Pictures at Home with Crew

Since we have been home

We are so happy to be home and be reunited with our children.  It has been wonderful to see our kids interact with Crew and fully enjoy their little brother.  Crew has done amazingly well.  He has smiled a lot and enjoyed playing with new toys.  He has not acted over stimulated but we have tried to keep him in the house with just us as much as possible.  Sleeping has been our only struggle.  Crew sleeps well during the day but wants to be awake all night.  We think he has his days and nights confused since Ethiopia is eight hours ahead of us.  He will sleep from 8 to 11 p.m. and then be up every hour or more after this until he gets up for the day around 4 to 5 a.m.  We have also been struggling with rocking him to sleep.  We have been big proponents of letting our children cry themselves to sleep at nap and nighttime but have been told his isn't good for attachment.  So we a rocking Crew to sleep and then transferring him to his crib.  Well he is really good at going to sleep but then waking immediately up when we put him in the crib.  This leaves me feeling frustrated and it has taken me an hour at bad times to put him to sleep.  This is fine with Justin home but when he goes back to work next week and I have two other children to care for I'm going to have to decide what to do.  I know we will just have to figure each other out and decide what is best for attachment and my sanity so until then I guess I will be rocking and praying he stays asleep when I put him in the crib. 

Yesterday I took Crew to the doctor for a check up.  He looked at Crew and did not say a whole lot expect that he was impressed at how he was standing up and moving around.  He saw fluid behind his ears and a lot of stuff in his nose but thought his chest sounded okay.  We have a follow up visits in two weeks to see if it clears up by itself without the help of antibiotics.  We were sent home with a kit to collect Crew's stool to see if he has parasites which is very common for children over there.  We will also be doing a lot of blood work soon to look at HIV, Hepatitis, and TB.  What fun things Crew gets to look forward to.  I asked our doctor about giving Crew Melatonin to help him get his days and nights straight.  He said we could so I ran out and got him liquid Melatonin and I am happy to report that Crew slept from 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. with just getting up at 11 p.m. and then again at 11:30 p.m. for a short while.  Justin and I feel much better. 

Thanks for following along on our adoption adventure with us.  We were told this is the end of the beginning of the adoption process as our paperwork is finally done but now we are starting our adventure as a family of five.  I can't wait to report all the fun things we do together and how Crew grows and changes.    

Flight home

On Friday night at 10:15 p.m. we left Ethiopia on a 17 hour adventure to Washington DC airport.  Crew did well with not crying uncontrollably until the last 1/2 hour of the flight.  Although he slept much less than I expected.  He fell asleep as soon as the plane took off and slept for about 6 hours waking up once for a feeding.  After this six hours he barely slept so it was me constantly entertaining him, keeping him from grabbing my food or drink, and sleeping short 1/2 hour naps when he did.  Crew still does not prefer Justin so handing him over to him would just make him cry more.  He did enjoy some short time playing with toys on the seat in between us (we bought Crew a seat to help my sanity).  Crew did sleep on his seat for those six hours he slept but he is so mobile that he kept trying to roll off.  So the only way I slept for three hours was laying on the seat next to him trying not to fall off the seat.  Again we found that Ethiopians do not like children crying so a women next to me was giving me parenting advice on how to calming Crew down and held him for a short while when he screamed.  To me he was just tired and probably did not like looking at the same scenery for that long.  There were several other families bringing home their children around us so we all bonded together and tried to enjoy the ride as much as possible.  I could not have been more excited when we finally landed in DC and made it past the immigration officer without any problem.  Crew was officially a US citizen once we landed on US sole.  It was such a great feeling.  We landed in DC at 8:30 a.m.  (local time our time it was about 3:00 p.m.).  We then flew into Ohare Airport at 1:30 p.m. and drove home to arrive in Bloomington at 4:30 p.m.  On the way home Crew finally slept which we were grateful since it was his first time in a car seat and we weren't sure how he would react.  I looked at him and just could not believe it had finally happened.  I had been praying and thinking about Crew for about ten years now and I could not believe he was finally here.  I was thinking about all the great things he will get to experience here in the US but the most important that he will be brought up in a Christian home where he will hopefully know Jesus as his personal savior at a young age.  I can't wait to see what God has his store for our little man.  I was also reminded what a guide told us about our Ethiopian heritage.  He said that we (meaning Justin and my self) are also Ethiopian in culture because of having Crew in our lives.  This made me really think about how this is true.  Crew will not only be Ethiopian or American.  He is Ethiopian American so we will have to do our part for him to know what that means and that it is important to us as well.  We look forward to the adventure that lies ahead of us as we parenting three children and adjust to having a 9 month old in our house that is not familiar with, his surroundings, or the English language.     

Friday's blog

We did not get a chance to blog on our last day in Ethiopia.  Justin in his efficiency with packing had us all packed up by 4:00 p.m. for a 10:15 p.m. flight so we did not have access to the computer.  Friday was our last day in Ethiopia.  We decided to go to one of the mountains to enjoy the view and hear about some Ethiopian culture.  Our driver took us up to the top of the mountain called Entoto Mountain.  We looked around at two churches and a palace that one of the Emperors lived a long time ago.  One of the churches was the first church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  It was tiny in size and we would not have recognized it as a church unless our driver had pointed it out to us.  There was a museum on top of the mountain inside one of the old churches.  A guide took us around and explained what each item was.  There were a lot of clothing wear by previous Emperors and crosses made with pure gold or various metals.  There were also the four gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke & John, written out in Amharic on parchment paper.  The view was pretty neat but it was a cloudy day so we could not see as much as you could on a clear day.  It was still neat to look over the city.  
After lunch, we were taken to the location that Crew was abandoned.  I wanted to be able to take pictures of the location that Crew was probably born near.  There was another family with us so they were nice enough to video tape and take pictures for us so that Justin and I could just walk around and soak it all in.  I felt immediately emotional as soon as I got out of the van which I didn't expect.  I felt overwhelmed with sadness thinking about Crew lying next to the road alone before a police officer found him.  I also felt sad for Crew's biological mother.  The fact that she will never have the privilege to see Crew grow up and what a sense of desperation she must have felt to leave Crew on the street (if she was the one that abandoned him).  I pray that if she is alive that God will give her a sense of peace about Crew that he is okay and will be taken care of.  The area was well populated so I'm sure Crew was found fairly quickly.  It did not look as bad of an area that I was thinking but I guess there is a slum right behind the butcher shop that he was left by which is likely he was born in.  I'm glad that we saw the area and pray that if he tell Crew this part of the story when he is a lot older that we will be able to tell him about the desperation of the Ethiopian people when they are literally starving to death.  As a mother I can understand desperation when you see your child literally starving to death.  I don't know if I could stand by and watch that happen either. 

Ethiopian way of life

us and one of our guides

Black maned lion