Life has calmed down quite a bit. My life is filled with little amazing moments that revolve around my beautiful wife and my amazing Julian. It’s all these little moments that I am realizing complete my life and make everything I do worth while. Julian is the happiest, most playful little boy I have ever met. My favorite part of the day is when I get home and open that front door to see those eyes brighten up and that smile. Julian always giggles because he knows Appa is home to play. And play I do. Im the guy in Julian’s life that makes him laugh. I make silly faces. I do what ever I can to make sure that Julian is happy and laughing. Sometimes I wake up at night to find Julian laughing in his sleep. I can’t help but think that he is dreaming of Appa making faces or being silly for his benefit. That alone is worth the lengths I go to make him laugh.
He is a really smart boy. He amazes me everday with new things he does. His current task is learning to walk all the time and not for just brief moments. He likes to grab me by the hand and put it above his head in an obvious ploy to get me to take him for a walk. I really enjoy walking him around the house. He is so determined.

Well, the last few months have been incredible. Our boy came home just in time for Thanksgiving. We were fortunate enough to spend an amazing Christmas with him, a new Year, and now his first birthday. I feel like these months went by so fast. Everything was crazy and I felt like I couldn’t keep up. I am now just starting to catch up with the events in my life.
Life is starting to settle down a bit and return to normalcy. Julian is doing amazing. He is an incredibly smart kid with an amazing sense of humor and playfulness. Jo-Ann and I feel so lucky to have such a great kid in our lives.
The other day we were attending a service at a new Church we had just joined. The pastor talked about people in the congregation writing “their Story” on how Jesus has impacted their lives. I can’t help but feel blessed and have been outlining my story in my head for submission. I think about all the delay and trouble we went through to get to where we are today. Completely worth it and I can’t help but feel like it was all part of a larger plan. I have determined that all the delay we encounted was really because the child that was meant for us was not yet available. Julian was not ready for us yet. We did not know God’s plan at the time. Now it is clear. And Julian is a gift. Beautiful. Fun.
He has adapted so well to his new home and all the new strange smells. All the new sounds. Man, when I think about it, I can’t help but feel like he is such a brave little boy. It really is inspirational. I guess that is the word that best describes him, an inspiration.
One night I came home from a long night of work, Jo-Ann and Julian had already gone to bed, I walked into the bedroom and saw little Julian sleeping right next to his Momma. An interesting thought came over me. This is my family. This is my baby and the love of my life next to each other. Sleeping peacefully. How amazing. I had to take a picture, quietly of course.

Believe it or not, we have received word that our son, Julian, will be arriving on Friday. We are to make preparations to pick him up and take him home. Finally. Everyone has read my blogs and has spoken to me in person and has felt my anticipation to this moment. You all supported me and Jo-Ann. For that I am grateful. He is coming home for good. No more waiting, no more trying to figure out a system that seems to have many rules but yet no definite time frame, regardless of what you do or how you try to position yourself. The road to Julian has been long and has been filled with every possible human emotion, but it is coming to its destination. Julian will be home sleeping in his own bed and wearing his new clothes. The bonus: Our first TV broadcast of the Islanders game is Saturday. Hopefully, he is up to it given the time difference and his long plane ride the day before.
As Jo-Ann has already stated, we will be spending some time with him alone. He needs to adjust to a lot of things. We ask for your patience but hope to see you all soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this song I wrote and recorded celebrating this day.


“Our Son is Coming Home”

We received word that the US Government has officially approved our fingerprints (for the second time) and have issued a consent to bring Julian into our country to join our family. At the same time they are sending us this certificate, they are sending a copy to Korea to start the application for Julian’s visa. The official date of approval was September 30th. We are told his application for a visa could take up to 4 to 6 weeks.
4 to 6 weeks is a length of time that I am noticing is a recurring theme in life. Everybody likes to use 4 to 6 weeks for an appropriate length of wait time. Not too much time but not too little. Not encouraging but certainly not discouraging. A month to a little more than a month. If you say 4 to 8 weeks, now that changes the whole dynamic of the wait time quite a bit. It is then looked upon as 2 months! That would be crazy! 2 months! So they say 4 to 6 weeks. Doesn’t feel as long.
The truth is it is long, regardless. A whole month or maybe more to issue a visa? But as I dig deeper into the process, I realize that the forms sent from our Government need to be approved, then re-approved and re-re-approved. So I get it. We are excited that finally we have a clear window of when he will be coming home. It will be as we expected, either the end of this month or the middle of November.
Jo-Ann and I are hoping that Julian would be home to celebrate Halloween with us. There is still hope that he may arrive before the end of this month, it is a slim chance but still a chance. Would be fun. Jo-Ann and I have already purchased a costume for him. A Skeleton. It is a black sweatsuit with skeleton bones printed on it. Complete with black converse high tops. He will look like a member of the Cobra Ki in Karate Kid when they were at the Halloween dance. We have dreams of taking him for a walk around the neighborhood and having fun as first time parents would on Halloween.
We are looking forward and praying that we have the opportunity to at least spend Thanksgiving with him. It is a time of family and Thanksgiving would not feel right with him all the way over in Korea and us here on the other side of the world. Even though I never actually held Julian in my arms, he is my Son and I am his Appa. I am proud of his accomplishments and I am preparing to be encouraging in his development. The simple truth is, I want our Son to come home and complete our family. Hopefully that will be soon.

By now most of you have already read Jo-Ann’s blog and have been informed of our recent update from Korea. Julian is doing well and developing amazingly. He is growing, he is eating properly, he is creeping around and get this, he is even talking a bit. He apparently has a three word vocabulary. His foster mother is doing an amazing job. It is apparent that she is spending time with Julian and teaching/ playing with him. We even received some pictures of him playing. The update says he loves music and he likes to imitate car sounds. There is even some pictures of him in front of a kiddy piano in a blatant attempt to bang on the keys. He is smiling in every picture.
The update comes at a good time. So much time has passed that we were beginning to feel like Julian is so far away and we will never get a chance to meet him. The only pictures that we have of him are when he was 4 months old. He is now just about 8 months. The update brings him closer to us by giving us a glimpse of what he has become in this 4 months of waiting. It was exciting to see the pictures and really kind of crazy to see him in front of a piano of all things. He is becoming a little boy and the only thing that makes me sad about that is we are missing it. The pictures give us a glimpse of it, though, but not enough. I want nothing more than for this process to hurry itself up. It will be soon I keep telling myself and Jo-Ann. Not long now.
We went for our second fingerprints last week. The guy at immigration that took our prints was telling us “it’s not long now, usually people come in for their second prints, the baby comes home shortly after”. Gives us a little hope. All we are waiting for is clearance of our fingerprints, then the issuance of a visa for him to travel. Red tape, red tape, red tape.

It is starting to get colder outside, which is good because we know that the colder it gets outside, the closer to Julian coming home we are. Julian is 7 months old now. We have been waiting for him to come home since he was 5 months old. The anticipation to his arrival is getting exhausting. We still have not received any new news regarding our application to bring Julian home. We hope to hear from our Government very soon.
In the meantime, we are getting his room in good shape. Jo-Ann and I have been stocking up on books and toys for him. Still a little apprehensive about buying diapers and formula because of the uncertainty of his exact arrival. Even clothes are a little hard to buy. There are of course the things that we definitely want to have for him. Such as, a little pair of converse all-stars and a Ramones t-shirt. Of course he needs an Islanders jersey so that he can root for the Isles along side Daddy. I think it will be pretty cool siting next to my son and watching the Islanders, each of us with our jerseys on.
It has been almost 2 weeks since we sent him the care package with the blanket and cameras. We can only assume that he has received this package and it thrills me to think that he is snuggling with that soft blanket as I write this. I can picture him just like Jo-Ann with his little face pressed up against the smooth, soft blanket, sleeping.
It is exciting to think that we may receive some new pictures of Julian from his foster mom. He will be 3 months older than the last set of pictures that we got. He probably got a lot bigger.

Well, it should be any day now that we receive our US approval to bring Julian home. Somehow you begin to tell yourself that you will be the exception. That everybody else waits 4 to 6 weeks, but you will be the one that it all happens in a flash. I have learned throughout this ordeal that it never is that way. But you always tell yourself that it is, I guess mostly to dream and make the wait easier, mentally. The truth is that nothing in this world is smooth and easy. Nothing worth much ever is and Julian is the golden trinket, the “Pink Panther” diamond (if you will) of a thing to wait for. So patience is a virtue and all we can do is prepare and make sure every last detail is addressed.
We begin to think towards the day that Julian comes to JFK. How shall we get there? What should we bring? What if he does not like us? I know at least the latter I have no need to worry. Jo-Ann, as most of you all know, is amazing with children. She has this amazing gift where children gravitate toward her. I think it is in her nature to be a mother. I sometimes question my own fathering abilities, but never her capacity to be a mother. If any of you have seen her with her nephew you would understand. Even nieces and nephews on my side, all love her. She is blessed with the ability to be a natural mother. Thank God for that.
We also have been thinking about how to make the transition from foster care to home. We have been preparing a package of things to send to his foster parents so that this transition can be easier. We fully accept that he is gonna be a bit cranky in the beginning. Given that he will be traveling half way around the world to a different time zone entirely to people he has never seen before. We figure the album that we send him with pictures of Jo-Ann and I will help with that. Hopefully, his foster mother can show Julian the pictures to help him get acquainted with Mommy and Daddy.
Jo-Ann has also been sleeping with this beautifully soft blanket we are sending him. Our hope is that he will sleep with this blanket in his foster home and get acquainted with our smell. It doesn’t hurt to try, at least when he comes home he will have something that is familiar with him. You should see Jo-Ann all snuggled up with the blanket in her arms. It fills me with hope and joy to see that and reminds me of why we wanted to do this in the first place.
I really can’t wait to see Julian in person. It is so odd, to miss someone you never met. In my mind he is missing us too, but he doesn’t know it yet.

Julian is 6 months old today. I can’t wait to meet him. Going by weather reports, it looks like it was a fairly nice day in Seoul. It has been very similar weather in Seoul as it is here. It has become a daily routine for me not only to check the weather here but to see what weather is like for our son. Keeps me feeling connected to him.
We are still waiting for our US approval to bring Julian to this country. We already have approval to bring an orphan into the country, but now we need to have approval to bring a specific child into the country. I believe the approval will come to us in the mail. We then need to inform our Agency of its arrival so that the we can then start the application for Julian’s visa. Now you see why they say approximately 4 months is the average wait time for a child to come home.
Meanwhile, we continue to build his toy and book collection. We are making final adjustments on his room. Clothes, we are a little apprehensive about buying at this moment because of the uncertainty of when he will be coming home. Most likely it will be in October and he will be almost 9 months, but what size will he be? We can follow a chart on male Korean growth patterns, of which he is currently on the bottom portion of the normal range of a Korean child, but kids do have a tendency to have growth spurts. So, we decided to wait until it is closer to his arrival to focus our attention on selecting his clothes.
The waiting time is not completely up in the air, we will have some sort of sense of when he will be coming home. When we receive approval from our Government, it will then take 4 to 6 weeks after that to get his visa. Then when we get his visa, it could essentially be any time after that. So there are steps that need to be completed. A checklist of things that need to happen before we are sure of when he will be arriving. So we just check the mail everyday, hoping for that I-600 approval and continue to focus on things that we can control.

We continue to wait. The agency has told us that all the clearances that Julian needs to come to the United States may take up to 4 months. Wow, 3 years ago we started this journey and now we are near the end. We will soon be a family.
I knew this was gonna be the wait that would feel the longest. I tried to prepare myself, but how could you prepare for something like this? I try to keep sane by focusing on the things that need to be done. Preparations need to be made. The room needs to be painted and wainscotting needs to be built and installed. Preparations need to be made. I naturally focus on things that I have control over. Government approval and red tape, I have no control over. So I try and not focus on it. Baby monitors need to be installed and shelves need to be hanged. That I can control.
On a positive note, we did receive an update on Julian from SWS, which stated that he is doing well with his foster family. That was nice to know he is well taken care of in the meantime. We are putting together a package to be sent to Julian’s foster family consisting of a blanket, disposable cameras and some pictures of us for him to see.

It was exactly 3 years ago today that Jo-Ann and I went to our first program meeting at the agency. We were contemplating adoption for almost a year before we decided that it was the right time to pursue our adoption. We took a 3 day trip into the city for my birthday with the main purpose of going to the first 2 informational meetings at our agency. Now exactly 3 years later Jo-Ann and I took a trip into the city to go to the agency to make our adoption of Julian official.
It is a great feeling realizing for the first time that this child is ours, officially. The paperwork will be sent tomorrow to Korea and our official countdown to Julian can start. Now it is all legal stuff that needs to happen. Basically stuff that is out of our control. We did our part and now we wait for Julian to be cleared to come to the United States. Visa’s need to be issued, etc, etc. The main thing is he is ours and we can take the time to finalize his room and make preparations for his arrival.
We were also told that we will be updated on Julian’s progress while we wait for him to come home.

We are on the final lap of bringing home our Son, Julian. Today we received a whole bunch of paperwork that is associated with the official acceptance of the referral. Some government forms and legal documents. We are more than happy to fill out whatever makes this process move along. After the amount of paperwork that we have already done, this seems so small. All the forms need to be filled out in quadruplicate. More scanning of the completed forms to PDF documents, so that we can email the results to our social worker for her approval. Then try to complete the rest of the copies in time to be sent out to Korea on Friday. That’s when the official countdown to Julian coming home can start.
In the paperwork was a piece of paper that stated what we can do in the meantime. They suggest that we send some close-up pictures of Mommy and Daddy to the foster family so that Julian can see pictures of us. It apparently helps in recognition, basically so that he may become familiar with our faces before he comes. We can also send over a disposable camera, so that the foster family can document the progress of Julian over the months that he waits to come home. A very cool idea. One that Jo-Ann and I are very excited about. We currently only have pictures of him at 4 months old.

Today is crib day. Our crib we ordered weeks ago arrives today. I have been making preparations for Julian’s room for a few weeks. Oh, by the way Jo-Ann and I have finally come to a decision on a name for our son. Julian. We fell in love with the name Julian after looking through a name book that our friend Jen had given to us to check out. I saw it and quickly called Jo-Ann to tell her. She liked it too. Julian Richard. Jude for short.
Like I was saying, I have been making preparations for Julian’s room for some time now. Painting and wainscotting. Wiring a speaker system in his room that is controlled from our room, so that Julian can have some light music to help aid him in his sleep. We were able to find this really cool laser projector that projects moving stars on the ceiling. It claims to have random shooting stars, but I have stared at the stars projected by this device many times and never once saw one. Maybe they are as rare as they are in real life?
Jo-Ann has also joined the world of Blogging. You can check out her blog at AdoptingJude.com. We were waiting to decide on a name before she started her blog. She officially launched it last night.
So the room. Like I said we ordered a crib a few weeks ago with a dresser. They are very dark in color, espresso I believe is the color. It has solid wood construction and the crib can be converted into a toddler bed and then eventually into a full size bed. I wanted to get something that Julian can use for a long time. It will look very nice with the green walls and the white wainscotting that I did. We are currently in search of a gliding chair for those long nights when Julian needs a little comforting to sleep. A book shelf for his books, of which Jo-Ann plans to have many. I guess she figures that Jo-Ann and I were both book people when we were kids and hopes to promote Julian in the same direction. Besides, she is a teacher. Teacher knows best.
We have been a little apprehensive about mattresses, though. One store salesperson said that we are best off buying a mattress that is 2 sided. One side is a little harder for a baby and the other side is softer for a toddler. Seems to make sense. But then we go to another store and they tell us that all mattresses are that way. Hmm. So we are still doing research on mattresses. Plus, we have the added issue that Korean children very often sleep on hard beds or even the floor. They are used to little or no cushioning. So that is an extra consideration.
I took some shots of the crib and dresser in the room for you all to see. Next is the theme, of which Jo-Ann has already decided, somewhat. Teddy Bears. I will keep you informed.

Over the last couple of days, Jo-Ann and I have been trying to come back down from the high of the news we learned about our son just a few days earlier. We have been spending a lot of time talking about preparations and looking into baby needs and supplies. Which is easier, now that we have all the necessary stats on our son. We found a great adoption doctor in Manhattan, who has reviewed the referral and so far has giving all really good, positive reports. He is in good health and has been well taken care of since his birth on January 27th of this year. We were very pleased to hear that news.
Today we need to talk to our social worker and discuss the next step. Which is to formally accept the referral. From there, a new set of legal paperwork needs to be filled out and the journey to him coming home becomes that much closer.
Still no definite news about a name. Jo-Ann and I are still in some disagreement about this subject. It is really hard, even having a picture of the child does not help. You would think that it would be as simple as looking at a child and only one name could possibly fit. I can only be comforted by the fact that if there is disagreement between Jo-Ann and I, then we just haven’t come across that one special name that is his name. But I am confident that we will.
This has been an exciting time in our lives. We have been spending a ton of time browsing baby shops and trying to design our son’s new room. Which as most of you probably know started about 5 years ago when we were doing construction on our house. When I was designing the new layout of our home, I made special provisions for a future baby’s room that would help make the room both safe and close enough to Jo-Ann and I to make us feel comfortable and be convenient enough with a new baby. Coming up with a theme has been more difficult than I would have liked it to be. But, I am confident that we will come to some type of agreement. More on that later in the week when our crib arrives and then the real fun begins.

As you all know we have been waiting for some time for a referral of our child from Korea. Well the day has finally arrived. I was outside doing some lawn and garden work when I got the call from our social worker at the agency. When she told me the news, I asked if it was a girl or a boy. She replied, It’s a little boy. Everything after that I did not hear. Not that I was not interested mind you, but that my mind was trying to compute It’s a boy! I then got the opportunity to share this news with my wife. I quickly called her. What an amazing moment. Luckly, Jo-Ann and I were both available to stop everything and go into the city to meet with our social worker and see the first pictures of our Son. We took the train in. Of all the years that I have taken the train, this was by far the longest train ride ever. The initial call was at 11:50 am, we were in the agencies office by 2:30pm the same day. The social worker handed us a folder and some pictures. The first pictures we were to see of our son. We read about our son's history and medical reports. Korea is very thorough in their child referrals. We learned just about everything we need to know about him. There was some medical stuff that we need to give to a doctor who is experienced in adoption referrals, but all in all a good day. Jo-Ann and I, excited about the referral, decided to celebrate at her favorite restaurant, Penang. The next step is to talk to the referral doctor and then we need to formally accept the referral and then more waiting. The social worker told us that it may be up to 4 months before we can meet our son. In the meantime we have some "nesting" to do. We have been starting to think about nursery themes and colors. Before we got a referral it was so difficult to focus on these things because we didn't know the age or the sex of the child. Everything we bought in preparation had to be generic. Good for both a little girl and a little boy. Oh and picking a name. That should be interesting, since Jo-Ann and I have not been able to agree on names. But we will see...