Adoptivus: 30

Many people consider their 30th birthday a low-point birthday milestone, but for me, I will always consider it the best birthday of my life.

I turned 30 in Seoul.

I spent the day on a bus tour seeing the sights of a beautiful city, visiting a Korean folk village, enjoying a delicious meal and panoramic views from the top of the tallest tower in Seoul, and shopping in local markets.  It was such a delightful day that I barely thought about it actually being my birthday, let alone the end of my 20s (which I was happy to see go anyway..I'm a big girl now, yo).

But Appa, ever the gentleman, carved out a little bit of time during Little Bug's nap for a private birthday celebration.  He bought me a sweet piece of cheesecake-cake, and we had a date in the lounge.  We talked about the big and small things happening for our family and flirted like high school kids, and I might have eaten all of my cake and about half of his.

It was perfect, and no party or gift will ever be able to top Seoul, Little Bro, and a piece of cheese cake.

Adoptivus: The Brothers Meh

One of the things I fantasized most about was the first moment my sons would meet.  Little Bug had been preparing for over a year to meet his brother, kissing his picture every night.  For him, Little Bro was already a part of our lives and the whole actually being in the same country business was just a formality. Meanwhile, Little Bro was happy being an only child.

When Little Bro came sprinting through the doors in our first glimpse of him, he stopped short in the middle of our merry little group, taking us all in with equal parts interest and wary.   Little Bug, on the other hand, stepped right out to meet his little brother and said loudly into his face "Hi, Little Bro." I held my breath, tears threatening as I watched what I knew would be an epic moment in all our lives.  I wished like hell my camera was already out, but wasn't about to miss the fireworks to fish for it out of my bag.

Turns out there was no need.  Little Bro looked once over at Little Bug and then turned back toward his foster mother and we were ushered inside.  There was nothing remotely special about the moment, other than it was the moment when these two brothers first met.

A total and complete meh.

Looking back on it, maybe moments like that don't matter.  I don't recall the first moment I met Appa.  The boys made their moments later with jostling for cars and toys and phones and pens.  Little Bug ate Little Bro's treats and Little Bro took command of Little Bug's balloons.  They both tried their hardest at making a family picture impossible without flailing limbs and arching backs. Those were the moments that started their relationship, even if they weren't the first.

And honestly, none of those moments really feel like mine, either, but I wanted to get them out in some form for the LBs to have when they are older and curious as to how their lives together started.

Adoptivus: Foodie Fail

After meeting Little Bro less than 15 hours after touching down on Korean soil, we fought the jet lag and lost by taking an obscenely long nap that ate the rest of our day.  Once we woke up, we really had little we were able to do but eat.

The hotel we stay at is attached to a large Korean mall and train station.  It's bustling, fancy, and very convenient.  As this was our first official night there, we knew absolutely that we wanted something Korean.  The little place with a seven sign menu of mandoo and soups looked like just the comfort food we were craving.

And it would have been perfection, if I hadn't have tried to get all fancy and order in freaking Korean.

Appa and Kim ordered by pointing to the picture of the soup they wanted, but I wanted to be adventurous, so I attempted to order a soup I was unfamiliar with and I ordered it in Korean.

Let's get it out of the way that when our food came it was apparent that we had ordered about five times the amount we could have eaten and must have looked ridiculous ordering the quantity of food.  We wasted so much at the end of the meal and it still makes me cringe to think about.

But the part that still leaves a sour taste in my mouth...literally...was the fact that the soup I ordered was, to my taste, disgusting.  I love me a lot of Korean flavors, but this was a cold soup and it tastes of fermentation and seafood, two things I don't prefer.  I truly did try to take a couple spoon fulls, but it was just too unappealing for me to stomach.  It didn't help that I was watching Appa and Kim happily tuck into some of my favorites.

I'd like to say we figured out a way to save some face in that small little mandoo and guk shop because all eyes were fixed directly on us, but we didn't.  We left that cold soup virtually untouched and despite our best efforts, made a minimal debt in the others.  I couldn't look in the direction of that shop for the rest of our trip without blushing in shame.


We finished the night with some ice cream from Baskin Robbins, and the flavor combinations were so interesting and daring.  I remember sitting at the table marveling over all the neat flavors and building a blog post in my head.  I'm sure it was the fatigue talking, but I remember just being totally blown away by the flavors in that shop.  I'd just met my son and yet my head you exploding from ginseng-flavored ice cream that I didn't even try.

That blog never got written and I have forgotten every flavor on that menu, including every flavor we actually purchased.

I am many things, but a foodie is apparently not one of them.

Adoptivus: First Date

Unlike meeting Little Bug for the first time, which was very much Mama meet Baby--Baby meet Mama, our first meeting with Little Bro was more like a hybrid play date/speed date.  And to be frank, he just wasn't that into me.

Little Bro is a tiny little boy with a personality about three times his size.  From the moment the doors opened and he came sprinting down the hall (not toward us, but rather away from his foster mother), I desperately wanted to be in his cool crowd.  He played hard, he grumped hard, and he loved hard, and this too-cool-for-school kid in his Captain Bitz tank top was a bit intimidating.

I remember being so focused on how torn I was.  I wanted to get to know his foster mother who was sitting quietly taking it all in, and I wanted to prove to them what great, "with it" parents we were and how our family would just click.  I wanted Little Bug and Little Bro to fall instantly in love with each other (the fight to the ground over the Cozi Coupe proved early on that wouldn't be the case).  Most of all, I wanted to touch Little Bro, to connect with him.  I wanted to breath him in and memorize every detail about him.  I wanted to touch his impossibly cute cheeks, kiss his sweet puckered lips, and brush back his whispy hair.

But he just wasn't that into me, and this adoption-savvy mama knew better than to force the love connection at this meeting.  So instead, I just kept gravitating toward him, inching closer and closer each pass he made around the room.  His sweet Korean voice was seriously the cutest thing I had ever heard, and I wanted to keep him talking as much as I could.

So I broke down and let him hold my camera....open and on.  A sin I paid for the rest of the trip with messed up settings.

But it got me my moment.  He sidled up to me to take some pictures and watch the monitor, and as he held the camera, his body almost close enough for a hug, I made my move and lightly rested my hands on his hips.

That was it.  On the first day I met the little boy whose lips and cheeks and toes and tummy and eyes I've kissed and studied and loved so completely for a year now, I could only muster up the courage for that small tummy pat.  Yet, I think back on our first meeting and that moment is still so vivid in my mind.  I can still feel the way his little warm body felt under my hands and how excited I was to be loving on my baby, even just a little.

There was no hug this day, no kiss goodbye.  I knew there would be plenty to last a lifetime later on.  It drove me to near distraction in the coming days and subsequent meetings when I still didn't get a chance to hold my son (and there might have been some threats requests to Appa that I for sure be the one to hold him in the car on the way back to the hotel).

But knowing what I know about my son now, I know this was absolutely his ideal first date.  This cool cat needed to be in control, and the give and take we played that day was the way our relationship would continue to grow.  And I am forever grateful for this one moment that got me through the next 6 days until I could properly hold him in my arms.

Adoptivus: Solitude

I'd like to say I spent the ride into Seoul marveling at the lights of its skyline, my favorite way to experience a city.  However, Appa, Little Bug, and I were all ugly sleeping in the back of the bus while my sister welcomed Seoul for us.  After a brief anti-snooze to check into the hotel, Appa, Little Bug, and Kim were all dead to the world while I sat at our hotel room desk, my head literally swimming from exhaustion, but my entire body was humming with the view from my window.

Seoul. 

It's weird to explain how you can visit a city that is so very different from everything you know and embrace it so wholly in your heart, but that is how I feel about Seoul.  It had been over 2 years since we had last been there, but as I sat there in the same hotel with the same view, it felt like we had come to our second home.  I didn't just love Seoul, but I had missed it even more than I realized. We received a message from Little Bug's foster family welcoming us and wishing us good night because they had been tracking our flight.  We had family there. It felt right and natural to be there. The night owl in me didn't want to sleep.  I wanted to just soak it in, even just from my hotel room window.

So although I should have slept...needed to sleep...I simply sat on that swivel chair and looked out the window at the lights.  Eventually I tore myself away and hid in the bathroom to quietly prepared the gift bags for Little Bro's foster family and social worker in a labor of love.  I took my time, allowing myself time to prepare for the moment that was only hours away.

In only hours, I was going to meet my sweet son.  And although I was out of my mind tired (and actually fell asleep at the lunch table the next day at the agency), I am grateful for those hours of solitude I had before one of the most important days of my life.

I was so ready.  I was so at peace.

And yes, I was so tired.

Adoptivus: A Year Later

Being an admitted sentimental sap, I love reliving the trip to my sons during the days leading up to their family days by capturing memories that didn't make the family blog. I affectionately call it Adoptivus. Believe it or not (and I am in the NOT camp), Little Bro's 1-year family day is next week.

A year ago today, Appa, Little Bug, Kim Emo, and myself got on that pretty teal plane to fly halfway across the world.  As I thought about what I wanted to write today, I realized I have very few specific memories from the flight over.  It was pretty uneventful, and that in and of itself is something I know I should be grateful for.  I took less than five pictures the entire 14 hour flight, for Pete's sake.  Anyone who knows me knows that means absolutely nothing noteworthy happened.

Instead, these are the precious memories that bubble to the surface as I look back a year later at our day spent in the sky.

*An hour before we left for the airport, I stood next to Appa in our front room, marveling at the calm.  Outside Kim and Little Bug played in his red wagon and soaked up the bright cheery sunshine.   Our small arsenal of luggage was carefully packed and standing in wait.  Unlike the first time, things were just so peaceful in those last moments of normal.  More than anything else, it is that calm and warm sense of peace and sunshine that stick with me from that day.  I was so supremely grateful for that sunshine.

*It took until we got to the gate and were waiting to board that Appa and I both realized in horror that the travel clothing we had dressed Little Bug in were simply too small for him.  The pants were up to his ankles and his Thomas shirt was barely covering his belly.  If Appa noticed it, I knew it was bad.  If you know how classy Korean people tend to dress (and how bundled they dress their babies), you can imagine how awesome we looked.

*When the plane took off, I caught my sister's eye.  This was her first international travel, and I knew she was a totally pumped.  I mouthed "here we go" and felt like my stomach was going to explode with happiness knowing that we were just hours (okay, a lot of hours) away from Seoul and my son.

*A middle-aged woman sitting near us offered Little Bug a loaf-like thing wrapped tightly in tinfoil less than an hour into the flight.  We accepted gracefully and under her watchful eye, we started feeding Little Bug this thing we didn't recognize from a person we didn't know.  I still have no idea what it was; it looked and tasted like a mixture of date bread, meat, and dried fruit wrapped in a tight sausage-like preparation.  But he didn't die and we won some smiles and appreciative nods from more than one Korean grandma on that plane.  Totally worth it.

*Little Bug spent a combined total of hours snapping and unsnapping his seat belt with total joy.  Who needs iPads and toys when kids have ice cups and seat belts?

*I watched "The King's Speech" with Colin Firth.  Anything with Colin Firth is worth noting.

"I Don't Know"

The "clinical therapies" waiting room where I spend an hour each week waiting during Little Bug's physical therapy is a melting pot for children and families with some sort of need. I see families and children who navigate wheel chairs and feeding tubes.  I see families and children who are trying to navigate therapy waters in a language they don't speak (or sign).  I see families and children who have behavioral challenges and needs.

And I feel very at home here.  Because in this waiting room, although we all have very different reasons for being here, we all want the same thing for our kids.  To be accepted.  To not be judged when our children start twitching and shrieking at the crayon table or run up to you and throw a book at your head.  To have our children smiled at instead of stared at, even in the moments when you can't help but stare.  To have a stranger strike up a conversation and keep it going even when our children cannot or will not.  To have other children see a friend instead of a wheelchair, leg brace, inability to socially interact, or physical deformity.

In an odd way, I love this hour of my week.  Even though I rarely talk to anyone else, it makes me feel less alone as a mom and gives me hope for a community for my son that I sincerely hope he will always feel comfortable in as he grows up and his needs evolve.

But yesterday I also saw the bleak truth of growing up in this waiting room.  And I pretended to be reading something very sad on my phone as tears silently streamed down my face.

It was an uncharacteristically quiet day in the waiting room.  A family who spoke ASL sat in one corner, and Little Bro was engrossed in the iPad.  From out of the practice rooms a boy about 7 or 8 years old came shuffling out, tears in his eyes and his face contorted in fear and sadness.  A man who later called himself "Pops" came behind him, allowing the young boy to navigate them to some chairs across from me.  There they sat in silence for a few minutes before Pops tried to sooth the boy.

The blow-by-blow isn't important (but will forever be etched in my mind), but basically this little boy had just been told that he needed to take medication for his attention needs.  I have no doubt this information was delivered age-appropriately and compassionately, but all this little boy heard was that "something was wrong" with him.

And it hurt.  Not anger.  Hurt.

Pops, bless him, gave me some good lessons on how to talk to a pre-teen boy in pain.  When the boy chose to sit across the couch from him inching away with each word Pops uttered, Pops told him that was okay if it made it easier to talk.  When the boy didn't seem to want to say anything, Pops calmly and encouragingly told him how smart and kind and fun he was, using loving examples. He just needed a little help talking tests, that's all.  The little boy's eyes filled with tears and buried his face in his hands.

"Does this feel like a big deal to you?" Pops asked softly.
"I don't know," the little boy admitted before dissolving into tears.

That's when I lost it, for the record. 

As Little Bug starts maturing and getting ready for big time school, I have started preparing for how to support him emotionally, not just clinically.  The emotions he might feel as he gets older and more aware of his challenges (guilt, anger, fear, embarrassment, rejection) literally keep me up at night with pains in my chest.  To hear my deepest fears whispered by this confused little boy broke me.  How can little ones be expected to understand just how unfair life can be or just how different and wonderful they are?  How can I protect my Little Bug from the moments when he is told by strangers that he is different and needs help?  How can I help him hear anything other than "something is wrong" with me in his head?

I don't actually have the answers.  I don't know.  And that sucks.