Adoption get together!

Saturday we had an adoption gathering for families who have used God's Children.(our homestudy agency) It was so much fun and there were so many families in our area we had never met before. The location was perfect and allowed the little ones to run around in a safe environment. They had a blast playing and running FREE.(Winter is way too long here) What a blessing to be allowed to use this awesome facility!

There were families with questions about starting the process, families just waiting to start the process, families in the process, and families who have completed their adoptions all celebrating together.

We took this opportunity to get a family photo. Why is it so hard to get everyone to look and smile at the same time???? Oh well, all our faces are turned in the right direction.

Growing

CAUTION!!!!!IGNORE THE BACKGROUND-LAUNDRY DAY-all you mom's understand, right???

She is growing everyday-at first 2t clothes were too long in the sleeves and now they are just right. She has gained 4 lbs(not sure on height) but her tummy has gone down. She doesn't seem to be stuffing herself as much, so hopefully she is trusting there will be food.

I did her hair in the style I swore I would never do it again. Because........I read on a hair blog that some hair needs weight to encourage the hair to grow and that is why a lot of girls wear braids and beads. So, I thought I might try and do something with it a couple times a week.(Somebody let me know if this isn't enough, I am so new to this whole girl, hair thing-I barely do my own)

And you can see, Sebastian is still not wearing clothes.......

We had a lady make this wall decal for her room. I LOVE the way it turned out.

here's a closer version of the saying....so true to how we feel about her(and all of our children). We did get the quote from a t-shirt we saw.

update

Everything is going well. We are slowly getting on a schedule and settling into a "norm". I think that was the scariest for me, not knowing how it was going to be and what it was going to look like.
She is still doing great. She doesn't quite know what to do with Sebastian. They like each other from afar, but once he gets close, she screams. She knows what is coming, a big bear. He is so funny to watch, he doesn't know how big he is and just almost tackles her. So here is a picture of them smiling at eachother, that's why I had to post it. They are too cute.

We have gone to a lot of dr. appt. and we still have some more to go to. Things so far are coming back positive and we are praying for more good news as we dig a little deeper into a specific issue. Her walking is improving everyday and she has almost mastered the stairs. How amazing is that? We didn't even know if she could ever walk and now she is almost running.
We have an appointment with an occupational therapist to evaluate her and hopefully see what more we can do to help her catch up. There was a little question on her age, maybe she was really only going to be 2 instead of 3. The dr. really thinks her birthday is right, and looking at her mouth full of teeth, we agree. She does much more than Sebastian in some areas, but it's so confusing because she is so much smaller than him and she is a whole year older. She is really closer in age to Thatcher-10 months apart.
The Husons, some family friends, just sent in their contracts to AGCI and will be starting on their dossier soon. We are so happy for them as they made this big step. Congrats guys!!!
We are getting quite an Ethiopian community here, it's exciting. By next summer, there should be at least 10, that I know of, little Ethiopians here in our city. How fun will it be to get together with them??

ALL BY MYSELF

My first attempt at styling her hair.

Injera What??? She has discovered the potato chip and isn't going back. Why didn't I start with an apple or something?

I am getting a little better with the hair. She doesn't like it in for very long, and if it is tight, she pulls it out right away.

Sebastian has been refusing to get dressed for the past 3 days. Today I managed to get pants on him. Maybe by Sunday he will be fully dressed and we can go to church.:0)

Travis went back to work this week so I am all by myself, not including the 4 little ones running around. The first day was good. The second day was ok. Today, I was ready to pull my hair out.It just started off badly, just a little off. We finally got to bible/story time at 9:45am, after meltdown after meltdown getting ready for the day, half of us were still in our PJs even. OH Well!!

We have added something back into our day-something productive.

I was even adventurous and had them do a Valentine's Day craft. Something they could all do, GLUE! Everything was going great, Sebastian and Wibnesh did theirs beautifully, and then we ran out of glue. Mmmmmm.....not well planned on my part.

For the most part, my days aren't that much different than before, except those little moments I had to myself here and there during the day, are GONE. I could check my e-mail here and there,or make a phone call while they were playing, not really an opportunity now. I am sure once we get into a groove, it might be different. Even if it's not, e-mails can wait and that's what voicemail is for, so I need to "let it go".

Now let's see what we can add tomorrow.......

Sweet things

Everyday we are seeing more and more of Wibnesh's(yes we still call her that and we can't decide what we will do with her name) personality come out and oh is she sweet! I have noticed the more use to us(or bonded) she is, the less she sleeps and the harder it is to get her to sleep.(I think early on, she used sleep as a coping method)She wants to play and talk instead of sleep, what 2 year old doesn't, right? We started doing this thing before bed where I go through all the names of the people that love her. I say "Mommy loves Wibnesh" and she shakes her head "yes", "Daddy loves Wibnesh" and she shakes her head "yes", and so on. Tonight as I was rocking her, she did this little jabber and then shook her head "Yes" and jabbered some more and shook her head "yes", I did catch a mommy in there and a Jesus. It was so cute that she wanted to do it on her own. I indulged her then and went through all of the people(ok not ALL) that love her.
After I prayed for her, then she closed her eyes and said a whole lot of something, none of it I could understand. We are pretty sure she is speaking in Amharic a lot of times. Then opened her eyes and smiled at me. OH I just LOVE THIS LITTLE GIRL!!!

Tonight we had family movie night. As I sat in our basement, all 6 of us, I felt so blessed. A year ago, we were talking about adoption and if we should take the leap. Now we have our long awaited child with us, just hanging out, as a family.
We have been home a week and tomorrow we will have known her for 2 weeks. It feels like so much longer than that. I guess because we have loved her longer than that?
I am in awe by how well things have gone with her adjustment period. I shouldn't be in awe, this is what we have prayed for since we knew her. I am certain there will be struggles, but this was a huge blessing to have our first week home go so well. We were able to reconnect with our boys, as well as, introduce them to their new sister without any major drama. As stated in an earlier post, it is has been HARD, I am not forgetting that, but prayers have been answered and we are blessed.

Welcome home and adjustment

Thursday we went back to HH to visit. We thought because Wibnesh had done so well with us that it would be safe to take her back with little drama. We were wrong. She does do well with us, but if she was to choose between us, obviously she would choose her special mothers. It was so hard to see how sad she was and obviously confused by the situation. We went back to the hotel as soon as we could. Once we were back, she was fine again, playing and giggling with us. It is wonderful to know how much the special mothers care for the children while they are there. Every child is so loved, hopefully paving the way for the child to then love and accept love from their adoptive parents.
We packed and got our stuff cleaned up to leave for the airport.
We spent a couple hours visiting with another family in their hotel room, which helped pass the afternoon a bit. I want to say how awesome our travel group was. It was so cool to experience this life changing moment with other like-minded people. Every couple was encouraging and uplifting to be around. I am so glad our agency has families go together to help each other out and bring support. It was very comforting to be able to go down to breakfast and see their faces, or know they were just down the hall if we needed them.
It was bittersweet leaving Ethiopia. We were so excited to get home and see our boys, but at the same time, sad knowing we were taking her away from everything she has ever known.
We got so many opposite reactions from others as we were in Ethiopia. Some Ethiopians would be happy and smile, saying "God Bless You", others would just give us not so nice looks and say something under their breath. I guess it was just the start of us developing a thick skin to others remarks. I try to remember what Almaz, the director of HH, said about that. She said, "Never let it bother you, YOU know what you know what you know what you know about the situation and why you are adopting."
The flight went amazingly well. She slept the whole time, except the last couple of hours, which was filled by eating.(she would eat ALL the time if we let her) We missed our connecting flight in DC because Ethiopian Air was late getting in and immigration took over an hour to get through. We were so disappointed to not get home to see the boys when we thought. It was so comforting to eat familiar food at the airport and Addis had her first introduction to Starbucks. She doesn't know how to drink from a straw, so it took her a while to get it.
We got to Bismarck at 10:45pm that night. As soon as I got off the plane, I was soooooo emotional, knowing my family and friends were waiting just around the corner. The people who have gone through this journey with us, encouraged us, prayed for us, shared our excitement and longed to see her as well; were all waiting for us to come through the glass doors.
I saw the boys first when we got to the doors. Immediately, I bent down to hug them. Thatcher was very affectionate, kissing me and smiling. Oliver,did his normal, smile but I am too cool to show anything more. Sebastian, was the oddest. He wouldn't even look at me or come to me. It was heartbreaking but I can imagine how confused he was. I really didn't think this would be his reaction. It took a couple days before he warmed up to me and now it's back to normal.
I had a friend tell me that once you get back from Ethiopia, your children look so "white". Soooo true!! Of course, they had been sick ALL week long, so they were unusually pale.
Family and Friends surrounded us with signs and banners and big hugs and smiles. Oh how nice it was to be home!!!!
We came home to a CLEAN house, which is a big feat considering there were 7 children under the age of 6, and 6 adults living there while we were gone. We had balloons, flowers, signs and care packages waiting our arrival. We could feel the LOVE, so to speak. It's amazing how God puts all the right people in your life.
It didn't take long for Wibnesh to get use to everyone and within a couple of minutes she was playing with her brothers. Remember how at the beginning Oliver was having a hard time with this, he was crazy about her and played with her the rest of the night. She took to him right away and goes around saying "Olala".
She is a good sleeper and I really was anticipating having problems when we got home. Thankfully, sleep is not an issue. Once she is asleep, she is out! Thank you Jesus! I don't do well waking in the night, I need my sleep.
Sebastian and her are interesting together. They just look at each other and touch each other every once in a while. Sebastian is such a roughie though, his interaction is always more of a hit, then she hits him back and then he cries and she cries. He is getting better at being gentle, he loves to restle and she doesn't quite know how to take it yet.He does try to give her kisses and is enthralled with her hair.
She is adjusting well. I imagined having to hold her all the time, or wear her in the moby because she is so scared or unsure about the place. It's like she has always been here, doing the same things like our boys. She eats what the boys eat and sleeps when they sleep. She walks around the house saying "momma" or "papa" and then just smiles. She likes to cuddle with me for a while and then she is off to discover or play with the kids.
I like to keep it real though, I really don't like reading blogs that make life seem so "unattainable".
This has been hard. Not just because of adoption, anytime you change the dynamics of a household, it's HARD. I know everyone only wants to hear the good stuff, but I don't feel it is fair to be one-sided. You have worked, stressed, prayed so hard for something and it is finally here, the feelings you thought you would feel are sometimes hidden under other feelings. Exhaustian, sickness, anxiety, fear, and feelings of inadequacey sneak in and rob you of being in the moment. The moment you have dreamed about and fought for so long.
Getting to know a new little person, who is human, thus a sinner, is HARD. Worth it, Yes. We are choosing to Love this child, just like we do our biological children, because of the Love God shows us. She has many wonderful characteristics and we haven't even seen them all, but she also has some bad ones, like we all do. She has a TEMPER. Supposedly, she was the "queen bee" in her room at the orphanage. When things don't go the way she wants them to, she lets you know, and she isn't quiet about it. I am continuing to pray for wisdom and discernment in my parenting with her, as with all my children.
I will stop for now and get to the pics.....I have more to share about some specific things but will post another time about them.


this is a lady at the hotel, her name is tsion.(say it like zion, in the bible) She was very nice and asked lots of questions about adoption. Daddy and Wibnesh on the long flight home.

First Starbucks.

Playing at the airport.

Trying to get a cousin picture while everyone was here. My children are the ones crying on the ends, you'll also notice them by their extremely pale faces.(sick all week)

Cousin harlie trying to share with Wibnesh.

Welcome home sign from a friend

Having lunch with her"brothers".

She has caught on to the whole camera thing and likes to see the picture after it's taken.

4 kiddos

She likes to color and look at books and color in books :(

Such a blessing-the good and the bad-sent from God

She was looking at a picture of her "nana" and "pop".

This is the best way for us to have her know her grandparents. In a perfect world we could visit more or live near them so they could know eachother.