Ethiopia Post 2

Day 3:  This was Sunday.  Nothing was really scheduled for this day, so we spent the morning with E at the orphanage.  After eating lunch at the guesthouse, we decided to visit the National Museum of Ethiopia.  It took a little convincing of our 11 year old travel partner, but he agreed and we enjoyed it.  We saw, among many things, the "Lucy" exhibit.  Ethiopia is such an amazing country.  The history is incredible.  I just loved being there. 

 

 

I made N take pictures of these beautiful flowers.  

 The rest of Sunday was spent with E, playing in the courtyard, looking through our photo album, using sidewalk chalk, taking pictures, giving piggy back rides.  Very special memories.  I'm trying so hard to remember little details that really are the substance of any trip.  Like the tiny little spoons we used to stir our coffee at the guesthouse, the names of the guards who walked us back and forth to see E, hearing pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and trying to guess from the wonderful smells what was for dinner, as the great lady who cooked for us at the guesthouse puttered about.  Our time spent with other families also at the guesthouse also made out trip so unique, hearing their stories and meeting their children. 

Here are some photos from our time visiting with E.  She loved to take the camera and take pics too.

 These are the pictures (and these are only a few:) that we will show to document our first days together.  Though we don't have pictures of her birth, or coming home from the hospital, or her first birthday, we do have beautiful memories of our first days together as a family and I hope they will be just as treasured.

Ethiopia Post 1

Our first month home has been full of firsts.  So full, in fact, that I just haven't had a moment to sit down and write about our travels in Ethiopia.  A neighbor gave me a journal before we left and I used it every day of our trip to write down all that was happening.  It's full of scribbly lines from the plane and exhaustion after a visit with E's birth relatives.  Just looking at it makes me remember little things that I didn't even write in the journal.  I wrote down E's schedule in the orphanage that the nannies told me on our first visit.  In the back there are pages where E colored with a crayon during the trip.  So many pieces of Africa are in that journal.

Now that we are home, I have had time to process things a bit and I want to get them down so I don't forget, but also to share our trip with those of you far away or close by for that matter.  I posted several pictures on Facebook, but I realize some of you are not on FB.  And I didn't write very much about the pictures.  So I will try to write a few posts chronicling our trip to Ethiopia.

Day 0:  Though it's not really a day of our trip, the night before we left was very difficult one for me.  Our youngest 2 boys were not coming with us.  Here they are, obviously this is not a photo of the night we left, but we did not take pictures of us saying goodbye!

I felt ok with this decision, but as the time drew near to say goodbye to them, I was very emotional.  We were only days before Christmas and I was leaving 2 of my children for 8 days.  I remember walking up our stairs to go to bed (after having said goodbye to the boys who were staying at friends' houses) and seeing the twinkle light in our dark dining room.  They are usually my favorite thing to see.  But that night I hated every single one of those twinkle lights and I did not feel very merry.  It was HARD.  I imagined every possible thing that could go wrong and convinced myself it would happen.  There were so many details of family taking care of them, they were traveling to another state for part of the time to stay with more family, and I was sure something would go wrong.  In the end, everything was fine.  I mean, honestly, nothing went wrong.  But in that moment I wanted to sleep through the next 8 days until it was over. (don't worry, things got better :)

Day 1:  My husband, oldest son and I had to leave for the airport at 3am to make our connecting flight to Washington DC.  Here we are, bright eyed and bushy tailed right before we got in the car to drive to the airport.

While waiting for our connecting flight to Addis Ababa, we ran into a couple also with our adoption agency.  We had gone to court with them weeks before and here we were on the same flight back to Addis to pick up our kids.  This was welcome news and we were happy to see them. 

 Our flight to Addis was uneventful, and happily so.

Day 2:  Our flight arrived in Addis in the early morning.  We were greeted by a man from our agency in Ethiopia.  He drove us to the guesthouse of our adoption agency.  It is like a bed and breakfast with a wonderful Ethiopian woman who cooks your meals.  The entire staff in Ethiopia is fantastic.  We loved spending time with them.  One thing that everyone I have spoken to says about our the staff in country is that they are so committed to the kids.  Everyone, the guards, house manager, driver, nannies, and cooks, all play with and love these kids.  It feels like a big family.  Here is N on our balcony writing in his journal for school. 

This photo is not from our 2nd day, but it is of one of favorite places at the guesthouse.  The rooftop has a beautiful view.

Though we were exhausted from travel, we went over to the big kid house and saw E.  This is a short walk and always accompanied by a guard (though at no time did we feel unsafe in Ethiopia).  It was a happy reunion and we spent all the time we could with her.  But at the end of the day, we returned to our room at the guesthouse and went to sleep.

More to come.....

Happy Birthday to E!

Today marks 2 notable events.

We have been home for 1 month.

and

It's Miss E's birthday!

Though her referral information says she's 4 today, we are sure she is 5.  We are working with a doctor in Boston who has verified that for us. 

Any adoptive parents out there have advice on officially changing her date of birth or just keeping it as is?  Leave me a comment.....

 

That's too much dancing....

Where have you been you ask?

Well, someone forgot to tell me that when you add the fourth child, it's practically the same as adding the 15th child.  Maybe it's this particular child.  That's possible.  Little Miss E is BUSY.  If I get the laundry done and have food in the house, then I consider the day a success.

So let me give you the short version update:

•  Her hair is still pretty short, but we managed our first style.

• Our plan to have her sleep in her own bed right from the start (and us being experienced parents guarantees that our plan would work) lasted for about 6 nights.  She is currently sleeping in our bed with us and she's a pretty active sleeper.  So, strike one at our "expert parenting" at bat.  All I'll say is we are working with what we think she needs right now and eventually she will sleep on her own.  We're working on it people.
• The honeymoon is over.  Yes, she's very cute.  And she's also a regular kid who doesn't appreciate the fact that we ran out of eggs when she was counting on them for breakfast (and lunch and very often dinner).  So any fit throwing is justified right?  We're working on this too.  Seriously though, we are all finding out what our new normal is.  She is part of a family that has rules and expectations and she is eager to please and contribute.  Right now is her learning curve (ours too) finding out how to do that.  Some days are better than others and it's not easy.  In fact it's hard.  Balancing three boys and how they are experiencing this adjustment with her adjustment is challenging. 
• She's sharing little things here and there about her life in Ethiopia.  Her language is coming along, but with the words she has and creative gesturing, she is sharing parts of her past.  I so treasure the fact that she can do this.
• The girl loves to sing...and dance...and force others to do it with her.  She's a lot of fun, silly, dramatic, and she will dance until it hurts.....
•  

(she's singing in Amharic and doing dances from an Ethiopian Children's CD)

NYE 2011

For the past 10 years, we have been taking a photo on new year's eve.  It's my birthday and we generally enjoy a quiet night in.  I've never felt like competing with the world to celebrate my birthday.  So, we decorate a sign and take a picture.  It's so fun to look back over the years and see a snapshot of who we were.  Of course this year we have an addition.  And let's just say, thank goodness we did it early in the evening because little Miss E just about wore us all out.  We were able to get 1 decent photo out of this event, but that was about it.  So we decided to put all the others in a slideshow.


This is how we roll at our house on New Year's Eve......

Home

We are home.  All 6 of us.  The fact that none of us ended up stranded in an airport is a true Christmas miracle!

We left Addis on Friday at 10:15 pm.  Our Ethiopian Air flight is scheduled to make a 1 hour stop in Rome to refuel.  Our stop turned into a 4 hour stop.  Stuck on an airplane, with a 10 hour flight ahead of us, was my low point.  This delay caused us to miss our connection from Dulles to Boston.  I had visions of us spending Christmas Eve at the airport while 2 of our boys spent Christmas morning waiting for us to come home.  But, we were able to rebook a later flight on Christmas Eve and made it home by the evening.  E was a trooper on the 20 hour plane ride, as well as the connecting.  Can you imagine being in her position?  No language to be able to understand how long, where, when, etc. 

E met her other 2 brothers for the first time.  And our 2 dogs as well.  The brothers are a bigger hit than the dogs, but we are making progress daily.  Any worries I had that she wouldn't know what to do with presents on Christmas morning were quickly put to rest as she tore into them like a pro. 

Our family is making many adjustments and learning a lot about each other.   I have plans to post about our time in Addis, but right now it seems to be last on the list of things to do.  I learned from the first trip that it takes several days to readjust to life in America.  It is so different in Ethiopia.  It's beautiful, but different there.  We've left a little piece of our hearts there in Ethiopia, with E's first family, culture and friends and nannies at the orphanage.  There are so many emotions involved with leaving one place and beginning in another. 

Here are a few things we have learned about little Miss E in the 2 days we have been a family:

1. she knows more English words in 2 days than I learned of Amharic words in 2 years.  I can see her language develop on a daily basis.
2. She can pick out her own clothes with no help from anyone.  Thank you very much.
3. She stopped me multiple times in Dulles Airport to show me the hand bag she liked at the store.  She's got expensive taste.
4. Skirts or dresses.  End of story.
5. Dolls, with hair.
6. nail polish
7. automatic hand dryers in public bathrooms are the best invention in the world.
8. She ate nearly a pound of ground beef with berbere in one day.
9. She has performed her version of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony a bazillion times with a set we brought back from Ethiopia.  
10. She has a loose tooth.

N and E at the orphanage. 

Coffee Ceremony outside

Coffee Ceremony inside

Stay Tuned for trip details......

Here we go...

Something happened today.  It doesn't happen often and so I wanted to take a moment to share it with you.

All.

ALL.

All of the laundry in my house is clean right now.
I know it won't stay that way for long.  Hours at the most.  So I wanted to document this accomplishment, in case it doesn't happen again for a long time.

In other news....

We leave tomorrow.  

I'm a mix of emotions right now and am anxious to go and come back home.  I have about 6 hours worth of movies on my ipad, 4 books, and various drugs for the plane.  I have to do the 13 hour flight but I don't have to like it.

Not sure that I'll post much from Addis, but will try.  I am counting the days until Christmas Eve when we're all together!

This picture was sent to me by a fellow adopting parent who is in Addis right now.  We are with the same agency so she has been able to see little E.  She sent me this picture.

We are on our way baby girl!