On Year Ago Today: The Young Family of 3

April 29, 2009

On April 29, 2009, we spent the morning with Rai's foster mother (Omma) at a beautiful flower park. Omma brought us back in time to run back to our hotel room and pick up some flowers and prepare ourselves for the big transition! We walked back into Holt-Korea's office excited to receive Rai and yet sad that Rai and his foster family would be separated after 16 months together. All Rai had ever known was this family, and although his foster family had fostered other children, we knew this wouldn't be easy. We, ourselves, did not look forward to saying goodbye to them either. We had grown to spend so much time with Omma, and the thought of this rough transition made our hearts sink.

But one year ago, we did make that transition starting with a set of instructions to care for Rai, legal instructions for the airports, the reading of a letter we had written (although Aaron had really started after being so inspired by Omma), and pictures with both Omma and Appa. The look on Appa's face when a Holt worker took Rai out of his arms and into mine was very difficult to watch. Although he was quiet through most of this process, we knew he was such a wonderful father to Rai. Now looking at the pictures, it is nice to see Rai and his foster family's personalities and how they interacted together.

One year ago, we each held Rai's hands and lifted him up in a game Omma taught us and walked across the street from Holt to our hotel. We walked these several blocks either playing games or singing songs in hopes that Rai wouldn't turn around in panic. Luckily, he didn't panic and remained in play-mode for the entire remainder of our trip. After an hour of play, we successfully got him to nap and just stared at him with a surreal feeling. "We're parents," we thought. "We're really parents."

April 29, 2010

Today was a bit of a "normal" day. Aaron and I had to work, and Rai went to preschool. I came home in time to play outside with the boys as Rai tried to push his toy lawn mower across our grass. We will celebrate "Airplane Day" or maybe we'll call it "America Day" tomorrow since this is the anniversary of Rai's big 12.5 hour airplane ride from Seoul, South Korea to Dallas, Texas. In the meantime, today is our official Family Day. The day the Young family gained a new family member and the day our family came together with Rai's foster family. Family day is truly a celebrate of our two families.

We hope to call Omma and Appa this weekend. I'm trying to collect any information Omma and Appa might want to know, such as how much Rai weighs and how tall he is (in the metric system of course). Although this is an exciting time of year for us, I can imagine this is hard for Omma and Appa. Hopefully, just hearing his voice will bring some comfort. (But we are very excited to call and very thankful to have so many willing Korean translators.)