My Journey, My Sun, My Seoul: The Anticipation

It's been a little over a month since my last post.....sometimes time just passes us by.

We've done a lot this last month to keep ourselves busy, whether it be at work, or with friends and family. We officially passed our one year mark in this process. With that came a lot of anticipation and preparation for this last stage.

I pray daily for our sons health and continued development while he is in South Korea, though I must admit I also throw one in there for him to be home with us this calendar year. With the new Korean adoption laws which were implemented in August of 2012, came a lot of unknowns about the finalization process of adoptions. We've been patiently waiting on some of the first cases under the new laws to be finalized in the Korean courts so that we may have an idea on what to expect. These unknowns become the things you obsess over as you wait......and wait........and wait.

The great thing is that through this process, there are many things you have control over. Those are the things I am committed to focusing on until we bring Makaio home. No matter what, we have the ability to prepare Makaio a package to be sent to Eastern Social Welfare Services every month for him to receive during his monthly check-ups. It's been fun for Jen and me to go shopping for toys and clothes and this and that, which we promptly package in vacuum sealed 1 gallon Ziplocs for shipment to Korea. It's amazing what you can fit into a 1 gallon Ziploc once you figure out how to pack them properly. All we can do is hope we are getting the right sizes based on the measurements we receive....especially considering we must ship everything nearly one month in advance.

Through this process we've become accustomed to spending $100/month on postage for these gifts. And you thought stamps were getting expensive!

On January 8th of this year all of that shopping paid off as we received the first set of pictures with Makaio wearing one of the outfits we had sent over to him. Now, his foster mother didn't necessarily match the clothes as we had intended, but it was still an amazing moment nonetheless.

For those of us in this process, these are the moments we live for as we wait. I often imagine what he is doing throughout each day, what he is learning, how he is changing. It's sad to be missing these significant moments of their development......but on that one day each month we get three pictures, and those three pictures erase that sadness. We are able to see he is happy, well taken care of, and may I say dressed better than ever before. While I miss him every day.......I anticipate how much he will change my life very soon.

So.....as we enter our 13th month, my anticipation has brought me to his bedroom. And for the next few months I plan to put everything I have into making his, the greatest room a little boy has ever seen. I cant wait to update you all with the progress!

In the meantime we'll continue to live for those moments, those three pictures, and the day we are united forever.