AMSA Reunion

I just wanted to (finally) tell you a little more about the reunion that we attended in FL. There is a group of parents of children that lived at the same place Kristen lived in Korea that are on an email list and one of the moms has organized a reunion for several years. Last year we had planned to attend, but Kristen wasn't home in time. It was devastating at the time! This year, we were so excited to be able to go.

Many of the moms there met Kristen before we did and knew about her. They were praying for her and for her family before we even saw her picture for the first time. I consider them her "aunties" and they were excited to see her again. I am glad that Kristen had been home a year and we were able to explain and hopefully she was able to understand that we were just visiting. I was so afraid she would think she was being returned or something.

It was truly amazing to see all these kids swimming and playing together in the pool, running around and eating together again. Except this time, there was more to them, if that makes sense. I can't explain the difference that having a family, having their own special people, and belonging makes to a child. But, you can see it whenyou see them.

This year, there were several visitors that attended from SWS, the agency that runs AMSA in Korea. They also brought an official from the Korean government. The official actually asked Peg (works at a placing agency in the US) what we fed our children because they were so happy and healthy. She had the perfect opportunity to answer that this is what happens when a child has a family and is loved!

Probably the highlight of the reunion was an evening spent at a local Korean church. This church did not have any connection to AMSA, but they had felt a calling to adopted children from South Korea. They connected with the mom from our list, and a relationship has blossomed. Several members of their church have visited AMSA, and they had a donation for them, as well. I don't know what I expected when we arrived, but to say that we were overwhelmed by their love and generosity would be a total understatement. They had hanboks for all the moms to wear, and a woman did everyones hair in traditional Korea styles. There were Korean crafts, a Hangul lesson, Tae Kwon Do demonstration with participation, a wonderful meal - individual bi bim bap for everyone! - and so much more. They had even made a DVD of two guys cooking several Korean dishes...and had a copy for each family! At the end, they sang songs with the children and one of their pastors spoke. Each table of guests had teenage or college age Koreans sitting with us. They had bags and beach balls with Korean names on them and it was so cool to have people read the Korean names and call Kristen and Daniel by them!

Many of the children there have been home for 2-3 years longer than Kristen, so I am not sure how many of them she remembered. I am pretty sure she recognized several of the younger children who came home this past year. She looked at them, and then me like "wow! what are they doing here!"

We are seeing a huge leap in Kristen's speech so far this summer. All of a sudden, she has things to say that we aren't MAKING her say. If she has a thought, she will tell us. That sounds so little, but is such a huge step! Last night the children had a babysitter, and she had put Kristen and Daniel to bed, but they were still awake. When I went in to say good-night, Kristen started telling me about how she had ice cream but she couldn't get it opened, and Hannah helped her. She is putting sentences and thoughts together! I think she knows she is doing better, I make sure to tell her how proud I am when she uses her words. She will grin and say that it makes me happy - yes, Kristen, my heart is full of joy!

We also see her soft, compassionate heart more and more. When I have a tearful, hormonal moment, she is always there to rub my arm and kiss me. She also loves to help and I know she will be a great baby helper.

We still have a long way to go, but we are celebrating each step, no matter how small.



Dinner at the Korean church - yummy!


With the head of SWS and another SWS worker (and Daniel as SpiderMan)



The family in Korean dress!


We love Peg and Jill!


Friends reunited!

An emotional day for Mom

Today marks the day I arrived in Korea one year ago. I had prepared for Kristen to have some anniversary grief and emotions that she might not recognize or know how to deal with. But, no one told me that I would struggle with the same thing myself!

We finalized Kristen's adoption earlier this month. It was a wonderful day and so great to finally have her be officially our daughter. We then took our first family vacation with all five of us - a great way to celebrate! All in all, we are seeing wonderful progress and growth in Kristen and so glad she is our daughter.

And yet, as this day has come and gone, I have realized that I have such a range of emotions linked to this time last year. As my sister is always reminding me, I was worrying obsessively about everything in Korea. I hardly ate (which probably didn't help) and was exhausted when we arrived. I am sad that we didn't get to experience more of Korea because of those things and because of our short trip. I wish I had more pictures and memories to share with Kristen and Daniel.

I also struggle with feelings of loss for Kristen. I brought her home to her forever family, and a country where hopefully she will be accepted for who she is and whatever her abilities. But, I took her away from her culture and country...as well as physically farther away from her first mother. I know she was loved by her caregivers and by her friends that remain at AMSA. I wish I could communicate to all these people how well she is doing and what she is learning. Some I can reach, some I can't for sure.

I wonder if I am doing the best job I can as Kristen's mom. I have so many dreams and prayers for her. I want to push her, but I want her to know that I love her right where she is today. She has shown such courage and resilience in the past year...and really for her whole life. We struggle with behavior issues and it such a tightrope to try to balance flexibility and challenging her. It is so hard to know what is going on in her head and how she is seeing things. I try not to second guess myself, but I always have to wonder if I doing the right thing. It has been a year and we have seen so much positive in her bonding to us. And there are other areas that I wish we had seen more...but there has been progress. A friend told me the other day that with Kristen especially, I needed to focus on seeing progresss, even if it seems small. I truly want to do that.

How will Kristen grow to view this day? Will she see it as the day that someone who had loved her and cared about her long before this day came to bring her to a family? Or will she see it as the day that she was snatched away from everything that she knew. Most likely, both sides will play into it. This bittersweet feeling will probably follow us through life. Although I view this day gratefully and with joy remember seeing her in person for the first time and holding her hand for the first time, it will always be tinged with sadness for me, and I am sure for her as well.

Above all, I am grateful that she is part of our family. There is so much that all of us can learn from her. Her beautiful smile and sweet personality light up my day. I am so thankful for the chance I have been given to be Mommy to my sweet girl.

And so it starts...

Yesterday at church, I was sitting with the girls outside our worship room waiting for Forrest. There was a dry-erase board that Katie had drawn on a little and then Kristen picked up the pen. Because she is the messiest ever with pens, I said "Kristen, put down the pen." She looked at me, gave an impish grin, and said, "Why, Mommy?" Ha ha ha!!! She knew exactly what she was saying, and I just had to laugh! It gives me such joy to start to see her little brain work and then have her mouth start to communicate these things! I am sure I will need to come back and read this later on when I wish she didn't talk so much!

I was laying in bed last night thinking about other things she said during the day and really realizing that she has come a long way in a short time. During the same time at church, she laid down on the floor and I asked her if she wanted to go home and take a nap. She said "NO!" right away and then said she wanted to eat. She was coloring and said, "Look, Mommy, Ki-ki color paper." WOW! She is starting to color in things in coloring books instead of just randomly coloring. She can count to 20 with a few helps and most days can go beyond that.

Her teacher has had great reports the past few weeks about her beginning to use her finger to follow along as they "read" their poems for the month and that she is with help able to find the capital letters at the beginning of words. These are all baby steps, but I think great signs.

More than anything though, her personality just continues to shine through. The more she can communicate with us, the more we get to see her and it is very special.

Talking!

My girl is starting to talk, really talk to me! I am sitting here on the couch just marveling at her. This morning she was "reading" a book...and saying real words that were in it and on the correct page. Then she brought me a book that she made about herself and school and showed me her name and told me it was her name. She had a picture of cat food in it and told me "Percy eat it." There was a drawn picture of her and I asked who is was and she said "Me." She understood what I was asking and had an appropriate response! She then showed me her brown eyes.

It is really impossible to write out how amazing this change is. All of a sudden she is volunteering information, asking me questions, asking us to come with her - communicating!

We are finalizing her adoption in a week - just before Christmas. I am so glad everything will be final. And then sharing the whole Christmas season with her is so exciting. Everything is "Ooooooh" and she is so fun to watch.

Getting ready to celebrate!

Tomorrow my newest "baby" will celebrate her first birthday with her family, in her new country. What a bittersweet day...of course we are thrilled that she is here and we are ready to party with her. But, especially because she was older coming here, I am sad for all that she lost when we left Korea. No one in our family has celebrated a birthday since she has been home - will she understand what is happening? What did she do for all her other birthdays? We have some pictures of her last celebration in Korea, but what about all the others? They will always be question marks...just another in a long list of her life. And of course I think of her first mom. I am so thankful she carried our Kristen and gave her life. I pray that she knows that her baby has a family now and that we love Kristen so much.

Her daddy is busy building her big present from us - it was a bigger undertaking than he imagined. ;) I'm not going to give away the surprise, but he is getting close to being done after about two hours.

We have made cupcakes to take to school tomorrow for treats. Kristen picked out little stars to put on them.

Last year this was such a sad, sad day for me. I am so excited to celebrate with her this year! It was so hard to pick what to give her! I literally wandered around the toy department saying, "We could get this, or this, or she might like this." I think we settled on something that will be a big hit, though. I will update with pictures and the big scoop tomorrow!

Two months with us and lots of summer fun!

Time has really gotten away from me! I can't believe I haven't posted before now. Kristen has been home with us for two months now and we just continue to be amazed at her progress and the way she is settling into our family.

Summer is one of my favorite times of year because we do lots of special things and Forrest and Katie are home from school. I was in agony waiting as long as we did for Kristen's travel call, but it really was wonderful timing. It has been great for our family to all be home together for the past two months. We have been able to introduce Kristen to some of our favorite summer things and she enjoys them, too. I think her favorite food is "ic-ee cream!" I just love to hear her ask for it! And she knows exactly what it is, too! She can unfailingly identify it in books or pictures!

I think the question I get asked most often about Kristen is how she is doing with English. First of all I have to say that I think she is doing amazingly well! She calls each of our family members - including the cats ;) - by name. She can almost count to ten (a HUGE accomplishment for her) and her other vocabulary is growing every day. She understands much more of what we say to her than she can say to us at this point. But her Korean speech was very limited, so we are even more happy with her progress.

Now, my little aside about the language! If you have never traveled to an Asian country, or been immersed in the language, I don't think you can understand the difference in the languages. I LOVE languages and am pretty good at figuring out at the least some words, hearing similar root words from English and hearing sentence patterns. But the Korean language truly sounded like a puzzle to me. It was so odd to not be able to make out anything - including where sentences started and stopped. Even learning Kristen's Korean name was hard! I have a great framework to try to fit language into and it was hard for me. Now imagine being 6 years old and thrown into not only a new language but a new world, in almost every way. Considering all this, I am even more amazed at the progress Kristen has made in such a short time.

Here are some picture highlights of our summer so far!

Kristen's first trip to a pool and hotel with us - we had a GREAT time! I love this first picture - she was kicking and splashing and just had a look of joy on her face!


Daddy with Kristen and Daniel - a great water taxi!


Kristen sat in this chair and wanted Daniel to sit with her for a picture - so sweet.


Kristen and Mommy work together to score some SkeeBall points...notice that said SkeeBall is in fact BEHIND us...oops!


This one isn't the best picture of Kristen's face - but again, her smile just melts my heart. She looked for Daddy and Mommy every time that plane came around!


Mommy with her three kids. Wow, everyone is looking at the camera!

Kristen has the sunniest disposition. She fits in with the other kids so well. She really looks up to her big sister - who has already taught her lots of mischief. Katie actually does a great job of teaching Kristen - our last trip to the grocery store, Katie was naming everything and Kristen was repeating after her. Kristen is also more of a "little mommy" to Daniel than Katie is. It is funny to hear her stern little voice telling him no.

We are so glad Kristen is home with us! We have one more month all together and then September and school are coming too soon!

Has it really only been two weeks?

We continue to be amazed at the way Kristen is fitting into our family. It almost feels like she has just been here! She almost ALWAYS has a smile on her face! I think that is what we have been asked most. "Is she always this smiley?" We just laugh and say yes! Her resilience is incredible.

I cannot imagine getting picked up and moved away from everything imaginable that is familiar and taken on a way-too-long airplane ride and planted down in the middle of a family. This is Kristen's experience, yet she seems to be happy here. We prayed that she would realize this was her family and home and it seems like she gets it.

I felt like we had a milestone this week when I was being goofy and she laughed at me. We have had several times where we have just danced and laughed together and it is so good!

It seems like she is understand a lot of what we say this week. She is standing in front of me right now with three blocks and just said "one, two, three." Amazing. Her other for sure English words are momma, , hi, bye-bye, pizza, please, Kee-Kee for Katie, Daniel (in her own way), Tiger (one of our cats, and the word of the week in our house: pee-pee. Daniel has decided that he is going to be potty trained. So, we are talking a lot about pee-pee this week. She has caught on. ;)

She is sleeping in her own bed and doing really well with that. Katie is done with school tomorrow and I know they are going to have lots of fun this summer.

We continue to praise God for the way this transition is going. I will add more pictures soon of my smiley girl.