He was born March 2nd. Judging from my weblog entries around that time, I was playing Ratchet & Clank 3. If all goes according to schedule, we'll likely be travelling to Korea in September, maybe August. Maybe October. He should be home well in time to enjoy the November release of Animal Crossing DS. We started the adoption process in April of last year (during Puzzle Pirates, Pokemon Colosseum and Crystal Chronicles), so it's been a long time coming. And considering what all we went through in the years before that (going back to around the original Game Boy Advance launch, I estimate), it's no wonder we're ready for this.

It's good to get his birthday under our belt, because the Korean adoption process has slowed somewhat lately... which just kills you inside. I mean, you're at the mercy of international law here. If Korea decides to shut the whole thing down, you're pretty much done. I think our schedule is running about two months behind the average from last year, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're waiting for approval it seems like forever. Was our paperwork incorrect? Was it lost? Do they just not like us as parents? Are they shutting the program down? Will our baby come home older than expected? Once the forms are filed, you have nothing to do but sit around and manufacture reasons why it's never going to happen.

In fact, Korea wants to promote domestic adoptions and keep the kids in their birth country. Just this year, they formally stated a new policy to gradually pare down the number of children being adopted internationally. Which is great news for Korea - changing cultural mores, eliminating social stigmas and all that - but it's not exactly what you want to hear as a prospective parent who has already invested so much emotion into the decision.

So finally receiving news of our baby boy lifts an enormous weight off of us.

Now things really get weird. It's one thing to have a theoretical child and be stuck in limbo awaiting news as it trickles through agencies and government red tape, but to be told that you absolutely do have a son, and he is an entire day's flight away from you... well, that casts things in a very different light. You check your world clock and wonder what he's doing right now. It's 5am in Seoul, think he's awake yet? You think about the people caring for him. You wonder how the agency matched him with you... did something make sense to them as they compared our file with his? Or was it just his turn to be matched and your turn to receive? You think about every day of his life that has gone by without you even knowing he existed... and yet, logically, you knew he had to be out there somewhere. You consider what happens next, as he lives with a foster family. Will they mention you? Will they speak to him of the strange turn his life is about to take?

There's finally an end to this part of the journey. We've never been happier. He is real!