Hhaving brought Ethan home from Korea less than 5 months ago, we find ourselves marking a lot of firsts during this time.
Yesterday was our first Fourth of July celebration with Ethan. And, because of the move, it was also our first day off in a while, a day to catch our breath and relax a little before our first weekend in our new churches.
We grilled out for the first time this year. Ethan spent time in his new pool. And we finished the day with our first trip to the Old Town Road Dairy.
Last Sunday, we had Ethan baptized in a special service in the afternoon so people from all of our churches could be invited, and both Randy and I could be there.
We were grateful that both sets of Ethan’s grandparents were able to be with us. (Randy’s parents traveled from Tennessee just for the weekend, bringing two of Ethan’s cousins he had not yet met.)
For the baptism Ethan wore the traditional Korean dress called a hanbok that he received as a gift from his foster family in Korea. It is very colorful. And as you can see in the picture below, boys wear pink!
It was meaningful to celebrate this event in Ethan’s life with our church families, Manor Hill Charge and 12th Street and Hope. They have been with us through the journey into parenthood and helped pray Ethan into our lives. It was also special to have our District Superintendent, Dave Norris, to officiate. He and his wife Jean have been supportive and shared the joy of this life-changing event.
The service was to include a slideshow to the song “You’ve Given Life to Me.” See Randy’s post, The Missing Slideshow, for details, and to view the slideshow.
The Faith UMC Choir sang “How Great is Our God” which was a special selection they sung for me right before we left for Korea to get Ethan. We included the congregational song, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” a congregational song from our wedding, too.
We played a recording of the World Vision Korea Children’s Choir singing in English and Korean, “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian” (see last year’s post on this choir’s concert in Huntingdon). And Open Timbre, a bluegrass group from Faith UMC, sang “The Blessing.”
Another special touch was the use of the Statement of Faith of the Korean Methodist Church in place of the Apostle’s Creed. We also used the ceramic pitcher and bowl that my grandmother (Ethan’s maternal great grandmother) had painted.
There was a good bit of music, but I like music! And so does Ethan. Ethan was a bit wiggly through a lot of the service, except when the music was playing! Now that he’s walking he wants down to get around.
Following the service, the Manor Hill churches provided a farewell reception. Joann, who (along with her husband, Dick) babysits Ethan on Sunday mornings, baked and decorated a beautiful baptism cake for the occasion.
We are grateful for this special day in our lives and in life of Ethan. We believe baptism to be a way in which we experience God’s grace. As an infant, Ethan can do nothing to achieve salvation. So it is with us all. God offers it freely.
Now we pray that Ethan will grow up to accept and claim this free gift of God as his very own.
Images from the day (the first one taken with our camera, and the other 3 by Ethan’s two grandmothers) …
Ethan was baptized Sunday (we’ll say more about that in another post). We intended to include a slideshow presentation at the beginning of the service, showing photos from the last 4 months. Unfortunately, I was not able to get it to work.
I’m not exactly sure what was wrong. My Apple PowerBook detected the projector, but apparently the projector didn’t get the message (I used this projector last fall at “community day,” but with a different cable). I should have conducted a trial run the day before and/or allowed more time beforehand (time was short due to Sunday morning activities and having family from Tennessee with us).
Anyway, we were extremely disappointed that it didn’t work; it would have been a good segue into Ethan’s baptism service. We invested a good bit of time on the presentation (on the slideshow plus shopping at Best Buy stores in Altoona AND in State College to get the necessary cables to connect the projector to Faith’s sound system so that the accompanying soundtrack could be played through the system).
A number of people got to see the slideshow during the fellowship time after the service on my laptop. And thanks to the latest version of Keynote, an Apple presentation application that I used to create the slideshow, I was able to send the slideshow to YouTube and then post it here.
I love the slide transitions available in Keynote (you’ll see a few of them in this slideshow). My favorite transition, and the single most biggest reason we were disappointed that it didn’t work Sunday, is the final photo and subsequent “droplet” transition (water ripple effect), which was intended to be a good lead-in to the baptism service.
BTW, I left the soundtrack out of the slideshow on YouTube (due to copyright), but you can preview or buy/download the song here at Amazon.com (see lyrics below).
“You’ve Given Life to Me”
(The Praise Baby Collection)
You are my hope, you are my light.
You are the way, the truth, and the life.
You have created all I can see and
You’ve given life to me. You’ve given life to me.
Though you are God, you became man
Walked here beside us so we’d understand.
All you created, all we can be
Lord, you have set us free. Lord, you have set us free.
And we praise you. And we praise you.
And we love you. And we love you.
So, without further adieu, here’s the nearly-5-minute slideshow; just click on the image. Please be aware that we have NO control over any of the other video/content/links from YouTube!
The one-year doctor appointment is not fun. It means at least four shots, one in each leg, one in each arm. This was on top of Ethan having a slight cold (cough and runny nose).
I think we were all worn out from Annual Conference and then we came home from air conditioned buildings to a sweltering house. We broke out the window air conditioners on Sunday and the first night we had Ethan’s room too cold. (We weren’t going to get out the air conditioners … here we are, we’re supposed to be packing, and we are unpacking stuff! But we didn’t think we could stand to pack in the heat.)
After Wednesday’s appointment, Ethan was quite fussy. The first couple of hours of the night he was waking every 15-20 minutes. We finally gave him some Children’s Tylenol, hoping to ease his aches.
The worse thing of the appointment was talking about our move, which Dr. Ettenger described as a “trauma,” similar to that of the death of a parent. Not exactly the words of assurance we were looking for.
However, Dr. Ettenger continued to explain that while Ethan will lose most of what has become familiar around him (not to mention that he just went through this a mere four months ago), he will still have his primary caregivers (mom and dad) with him!
Ultimately our assurance is from God. We trust that this move is God’s will and he will provide everything we need!
This was Ethan’s last appointment with Dr. Ettenger due to the move. We deeply appreciate Dr. Ettenger’s work with us and Ethan over the course of the last few months. At one point he said, “I don’t need to tell you, you are doing a good job.” Those sure are reassuring words for new parents to hear. Everyone needs a “That a boy!” every now and then. And we send one to Dr. Ettenger, too.
We celebrated Ethan’s birthday at Grandma’s house along with family and friends. The highlight of the day was watching Ethan dig into his first birthday cake (see photos below)!
This is a good time to remember the gift Ethan is to us — how God guided our steps throughout our inquiry into the possibility of adoption and the decision-making process, the choice between domestic or international adoption, the selection of an adoption agency, the application process, choosing a country from which to adopt, to name part of the process.
Beyond all of the decisions that we had to make, God’s hand has clearly been upon this entire journey. God worked out all the details according to his timetable — granting us a referral at the time of our dissertation proposal hearings, reaching the final step in the process at the time we completed the first draft of our last two chapters of our dissertations which cleared the way for us to make travel plans to Korea to welcome Ethan into our family, and still leaving us just enough time to complete our revisions and defenses in order to graduate in May 2008.
What an adventure this has been and, with God’s help, will continue to be!
Wednesday morning, we drove to Camp Hill, PA where we met with Cindy, our caseworker from Adoption Horizons, for our second (of three) post-placement visits. Basically, it was an opportunity for us to talk about Ethan’s progress. It went very well.
That leaves only one more post-placement visit. Sometime in the fall, we will go to court to finalize our adoption of Ethan.
Later Wednesday afternoon, we checked into our room at Messiah College. We are assigned to a dorm room with a living room, kitchen, private bath, and a bedroom with 3 twin beds (2 of the them are stacked). The room also includes a pack-n-play, which Ethan is sleeping in (it’s the first time we’ve travelled away from home that he is able to sleep in his own bed!).
Annual conference started this morning at 9:30 and ended a little more than 12 hours later. The big test today was leaving Ethan with total strangers for the first time when we dropped him off at child care for the morning session. We didn’t know how Ethan would handle it, but he handled it very well!
We kept him with us for the afternoon worship service. Then, while Joleen wrote for the Daily Link during the afternoon’s “worshipful work” session, I wheeled Ethan around in his stroller while he slept for well over an hour (mainly in the hallway where I was able to catch most of what was happening in the main auditorium).
After dinner, it was my turn to write for the Daily Link while Joleen hung out with Ethan for the rest of the evening.
Ethan has certainly changed the dynamic of annual conference for us. Simply put, Ethan is a huge attention getter. As Cindy (our caseworker) told Ethan yesterday, “You’re going to be a big hit at conference.” Indeed, he has been!
We’ll try to take some photos tomorrow — today, being the first day at annual conference with Ethan, and having a lot of extra stuff to carry with us, we just didn’t want to bother with the camera. But we should be ready tomorrow.
For now, here are some photos of yesterday’s arrival in our dorm room …
Today marks the 100th day since Ethan joined our family!
In Korea, families traditionally celebrate a child’s 100th day (from birth). Historically, a child’s first 100 days were the most critical. If a child lived that long, they were more likely to survive. While modern medicine has changed that, Korean families still continue to celebrate the day.
Well, we checked the calendar and today, May 22, 2008, is the 100th day we’ve had Ethan.
And how did we spend our 100th day together? On the road!
We made good time, except for the last 20 miles, which took us about 2 hours, turning a 9 hour trip into 11. Traffic on the Interstate virtually stopped. We eventually made a U-Turn and took a detour following the back roads. While Ethan handled the trip fairly well, it was a very long day for him, strapped into a car seat! (You can read about the last trip to KY here: Setback.)
Sometimes it feels like we were just in Korea, and that “the meeting” (February 11, 2008) and “gotcha day” (February 12, 2008) were only yesterday. But in other ways, though, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been 100 days — it feels like Ethan’s been part of our family for much longer!
To review and/or relive those early moments, check out these posts …
1,000 Words (a photo from the morning we first met Ethan in his foster home in Korea).
The Meeting (a description of our one-hour meeting with the baby).
Of course, you can always click on Adoption (under categories) to read posts about our adoption experience or even Cross-Cultural Experience to read our posts from Korea.
Today, we celebrate 100 days with Ethan, as we continue to thank God for him!
Ever since we brought Ethan home 9 weeks ago, we’ve wondered how this trip to Kentucky would go, mainly because Ethan doesn’t always handle the car seat very well.
But Ethan traveled surprisingly well. He got a little tired and fussy toward the end, but that was understandable — it was a long trip, and a long time to spend trapped in the car seat. Thankfully, the trip didn’t take us much longer than it normally does.
However, while we focused so much on the drive here, what we did *not* expect was how Ethan would react to a strange hotel room.
After we arrived at the Asbury Inn, we went for a walk. By the time we got back to our room it was Ethan’s bed time (which we sometimes refer to as EBT).
We gave Ethan his bottle and tried to put him in the pack-and-play crib, but he resisted and cried — loudly. As it turned out, he fought sleep (amazingly well, I might add) for the next 3 hours. We finally put him in bed between us (at home, he always sleeps in his crib).
Ethan had a short, restless night. He tossed and turned a lot — it was rather dangerous as we both took shots to the body by Ethan’s flailing feet and hands.
I think I got about 5 hours of interrupted sleep, then had to get up and review/prepare for my dissertation defense, which thankfully was scheduled for the afternoon (we plan to report on both defense hearings Friday or Saturday).
Today, Ethan did pretty well, but as EBT neared, he began to fight sleep again. Fortunately, though, he went to sleep (in our bed) a little earlier tonight (10:30 pm).
The experience here reminds us that Ethan is still in transition. Though he is doing incredibly well, “the takeaway” has left a mark (whether he remembers it or not). While we expect him to grow healthier in time, it will take a lot of love, understanding, and patience on our part, especially when we experience an occasional setback.
Well, we need a good night’s rest tonight — Joleen’s dissertation defense is scheduled for 9:00 am and we will be driving home after lunch.
Here are a few images from Asbury …
Ironically, I remembered today that the last time we were here, we learned that this little guy existed and was going to be ours. As we wrap up this part of our journey, this place holds a special place in our hearts. As challenging as the last 24 hours have been, we’re glad Ethan gets to experience this place with us (assuming the rest of the night doesn’t go *too* badly ).
Whenever we return from traveling (or at the end of some important experience), we’ll commonly ask each other: How was the trip? It gives us an opportunity to reflect on things we enjoyed, things we didn’t enjoy, things we learned, and things we’ll carry with us forever.
Here at the end of our 10-week journey (i.e. parental leave), which involved going to Korea to get our baby and 8 weeks of creating a family with Ethan, it’s a good time for us to reflect on our trip.
General Highlights …
Time in Korea. We enjoyed our time there, experiencing a new culture.
Making new friends at the Korean Methodist churches, especially the small group with whom we spent our first evening with Ethan.
Spending time with Ethan, getting to know him, sometimes entertaining him, and many times being entertained.
Introducing Ethan to family and friends.
Completing our dissertations (mostly).
Memorializing this experience and inviting others on the journey with us, through this Web space.
We’re grateful for God’s incredible gifts to us. And we look forward continuing this journey with God and each other.
Today, Mom came to our house to spend the afternoon with Ethan while Randy and I went to State College to run some errands.
Round 1 involved a lot of separation anxiety, but in Round 2, Ethan had a wonderful visit with “Grandma!” They played together. Ethan had one of his favorite snacks — yogurt. And NO crying this time!
Ethan just continues to amaze us as he moves forward in his adjustment. What an encouragement on our last day of parental leave!
