Day 3

Today we went to the big kid house, took them our donations, lots of sweet treats for the kids, and lots of pictures. I was sort of expecting this day to be an overwhelming and emotionally hard time, and it kind of was. When we walked into the first room it was full of children (approx. 50) ranging in age from probably 4 to 10, and they all immediately stood up and starting singing "good morning, good morning" to us when they saw us. Oh, my gosh, talk about breaking your heart. We started handing out the tootsie rolls, suckers, and fruit roll-ups, and it was of course a big hit. I started going from child to child unwrapping the roll-ups, and as soon as I would start on one, the next child would be holding out his hand saying, "mommy, mommy." I wish everyone could experience what we experienced today at least just once in their life. It changes your heart. And 5 million orphans is no longer a concept but a true life reality. The good news is the children were happy, playful, loved to cheese it up for the camera, and have excellent nannies watching over them. And many of the children already have adoptive parents just waiting for them to pass through court and come home. Roger fell in love with one particular little girl. She already has a waiting family; Roger said if she didn't we'd be in trouble. We took a photo album for a little 8-year-old boy who came home this past spring to give to his friends still at the orphanage. In it were pictures of this little guy playing soccer in his beautiful soccer uniform, playing basketball with his adoptive brother, riding a horse, on a hay ride, posing for the camera with his new family. You get the picture. This little friend looked at those pictures, and you could just read his mind through his eyes. I hope that little boy finds his new family soon. We then moved on the the 2-year-old room, and, boy, was there some fun personalities in there! We delivered a care package for a family waiting to bring their little boy home, and it was neat to watch him open up his goodies and look at his parents' pictures at the same time, putting the two together. But then, of course, after he opened his bag full of fruit snacks and a little toy truck, it was a battle to keep everyone else's hands off his new stuff!

After we spent time with the kids we went back downstairs and had a coffee ceremony. I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous about this part. But no need to be. It was really good (with steamed milk and sugar), and really hot, so I wasn't quite as concerned about getting sick after I saw that. It was delicious and strong! For all you coffee lovers out there, authentic Ethiopian coffee is the real deal!

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Rico's with the two other adoptive families here with us. So far we've had a great experience with food. Our driver Melke makes sure we only eat at "safe food" restaurants, and so far he hasn't done us wrong. One family here is adopting a little boy the same age as Ari and the other family is adopting a 5-year-old girl. It was neat to witness that little girl's first hours with her new mommy. I am excited to see how she progresses throughout the week as she adjusts to her new reality. As we neared the end of our meal, our waiter come to our table and said something about the road in front of the restaurant being closed. Or at least that's all we could understand. We looked out the front window and sure enough there were soldiers lined up and down both sides of the street. It's not necessarily uncommon to see men in military uniform and weapons out and about, but we could definitely tell there was something going on when we saw how many of them there were. We walked outside to quickly get in with our drivers, and Roger asked the waiter as we were leaving what was going on, and the waiter replied with what Roger thought was "beekeepers." Yes, Roger is having somewhat of a difficult time picking up the dialect here. He then turned around to me and exclaimed "beekeepers!!" with a midly panicked look on his face. Seeing that many men outfitted with rifles is a little unnerving. I said, "What? Beekeepers?" Well, we asked Melke, our driver, what was going on and he explained that someone important was getting ready to travel down that road and it was being secured by the soldiers. We then later figured out that the waiter had said "peacekeepers," not "beekeepers," and even now I cannot think about the look on Roger's face when he said "beekeepers!" without laughing so hard I cry. We will never forget those intimidating Ethiopian beekeepers. Ari continues to do amazingly well. We have video of him full on laughing that we tried to upload to YouTube, but no such luck yet. He is basically sleeping through the night, going to bed at 8:30 and waking between 6:00 and 7:00. Although, as I'm writing this it's 5:25 a.m. and he's been up for 25 minutes now. We have started feeding him warm rice cereal with banana, and he loves it! I've started titrating Similac formula with Bebelac, and he's tolerating it well. A little more gassy, but that's about it. We are not so much worried about establishing a routine right now, just keeping him healthy and happy. God has blessed us with an easy, happy baby, and it is not lost on us for one second. We continue to get lots of smiles and giggles. Now, sleeping for us, on the other hand, is a different story. I'm not sure if it's because we aren't adjusting to the time change or if it's because we have so much adrenaline as a result of being new parents, but so far every other night we've only gotten about 3 hours of sleep. And it's not because of the baby. Oh, well. This week is already flying by. What's a little lost sleep; right?
-Abby

Melke our driver with Ari

Coffee ceremony

Car Ride