Got it.

Got snowsuits

Got bearsuits *

Got stripes Got wipesGot clothes for him **
Got clothes for his twin
Got books and toys***Got wishes for joy****Got homemade owls

Got baby towels*****Got suitcases packed
(Got help from the cat)


Got nappies******

Got happy

And so.

Let's go!!*******




* is this child cruelty? I sure hope not.
** check out the tacky but fabulous superman outfit!!
*** the cot is in our room, before you think we've forgotten something major here...
**** sorry about that rhyme.
***** and yes, the towel ALSO has an owl! I didn't make that one though.
****** if you were writing this in the states, what would you rhyme with 'diaper??'
******* 9.30 tonight! And yes, I'm ready! For the flight at least, if not for parenthood. Will post again from Addis as soon as I can.

It seems I always forget

To post the really important things, like dates.

Like the fact that I have to appear in court in person.

Like the fact that this means I'm flying tomorrow. On my own, because there was only one ticket left - J has to fly 48 hours later and touches down just a few hours before we need to go to our document checking appointment.

The last few days have been pretty intense. Once again, it's been an acceleration from zero to leaving the country in just a few days. You'd think I would have learned from last time and been more prepared, but no. Until we got that court date, I think that I didn't really believe these babies were going to make it home, so there wasn't much point making final preparations.

But now I finally do. You know, mostly. I keep looking at the baby clothes as I sort them and think: Hopefully, this time next week, this will have a baby inside. It makes me feel a bit teary and a bit scared.

Stuff for the babies is packed, although last night, late, I got an email from a friend who is there saying 'pack more clothes! The babies have exploding diarrhea!' So perhaps one more trip to the baby shop is in order...

Attachment literature, anybody??

Just another plea for help from the interwebs here, folks!

After about two years of reading and thinking about adoption attachment, we've decided that nobody but us is going to hold / feed our babies for the first few weeks (at least) after we get home. Also, we've decided that for a while we won't have any visitors at our house - we want to keep this as a 'safe space' for the babies until they begin to understand that they are in a family, and we will always be there. This makes a lot of sense to us, and I know that everyone on this list, even if you have made different decisions for your own situations, will at least understand where we are coming from.

However! We are having difficulty working out how to communicate this information to family and friends. People have mostly been very supportive of us during the long process, and we know that they are all eager to meet and hold our twins. We want to explain to them that we are making these decisions, not because we dont' value the contribution that they will make to our children's lives, and not because we are overprotective and paranoid, but because our children have different needs and need to learn not just who their parents are but what a parent is. It turns out that this isn't easy for people to hear - basically they think we are crazy. Or stupid. Or both.

So, I'm wondering... has anybody got any tips for how to communicate this information? Has anybody written a letter (or found a good one on the internet!) that might be helpful for us to use as a template? In terms of information sheets, I've been able to find a lot about WHAT should be done to facilitate attachment, but much less successful finding bite-sized information on WHY, and I want people to understand that we really do have good reasons for these decisions! Any help gratefully received!

On a related topic - I do'nt really think I can ask our family to read weighty tomes on these issues, but one or two of the more interested have also asked for a recommendation of a short book or 'primer' on the topic of attachment (and particularly how attachment affects brain development). I've really, really enjoyed 'why love matters', but i think even that is probably too in-depth. Does anybody have any suggestions??

Exceedingly Abundantly

It's no secret that I have been feeling pretty discouraged lately. Yesterday I went out for lunch with a friend and ended up crying into my salad because I was so worried about the babies. (I've also been challenged a lot about my attitude towards all this by a book I've been reading, but events have somewhat overtaken the post I was planning on that topic. I've been fighting hard to stay trusting, especially in the last few weeks. I knew that God is powerful, but I was finding it hard to remember that he is good. I was probably going to have to quote from Job. It wasn't going to be pretty).

Then, last night - some wonderful news. Our babies are both up to 3.1kg! Finally, a weight that doesn't start with a 2! I know that people around the world have been praying for our little ones, and we are so grateful for this tangible answer to all of our prayers. Went to bed happy. I said to J - for the first time in a long time, I am starting to believe that these babies might actually make it home. Woke up happy.

And then, this morning - I don't know how to say this any other way than just stating the bare facts - we got our court date . It is:

OCTOBER 27!

October 27, people! Twelve days time! I am absolutely overwhelmed by God's kindness to me today. I was hoping and praying for the middle of November, but prepared for this to be way into December. Truly, he has done exceedingly abundantly above all that I had asked our thought. (Ephesians 3:20, way out of context, but you'll forgive me in my excitement, yes?)

We need to be out there October 25 so we can check all the paperwork is in order on October 26. I'm hoping to go out a few days earlier (hopefully with my mum) to visit a bit with the babies and remind them who I am.

I think it's finally, finally time for me to come out of nursery-avoidance mode. I'ts largely done, but there's no actual furniture. But today - no more excuses - today I'm buying a cot!!



(By the way, I'm painfully aware that I was not the only person in the universe waiting for a court date. Hurry up, Ethiopian courts, for court dates for Rana, and Evelyn, and Rebecca and Liz and Shannon and everyone else who is waiting! We've already waited out the closure! STAT! )

The Babies

I've realised that I have written a lot lately about waiting, but I haven't really written much about the two big things: Ethiopia (after the first two days of shock) and the babies (ditto). So first: the babies.


The babies are beautiful. They are bright as little buttons, have wonderful eye contact and lovely little personalities. And if love can be measured by how miserable you are apart from someone, I can tell you now that I definitely love these babies.

The most noticeable thing about these babies is that they are SMALL. One of the things I was trying to think through and deal with during the year + that we were waiting was the fact that we might be referred an 'old' baby. Our age range was up to 12 months, and we knew that with time taken for court and travel that the baby could be considerably older than this by the time they came home. I'm not going to defend myself about finding this hard to process - I knew I should just deal with it, but dangit, I really, really love crunched up little newborns and that's what I think of when I think 'baby'.

So anyway, when our babies were matched with us, they were four weeks old. And twins. And a boy and a girl. This is a total jackpot situation, yes? Well, YES! Of course. And the babies themselves are unbelieveable, perfect, adorable. But suddenly I found myself faced with issues that I had never considered. I had been so concerned about the baby being big, that I never thought about what would happen if they were scarily small. As I write, the babies are 10 1/2 weeks old, and they are both only just past the 6 pound mark. Did I say they are 10 1/2 weeks old? They are not quite yet grown into 'newborn' size clothes. I know that 6 pounds isn't really tiny, in the scale of things, and there are much tinier babies than this out there, but we know about their new weights because we finally got a weight update on the weekend and we can now calculate that since their birth they have only put on 1 1/2 pounds (baby girl) and 1 pound (baby boy) and that doesn't feel like enough to me. It doesn't look like enough to the WHO growth chart, either, even when corrected for likely prematurity. I wonder - is this officially failure to thrive? Then I checked some definitions and wow yes, it is definitely failure to thrive. And then I think - why would I not expect failure to thrive under their current circumstances? I've been reading this cheery book , and institutional care is filed under the chapter entitled 'severe neglect'. And hey - I have to agree. I've been there. We have a great big album of photos from our trip that I bore people with, and I love to point out pictures of our babies' favourite nanny. "Look, there she is! She's pinching their little cheeks and talking to them!" And she is, and that's great, but let's face it, she has 10 other babies to look after too and I know that, pep talks aside, our babies are getting nutrition and hygiene but nothing that even remotely approaches mothering.

What will the long term effects be, I wonder? I know that brain damage is a risk. I don't want my babies to be brain damaged. I know they are being regularly fed, but if they aren't eating enough at each feed, or spitting it all up, or not absorbing it properly, I'm pretty sure they face malnutrition the same way as if food wasn't available. I can't bear to think about the fact that this is almost certainly unnecessary. With dedicated care, I know they could be bigger. I know they could be growing. I wish I could do that. It makes me feel dizzy just to think about it.

And I know that there is nothing that anybody can say to make this any better. Nothing that will fix this, now, and we probably won't know for years whether there has been any long term damage.

Hmmmmm. Not really an upper, is it?

Small Things

Things I don't have, today:

1. My babies at home
2. A court date
3. Any idea, at all, how the babies are doing
   

Things I do have, as of today:

1. A colour-coded sweater drawer:

I almost wish I had my job back.

I'm with Rana

Okay, that's it, I've had it.

Why don't we have a court date yet?

Why do the courts need to close for two weeks (AGAIN) for more training?

Why havent' we had any updates about how the babies are doing?

When will we know when we're travelling again?

Will all the little baby clothes I've bought go to waste after all?

Why does my cat keep pooing on the floor?

Why has our water supply chosen this time to spring a leak?

Why can't I seem to keep the house under control, even without babies?

Are the babies putting on any weight?

What fun are baby photos when you can't cuddle the real thing?

I'm with this lady.

I'm so totally over this stage. I just want my babies to come home.

Culture Shock

Here's another one I prepared earlier, and haven't edited at all. Written day 2, Addis.

 

 

 

It's not cool to admit this, but arriving in Addis gave me a huge, 240 volt culture shock and it seems I left my rubber-soled shoes behind. In short, it fried me.

This is not a good feeling to have in the country of your children's birth. Those of us who consider ourselves to be thoughtful people, who have carefully considered the ongoing impact of international adoption, know that it's hugely important to honour our children's heritage. Nobody wants to love Ethiopia more than us. We read books. We listen to music. We go to restaurants. We learn Amharic. And then, in our case, we arrived, and POW. Instant, intense desire to leave. I couldn't believe it. Why? WHY? After all this time? I lived in Africa as a child, and the smells and sights brought back happy childhood memories. The goats being herded down the road kept making us point and say 'oooh, look!' The music was infectious, and the food was cheap and good. And still I wanted to leave. Why? I hated myself for it, which was convenient, because I already hated myself for not hearing angels sing when I met the babies. And then I remembered - I felt exactly the same when I arrived in England. And I liked that so much in the end that I decided to stay. I think the reason things felt so difficult was just the disorientation. I didn't really hate the place, I just hated the fact that I didn't know how to procure a sim card, or I did (get it from your driver) but I couldn't contact our driver because we didn't have a sim card. And we had a map, but we didn't really know where we were on the map, and we had dollars but not birr and we had been raced out of the airport so fast that we hadn't had a chance to change any money. In England, I hated it because I had a cheque for my scholarship money but nobody would let me open a bank account, so I couldn't access any of my cash. And I spent a large chunk of my first night there standing in a telephone box in the freezing January cold, frantically trying to call home and not knowing what the international dialling out code was (it's 00, just in case you ever need it).

Money and communication and orientation. Sort them out and most other things fall into place. We now have birr. We paid a huge fee to use someone else's phone, contacted our driver and we now have a sim card. And we now know that the orphanage is there, and the hotel coffee stinks but wonderful coffee can be obtained here, which is en route. And I still feel a bit shaken up, but I no longer want to leave. I'm glad. Now I feel like I can look my babies in the eye again.

Last days of coupledom, redux

Well, I thought that J and I had already had our last days of coupledom. You know, last month. We wanted to fill them with happy memories of when we were him and her rather than mum and dad, but to be honest they were mostly spent running around in ever decreasing circles, trying to pack and get ready for the trip.

But, as things turned out, here we are again, just the two of us.

So, what I want to know is: if you could have approximately a month before really becoming parents, what would you do with that month? Trips away are not an option, but I'm wide open to most other ideas. J is at work during the day, but I am not. Should I be sewing baby clothes? (Wow, it turns out baby clothes are really EXPENSIVE. Forget university education - this is what we should have been saving for). Should I be filling the freezer with defrostable meals? Should I be reading? Sleeping? And what should we be doing with our weekends and evenings?

Thing is, I don't really want to be in this situation, but since I am I don't want to waste it. I know that in a few months time, through a fog of tiredness, I will remember - I had more than a MONTH to fill, with almost no responsibilities. I want to at least look back and smile.

No word on court date yet, by the way.

What's with the background changes?

It has no doubt NOT escaped the notice of any of my regular readers that I did not come home from Ethiopia with babies. No, I did not. No babies here.

Sigh.

However, what I do have is approximately eight million and forty baby photos. I cant' show them to you yet, for reasons that you all already know, but boy oh boy I can sure spend a lot of time looking at them.

[You can't tell, but I just clicked away from this window for five minutes to look at them all again].

I have looked at them a lot since I came home. A lot. Even the un-favourite ones, eg where one baby is puking a little, are irresistible to me. And... there's no cool way to say this, so I'm just going to say it- I've started digitally scrapbooking some of them. Yes. I have. I have scrapbooked, and I am not ashamed.

(Okay, maybe a little ashamed).

It seems that the older I get, the less cool my hobbies become. Photography was reasonably cool. Sewing is borderline. Making my own beaded jewellery was pushing it. And scrapbooking... wow. I'm pretty sure that it is really incredibly uncool. (Sorry, scrapbookers. I'm one of you now, so I say this with love). I told my sister about this new interest, and she openly mocked me, which is never a good sign.

The one perk is that my new stash of digital papers (that's scrapbook-talk, y'all) can double as blog backgrounds! Now the text here actually contrasts with the area behind it - novel, non?

And actually, another one is that I've used my new hobby to solve a problem I've been ruminating on. I really want to tell you the babies' names, but after my last little experience with google, I've been very loath to type their names in any kind of searchable format. I've also been wanting to show you some pictures that don't break any rules (nothing that identifies the babies). So, without further ado, here they are in all their non searchable, legal, scrapbook-y glory:

[actually, in the end I decided to remove them, just to be on the ultra, uber safe side. I'll put them back up after court]

Her first name means 'precious jewel' in Amharic. Her second name was my grandmother's. And her third name is the name she had first. (When you see baby boy's name, you'll see why we didn't feel we could keep their first names!)

[same as above]

His first name (also Amharic) means 'Jehovah is Salvation'. His second name is my Father's name, and was J's uncle's name. And his third name matched his sister's a bit too closely for us to send them through school like that.

Come home soon, babies.