Tae's 100 day photo

Today we received a digital copy of Tae's 100-day professional photo taken last December. We thought it was so beautiful we needed to share it with the world! Tae continues to be such a joy and delight. Today we all met Mike at a park downtown for lunch since he started back to work today. Tae had his first swing on a swingset and fell asleep in the stroller on the way there and back.

He does continue to grieve, especially late at night, though he is so comfortable with us, and now with his Schofield grandparents as well. We are happy and grateful for this amazing gift of our son!

P.S. Here are some park photos:

Tae's Big Day Out!

Since Mike goes back to work on Monday (*sigh* from both Jana and Tae), we thought today would be a good day to celebrate being a family of three living near the ocean, so Tae and his parents and grandparents spent the day at Avila Beach. He did great! Granted, he did sleep and eat most of the time, but he also had fun in the sand and sea. Here are some photos:

Ah...this is the life:

Yesterday, as you can see below, was a day of thinking, playing in water on the deck, and eating:

A cute eating story:

We've been giving Tae "Cheerio kisses" where he takes an "O" from between our lips with his mouth. Tonight I said "give mommy a kiss" without a Cheerio in it, and he did! It warmed my heart! I, of course, tried it over and over again and he didn't do it again without a Cheerio...but there's always tomorrow! :-)

We do feel like Tae is doing extremely well adjusting...enough to be fussy with his parents when he wants to! He's still on a bit of a crazy sleep schedule (different every night), so there's still adjustment to go, but we are beyond grateful to God and the rest of our support system for helping us get to such a good point already. Thanks to you for thinking of us and checking in!

Some more photos of our sweet boy!

More photos...and your questions answered!

We are happy to report that we've had a good couple days -- Tae is feeling more and more comfortable with us, and he is continuing to be more comfortable exploring his new surroundings. And we are completely smitten with him -- he's a delight, even when he's not! He's had less crying episodes, and usually they're related to teething. And as new parents who have prepared so long for this day, even the crying (mostly!)seems like music to our ears. Tae has already poured loads of joy into his parents' and grandparents' hearts. Here are some more photos of our Beautiful Star, and your questions answered below:
Tae stealing grandpa's glasses:
Tae "helping" daddy build the backyard deck:
In emails and conversations we've had great questions from people about Tae, and since we thought others might be wondering too we decided to post answers here:

Name
We've decided to keep Tae as his first name, and we're deciding on a middle name. We'll keep Schofield (my last name) as a second middle name and Isensee as his last name, but we're still deciding on a first middle name, whether the rest of his Korean name (Tae Gyu) or an American name.

Walking?
In one photo on our last post, it looked like Tae was walking. He's not quite walking yet - but it won't be long! He can pull himself up and use the furniture to walk a few steps. We assume that he'll be walking by his first birthday (August 31).

Sleeping
We've decided for the time being to co-sleep with Tae on a futon mattress on the floor of his room. He co-slept with his foster mom (the norm in Korea) and has never been in a crib, so we decided that now is not the time to start when he's going through so much transition otherwise. Nighttime is the hardest for Tae, when he's most aware of his foster mom's absence, so being able to comfort and quiet him immediately has been so helpful. Plus, like every baby, he truly looks like an angel when he's sleeping.

Last night he was in bed over 12 hours, but up two short times and one long one...though I (Jana) did end up getting 8 hours of sleep...a nice treat.


Skin
Tae has very light skin -- even the director of the Holt agency in Korea said he looked "white." However, just like Caucasians, Koreans have many variations in skin tone, and both of Tae's birthparents were full Korean. His skin may turn darker as he grows, but for now we actually have similar skin tones as him.

Caring for him
Until he's feeling more bonded with both of us, we're not having others (even the patient grandparents!) hold/feed/bathe/change him yet, and we're still sticking close to home so that he's not overwhelmed by too much more newness. He's played on the floor with grandparents and a couple others, but for now we're doing all we can to ensure he feels fully comfortable with his new parents before enlarging his world even more. We are so grateful for the remarkable steps in his comfort level he's made in the past few days, but we still have a journey ahead of all of us. Yet it's one we're walking with joy!

Many thanks for your thoughts and prayers! We'll post again in a few days.

Home Recovering & Enjoying

This is our 3rd night home and we are starting to get our feet under us. Each hour we fall more in love with our son even as all three of us work under the strain of a 16 hour time change and the upending of our former lives. Fortunately for Jana and I, we have had years to prepare for this moment. Tae's life was rather more suddenly upended. Fortunately for him, he has the resiliency of youth!

Here is a recap of the last few days:

Our trip from Seoul Tuesday morning began in a torrential rainstorm, the worst rain our airport driver had seen in the last three years. Our driver was also our hero as he assisted us (and a Korean Holt escort travelling with a baby going to meet her family in North Dakota) in moving us into Economy Plus on United. The 5 extra inches were a blessing that we believe were the result of Holt Korea's good name.

Our plane was full and we were seated in an area with a number of kids from Tae's age through 15. In fact, the 15 year old was a Holt adoptee travelling home from his first trip back to Korea. We had several conversations with his mom during the flight, and Jana sat and had a conversation with him as well.

Tae slept the first 4 hours of the flight while strapped into our Ergo carrier on my front. During the rest of the flight he was not as happy to sit and did not want to be strapped in his carrier, although his mom and dad felt better about it since we had several hours of flying with the "fasten seatbelt" sign lit. When the sign was not lit, one of us spent time walking the aisles with him. The flight attendants were great. During one extended "melt down" we tried everything and then the attendant brought us chipped ice which helped calm him down. Tae also earned his United "wings" pin from an attendant.

Customs, immigration, and security back stateside was quite the process: twice through the immigration line and then having to go through security wearing a little one while taking off your belt and shoes and juggling you extra diaper bag and having your formula specially screened. We made our connecting flight with mere seconds to spare.

The Schofield grandparents had arrived in SLO a few days earlier and were there to greet Tae with tears in their eyes and joy in their hearts. They have been staying in SLO and helping to feed and clothe us so we can do the same for Tae. It has been wonderful!

We have had many tears in our eyes, especially our first 24 hours home as our hearts shouted for joy at the increase in our family, and our hearts mourned for the losses Tae was experiencing. We are continually reminded of how grateful we are to both Holt Korea and to Tae's foster mom for the care they gave our son.

Tae has been very resilient, but there are times that you can either see or hear the loss he has experienced. He has been quicker to latch onto me, and Jana has taken to calling him "daddy's boy." Daddy's back is feeling this fact because his happiest place (which we are so thankful for) has been in our arms. He has been eating, playing and sleeping in both our arms.

Our first night home Tae appeared happy to switch to West Coast America time, spending 11 hours in bed with only two relatively brief awake times. Night two was a different story, as night time lasted less than 9 hours and included two long periods of wakefulness. In fact, we were awaked shortly after midnight by Tae, who proceeded to crawl over me and head out the door and down the hallway to the bathroom (where the light was on) before returning. Then it was time to play and have a bottle and struggle back to sleep over 2 hours later.

Night 3 just recently started when he fell asleep on Jana's back at 8 PM. It could be a long night or an early morning...When I am awakened at night I try to pretend I am on Seoul time, and during the day I am on West Coast time. So far it has worked but it will certainly catch up to me.

Tae's daytimes have been filled with normal cute baby activities, although most of the time he is in one of our arms. He is slowly becoming more comfortable leaving us to explore his surroundings. We get glimpses of his comfort level expanding like in the photo with Sharie during his big exploration today.

Tae also appears to be teething, with the accompanying cries, drool, and chewing on everything to prove it. His grandparents have purchased him some refrigerated teething items which seem to help.

I could go on and on about our wonderful beautiful boy, but I need to go to bed. Suffice it to say we three are deeply in love.

We're heading home as a family of three!

We're at the airport in Seoul almost ready to board our flight with a beautiful baby boy! It is truly surreal and wonderful to hold him in our arms -- and we've been holding him almost every minute since we received him yesterday. When we left the Holt office he grieved quite heavily and clung to us while looking around for his foster mom for the next several hours. It's heartbreaking to see that, but we also give thanks because it reinforces what a positive experience he had with her.

Last night despite many tears (of all three of us!), he thankfully slept all through the night except a little whimper at 3am for his bottle. Today he has been a delight! Though it's clear he is confused about what is going on, he has those wonderful little laughs and smiles and has only cried when we tried to bathe him this morning (we must not be doing it right -- his foster mom said he loved baths!). Now he's happy and fed and ready to board the plane. We'll write and post more photos when we get settled back in SLO!

Thank you for your prayers and support -- we have truly felt upheld by them!

The day before we become parents!

We took full advantage of this historic day - knowing that tomorrow at 3pm our lives change forever when Tae is placed in our arms! So today we enjoyed more sights of Seoul...here's a bit of it:

We started the day with our new friends Heather and Jonathan (another couple adopting through Holt) touring the National War Museum and Memorial in Seoul. It's a powerful reminder of what Korea and so many other countries endured and lost in the Korean War and other wars. A powerful symbol at the end was a "tear" made of 1,300 ID badges of soldiers who died in the Korean War. It was a significant learning experience for all of us.

We then hit the markets! Seoul has utterly endless markets -- street vendors, underground markets, above ground markets, "malls" that are actually hundreds of stalls put together in multi-level department store style. Of our purchases, two of the most meaningful were "hanboks" for each of us. Hanboks are the traditional Korean dress for both men and women that are worn mostly just for weddings, but always for a child's first birthday celebration called a "tol." Tae's foster mom gave us a hanbok for Tae's tol, and we wanted to have some of our own to celebrate Tae's heritage. Here I am getting fitted for my hanbok.

Then we celebrated our final evening as a family of 2 by going out for dinner at one of the top rated restaurants in Asia. It was a full traditional Korean Buddhist meal with 32 - yes, 32 - different tiny plates of vegetarian dishes that you eat with chopsticks while sitting on the floor. And every night this restaurant puts on a traditional cultural performance with Korean dancers. At the end they handed Mike a cymbal and me 2 fans and brought us up on the "dance floor" to dance with them -- we danced til we were dizzy! Fun! Here we are after dinner -- our last as just the two of us!

We'll end with a few scenes of Seoul -- we have loved this city and look forward to bringing Tae back some day!

The first is Samsung's office building:

Hi...It's Michael tonight. Jana is wiped out an lying upstairs (possibly already asleep).

Today was our first day just being tourists and we put a lot of miles on our shoes. We started the day sleeping in a little later than the last several. We are each waking up around 4 AM but have been managing to get some more winks before actually starting our days.

After our morning coffee and pastries we loaded onto the fabulous subway and headed toward the center of town. We started our day with a walk on the Cheonggyecheon (stream), a recently restored stream combined with a 6 kilometer path alongside, all through the heart of downtown. It has 22 bridges across it, most of them only pedestrian (which here also includes motorbikes since they can make better time on the sidewalks compared to the crowded streets!). There are also a number of water features along the stream. The day was overcast so not too hot.

From the stream we headed back up the central artists/shopping area in the city, Insa-dong. We had been here just yesterday on our tour, and had a great traditional Korean meal, but had not had any time to shop or really look around. Today (Saturday) the crowds were thick. We saw far more foreigners than we have the previous three days. Even so, they comprise probably no more than 1 or 2 people out of every hundred in the places we have been.


We had another great Korean meal for lunch, this time in a vegetarian (they also serve seafood) restaurant.

When it came time to shop, the most meaningful gift we bought was one for Tae. We stopped at a stamp-making shop, and a women carved a traditional stamp with Tae's Korean name on it. In Korea such stamps are used on all important documents. It was amazing to watch her work and she beautifully packaged the final product. Someday we might find his stamp marking the walls, and we will rethink what a great gift this was, but it will provide a neat connection in his future.


From Insa-Dong we headed south across the Hangang River to the newer part of the city. This area contains hundreds of tall apartment complexes, which is part of what makes Seoul one of the densest cities in the world. We visited the national center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, arriving on Schofield-Isensee time just after the 5 PM performance had begun (It was really from waiting for Tae's stamp). We were seated in the theater after the first performance and saw 7 more instrument, singing and dance performances spanning the last six or seven centuries. They were fascinating in their breadth and artistry.

Coming back to the hotel it was trying to spit rain again...Tomorrow is supposed to be wet. We headed for an interesting restaurant in our guidebook, but could not find it. We ended up in a little noodle bar where we each struggled to each our noodle soup with chopsticks!

Tomorrow we try to do indoor things (National War Museum) and indoor shopping at the Dongdaemun market.

More precious time with our son

Today was fantastic. It was a dry day - we even got sunburned - and we had more incredible moments with our beautiful baby boy at his medical checkup (he's perfectly healthy!). I'll let the photos tell the story. (We've tried to upload video but it's just too big. Today he was less active and even more adorable which the videos show...but you'll just have to see him in person)!

(In this photo below Mike is showing Tae his "100 day" photo -- an incredibly adorable professional photo we received today that was taken of him when he was 100 days old).

It is so clear how much he and his foster mom love each other. She is so good to him and he is so attached to her. It's likely that it will be a difficult transition for both of them when they have to say goodbye on Monday.

We also spent a great day touring Seoul with 2 young women tour guides and one other couple from New Jersey adopting through Holt. We saw Gyongbokgung Palace (one of the 5 famous palaces in Seoul from the Joseon dynasty in Korea), toured 2 fabulous markets, had lunch on the floor at a fantastic restaurant (we have eaten some excellent food in Korea!), and tonight we got our American fix eating at TGI Fridays with two other Holt couples. It's been good to share this experience with others going through the same thing. It's truly surreal to think that this little boy with whom we've only spent 2 hours has already changed our lives completely -- he is God's greatest blessing to us!

(here's the changing of the guard at the palace:)

Our lunch today:

Thanks for checking in on us here in Korea. We plan the next couple days to enjoy more sights of Seoul and shop back at the markets. Blessings and love to you across the ocean!