Birtukan Sinshaw made donuts for breakfast at the guest house. We went out to lunch on the way to the Embassy, right during nap time for all the kids! All of the kids were short tempered and crabby. An older lady at the restaurant asked me if I was Irish, because a lot of Irish families adopt from Ethiopia, and "God bless me for what I am doing." She said she was Ethiopian now, but was originally from Malta.
Birtukan had her first full blown temper tantrum in the bus on the way to the Embassy. She found a mint in my bag, so I gave it to her. Then she dropped it on the insanely dirty floor and wanted to put it back in her mouth, but I wouldn't let her (because it was covered in dirt) and threw it out the window. How. Dare. Me. About 5 minutes into the kicking and screaming, I almost started crying myself at the thought of taking her into the Embassy in public like this. "Yes, I'm a totally fit parent. Don't mind my kicking and screaming child that wants absolutely nothing to do with me. Nothing to see here, keep the line moving!" Ugh! Luckily she stopped screaming as soon as we got out of the van to go inside of the Embassy.
We got there around 1400, and the kids had already been pushed to their limit. There were a ton of people there! There were 4 adoption agencies ahead of us at the Embassy, which meant we had a long wait ahead of us! Luckily there was a little play area for the kids to play at, and Birtukan really started warming up to Mike. Whenever she needed something, I would redirect her to him, which I think helped. They called our name at about 1630. We answered a few questions, signed a few documents, and that was pretty much it!
Birtukan did really good using the potty today. Mike watched a DVD with her (The Alligator Hunter) and she said her first sentence in English: "The turtle ate popcorn." Yes, another one of our children is obsessed with popcorn! He also went through numbers with her, and she started counting "1, 2, 3" all day long. She is very smart!She fell asleep really early again tonight and skipped dinner. They made a delicious meal of hamburgers and french fries for dinner, which Birtukan slept through. We played Apples To Apples tonight with other families from the guest house while the kids slept. It was an exhausting day without lots of fantastic photo ops. I did get some shots from around Addis Ababa though.
Hamburgers: Ground beef, chopped onion, chopped spicy peppers, salt, berbere, egg, flour.
No comments:
Post a Comment