14 months old!

Can you believe this sleeping beauty turns 14 months old today?!?!?

These are more pictures we received last month from what we believe was her first foster home for 8 months...



Is it possible for her to be any cuter?!?!

And yes, we're still waiting.

And no, we have no idea when we'll be traveling.

And yes, this about sums up the way I feel about the EP situation and our current wait....

We are ready to get this baby home!

감사합니다

A big THANK YOU to Mrs. Lee for sending Seon-Mi these adorable clothes all the way from Korea! (And thanks MaryAnn for dropping them off at our house!)

When I went to pick up Zoey, I had the pleasure to travel at the same time as a family that I met through our agency. Their son had an absolutely lovely and very kind foster mother, who I believe had fostered several children thru Holt, I want to say Rai was her 17th? (click on Rai's name to see him opening the box!) It was an amazing number, she was is an amazing woman, and she was so hospitable and invited me to tag along on several outings with MaryAnn, Aaron and Rai. I know that she checks my blog from time to time, so I hope this all translates for her! We love the clothes, Zoey is doing well, and we appreciate you thinking of us!

And Happy Chuseok 추석 to all! (Yet another excuse to eat yummy Korean food!

50 words and toddlers.

So, when we set out to adopt again, we didn't realize we would be adopting a toddler. I will be the first to tell you that it took some time for me to get used to. But after much thought and prayer, I will say that I am now very, very excited about it! She's walking, talking and eating table food! We often joke how fun it would be if she came home potty trained. :0) Ha! A girl can dream, right!

But she's speaking....Korean. And we do not. I remember Zoey at nine months old, looking at my lips when I spoke at our first meeting, unsure of why I looked like everyone else in Korea, but the words coming out of my mouth were very different! I even remember a caucasion friend of mine who speaks fluent Korean getting a similar look when she would speak to Zoey in Korean! It was very clear she knew there was a language difference.

When I met with her foster mother, I was prepared with all kinds of questions. Amongst them, what Zoey liked to be called and how to comfort her. Her Korean name is Seon-Mi, which is now her middle name, and it's pronounced 'sun-me'. In Korea, they will often times add an 'ah' sound at the end when addressing children. I heard her foster mother call her 'Seon-Mi-a' as she pat her on the back as she cried and called her '예쁘다', pronounced 'ee-poo-ta', which mean pretty. She said she would comfort her by holding her close with her head on her shoulder and whisper 'ee-poo-ta Seon-mi-a' in her ear. The social worker at Holt wrote it down on my list of notes.

I remember one of her first night's home, as she grieved the loss of everything familiar to her, I whispered this same phrase into her ear and she looked up at my face and stopped crying for a second...long enough to realize I was not her foster mother, but clear that she recognized that phrase. We used this phrase, amongst other Korean words here and there for many months after Zoey was home. Over time, she learned to be comforted by that phrase when we said it to her. While some of the Korean words we used have since faded, I am happy to say that Zoey, two and half years after homecoming, still responds to her Korean name without hesitation, especially when she's in trouble. :0) At nine months old, she was not very verbal and while I giggled when people would ask how she well she was picking up the language when she was that age, I realize that with an older child, just how important language is.

Our family has set a goal to learn 50 useful words before Emersyn comes home! My brother is traveling with me and his goal is to become fluent. :0) So far, he knows the word for 'rainbow' really well, so looks like we'll be all set when we travel to Korea!

But just in case we need to understand and say more than the word rainbow to Em, every week or so, our family is going to learn a new word, write it on a card, post it on the fridge, and start replacing the English word with the Korean one in our every day language. This way, when Emersyn gets home, we will be more equipped to understand what she's saying and help her to understand us.

So, if you'd like to learn along with us, I'll be posting the new word of the day as we learn them here!

We're going to start with 비행기 - bihaeng-gi, pronounced 'pee-hang-ee', which strangely enough is a word I already know. :) We have these Korean Children's Song DVDs that we listen to in the car pretty often and they use this word in one of the songs...and it happened to be the first word I learned when using Rosetta Stone, so there you go.

Obviously, I hope this word helps us to explain to Emersyn what's going to happen as we travel home. I'm sure this will be her first time on an airplane and it will be a very looooooooooong first ride on one! Don't use the word airplane very often in your every day discussions?!?!? Well, now you will!!

And we're also going to learn 'I'm hungry' - 배고파, pronounced 'pay-goo-pa'. Good phrase to know for a toddler who will be hungry for something other than formula in a bottle, which is pretty much all Zoey would 'eat' when she came home.

So there go. We will point to the sky and say pee-hang-gee and just before dinner you'll hear us saying 'pay-goo-pa'! (I believe the word 'hungry' is a different word, but equally important, so we'll make sure to learn that too!)

Native Korean speakers, please feel free to correct me. :0) My agency;s online forum provides a list of these phrases I'm using and google translate can only be so accurate!

Here they are, on our fridge and ready to be used. :)

July Birthdays!

Before Zoey, there weren't any July birthdays in our immediate family to celebrate and now we have two!

Emersyn's first birthday was July 15 and what a weird day was that for me emotionally. I've never 'missed' one of my kids birthdays before and and though I knew from referral that we would, the day was still very bittersweet. I am thrilled beyond belief that she got to celebrate her Tol in Korea and hope there are lots of pics to document it! But of course, we would much rather of been with her on her big, special day. We are thankful to be her family though and know we will have many more birthdays with her to celebrate! Since Zoey's birthday is just two weeks later, she was convinced Emersyn's party was hers! Not sure what she thought about having a pic of Emersyn's face on her cake, but she went with it!

Here's a recap of the day! My brother, sister-in-law and their three kiddos joined us for the celebration and turned out to be a fun little party. :) (click on the image to view it larger!)

Upper left hand pic: That was my super lame, yet 'worked in my head' idea! We are in a huge drought down here in Texas and I had bought flying paper lanterns (yes, like the ones in the moview Tangled!) to float into the sky in honor of my girl's bdays, but got shot down as they would start a forest fire with how dry the ground is! So, I thought floating a single candle in our pool would represent her first year nicely, and the wind was so strong, we couldn't get it to light! So I literally snapped that pic in the half second it stayed lit. :) But thanks to my brother for trying to help me pull it off!! Next year, next year...

Then, on July 31, Zoey turned THREE!! I can hardly believe it!

Zoey is VERY into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and loves anything that has to do with it! So of course, it was all about him at her party! She had a blast, loved her party, loved her presents and loved that she is now able to tell people she is three!

Here's a couple pics from her big day! (click on the image to view it larger!)

I am now a proud, proud mama of a six year old, three year old and one year old!

Now if we could just all be living under one roof.....:0)

What's up with the kiddos?!?!

Yah, remember when I said I was going to start keeping up with this blog?!?!? Hmmm...not quite sure what happened!! I think I'm at that point where I have so much to catch up on, I just don't post anything at all. :) Good logic, huh?

Well, this is my attempt to start 'catching up'!

Today was a good day in our house! Zoey started preschool! And for any of you who know her in person, you will know what a huge step this is for her! Huge! This was the first time we have ever really 'pushed' her to do something waaaaay outside her comfort zone. She won't even stay in the nursery at church by herself, and she knows all those people! But I am so happy to report that after about 15 minutes of tears (and some screaming) her teacher was able to calm her down while Danny and I stood out in the hall listening. It was hard to not run in there and hold her, I won't lie, but I knew she was in good hands and I knew she would have fun. Her teacher said she remained a little reserved and quiet the rest of the day, but did great! And we are looking forward to her growing from this experience! SO proud of her!!

And did I mention that she is now fully potty trained? Girlfriend made potty training an absolute breeze! Woke up last Tuesday and told her no more diapers and poof! Here we are a week later and she's even waking up dry from naps. I am one happy mama and glad to be done with diapers...till Emersyn gets home that is!!

Here she is this morning on our way to preschool! (excuse the lame cell phone pics!)


And of course, Braedan started first grade on August 22! He is doing so well (as expected!) and even has a few kids in his class from last year, which makes everything easier. His reading is amazing and he loves school, and his teacher.

Here he is on his first day of first grade!


And our third little munchkin was busy this month too! I was so surprised to receive over 20 photos of Emersyn! We think they are from her first foster family, who took care of her from 2 weeks old till early April, when she was transferred to a foster home in Seoul. Here's a few snapshots of this oh so adorable girly!

Look at that smile!


Love this candid shot of her smiling behind that bottle!

So what's the latest on our adoption process? Well, we are completely paper ready on the US side. And we are currently waiting on what could be some very good news for our family...last week it was announced that the Korean Ministry will now provide priority Emigration Permits to Korean-American couples. What does this mean exactly? Well, our US agency has been notified about this new policy, but has yet to receive the actual details. At this point, without this new policy, we would lucky to be traveling early spring of next year. With this new policy, we hope that that time frame will be greatly shortened, but are awaiting official word. As you can imagine, this news is very exciting to us, but also bittersweet as the extended wait times for families right now continues to drag on and families continue to wait to bring their babies home. We are trying to remain as positive as possible and just remember that it's all in God's hands at this point and Emersyn will come home when the time is right. (and yes, we hope it's sooner rather than later!)

Waiting for relief from the wicked hot weather and drought...but in the mean time, staying cool and enjoying every last second in the pool!



Now let's see if I can keep up with this blog from here on out! :)

Wowza!!

What a lame blogger I have been this month!! July was a busy busy month for us and August is half way over!! So I've got some catching up to do!!

Let's start with these updated pics of my precious youngest daughter we received on July 20! I really, really, really wanna squeeze that baby!!!



They also sent a pic of the burn she suffered the previous month and thankfully it's healing, but looks like it may leave a pretty nasty scar. :( But we were pleasantly surprised to get her MRI results a week later on July 27, which were all normal!! And they squeezed in another picture of Em and her foster mother with the care package we sent!

Sadly, we can't show her face per our agencies' policies, but we can thank her for the excellent care she is giving our sweet baby!

We cannot wait to hold this little girl!

We also received our I600 approval in record time. We wished that would have happened with Zoey's adoption!! It was submitted with the I600A on June 23 and we received our approval on July 27. We are now all paper ready on the US side...it's all about when the Korean government will issue our EP to get Miss Em home!! Let's hope it's sooner than later, but it's pretty clear we will not get one this year and just pray that EP's begin shooting out like crazy come the first of the year.

Thanks for your continued love and support!! We can feel it!

Zoey can swim!!!

Check this girl out!!!

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