In A Labor of Love we tell of the DVD that Randy and I made for Ethan to watch while we are away.

We hoped it would be a good thing, and not make him sad. We tried to make most of it fun, along with our bedtime routine. I’ve been staying in touch with Grammy by email and asked how Ethan is liking it.

Grammy said that Ethan waves to us on the TV, and that “he really thinks it is funny.” He played the drum with the video segment of he and I playing. Ethan said the funny syllables along with the video segment where he and daddy do that together. He sang “Old McDonald” along with Mommy singing on the DVD. Grammy took some pictures of Ethan watching us.

Grammy also said that she showed him Sarah on the computer and he said it was him when he was a baby.

We’ve emailed some messages to Ethan along with our love and hugs. Ethan responded to an email, saying,

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We miss that little guy so much! At every turn something reminds us of him. I laid awake last night thinking of a sleeping “Sarah” and of my active little boy (whom I tell will always be my baby boy) as it was afternoon in the States.

We came to Korea to pick our baby girl. And now that we have her, we are ready to go home!

My last post tells the story of our first hours with Sarah. As I commented on the previous post, we had a *great* night. Instead of her normal 4:00-5:00 wake-up/feeding, she woke up at 12:30 a.m. She cried at first, drank a little formula, then was pleasant/playful until we put her back in her crib at 1:30 a.m. She went back to sleep well!

Sarah slept much longer than normal, going to sleep about 1.5 hours early and waking up 1.5 hours later (based on what we were told). She’s pleasant and playful again this morning, so we’re off to a good start and are hopeful that today will be an important day of bonding/adjusting with Sarah (though there could/should still be some rough spots)!

The day’s agenda will be pretty light but will depend a lot of Sarah. We’ll try to get out as much as we can to enjoy our last day of beautiful weather here in Seoul (forecast: Sunny and a high of 70 degrees).

Posts today will also depend on Sarah. I will try to post some photos from our last of couple days here, but it’s possible that I’ll wait till after we get home to do it.

In the meantime, thanks for following us on this journey. FYI, our blog probably averages at least 40-60 views/day. Those numbers have been considerably higher in the last week as we’ve averaged 190+ views/day, including a high of 445 on the day we met Sarah. Again, thanks for following us and, especially, for your prayers!

This time tomorrow morning, we’ll be on a bus to Incheon International Airport where we’ll board a flight to Washington, D.C.

As I said, we are ready to go home and to unite the family God has blessed us with!

On Wednesday afternoon, we were taken to meet our baby girl in the home of her foster family. As you may be able to tell from the photo, our meeting with Sarah went very well!

The girl who will be called Sarah was very comfortable with us. While our visit with her included the foster mother and 9-year-old foster brother, as well as the case worker, the meeting went so well that we hoped we might experience a fairly smooth transition.

That transition began about 5.5 hours ago around 3:30 p.m. (Korea time, 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time).

During our one-hour visit, we were asked when we wanted to pick up the baby. We were caught off guard because last time we were told when to pick up the child. We expected to pick her up Friday, but we opted for Thursday afternoon to give us extra time to bond/adjust before the long trip home on Saturday.

The hand off at the SWS offices today was very painful for the foster mother (as we can only imagine!). Sarah was well-taken care by her foster family; we are grateful for that!

After arriving at our room minutes after “the takeaway,” all indications were that it might just be a smooth transition. But we weren’t holding our breath. And for good reason, because about 20-30 minutes later (3:55 p.m.), reality hit and Sarah began to cry pretty intensely.

Thankfully, though, she cried herself to sleep about 20 minutes later (4:15 p.m.) while Joleen was holding her (we got her at her normal nap time). Once in her crib, she slept for an hour.

She woke up and cried some more, then fell asleep again while I was holding her (6:05 p.m.). I put her in the crib, but she slept only about 20 minutes or so. When she woke up, she was in a good mood.

After dinner (takeout from McDonald’s), Sarah cried again, until she fell asleep about a half hour ago (8:40 p.m.). Her usual bedtime is 10:00 p.m., so we’re not sure what the rest of the night will look like. We’re hoping for a good night’s sleep for all of us and an important day of bonding/adjusting tomorrow.

Not surprisingly, Sarah’s not eating well. She had one (part) bottle of formula, but didn’t eat any banana (which she normally eats after a bottle), and she skipped (so far) her nighttime bottle of formula.

When Sarah cries, all we can do is comfort her, and trust that over time (hopefully soon!) she will feel safe and be ready to embrace us as we have embraced her!

As I said, we are in transition.

It is interesting to be experiencing this a second time. It’s emotionally/physically exhausting but not quite as scary as the first time around. And while Ethan made the adjustment fairly quickly (in the grand scheme of things, anyway), every child is different (and we can already see differences, as well as similarities, between Ethan and Sarah). So even though we’ve been through this before, there is still a lot of uncertainty!

Well, it’s just after 9:00 p.m. here. We’re going to bed to get as much rest as we can, not knowing what challenges the next 24-36 hours will bring!