I WUB TARIK

Annalise plays this 'game' with me. Every night, I say "Night, night, don't let the bed bugs night. If they do, hit them with a shoe, and I love you!" But she loves to steal the last night and say "I wub momma!" So, we go back and forth with I love Anna, and I wub momma, over and over and over. It is quite cute and she laughs and laughs. Sometimes, I throw in I love dada, or I love Katie, or I love Jack. Last night Anna said "I wub Tarik!" I thought it was neat that she is thinking of him too.

We sent a care package to Tariku yesterday. Gary and I went shopping separately, and ironically picked out matching things. I picked a cream and sage blanket, that has silky patches and really soft cotton-y patches. Gary picked out a sage baby/blanket. It is one of those things you are supposed to sleep with before giving to your baby. The parent's scent stays on it and the baby learns our scent (or mine, I hogged it all night the 3 nights we slept with it). Then we had a picture book made by Kodak Gallery. It has 10 pictures of us and the kids and then 1 each of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (from a recent holiday or something). He might be alittle too young to look at the pictures, but hopefully they will show him anyway. I hope the scent thing works. It would be neat if he recognized us in some way when we get there.

We had a conference call today with our agency. It was information on the trip south to Hosanna. This is the city many of the children and babies are from, or near there. We will take a day trip down there, so they wanted to go over the specifics of that. It is 4-5 hours each way, by LandRover. Though she said the paved road is almost complete, so the trip is much smoother and less dusty than it used to be. We have to bring a snack because we won't stop for food and will be using traditional Ethiopian pit-style bathrooms, which is a hole and she mentioned there is nothing to hold on to. I think I will go light on the beverages that day. I avoid using a porta-potty at all costs, and this sounds very much worse. She said we would make one stop at a hotel, where there are more modern bathrooms, but even those don't flush. I know it seems stupid and naive of me to be so surprised by this, but I just hadn't thought about not having flushing toilets. There will be much more important things to think of that day. We will (hopefully) be meeting Tariku's parents. What an emotional experience that will be. I really can't even imagine how it will feel. It will be very, very sad and alittle scary - what will they think of us? what will they ask us? But, I am happy we have the opportunity to do it.

I gotta go, need to clean up the house and get to bed. (Sorry for the abrupt end, I never was good at the endings of my papers back in school.)
I WUB TARIK!!