After my post about Clarissa's middle name I had questions about her Korean name and if we plan to incorporate that with her American name.
This is something that we've been discussing for a long time. A lot of adoptive families use their childs Korean name as a middle name and we decided that we'd wait to see what her Korean name was and then decide. Sometimes the birth mother gives the baby the name and other times a social worker does it. We decided a long time ago that if her birth mother named her, we would use that name as her middle name. We figured that if she named her it was probably something special to her and we wanted Clarissa to keep it.
When we got the referral we learned two things. First, Clarissa's name was given to her by her social worker and not her mother, and second, it's a little hard to pronounce without a little practice! We talked about giving her two middle names, her Korean name and an American name, but I think that's just too many names.
Part of Clarissa's Korean name means "grace", so we thought about going with Clarissa Grace, which I think is pretty. That was a definite possibility for a while.
We spent a while discussing the options and in the end we finally decided to take it to a family vote and Rose won. We had picked out Rose a long time ago as a possibility and we all agreed that Rose was the name we all loved the most.
Clarissa will always know her Korean name and I plan to have a Korean scroll made for her room with her Korean name on it. Her Korean name is beautiful and will always be special to us and hopefully to her. It's just not going to be part of her legal name.
Now for a little trivia about my family! Giving our daughter a middle name at all is breaking a long standing family tradition. No females in my family have a middle name. My grandma doesn't have one, my mom doesn't have one, I don't have one, my sister doesn't have one, my sisters daughters don't have one...I'm totally the rebel by giving my daughter a middle name, lol.
I don't really know why that's a tradition in our family, it just is. I've never minded not having a middle name, that's just normal in my family. But it's important to me to give middle names to my kids that that honor someone from our family history. We put a lot of thought into our boys middle names. Josh's middle name is my dad's name, who passed away before Josh was born, and Matthew's middle name is my husband's great grandfather's name, who has a neat life story. I didn't want to leave Clarissa out of that tradition. But you can see why the thought of giving her TWO middle names seems like too much to me. Even giving our daughter ONE is breaking tradition!
So there is the rest of the middle name story. It's been a hot topic around here for quite a while. Coming up with a name is a big responsibility as it is and I especially worried about it with Clarissa since we weren't quite sure what to do about her Korean name. We feel good about our decision though and hopefully when Clarissa is older she'll enjoy hearing the story of where her name came from.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Clarissa's middle name
A comment just reminded me that I was going to tell the story of Clarissa's middle name.
Her middle will be Rose, which is my great-grandmothers name. Actually, she's technically NOT my great-grandmother, she's not even a blood relative. But she had an important part in our family and even though she died when I was a baby I've grown up hearing stories of what a wonderful person she is.
When my grandpa was a baby around 1920, his mother died of the flu. His father wasn't able to care for my grandpa on his own so my grandpa's mothers best friend Rose stepped in and offered to raise him. She didn't have any kids of her own and she was a wonderful mother to my grandpa. I've grown up hearing stories of what a wonderful, happy, caring person my great grandmother Rose was.
The next part of the story might not make sense if you're not LDS, but I'll try to explain it the best I can. In our religion we believe that we have the opportunity to be with our family after we die, but in order to do that there is a ceremony that is performed in a temple that "seals" us together for eternity. That's something that is extremely important to us in our religion. My great grandmother Rose had raised my grandpa from the time he was a newborn and she was the only mother he knew. She could have legally adopted him and had him sealed to her in the temple so that they would be together for eternity. That's what we'll be doing with Clarissa. Once she's legally adopted and sealed to our family, she's considered a member of our eternal family and we believe that we all have the opportunity to be together again after death.
But Rose chose not to do that. As much as she loved my grandpa and treated him as her own child, she loved his mother so much that she wanted him to be with her again when he died. So she never officially adopted him and when he was old enough she went to the temple with him and stood in for my grandpa's mother as a proxy in the ceremony and had him sealed to her.
The significance of that might be hard to understand for someone not of our religion, but that was quite a sacrifice for her to make. What a wonderful example of friendship.
Rose lived to be quite old and dedicated her life to serving others. Though I have no memories of her (She died a few months after I was born), I've grown up hearing stories of her and what a wonderful, kind hearted person she was. I love reading her life history and learning more about her. I wish that I had gotten the opportunity to know her.
When it came time to give Clarissa a middle name, Rose was the very first person who came to my mind. She knew what it was like to raise a child who wasn't biologically hers and she loved my grandpa like her own. We have given all of our kids middle names in honor of people in our family history. We carefully pick the name of someone in our family who has passed who we hope that our children will want to learn more about and use as an example in their lives. I can't think of any better example for Clarissa than Rose. I hope that Clarissa grows to be a kind, loving person just like her great-great-grandmother Rose.
So Clarissa's name is pretty special to us. She's named after two strong women in our family history (If you haven't heard the story behind Clarissa's first name, click here: http://www.heartontheline.com/2008/05/whats-in-name.html and here:http://www.heartontheline.com/2008/08/she-lived-in-righteousness-and-died.html) and I hope that when she's older she'll want to learn about those women and use their example as a guide in her life.
Clarissa Rose. Two special names for a very special little girl. :)
Her middle will be Rose, which is my great-grandmothers name. Actually, she's technically NOT my great-grandmother, she's not even a blood relative. But she had an important part in our family and even though she died when I was a baby I've grown up hearing stories of what a wonderful person she is.
When my grandpa was a baby around 1920, his mother died of the flu. His father wasn't able to care for my grandpa on his own so my grandpa's mothers best friend Rose stepped in and offered to raise him. She didn't have any kids of her own and she was a wonderful mother to my grandpa. I've grown up hearing stories of what a wonderful, happy, caring person my great grandmother Rose was.
The next part of the story might not make sense if you're not LDS, but I'll try to explain it the best I can. In our religion we believe that we have the opportunity to be with our family after we die, but in order to do that there is a ceremony that is performed in a temple that "seals" us together for eternity. That's something that is extremely important to us in our religion. My great grandmother Rose had raised my grandpa from the time he was a newborn and she was the only mother he knew. She could have legally adopted him and had him sealed to her in the temple so that they would be together for eternity. That's what we'll be doing with Clarissa. Once she's legally adopted and sealed to our family, she's considered a member of our eternal family and we believe that we all have the opportunity to be together again after death.
But Rose chose not to do that. As much as she loved my grandpa and treated him as her own child, she loved his mother so much that she wanted him to be with her again when he died. So she never officially adopted him and when he was old enough she went to the temple with him and stood in for my grandpa's mother as a proxy in the ceremony and had him sealed to her.
The significance of that might be hard to understand for someone not of our religion, but that was quite a sacrifice for her to make. What a wonderful example of friendship.
Rose lived to be quite old and dedicated her life to serving others. Though I have no memories of her (She died a few months after I was born), I've grown up hearing stories of her and what a wonderful, kind hearted person she was. I love reading her life history and learning more about her. I wish that I had gotten the opportunity to know her.
When it came time to give Clarissa a middle name, Rose was the very first person who came to my mind. She knew what it was like to raise a child who wasn't biologically hers and she loved my grandpa like her own. We have given all of our kids middle names in honor of people in our family history. We carefully pick the name of someone in our family who has passed who we hope that our children will want to learn more about and use as an example in their lives. I can't think of any better example for Clarissa than Rose. I hope that Clarissa grows to be a kind, loving person just like her great-great-grandmother Rose.
So Clarissa's name is pretty special to us. She's named after two strong women in our family history (If you haven't heard the story behind Clarissa's first name, click here: http://www.heartontheline.com/2008/05/whats-in-name.html and here:http://www.heartontheline.com/2008/08/she-lived-in-righteousness-and-died.html) and I hope that when she's older she'll want to learn about those women and use their example as a guide in her life.
Clarissa Rose. Two special names for a very special little girl. :)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday
My blog has been kind of quiet lately. I'm struggling a little these days to juggle everything I have going on right now. A few years ago I went through a period of really extreme anxiety and panic attacks and after I was treated for them I got much better and haven't had problems in quite a while. But unfortunately all the chaos around here right now is kicking up the anxiety again.
I hate to even complain about my life right now because in the big picture we're extremely blessed and I am SO excited to bring Clarissa home. I'm not really worried about the adoption necessarily, I'm just really overwhelmed with life right now. Everything changed really quickly and it takes me a little bit to adjust to change. We just made the final ginormous payment to the adoption agency and now we're scrambling to save for our trip to Korea in a few months. It's definitely not cheap to spend a week in Korea and we're stressed about finances a bit after writing the second biggest check of our marriage to the adoption agency last week. The only check we've written bigger than that was for the down payment on our house! I get a little panicky when I see that much money leave our savings account at once!
Between the stress of that and finishing up some projects I needed to do and having a lot of stuff going on right now for my church job and planning to be out of town this weekend and wondering how we can possibly justify the expense of taking another trip (it's a family event that we really have to be there for), I'm just really overwhelmed and overloaded. I'm trying to take everything one at a time but things just keep flying at me from different angles and I'm having a really hard time keeping up. All of those things trigger my anxiety and then I'm really not much fun.
I know that things are going to work out fine in the end. When I think about bringing Clarissa into our lives I feel a lot of peace. This has always been something that I strongly believe that we've been led to do and I know that this is the right thing for our family. I'm looking forward to the day I can finally hold Clarissa in my arms and put all this adoption craziness behind us. The next few months are just going to be kind of a struggle though. Getting through the end of this process is nervewracking and overwhelming. The WAIT is easier for me now than it was before we got our referral, but life is a lot crazier now than it was back then. I'm mentally exhausted these days. I'm not sleeping well and I keep waking up in the morning with butterflies in my stomach.
So these days I'm doing a lot of praying and using a lot of relaxation techniques that I learned the last time I went through my anxiety issues and I know that everything will work out. I think we all go through these bumps in the road sometimes.
I hate making blog posts like this because I don't think everyone really wants to listen to me complain. But in the interest of wanting this blog to be an honest look at what it's like to adopt a baby from Korea, I think it's important to include the hard times. Adoption is fun and exciting but it's also scary and stressful at times.
But I don't want this post to end on a bad note, so let me tell you the good things that are going on these days. Yesterday I got the kids organized with a summer chore chart and they're being awesome about it. Josh is downstairs emptying the dishwasher right now and I didn't hear a single complaint about it. Way to go Josh! Yesterday I informed the kids that for the summer I was putting a strict limit on their computer time and giving them an expanded chore chart to do and I expected all kinds of grumbling, but I got none. I have sweet kids who are happy to help and I appreciate them so much. It's hard to get too down around here when I have such sweet kids who always make me smile.
Another thing I'm loving is how awesome the weather has been this summer!! Boise gets super hot in the summer, usually into the 100's (I've seen it hit 112!), which makes it kind of miserable to go outside a lot of days. But for some reason it's been cooler this summer. Several days recently have been in the 80's or low 90's. It's been really enjoyable to go outside without feeling like you're going to melt into a puddle. That definitely makes me happy!
Also, no matter how much stresss I have in my life right now, I have photos of Clarissa to look at and that makes me happy. I feel so blessed that we've been able to go through this adoption process and I'm so happy that we've made it through the long wait for the referral. There were times that I really thought it was never going to happen and it finally did. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the foster parents who are loving our sweet Clarissa until we can go get her and I'm grateful for whoever took the time to take photos of her so that I have something to hold on to while we wait.
Even with the stress, life is good and I'm grateful for it.
I hate to even complain about my life right now because in the big picture we're extremely blessed and I am SO excited to bring Clarissa home. I'm not really worried about the adoption necessarily, I'm just really overwhelmed with life right now. Everything changed really quickly and it takes me a little bit to adjust to change. We just made the final ginormous payment to the adoption agency and now we're scrambling to save for our trip to Korea in a few months. It's definitely not cheap to spend a week in Korea and we're stressed about finances a bit after writing the second biggest check of our marriage to the adoption agency last week. The only check we've written bigger than that was for the down payment on our house! I get a little panicky when I see that much money leave our savings account at once!
Between the stress of that and finishing up some projects I needed to do and having a lot of stuff going on right now for my church job and planning to be out of town this weekend and wondering how we can possibly justify the expense of taking another trip (it's a family event that we really have to be there for), I'm just really overwhelmed and overloaded. I'm trying to take everything one at a time but things just keep flying at me from different angles and I'm having a really hard time keeping up. All of those things trigger my anxiety and then I'm really not much fun.
I know that things are going to work out fine in the end. When I think about bringing Clarissa into our lives I feel a lot of peace. This has always been something that I strongly believe that we've been led to do and I know that this is the right thing for our family. I'm looking forward to the day I can finally hold Clarissa in my arms and put all this adoption craziness behind us. The next few months are just going to be kind of a struggle though. Getting through the end of this process is nervewracking and overwhelming. The WAIT is easier for me now than it was before we got our referral, but life is a lot crazier now than it was back then. I'm mentally exhausted these days. I'm not sleeping well and I keep waking up in the morning with butterflies in my stomach.
So these days I'm doing a lot of praying and using a lot of relaxation techniques that I learned the last time I went through my anxiety issues and I know that everything will work out. I think we all go through these bumps in the road sometimes.
I hate making blog posts like this because I don't think everyone really wants to listen to me complain. But in the interest of wanting this blog to be an honest look at what it's like to adopt a baby from Korea, I think it's important to include the hard times. Adoption is fun and exciting but it's also scary and stressful at times.
But I don't want this post to end on a bad note, so let me tell you the good things that are going on these days. Yesterday I got the kids organized with a summer chore chart and they're being awesome about it. Josh is downstairs emptying the dishwasher right now and I didn't hear a single complaint about it. Way to go Josh! Yesterday I informed the kids that for the summer I was putting a strict limit on their computer time and giving them an expanded chore chart to do and I expected all kinds of grumbling, but I got none. I have sweet kids who are happy to help and I appreciate them so much. It's hard to get too down around here when I have such sweet kids who always make me smile.
Another thing I'm loving is how awesome the weather has been this summer!! Boise gets super hot in the summer, usually into the 100's (I've seen it hit 112!), which makes it kind of miserable to go outside a lot of days. But for some reason it's been cooler this summer. Several days recently have been in the 80's or low 90's. It's been really enjoyable to go outside without feeling like you're going to melt into a puddle. That definitely makes me happy!
Also, no matter how much stresss I have in my life right now, I have photos of Clarissa to look at and that makes me happy. I feel so blessed that we've been able to go through this adoption process and I'm so happy that we've made it through the long wait for the referral. There were times that I really thought it was never going to happen and it finally did. I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the foster parents who are loving our sweet Clarissa until we can go get her and I'm grateful for whoever took the time to take photos of her so that I have something to hold on to while we wait.
Even with the stress, life is good and I'm grateful for it.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Has anyone seen my brain?
I think all the craziness around here is seriously getting to me! I'm so preoccupied with the adoption right now that I've shut everything else out of my mind and I find myself doing a lot of silly things lately!
I'm the secretary for our church's womens organization and part of my job is keeping track of everyone's birthday and getting cards out to everyone each Sunday. Everyone in the presidency signs them and when they run low I make new ones and bring them to our weekly meeting and we all sign a bunch of them. Last week we were out so I made some more and then forgot to take them to the meeting. Crap. So I arranged for everyone to sign them individually and then the president was going to take them to church today to hand out. That worked out fine until I realized that I forgot to sign them! Duh. Handing out birthday cards really isn't difficult, you would think that it wouldn't trip me up quite so much.
I've been doing that about everything lately. My brain is just in another universe these days. I've been extremely busy for the past few weeks and I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the things I need to do. My to-do list keeps getting longer and I'm struggling to keep up. This week I have a few more adoption projects to finish up, some projects that I need to get done for my chuch job and then I've got to get us packed up to go back out of town next weekend.
I guess being busy is a good thing and a bad thing. The busier I am the faster time goes and the faster Clarissa is going to get here. My life is certainly moving a lot faster than it was when I was waiting for the referral, that's for sure! I tend to get overwhelmed easy when I have a million things to do though and at the moment I'm just wishing that I could hit the pause button for a minute.
The other thing we have going on here this weekend is that I think Matthew may have Scarlet Fever. Josh had it when he was almost exactly Matthew's age and Matthew has all the symptoms of the beginnings of it. He broke out in a really weird rash yesterday that he still had today and it looks just like the rash that Josh had. We're keeping an eye on it, but for now we're keeping him at home just in case.
So between Matthew being sick, all the church projects I need to do, all the adoption stuff I have going on and the fact that we're leaving town AGAIN next weekend, life is certainly not boring right now.
Thank goodness that I have a fantastic husband who talks me down when I get overwhelmed and I have sweet kids who keep offering to help me. Josh realizes that I'm a little stressed out and he's been following me around all day asking if he can help me with something. He's such a sweet kid. I let him help me do the attendance rolls for church and then he offered to clean up the family room. I apppreciate him so much today, I just couldn't ask for sweeter kids.
So now that I've blogged I'm going to go back to my projects. Each project completed is one project closer to Clarissa being here, right?!
I'm the secretary for our church's womens organization and part of my job is keeping track of everyone's birthday and getting cards out to everyone each Sunday. Everyone in the presidency signs them and when they run low I make new ones and bring them to our weekly meeting and we all sign a bunch of them. Last week we were out so I made some more and then forgot to take them to the meeting. Crap. So I arranged for everyone to sign them individually and then the president was going to take them to church today to hand out. That worked out fine until I realized that I forgot to sign them! Duh. Handing out birthday cards really isn't difficult, you would think that it wouldn't trip me up quite so much.
I've been doing that about everything lately. My brain is just in another universe these days. I've been extremely busy for the past few weeks and I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the things I need to do. My to-do list keeps getting longer and I'm struggling to keep up. This week I have a few more adoption projects to finish up, some projects that I need to get done for my chuch job and then I've got to get us packed up to go back out of town next weekend.
I guess being busy is a good thing and a bad thing. The busier I am the faster time goes and the faster Clarissa is going to get here. My life is certainly moving a lot faster than it was when I was waiting for the referral, that's for sure! I tend to get overwhelmed easy when I have a million things to do though and at the moment I'm just wishing that I could hit the pause button for a minute.
The other thing we have going on here this weekend is that I think Matthew may have Scarlet Fever. Josh had it when he was almost exactly Matthew's age and Matthew has all the symptoms of the beginnings of it. He broke out in a really weird rash yesterday that he still had today and it looks just like the rash that Josh had. We're keeping an eye on it, but for now we're keeping him at home just in case.
So between Matthew being sick, all the church projects I need to do, all the adoption stuff I have going on and the fact that we're leaving town AGAIN next weekend, life is certainly not boring right now.
Thank goodness that I have a fantastic husband who talks me down when I get overwhelmed and I have sweet kids who keep offering to help me. Josh realizes that I'm a little stressed out and he's been following me around all day asking if he can help me with something. He's such a sweet kid. I let him help me do the attendance rolls for church and then he offered to clean up the family room. I apppreciate him so much today, I just couldn't ask for sweeter kids.
So now that I've blogged I'm going to go back to my projects. Each project completed is one project closer to Clarissa being here, right?!
Friday, July 3, 2009
Two weeks
It's now been two weeks since we saw Clarissa's sweet face for the first time. I'm happy to say that time is totally flying by!! These past few weeks have been insanely busy and I don't really see things slowing down too much for the next little bit. I keep thinking that after I finish each project or each step in the adoption that things will calm down for a bit, but so far I just keep coming up with new projects!
Shawn has today off work for the holiday so this morning we FINALLY went to the post office to apply for our passports. We've literally been planning to go do that for months and we just kept putting it off. For some reason in my mind I thought it was going to be a big pain to go do it, but in reality it was ridiculously simple. There was no one in line at the post office this morning at all and the woman who helped us was SO nice. We were in and out of there really quickly. If everything goes the way it's supposed to we should have our passports by the middle of August, which should give us plenty of time before we actually travel.
After that we went to the mall for a bit and I bought Clarissa some clothes to put in her care package since I decided that the clothes I bought her last week aren't going to fit. There is nothing more fun than buying little girl clothes. Seriously, I'm going to have to learn to restrain myself before I spend our life savings on clothes. Actually, we already spent our life savings on the adoption, so there's not much to left to spend on clothes...
At the moment Shawn is out picking up movies and a pizza and we're all going to snuggle up in a bit and have family movie night. We've enjoyed sharing movies from our childhood with our kids lately, so tonight we're watching The Princess Bride and The Karate Kid. Two classics from my youth that I think the kids will like.
Tomorrow we're going to do something fun, but we haven't decided exactly what yet. We'll probably go have a picnic somewhere for lunch, we might go out to the lake for a bit and tomorrow night we're going to grill hamburgers, roast marshmallows and set off some fireworks in the backyard. The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. It was a huge event when I was young and I have such great memories of it. My dad used to love holidays and he always made a big deal out of the 4th of July. He would get up super early in the morning to save us a good spot at the parade, there was always something fun in the afternoons and we always went to the fireworks in the evening, which were a big deal in my hometown. I always miss my dad and my hometown on the 4th of July, so planning lots of fun activities on the 4th is my cure for nostalgia.
Right now it's already the 4th of July in Korea, not that Korea is celebrating anything! It's about 8am right now. I bet Clarissa is just getting up and starting her day. Maybe right now her foster mom is getting her dressed and putting a cute bow in her hair. I hope she's being loved and snuggled and I hope that someone is kissing her chunky cheeks 20 times a day. I can't wait until that's my job! :)
Shawn has today off work for the holiday so this morning we FINALLY went to the post office to apply for our passports. We've literally been planning to go do that for months and we just kept putting it off. For some reason in my mind I thought it was going to be a big pain to go do it, but in reality it was ridiculously simple. There was no one in line at the post office this morning at all and the woman who helped us was SO nice. We were in and out of there really quickly. If everything goes the way it's supposed to we should have our passports by the middle of August, which should give us plenty of time before we actually travel.
After that we went to the mall for a bit and I bought Clarissa some clothes to put in her care package since I decided that the clothes I bought her last week aren't going to fit. There is nothing more fun than buying little girl clothes. Seriously, I'm going to have to learn to restrain myself before I spend our life savings on clothes. Actually, we already spent our life savings on the adoption, so there's not much to left to spend on clothes...
At the moment Shawn is out picking up movies and a pizza and we're all going to snuggle up in a bit and have family movie night. We've enjoyed sharing movies from our childhood with our kids lately, so tonight we're watching The Princess Bride and The Karate Kid. Two classics from my youth that I think the kids will like.
Tomorrow we're going to do something fun, but we haven't decided exactly what yet. We'll probably go have a picnic somewhere for lunch, we might go out to the lake for a bit and tomorrow night we're going to grill hamburgers, roast marshmallows and set off some fireworks in the backyard. The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays. It was a huge event when I was young and I have such great memories of it. My dad used to love holidays and he always made a big deal out of the 4th of July. He would get up super early in the morning to save us a good spot at the parade, there was always something fun in the afternoons and we always went to the fireworks in the evening, which were a big deal in my hometown. I always miss my dad and my hometown on the 4th of July, so planning lots of fun activities on the 4th is my cure for nostalgia.
Right now it's already the 4th of July in Korea, not that Korea is celebrating anything! It's about 8am right now. I bet Clarissa is just getting up and starting her day. Maybe right now her foster mom is getting her dressed and putting a cute bow in her hair. I hope she's being loved and snuggled and I hope that someone is kissing her chunky cheeks 20 times a day. I can't wait until that's my job! :)
Thursday, July 2, 2009
We got a new picture of Clarissa!!
It's is absolutely killing me that I can't share photos here because getting a new photo of Clarissa is like Christmas around here and I want to share it with everyone!
The other day I mentioned that we got her five month well baby checkup report in the mail and I was a little disappointed that there was no photo with it. Then today I got an e-mail from our agency with a photo that I'm guessing was probably taken the day of the checkup.
There is something just so amazing about getting a photo of her. It's actually kind of a strange feeling. I feel so close to this amazing little person that I've never even met. I so badly want to just pick her up and kiss her sweet face.
So now my petty complaint about the photos from Korea is that it's hilarious to me how they take these photos. In their mind they're simply documentation photos to go in their file, not glamour shots or anything, so I think they pretty much just plop them in the chair, snap a quick photo and move on to the next baby. In the latest photo she has this total deer in the headlights look on her face, lol. She looks totally startled like she has no idea why they just put her in the strange little chair and stuck a camera in her face. I would love to see a photo of her smiling! I wonder what she looks like when laughs and when she's comfortable in her surroundings.
I will happily take what I can at this point though. I love her deer in the headlights look! :) Since I can't show the photo I will describe it. For anyone who saw the last photo (I shared it with family and some friends) this one is taken in the same place. She's sitting in a purple Bumbo seat with a big stuffed animal behind her. She's wearing the cutest little strawberry outfit! She has a ton of hair and it's pulled up with a clip. I love to think of her foster mother picking out cute outfits for her and fixing her hair. I can tell that she's being loved and well cared for.
One thing that I can really tell from this photo is that she has HUGE eyes!! I've learned interesting things about Korean eyes over the past year. If you're caucasian you know the crease in your upper eyelid that we pretty much all have? Only about 20 percent of Koreans have that crease in their eyelid. Most Koreans eyelids go straight down, which makes their eyes narrower. In Korea it's considered a sign of beauty to have a crease in your eyelid. It makes your eyes wider and rounder, which they like. The most common plastic surgery in Korea is eyelid crease surgery! People who don't have a natural crease pay lots of money to have one surgically created. I had no idea that such a thing existed until I started reading about Koreans and I kept noticing that eyelid creases were mentioned a lot when they described someone.
I tell that whole story because Clarissa is one of the 20 percent with the crease in her eyelids, something that she actually shares with her biological mother. (Eyelid creases are such a big deal that although we only have a small amount of info on Clarissa's biological mother, they did take the time to mention that she has an eyelid crease. I don't know much about her mothers life story but I do know everything I need to know about her eyelids, lol!) Anyway, Clarissa has extremely round eyes for a Korean. I could tell from the last photo, but they're even more noticeable in this photo (possibly because she has such a surprised expression on her face!)
The other thing I noticed in this photo is that strangely she almost looks SMALLER in this photo than she did a month ago, which is weird since she's gained a pound and a half since I last saw her. I think that maybe she has gotten taller so even though she gained weight she actually looks like she's thinned out just a little. Her cheeks are slightly less chunky than they were in the last photo. They're still pretty smoochable though!! :) I wish so badly that I could just pick her up and snuggle her.
I just can't stop looking at her! I've stopped typing this blog post several times just to go look at her sweet face again. I love her SO much! I love every single thing about her. I love her round face and her big eyes and all that hair and her chunky little legs. I love her sweet little hands and her sweet little toes and I love that she has a foster mother who takes the time to put cute bows in her hair. These photos are so special to me, especially because I never know how long it's going to be before I get another one, if I even get another one at all before we go get her. They're really hit and miss and I think that we've already gotten lucky to get so many!
So now I'm going to go back to staring at my sweet baby. :) I'm going to have every inch of that photo permanently burned into my mind by the end of the day. Clarissa is REAL and that makes me happy. :)
The other day I mentioned that we got her five month well baby checkup report in the mail and I was a little disappointed that there was no photo with it. Then today I got an e-mail from our agency with a photo that I'm guessing was probably taken the day of the checkup.
There is something just so amazing about getting a photo of her. It's actually kind of a strange feeling. I feel so close to this amazing little person that I've never even met. I so badly want to just pick her up and kiss her sweet face.
So now my petty complaint about the photos from Korea is that it's hilarious to me how they take these photos. In their mind they're simply documentation photos to go in their file, not glamour shots or anything, so I think they pretty much just plop them in the chair, snap a quick photo and move on to the next baby. In the latest photo she has this total deer in the headlights look on her face, lol. She looks totally startled like she has no idea why they just put her in the strange little chair and stuck a camera in her face. I would love to see a photo of her smiling! I wonder what she looks like when laughs and when she's comfortable in her surroundings.
I will happily take what I can at this point though. I love her deer in the headlights look! :) Since I can't show the photo I will describe it. For anyone who saw the last photo (I shared it with family and some friends) this one is taken in the same place. She's sitting in a purple Bumbo seat with a big stuffed animal behind her. She's wearing the cutest little strawberry outfit! She has a ton of hair and it's pulled up with a clip. I love to think of her foster mother picking out cute outfits for her and fixing her hair. I can tell that she's being loved and well cared for.
One thing that I can really tell from this photo is that she has HUGE eyes!! I've learned interesting things about Korean eyes over the past year. If you're caucasian you know the crease in your upper eyelid that we pretty much all have? Only about 20 percent of Koreans have that crease in their eyelid. Most Koreans eyelids go straight down, which makes their eyes narrower. In Korea it's considered a sign of beauty to have a crease in your eyelid. It makes your eyes wider and rounder, which they like. The most common plastic surgery in Korea is eyelid crease surgery! People who don't have a natural crease pay lots of money to have one surgically created. I had no idea that such a thing existed until I started reading about Koreans and I kept noticing that eyelid creases were mentioned a lot when they described someone.
I tell that whole story because Clarissa is one of the 20 percent with the crease in her eyelids, something that she actually shares with her biological mother. (Eyelid creases are such a big deal that although we only have a small amount of info on Clarissa's biological mother, they did take the time to mention that she has an eyelid crease. I don't know much about her mothers life story but I do know everything I need to know about her eyelids, lol!) Anyway, Clarissa has extremely round eyes for a Korean. I could tell from the last photo, but they're even more noticeable in this photo (possibly because she has such a surprised expression on her face!)
The other thing I noticed in this photo is that strangely she almost looks SMALLER in this photo than she did a month ago, which is weird since she's gained a pound and a half since I last saw her. I think that maybe she has gotten taller so even though she gained weight she actually looks like she's thinned out just a little. Her cheeks are slightly less chunky than they were in the last photo. They're still pretty smoochable though!! :) I wish so badly that I could just pick her up and snuggle her.
I just can't stop looking at her! I've stopped typing this blog post several times just to go look at her sweet face again. I love her SO much! I love every single thing about her. I love her round face and her big eyes and all that hair and her chunky little legs. I love her sweet little hands and her sweet little toes and I love that she has a foster mother who takes the time to put cute bows in her hair. These photos are so special to me, especially because I never know how long it's going to be before I get another one, if I even get another one at all before we go get her. They're really hit and miss and I think that we've already gotten lucky to get so many!
So now I'm going to go back to staring at my sweet baby. :) I'm going to have every inch of that photo permanently burned into my mind by the end of the day. Clarissa is REAL and that makes me happy. :)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The picture book is done!!
Weeks before we got our referral I came up with an idea to make a board book for Clarissa that I could send to her in Korea once we got the referral. I think I posted about it once before when I got started on it and today I FINALLY finished it!!
This project was a muuuuch bigger headache than I anticipated. There are a million different types of photobooks that would have been easier, and probably cheaper, but I'm pretty stubborn when I get an idea in my head. I'm really happy with how it turned out, but I'm not in a hurry to make another one. :)
Here are some photos of the finished product. The back cover has a photo of Clarissa on it and since I still can't share her photo online I had to black out her face. Darn.
And again, I don't know why my photos always look so crappy when I post them here. They look fine in Photoshop and then when I post them they always look grainy, dark and the color is off. I'm picky about that sort of thing and it drives me crazy! Oh well, you'll get the idea anyway.
Now all I have to do is write a letter to the foster mother and I'll have my package ready to send off to Clarissa! A lot of times they take a photo of the baby with their care package, so I'm really hoping that one of these days I get to see a picture of her with the things I sent. Frankly, I'm really hoping I get a picture of her doing ANYTHING one of these days soon. I'll take what I can get! :)
This project was a muuuuch bigger headache than I anticipated. There are a million different types of photobooks that would have been easier, and probably cheaper, but I'm pretty stubborn when I get an idea in my head. I'm really happy with how it turned out, but I'm not in a hurry to make another one. :)
Here are some photos of the finished product. The back cover has a photo of Clarissa on it and since I still can't share her photo online I had to black out her face. Darn.
And again, I don't know why my photos always look so crappy when I post them here. They look fine in Photoshop and then when I post them they always look grainy, dark and the color is off. I'm picky about that sort of thing and it drives me crazy! Oh well, you'll get the idea anyway.
Now all I have to do is write a letter to the foster mother and I'll have my package ready to send off to Clarissa! A lot of times they take a photo of the baby with their care package, so I'm really hoping that one of these days I get to see a picture of her with the things I sent. Frankly, I'm really hoping I get a picture of her doing ANYTHING one of these days soon. I'll take what I can get! :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
