So sweet...

Settling in...

I'm too tired to try and torturously construct a 'clever' blog post, so I thought I would just quickly throw up some pictures.  First, our beautiful children:

Today, Christian helped Daddy put together his new wagon.  Then he enjoyed both giving and receiving rides. He was very excited with it and proudly showed me his 'banana holder' (he's already planning on putting a banana in the cup holder when we go out).  Mari seemed rather bemused by the whole experience.

Finally, a cute picture of Mari and her Daddy.  She is holding her favorite thing in the world: our remote.  Thanks to her and Christian, there is now an ominous internal clinking noise when you shake it.

Life imitates art...

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about how life with Mari is similar to the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark".  I know that sounds utterly random, but before you declare me insane from lack of sleep I will try and explain:

We are trying very hard to get her on a consistent schedule, but sleep is still a problem.  Yesterday morning, I had quite the battle trying to get her down for her morning nap.  Our strategy is to rock her while feeding her a bottle.  Then, once she falls mostly asleep, we transfer her to the crib and sneak on out.  However, there have been several times when I am rocking her, the bottle is almost gone and she is not showing any signs of sleep.  At these times I feel a strong sense of panic because the bottle is the ultimate weapon in our relentless sleep campaign.  Once deployed, it usually works...but if it fails, we have no good backup strategy to get her to sleep and she makes us pay.  Anyway, as I watch the level of tformula slowly decline and Mari's eyes are still wide open, I think of the scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" where Harrison Ford and Karen Allen are trapped in the pit with the snakes.  She is waving a makeshift torch in a circle to keep the snakes at bay while he's looking for an escape route and then as the torch starts sputtering she yells, "Indy, the torch is going ooooooooout!"  I myself often feel like shouting, "Jeff, the bottle's running ooooooout!"

Occasionally, we also will try to replace the bottle of formula she is sucking with water.  As I first contemplate the switch, then perform the switch, then anxiously watch her reaction to see if it worked, I think of the beginning scene from Raiders where Indy tries to steal the gold idol from the pedestal by replacing it with a bag of sand.   Makes perfect sense, right?

Hmmm...maybe I do need more sleep :-)

Anyway, we're hanging in there, mostly thanks to my parents who are staying with us for a few days.  Mari is adjusting very well (minus the sleep issues) and is mostly a very happy and content baby.  Christian continues to try very hard to be a good older brother and they are slowly starting to interact more.

She likes him more from a distance rather than up close. I tried to get a picture of them together on the couch, but as soon as Christian put his arm around her she tried to get it off.

She watches him all the time and tries to follow him around.

So sweet! (And staged - I told him to give her a kiss.)

Today I also discovered that in the world of Mari, having a towel on your head is quite possibly the funniest thing ever.  (Note: the purple bandage on her arm was from her visit to the International Adoption Clinic.  They had to take quite a bit of blood for all of the tests.)

This video is definitely the cutest thing ever.  They are starting to have short interactions with each other...

Can you feel the love?

Our next Christmas card...

As you can see, Christian and Mari are adjusting to each other.  She was afraid of him at first, probably because he is so loud and in her face, but is warming up to him now.  She actually watches him quite a bit now and will even give him some rare smiles.

As for Christian, he's really trying hard to be a good big brother.  He likes to bring her bottles and is always careful to use his "library voice" (essentially a stage whisper) when she's sleeping.  On the other hand, we also see him struggling with the new intrusion into his well-ordered existence.  Our attention is now split and we do see signs of jealousy and his previous excellent behavior has deteriorated a bit.  Still, we know that he is adjusting just like Mari is and we are so proud of how well he's doing. 

For example, here they are nicely playing together.  (Full disclosure: one minute after I took this picture, Christian grabbed all of the toys and Mari started screaming.)

As for the parents, we are still trying to get everyone on a regular schedule.  Mari is still waking up all through the night and so we're not really getting to sleep until the early morning (last night: 3am).  Still, Mari is adjusting more every day and we're just as proud of her as Christian for how well she's adapting to our crazy family! :-)  More later...

We made it home!

The one word I would use to describe our trip home was: grueling.  Jin Ah did surprisingly well on the long flight home from Seoul to Detroit.  She and Christian both slept most of the time and she did relatively little crying.  Once we reached Detroit and made it through all of the security, etc., we found out that our flight was delayed due to the flight crew being late.   Not too bad, but when it came time to board, an announcement came that that bathroom on the plane was out of order, so everyone needed to use the bathroom by the gate.  Once on the plane, we were told that due to bad weather (it was storming out) that we would be delayed at takeoff for half an hour, and then the flight would take longer than usual due to the storms.  One passenger got up and asked to use the bathroom and the flight attendant refused!  Poor guy.  When we finally arrived in Columbus, we also had to wait on the plane becauase the flight crew couldn't be outside in the lightning.  At this point we were just so ready to go home.  Still, both Mari and Christian did their best and we all survived.  Thank you everyone for all of your prayers - they worked!

So, now we're home and adjusting to our new life.  75% of our family is happy to be here, and 25% is not happy at all :-) Poor Mari is grieving, and it's hard to see her so frightened and confused.  My heart goes out to her and the foster family.  Last night, she had her first meltdown at bedtime.  I know that she was looking for her Omma and it was so sad to see her crawling to the door, crying for her Omma.  Today was a pretty rough day for her, but we hope that each day it gets a little better.  She actually let Jeff hold her on the plane (I am guessing that her 'good' behavior was due to just being in shock), but now that we're home she's back to not liking him and getting an upset look on her face when she sees him.  Jeff has learned that she will let him hold her outside, probably because of all of the distractions. We also think she's teething - she's running a temperature and keeps on sticking her fingers in her mouth.  She and I had a couple of small yet good interactions with eye contact while feeding her bottles.  She seems fascinated with both my hair and my glasses and always wants to grab them.  She also likes to put her fingers in my mouth.   So, we'll see.  I do hope that she can be a happy girl soon, but we're prepared to help her for as long as it takes and completely understand why she's so unhappy.  Christian is trying very hard to be a good big brother for her.  Last night, Jeff told me that he asked to pray for Mari because she was crying so hard.  And he also said she may like his 'music' (CD player) and let her have that too.  We are very proud of how well he is doing so far.
Some not crying pictures.  There aren't many :-)

Our last day here (and official "Forever Family" day)!

Yesterday, Christian fell asleep at 3pm and apart from trying to get him up briefly for half an hour, he slept straight until 2am.  I think he really needed the rest - he woke up cheery and telling us that he got up on the 'right side of bed' (as opposed to the 'waking up on the wrong side of bed').  It's 4am now and he's in a great mood :-)  I decided not to fight it and spent the last two hours packing all of our stuff.  Our flight leaves this afternoon and we will meet Mari at the airport to take her home.   I'm hoping that we will be able to take a nap this morning to give us some more energy.

I cannot say enough how wonderful the experience meeting Mari's incredible foster family was - definitely the highight of the trip! They are such a generous, loving family and welcomed us and made us feel so comfortable even though our communication was extremely limited. During our short visit, Mari's foster mom was working with me so hard to make Jin Ah a little more comfortable with me. You can tell that they just love her completely - the entire family works together to care for these children.  While we were visiting at the orphanage, all Mari had to do was to look at her Appa and she would break out into a huge smile!  The older daughter is also a favorite and can get her into a great mood just by singing her special butterfly song.  The younger daughter is extremely artistic and gave us an an incredible sketch of Jin Ah. And while Mari was napping, I 'talked' with Grandma a little bit and got some information about how she comforts her by lovingly squeezing her arms and legs. We've been thinking of her and her Seoul family and getting very teary eyed.  Grandma and foster mom kept pointing me out to Mari and saying "Omma" (mom), but I told them that I can be called "Mommy" but Kyung Sook will always be her Omma.  We are all family now and I want Mari to be able to know them as she grows up.

I just also wanted to point out something very huge from our meeting. 

That's Mari handling Christian's beloved lovey, his most precious item.  He actually let her play with it without complaint, which is completely amazing considering his normal tolerance for sharing.  I know that there will be many fights and whining in the future, but I was so proud of him for being such a great big brother to his new sister!
Anyway, this will be my last post until we make it to the other side.  Please pray for our trip home.

Running on empty...

Christian woke up again at 3am.  He's killing me.  I think I'm surviving on a combination of caffeine and dwindling adrenaline. 

Today was the big shopping day.  We went first to Namdaemun Market with Mari's foster brother's family.  On one of the subway rides, Christian decided that he wanted to be held by Daddy instead of me.   When I told him no, Christian had the mother of all meltdowns.  It was truly epic, and beyond horrible.  There we were on a completely silent and full subway with Christian screaming his head off.  A woman even yelled at us.  We got off of the subway and Christian was still melting down in the station.  People were staring at us as they passed on by.   I finally caved and Jeff took him; even then, it took Christian quite a while to calm down.  Ugh!  I keep on replaying that whole scene and beating myself up for not handling it better. 

Anyway, after that inauspicious beginning, we walked around Namdaemun without finding anything of interest.  We then dropped the kids back at the hotel with their daddies and then Lisa and I took the subway to Insadong to get our serious shopping done.  I got Mari's name chop and the other essentials, but am completely exhausted from all of the running around.  Seriously, I think we're all running on empty at this point.

So, let's end this post on a better note.  Here are some pictures that Lisa took of our initial meeting with Mari and the foster mom.  We also had the incredible opportunity to have dinner at her place.  It was wonderful meeting the rest of the family and just hanging out with them.