Painting Sean's Room

My awesome sisters bought me the bedding set we picked out for Sean's room, and I used it to match paints. (I really hope this kid likes dogs. And I don't mean, you know, for dinner.) The set came with a border though, so I thought we shouldn't have to settle on a single color. I measured as best as I could on the bumpy walls that have probably seen about 20 coats of paint over the last 40 years and using the laser level, sectioned off the walls about midway between. Painting the ceiling sucked, but then it always does. Then it was time to start on the walls. Light green went on top:

Then the dark blue went on the bottom:

And the we added the border:

I'll take more pics when the furniture is in and everything is all set up.

The Illicit Package

It's weird knowing that your child is somewhere very, very far away and even though you haven't met them yet, there is a very strong need to somehow try to connect with them. From the message board groups we'd been on, and even in the classes we had to attend, we were told that it was quite normal for parents to send a small package of goodies overseas to their child.

After the acceptance paperwork was taken care of, I contacted the staff at our agency and asked for the address and any information they could give me with regards to sending the package. They pretty much flat out told us not to send anything. I won't quote directly from the correspondence, but the gist of it was that they can't guarantee the package would even get to the correct child, and that the workers in their Seoul office have much better things to do than to hand-deliver hundreds of care packages to children who have shown up at the offices for the well baby visits with their foster moms.

We were a little shocked and surprised. I had spent quite a long time working on a photo book to send. I included pictures of the immediate family with the words for each family member printed below the photos in Hangul and their first names in English. (You can view the whole book here.) I figured I'd make a few copies of the book, send one over and hope for the best, and then bring one with us when we traveled (and also have one at home in case something happened to the first two). Now we were being told not to send anything? Because they couldn't guarantee that he would get it, or return home with it? Who cares!!? Don't they understand that we had to at least try!?

Someone nameless, and off record, basically told us to just go ahead and send a small package anyway. But do so knowing it may never get to him. We bought a small stuffed dog, two pairs of pajamas with dogs on them, and a Rutgers University onesie. I stuffed all this into a gallon zippie, got the address of the Seoul office from a nice person on a message board (thanks again!!) and sent it on its way. Here is what everything looked like before I crammed it into the plastic bag:



We knew it probably wouldn't make it in time for this month's well baby checkup, so we are setting our sites on the one for early July. Keep your fingers crossed for us that he gets it!

More Pictures of Sean!

Almost immediately after we completed the acceptance paperwork, we were sent a new medical report, and more importantly, new photos! (I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Of course the health of the child is more important than the way he looks.)

Sean is about 8 months old in these:







So much happier now that we have more recent pictures! Everyone just wants to pinch those cheeks! We can't wait to be able to do it in person.

It's A Boy!!!!!

Last night when the phone rang, I knew. I just knew. Our social worker, Lisa, called with the most wonderful news-- we have a son! Bak Seok-min was born August, 27, 2009 outside of Seoul, and Lisa was going on and on about how cute he was, and about his height and his weight and percentile of this and it was all I could do not to scream "Shut up and email us a picture!!!! Send the picture!!! Where's the picture!!!?"

And here it is:

He's pretty cute-- even for a newborn, which I always think are hideous and look like creepy aliens, except in very rare instances. Stop making that face at the computer screen, you know it's true. Everyone pretends that they are adorable, but in reality they usually look like something that was plucked from Area 51. Well, not my son. I think the hair helps a great deal.

It's so exciting and overwhelming and exhilarating!!! But also seems quite surreal. The plan is to change his first name to Sean and leave Seok-min as his middle name. For a long while we were leaning towards Julian, but I decided I didn't want him getting beat up on playgrounds. So we went with the second Lennon son. This way, when people ask who he's named after, I can say "Shelby." (Tradition in Jewish families, at least mine and the ones I know, is to take the first letter of the name someone who has died and use that letter to choose the child's name. So yes, I'm honoring my dog. I love following rules.)

Our Home Study Is Done! Let The Waiting Begin.

(A guest blog post from the Dad-To Be.)

Sorry that it's taken so long to post an update, but you know how it is with the holidays. The big news is that our home study is done, and our social worker Stacey is most likely busy as we speak trying to put into words just how wonderful Lori and I are, and how we will be the greatest parents ever.

But seriously, folks, if anybody ever tells you that an adoption home study is a stressful event, something ain't right with their agency or social worker. Stacey couldn't have been any nicer or made the process any easier. She came to our house two times for a total of about five hours. From the second she arrived, she made us feel completely at ease. Truth be told, the process actually made us feel even better about the decision we've made. (And I'm speaking for Lori here, but I'm sure she'd agree.)

So where do we go from here? We wait. For those of you who think you'll be attending a baby shower for us this year -- don't go running to Kids 'R' Us just yet. Stacey said we should tell everybody to expect this to go down in Summer 2010. Yes, you read that right. 2010. We'll probably have a match in early 2010, and then it's another four months or so after that until Korean Baby arrives.

Our Homestudy is Scheduled!

We finally got a call from our social worker, Stacey. She seems really cool, and very energetic and positive, and easy to talk to. It was weird to speak to someone who likes her job so much. An alien concept to most people I know. It just spilled out from her, over the phone. What a freak. Ha, ha, I keed, I keed. Stacey herself has two adult children who were adopted from Korea, which is also really awesome. Who better to step families through this process than someone who has been there first hand?

Anyway, she said her schedule was filling up, so we made the appointments for early December, two mornings, and we'll have to take a few hours off work. The first session should be about 2 hours, and I think she is mostly going to look at our house, and not really delve too deeply into, well, us. The second session should be about 3 hours, and that's where we'll go over those giant essays we wrote and anything else she wants to ask us, and all of this will depend on how many questions we have for her, and how much info she can get from us. I also found out she likes dogs, which is good.

The other information she gave me dealt with time frames. She said with the holidays and everything, we could assume she would be done writing our homestudy in January and it would then be sent to Korea. Based on current wait times, it would be another 12 to 13 months for a match/referral. That means it will be about a year from the time our file goes to Korea to which we are matched with a baby. If you are keeping track, that's January/February 2010. Then, it's another 4 or 5 months for the baby to come home. She said we'd be safe telling our family and friends not to expect anything before SUMMER 2010. She kept trying to tell me it wasn't such a long time, and it would go fast, which was funny to me because I hadn't expressed anything about the long time-frame. It's really okay by me. So there you have it. But keep in mind, anything can happen.

Mandatory Parent Training Classes 1 and 2

Well, we attended the first two parts of an ultimately 6-part mandatory class schedule for parents-in-progress of an international adoption. While there were some good things about it, I tend to have a visceral reaction to the word "mandatory" and immediately become grumpy, feel put-upon, and begin grumbling about "The Man." I also hate sitting in classes, and forced socialization. That said, it was a good forum to be able to ask questions, and see the variety of people who were in the same boat as us. And the social worker presiding over the class was super-nice, easy to talk to, and seemed to genuinely love her job. The couple sitting across from us was in process to adopt from Nepal. Nepal? The only reason I know where Nepal is, is because in Raiders of the Lost Ark, that's where Indiana Jones seeks out Marian Ravenwood at that bar where she outdrinks the local, because he's trying to get the headpiece to the Staff of Ra...okay, I'm geeking out a bit here. Anyway, I found that fascinating, and they seemed nice.

We went around the room, introducing ourselves, and then basically just spent a good deal of time asking questions. A lot of people were asking questions I thought were stupid, probably because we (Wade and I) already knew the answers to them. Do your homework, people. And so much of this process has so many unknowns, it's hard to give a definitive answer anyway. No, we don't know how long the wait is going to be from the time your paperwork goes overseas-- which was pretty much what everyone ultimately wanted to know.

Next, we did an exercise on a sheet of paper where we had to match up a list of important events in adoption history, with the year we thought they took place. Then we had to match up a second list saying why these events were important. That's all fine, but I felt that it was nothing I should've had to sit in a classroom for, and I'm not sure how my familiarity with the "orphan trains" that began in the mid 1800s are going to help me at 2am with a screaming 11 month-old who never slept in a crib before. But maybe we cover more pertinent stuff in the later sessions.

Next we watched a video tape of teenagers who had been adopted internationally. They all spoke positively, and seemed well-adjusted, and happy. I know from speaking with friends who have been through the process that they are saving the other video-- the ones of the angry teens, resentful of being torn away from their "families" and culture--is being saved for later.

We then broke for lunch-- which was the highlight of the day. We met up with a friend from college and her family, which included her biological son, and adopted Korean daughter, who was just too adorable. We had a great time at lunch, and I got a lot more information out of them than I did from the class.

When we returned from the class, we had to do an exercise that invovled drawing a picture in a group with crayons, without speaking to each other. I got the white crayon, because I was supposed to be frustrated by being "invisible". Except I pushed so hard, I broke the crayon in half, and then just continued on with a pretty pink pen I had in my purse. Invisible my ass. One of our group members was asked to leave and join another group, and were secretly told to "disrupt" the new group's drawing. When we reconvened, we were asked how we felt about the disruptive person, and how we dealt with them. This was supposed to symbolize the newly adopted child coming in and disrupting our families. It's these types of things that make me want to run around screaming. Really? A new baby is going to disrupt our lives as we know it? Really? Gosh, I'm so glad you had me draw this picture, because I never would've realized that on my own.

The last part of the class was, in my opinion, the most valuable. We talked about the effects of institutionalization on children, and how this may affect their behavior once they came home. We talked about different developmental rates, and talked about language adaption-- this was important stuff. We should've been doing this type of stuff the whole time. We also went over a list of actual comments that children have said to their parents-- and discussed how to handle these awkward and surprising situations. Hopefully the future classes will feature more of this sort of topical information, and less drawing in silence.