Dani has been with us 4 weeks today and it’s her 2nd birthday! She is such a delight and she has added even more joy to our family. When she smiles her entire face lights up! It’s amazing and I hope she is always that way. We are all still getting to know each other and we can tell she is understanding more English every day. I expect that she will surprise us and start saying a lot of words at once.
Here is what she is saying clearly as of today:
Shoes, Go! Mama, Dada, Uh Oh, No!
We can also tell she is trying to say Thank You. She will go lay down if we say she needs a diaper change. I know she understands up, down, zip, go, stop, sit, stand up, your chair (as in go to your chair so we can eat), drink, eat, no, brush your teeth, change clothes, it’s time to go and more that I just can’t think of right now. In the last day or so she is more willing to wave hello or goodbye to people who do it to her first. Most the of the time though if a stranger gets too close to her she will either cry, turn away or both. Her tantrums are still pretty frequent, and it’s obviously a very hard habit we are trying to break in her – she is clearly used to getting what she wants by screaming and thrashing.
We love this little girl so much and are so grateful that God has blessed our family with her! I can’t imagine our life without her.
Enjoying her birthday cake by grabbing the entire slice and taking a bite.
Fresh out of the bath and after having her teeth brushed.
We woke up with the end of our trip in sight! We got up and made sure that our bags were packed, and we headed downstairs for the buffet. After breakfast we checked out and waited around in the Hyatt lobby for the bus to take us back to the airport.
Nadia said she was the queen in this seat in the back of the bus.
The family bathroom in the Seoul airport even had a tiny toilet for little kids.
Once arriving at the airport we went to the Korean Air counter to check our seat situation and the woman said that 10 people bought tickets overnight, but the middle seats were still open with 2 hours to go. We got through security and let the girls play in one of the play areas inside the airport. We boarded the plane first with the other parents of small children and waited to see if anyone would take the seats in between us. They didn’t, so I did a little Snoopy dance in my seat! Our flight took off at 11:35 am on Friday the 14th.
Ready to get home.
Dani happily sat in the seat next to me for the entire flight. She only wanted me to hold her one time, but for the bulk of the flight she was content to sit and play. She slept for about an hour and enjoyed all the meals, snacks and juice that was offered by the flight attendants. She had three small crying fits/tantrums – two when I went to the bathroom and one when I didn’t cut up her tomato fast enough to feed it to her. Amelie sat in the row behind us with Mike and watched movies, colored and slept. Nadia sat on the other side of Dani and watched “Frozen” 6.5 times. She didn’t sleep at all 🙂 We landed in DFW at 9:27 am on Friday the 14th, about two hours before we took off. We explained to Nadia about the time change one more time, but I would have rather just said the airplane was like the TARDIS. We got in the immigration line and after half an hour made it to an officer. He scanned our passports, took our brown envelope, from the consulate, and took us over to a waiting room. In the end it took us 2 hours to get through immigration because there were so many people who flew in around the same time as us.
This is what Dani thought of the wait after only having 1 hour sleep.
We were so happy to see Roger and Paula at the airport. They brought our car so we could drive right home.
First time in the car seat. She was asleep before we got 3 miles down the road.
We got home and the girls were thrilled to see all their stuff and their rooms. We took Dani into our room and just laid her down on a blanket by the bed. We didn’t want her to wake up in her room in a new crib and not know where we were. Then the rest of us changed into our PJ’s and took a nap too since it had been a really long day.
After naps we all went into the backyard to enjoy the sun. My friend Sarah and her girls showed up with fresh veggies, fruit and milk and had a little playdate for the big girls. Once they were gone we took Dani into the house to see her room and play in there for a while so she could get used to it. She was really cute checking out all the new stuff in her room to play with.
We had dinner and got everyone to bed. Dani screamed quite a bit in her sleep and jet lag woke us up so we brought her down with us to play for a bit. She quickly found the Radio Flyer car and had a blast giggling and laughing as she played. Then at around 3 am we tried to get back to sleep at least for a little while.
As always, I was SO HAPPY to be home. I was thrilled we made it through the trip with no one getting sick (a first for us on an adoption trip) and it was so nice to be able to sleep on our nice, soft beds. The girls were happy they didn’t have to worry about the tap water any more, which made me laugh and agree with them. To quote Mary Poppins, this trip was practically perfect in every way. We are so grateful for those who have followed along and offered prayers on our behalf.
