Gotcha Day!
We didn’t call Tsegay to pick us up until closer to 9:00 than 8:00. No problem, the driver had other families to pick us up so we were able to take our time and relax in the lobby for a bit. The Hilton is one of the nicest hotels (and you have to go through a metal detector to get inside). The main translator came to pick us up. Before going to our guest house, we had to go to another guest house to pick up Kevin and Stacie. Kevin and Stacie are minor celebrities in the local Ethiopian adoption circuit as they were the first to adopt through CHI. They were here to adopt their second, a little girl. We then had a choice to go to HOH II to get settled in before meeting our kids, or meet our kids right away – but that Kevin and Stacie were going to meet theirs right away. We chose to go ahead and meet our kids right away – lucky for us, I had their backpacks packed on top of one of the carry ons, so it wasn’t a big deal to pull them out.
They took us all up, and then Ashley, our social workers at CHI in St. Louis who is also here with us came in, and before we could finish saying hi, our children came running in. They ran in yelling “Mommy, Daddy!!” and first saw Ashley and ran to her. She pointed them to us and they stopped for a minute, their eyes grew wide, and Aman ran into Adam’s arms and Serawit ran into mine. Their eyes grew wider when they saw their backpacks and immediately started taking the stuff out – we didn’t pack a whole lot, but a small toy, an inexpensive digital camera and some candy.
The rest is a blur, but next thing we knew we were walking around to the rest of the complex while they ran to every staff member to tell them that their mommy and daddy were there.
Just like we were told ahead of time, Aman is kind of the leader of the group, and all the other kids kind of look up to him. Serawit is just a sweetie. Actually they are both very sweet. Kind of a blur after that but eventually we ended up back to our guest house eating lunch. The cooks have a little table set up just for the kids next to our table. The food is buffet style. The kids say prayers (in later days when there are more kids, they all do it together and it’s the coolest thing – we will definitely keep that habit when we get home) and we got to play for a little bit before gong on our first trip, a city tour, which was very interesting until Serawit threw up. Yep, projectile vomit, and being the inexperienced mother I am, I had NOTHING with which to clean her up. LOL. With some help from Stacie and Kevin (we owe them wet wipes big time) and the driver and the translator, I managed to clean her up ok. Bless her little heart, she was mortified. We figured it was the shock, plus the pollution plus the very bumpy roads. I kept kissing her head and told her it was ok and she didn’t do anything wrong. I think she eventually understood. After that, I always carry a backpack with wet wipes a big plastic bag, and a change of clothes. Also, we started giving them anti-nausea medicine before going anywhere by van.
Fast forward to dinner, one of the other families who have twin 4 year old daughters had come for dinner. Apparently they are all friends. J That was fun, seriously. They were all soooo cute! Before dinner they all played together, either in our suite or in the common outside area.
After dinner, I decided to try our first bath time. Would you believe they love baths??? Even though we had to turn on the hot water heater ourselves and it hadn’t warmed up enough they still loved it. After their baths, they got into their jammies which they thought was so cool (they had to show them off to each other), brushed their teeth with almost no prompting and we put them into bed with even less prompting. Wow – hope this keeps up after we get home. After putting them in bed, we forgot we were going to give them a Benadryl because they had some congestion. I went to give it to them, and while Serawit was barely awake enough to take it, Aman was already asleep so I didn’t wake him up.
To fill in some of the blanks above, no, they don’t know English, but they know some words. They can sing the Alphabet Song, and can count in English to 10. In that 24 hours they picked up more words. We introduced them to pictures of the rest of the family and got them saying their names, and we think they understand who they are. Most of all, it was amazing that they were already bonding and attaching themselves to us on the first day though it seems more Serawit to me and Aman to Adam. That’s ok, it’s normal for a kid to bond to one parent before the other.
A funny aside. I managed to break the rocking chair and Adam broke the coffee table. Both funny stories we can tell our grandkids one day. Even with those embarrassing things, it was an absolutely wonderful first day – better than we could have dreamed. One of the best days of our lives.