Another Day With Melat

We are so very blessed, everyday with Melat keeps getting better.  She is such a joy to be around and she is adjusting and bonding well.  She is amazing in that she understands what we ask even though she speaks no English.  She sleeps through the night and uses the potty with no trouble.  She eats great and loves bananas and peanut butter, just like her big sister Annierae.

Yesterday we went to the US Embassy, Melat is officially a US citizen!!  We now are waiting for her VISA which we will have tomorrow.  Then we get to come home and Melat will meet the rest of her family.  She met her big sisters and grandparents yesterday,via Skype, and loved it when Annierae would pretend to eat the Cheerios Melat kept trying to feed her.

This morning Melat played play dough with daddy, which was a big hit!!!  They are playing with it right now while I type this post.  She has great fine motor skills and has been coloring and putting stickers on everything.  She LOVES getting her hair fixed and wearing headbands, and she has to try on all her shoes.  We have another girly girl on our hands!  She is very tiny, smaller then I remember, she wears 18 months in clothes and a size 6 shoe.  Lucky for me I brought a suitcase full of shoes for donations and swapped out some size 6's.

She is also a gadget girl, one of the first things she did when she came into the room was walked over to the TV turned it on and took hold of the remote.  I guess they must have watched TV in the orphanage because she knew just what to do.  Whenever Greg or I are on the computer or IPad she thinks she needs to help us and loves to move things around the screen.  She already knows how to slide her fingers across the screen to view all the pictures and loves to play with the Parrot App that mimics your voice and sounds.

We are so amazed at how well she is doing and can't wait to get her home to the rest of her forever family.  This little one has had an amazing journey for such a young life and I can't wait to see how she blossoms and grows in the next few weeks, months and years.  WE LOVE MELAT!!!!  

Just got my hair fixed

Loving on Mommy after Embassy

Big stretch!

Trying on shoes

Play-doh time with Daddy

Very focused!

Gotcha Day back at the hotel

Someone discovered the TV remote

Not crazy about being interrupted for a picture

Gotcha Day spaghetti dinner

Big girl eating all by herself

Gotcha Day!

Today we officially took custody of Melat!   This is a doubly special day for us, as besides being Melat’s Gotcha Day, it also would have been Greg’s mom’s 87^th birthday!

 To back up a bit, we arrived in Ethiopia early Sunday morning and went to the transition foster home Sunday afternoon to visit Melat.  When we arrived she wasn’t her usual cheerful self.  Turns out she has a slight cold and a bit of a fever.  We spent about an hour with her then left her to rest.  We went back to the hotel and did the same as we had been up for nearly 30 hours without much sleep.

On Monday we went back to pick up Melat at 2:00pm Ethiopia time.  She had just woken up from her nap and was still a bit warm, not feeling a 100% yet.  The nurse was there and we were able to ask lots of questions and get her routine, favorite foods and her overall health assessment.  Outside of her cold, she seems to be in pretty good overall health.  The nurse gave her some children’s Motrin and she perked up about an hour later.  We thanked the foster home staff, left them gifts of appreciation then headed back to the hotel.

By the time we returned to the hotel, it seemed Melat was feeling much better.  She started to smile more and devoured a bowl of cheerios, which appear to be a new favorite snack.  So we’ve been playing with toys, coloring, eating cheerios and basically just hanging out.  It will be a long 3 days hold up in the hotel as we wait for her visa and other paperwork Thursday.

Here are a few pictures from Sunday and today, Gotcah Day, as Melat begins her new life with her forever family.  We’ll post more in the days to come and perhaps a short video or two.

Thank you all for the prayers and good wishes while we’re on our journey!

Not feeling so well :(

But Daddy got a smile out of her!

Gotcha Day!



Someone discovered Cherrios!



The Waiting Game

Well it has now been over 5 years since we have been trying to adopt again.  We have had to remind ourselves many times that it is all in God's timing.  Our plan was to return to China to adopt a sibling for Annierae, from her same birth country.  We waited a year to submit our dossier to China because that was the Chinese government’s rule.  Our dossier was logged into China on February 6, 2007.  After waiting in line for two years, China referrals slowed way down, we were given the news that I (Kristine) had stage 2 breast cancer.  After waiting another year to go through treatments and surgeries we were told that China would no longer accept us, unless we were willing to adopt an older child with more difficult special needs.  Hmm, I am not well enough to take care of a child with little to no special needs but a child with server challenges I could handle?  Our hearts were broken and we thought that our hope to adopt again would never happen.  I remember begging God to take away the desire for another child but that feeling would not dissipate. 

God's plans are always better than ours, another reminder that we have held onto.  We are thankful that God made us wait.  If not for the wait, our beautiful daughter Ja may have never become part of our family.  If we had brought a child home from China when we thought we were going to, we would have never been open to taking in a 16 year old refugee from Burma.  We would have never known Ja and I think that somehow we would have felt an empty spot in our hearts and not known why. 

We are also thankful for the way God answers our prayers.  If He had taken away my desire we would have never pursued finding an agency that would work with us, even though I had a history of cancer.  Adoption Associates was very positive that if we sent in a dossier to Ethiopia, we would be accepted into the program.  Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia on November 17, 2010.  We thought that it would only be a couple of months until we received a referral.  Ahhh, but once again referrals slowed down and so we waited.  We prayed fervently that God would fulfill our dreams of adopting again.  He answered this prayer with the referral of our beautiful daughter, Melat.  After meeting her in December, we were reminded yet again that God is so good and His plans are much better than ours.  As we say with all our daughters, we could have never dreamed of better children then the ones God has blessed us with.  God knew well before Greg and I ever meet what our family would be and He had his hands on our children, taking care of them in ways we never imagined before bringing them into our lives.

We are thrilled to report that on February 24^th we will be heading to Ethiopia to bring home our sweet Melat.  The wait the past couple of months has been the most difficult in all the years we have waited.    To hold your child and then have to leave her behind is unspeakable to us and we honestly don't know, other than by God's grace, how we did it.  Melat will be home with her forever family on March 2^nd, 2012.  It's been a long wait but God had a plan and we waited for Him to unite us with Melat.