Meeting our son (long post)

Yesterday we met our son for the first time. After more than five months of staring at pictures, analyzing well baby check updates and praying our hearts out we finally got to see him in person. There is no way to accurately describe what it was like to see him as his Halmoni (she's his foster mom but in the home she is called by the Korean word for Grandmother) brought him through the door, that feeling that you get when you are changing the radio station in the car and look up to see that you have almost rear ended the car in front of you! It is impossible to tell you what the little dimples on the back of his hands look like, or how he smiles with his entire body, or what it feels like to kiss his gorgeous black hair so I'll just tell you about our day.

We got up early (like 5am) because we were nervous and waited for the breakfast room at our hotel to open. After eating breakfast, we got ready to leave. I was thinking as I was drying my hair how weird it seemed to be doing things that I do everyday when today was the day we would meet our son. Before leaving the hotel, we got Starbucks and went up to the roof to spend some time praying together. Then we hit the subways!! Sam and Soo-Ae had taught us how to navigate on Monday so we weren't to worried. As we were exiting the Hapjeong station where Holt is located, we saw an older Korean woman carrying a baby on her back. It wasn't Zach, but we discretely followed her because we knew she was heading to Holt. When we arrived at the Holt building, we saw Mr Kim who had been our driver from the airport and he told us to go to the second floor. When we got there, we met Mrs Lee who is the Holt Korea social worker. She gave us some information about our schedule for the rest of the week and told us that our baby would arrive soon. It was probably ten minutes later that the office door opened and there he was. All of the women from his foster family had come to introduce him to us. They came into the meeting room with Mrs. Lee and we all introduced ourselves. If Zachary could talk, he call his foster mother Halmoni, his foster mom's daughter would be Omma, and his foster mom's granddaughter would be Nuna so that is how we will refer to these wonderful people. Zach's Halmoni handed him to me and he would look into my eyes for a minute and reach for my hair and earrings! He loves to put everything in his mouth and he has three teeth! He likes to sit up, crawl, and pull himself up on furniture... what a big boy! After a few minutes of me holding him, Zach reached for his Halmoni so I handed him back to her for awhile. His Omma presented us with an amazing scrapbook she had made with over 100 pictures of him in their home. The precious gift brought me to tears. I'm so thankful that Zachary will have this physical connection to his life before us and I can't imagine the love and pain that his Omma felt as she prepared it. We learned the Korean words for peek-a-boo and patty-cake, both games that Zach loves! His Halmoni and I tried to feed him, but with all of the excitement, he wasn't interested. I asked about his eating and sleep habits and his Halmoni said that he eats every 3-4 hours (yikes) and sleeps (in bed with his Halmoni) from 11pm-9am with two 2 hour naps! Phil held Zach for a little bit too but he was getting tired because it was almost time for his 11am nap. He didn't stay unhappy for very long though because Phil handed him off to his Nuna! This precious seven year old girl is Zach's favorite person. She gets the biggest smiles out of him and is in many of the scrapbook pictures because she loves to play with him.

We have prayed for Zachary's foster family since before we even knew about him and we are so thankful and God has given us more than we had even known to ask for. Our son has been lovingly nurtured beyond our wildest dreams. He is healthy (he's never even had a cold and the only medical interventions in this chart are vaccinations), big, developmentaly on track (and ahead in some areas) and he feels secure with his foster family. While it absolutely breaks our hearts to know that when we receive him on friday it will cause him to feel afraid and sad, we are so thankful that he has received this foundation of love in his little heart. We are also very thankful for Holt. We know that Holt works toward what is best for the children, not the parents, and they use a system to figure out what is best so we are confident that our agency with more than 50 years of experience has prayfully determined that we are the best family for Zach.

We will get to see our son again on Thursday before we take a bus to Ilsan to tour the facility that Holt runs for children and adults who are unlikely to be adopted or live independantly. One of the other adoptive families from Holt is here now to bring their son home from Ilsan so it will be neat to be there with them tomorrow. We met them yesterday at the Holt reception center (where we went to play with and help with some of the babies who aren't in foster care right now) and it was so neat to see someone in real life who I've "known" online! Last night we ate Kalbi (Korean BBQ) with Sam and Soo-Ae, which was delicious, and then saw some more sites around Seoul. It has been great to have an "insider's view" and we are so grateful that they have taken so much of their own time to make this a wonderful trip for us.

Phil is going to post some pics and video here in a minute and I'm going to share some prayer requests in another post since this one is so long. Thanks for reading!!

M