Day 4- Let's meet Parker again!!!

We woke up to snow today (Monday)!  We knew snow was in the forecast but they say it doesn't snow much here so we didn't really expect to see it.

We had meetings scheduled starting at 11:30AM.  Our first was a meeting with Dr. Kim, the president of Eastern Social Welfare Society.  It was us and three other families and she went over a little bit of history about SK and history of Eastern.  She told us about the founder who passed away several years ago and about his love for children.  Until the time he retired, he met every single family and child that came through the agency.  Amazing!  After our meeting with her, she gave us each a gift and a calendar from ESWS that has pictures of children adopted from Korea and then they had a traditional Korean lunch prepared for us in the staff cafeteria.  Lunch was very good, but not much to Kendon's liking :-).  We did meet some other families that are here also and a family that will have court the same day as us.  It was very nice to get to meet these families and such an honor for Dr. Kim to take time out of her day to spend a little bit of time with us.

All dressed up for our meeting

After lunch, we got to have our second meeting with Parker.  It was such a good meeting!  He didn't start this meeting out shy like he did the previous meeting.  There were no meeting rooms available so we met in a guesthouse room that wasn't being used.  It ended up working out very well because he loved climbing on the bed and there was a window for us to see the huge snowflakes that were falling!  We played for a few minutes and the foster mom stepped out of the room.  A few minutes later our social worker asked if we wanted to play with our son for a little while alone.  Of course!!!  We were a little nervous about this part because we know he is attached to his foster mom, but he did so good and never even looked for her!  We played with bubbles, a singing tow truck, another little people airplane, gerber puff snacks, applesauce packets, teddy grahams, goldfish, and puppets.  The boy likes his snacks!  A little while into our time, Kendon noticed it was snowing again outside.  Parker got very excited and let us hold (!) him up to the window.  I was pointing to the snow and saying 'Whoa"..... and he started repeating it back to me!  I guess that would be his first English word! Towards the end, he figured out how to play peek a boo with kendon on one side of the bed and he on the other.  They would look under the bed and then pop up and look at each other over the bed.  He got pretty tickled at that and gave us a good little belly laugh.  It was then time to go and we got another hug and kisses.  SUCH a sweet boy! 

Looking at videos of big brother and sister

We got back to the room and Kendon said, "Ok, Im ready to go home now..... so we can hurry and get back!"  We are so ready to have him in our arms all the time!

We had our social worker set up a time for us to go volunteer in the 'baby home' which is if I understand right, where most babies spend the first several months of their lives before they are placed with foster families.  We went and did this about 2:30, can I tell you, I could do that ALL day long!  I was handed a little one that had just eaten, she smiled at me a little bit then laid her head on my chest and went right to sleep!  Kendon found a little chunky one a little older playing in another room and went and got her.  I heard several crying in another room so I went in to look at them.  I laid the one I had down and made sure she stayed asleep and picked up another to finish giving her a bottle while patting another ones behind.  I wish I could have held about four of them at a time!  This was hard for Kendon, to see them all crying in their cribs.  Hard for me as well, but the nature of my job makes it a little different for me. 

We had decided on another part of the city that we wanted to go check out today so we headed over there after loving on the babies.  When we left our room, it wasn't really snowing.  When we got to where we were going, it was miserably snowing!  We walked for a little ways then decided to go on back.  We found a little café and went in and had a burger before getting back on the subway.

 It was another very good, cold, successful day for us!  Tomorrow we have another free day then Wednesday is court.