1st Full Day at Home

Right now it's just after midnight and Carter is wide awake and we're watching SNL.

Today was our first full day at home, Paige's Mom & Dad left to go back to Connecticut at about 12:30 since they had committed to sing in the choir tomorrow morning and my parents are still with us for a while longer.

We had our first excursion this afternoon, we all went to Babies R Us to pick up a few things and Grammy & Papa Ross bought Carter an exersaucer (he's loving it right now) and he had his first trip to Wegman's. All-in-all it went pretty well. He slept in his car seat for a little while and really liked being rolled around in a shopping carriage.

I guess day two out of Korea is the day for it all to catch up with Carter not to mention that he is teething. After we got home from our errands he went down for a nap and slept for 5 hours! We woke him after our dinner to feed him and figured if we did not wake him he would be up all night. He ate, he was changed and he fell back to sleep in Paige's arms, he just would not stay up. I guess he officially hit the wall. Now, after his marathon nap session it appears we are up for a while. Paige is feeding him some homemade applesauce and Preston is sitting close by hoping for some spillage.

After his marathon nap I took him up to his room to change his diaper and put on his pj's and I had my 1st pee mishap. He did not get me but he got the changing pad pretty good. It had to happen sooner or later, just happy I didn't get it straight in the face.

One of the things we had been concerned about was how the dogs were going to react to bringing a baby into the house. They have been around plenty of other children over time but all those kids go home. We are happy to report that Preston & Madison have really been good. If Carter cries both dogs get concerned and run to him. If he's sleeping in the baby bjorn in the family room both doges peek over the top to check on him and if we're sitting down holding Carter they will also sit at our feet protecting him. So-far-so good.

With any luck we'll get some sleep in the next few hours. - John

We made it home!!

Our flight home was just under 13 hours, Carter was amazing, he slept for just about half the flight and laughed and played the rest of the time. Paige's mom and dad were at Dulles to meet us when we got thru customs and my parents arrived about 15 minutes after we got home.

The 3 of us are exhausted, we took a 4 hour nap this afternoon and will be going back to bed shortly.

We have turned the ringers off on the phones tonight, just trying to re-adjust so if you don't hear from us tonight just know we are not avoiding you but that we are simply settling into our new life at home on limited sleep.

We will update with more specifics & photos over the weekend. Thank you everyone for you comments and well wishes both here on the blog and Facebook too. - John

Gotcha Day!

As I am typing this Carter is sound to sleep on our bed and housekeeping just delivered the crib.

Today is what is termed "Gotcha Day" in the world of adoption. Our meeting time was set for 11:00 a.m. at SWS. Of course we were wide awake at 4:00 this morning in anticipation. We finally went down to breakfast at about 8:30, we were pretty quiet, I think we were both in shock over what was finally about to happen. After breakfast we finished getting ready, of course we snapped a few times at each other, what husband and wife don't when they are both stressed and anxious, it's human nature.

We timed the shuttle to the Metro pretty good, we only waited a few minutes. At the Metro station we realized that all the single fare cards we had purchased this week had a 500 Won deposit, luckily we still had them all and we netted back 3000 Won (approx. $3). We waited very little time for the train and we arrived at SWS exactly on time, 11:00. The couple we had met on Tuesday from Charlotte were in the room next to us, their "gotcha day" too. Their son Kyle is just about a year old, we may see them at the airport in the morning since their flight is shortly before ours.

Carter was already there with his foster-foster mother and her husband and his original foster father was there too. It was very nice to meet him and it was very clear how much Carter meant to him and his family. Carter needed to see the doctor for his final examination, on Tuesday we were shown a rash on his belly, as it turns out it is eczema. I have, my mom has it, my dad has it, he's a Ross already. We were given some hydrocortizone and an all clear to fly tomorrow.

His foster father gave a bunch of pictures they had take over the past 7 months, some clothes, bottles, formula, diapers and the list goes on. We not only walked out with a baby, we left with 4 large bags of equipment! We were also given Carter's Korean passport and exit permit (EP) and all his immigration paperwork in a sealed envelope with instructions not to open it. It is all in a certain order and they do not want anything out of place when we check in at the airport.

We requested a tour of the infant center, where the babies go after parental rights are surrendered. There 50 to 60 babies here at any given point and nurses and volunteers provide for these children. Part of the fee all families pay is used to help subsidise this program. It was nice to see where carter was cared for between being born and going to his foster family.

At the end all we had to do was sign our names on one single piece of paper, they never asked for ID once, we just signed. I guess they trusted us since we spent almost 2 years in the program. We had so much equipment to take back to the hotel there was no way we were taking the train so they called us a cab. Carter fussed a little bit on the way back since it was way past his nap time, we arrived back at the hotel at 12:30 and he has been napping ever since. A good start to the rest of our lives.

This is the last post from the land of our sons birth, we leave here in the morning, Friday March 26th at 10:25 and this is strange, we arrive back at Washington/Dulles on Friday morning, March 26th at 10:25. A crazy thing that international dateline. We'll post again from home and include more pictures from "gotcha day" and the trip. - John

The Meeting

Hello from the future! It's Wednesday evening here in Seoul, 13 hours ahead of our family and friends back on the east coast United States and we met our son yesterday afternoon for the first time. WOW! Finally! What an experience, but lets catch up first.

Monday we changed hotels form the Hyatt by the airport to the Sheraton Walkerhill in Seoul. It took a little over an hour by bus to get to the hotel, it's not exactly in the middle of it all but I was able to cash in some Starwood points to take care of the stay, one less expense and SWS is only 8 Metro stops away, no big deal.

Before we made our move on Monday our day started with a call to our caseworker at SWS to let her know we had arrived and to see what our schedule would be for the week. She told Paige that for "person reasons" Carter was no longer with his foster family and had been moved over the weekend and to call back after 1:00 to find out when we could meet him. Well Paige looked as if she had seen a ghost when she was relaying what she had just been told, we were at a lost for words, just what does "personal reasons" mean in a situation like this? Had something happened to Carter? Could the foster family just not deal with the fact that they were having to give him up after these 7 months he was in their care? We decided not to dwell on it, like most of this process this was out of our control. We packed up and made the move to the next hotel, our home away from home for the next 5 days.

After we arrived at the Sheraton, unpacked and had some lunch it was time to make a move. Oh, wait, we need to call SWS for our time to meet Carter tomorrow! Paige called our caseworker and she told us to meet her at her office tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, only 24 more hours and we will be meeting our son!! She did tell Paige that the "personal reason" for Carter being moved was because his foster mother's father had passed away. We certainly feel badly for her and her family and at the same time we are relieved that it wasn't something involving the baby.

Now we can make a move. We took the shuttle bus to the Metro and went to a large mall, kind of their version of Mall of America. It's call "Lotte World", it was raining out so we really couldn't go out to explore so the mall seemed like a safe bet. The Metro leaves you off right inside the mall, as you enter the first floor is all specialty foods, the next 5 floors are all woman's clothing and accessories. Retailing in Asia is a lot like it is in Europe, the store is set-up in a circle and each designer has their own little store. I went thru the men's area and the only "American" brands were Hugo Boss, Ralph Lauren & Tommy. The one interesting area in the store is call the "event hall", this is where they set up all of their clearance merchandise in one area. Each category has its own space with a salesperson manning the rack for assistance. Kind of Nordstrom's version of the Rack but within the full line store. One thing we did notice was that as soon as you stopped to look at something anywhere in the store as sales associate was right there at your side, now working for Nordstrom I understand customer service, but I did find this a bit unnerving. After a couple of hours we decided it was time to head back to the hotel, we were walking back to the Metro when Paige saw a Krispy Kream and the light was on!! She had never experienced a fresh, warm doughnut from "KK", she had to come all the way to Seoul, South Korea to have that.

After our "KK" treats it was time to go back and get some rest before dinner, the time/day change was hitting us, we took the Metro back to the bus stop, when we walked out of the Metro Station it was SNOWING!! Boy it was beautiful, big fluffy flakes but were they wet. We had just missed the bus and the next one was in 20 minutes. There wasn't an enclosure so we we just standing there waiting, accumulating snow when this 20 something Korean man walks up to us, hands us his umbrella, says something in Korean, bows and walks away. Paige says there have been Angels all along the way for us, from the random meeting in her office last week with the airlines to this randon act of kindness........

We left the hotel on Tuesday at noon for our 1:30 appointment, we were early. As it turned out SWS is only 6 Metro stops away and not 8, a we were riding this old man insisted that I sit down. He asked us where we were going and we told our story, he looked at out directions and map and told us were on the Right path. Another Angel.........

As I said, we arrived 20 minutes early and we were placed in a waiting room with another couple, they were from Charlotte , North Carolina and had received their referral a few days before us in December and gotten their travel call a few days before us. They left to go meet their son about 5 minutes before us, when our caseworker came for us she told us it would be about an hours drive to where Carter is stay. Hell, its been this long what's another hour right? After almost an hour we arrived in a very modern apartment complex very much resembling an Archstone property back home. Our driver located the building number we need and our caseworker took us to the 18th floor. When the elevator doors open there he was. Our son! His foster-foster mother was waiting in the door with him, of course Paige started to tear up right away, I would expect it any other way. We were able to play with him for about an hour on the living room floor. His foster-foster mother gave us some snack, we were told they were rice cakes, I don't think so. They were green and kind of tasted like spinach, all-in-all they were pretty good, she also cut up some huge apples. She took half the apple and just spooned out some of it and feed it to Carter, he loved it!!

Carter is so happy, he laughed at us, smiled and loves to jump. Our caseworker was very surprised at how social he was with us since he had some trouble adjusting from his foster home to his foster-foster home. As an hour came he was starting to get cranky, it was his nap time. The caseworker told us we could have tomorrow, and we did but the foster-foster mother asked to keep him one more day. We agreed, it would give a day to go sight seeing and shopping. We will go to pick him up on Thursday at 11:00 a.m.. or that's Wednesday night at 10:00 for everyone back home. On the ride back to Seoul it just felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from me, one I had been carrying for some time and that everything was falling into it's rightful place.

Live from Korea

We miade it! We are in Korea and just days away from meeting our son Carter. Its bare to believe the time is finally here. This journey has been amazing.

First off please forgive the typo's as I am working on just a few hours of sleep. Its now 7:00 pm local or 6:00 am in DC. So here it goes, I wrote this when we first got to our hotel room.

So let's start from the beginning. Our good friend Michelle picked us up this morning at 9:30. When loading the car Maidosn decided she watned to come along for the trip and jumped in the car with the bags.

When we arived at the ticket counter the mangager came over and said 'oh, we have been expecing you'. John and I were a little caught off guard. Well turns out they were giving a choice of seats, either 1 row by ourselves or an exit row. We choose the exit row as it has more leg room. Then we were handed a complimentary pass to the lounge so we could relax beore our flight. So we had something to eat, and glass of orange juice and just enjoyed our last moments before getting on a plane for 13 and a half hours.

The flight was very nice , our exit row was wonderful, there were not seats in front of us at all and we were right next to the galley. We each had our own TV and watched a couple of movies.

Lunch was either Beef with Wine Sauce or Bibimbab. John got the beef with wine sauce and believe it or not i choose the bibimbap. It came with rice so I knew I couldn't go wrong. it was DELISH!!!! I did not have the seaweed soup, but I did try it.

A couple of hours later we were served 'hot rolls', I tried to find our exactly what the were but i was only told they were 'hot rolls'. Those were very good too.

Dinner was served about an hour after that and both John and I choose to get the chicken as the other dish was shrimp and rice. And anyone that know us knows that John is allerigic and I don't care for shrimp.

We did a rest a little bit on the plane towards the end of the flight. I think we are both running on pure adrenaline at this point. I'm not sure how we are still awake as neither one of us got more then a couple hours of sleep on Friday.

We are currently at the Hyatt right next to the airport and tomorrow morning we will switch to a Sheraton for the rest of the week.

The plan of action righ tnow is this, tomorrow morning we will call SWS (agency in Korea) to find out when we our appointment to meet Carter is. We believe it will be on Tuesday sometime. We will meet with him and his foster family for about an hour then the rest of the day and Wednesday is for us. Thursday we will get him and Friday we fly home.

That's it for now...... more when we can along with pictures!

Bye

Paige and John

FINALLY!!!

At 8:55 a.m., Friday, March 19th we received the final word we can travel to Seoul to pick-up Carter!!!



On Monday (3/15) we received his SEO # from the NVC, on Tuesday (3/16) his visa was cabled to the US Embassy in Seoul. We have held our breath all week waiting to get this call so we can move one step closer to closing this chapter of our lives and begin the next.



We, I should say Paige, experience some unbelievable luck this week. There was a meeting in her office on Wednesday with the Regional Director of a partner airline they use to provide air freight services. After the meeting they were all talking and Paige showed them Carter's pictures and the Director told his Assistant, "Give her your card. When she receives her call, take care of her." Whatever they can do for us will be greatly appreciated, we're not expecting much but every little bit helps. Even if its just confirmed seats since this is a last minute flight we will be so grateful.



So, Paige is working with the airline as I type to get our flights, once she has that I will work with my Starwood Points to get us a hotel. With any luck we'll be flying tomorrow afternoon.



We will be updating our Facebook pages from Korea as well as this blog so you will be able keep tabs on us and for many of you get your first look at Carter since we will finally be able to post pictures. Stay tuned........

Travel Call!! Well Yes & No....

What are the lyrics to Carly Simon's song? "Anticipation........Is keepin' me waitin'............'"

As I mentioned in a previous post, we received our I-600A approval on February 22nd and we have been calling the National Visa Center in Dover, New Hampshire twice daily for the past two weeks and nothing had been logged in. On Tuesday of this week Paige sent an e-mail to CIS asking them to please follow-up and see if our information had been sent, on Thursday she received an e-mail saying that our paperwork was being sent that day, overnight via UPS to NVC and they provided a tracking number. Did it really sit for over 2 weeks in Fairfax, VA before an e-mail from Paige moved it along? At the same time Paige was speaking with our case worker at FCA in Connecticut who told her she usually receives travel letters on Thursday & Friday so at the earliest we would hear about our travel approval would be next week. OK, we've waited this long what's another week? "Anticipation......"

This morning we both tracked the UPS movement of our paperwork between Virginia and New Hampshire, at 8:16 it was scanned out of the depot in Manchester, NH for delivery. I went about my usual morning ritual, I visited the sales floor to see what new merchandise came in and then to hit E-bar to get a cup of tea. By the time I got back to my desk my Iphone (I left it on my desk) was beeping with text messages and e-mails, the red message light was lit-up on my office phone and when I logged back onto my computer there were several e-mails from Paige with the subject line "CALL ME!!"

Once I got Paige on the phone she said our case worker at FCA called to say she had received our travel letter from Korea and all they are waiting for is the approval from NVC, we are cleared for travel and Carter is ready to be picked-up!!

At 10:15 this morning our information arrived at NVC in New Hampshire, Paige waited until mid-afternoon to call them to see if we have been logged in, I'm hearing Cary Simon again......"Anticipation......" no dice, not yet!! The Center is open until midnight, we will try again tonight, for every helpful and accommodating person you get at NVC there some who are not so much, we are told that NVC approves Visas within 72 hours of being received so hopefully no later than Tuesday since its now the weekend which means we could be traveling this time next week!!

Now comes the crazy time!! We have to finish getting everything ready this weekend. The electrician is coming tomorrow to install a ceiling fixture in Carter's room, I need to hang the letters spelling his name over is crib and attach the changing pad to the dresser. The mattress needs to be lowered since the delivery men set it up at the highest setting and I am sure there are plenty of thing Paige wants/has to do too. Not to mention getting the house in order for either my parents or my brother, between then someone is coming down to house/dog sit while we are in Korea plus they will be here when we get home to meet their new grandson/nephew depending on who comes to stay. The poor dogs, their lives are about to change forever.......

Update from Korea

This afternoon at lunch time Paige called me at the office to say we had received an update from FCA. We have been hoping for one for about the past month since we have had no word on Carter's progress since the referral back in December.

We now know that any of the 12 month clothing we have for him will not fit, he weighs 11 kg or 24.25 pounds so we'll need to exchange a few things. He sleeps thru the night (Yeah!!), one surprising thing said he goes down at 10:00 p.m.!! Did I say he sleeps thru the night?..... He has a ton more hair in these pictures than he had in the first set of pictures. They are little blurry since they are in a PDF format, we will be receiving the originals tomorrow via FedEx.

There was a list of all of his developmental milestones, he is right on track and even a little ahead of the curve. There are so many milestones sent to us I wont list them all out here.

Basically we are waiting for Carter's Visa to logged at the National Visa Center, Paige is just about stalking the Visa Center everyday checking to see if the step has finally been completed. This is basically the last step here in the US, the final steps are all completed in Korea. Our hope is to travel sometime this month.

That's the update for today, hopefully our next post will be announcing our travel call. - John