIME, that is.

He does not sleep well, err, much at all, during the night. I am sure most of this is the fact that his poor little body is on Seoul time, which is 13 hours different from EST in the U.S. Some of this poor sleep at night is likely also due to emotional confusion about where he is, who the heck we are (who are these weird white people who talk, smell and look so odd, and keep trying to feed me gross things??), where the heck his beloved foster mother is. Poor guy. And kudos to Sheref, who stays up with him due to my work schedule. Oh, and the fact that I am in Phoenix for 3 days at a conference, which has been scheduled for months, long before we knew the timing of Charlie's arrival. So hats off to my wonderful husband!

Love this Kid!

A few things about Jin-yeong:

1) He loooooves his paci

2) He really likes refried beans (we figured this out at a Mexican restaurant tonight)

3) He does not like water in his eyes, but otherwise likes baths

4) He goes crazy with glee when he sees formula being mixed up for a bottle

5) He says "mamamamama" a lot (before you think "aww, how cute...boy loves his mother," I should tell you that this means "food" in Korean!!)

6) He has the cutest little scrunched up nose when he smiles and laughs -- just like in the pictures we were sent when he was still in Korea

7) He is super flexible. Like, grab his feet with his hands, jack-knife his little body and put his feet up over his head flexible.

8) He likes his stroller

9) He falls asleep almost instantly when he's in his carrier (front or back)

10) He is so freakin' cute!

Oh, and he has 3 fantastic big sisters. After a rough initial few hours for Rose (see previous post!), all three girls just love him and are so great with him.

Jin-yeong Flies to America...and does it with a minimum of parental torture

From the moment we decided to adopt from South Korea, we dreamed about our future baby, fantasized longingly of the day when we would be able to travel half-way across the world and bring our long-awaited, destined-to-be-ours child home to us. One thing, however, we anticipated with dread. That one thing would be a twelve to fourteen hour flight with a baby who had just met us one day prior.

When we decided that Sheref would travel alone to South Korea, I was disappointed. I mourned the missed chance to see my child's birth country, thank his foster family in person, soak up his native culture. Secretly, though, I did a little happy dance that I would be spared that awful flight.

So imagine our delight when the flight just wasn't that bad. Yes, fine, I wasn't there, so easy for me to say, but I am paraphrasing Sheref: it just wasn't that bad. We are figuring out that the Unal boys are laid-back. The Unal girls, yeah, not so much (except for me, 'cause I'm super laid-back...haha). Jin-yeong slept for EIGHT hours of that flight. And he never cried.

Jin-yeong in the bulk-head bassinet on the plane.

Doing what he did so well on the flight...(and is not doing so well now at night)

Sheref said he was sitting by a sweet older lady from China, who spoke only Mandarin. On the other side of him was a Korean-American woman flying alone with her 15 month old daughter. Apparently the daughter, not surprisingly, was fussy and fidgity on the flight. At one point when the 15 month old was throwing a fit, and Charlie was lying quietly in his little bassinet, the Chinese lady turned to Sheref, motioned towards the 15 month old, and shook her head disapprovingly. She then motioned towards Charlie, turned to Sheref, and gave him a big thumbs up. Cracks me up!

Jin-yeong Arrives!

Ella and I drove to Atlanta yesterday to pick up Sheref & Charlie at the airport. Their flight arrived at 19:40. Ella and I got to Atlanta around 15:30 and spent most of that time shopping. We arrived at the airport, which was amazingly easy to navigate (I had been there many times, but only for layovers, so had never driven to the airport) around 18:30. We had a nice little sit-down dinner in the airport and then waited for Sheref & Charlie to clear customs and immigration. They finally came out into the arrivals lobby around 20:45. Charlie was amazingly chill, laid-back and happy. His foster mother told Sheref he is the most laid-back baby she has fostered, and he is her 14th foster child! He was quite curious and interested in everything, but very chill. We drove about 2 hours towards home, then decided to stay at a hotel. Charlie had very little interest in sleep after sleeping 8 hours on the flight, especially considering that it was the middle of the day as far as his body clock was concerned. He fussed a lot overnight, but it was still about 50 times better than I had expected. This morning we got up and drove home, arriving around 1pm. He was such a little superstar in his carseat. Again, I fully expected him to scream all the way home, and in fact he just fussed for about 5 minutes, and otherwise was quiet. So far, his transition to our family is going faaaaar better than I had expected. He is clearly a little reserved, and only smiles and laughs with a lot of effort, but he has gotten visibly more comfortable even just over the course of the afternoon and evening since we arrived home.

Our first family picture this afternoon, on our way for our first family walk. Rose is the one on the left, standing back a bit, looking sort of ticked off. She looks ticked off because she was ticked off. She was quite wound up when we got home, and would not let Charlie have any breathing room -- like constantly trying to get him to drink his bottle, play with X or Y toy, play with our dog, etc etc etc. She got reprimanded a few times, and then decided that she wanted to regress to being the baby...blah blah blah blah. She was not a happy camper on our walk. A little "Rose time" (one-on-one time with me) made her feel a little better. She seems to be doing fine now. She does really like Charlie, and wanted to help with his bath and help feed him. After we put him to bed around 30 minutes ago, she actually woke him up by sneaking into our room to "just look at him." Why, you ask? Well, in Rose's words, "Ummm, I just wanted to look at him because I forgetted what he looked like." Okaaaaay.

Charlie was super curious and kept craning his neck to the side in the front pack, which was uncomfortable for both of us, so we switched the carrier to the back, which worked out much better for both of us. About 5 minutes after this picture was taken, he was out, fast asleep!

In his high chair, "enjoying" some mashed bananas (yeah, not really)

Exploring his new home. The boy loves his paci.

With Ella. He smiled at her the first time he saw her at the airport, and still seems to love her!

After his bath, again with Ella.

Charlie with the dethroned former baby of the family, Rose.

Finally some pictures of our son!

I still haven't actually talked with Sheref, and have not received more than fairly short emails since he met Charlie, but I finally got some pictures of our little guy. Sheref says he is super sweet, and very active. He said they are "getting along well" and Charlie is "just about perfect."

How cute is this guy??

Let's just ignore the fact that this picture freaks me out, and focus on the cuteness factor. I realize that is very strong multi-pane glass, but still...

Sleep is good...

Full Circle: A Very Cool Story

This is Eun-ha, soon to be Zoe Grace.

Zoe's family lives in Tennessee. They are anxiously awaiting permission to go to Seoul and bring Zoe home to them. Interestingly, Zoe was almost our daughter. Ok, well, sort of.

In mid-May, right after we had officially completed all our application paperwork to be on the list of families waiting for babies, we saw a picture of Zoe on our agency's photolisting. The photolisting is for babies and children with special needs who have not yet found their families, either in Korea or by matching their special needs with special needs that non-Korean adoptive families are "willing to accept." Keep in mind that some special needs are minor. Zoe's was prematurity, from which she has now completely caught up. We found Charlie on this photolisting too; his special needs are also very minor.

Zoe's picture just spoke to us somehow, and we decided to pursue adopting her. The way that works with our agency is that families can request the entire file (all the medical and social info on a particular child) and have a few weeks to review it and decide if they want to pursue adopting that child. Once how ever many families have declared interest, the process "goes to committee." This means that you fill out a bunch of paperwork (sort of essays on why you want to adopt this child, how you will deal with adopting a child of a different race -- assuming you are not yourself Asian -- how you will deal with that child's needs, etc), have a super super crazy weird awkward phone interview, and then the case goes to a committee, who decides which family best matches that child's needs.

Obviously if you've read this far, you've probably astutely concluded that we were not selected to be Zoe's family. About 1 week before the committee met, I saw a post on our adoption agency's online forum that made clear the poster was going to committee for the same child we were pursuing. I emailed her, and could immediately tell that this lady really really wanted this child. To the point where I just sort of felt that the baby was not meant to be ours. I could also tell that this lady and her family were a really really nice family, which made me happy. I found out that we were the only two families pursuing Zoe's adoption. If Zoe wasn't going to be ours, then how wonderful to know who she was going to and how she would be raised.

So about a week later, the day following that super crazy weird and awkward phone interview I alluded to above, we were notified that the other family was selected to be Zoe's family. Sheref was more disappointed than I was. As I said above, I had already somehow subconsciously concluded that Zoe was meant to be with the other family.

All of which brings us to today, when I am "online friends" with Zoe's mom Paula. Sheref had the opportunity to go visit with Zoe in Seoul on Wednesday. While picking up our new son in South Korea, our family got to visit and play with the girl who was, sort of, almost our daughter. We are hoping Zoe is home with her family in Tennessee very soon!

p.s. I did get permission from Paula before I posted this!

Seoul

Sheref arrived safely in Seoul. He said his flight was as good as a 15 hour flight can be. He was quite impressed with Korean Air; his comment was that "they were incredibly polite, and served unlimited alcoholic drinks and Bibimbop for dinner -- I can't complain!"

He arrived in Seoul around 5 pm Monday (Seoul time -- they are 14 hours ahead of EST), breezed through customs, and met his very nice driver, who drove him 90 minutes through Seoul to his hotel. Sheref said he was impressed with the sheer size of Seoul. That evening he found dinner, watched the World Series, which apparently was on television in the lobby of his hotel. He said his hotel, the Sheraton Grande, is very swanky and hosting the International Society of Hand Surgeons this week. Good luck for anyone suffering a hand injury in Seoul this week, I suppose.

On Tuesday, Sheref had his city tour, which was arranged by our adoption agency. His tour guide was a premed student, who was very happy to find out Sheref is a pediatrician. Sheref said what was booked as a 3 hour tour turned into a 6 1/2 hour tour, because they were getting along so well. The tour guide even called his girlfriend to join them for dinner, and the girlfriend showed Sheref the best shop in Seoul for buying wedding ducks (apparently...not like we would know...complete random aside here, but writing this sentence reminds me of the scene in "Elf" where he storms into the crappy little diner to enthusiastically congratulate them on their self-advertisement that they make the "World's Best Cup of Coffee"...). Anyways, suffice it to say that his tour went well and he is enamored with Seoul.

On Wednesday, Sheref is going to sight-see and shop a bit on his own. He also has an appointment to go to Holt (our adoption agency) and visit with some of the babies in the reception center, as well as meet the Holt social worker.

I will post more as he updates me. He doesn't have a laptop there, and we don't have Skype or anything fancy like that, so I get one set of emails per day. I'll continue to post the info I have. I am excited for Sheref to meet the babies at the reception center tomorrow, as one of them is the daughter of one of my "online friends."

Seoul Airport, Monday evening

Street shopping

Sheref and (I assume?) a palace guard

Changing of the guard at the palace (I am sort of making this caption up -- Sheref told me he saw the changing of the guard, and this looks like I would expect changing of the guard to look...)

Another palace picture