Day Three

Whew. You know how you don’t realize how bad you felt (past tense) until you start feeling normal again? Today was that day. Today was the first day I’ve felt totally normal. Not tired, draggy, overwhelmed, lightheaded, etc. It was amazing to feel like myself again to face the day ahead.

We got a later start today as we didn’t have anything planned in the morning except visiting the babies. Little Miss was as sweet as could be! We got to play, snuggle, I got to feed her a bottle and enjoy another short time of relaxed baby sleep in my arms. After she awoke, I got to experience yet another first - a diaper change. Who knew a mama could be so excited about a diaper change? I was, and I think that Little Miss has one of the littlest tushes I’ve ever seen! Ha!

After leaving the foster home we went to lunch at a restaurant named Lucy, which is named after “Lucy” the oldest human remains ever found, which were found in Ethiopia (the restaurant is located next to the Lucy museum). We took our driver out with us as well. I ordered my favorite traditional Ethiopian food, tibs wat, and was hopeful I could take the full on spice that Ethiopian food offers……..turns out I could! Yay me! We then visited another orphanage to deliver some gifts to two special girls waiting for their parent’s adoptive court date and brought along donations as well. 

The afternoon visit with the babes was full of bottle eating and snoozing for a certain little girl. I am realizing why she is so teeny…..she is a super slow eater and still tries to “talk” while eating. Silly girl. She averages about 2 to 4 oz. of weight gain per week. Now that I’m here I’m seeing that she only seems to take in 2 to 3 ounces of her bottle each time she is fed (or at least fed by me). Please be praying that this little one continues to gain weight consistently - she is seriously the teeniest baby I have ever seen. 

Overall an amazing day!

Side note - we had a big laugh today. Our driver, Eschetu, asked us “Women from Missouri, are they all tall?” So funny, I know he had to have been wondering that all along, it only took him three days to ask…….Rhonda being 5’10” and me being 5’11” I’m sure we are quite the sight ;)

Day Two

Today has been a long one that is for sure! 

It started with waking up at 4:30am so I could facetime the hubs and kiddos at home at a decent hour (for them). It was the first time I had been able to see the kids faces since I left on Tuesday and it was SO good to touch base. I was able to show them some videos of sweet little Miss, so it was fun to watch their facial reactions to seeing her cooing, smiling and interacting for the first time. Tori was even teary when watching her - that girl wears her emotions on her sleeve!

We had breakfast early at the guest house before our driver came to take us to visit Embracing Hope Ethiopia, the ministry that works in Kore’. We took them about a third of the donations that we toted here.

We spoke with Christy Shannon who (along with her husband) started this ministry whose goal is orphan prevention by providing help to the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia and were given a tour. It was amazing. The heart behind their ministry, the stories she shared and the vision they had for the ministry in the future was absolutely incredible. Looking for a ministry to support? I know of one! 

Embracing Hope Ethiopia is about 30 min. away from the foster home and guest house. Since the foster home little Miss is staying in has certain visiting hours, we had to hightail it back in order to get a chance to see the babies for the last bit of the morning visiting hours. Our driver was incredible. Ethiopia has no lanes, street signs, stop signs, stop lights, speed limits - basically not many written rules. Surprisingly, it is fairly safe. You will hear a lot of honking, but it is more of a happy information honk than anything, just for communication purposes. Also throw into that mix a lot of people who are walking all over the place? It can be a bit unnerving at times. I actually had to just shut my eyes for a bit because I was getting a bit anxious, sometimes it is easier not to see :) Our driver was able to deliver us to visit the babies with about a 1/2 hr. left of time to spare. What a man!

After lunch we headed to Connected in Hope compound. I even got to try my hand at weaving, which they probably regretted afterward, because I stink! It is harder than it looks, even with a loom. We did just a bit of shopping after leaving Connected in Hope and I was able to find a sweet Ethiopian dress for little Miss (that she will fit eventually……)

The afternoon visit was great - lots of smiles, coos. Jason and I have on our hands one happy baby - so fun! This visit was also full of firsts. The first time she spit up a lot on herself and me, resulting in a clothing change for her and wet pants for me (oh how I had forgotten!) and the first time she fell totally asleep a long enough chunk of time that I could just enjoy relaxed baby weight in my arms. Granted, it isn’t a lot of baby weight compared to my boys, but there is nothing more sweet than that. 

Look at these little feet!

I found out today that little Miss was sick last week. Since our updates always come a week later than they actually happen, THIS would be the week that I would have seen on the update that she was sick and on meds. Instead, this week I am sitting in Ethiopia playing with a active and healthy baby. How amazing it is to not have to endure a week of trying not to worry until her next update if she is better, or how she is doing. I already know. Thank you Lord!

More to come tomorrow!

Day One

I am officially in love......

Oh the cute littleness that makes up my sweet girl. She is an absolute doll baby. All eyes. She is smiley and cooing. Oh.my.word. It was absolutely surreal to see her in person and she is just amazing.

I had a chance to speak to the lawyer handling our case this afternoon and found out that THE piece of paperwork that we were waiting on came in TODAY! It still needs to be translated, but should be at my house in the US by next week. Can I get a woot woot? Praise the Lord! She seems to be healthy as a horse, a very mini horse at that, is extremely alert and is right on target with things developmentally considering she is in an orphanage type setting of care. 

Besides having the chance to snuggle, play & inspect her all over - I was able to bottle feed her both visits today, which is when my gal apparently LOVES to be vocal. Staring right in my eyes and “talking” when she is supposed to be eating. So cute. 

Honestly, I do not know how I physically made it through today. Only about 4 hours worth of sleep in the last 2 days, combine that with not knowing which meal we were on or when we had eaten last (the constantly switching of time zone will mess you over) and a high altitude? There were some moments of feeling weird and lightheaded, but thankfully that has passed.

Tomorrow I am headed out to Embracing Hope Ethiopia to take them a bunch of clothing, socks, underwear, shoes, children’s vitamins, baby vitamins and some fun kid stuff that they need. This will be the first place I visit to distribute the crazy amount of donations that you all helped with. Then I will visit little Miss later on in the day! 

Travel day!

We finally made it!!!! I'm going to try to update each day - so here goes.....

As a first time world traveler (ha!), never knew how a day can seemingly last forever, currently ours isn’t even over yet.

Starting at 12:45pm on Tuesday……..it began. Between Rhonda and I, we had four 50lb. bags of luggage to check, two rolling carry-ons and two backpacks. Most likely appearing very high maintenance to the other travelers. After getting all checked in, our initial flight to Toronto was delayed almost 2 hours - which is a problem when you only have a little over an hour layover at the next destination. You guessed it, we missed our connection. We were told that someone would meet us BEFORE immigration after we landed at our gate to let us know what was going to happen since we were now flightless. What we were not told is that we would unload on the tarmac and then have to speed walk seemingly a MARATHON distance before arriving at the said location. I can’t lie. If we weren’t a bit freaked out about messing up the whole journey right as it started, it would have felt like we were on the Amazing Race. Rhonda and I rocked it - I was SO thankful for long legs and a sense of urgency in a travel partner! Thankfully the airline was able to put us on a flight to London that left 2 hours later, which was perfect because we originally had a 12 hour layover, so we had the time to spare. After each of us slept less than 2 hours on the plane that evening on the way to London (who on earth gets good sleep on a plane? ugh!), we arrived to try to navigate the massive airport that is Heathrow. Honestly, the biggest mass of people and nationalities I have ever experienced. Wow. Since we had a long layover we stored our bags and hit the city. In a mere 4 hours we were able to take an express train to the underground Waterloo station then walk to see the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abby and even have lunch outdoors at a cafe. Cool. Even with 2 hours sleep we were refreshed from the movement. Headed back to the airport to check in with Ethiopian Airlines and finally boarded the plane at 9:30pm London time (3:30pm Wednesday Missouri). We finally arrived in Addis at 7am - spent a half hour getting our visa, going through cutsoms, getting our baggage. At 8am we finally met up with our driver to head to the guest house.

Whew. 36ish hours from beginning to end. Freshly showered and about to head off in the next 15 min. to meet our babies for the first time. EEEKKKK!!!!! 

More to come………

The final countdown......

in less than 24 hours I will be headed to visit my sweet little miss! Oh.my.word. So excited!!!!

Preperation

Whew. It has been a busy week.

If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you probably are aware that I am a planner of extraordinary proportions......and I have been in full on plan mode since purchasing my plane tickets to Ethiopia last Wednesday.

I spent time last week scanning the Facebook adoption forums I've been a part of for SO long for traveling tips, packing tips, donation tips - even tipping tips! Ha! The results have been list upon list. Oh how I love a good list!

Since my last blog post - I've had some super fabulous people come along side us in this journey. People are donating needed items, lending us huge bags to use for the trip, making plans on helping out my family in practical ways while I'm away, giving money to pay for extra baggage fees so we can bring over all these donations.......it goes on and on. We are humbled by the love and support shown. We are simple amazed by the giving hearts of our family, church & friends.

My niece Ana with Tori at her pop/cookie stand last Saturday - Ana raised $160! She was super excited about shopping for the needs of Orfins in Ethiopia.

This week, as I was shopping for some socks & undies to take to Embracing Hope Ethiopia, I had one of those - "Wow, that was awesome God" moments. 10 min. before needing to drop off my youngest kiddo at preschool, I ran to a store that was having closing sale. I got there right when it opening and, because I was a woman on a mission, had the merchandise I needed in moments. This store was having a morning meeting - so they directed me up to be checked out by the woman at customer service. Since there were extra discounts, it took her a while to ring up all of our stuff, in the process she noted the fact that I was purchasing a lot of socks & undies. I told her excitedly that I was taking them with me to Ethiopia next week and they would soon be on little Ethiopians :) - she looked at me in complete shock and said "Do you know where I am from? I am from Ethiopia!" WHAT? How cool is that? She grew up in Addis Ababa and came over to the U.S. as an adult. We talked for awhile (therefore making us late to preschool - so much for a quick trip). I was blessed beyond belief. She seemed blessed beyond belief. I walked away.........Praising God.

God is good. So good. Can I get an amen? Let me tell you how overwhelmed I am that I get to go to Ethiopia. I get to be the delivering hand giving to those in directly need. To meet needs with what others are sending. It is humbling. It is incredible. I am so amazed with how this all started with wanting to adopt a child that needed a home - and over the course of this process, through the waiting, through the delays, God has opened our eyes to the need. Given us a love for a country that we've never even visited. We are experiencing first hand how our God is in the changing hearts business......we would have never guessed that a totally changed heart was going to be the outcome of the step of faith we took in the Summer of 2012. Even with the pain in the process, even though it feels far from over, how glad we are that God didn't leave us as we were!

If you'd still like to donate, it isn't too late, but for packing purposes it would be helpful to have everything by Sunday afternoon. The biggest needs we still have at this point is for clothing (used is fine) particularly sizes 12 to 18 mo. - we also could use infant & children's ibuprofen, tylenol and vicks vapor rub.

Please be praying for me as I continue to prepare for this trip. Continue to pray for our adoption process as well......we are still waiting on paperwork so we can move to the next step. Pray for our little gal's health and safety as she waits for us to come get her for good.

Want to Donate?

I am leaving for Ethiopia in a week and a half - EEK!!!!

While in Ethiopia, besides loving on my little miss at the foster home, I will also be visiting another nearby orphanage and a few ministries (Embracing Hope Ethiopia and Connected in Hope) and am HOPING to be able to bring a bunch of donations with me to meet some immediate needs and show some love!

Want to be a part?

What is needed? 

So glad you asked!

For the orphanages
One major need is medical grade formula, such as Enfamil Enfacare or Nutramigin. These are formulas for preemie babies - but are literally lifesaving for malnourished babies. This type of formula is not available at all in Ethiopia, which is why bringing it in to orphanages in the country, it is like liquid gold. Anyone who is in good with a formula representative or a pediatrician might be able to get there hands on a lot......for free. Any help with this one would be GREATLY appreciated.

Other big needs are:
*Over the Counter medications, such as: children's Tylenol, ibuprofen, cough medicines, vicks vapor rub, antibiotic ointment, children's vitamins, anti-fungal meds, etc.
*Bumbo baby seats - (USED is just great!) baby to nanny ratio is too high for the younger babies to get all the uprightedness (like my new word?) that they need. This helps get them upright more often!


For Embracing Hope Ethiopia (I contacted them yesterday and this list below comes directly from them) Want to know more about what they do in Ethiopia? Orphan prevention at it's finest.
Please check out their video here.
Things we are really low on right now include:
12mo. & 18 mo. short sleeve shirts
12mo. & 18mo. long sleeve shirts
12mo. & 18mo. pants
12mo. & 18mo. sweaters, sweatshirts, and hoodies
12mo. through 4T winter coats
We can always use:
9 mos - 4T short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, pants, sweaters, sweatshirts and hoodies socks underwear.

Connected in Hope - actually I won't be taking anything this trip donation wise, but we will visit. However, remember those scarves from this blog post? Shipping is crazy expensive, so oftentimes they use people traveling to bring scarves back with them to ship locally to the office in the states. I will be using my suitcases, that are now empty of donations, to help bring some of these back!

Fun Stuff - we would also like to bring some fun kid stuff to bless these kiddos with. Things like:
Jump ropes
Punching balloons/ balloons
Stickers
Sidewalk chalk
Tiny plastic hairbands or hair accessories
Soccerballs or balls that can be deflated for travel :)

Well, there you have it folks. One complete list! In the off chance that I end up getting more than I can physically take over, no worries! Jason & I will be going again and between the two of us, could bring even more stuff. Oh my.

Have I mentioned lately?  God is Good