March 4, 2008

I will start with the fact that we are home, safe and sound. And we are so lucky; she is the BEST BABY!

But back to March 3. We were able to take her back with us. We meet with the Social Worker and the Foster Mom for about 45 minutes. They actually both left the room for a while and Kayli did just fine. The Social Worker gave us a bag full of supplies (Korean formula, diapers, wipes, a nook, a baby carrier and a cloth diaper) which came in handy over the next 2 days. The Foster Mother gave us a bag also with her favorite snacks (similar to a puffed popcorn but a little sweeter, like a kix cereal), 3 packages of Rice Gruel (which she didn't like when we made it), her FAVORITE blanket (which was our saving grace over the trip home but has Pokemon like fighting characters on it?), some mandarin oranges (did you know they come in a form other than a can; I didn't :) ), a Hanbok (which is a traditional outfit to wear on her first Birthday), and my favorite item was a whole photo album of her first 9 months. It has pictures of her foster family (mom, dad, 2 brothers, grandma) her playing at a park, with her friends, sleeping, and with another little girl who they said was her best friend. What is so neat about that is the other little girl was adopted by a family from Lifelink, and I asked for their last name so I can connect with that family soon. Then Dr. Kim (who is 94 years old and started Eastern Welfare Society 35 years ago) came and gave his blessing (in Korean, so unfortunately we couldn't understand it but the Foster Mom was crying), and then they handed her off to us. The Foster Mom did ask two questions of us: 1-to please send lots of pictures of her as she grows up, and 2- if I worked outside of the home (which I replied part-time and then explained the my friend and neighbor who watched my other 2 kids will be babysitting for Kayli; thanks so much, Mandy.)

Once we returned to our room, she feel asleep for about 1 hour. It was her nap time, but I am sure she was a little stunned also. When we initially left with her, she did cry for a couple of minutes, but that was it. Jeff and I finished packing while she slept, and then decided to take her for a walk and find some food (back to our daily struggle.) We put her in the baby carrier Eastern had given us, and out we went. We decided to order take outand was that an experience. Jeff decided on a chicken plate from a picture, and the woman/cook/server (she did it all) tried to talk Jeff out of it and pointed to and said "fried chicken" for another item, but we didn't understand why she was talking him out of it; we thought because it was spicy (she even showed us the package, but it looked fine.) We brought it back to Eastern, and Jeff began to eat. Jeff said it was spicy but also very crunchy. One bite, two bites and he finally decided why that was, and out he pulled a chicken foot, ...a real chicken foot! So that went into the garbage, and out he went to find something else and ended up buying 3 items from a street vendor. Kayli slept until 2:30 in the morning, then woke up screaming; I fed her, and down she went until 8am the next morning. We had a futon brought in, and I slept next to her half the night, Jeff the other half. We also feed her the rice gruel, and we were told she isn't a picky eater so eyed up all our food. (I ate a green onion pancake that night, and it was a little dull tasting, but better than chicken feet!)

We were taken to the airport by an employee of Eastern at 9:00am. Our plane left at noon, we had to go through immigration and customs in Tokyo Japan, and then left again at 5pm. We then flew 11 hours to Chicago and had to go through customs and immigration again there. It was amazing how the officials only checked 2 of our bags (we had 8!), and then I saw them DIG through another woman's bags (who obviously was not American due to her dress.) We had to go through the other line (non-American) because of Kayli. She will not be a legal citizen of the USA for about 6 months. What a relief to hear primarily English speaking people at O'Hare. We enjoyed the trip, but decided after 24 hours of travel on 2/27-28 and 3/4 that we have had enough!

Once home (on 3/4), she actually slept from 9:30pm to 2:00am, then again from 3:00am to 7:00am, and I think that is a great start!

Thank you all for the well wishes, prayers and congrats. We also wanted to thank Adoption Voyages for a wonderful service. So if or when any of you are planning on adoption, we would highly recommend them.

Jeff, Kimberly, Evan, Trenton and Kayli Blom

 

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