Making plans

What a busy week! It always catches me by surprise how this process if filled with starts and stalls. You wait and wait and wait and think that nothing is happening, and then, next thing you know, you are behind the game and scrambling to catch up. It's all a very good thing though, right? Must stop complaining right this instant!!

Immediately following our travel notice, there's an insane 24-hours where you have to plan your entire trip and frantically make arrangements both stateside and across the world. The agency sets up the visits and court date. As for travel arrangements, it's up to you.

At first our agency wanted us to do some crazy whirlwind tour, arriving on Feb. 2, meeting Little Brother Feb. 3 and going to court Feb. 4. They said we'd have a second visit with Little Brother on Feb. 4 after court and then could leave on Feb. 5.

That was little too fast and furious for our preference. Especially since we are bringing Little Man with us! We knew we'd need to take things a lot slower to give him some time to get grounded and have the best possible trip.

After lots of back and forths with our agency and Korea, we managed to revise the schedule. Here's our itinerary:

Jan. 29: Head to Chicago, goof around, head to bed early.
Jan. 30: Fly to Seoul!
Jan. 31: Arrive in Seoul
Feb. 1-2: Recover and explore
Feb. 3: Meet Little Brother! The first meeting will be at our agency's office.
Feb. 4: Court date
Feb. 5: Second visit with Little Brother, this time at his foster home.
Feb. 6: Visit with Little Man's foster mother.
Feb. 7: Return to the states.

We've planned one major thing each day and depending on how Little Man is doing, we'll do as much exploring and adventuring as we can.

I have to admit, bringing Little Man along on this trip has made it a much more stressful interesting experience so far. We are super excited to see Little Brother, but a lot excitement is shelved right now as we make plans for traveling with a very busy and passionate three-year-old. The 13.5 hour flight is a scary, but more, I'm worried that the 15-hour time difference and extreme change of setting will mean we have a grumpy tyrant to deal with all week. And the #1 thing I stress about is that he'll have a meltdown during court or during our visits with Little Brother.

I know we can't control all of that, so I'm trying to make sure I have things that will help him feel comfortable and know that he's still our special boy. We plan on doing things much more slowly that we would if it were just the two of us traveling. It's scary, but really, we are so excited to have him experience a place we talk about so often! It wasn't an easy decision to bring him, and it certainly would be easier to have him stay, but we really wanted to do this as a family.


In the meanwhile, Mama is running on the delicate edge of deliriously happy and total freak out. My lists of things to do before we go is pages (PAGES!!) long. Finding the last little gifts for the foster family, having enough things to entertain Little Man on the plane, researching places we want to try and check out which are kid friendly, finding a new dress for court, and where are those outlet adapters???!! You get the idea.

Off to do more shopping/planning.

If you have any travel tips with little ones, be sure to share!