Korea Part 3a

The day had finally arrived. It was Family Day. I didn't sleep much the night before. I was up at 4 and then again at 5 and then again at 6 and finally decided to just get out of bed.

We ate breakfast. We did some laundry. We stared at the clock. We were told that we should be at our agency at 11:10am. So we grabbed a cab and headed out. We got there very early.

There is a little cafe there so Dave grabbed a lemonade and we met a nice couple from California that was also there to be united with their son. They had met him a couple of days prior. We sat and chatted with them both of us moms watching the clock.

Turns out we weren't supposed to be there until 11:30am. We were meeting with the director of the agency, having lunch and then at 1:30 we would meet Katie. Sigh...wish I would have known that but it was nice to see all the great things our agency does and to hear to background of adoption in Korea. The director skirted over the new adoption laws just saying no one really knows for sure what was going to happen and she apologized many  many times for the long wait to be united with our children. She then thanked us for being willing to take care of these children.

After our traditional Korean lunch we waited some more. We were sitting in the lobby and I saw our foster mom walk in with Katie on her back. I cried. Like a big old baby. Not sure they if saw us or not but we didn't actually interact then.

We met with our social worker to fill out some paperwork, get her passport etc. From there we walked up some stairs (which brought back a flood of memories of the stairs we walked up in Ethiopia to first meet Kiya) and into a playroom. There she was. Perfect.

We gave Katie her space. She didn't run up to us and that was okay. She was cautious. It took time but we sat on the floor and played with her. She loved waiting to see our reaction to when she did something. I asked some questions of her foster mom. Her foster mom told us that we were very lucky that Katie is a very sweet girl, not fussy, not picky and loves to wear dresses, have clips in her hair etc.

Her foster mom gave us a big stack of photos, a hanbok, dinner, a Pororo toy (super loud by the way) and an outfit. You could tell this woman loved little Katie very much.

We sat and played for a long time. Giving Katie the space she needed. She would check in with her foster mom a few times and as time progressed she seemed to be more comfortable with us. We hadn't gotten hugs yet but that was okay.

Our social worker left for a few minutes and when she came back she gave us an envelope with something I was never expecting to see. Sonogram photos of Katie. I have never been in possession of anything like this. I couldn't believe it. We now know that Katie was born at 39 weeks.

Soon it was time to leave. They ushered us out of the playroom. We allowed Katie's foster mom to take her and head downstairs. There the director said a prayer for all of us families and children. It was very touching and there were tears around the room. There were 3 newly formed families there counting us. Katie was held by her foster mom the entire time.

As we were getting into the van, her foster mom kind of grabbed me and hugged me. We were both crying. We stopped to take a picture. I look smiley but was holding back tears as I didn't want to scare Katie. We gave foster mom her time to say goodbye. She cried, I cried, little Katie silently shed some tears. Her foster mom handed her too us and we were almost ready to go. Katie reached out for her and as the van door closed she collapsed into me and eventually fell asleep.

This is merely the beginning of a  beautiful love story...