Children's Day!

Happy Arini Nal, Emerson!!

Arini Nal is Children's Day in Korean. It's a major holiday in Korea celebrated on May 5th. It's practically equivalent to Christmas for the children in Korea. Today they get showered with presents, new clothes, eat yummy foods, and/or go out on outings, such as to the zoo or an amusement park.

Dear Emerson, we hope you have a wonderful Children's Day today! You may be too little to remember what you and your foster family did today. But I hope whatever it is, it will make your eyes light up, bring laughter to your lips, and fill your heart with joy!

Daddy and I look forward to making your days with us feel like Children's Day always.

Roomies

This weekend Jagger and I became roommates.

My new roomie.

Even though it's still going to be quite awhile before Emerson comes home, I got the ball rolling on getting our home room ready to become her home. First step was for me to move out of my existing craft room and move my stuff into Jagger's room. We're going to turn my craft room into a play area for Em.

I guess I should clarify that Jagger didn't really have his own room. It was just a spare room that we put all his cat toys in. It was also the room we'd put him in when we had guests over who had allergies/aversions/fear of cats. Not sure if he minds sharing the room with me, but he did make the move a bit difficult at times. Gene and I would be moving furniture like my desk and shelves, and Jagger would either block our way or try to jump on the furniture. That could have been his way of telling me to stay out, haha.

Jagger had legit reasons to be less than enthusiastic.

I did move in quite a bit of stuff.

Some of Jagger's belongings were
moved out of the way for my desk.

Jagger (lower left hand corner) leaving the room

dejected with what it's become.

Once I was pretty much moved into my new crafting quarters, I got to work finishing up some cards for a dear friend. She is announcing to family the very big news that she's expecting, and thought Mother's Day would be the perfect occasion to do so! She asked me to make some gender neutral cards for her mom and MIL. She also wanted to make sure she could include an ultrasound picture in them. So I went to work and these are what I came up with....!

Baby bibs! The card on the right is a two-parter.

She can pull out the inside and attach her ultrasound photo.

And of course, my new roomie tried to get into the photo shoot again. I had to take close-ups so that he wouldn't be in the shots. I finally gave in and snapped one of him as well.

Today is 2.2.2.

According to our Lilypie time chart on our blog, today marks 2 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days since we've been waiting for Emerson to come home to us.

It feels like the wait is much 2 long.

She is 2 missed by the 2 of us.

We look at her picture everyday and think she is 2 adorable.

Sometimes it's 2 hard to look at her picture because it reminds me that I can't just reach out and take her in my arms 2 hug her and plant a hundred kisses on her.

We are grateful and so thankful 2 God that she has a wonderful foster family looking after her while we cannot be with her.

2 our precious daughter, we send our loving thoughts 2day and everyday until you are home with us.

Easter Fun

hahahahahaha! :)

Today is Emerson's first Easter so I made her some bunny ears. Okay, technically her picture got bunny ears. I showed Gene and he thought it was a little much. You can just imagine what fun I'm going to have with her on future Easter celebrations!

Gene was more enthusiastic about this card I made for her.

Jagger wanted to wish Emerson a Happy Easter so badly that he forced his way into the photo shoot.

Emerson... mommy, daddy and Yags wish you a Happy First Easter! We love you!!!

First Care Package!

I am so excited! We are sending our first care package to Emerson via an adoptive parent I recently befriended. Claudia is going to take our care package for us since she's leaving for Korea this weekend to bring home her son. Now THAT's exciting! I know our travel call is still a long ways from now, so for now I am ecstatic just to be able to send Emerson something from us!

I ran around like a mad woman putting together our package. Originally I thought we'd have until June to send one, since that's what we were told by our case manager. But traveling families are also able to take one for you since they'll be dropping by the agency in Korea.

So here's the thing.. our care package has to fit in a one gallon ziplock bag. Newsflash: those bags are fine and dandy to marinade meat or store leftovers, but are pretty dang tiny to fit a care package!

Here's everything I bought:

The vitamins and coffee are for foster mom, for those of you who are thinking "What in the world", lol. I shoved everything into the bag but closing it proved rather difficult. Trying to zip lock that bag reminded me of trying to squeeze into size 24 jeans. It just wasn't going to happen. I had to pick and choose and ended up taking out a couple things.

I knew I had to keep "the Sophie" even though squeezing her in was quite a feat. It seems everyone and their mothers (well, especially mothers) know of Sophie. From the sounds of it, this giraffe toy is THE favorite among babies. They love the squeaky sounds it makes and love gnawing on Sophie.

Another must was a baby's first album filled with pics of us, and one of Jagger. Now little Emerson will know what we look like! :)

Here's the final bag, closed and all:

Not bad, eh? I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself. That bag is STUFFED. Lying flat on the table, it rises about 4, maybe 5, inches off the table. I hope Claudia has the room in her suitcase for it! It's pretty heavy with everything folded and condensed in there. I'm seeing her tonight so I'll see what she says. It's just so nice of her to take anything for us during this majorly exciting time for her, that I don't want to hand over this big old ziplock bag and cause her any inconvenience.

Anyhow, here's what ended up not making the cut - four pairs of socks and an uber cute dress for the spring season.

I figure Korea's still a bit chilly right now so I'll send it in June. The socks are 12 to 24 months so I can send them in the future or take them with me when we go to Korea.

So happy our baby girl is going to receive this care package!! More than the things we're able to send, I wish there were a way we could bottle up our love for her and send it. But for now, this overstuffed one gallon ziplock bag will have to do. There wouldn't be a big enough ziplock bag that could handle the love we want to send to her!

Another Mini Birthday

Emerson turns 9 months today! Happy (mini) birthday, my beautiful baby girl!

How is it that time can move so slowly and yet so fast? The wait for her seems to be moving at a snail's pace but then halfway around the world, our baby girl is growing up so quickly.

Development milestones Emerson's expected to hit this month are:

• possibly experiencing separation anxiety as now she is able to identify familiar faces and expect predictability,


• recall memory (such as recalling where her toys are),


• her babbling will start to turn into jabbering and may even start to sound like real words,


• her personality will start to emerge. Her shyness has been mentioned in the past, so it'll be interesting to see if that solidifies or changes...

What I'm quickly learning about the adoption journey is that it's filled with bittersweet moments. You are so happy and overjoyed at all the wonderful milestones and growth your baby is achieving, but just a bit sad at the same time that you can't be there to share these moments. I know, I know - we will have a lifetime together in the future and I definitely can't wait for those as well, but it's just so hard to be away from her. But the most important thing is that she's growing happily and healthy!

In conjunction with Emerson's mini birthday, yesterday we got the last of the necessary approvals we were waiting for from the US government. We checked the mail everyday this week for this notice and finally received it yesterday. I was a little worried that with the threat of a possible government shutdown that our paperwork may be delayed, but nope, they took care of it just fine. And no government shutdown either so everything worked out in the end. :)

Our precious Emerson.... look at you all growing up into such a beautiful and smart baby girl. We are so unbelievably thankful to God as He seems to be making sure you are hitting all those monthly milestones right on the dot, if not even earlier! We miss you so much. I am praying you can come home SOON. Happy mini-birthday, our daughter. We love you!!!!

Birthday Parties

Today we went to our friends' daughter's birthday party. Her name is Kennedy and we've known her since she was a newborn. She's just such a sweet, outgoing girl who loves giving hugs. She turned 4 today and had a princess party filled with pizzas, a pinata, and presents.

We had fun hanging out with our friends and watching all the kiddos have fun playing with each other. Throughout the party I couldn't help thinking of Emerson and how we'll be going to parties like these together once she comes home. Once she comes home....

New Picture!!!!!

Our case manager just emailed over a new picture she received from Korea today!! Here is Emerson at 8 months old...

She has grown so much from the four baby pictures we've been staring at for the past two months. And she looks so different with her hair actually combed down, LOL! She's still adorable as ever!!

Our case manager says she is putting the original in the mail tomorrow but wanted to send us a sneak peek today. That was so sweet! I know what I'll falling asleep to every night: this sweet picture of our little girl!