Update coming soon...

We're still here - photos of Christmas will be coming next week. We're temporarily banned from our house due to hardwood floor staining that should be done by the weekend (anyone who's undergone any sort of substantial home improvement project is laughing at my optimism right now.) Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Catch Up Time

Yeah, yeah. I'm a bad blogger. Here's what's happened since we last checked in...

Beach!


First sight of the ocean!


Cousins!


More cousins!


Snake handling!


A fabulous swimsuit wardrobe!


Ellie and I and the grandparents headed out to the last day game of the season. Ellie enjoyed the food, getting a pink Rangers shirt, and singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." And she watched a little baseball too. She was concerned that "those boys" were spitting and noted that they were not using their good manners.


Next came Halloween. We met up with some of our neighbors and had a blast trick or treating. Ellie and her friend Joshua came back from many a front porch in the first hour shouting "They gave us candy, too!" I'm not sure if they thought everyone was just being really friendly or what.


We went to a party at Gladney and got to see our sweet caseworker Mary! She took a new job this year, so it was such a nice surprise to see her. The man in the white outfit standing behind her is Belay - Gladney's in-country director in Ethiopia. (I had a really nice pic of the three of us which Ellie erased while playing on my phone.) When she went up to him, he looked at her and said "Hiab!" After over a year he recognized her and remembered her name! She was so excited to see him...and the bounce house.


Fall leaves! Ellie's been leaf-peeping in the neighborhood for weeks and shouting on the way to school "I see red! It's a sign of fall!" She's realizing now that aside from the Japanese maple we pass in our neighborhood, brown is really the only sign of fall we get in Texas.




Can I close with a rant? Why is this cute stethoscope shirt only available in the boys' section at Target? Wouldn't it be just as cute in pink or purple? I know that there is a lot more to imprinting a world view on a child than a tee shirt, but if I want to buy my daughter a shirt that declares a statement other than that she's spoiled, a diva, cute, a princess, sweet as candy, etc. I have to shop in the boys' section. I'm not saying she doesn't have her share of pink, butterflies, and glitter in her closet, but she also has Beatles and The Who tees, dinosaurs, and this sweet doc in training one. She wears rhinestone earrings to rock out with her drumsticks and to hunt bugs with her magnifying glass, but who says she can't like both? It would be nice for more stores to consider that girls might like more than one thing - that they might want to wear a pink hard hat while they play with tools or to carry their matchbox cars in their purse.

When she put this shirt on, she went to her closet and got out her tutu to go with it. She told me that she was a doctor AND a ballerina and that she was going to do a dance and then fix me up.

Attention, retailers. Dr. Ballerina needs a little more diversity in your girls' section.

The Rest of the Summer

Oh yeah - I have a blog! Here's a fast recap of the summer since the last entry:

Coffee Table vs. Ellie's Eye! Winner: coffee table.


Playground playtime (needless to say this happened in July, before August and 100 degree weather hit)


Splashing and leaf boat making.



Weekend egg souffle breakfasts and vigorous political debate.



Cousin Suzanne went to Turkey for vacation, and we tracked her whereabouts on every globe and world map we passed during that period. She was very confused at first at why Suzanne would go on a trip in a turkey. Suzanne brought her this lovely jeweled enamel box, which Ellie decided to use for dead ladybug storage.


This cardboard box was a chair, a boat, a spaceship, a house and a general hiding place, although it's pretty hard to hide with all that hair.


The circus came to town! See that tiny child below the GIANT poster?


First day of school - this year she's in Primary II with the "big" 4 year olds.


Ballet class. And first "one ponytail."


First DQ dip cone.


And finally - FIRST TRIP TO THE BEACH! We arrived last weekend at Duck, North Carolina and have been having a wonderful week. We've enjoyed visiting with lots of family, meeting new cousins, etc. More on that later!

Days Go By

The next day we went back to the Gladney home to say goodbye to the caretakers and to have a special coffee ceremony to celebrate the new families.

The "special mothers" as the children's special nannies were called, dressed the children in traditional Ethiopian dress - Ellie's is in the style of the northern region where she was born.

The nannies love these children SO MUCH. The parents were warned that the nannies would take the children from us and carry them around the home to say goodbye for the last time. I have no doubt about the kind of care Ellie received after seeing how enthusiastic and emotional everyone was.

Every time I grumble about doing laundry I think of this and say a silent prayer for Tide and Kenmore.



Then we headed to the garden to take pictures with the kids and their special mothers. What you don't see in this photo is that I'm apparently standing in an ant hill, which I will discover 15 minutes later in the cab on the way to the restaurant with the rest of the families for lunch. I made a beeline to the bathroom at the restaurant and shook over a dozen ants out of my pants including some that had giant pinchers and looked like something out of a Discovery Channel special.

The rest of the week was an emotional roller coaster - Ellie got more and more unpredictable as the week went on, and my facade of calm got weaker and weaker. We skipped several outings planned for the Gladney families because coming back after leaving Ellie with a sitter seemed to exacerbate her distress. Suzanne and I did take one morning to get out and do some shopping and to get a coffee at Kaldi's (Ethiopia's version of Starbucks.)
One of the brightest highlights of the week was the lovely family sharing our guesthouse. Marcel and Cornelia and their daughter Lili-Cai were in Ethiopia to pick up their daughter Sena. They were supportive and encouraging and gracious with their time, toys and advice all week long. Some of the happiest moments of that week for Ellie were play time with Lili-Cai. As things got harder, I was so grateful for their presence!

Lili-Cai and Ellie blowing bubbles (yeah, Ellie's in pajama pants, because that's what she chose out of the suitcase and I was not about to argue...):

We had the privilege of getting to meet Ellie's uncle and two of his cousins, which was an overwhelming experience that I think I'll keep private for Ellie when she's older. On Friday, our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:30 in the morning, so we packed up after dinner and headed to the airport. Poor Suzanne was sick and fighting nausea, and I was fighting back an anxiety attack thinking about what behavior Ellie might unleash on us during the wait and the flight itself. After many delays (missing flight crew, missing plane, power failure at the airport...) we boarded with the same surly crew we'd had on our way there. Ellie turned out to be a champion traveler - a few breakdowns toward the end but at the end of a trip that long who could blame her? The best part was that all the sadness and mourning she'd been wrestling with all week seemed to lift once we got to the airport, and we had the chance to see some of the sparky personality of the little girl I love.


I know this has been a long post, but I can't wrap up the retelling of this part of our adventure without thanking Suzanne, my dear cousin and friend and very favorite travel companion! She was truly my hero that week - ready to entertain, crack a joke, to console, to transcribe Amharric so we could communicate, to run errands so I wouldn't have to leave Ellie, to haul ALL OF OUR BAGS through customs when Ellie lost it in the airport and refused to walk (damn you Lufthansa and your stroller-gate-checking-fail!) I couldn't have asked for a better sidekick on this trip, and am so glad that Ellie got to spend her first week as a part of my family with her Aunt Suzanne!

E-Day!

The next morning I woke early to the sound of roosters, then the call to prayer from the neighborhood mosque, followed shortly by the call to prayer from the nearby Orthodox church. Nothing tells you that you aren't in Texas anymore like the alarm of farm animals and rivaling religious orders with loudspeakers. Since we arrived after dark the night before, it was also my first daylight view of Ethiopia. The view from Suzanne's window of the courtyard:

This was my view from my window:

What you don't get in this picture is the smell of wood fires for the kitchens - there were fires inside the house at night too for warmth, and I don't know what kind of wood they use but it's like the whole city smells like a Pier 1 store.

Suzanne and I had breakfast and waited for the call from Travis that he was on his way with Ellie from the children's home. He was delayed and had several babies to "deliver" that morning, so Ellie was the last one when he finally arrived.
First glimpse!

Travis handed her off with the comment that she was about the sweetest kid he'd ever met and that he hoped I'd been working out because she was sturdy. This photo pretty much sums up the theme of the week up until we reached the airport: Me - ecstatically happy. Ellie - wondering what the hell I'm so happy about.

Another adopting family was staying at our guesthouse (more about them later), and had one of the Gladney caregivers, Sem, there that day to babysit their daughter. (Families aren't allowed to take the children out in public except to the embassy and to the airport.) After Suzanne and I failed to stop Ellie's tears with any of the toys we'd brought (with the exception of pink sparkle tennis shoes, which while a size too big, were put on immediately,) she came to our room to see if she could help. We spent about an hour playing with her and our neighbor's daughter and not crying. Victory. (Although she's only smiling here because Sem told her to.)


Tomorrow: Back to the Gladney Home and Antsy Pants!

Into Africa - Part 1

In honor of my first anniversary home with Ellie, I thought I'd finally do a post about the trip to Ethiopia and meeting Ellie for the first time. Those of you who were reading while we were there know that the first week was challenging (ahem) and a bit stressful. I thought I'd focus on the other parts of our trip, which were more entertaining (in hindsight, anyway!)

365 days ago I got on a plane to Washington D.C. to pick up my dear cousin Suzanne on our way to Addis Ababa. Somewhere over the Mississippi the Xanax wore off for a moment and I had a sudden "how the hell did I get here?" moment. Even though the process of adoption is long (very) and requires great intent and diligence and determination, to some extent I felt surprise that things were actually working out!

Among the many bags American Airlines received a hefty fee to transport was this one - the largest rolling duffel I could find packed to the gills with undies, socks, jammies, and other clothes to donate to the orphanage thanks to the generous donations from friends, especially the ladies at my baby shower. Did I mention that all of you rock? Cause you do. Hard.


I flew out of Dallas the morning of the 19th and met Suzanne at the Dulles airport. We had lunch with my aunt and uncle and I braced myself for the 8 hour trip to Frankfurt, Germany. Here are Suzanne and I fresh as daisies on the DC to Frankfurt leg (the freshness wore off sometime in hour 12 of travel):





Sunrise somewhere over Europe:

Sometime the morning of the 20th we arrived in Frankfurt. The layover was a nice break from sitting on a plane and a good place to pass the time - shops, Haagen Daz prominently located in the middle of the terminal, internet kiosks and even a McDonalds. I found a 10 Euro bill in the back of my passport holder from the trip Suzanne and I took in 2006 to Europe, so we put it to use on a couple of coffees (see, my disorganization pays off!) We gate-checked the folding stroller I'd brought to make toting Ellie a little easier through the airports on the way home - little did we know that was the last time we'd see it. I can only assume it enjoyed the connecting flight to Yemen and is being enjoyed by some toddler in Sanaa right now. When our flight boarding call was announced Suzanne and I found ourselves in the middle of a crowd that resembled the line for the last copter out of Saigon, and got our first taste of Lufthansa "efficiency." A bus ride to the tarmac, a hike up the steepest plane stairs I've ever seen and another hour of disorganized musical chairs while loading the passengers and we were off!

Almost there:

We landed and picked up visas in a comedically bureaucratic office/hallway, learned of the stroller's departure and were thankful the rest of the luggage stayed with us. We were met by fellow Texan Travis from Gladney and our American-music-loving driver Milian ("like a million dollars," he told us.) The drive to our guesthouse through central Addis in the dark was sensory overload, our first lesson in the fluidity of Ethiopian driving rules, and the beginning of a week of culture shock.

Tomorrow: we meet Ellie!

First Fourth

Mimi brought bike bling.

The result

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Lining up with her neighbor friend for the parade.