Little Miss Emma

Isn't she adorable! We met the social worker at 9am and drove for 1 hour to the foster mothers home. She lives in a condo and greeted us with Emma as we got off the elevator. Emma was very tired but was fascinate by us. We probably didn't help by pulling out the camera and shooting a million pictures of her! She is crawling now and cruising on furniture. The foster mother says she can even climb on the couch. She says she is a great eater....finally one that likes to eat! She weighs 20lbs. After a few minutes of playing with her she let me hold her. The foster mother says she is very social and talkative. She doesn't like loud noises like the vacuum and she wasn't sure how well she would do on the airplane with the noise.

Emma doesn't like her bottle and eats rice and chicken for lunch. She has 2 bottom teeth and chews very well. We even saw her eat a whole strawberry. Apparently, they don't cut things up like we do in the U.S! She goes to bed at 1am...yes 1am and sleeps until 11:00. That will definitely have to change! And she take 2 naps. She said when she was tired she goes to her pink blanket, sucks her thumb and lays down! In fact, looks at the picture below and you can see her laying on it!


After we were done playing, we gave the foster mother her gifts and she gave us some. She gave Emma her 1 yr old Hanbok, some Korean figures and gifts for Davis and Leah which were Hanboks as well. The best gift of all was a huge photo album she made with a million pictures of Emma since she was a baby! She captured everything and hand wrote captions which were translated into English. Here is a picture of all the gifts. The 2 wrapped ones are for the kids.



I could go on about how fine of a person her foster mother is. Emma is her 9th foster child and our social worker said she is getting another baby. You could see how much Emma was loved and how much Emma loved her. Friday will be a very emotional day.



Our social worker is very nice. She has 2 young kids of her own and has been working as a SW for 15 years. She said that Korea has been trying for the past 50 years to close intercountry adoptions but it hasn't happened and she doesn't see it happening any time soon. She said they have a hard time finding foster families. High school kids in Korea go to school from 7am until 10pm! She said that the guest house we are staying at is used for adoptive families but adoptees can stay for free if they want to return to visit Korea.

We met another couple from Kentucky staying across the hall. We were walking out of our room and she opened the door and said I thought I heard English! They are a very nice couple that have 2 girls (5 and 7) and are adopting a boy. A few hotels away is another couple that are adopting a boy also and have 2 girls at home. In another hotel is another family from Goldsboro, NC that is adopting their first child. We met everyone at SWS this morning! It is so nice to have people in the same situation! We are going to be doing some sightseeing and eating together.