Friday, November 30, 2007

New Look

Well we have officially made the switch to our new url. I hope we haven't lost anyone, though I suspect we may have. We will try and make the rounds and update everyone, but if you know anyone who may read this from time-to-time you may want to let them know. We have also changed the name and look of the blog. Since our son is home with us now we have decided to blog more about raising a transracial family in the midwest. Hopefully you all won't find that too boring.

On a side note I have also transferred this blog to another site. Take a look and let me know which you prefer or if you don't care at all. Thanks!

http://4goodreasons.wordpress.com

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Weekend Reunion and Ch-Ch-Changes

Well after an eventful week, "Our Adoption Adventure" is back! After last week's phone call, the wife and I had some discussion about internet safety and whether or not we should continue writing this blog. (After all we started this to keep everyone informed on how the adoption process was going and we brought our son home in August. So maybe end of story?) But we have also enjoyed doing this and still have lots we can talk about. So after some cleansing and a couple tweeks, we are going to continue blogging. We have made a few chnages, the biggest will be our url. After this week our new address(assuming it is still available) will be:

http://4goodreasons.blogspot.com

I put our blog there for a couple days so I think we should be good. If not we will let everyone know. Also we are going to TRY to limit access to our personal information. Most of you know who we are, so we may not be posting our names or where we live very often. Probably a little paranoid but my better half would feel better if we didn't put that out there and I respect that.

So on to the news. We got together in Wisconsin this past weekend with a few of the families we traveled with. We had not seen any of them or the kids since we all parted ways at various airports. It was a lot of fun and we were even able to go out to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. We spent the night and the kids, especially the oldest two, thought staying in a hotel was really cool. I am posting a couple pics of the kids for you to enjoy.




We are also starting to get ready for the holiday and Tariku's upcoming baptism. (See I just put in a name, man this is going to be hard!) Basically that means LOTS and LOTS of cleaning, so 40 some people can come into our home on Sunday. If we don't get that done I guess we take everyone out to eat instead. It's not looking good.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Weird phone call

So, tonight, about 4:00, Annalise was throwing a tantrum about something and Gary is feeding Tarik. The phone rings and some man asks for Gary or Jennifer XXXXXX(mis-pronounced our last name, as always). 'Long O' Gary says, as always.

The man said he saw our blog and was thinking about adopting and had some questions. He asked if all 3 of our children were adopted, Gary muttered over the chaos 'Well we have 4 and only 1 was adopted, the other were biological'. Long silence from this man.
Then he says again HE was thinking about adopting but didn't know alot about it. Then he asked if our adopted child was American or adopted overseas. Gary said it was an international adoption. Another long pause. The guy said 'international is kind of expensive isn't it'? Gary said 'it can be'. Again he said he was just looking for some information on adoption and Gary asked if he lived here in our state. The man said 'no, he lived in Illinois, but was thinking about moving back to our state'. Gary then told him we used CHSFS and he could contact them with any questions. The man said he had looked at lots of agency websites, but couldn't find any pictures. Gary said alot of times they don't post pics and then told the man that it wasn't a good time to talk. The man said he might call back if he has more questions.

Gary called me at work and said it was a weird conversation, something about it made Gary feel uncomfortable. Gary really felt like there was more to it and was waiting for either some racist comments or comments against international adoption. Nothing like that was said though.

And we both wondered why, if he had read our blog, he would need to ask most of those questions. And of course now we are wondering if we should never have started this blog, or at least made it public. BTW - there were 2 hits from Illinois on our blog today - one a couple hours before the call and one just after.

Of course, after the fact, we wish we would have responded differently to this man. And maybe got his name, or just stopped him at the very first question. Like 'You SHOULD NOT be calling us at home and invading our privacy. Yes, we have a blog, but our phone number is not on there, so we are not inviting such calls.' Don't get us wrong, we love to talk about our adoption, but this didn't seem the appropriate way to do it. The guy could have posted a comment and asked if he could speak to us about adoption. That would have seemed more normal.

Personally I do not think normal people call up total strangers with such odd questions.

I have so many thoughts and worries going through my head. I would like assume it was harmless and he is really considering adoption, and maybe he doesn't have any social skills and didn't realize how weird it felt to us.
But in reality, we are now considering locking up the blog, or taking out all pictures and personal information (though it may be too late).

Any advice, are we over-reacting, over-worrying? And this is an FYI in case someday you trying to get into the blog and it is locked down.


And - sir - if you are reading this, I don't mean to be insulting, but we do not wish for you to call us again. Even if your questions are legitimate and your intentions are harmless, it was very uncomfortable and inappropriate.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Ethiopia, Chapter 6, The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-quarters

Since I have been labeled either a dork, or nerd, or both, I decided to embrace my geekness and go with it. Letting you gentle reader, figure out today's title.

OUR journey in Ethiopia continues.

Monday was the day we went to the National Museum of Ethiopia. I was initially looking forward to this because this is where Lucy is. If you want to learn more about Lucy, just click on her name. However just before leaving the US I read an article in "The Daily Prophet" which mentioned that Lucy was going on tour in the States and what we would see in Ethiopia was actually a model, not the real thing. Then I learned that it is always a model so my chance of seeing the actual skeleton was always going to be 0.

To get to the museum we did not have to go to King's Crossing and board a train, instead we all piled into two vans and off we went. Traffic in Addis is interesting and very hectic. Not as bad as Cairo but definitely a close second. Both of our drivers for the week were very skilled in the art of placing a van in a lane of traffic designed to fit a Yugo which was very helpful. After about a half hour we arrived in one piece at the museum.

Once there we had to go through security and have our passports checked. I started thinking they might have "The Philosopher's Stone" inside, but alas all in all I was very disappointed with the place. It is incredibly small and Lucy's exhibit is in a corner in the basement with little signage to even let you know where she is. There was lots of art which I loved but not as much artifacts showing Ethiopia's history as I would have expected. After all Ethiopia has been considered the Cradle of Humanity.

After the museum we went back to the guest house and then went over to the care center to see the kids. We would have gone in the morning to see them but they were at the embassy getting their passport photos taken. Tariku was tired and slept most of our visit. We wrote it off as him having a long day and the fact that he was 4 months old and really at that age all they do is eat and sleep. Again we probably would have known he wasn't feeling well if he had been in our care and we were able to watch over him 24/7. I am not criticizing our hosts, they really did a great job and we understand they still had some last minute details to take care of including the passport photos. I just meant that since we did not have him with us the whole time it took us longer to realize he was sick.

Tuesday was the day we had Tariku the longest up to that point because it was US Embassy day. The kids had been to the doctor in the morning and had their blood drawn and then they were dropped off at the guest house. I have never seen so many excited adults in one room. Except maybe at the finals of the Quidditch World Cup.(Okay I will stop now. I promise!) Back to reality the children arrived and we all piled into the two vans again and headed through town to the US Embassy. After another half hour trip in the vans, security not once but twice, where some families had to drink the formula out of their baby's bottle, and another 2 hours of waiting we each went to the window answered a few questions and were told that our children were our and we could bring them home! Of course throughout the entire day Tariku slept and ate a little bit.

I should mention eating and then leave Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for next time. The babies in the care center are cup fed from these tiny metal cups. It is amazing to watch. We even saw an infant under 15 days old in Hossana's care center eating this way. They say it is safer on the children since it is easier to sterilize a cup that a bottle and nipple. I believe this is part of the reason they do this. It is also a lot quicker to feed the kids this way and when you have lots of hungry kids who need to eat every 4 hours or so, you need to do it quickly. (Just one man's opinion) Anyway, Jen fed Tariku on Monday out of a cup and she did a great job with it. On Tuesday we all brought cups and bottles not knowing if our kids would take from the bottle right away but all of us wanting to transition them to that point. Tariku took the bottle right away never once needing us to go back to the cup.

Eating for us included a great mixture of American cuisine and Ethiopian. The cook at the guest house made us breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday and we walked away from most meals way too full. I never knew you could have dessert with every meal!

Again, this is way too long of a post so I am calling it quits. I better go make sure Jen doesn't think I am too much of a dork. Besides I am getting this pain from the scar on my forehead. Peace!

Monday, November 12, 2007

Growing Boy

All I have to say about the previous post is my husband is a dork. I didn't get the title, he had to explain what it meant, so maybe I am a dork and he is a nerd!

Anyway, Tarik had his 6 month checkup last Monday (not today, I am just slow). He weighed in at a whooping 17 lbs, 2 oz. This is just 50th percentile, I was kinda surprised because he has such chubby cheeks and an adorable big ole belly. Well, his height was just 25 1/4 inches, and that puts him at 15th percentile. Alittle on the short side at this point, which makes him look so chubby. He had to get 4 shots and had some big tears from that, but he was just fine the rest of the day. After his first set of shots, he had the worst mood we have ever seen from him, so I was alittle worried.

He is still working on his sitting, which he has been doing for quite awhile and not improving at any monumental speed. I would blame this on my lack of setting him down. I am sure that if he spent more time on the floor practicing, then he would be getting better. His cousin Ben has been a pro at sitting for a few weeks. Also, he is so funny because for the longest time he had only rolled from his back to his belly, which I think is the harder way to go. The a couple weeks ago, he finally went from him belly to his back. And for about 3 days, he rolled alot. Now it is like he forgot how.

The rest of the kids are doing great! Anna and Jack switched rooms, so now it is the girls in one room and the boys in the other. It was an easier transition than I expected. Hopefully after the holidays we can re-paint and decorate their rooms.

Gary had today off work for Veteran's Day, so I took a vacation day and we got a large chunk of Christmas shopping done. It was fun to spend the day together and the stores weren't too full. Still lots of people out, but not like it will be in a couple weeks.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Ethiopia, Episode IV, A New Hope

After only two and a half months we have decided to post some pictures and tell everyone a little bit about our time in Ethiopia. I know what you are thinking, "But Gary, we were really hoping you would wait another 6-7 months."

Let's see, when we last left our heroes...

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away"

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….


Ooops, wrong story. WE were in Cairo. In my defense it did seem a lot like another world.



So let's see, we arrived in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia on Friday night. We were met by a representative from our agency. His name is Masey and he was pretty much in charge of getting all of settled and assisting us with any and all of our needs. We were the third family to arrive. The rest of our group were due in the next morning. The guest house is amazing. It is a very large home with 7 or 8 bedrooms. It has a large living space were we gathered to watch TV and chat. There is a kitchen upstairs but it was not really used. The kitchen and dining area downstairs was were we all gathered to eat.

Saturday morning we got up and got ready to meet our children for the first time. I can't properly describe how it felt waiting to see Tariku for the first time. We were led into a large room at the care center and one at a time, each family was led to another room where their child was. The agency creates a video "Life Book" for each family and part of the video is our time there including our first meeting.

So once we were led into to room and shown Tariku, Jen of course started crying. I being the manly man decided not to.
On a side note, it must have been really dusty at the time because dust particles got into my eyes and made them water. I hate when that happens.


We only got to spend a short time with Tariku because we had to get to the office and meet the rest of our travel group and discuss the agenda for the week. What I remember most about our visit that day was how quiet and sleepy Tariku was. In hindsight I should have realized he didn't feel well.

Meeting the rest of the group was interesting since they had all just gotten off the plane and looked half dead. You are pretty much on a plane traveling for close to 18-24 hours and I can't even imagine what was going through there heads at the time or even how much they remember. After introductions they all left to meet their children. The rest of the day was getting to know everyone and preparation for our trip to Hossana the next morning.

HOSSANA

Sunday morning we all got up early, 4am early, in order to make the trip south. This trip is optional but it is an opportunity to maybe meet the birth family, see the care center where the children were dropped off at, and also see Ethiopia. Each family had it's own Land Rover and driver and at about 5am 8 vehicles drove out of Addis. The trip itself was really something, watching the sun come up and burn off the mist from the mountains was amazing. We were able to see small huts in the distance, some were close to road, and watch the Ethiopian people start their day.

Once we reached Hossana we went to the CHSFS office and waited for our visit. At first no one from Tariku's birth family was there and when it seemed that we would not be able to meet anyone, word came down that his birth father was on his way. Once he arrived we went into an office and had a nice conversation and afterward took some pictures. There is probably more to say but we want to wait until Tarik is older and we can tell him about it first.

On the way back to Addis we stopped at one of the homes and visited with the family who lived there. We were also able to go inside see how they lived .While we were there lots of children and adults appeared and watched us. We interacted a little bit with them. I found a small group of children who were facinated with my video camera. Once I turned the screen around and they were able to see themselves they about flipped and I had them had a large group of children. I did end up giving some change to them, we were encouraged not to since it has in the past caused some problems, but we were in the car and it seemed like the right thing to do. I forgot to mention that while in Hossana we stopped in the care center there. Jen and I had brought some gifts for the children in the area, crayons and granola bars if I remember right, and we asked the guard at the care center to hand them out to the children that had gathered outside the walls.
We made it back to the guest house in Addis late afternoon and spent the evening watching a movie I brought along. Thanks Netflix!

Jeez, I am only thru Sunday! I better call it quits for now and take up the next chapter later. (SPOILER ALERT!!! We find out some interesting news about Luke's father. You don't want to miss it.)



Oh, we also got new pictures taken and wanted to share some of them.




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