Day 5, Jan. 24, Gotcha Day!

Saturday night we headed to bed around 10 because we are tired and then found ourselves awake at 2:20 a.m. It was extremely early on Sunday January 24, the day we get our little boy. Unfortunately, there was no going back to sleep. We were done for the night. Dan got on the internet outside the room in the hallway. He ended up on facebook chatting with my mom and one of the kids from our Bible Bowl team who did a lot helping us fundraise. He had a great time. I sat and read Dan’s book and played some more yahtzee (little electronic game a friend gave us the night before we flew out of town). We basically killed time until the alarm went off and we started getting ready for breakfast. We were so excited by this point. This was the day we were going to meet the infamous Almaz, do our paperwork, load in a van, and go pick up our son. Crazy to think about. A year of working to this goal and it is finally here. It was totally a surreal day. Everything about the day is crazy to think back upon. Well, we went down to breakfast. At this point in the week, the waiter knows who we are. We walk in and he asks if I want my omelet (onions and chilies – actually green peppers) and then automatically brings me my coffee and Dan his tea. It was that way every morning from then on. We sat and tried to relax and enjoy breakfast. We then headed up to the room to get everything ready to go to get Mason. My mind says it is going to take a bit of time. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes later, we were ready to go. At about 8, I am getting really tired, so I decide to take a nap. I am not sure what all Dan did during that time, but I slept for a little over an hour. I think Dan read his book now that I think back. We played a couple rounds of sequence at this point and then decided to go down and sit and read in the lobby. We were trying to kill time and somewhat anxious to meet some other AGCI families. We get down in the lobby and sit for a while when we met two other AGCI families. (We had actually met two families on Saturday afternoon when we headed out for the walk, but hadn't seen them since.) Once again, reading and hanging out down there had not killed as much time as we had thought, so we decided to head up to the room and play some sequence and then order room service for lunch. Dan got a steak sandwich thing, which was yummy. It was two full sandwiches and I got a ham and cheese, which was not so yummy. I am just not a fan of ham/pepper loaf stuff. They both came with French fries, which were really good and I believe were homemade. Either way, they were good. So, we killed that time, got our bags together and headed downstairs around 1. Here's our lunch...the first time of many we ordered room service that week.

When we got downstairs 3 families were in the lounge area visiting so we joined them and shortly after we sat down the other two families joined us as well. There were six families in our travel group which was a great size. We were all anxious to be picking up our children! We were excited to see Almaz walk into the lobby and ask if we were ready to do our paperwork. We headed out to the patio bar and got to work. Here is a picture of Was, Johannes, and Almaz as we were getting settled in to get the paperwork started.

We did the necessary paperwork, and then they sent around the sign up for coffee. We ordered way more than anyone else. I mean way more. We got 20 kilos of coffee, which for those of you who don't know is about 44lbs. We gave about everyone in our fairly large family a bag of coffee as a gift and we have plenty to get us through the next year at least as well. They also collected money to be exchanged into birr for the shopping trip. Almaz then sent the men to get the donations and they were loaded on top of the van and Almaz continued to update us ladies on our babies. We found out then that Mason had been switched to soy formula just that week, so we had to switch out all we had brought for him with soy from Hannah's Hope (the orphanage/transition home that Mason was at). Here is the van loaded with all the donations.

We then had a quick potty break and everyone loaded into the van. There weren't enough of us to warrant two vehicles, but there was enough of us that it was a tight squeeze (and this was before we added 6 children). Dan and I were the youngest as well as the only couple that were first time parents. Here we are loaded up and anxious to go pick up our little man!

Here are a few pictures along the road on our way to Hannah's Hope.

Here are four of us moms waiting our turn to meet our babies.

I had the privilege of video taping one families meeting of their beautiful little girl. She was about 2 1/2 and had a little bit of a rough time, but from what I know is doing well with her new mommy and daddy and brothers! When I got done with that and walked around the front of the building, I came around to the side and Dan was calling me over. He said 'here he is, he's coming!' I was shocked. Almaz said she was going to take us each to meet our children so we could get it on picture and video. We were surprised. Almaz came up and said that she had to bring him because he was sitting there with his arms up just begging to be picked up and who could say no to that face. So here is Almaz with our little man. Our first sight of him on Jan. 24, 2010.

She handed him over to his daddy because I had the cameras. He did well coming to each of us, he didn't fuss too much, but rarely does anyway. He was definitely reserved and somewhat confused.

Isn't he just the cutest little boy you have ever seen! :) Apparently from what we were told Mason Mamush was well loved at Hannah's Hope. He was and is a very social little boy, he loves to laugh and play, and he is a ham. Loves attention and loves to giggle, be held, and played with. Here I am with a special mother that came to see mason. I honestly never figured out who his specific special mothers were. I think all of them came up to us and loved on Mason. It was fun when we brought him back to Hannah's Hope, but I will post more about that later.

Here are a few of the families in the courtyard area getting to know their new little babies. Almaz wanted us to see Mason's personality, so she had us take him up to the balcony where he loved to play. here he is overlooking other people. he would look down at them and yell to get their attention. When people looked up at him he would laugh, clap his hands and get really excited. It was adorable.

One of the special mothers put him in this walker to play a bit. He was having a good time. It was fun to see him laughing and playing.

In this picture he and I were playing. We were finally able to get him laughing and playing with us. As you can see he had two teeth when we picked him up. (Just a side note, he now has 7 and is working on the 8th)

Here is Dan playing with him in his room. Yes, he was in a little girl room. When he arrived at Hannah's Hope there were so many little boys that he had to be put in a little girl room. Instead of moving him to the boy room as space became available (because families picked up their little ones ahead of us), they left him there since he was used to the special mothers in that room and attached to them. I love this picture because it looks like Mason is telling daddy how it is going to be. Here is a picture of the three of us with Almaz. This is as we were getting ready to load up and head back to the hotel.

Hannahs hope is an amazing place, and I intend to do a whole post on it after I am done with the trip. It is beautiful and filled with beautiful children as well. Mason wasn't too thrilled when we first got into the van and crawled into the back. There were definite alligator tears, but no fear, he can pull out the tears even when he is pouting.

he quickly was over his initial fear and then just curious about what was going on.

Hannah's hope is less that 5 minutes from the hotel and amazingly, Mason was sound asleep by the time we got to the hotel. I know this for a fact because I was able to climb out of the back of the van and get up to our room with him still asleep.

We just laid him down and took turns just laying there looking at him. The moment had finally come and we had our little boy. We had spent 13 months praying about this moment and for this little boy. It was crazy and very surreal. He finally woke up from his nap and was terrified. It is the only time I have seen that look on my babies face. He was absolutely terrified. he did not know where he was or who we were. I was able to comfort his which was heartbreaking and great all at the same time.

We then gave him his first bottle. He was used to holding it himself at Hannah's Hope, so we had to work to get him to let us feed him. We were told that he was eating baby food, cereal, bottles, and some soft table foods. When we picked him up, all he would eat that week in Ethiopia was bottles. We tried cereal and baby food, but he would just spit it out. We tried little poof snacks, those came right out as well. It took a couple weeks to get the baby food going again and a couple more weeks before he started soft tables foods, but now we can't get him to stop eating so it's all good! It was just part of his grieving and shock.

Here is daddy giving it his best shot at the cereal and vegetables. Mason's face is priceless. To me it is saying 'do you have a clue what you are doing?' What are you getting off that expression. Pretty much every bite would come right back out as soon as it went in. He had finished his full bottle and would not give up his bottle. It was his 'safety net' so to speak.

We then decided to give him a bath. Still, he wouldn't give up that bottle, so it went into the tub with him. We had brought the stacking cup bath toys. I would highly recommend them to anyone going. the others in our group hadn't brought any toys and were saying they wished they had.

Dan was able to get him to look at what he was doing to get him to relax a bit. Still, a death grip on that bottle!

I was eventually able to trade him a stacking cup for the bottle. We had only brought two bottles with throw away liners. We needed that bottle! Bath time went well and was fun for all. It is still probably his favorite thing to do. He is always going into the bathroom and standing at the tub trying to reach the nob to turn on the water. It's really cute! Here he is all bundled up after his first bath. I think babies are about their sweetest when all cuddled up in a towel after a bath.

Here he is in his pajamas playing with his new toys before he headed to bed. We had no clue as to what a routine for a baby should look like and just went with the flow while there and for the first month or two home. One thing I do have to say, especiallly for first time parents, get pajamas with zippers! If you don't function really well in the middle of the night when you are half asleep, they are the way to go. We didn't take a single pair with a zipper and regretted it! We spent a lot of time fighting with snaps with a restless baby who was wiggling and kicking his legs. It was just a couple weeks ago that we started using those pajamas, but that is another post as well...

here is daddy getting Mason to sleep and falling asleep himself as well. This is still a favored sleeping position for both daddy and baby! And that is the end of our first day as a family of 3! It was absolutely amazing, blissful, surreal, and unbelievable at the same time! I hope this does it justice and gives those of you reading who are waiting your turn a snipit as to what is to come! Your time is coming and meeting your precious gift will be an amazing day for you as well! I will do my best to finish trip posts and the HH post as well as our sleeping post soon! Keep checking

Days 3 & 4 - Jan 22 &23

Ok, miracles do happen! I am going to at least get the next two days blogged. It won't be near as long as day 5 (gotcha day) for those of you anxiously waiting! (a.k.a. Mom)
Well, we got checked into our hotel, up to our room, and a few essentials unpacked, and off to bed for us! We were so tired and hoped to get up early and get the day started. We didn't want to deal with jet lag too much, so we forced ourselves to get up, get ready for the day (which I have to say, I did a pretty good job keeping the water in the tub when I took my shower sans shower curtain), and go down to breakfast on Friday morning. We slept each night with our windows open and it was great! Our room was a little warm most of the time but not terrible. So, we woke up to a beautiful morning. We had a room that faced the back of the hotel and had a great view of the city. We were able to watch people come and go, people working, it was great! Here is a couple views out the window.

After breakfast, we were a little tired and still needed to finish unpacking, so we went up to our room, unpacked and got settled. We had to go through our bags of donations because we had a few of our things mixed in, so we pulled out all the donations we brought and went through a bunch of the stuff. We took these little teddy bears that had letters for the kids, but we tried to spell Ethiopia with them for a picture, apparently we didn't bring any T's.

This is part of the clothing donations we were given by another AGCI family to take. We had fun going through it and seeing what all was there. This is for you Dave. There were a number of Seattle Mariners items in there. We were thinking of you as we found them!

After we were done getting organized, we decided to take a little nap. I woke up around noon and let Dan sleep another hour. Unfortunately, when I woke him up, he had my stomach bug. He ran to the bathroom and was throwing up and had diarrhea for the rest of Friday and Saturday. By Saturday afternoon he was starting to feel better, but still not great. So, we obviously did not get to go out and see the city and learn about the culture. Now we will just have to go back! :) We hung out in our room, ate snacks and read our books. We brought a number of travel games, which was a God thing, because we about pulled them out and left them at home. We spent hours playing Rummikub, Speed, Sequence, Solitaire, and other such games. It was not ideal, obviously, but it was a nice way to spend our last two days of just the two of us. Our TV in the room didn't work, so no, no TV either. Also, yes, there was Internet at the hotel, but no, it did not work in our room. Come to find out after some trial and error and a little investigation, the router for wireless on our hallway was right by the elevator in the center of the building. Therefore the Internet worked outside our room, but not in our room. The other halls we check out, the router was halfway down the hall, so all the rooms had Internet on those halls (we know so b/c other families in our group were also in the end rooms in their hallway). On Saturday afternoon, Dan was feeling ok, not great, but ok, so we went for a walk. We walked out the front door of the hotel and took a left. We headed up the road to a market area. We didn't take any pictures as it was really busy and we didn't want to offend anyone. It was fun to see all the people coming and going, the goats and cows. It was just amazing to see life in Ethiopia in action! We basically turned around and headed back to the hotel so Dan could take a nap. We went to bed Saturday night anxious and excited about the fact that the next day we would finally be meeting our son! Here are a few pictures from our walk. A view of the hotel from a distance and some scaffolding on a building we walked past.

So, that was our Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately not as exciting as we had hoped, but it was ok. We were finally in the same city as our son. There was nothing that was going to stop us from meeting him the next day. We were so anxious!

On another note, for those of your who made it this far, please pray for us! We are feeling very unsettled and are seeking God's guidance as to what our future holds. Please join us in prayer as we seek the Lord's will and guidance. Thank you in advance!

Also, keep checking, I have already started on the big 'gotcha day' post!

Firsts!

Lately there have been some firsts going on in our life. We took our first (and second) road trip to Colorado. We had our first post placement visit tonight, which went really well might I add. Today, apparently, Mason decided, for the first time, to get into Mickey's kennel to play with him.

here is Mason eating his first enchilada. Which he loved! He will fit well in southwest Kansas.

Here he is last week on his first bike ride with daddy. Apparently he slept most of the ride. And the most exciting first of all...our first steps! Tonight right before the social worker showed up, Mason made his first few steps! We are excited and are sure he will be running around the house before we know it! Amazingly we have the camcorder out and were playing with it. The steps are at about seconds 24 - 28. The rest is not really exciting.

I know I still have to finish our trip story, but I will do so soon. Life has been chaos. i haven't really been home in two or three weeks. So, as soon as I get that time home, I will finish our story of the trip with pictures and all.

Bad Me!

Ok, so it has been forever since I last posted! Sorry! Life has been Crazy! Not just new baby crazy, but CRAZY!!! We have now been home 1 month and it has been absolute chaos! We got home and had to replace our water softner in the first few days. Then, we had to change out all the water filters on the RO system. Then, we both headed back to work on the 15th. Then, our water heater went out and we had to stay at my grandmother's house for just over a week while Dan found the time to replace it! We had our van in the shop for a minor overhaul as well.
We have been back to life as normal, or at least the new normal. We are trying to get the taxes done, schedule a doctor's appointment in Denver, schedule our first post-placement visit, figure out what we have to do for re-adoption in KS. Pretty much, life has been at a hectic pace. Our days generally consist of me getting up during the night with Mason (He doesn't sleep all night, we have good and bad nights. The most sleep I have gotten all in a row for the past month has been 6 hours - and that only once!), getting up and getting ready for work. Dan gets to stay home and get up with Mason. Dan takes care of Mason throughout the day while he tries to get stuff done around here. He then brings him to me in the afternoon sometime before he has to go to work. Mason then hangs out with me at the office, with my sister, her husband and their 4 kids. It is a crazy life. Then, I generally bring him home, feed him, and get him ready for bed. Then he goes down for bed (kind of) and I try and get stuff accomplished around the house. Right now it is a disaster area!
But, enough rambling - here is your photo essay!

Starting with our new beautiful water softer and hot water heater. Oh, blessed things
Mason with Dans mom and her husband Al.

Mason getting his first adjustment from my sister the day after getting home. He didn't really care for it, but doesn't mind getting adjusted now.

Mason with my mom and step-dad at Wendy's.

Mason with my grandma Fuller (who is in her 90s)

While visiting Grandma, I was so exhausted, I fell asleep. Asleep enough to not even realize that Mason was playing with my face. Cuteness Fun with diapers

Interrupting reading time...

Mason loves the dog Mickey (he isnt always this shaggy - we had him groomed shortly after this) and the cat Casper. Mason 'helping' daddy replace water filters.

Baby dedication (which they do once per year at our church) was one week after we got home. So, this was Mason's first week at church. Which he does awesome at!

Lazy baby! We went to lunch after the baby dedication and mason decided it was easier to drink his bottle leaning forward and resting the bottle on the table than holding it himself. Lazy boy!

Mason in his ET outfit. We bought him this one thinking it would fit for a while. The top was a struggle to get on and squeezed his belly. The pants were huge! We got him an outfit for when he is around ten and one for when he is an adult, so it's ok. It was just kind of sad that this is the only time he will wear the top at all. (the pants we'll put to use this summer)

Playing in the box for the water softener. Dan cut holes for windows and Mason had a great time! Our little stud muffin one week before church. We have gotten a number of adorable 'church' outfits. It's fun to dress him up in them for church.

After bath time!

And your final vision at cuteness for now. I will resume the trip story soon! I promise! :) Kind of!