Tears of Joy...Tears of Sorrow

My little girl is so close to walking it's amazing. She took 10 steps before falling down yesterday. She was so proud of herself. She wants to walk to me and not to her Daddy. I'm so happy that she prefers me. I never had that with Ryan at this age. He preferred Daddy. Katie didn't really care one way or the other who she went to although she is more of a Daddy's girl.

Last night, I cried before I headed to bed. This little thing that you might think is fairly insignificant was a huge thing to me last night. This is one more milestone that the First Mom is missing out on. My little B is walking before her first birthday (yet another milestone and something of great importance for Koreans).

On R's and K's birthdays in the past, I have had many happy moments. At night, I'm sitting and crying about the losses both they and their First Mom have endured. So many losses in their young lives...too many for ones so young and innocent.

When we started our adoption journey back in May of 2004 to become parents never did I expect that I would be blessed with three beautiful children. Never did I expect all of the emotions I would be having either.

I cry on each one of the kids' Airplane days (Arrival Days), I cry on each one of their birthdays, I cry on the day that we were officially a family.

These children have lost so much. Loss of their First Mom, loss of extended members of their birthfamily, loss of language, loss of culture, loss of having just Korean friends, loss of foster family, loss of seeing Korea, loss of their homeland, loss of their Korean citizenship, and so much more.

Their First mom has lost so much as well. Loss of her children, loss of her grandchildren and the rest of the family line, loss of seeing her children grow up, loss of seeing the milestones in their lives, loss of being able to communicate with them in Korean, loss of seeing them, hearing them, and touching them, loss of seeing if their personalities are similar to her own, and so much more.

I hope that their First Mom knows how much I love her children. I hope that she knows that I kept them together. I wrote her a letter and physically placed that letter in the kids files. I pray that she reads it. I hope that she'll continue to check the file for more letters that I'll write. I hope that she enjoys the kids' artwork that they want to send to her.

I hope that their foster families continue to read the letters I send them. I hope that they see all of the artwork the kids want to send to them. Most of the artwork thus far goes to Korea. I am able to keep very little of the artwork. This is how much my two oldest kids love their foster family. Their foster family is our family as well. We love them just like we would any other family member.

I hope that someday soon we can travel as a family to Korea. So that R and K can see their foster family and that B can see hers. R says that he's sad that his Omma doesn't live here with us. I tell him that I'm sad too and I'm sure that his Omma misses him very much.

Well I gotta go so that we can listen and try singing along to some Korean music as we do every day for at least an hour (most days it's much more than that). I just hope that I don't breakdown and cry again while listening to it thinking about all of the losses.

~Jen