We would certainly appreciate your prayers as we travel and bring Ethan home with us on Thursday.

Here’s our schedule …

We’ll check out at early in the morning (7:00 am here), 5:00 pm, Eastern Time. We have an hour bus ride to the airport where our plane is scheduled to leave at 11:05 am (9:05 pm, Eastern Time). We should land in Tokyo a couple hours later.

After an hour-long layover in Tokyo, we’ll embark on the long 11.5 hour flight to Detroit. Then, after a less-than-2-hour layover, we’ll take a short commuter flight home to State College, where we’re expect to arrive at 3:30 pm on Thursday (Eastern Time).

Please pray for safety, of course. Also, pray especially for Ethan, that he handles the trip as well as possible. Pray that God gives us wisdom and patience. Pray for our fellow passengers and the crew, that they will be supportive and understanding.

Pray also for smooth transitions in Tokyo and Detroit and that we have no problems with customs and immigration, especially in Detroit where we have a fairly short layover. We have all of our legal paperwork for Ethan, but you never know what snags might come up in that process!

We’ll post a report on the trip sometime after we get home. Thanks for your prayers!

It’s 8:20 pm here (Wednesday) and Ethan has been with us now for about 28 hours. There have been some glimmers of hope, but overall, it’s been a fairly rough ride so far!

The night went pretty well. Ethan woke up around 3:00 am and we both got up to feed him. He was a little scared, but okay, for the most part.

This morning, we didn’t really want to get up before we had to, so we waited till Ethan got awake, which was around 7:30 am. For the first few minutes, he was in a good mood, but as he got more awake, he cried and screamed again, this time for about 4 hours, minus a 20-30 nap.

A woman (who is here to adopt her second child) in a neighboring room came and knocked on our door shortly after we got up and offered a toy rattle. She said we have “a screamer.” Joleen said, “That was nothing!” (what she heard so far was minor compared to the previous night, as well as what would follow).

While there have been some very rough spots today (he is grieving, after all, and experiencing tremendous fear, naturally), there have also been some glimmers of hope. We’ve ventured out a few times today, carrying him in our Ergo Baby Carrier, which is probably one of the best baby-related investments we’ve made so far, as we’ve taken on a 24.3 pound baby!

On our first walk, a trip to E-Mart to pick up some supplies, he eventually went to sleep and was out until we returned home, somewhere around an hour later. Since he normally only takes short 20-30 minute naps, we assume he’s pretty exhausted. In fact, he normally goes to sleep between 10:00 and 11:00 pm, but tonight, he went to sleep a few minutes ago (of course, we don’t know what the rest of the night is going to be like).

FYI, Ethan has an interesting diet, at least we think so. He refused to eat much this morning, but for lunch, Joleen fed him rice with dried seaweed mixed in. We’ve been told that rice soup is his main food, which he normally eats about three times a day. He also eats fruit (tangerines and strawberries, etc.). According to the foster mother, he doesn’t “do formula well.”

We’re hoping for a more restful night and a good trip home tomorrow. There could be some more challenges along the way, but we’re *hoping* these episodes become fewer and further in between! He is certainly living up to his Korean and American names, which mean strong, particularly his lungs!

As you may recall from our post, The Takeaway, we said …

While we believe he will adjust and come to love us, too, the ugly part of this experience will be the period of time it takes Ethan to go from viewing us as kidnappers to viewing us as parents.

We’re still very much in the middle of this process!

But, just a word about the glimmers of hope: there have been times today when Ethan has been happy — smiling, laughing, shaking his head from side to side (which he does when he’s happy). We know he’ll eventually be okay, but right now, we just want to get him home and begin to make that adjustment!