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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Our Trip To Ethiopia Day 4 - Tuesday

This sling was perfect for us!

Little miss busy body


Just pure sweetness..

A 10 second power nap



This morning we went back to the HOH, the agency run place Annsleigh has been living at for the last 6 months. We went there so we could review important paperwork for our visa appointment which had been moved up a day! YAY! I put Annsleigh in her sprout pouch sling for the first time. She loves it & falls asleep in it. I have got to recommend some kind of sling or pouch to hold the little ones. It is so much easier to hold onto her in the bumpy brakeslamming van rides. One time, out of the sling, her little head bumped into the railing in front of us when in the first row of van seats, even as I tried my best to hold tight to her. The slings as also great for the excursions and museum trips later. They do like to be held and with it, both of my arms were free to pull up and climb into the vans and squeeze into them, as well as get out of them with a baby. My muscles were sore by the time we came home from this exercise. Anyway, when we got to the HOH, Annsleighs nurse came up to her again....Annsleigh reached for her but this time I did not let her hold her. I felt like it really confused Annsleigh, plus made me sad...Once again, as soon as we got out of the van at the HOH all the older children come up smiling and giving hugs and kisses. I cannot wait for all of them to go to their new homes...HOH is wonderful, dont get me wrong....they do love the children and all the adults know all the childrens names and likes and dislikes and personalities, but it is still an orphanage.....older ones especially look like they are in ragged clothes. The older kids just stand around outside. There is a heap of bikes piled up in the corner....one of the parents ask if they can ride them. They say yes.....we pull them out and all the kids start playing. Just seemed like the workers there dont try to engage the kids in any kind of play or even encourage it. Those bikes were piled up for a while. Anyway, all this observance occurred while all us parents just stood around wondering what to do. Then we were led upstairs so we could sit or whatever until it was our turn to go over paperwork....finally our turn comes. We reviewed our I-600 and I-864 papers and income tax forms. We are told how to fill in the sections that pertained to Annsleigh and did so. Then we were told verbatum how to answer questions that would come up tomorrow at the visa appointment. 1. What happened to birth parents.....mother relenquished due to no income...father unknown.....2. Was this the child referred to you?.....yes.......3. Have you had any personal contact with this child prior to this trip?...no....4. Do you plan on visiting birth parents?....yes....then we will be told we can have no further contact with birth parents and no gifts given. Thats it! Ok....easy enough. Everyone gets asked the same thing...Cool.... After this, Brad and I were exhausted and went back to the Melkam Guest House and rested as Annsleigh would have it.:) She fell asleep in the sling again while in the van..We skipped the excursion to the National Museum as it looked like we all could get in a good nap....or so it seemed. Annsleigh woke up wired and bouncing off the walls! She takes like 10 min power naps ready and raring to go go go!!!! She unpacked all our bags and tried to tear down the headboards as Brad and I were zombies laying around the room....We discovered she likes those little banana puffs I happened to bring along despite hearing from other families that these kids this age dont know what to do with little cheerio bites....YAY! Glad I brought them. She wanted to take them herself (she has a pincer grasp.....YAY!) but I took over and told her to let momma do it now. She also likes to hold her own bottle...but the same thing....I told her to let momma do it now. She is non stop eating these banana puffs. Hilarious! Sticks her tongue way out to catch one off my finger....She is extremely busy when she is awake...never still & silly too. When she poots, she smiles and scrunches her nose! She finally fell asleep when it was too late for a nap 7:00PMish. Its very hard to learn what your toddler like baby wants and needs to go to sleep. She fights it and fights it. The HOH staff do not tell you anything about your baby and her likes/dislikes or routine at all. Does she like to rock? Pat the back? Go to bed with a bottle? Just lay down? Seems like they could give a little info on the routine. This was very hard for us. We fell asleep also when she did and knew it was gonna be hard when she woke back up. And she did...up at 11:00PM. She is quite cute when she wakes up.....she sits straight up with eyes clothes and swaggers back and forth and flops back over a few times before she actually wakes up. She always wakes up smiling...which is fabulous :) But it was very very difficult now to get her back down. We gave her a bottle and she sucked it dry. The only way we could get her down this time was with her laying down on the bed while we held the bottle and she sucked it empty.... something we really wish we brought but didnt because supposedly these kids dont use pacifiers, dont have pacifiers and dont know what to do with pacifiers...was A PACIFIER!!! And they dont sell them here. We just had to take the nipple off the bottle and let her suck on the plain nipple.....BAD BAD BAD! As far as all American standards go and my better nursing judgement.... but we had no choice. Finally after much fretting and rubbing her eyes and ears....she went out....and so did we....end of day 4. Whew!

6 comments:

Mike and Laura George said...

I am so excited to hear that you are finally home with your your little one.
BTW, the amharic word used to describe the nipple is pronounced "toe toe". We use that to call Emme's pacifier. We thought that binky had been done to death! :)
Check out our latest happenings:
www.bringingemmehome.wordpress.com

LISA said...

So glad you are home with your baby girl!!!

Frances Williams said...

again, so remember that!! they gave us Yonni with no info whatsoever....so we had NO IDEA that we were supposed to sit him on the toilet everytime he woke up. by day 2 and a 1/2 we asked tsegay because we were worried that he had not had a bowel movement in his diaper!!! oh the joys(-:

Erica said...

The 2nd picture just made me laugh out loud - that is one look she will probably turn on you many, many times in the years ahead. She is just so adorable - you just want to pinch her round cheeks. Honestly, your post wore me out as I know you were just exhausted but Annsleigh seemed ready to go constantly!

Sherry said...

Fran, I am enjoying reading about your trip. The pics are great! Wow, little Annsleigh has changed so much! She is such a doll :)

Annie said...

Fran, Annsleigh is just beautiful :) loved reading about your trip and getting to know her (even though I know it may have been frustrating at times.)

Hope you are all adjusting well :)