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.

Awwww Yeah...

We're getting our fourth of July on super fly style and it isn't even dark yet. Stay tuned...