Naughty or Nice?

Last Saturday was the perfect Winter Wonderland. With snow coming down from morning until night, it made for a picturesque scene. However, the white fluff made it a little more difficult in setting up (and guests traveling) for my friend Dominique's baby shower. While the ladies were celebrating the soon-to-be mama and upcoming baby, the dads had other plans.

Michael, Peter and Craig took the kids to see Santa! Here you can see Stefan and Mehandis patiently waiting their turn, at our local coffee shop - Cranky Al's. No pouting from either of these two!
Santa inviting them for a little bit of "lap time".
I wonder what he told Santa he wants for Chrismas?

Guess Who is One!!!

We celebrated Mehandis's 1st birthday last week! His official birthday was on Tuesday, December 4th... but he squeezed in a couple other celebrations following a party on that date. On the evening of his birthday, we celebrated with offering him a dinner of homemade chocolate cupcakes (or cake pieces as it was hard removing from the muffin tins) topped with whipped cream and sprinkles - "bib-free". He loved it! Lots of smiles and "mmm's". Mehandis even seemed to enjoy his serenade of "Happy Birthday".
Following his messy dinner definitely needed a good wash down. So we had to document the occasion of him being in his official "birthday suit".
The following Sunday we had our parents come to town for a small celebration. Mehandis ended up loving this balloon... pulling it up and down or playing peek-a-boo with it.
I cannot take credit for this cute cake. Our friend Allison made it for Mehandis. He especially loved the powdered sugar "snow".
Yep, our son loves a good party!!!

The Windy (& Snowy) City

This past weekend Mehandis had his first taste, touch and eyelashes full of snow! Michael, Mehandis and I took the train down to Chicago to visit my parents' new home. During our visit it snowed several inches, but that didn't keep us from going out on at least one outing. We walked to an Italian restaurant in the wintery weather. Mehandis was so quiet and observant when out in the falling snow. Please no comments from random readers about how we could take a child under the age of one into the blustery weather, note how he is wearing his mittens in the picture above (inside joke from the day before).
Here is the "First Family", as my parents describe it, in front of their new home. It is a beautiful condo downtown perfectly situated by a lovely park and close to the fabulous Michigan Avenue shopping. Next time we will venture further out to appreciate these things!
Here are my parents with their "favorite" grandson. Did I mention to you before that I am an only child?
Mehandis loved all of the mirrors that were around their home. The kitchen and dining room especially are suited for self-gazing :)

Videos from Our Trip to Ethiopia

Here is video from driving the Markato market



Driving in Addis Ababa



Video of Mehandis in Ethiopia



Video from the Crown Plaza

Journal Entry 9-22-07

Sunday – 9/24

We went to the same restaurant that we were at the week before for breakfast, this time with Mehandis. It was fun to have him along. We sat there for a while and then went to the bathrooms to freshen up before going to find out gate for the ride back to Chicago. We did not know we had to go through security again since we did not on the way to Addis but we found a really long time to get to the area where our gate was located. But when security saw that we had a baby, they put us in the first class line and we got through security quickly. Soon we made it to our gate and we made sure we had a bassinette seat for the flight home.

We boarded the plane and Mehandis was in a great mood. We gave him a bottle and he quickly fell asleep. We got him in his bassinette and he was out.



We enjoyed a nice lunch and then watched Oceans 13 as we crossed the Atlantic. Shrek 3 was the second movie and it was not nearly as good as the first (I never saw the second one). On the landing in Chicago, we made sure we gave him a bottle this time and then I held and played with him and did all I could to prevent him from crying. I held him up in the air like he likes to do and got a lot of smiles out of him and waves from the people behind us. He did puke on me, the worst we had seen him do, but I just wiped us down and kept playing with him to keep him happy. I was so engrossed with him that I did not realize how close we were to landing and was surprised when we touched down.

We got off the plane around 12:30PM and went through customs and after getting our luggage, we went to immigration to get final approval. We had to wait for the customs official to come back from lunch to process us. So we used the time to change my shirt and Michele put a new homecoming outfit on Mehandis. But Michele was not done when the customs official arrived and Mehandis was just in his diaper when we brought him forward. He quickly took our paperwork, stamped the papers and we walked out to the free world. But we saw no one waiting for us, a small disappointment. But we saw another exit that had many more people waiting by it, so we walked over there. Soon we saw our parents waiting for us but they did not see us since they were looking through the doors and we were coming from the side. So we decided to sneak up on them and surprise them. They were plenty surprised and we had a happy homecoming!

We drove back to Michele’s parents (The K’s) house with my parents driving me and Mehandis and Michele were with the K’s.





We found out the K’s sold their house in a week! We talked about the trip and looked at pictures and ate snacks. My parents left around 4PM and we had a nice dinner together. However I felt so tired after dinner that I laid down on the couch and quickly fell asleep. Michele and her parents took care of Mehandis for a while and then at 7PM, all of us went to bed (well the three of us).

We all slept great that night, waking up Mehandis at 1AM to feed him (he was not crying but we thought it would be a good idea) and I slept to 5AM. So I basically slept 12 hours. I got up, checked my work e-mail and went back to bed at 6 to be with the family. We all got up at 6:30.

We had a nice breakfast with the K’s and soon after, we packed and drove home to Milwaukee. We arrived with Mehandis in our home around 12:30 in the afternoon on September 25th, 2006.



It is hard to believe having him here in the United States, it is surreal. You start this adoption process and the baby is only a concept until you receive the referral. Then you think and talk about a child that you only know as a picture for a couple of months. Then after a year starting the process, you get on a plane, meet him and bring him back to your home a week later. We are so lucky to have Mehandis and we are looking forward to our future together as a family.

Journal Entry 9-21-07

Saturday

Today was a non-eventful and restful day. I got a great night sleep and felt much better in the morning. Mehandis woke up in the middle of the night when he knocked his head on the bed, so he cried for a bit. Michele took care of him, a good woman. He slept the rest of the night and the three of us got up around 6:30. We cleaned our room and moved out so new people could move in and it could be cleaned. We showered and got Mehandis ready for the day.

The lady who arrived the day before missed the infamous fifth step on the way down to breakfast and twisted her ankle. She was in a lot of pain but hopefully it would get better soon. We met a new couple who came during the night before who were from the United Arab Emirates where the guy worked for the state department.

After breakfast we hung out in the main room with the two other couples, watching Mehandis and talking. Eventually a car showed up and took the other two couples to the care center to meet their kids. Michele and I walked to the office to get our final paperwork for the trip home. We got ¾ of the way there and got a lift from CHSFS the rest of the way. We got our final paperwork, our U.S. visa info that we could not open until we got home and were given his life book and two DVD’s. We tried using the computer to e-mail but it was off, so we waited outside for a ride back to the guest house.

When we got back to the guesthouse, we got to see the new families who just arrived from Ethiopian Air getting into the vans to go to the office and meet their kids. It was fun to see them, very tired but getting a rise out of seeing Mehandis. Soon we had the house to ourselves. I sat around and played with Mehandis while watching soccer on TV. We relaxed in the main room most of the afternoon.



Soon the rest of the families started arriving back at the house, it was nice to meet them and hear their stories. There was one family from Evanston and another family was adopting three kids after adopting one child a year ago. We read and played with Mehandis, gave him a bath and did our routine to get ready for the trip. The day passed quickly and soon Massi called and it was time to head to the airport. We left at 5PM for a 10:30 flight.



The road out to the airport was the same type of driving in Addis, lots of cars, little space on the road, lots of debris on the side of the road, lots of road construction and some really bad roads (with some nice roads as well). On this drive, I was not overly sad to leave the city. We were ready to go home and start our lives with Mehandis.

At the airport you had to pay a toll to drop off passengers and then you had park and walk your baggage to the terminal, you could not park on the side of the road and unload like US airports. Then a security guy on the walk to the terminal asked us for our passports. We just showed the covers and that satisfied him and we went inside the airport.

When you walk into the terminal you immediately go through security. Mehandis was asleep on Michele in our carrier and stayed asleep during the process. Once through security, we found out that we were too early to check in for our flight, which started at 7PM and it was 6PM. A security guard noticed that we were looking for a place to sit and found us a couple of chairs. There were two girls next to us who took a big interest in Mehandis. When they left, a mom and son from Canada sat down next to us and started asking about Mehandis.

Soon it was 7PM and we got in line to check in. It took a bit to get through the line, but we had plenty of time. Then it was on to customs, and the nice lady looked at our paperwork, stamped our passports and we were through. We went to find a bathroom and while Michele used the bathroom, a maid talked to me about Mehandis and wanted to hold him but I denied her. She was not very happy about that. Then a national guard man walked by and asked me about Mehandis and I said he was mine. He did not believe this and asked where the mom was and I pointed to the bathroom and this satisfied him. Soon Michele returned and we were off to find food. We found a small café and had a simple dinner while watching English Premier League soccer on TV. I had a burger with fries and Michele had a good egg sandwich. I got some needed freshly squeezed orange juice.

After our dinner we found a bathroom for me to use. I went in and found squat toilets and what looked like a urinal trough (what you often find in stadiums in the United States for men). So I went there. However, while I was going, I was readying a sign that said “Not a urinal” with other writing on it in a different language. I read another sign that seemed to say that this was a devotional sink of some kind even though there were normal sinks behind me. I am glad no security guard or anyone else walked into the bathroom at that time because I could have been in some real trouble.

We waited outside our gate to board the plane and soon before we were to board, I went to a bathroom to change Mehandis’ diaper. I went to a men’s washroom but there was no changing table. There was a maid outside the restrooms and she could see my problem, so she took me into the women’s bathroom and she changed his diaper with me standing next to her. It went ok but she could not figure out how to re-snap his sleeper back together. I thanked her for her help and went back to the gate to get in line to go to through security again and to get our boarding pass.



We saw one other couple on our plane who was adopting a baby. But we did not end up talking with them until the end of the flight. We boarded the plane and Mehandis was doing ok. We had a bassinette seat, so that was great. A lady sat down next to me with her 22 month old daughter. She was told to put her daughter on her lap for takeoff since she was under two years old and that is when the screaming started. For some reason, this girl did not want to sit on her mother’s lap and her mom did little to stop this. Either because she thought it would go away or did not know how to comfort her child. Bottom line is that the girl screamed at the top of her lungs for a really, really, really long time. To compound matters, they backed up our airplane incorrectly, so we had to be pushed back in and had to wait for the traffic behind us to clear before we could be backed up again for takeoff.

During this time Mehandis was in Michele’s care and was doing so good, but finally he broke down to the screams and started himself. How can you blame him, it was 11PM, over 3 hours past his bedtime and someone was screaming extremely loudly next to him. I wanted to cry as well. So lets just say that the start to our trip home did not go so well.

Amazingly, and thank god, once the airplane started to roll down the runway, the kids immediately fell asleep and all of a sudden it was quiet on the plane. We got a bassinette set up for Mehandis and he slept most of the way to Sudan.



On the way down, he fussed a bit, but was not that bad. After our hour layover in Sudan, we were off to Germany. Mehandis did great on this leg of the flight until the end. It was now morning and after flying five hours, we did not think to give him a bottle before landing. He was probably really thirsty and his ears hurt because he screamed all the way down and even after the landing. We were embarrassed and felt bad for Mehandis who did not look very well. As soon as we could, we got him a bottle in the Germany airport and soon he was doing much better.

Journal Entry 9-20-07

Friday –

We woke up at 5:30 to a farting noise and soon discovered that Mehandis had a small blowout. So we got him up, changed him and got new clothes. We then put him back down and he went back to sleep. So we went back to sleep until around 7AM. We got up, changed him into clothes for the day, fed Mehandis and got ourselves ready for breakfast. While I ate Mehandis had another small blowout, so Michele cleaned him up. We played with Mehandis on the ground for a bit.





Soon a lady came to show the group how to do African hair. She braided the hair of the oldest girl and did a great job.



Greg Kenyon and I walked to the office while the rest of the group took cooking lessons. Greg and I checked email and then walked back to the guesthouse. We had a tasty Ethiopian lunch. After lunch we basically hung out during the afternoon. We fed Mehandis, changed him and talked with others in our group. We had some simple pizza for dinner.



Michele and I were supposed to go to Martin’s Cozy Place for the night since we were there one extra night. When we talked to Massi about our situation, he had never heard of the place and said that we could stay at the guest house for the night. Even though we were excited about Martin’s place, we decided that since Massi had never heard about it and we could guarantee a ride to the airport and not put Mehandis in jeopardy, we decided to stay at the guesthouse for our last night. Plus we did not have put pack and unpack again.

Michele and I tried walking to the office, but we ran into a pack of goats, did not have a good feeling about the situation, so we turned back. Massi soon drove up and drove us back to the house.



A new couple showed up who was there for the next week and ate dinner with us. They were from New Jersey and were very excited. It was her first kid and the guy has a 27 year old!

Soon the rest of our group had to go to the airport, so we said our goodbyes and they were off. We sat on the couches for a while and talked with the new couple. We told them what to expect and how our experience was. They went off to get their room ready while we put Mehandis to sleep. Mehandis was in a great mood, entertaining the new guests. We read him a book and he quickly went to sleep. We went back on the couches and I laid down because I did not feel very well. I took some medicine and went to sleep around 8:30.

Journal Entry 9-19-07

Thursday

We had a hard time sleeping during the night, waking up around 2AM to make sure Mehandis was doing okay and getting little sleep the rest of the night. He was still sleeping at 6AM but we could not wait for him to wake up on his own, so we woke him up at 6:30 and he smiled at us. So we brought him into our bed and he was as happy as could be, laughing and smiling at us. We then got out the camera and took some fun pictures of us in bed together. We got up around 7:30, fed and changed him and got ready for breakfast. We had good pancakes for breakfast and were off at 9AM to see the new CHSFS hospital. There was a slight bit of misinformation on how long the trip would be; we thought we were told that it would take 1 hour to get there but it was only about 15 minutes and the whole trip took about 1 hour. The new hospital is set up to handle new parents to care for their newborn children and simple surgery. This was set up for the poor. It was a nice facility with a staff that was really looking to help.
After the clinic we stopped back at the guesthouse and picked up our donations for AHOPE and drove there, which was only about 5 minutes away. AHOPE works with HIV positive children and we got to meet about 35 kids there. It was not nearly as nice as the care center through CHSFS but the kids seemed very happy. The staff was nice and gave us a tour. The kids came outside and came up to us, they were cute and were kind. It help good to give these donations to this organization, you can easily see that they needed the funds to keep going and were doing good work. They had three facilities in Addis, all of them about the same size.

When we got back we changed and fed Mehandis. Soon it was lunch time and we joined the group for lunch while Mehandis took a nap. After lunch I walked to the care center with Greg and Jarusha while Michele took a nap. I was finally able to get on the internet and let our family know how we are doing. I sent an e-mail to our parents to post on the blog and they were very happy to hear from us (we never called them while we were there). I read many of the e-mails that we had and saw that the Cubs had moved one game ahead of the Brewers in the standings. I made copies of the addresses of the people in the house, purchased some formula and walked back to the house. Michele and I hung outside with Mehandis for a bit but soon he looked tired. So we took him to bed for a bit to sleep but he was unable to sleep. We gave him his pacifier and he started playing with it like it was an airplane, buzzing it all around. We laughed really hard at his playing. So soon we gave up on his nap and we fed him. We moved to the front room and while we were sitting there, he had a HUGE blow out. Michele was holding him and all of a sudden felt warm and knew she was in trouble. It got all over her pants and the leather couch, and of course Mehandis. Russ, David, Michele and I went into emergency mode to get him and the room cleaned up. We took him right into a bath and got him clean. After his bath, he was a happy boy.

After dinner we sat in the main room with our kids, playing and talking about the trip since most of the group would be leaving the next day. Most people on trip had a great experience. The dogs barked outside during the night, the pillows were not soft and the beds were not comfortable. But overall it had been great.

We put Mehandis to bed around 7:30PM and left him while he was still awake but he fell asleep on his own. Nice!!! We joined Greg, Jarusha, John and Alicia and had a drink in the mainroom. We went to bed around 9:30PM.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

It is Thanksgiving morning, and our little family of 3 has enjoyed it by lounging and recalling our favorite Thanksgiving memories. So many special times... from traveling to Dallas for my first NFL game (don't ask me the score but I can tell you all about the cheerleaders outfits) to the first time we hosted at our house (not too difficult since it was a party of 4) to the ways we celebrated as kids (including LiteHouse Pre-Thanksgiving dinners from college years till now). Incredible.

Later this afternoon we will be traveling to Illinois to celebrate the holiday with Michael's family. We already enjoyed a great turkey dinner with friends last night... but I still have room for broccoli casserole and more! Usually it is tradition for our friends to go around the table and say what we are thankful for. This year we are grateful for a countless number of things- our wonderful supportive families, enthusiastic & loving friends, good health (except for that cough that keeps traveling between the 3 of us), safe travels that allowed us get half way around the world, incredible caretakers that helped mold Mehandis into the happy little boy he is, technology which makes the world seem a little smaller, and of course our wonderful son.

Thanks also goes to my friend Jamie who came over this week to "level" Mehandis in order to find out how his fine and gross motor skills are developing. She was so helpful in giving great suggestions, wrote down "goals" for us and gave us good news overall. Looks like Mehandis fine motor skills (upper body and hand usage) are average for his age. His gross motor movement skills are delayed... but definitely emerging! Amongst other things, we will keep practicing pulling to standing and walking along furniture. Fortunately, Mehandis loves moving and is easily motivated to do his "exercises"!

These pictures show Mehandis's determined spirit when I was working with him on Monday.

Baptism Weekend

This past Sunday, November 11th, Mehandis was baptized at our church. Prior to that, some of his relatives were able to meet him for the first time. My dad's brother and sister, Ardith & Gregg, drove quite a distance from Michigan in order to be present for this special weekend.
My Aunt Ardith amazed Mehandis with her "special sounds"!

Great Uncle Gregg read Mehandis a favorite book, "You Are Not My Bunny", and entertained him with some things he brought from home.
Mehandis loves my dad's mustache and grabs for that versus his typical favorite - glasses!

As you can see, we were a little nervous about how Mehandis would do during the baptism service, especially with us being in the front row! But look at how he just loves to watch the choir and listen to the music. The clothes he is wearing is the traditional Ethiopian outfit that was given to him by the nannies at his Care Center.
Pastor Margaret and Pastor Gary both participated in the baptism ceremony. Since Mehandis's name in Amharic means "engineer", they chose Psalm 127:1a for his baptismal verse. It reads, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain".
The proud Godmothers, JoAnna & Erin, along with Godfather Brad were saintly to arrive in Wisconsin for the 8:30 service. They live in Illinois and Minnesota... so it took some precise planning!
Mehandis with his grandparents. Make sure you ask them how long he should have for his morning nap!
A tribute to Veteran's Day with Great Uncle Gregg.
Mehandis you are such a blessing to us all!!!

A Thirsty & Hungry Fellow

We had our one month follow up appointment today with Mehandis's pediatrician. Lots of good news (except for when Mehandis found out he needed 2 more shots). In one months time, he has gained 2 1/2 pounds and 2 months worth of gross motor skills! True, his doctor said he shrunk a quarter of an inch (length measurement is not a true science at this age) but he can see that Mehandis is a great eater. I thought those thighs were looking a little thicker!!!

His menu has now expanded to include (but not limited to) yogurt, pinto beans, cheese, kiwi and an occasional bowl of Michael's leftover oatmeal. He even fed himself half of a banana this week. I think I will be most adventurous with self-feeding during the last meal of his day... bathtime quickly follows dinnertime!

Check out Mehandis drinking from a cut-out cup during today's lunch. He enjoyed an apple sauce yogurt "smoothie"!

Then he decided he wanted to hold the cup himself. Did a pretty good job!!!
I love the "mustache" that followed...