Hope

Gosh, this rollercoaster is exhausting! One minute we are hitting bumps at the bottom of a hill and the next we are being pulled up to the top, cresting another hill waiting for that feeling of our stomachs flying up into our diaphragms. Whee!

Once a reporter, always a reporter. Being the closet investigator I have been following several blogs of other adoptive families across the nation, whose timelines closely mirror ours. Being with different agencies in Korea there are, of course, variations. Today I logged on to check to see if any of these families had heard anything, anything at all. And, there they were - several headlines screaming excitement about visas being issued. Hooray! I am so excited for these families. This wait can be excruciating at times.

Being just a tad behind many of these families I am full of hope today that we might be in one of the next few batches being processed - Korea files the paperwork required for the passports twice a month. Even seeing that others are seeing movement has me ecstatic. There is movement! We might actually still see our son in the next few months. Huzzah!

8 Months Old Today

Andrew turns 8 months old today. We had really hoped to wish him a happy day in person, but we are still waiting for the Packet 3 to come back from Eastern, so instead we send him our thoughts and our prayers hoping he's having a good day with his foster family.

Each day we wait gets harder and harder. Being parents to a little boy so far away is definitely not easy. On days like today it is heartbreaking to be so far from our little boy, to have his cries soothed by someone else no matter how great his foster parents are. We are his mommy and daddy and should be with our son. We should have been traveling this week, if everything had gone according to plan, but heard last week that we may still have as much as 2-3 more months to wait due to a backlog in Korea processing passports - the prerequisite to a visa and us being able to travel.

So, rather than packing or trying to buy plane tickets we are adjusting to the idea of being here quite a bit longer and bringing home a little boy rather than a baby. Today, Shawna is going to register for a fencing and a hip hop dance class, and maybe a tennis ladder, to help her bide the time over the next few months. Eric is working with a group he will be teaching classes for, and preparing for the test drive of the class next week.

In the meantime, Dixie and Ian have been practicing to be a good big brother and sister by sleeping in the crib and on the changing pad. They are wishing he was here so they could share some of their friendly, cat snuggles as only a cat can do.

Still waiting

Nothing new here. Still waiting on that Packet 3 to come back from the Korean agency. Should everything have gone well it should have come back a week or more ago and we should have heard last week or be hearing this week that Andrew's visa was issued and it is OK to bring him home.

But, alas, we are at the mercy of the Korean government, which seems to be moving at the speed of molasses right now. So, we wait and wait and wait. Last week we heard that we may have another 2-3 months to wait, which was distressing. Andrew is quickly leaving his babyhood and soon we will be packing up all of the baby things in favor of toddler things.

Packet 3

What a week! I called the U.S. Embassy today to ask if our Packet 3 (all of the paperwork from immigration and the U.S. visa center) had been sent to the agency in Korea yet. Yup. It was sent out yesterday, on February 26. I'm impressed.

So, now the agency will receive this packet and match it to Andrew's paperwork at the agency, then send the even bigger packet back to the U.S. Embassy. After the U.S. Embassy has the stack of papers they can schedule the visa interview and issue the visa. Once Andrew has his visa we will be outta here!

One more step complete

We can check off one more step now. Yesterday I called the National Visa Center to see if our immigration (I-600) approval had been sent on to Korea. Good news! It was sent off to Korea on Thursday, Feb. 19.

I asked a woman at our agency if that meant we might get to travel before the sacred 4-5 month wait, but she swore up and down it didn't mean a thing and to still plan on traveling sometime over the summer. But, being the optimist I am going to hold out hope and believe it does mean something, even that we are one tiny, little step closer to meeting our son.

Andrew's living arrangements

Here is a view of Andrew's room. The little chair is Shawna's - her maternal grandfather gave it to her when she was a little girl. Eric's mom made the curtains. The dresser was left in the house (formerly Eric's maternal grandparent's) by the original owners.

What you can't see here are the child-sized rocking chair made by Shawna's maternal grandfather and the chiffarobe made by Shawna's paternal great-grandfather for her father when he was a baby.

What you also won't see here (yet) are the dirty diapers, paints or crayon marks on the walls, and toys or books strewn about. We are waiting for Andrew to help out with those tasks.

Preparations

Knowing that we may have less than a month before we go pick up our little guy, we have been busy preparing for Andrew's arrival. Over the past few weeks we have put safety thingies on every cabinet and outlet in our house and are now crawling around on all fours trying to see what is at eye level for an 8-month-old that might look tasty or extra fun, but probably shouldn't be, and moving things accordingly.

This past weekend we helped one of Eric's friends unload some of his son's clothes. Colby and Sharon's 3-year-old son, Colin, generously let us take many of his baby clothes to use with Andrew. Above is a photo of Shawna sorting through the many clothes. We have also been lucky enough to receive toys from our neighbors and Shawna's skating coach. We are sure thankful for friends with surplus toys and clothes!

Speedy Delivery

Well, gee. It's only been five weeks since we signed the papers accepting our referral and we have motored through step after step. Our legals took only a few days, the state approval came whipping back, then we received the letter to have our immigration fingerprints done only a few days later and went right away the next day.

We received the I-600 approval today! If everything goes smoothly in Korea we should be meeting our son for the first time about 4-6 weeks from now.

We are so excited to meet Andrew! Stay tuned here for updates as we get closer to our travel date and when we return. We will be posting updates and photos here.

Back to blogging

It's been a long time since we updated our blog. But, now we have something to write about.

On January 7, 2009, we accepted a referral for a cute, baby boy in Korea. He is now 6 months old. Andrew Nathaniel Ervin was born July 17th, 2008. He had a rough start with a brief hospital stay after contracting a virus, but is healthy and growing well.

Now we are slowly inching our way toward being able to go get him and meet his foster family. His legal papers (birth certificate and custody) arrived about a week after we signed our papers, which is incredibly fast. The typical timeline is 2-6 weeks.

Immigration signed off on our paperwork on Jan. 27 and we got our invitation to be fingerprinted today. We will go first thing in the morning. Then, it's about six weeks for immigration approval and six weeks until we travel, give or take a few weeks on either end. We're getting closer!

Traditional Korean Food Lesson

One of the neat things about adopting from Korea is being able to incorporate different parts of the culture into our lives. Korea is know for it savory, different, and enjoyable foods (something that Shawna and I both enjoy is trying out foods from other cultures.) While Korea has many foods that both of us enjoy, one item that is shared by only me (and not too many others apparently) is the wonderful dish, kimchi.

In Korea kimchi is as ubiquitous as squid. Kimchi is eaten at every meal, and some might say the aroma and taste must be acquired. For others (Shawna, my coworkers, my family, my friends, well really everyone except a select few) it smells something like dirty feet or old, rotten shoes. To me (and that select few) it’s a treat to be savored.

There are actually several varieties of kimchi to complement different meals much like wine. They are made from pickled cabbage, radishes or tofu, and seasoned with peppers, onions and garlic. If you’re in kimchi’s homeland it will be put in large jars and allowed to ferment underground for months. Yes, months. When we buy the Safeway variety it is so fermented that it explodes upon opening much like a shaken can of Coke. Not only do the cabbage and radishes pop up to say hello, but that lovely smell of rotten shoes permeates throughout the house. I really can’t understand why more people aren’t rushing out to get it.

If you think that this treat is only good for its effervescence, you’re wrong. It’s actually been named by Health Magazine as one of the five healthiest foods. (Well, yogurt is on there too.) Yes, apparently the Koreans are quite healthy for eating kimchi and you might wonder if all of the germs in the world are perhaps scared off by the pungent odor. But, really it kills viruses and bacteria, including the SARS virus and the bird flu. So, we’ll have a secret weapon in our household (even if I have to resort to sneaking kimchi into Shawna’s or the baby’s food).

Why Korea?

Many of you have been asking why we chose Korea. Fair question.

When we started looking into adoption we had some criteria: get a child as young as possible, work with a reliable agency, and work with a stable program. Once we looked into many of the other countries, and domestic adoption, we felt Korea met our needs the best.

The American adoption of Koreans started in the 1950s after the Korean war. At the time, most of the babies were half-Korean and half-American, the product of American soldiers and Korean civilians. Today the story is much different. The babies adopted in the U.S. today are typically 100% Korean, and are given up due to the social stigma of single parenting and the rejection of babies born out of wed-lock.

In Korea, children (and their mothers) are registered through their father's line. There is no system of birth and marriage certificates, so the registry is the only way to track who was born when, to whom. If you are a single mother, you are unable to register your child, thus making him invisible to the country and all its advantages. So, many women choose to give their babies up for adoption.

Babies used to come to the U.S. very young, but Korea (as with many countries) has a long-term plan to phase out international adoptions and increase domestic adoptions. As of January 2007, babies must now be 5 months old before they are free for international adoption. After that it takes about 3-5 months for visas, passports, etc. to be processed to bring the baby home.

While you may think adopting an older baby has its disadvantages, think again. Korea has a model adoption program and places the babies with foster mothers who give the babies one-on-one attention and take the babies in regularly for checkups. Korea has an excellent healthcare system, rivaling that of the U.S., so the babies are in excellent condition when adopted with full medical histories of the birth parents and the baby. Also, many developmental and physical problems are not able to be diagnosed until around 4 or 5 months of age, so adoptive parents have a better idea of the child they will be raising. The information we will receive on the birth parents and the baby's health up to that point is by far the most detailed and thorough of any country.

We also liked the idea of adopting from Korea because the program is so well accepted in the U.S., and our child will have plenty of opportunities to learn about his culture at culture camps and with the many, many other Korean adoptees in the Denver area. There is also a large Korean population in Denver with a Korean Academy for adoptees and their parents, Korean grocery stores, churches, etc. so he will have access to many avenues to learn about his birth culture. We also plan to take him to Korea at some point on one of our agency-sponsored trips (when he's old enough to really grasp it and remember it) to visit where he was born, his foster mother and maybe his birth mother (if we can find her).