Interested in helping us pack?

I made a little Walgreen's run today... to kick off packing/purchasing things for our trip. I think I can almost check off everything in the medicine category now (except for 3 more prescriptions we need filled - scabies, yellow fever and "digestion" meds and this is after getting our meds for hep A, tetanus, typhoid & malaria). Not sure if the Wal-phed is going to Ethiopia... but did need it today since I have come down with an icky cold.

Lately, we have gotten several requests from our friends and family about donations that the Ethiopian children may need. So if you would like to "help us pack our suitcase" with some donated items, I have listed the care center requests below. Many of the items listed are for AHOPE, which is an organization in Ethiopia that provides care for more medically involved children. Please let us know if you are interested in donating and we will make sure it gets to those in need.

• Cotton, jumbo size
• Kimberly Clark procedure mask
• Wooden spatula (2 PIECES)
• Baby wash (Hair and body wash)
• Antifungal shampoo
• Night time cold/flue relief
• triple antibiotic ointment (neosprine)
• Topical ointment
• Antifungals
• Antifungal oral preparation (lozenges)
• Ear buds (cotton swabs or cotton tipped applicators)
• Cussons body soap and powder
• Ready to use Enema (relieve)
• Children Tylenol, motrin
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Sterile gauze
• Antibacterial wipes (moisturizing towelettes)
• Rechargeable batteries of AA size with charger (8 pieces)
• Rechargeable batteries (4 pieces AAA size) with recharger
• Digital camera for the Child development center
• Films for Polaroid camera
• Use and throw camera for photographing project with children
• Games which are also for learning for older children ( 6 to 14) different games for different age groups
• School bags
• Clothes for older children

Packing, packing and unpacking

Things have gotten a little busier for me this week... I learned that I am leaving Pershing Elementary School (where I have worked the past 2 years) due to the district needing me to teach a preschool speech/language group at Walker Elementary School along with servicing students within an early childhood classroom at Hoover Elementary School. So not only did I wrap up my summer job at New Berlin Therapies today ... but I also packed up my speech room at Pershing.

This once again reminded me to pass on things which I do not need... my Forrester was at full capacity by mid-day. Fortunately I had time to unpack half of the goodies at one of my new schools and I am very thankful that the custodian showed me where I could pull up my car, right by the school's door, to unload. I am going to take a careful look through the rest of the boxes to see if they are "move worthy". Thinking that the college text books may be out of date by now anyway? No need for lifting weights today! Below are two of the work shirts I will not be in need of in the immediate future...

Thank you to the staff at Pershing for being so welcoming and helpful to me during my time there. I will miss the students and their teachers' eagerness to go above and beyond to support them.

I heard that on NPR...

So several weeks ago I was driving around listening to our public radio station, WUWM, and I heard a "teaser" for an upcoming Lake Effect show. The announcer was talking about a local couple who decided to adopt a baby from Ethiopia. That obviously caught my attention, but then I heard the names of the couple... they are our friends Becky & Patrick! We met them in March at an "Adoption Mixer" and have kept in touch since then. They did an outstanding job talking with Jane Hampden about their decision to adopt, why they were drawn to Ethiopia and expectations for the future. I highly recommend going to the following link to listen to their portion of the program. It can be found at:

www.wuwm.com/view_le.php?articleid=246

Becky and Patrick are also a super fun couple with an outstanding guacamole recipe! Michael and I look forward to more nights out together and play dates with their soon-to-be two sons.

Speaking of articulate people, my friend Bethanne recently gave me the poem below (you can see Mehandis's crib in the reflection). She is a previous co-worker of mine and was the person I went to first to seek out advice on "starting out" with the adoption process. Bethanne has two beautiful children from Colombia. The poem does a wonderful job illustrating the impact of both birth and life-long mothers while celebrating the gifts that each give. Thank you Bethanne for sharing this with me.

Two by Two

On Thursday my Aunt Ardith came up to Wauwatosa, from Flint, in order to help me learn how to use my Grandmother's sewing machine. My aunt is one of the few people in our family who knows how to use this "Rotary Electric Reversewe Sewing Machine" which my Grandmother purchased in 1940. The picture above is of Grandma Kremkow sewing one of her many projects... from maternity clothes to baby clothes to her mother-of-the-bride dress to matching outfits for her three grandkids!

Aunt Ardith so generously offered to come and give me a tour of the machine and a beginner's sewing lesson by making a baby blanket together. After a rough start of dropped stitches and the search for the perfect needle I began to sew! I think it was beneficial to have the multiple re-threads and do-overs because I sure did gain confidence with knowing how the machine handles and how to problem solve.

What a beautiful blanket we were able to make for Mehandis... following a little bit of sweat, a few drops of blood and lots of laughter. Thank you so much Aunt Ardith for your encouragement and patience! I will always remember the fun we had and hopefully many of the sewing tips as well!!!

Out on the Town

This week I had the opportunity to try two Milwaukee restaurants that I have never been to before. Due to the fact that Michael and I are not too adventurous with our cuisine (perhaps sampling between Saz's, Hector's or the $5 Pizza Pizza), it isn't surprising that there are many restaurants that we have yet to dine at!

On Tuesday, my book club traveled to Bombay Sweets - to go along with "The Namesake" written about a first-generation son of Indian parents. We had fun sampling a variety of dishes and checking out the many desserts & snacks. I wish I could remember the name of some of them.

Wednesday, Michael and I finally made it to the Ethiopian Cottage. I tried going with my mom when she was in town, but found out it's closed Monday's - the night we had planned for dinner. Then Michael and I said we would plan to go there the day we received our referral - this was also on a Monday. And wouldn't you know it, the day that Mehandis made it through court to officially become our son was also - Monday. So, Michael organized a group of our friends to meet us there on Wednesday night. The 8 of us dined in the traditional Ethiopian style... sitting in a circle around a platter of injera topped with vegetables and meat. We had no forks or plates, but scooped up the food with the pieces of injera and saved the hard-boiled egg delicacy for last :)

The owner of the Ethiopian Cottage, Yigletu Debebe, was a gracious host. He was excited to hear about our upcoming trip to Ethiopia and offered to help us any way he could. We also learned of an Ethiopian community, here in Milwaukee, that gets together several times a year. Yigletu said that the group is pretty small, about 100, but organize a variety of events.

So you think that I can get Michael to go for sushi with me next?

"It's time for me to fly..." (soon!).

Yippee!!! Tuesday I received some more good news from Michael, while I was on my lunch break. We got our travel date... which is the first day we can "check in" to the CHSFS guest house. And that date is September 14th. There was a possibility of traveling a week earlier; however, that would have meant we would be in Ethiopia's capital city, Addis Ababa, during their Millennium celebrations. Yep, it is going to be the year 2000 as of September 11th of our year 2007. CHSFS decided that it would not be the best idea to have families stay during that week since the US Embassy is closed for two days, flights might get tricky and the city will be on overdrive.

Getting the actual dates for our travel makes it feel even that much more real. But with getting "real" comes the need to get organized!!! Michael and I got into "overdrive" mode ourselves on Tuesday evening, getting out all of our papers that tell us what we need now (which above you can see Chewy helping us sort through) and making lists as to what kinds of lists we need to make now! I am glad that Maira, Peter and Stefan were able to stop by to help us get back on celebration mode with popping open a bottle of champagne - given to us by them on the day of our referral.


Oh yeah, we got an update on Mehandis's physical development. It looks like he has gained almost two pounds in a month and a half of an inch in height/length. So he is now 13.8 pounds and 25 inches. This is pretty similar to the size of the other children at the care center, even though it sounds alarming compared to children "homegrown" here in the US. It looks like Mehandis will take a bit of time to catch up to his friend Stefan's size, despite the fact that our little guy is about a month older.

Speaking of development, I had a funny dream last night. In my dream we were picking up Mehandis and he was the age he will be (9 months). However, his speech skills were quite advanced. He was speaking in two word phrases! As a speech-language pathologist I was quite impressed by this :)

Officially a Family of Three!!!

We are so glad to finally share a picture of our son. Today Mehandis Awano Wolaver officially became part of our family!!! His case made it through court today and we are now legally Mehandis's parents :)

After a lot of voice mails (thanks mom & dad for being forum watchers!) and email checking, Michael was able to share the good news with me this time. It seems that most of the scheduled cases from CHSFS got through today. While many of us newly "legal" moms and dads are thrilled... even more wonderful for these waiting children!

Next we find out our travel date, which our social worker said should be given to us tomorrow. And then we will know when we will get to hold our son in our arms for the very first time.

Simple Pleasures

This week we enjoyed some summer vacationing! Michael and I took a couple of days off from work in order to go camping with our great friends, George & Dara. For the past several years the 4 of us head north to Kohler-Andrae to do some camping, swimming and card playing. I have to say that we are getting to be pretty good camping cooks as well (especially with the help of George's gas grill!) We enjoyed french toast, steamed veggies & chicken and of course smores. If you are interested in seeing just how much fun we had, then you will have to go to You Tube for the Britney Fly Swatter Dance Video... actually I am personally hoping it's production never made it that far.

As Dara & George's sign states below, camping is truly one of life's simple pleasures... however getting there isn't so simple. It took several trips to the store and a couple hours of packing to be prepared for our outing. And even then, things were forgotten (i.e. forks). I still can't imagine how it will be organizing ourselves for our trip to Ethiopia. Or, packing for 3 pretty soon!

Mehandis is 8 months old today and we received an update about the Ethiopia Courts on Friday. It turns out that the date for court closure has been pushed back. Mehandis's case was initially scheduled for this past Friday; however, all of the 16 cases set for that day were re-scheduled for this coming Monday. Our social worker told us that all of the cases heard this past Thursday went through without a hitch. So she is hopeful that the same will occur with Mehandis's group. She is keeping her fingers crossed and we are sending lots of prayers.

AKA - Our Adoption

So you might have realized that the title to our blog has been changed from "Our Adoption" to "Our Zamad Azmad". I thought this would be a fitting change since we our now a growing family, or zamad azmad (an Amharic translation of family). But to the subscribers of my blog... the new title may have looked a little like spam, I didn't even recognize the message from FeedBlitz when an update on the blog was sent to me. It said something to the effect of "Our Zamad Azmad - EE-I-EE-I-O". Think that would be an easy message to delete. By the way, anyone who is interested can sign up to get email updates on our blog... just by scrolling down to the bottom of this page and entering their address. Think we have about a dozen subscribers right now!

This past weekend Michael and I had a visit from my Uncle Gregg. He is a very enthusiastic great-uncle-to-be! I appreciate the emails he has sent out to many family members, in order to keep everyone up to date on our progression with the adoption. He has also shared some interesting articles on Ethiopia with us as well. We had a good dinner together at Pizzeria Piccola and a movie out to see the Simpson's Movie. Can anyone make out the mascot on his baseball hat?