The Newest Verdigets
Today was such a full day! We arrived at the agency a little early and sat in the little room waiting to meet our son. Turns out, the worker thought we went upstairs for our scheduled meeting…we were waiting for someone to bring us there…we ended up being late to meet Benjamin! All is well though! Our first meeting went well (most of it anyway). He is absolutely adorable! He’s got two teeth from what we could see…he’s crawling all over the place…loves toys and loves to throw them…we can tell he has quite a little personality…and the pics did not lie, he’s a big boy (Nana, we’ll get a size at our meeting tomorrow. He’s definitely bigger than Ollie)!
His foster parents are amazing! They were both there, and so very gracious when we met them. You can tell they are completely in love with this baby. They were full of information and stories to share. We were marveling at how foster parents are able to do what they do. We couldn’t be happier with the people that were taking care of our son for so many months! - We have two photo albums of pictures - some from the very first day they got him. The foster father also gave us nine CD’s full of pictures and a a mini DV tape of movies. They also gave us a beautiful hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) as well as a special gift for him for his Tol (his first birthday celebration).
Benjamin is a little bit afraid of strangers. We were fine when we all sat together and played, but when we were left alone with him, he cried for his foster family and kept looking around for them. It broke our hearts. Luckily, both foster parents want us to spend as much time with him as we can before we leave. We get to meet with him again tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll recognize us and will begin to feel a bit more comfortable. We were invited to the church of the foster family because the minister is going to pray for Benjamin. Our social worker cannot go with us, so we don’t think we’ll be able to go.
Here is the link to photos, just click on October
After all this, we had lunch with the Chief Operating Officer of Eastern. We had a nice time chatting with him as well as with another family from New South Wales. They were here on a homeland tour. They adopted their son from Korea ten years ago and then another Korean-Aussie born daughter two years later. (They were very nice…gave us tips on where to go and how to get around on the subway).
Finally, we got to hold the babies! Eastern has a small nursery/hospital for newborn babies waiting for foster families. We were able to go into one of the rooms and hold and snuggle the babies. Benjamin actually spent some time there before he went to his foster home. - There was one little baby boy that Brad got to hold while we were there. Of course, he just smiled and smiled at Brad the whole time. (Does that surprise anyone?) I held one little baby for a while, but couldn’t help myself. I had to pick up a few others as well.
The day was amazing. We hope Benjamin gets more familiar with us in the coming days so he isn’t so upset when we leave Monday. Check back again tomorrow!