News from Addis Ababa

We have Abe in arms. He's the happiest, easiest baby we've ever seen. He wakes up smiling. He eats everything we give him, including injera. And he's so much smaller than we were expecting. I'm curious toget him to a pediatrician to find out what percentile he's in.


Everything is great. The photo above is Ted's first day as a father with jetlag. He's loving it. For any soon-to-be traveling families: try to book the Ayat House as soon as you get your travel dates. It's an amazing place. Also, I've met a lot of your babes already and have taken lots of pictures. The Ayat House is close to the foster care center, and I plan on going back Monday or Tuesday to visit again. I'll take lots more pictures then.

I know I said this on a recent post that not all babies are cute. I want to add a caveat to that: Not all babies are cute, but all babies born in Ethiopia ARE.

We can't wait for you all to meet this amazing creature asleep on me right now. He's even cuter and more amazing in person. We're certifiably in love.

Momma, you're gonna have a COW when you meet him.

Beautiful Boy

The surprising calm continues. I slept nine hours last night. We're almost completely packed. Ted's outside watering the yard. Last night as we were getting things together, we both drifted to the TV, zoning out at that episode of Seinfeld with the friend of Elaine's who flops around bra-less. Good stuff that Seinfeld.

In nine more hours, we'll be sitting on an airplane that will take us to London and then to Addis Ababa. By Wednesday morning, we'll be kissing some long fought-for cheeks. We're staying in Addis at an apartment/guest house, so I'm not sure how much access we'll have to the internet. I'm hoping to be able to at least get some text off once or twice while we're there. Thanks, Carrie and Rusty for your help with that.

Until we're able to post more pictures, here's a collection of some of Abe's best shots up until now. We'll see you all after March 26!

The monster's gone, he's on the run, and your daddy's here...

Choked up

I just made my last (hopefully) list of a few little things to pick up before we leave. Amazing. This is actually happening! I've been 100% healthy, not even a cold, for more than a year, but yesterday morning woke up with pain in my chest and throat. Oh boy. It got worse throughout the day, but last night I was able to sleep like a rock for more than 8 hours, so I'm hoping the rest will knock out whatever that bug is. For any of you who've been praying that I can sleep: thank you. It's working.
Yesterday, as promised, Pattie and Carolee came over to pack. I thought they were going to be lending me a hand, but they whipped out their special packing tape and scissors and before I knew it, it was all done. I'd barely lent them a hand. I was amazed. Really. After they left, I got all choked up, overwhelmed by the generosity of our friends and so thankful...

As I was writing that sentence Pattie called, telling us that she's tracked down an infant car-seat from a lady we both know at our church to use for the few days we're in L.A. before heading back up to Portland (where we have a car-seat). Yay!

Again, choked up. You notice what's on Carolee's hat? The words "Great Love." Yes ma'am that's right: you do love well.

Also yesterday, Ian and Amanda came by in the morning to bring more baby gear and treats from Porto's Bakery, one of my favorite places around here. How wonderful. They've also lent us their red moby wrap, which I love and will be taking with us on the trip.

This morning right after I woke up, our dear Lily called from our bed in Portland. Our nephew Matt is house/cat sitting from his headquarters in the basement, and Lily came as well to add her help to loving our furry babies while we're gone. I'm blessed beyond measure to know that we have two of our loved-ones staying in our Portland house and that our sweet neighbor Linda agreed to come over every now and then to give skittish Buddy some love too (she's his favorite person in the world).

It's all coming together, and we feel so thankful for our community of friends. Five minutes ago, Susan poked her head in this room to say those most magical words of all: Hey, you want some coffee?

Choked up.

Alright, Mister, we're coming to getcha. You've got an army of good people ready to welcome you home with great love!

Packing to go

Officially tired with little creative energy today. This picture of Abe is pretty much how Ted and I feel right now. Lots of going up and down 76 stairs to the house from the street, usually carrying a lot of stuff, and last night the timing was perfect for twisting my ankle. Colorful bruising is in my immediate future. Our to-do lists are growing by the hour.

I went today to this randomly chosen optometrist in Glendale to get a back-up pair of glasses for the trip. It was a tiny little shop with a sweet Armenian woman working behind the counter who reminded me so much of the women I used to teach in my ESL classes down here. She treated me like family as I picked out my frames, and eventually the optometrist came out from the back to talk to me. When I was explaining why I need the glasses asap, his face lit up and he told me that he was born in Ethiopia!

He then took me to his desk and pulled out his old photo album from his childhood in Addis Ababa. His grandparents, as part of the diaspora after the Armenian genocide, emigrated to Ethiopia. His parents were born there, and then he was born there. He lived there until his late teens. What stories people have if we take the time to listen.

In the afternoon, look who came to visit:I made Zoe cry by making a 'zrbt' on her tummy. She'd warned me that the screams were coming by giving me a classic furrowed eyebrow frown but I made the mistake of thinking that she was just suprised. All babies love the 'zrbt' right? Wrong.

The above photo was taken after the zrbt trauma, so I'm assuming she forgave me. She was more interested in Ted the whole time anyway. She thought pretty much anything he did was pretty cool.Can you believe the cheeks and eyelashes on that girl? What a beauty!

Last night, Samantha popped by too and dropped by the cutest all organic onesie with a guitar on the front for Abe. It was so great to meet her and her daughter. I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: this blogging community is really something. I don't know what I'd do without everyone. I had no idea when I started this blog that I would end up making so many life-long friends. Wonderful thing.

Tomorrow is our official bag-packing day, at least for all the donations and gifts for the Gladney caregivers. Oh, and the hundreds of diapers and wipes, plus all the powdered formula as well. Two expert packers, Carolee and Pattie, are coming to help me, so I think our chances are good of staying under our weight allowance. We'll see.

Finger-eatin' good!

I am tired of looking at that ugly picture of me and Ted in last night's post. So here's this pretty thing to cover it up.
Every time I've woken up at night since Monday, I have a hard time getting back to sleep because I remember all over again that this is our baby. Unbelievable.

Plane tickets make reality sink in...

We didn't like the flight attendants on our flight last summer to Ireland with Ted's dad. They were simply just not very bright. We really wanted to like them since they were Irish and all, but really: not much going on upstairs. One in particular, though she was a pretty girl, kept making the face Ted and I are making in this photo to your left whenever we asked her a question. This was also the go-to face she'd use as a response to any of our jokes or attempts at friendly banter.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, besides putting aside any pride to show you how we entertain ourselves on airplanes, this trip to Ireland has played a decent role in getting our baby home. On our way back to the U.S. at the end of our trip, the flight was overbooked and we volunteered to give up our seats, thus getting hefty vouchers to use in the future. We got a free meal out of the deal too and ended up back at home only two hours later than planned.

We've been saving these vouchers since then and were able to use them towards our trip to Ethiopia. One caveat: Ted and I had to drive out to LAX tonight to use the vouchers at the ticket counter. As we were driving up, parking, and walking into the airport amidst seas of people at 8:30 pm on a Wednesday night, I told Ted that I feel a little bad that this is the first thing Abe is going to experience of the U.S. Poor thing: he's going to be uprooted from all that's familiar and comfortable to him to be taken care of by the likes of us.

While at the ticket counter, we were given this, which made me cry:
There was something so surreal about seeing his name on something as official as a plane ticket. The "Rooney" part got me all choked up and made my heart stop for a moment. This is for real.

The ladies at the ticket counter were happy to ooh and aaah over the photo I have of Abe in my wallet, though I had to correct one lady when she said that all babies are cute. I told her that I'm not so sure any baby Ted and I produced biologically could ever be as cute as this kid whose picture they were parading around. Before you try to leave any kind-hearted, reassuring comments, I offer the photograph at the top of this post as proof.

So yes, we've got our tickets booked, thanks to Ted, who could have a second career as a travel agent. He figured it all out himself, with hours and hours of work going into all of it. We're leaving Monday night from LAX around 8pm and arriving to Addis Ababa Wednesday night at around 10pm. Long trip on the way there, but the way back should be simpler. We'll get back to Los Angeles on the 26th in the afternoon and hang out here a few days before heading back up to Portland, our other beloved land of green and lucky rainbows.

Look who I got to meet today!Dani drove all the out to my favorite coffee place to meet up and give me the biggest bottle of bubbly I've seen in my life. How fun! We've invited our neighbors over to share it with us tomorrow night.

And check out her amazing little man:
They've been home all of two weeks, and already Judah is sleeping 11 hours a night and is a complete delight. He is so much fun to make giggle. I think I could have spent hours making my "bing!" and "bong!" noises to get that laugh out of him. What an amazing boy. We're looking forward to letting Abe and Judah giggle and play when we get back, maybe while us grown-ups enjoy another monster bottle of bubbly...and then we'll all be sharing in the giggles.

How it went down, finally

We are a couple of spoiled people. For the last few days, Ted and I have been trying to share the use of a lap-top during a very busy time when we both actually really need consistent access to a computer. This is why I haven't posted details of Monday yet. Thanks for being patient.

So this is how it all went down:

Like I said before, I've had a strange amount of peace about everything for the last couple of weeks, excluding the popcorn on the floor meltdown a week ago. Packing up Abe's stuff to come down to L.A. was not an easy task, but it was definitely made easier by two factors: 1. I think God may have been nudging me to do it and 2. A friend came over and watched Magnolia with me while I did most of the packing (in my top ten favorite movies of all time: "I do have love to give, I just don't know where to put it!" is one of the best lines in any film, ever--breaks my heart every time I hear it).

I got down to L.A., with that March Forth breadcrumb and a suitcase packed full of 'Neezer gear'. Then as Ted and I were praying Sunday night about the court date coming up, my prayer was something like this, "God, I know that in heaven all things will be made right, that we'll see full justice there for eternity, but I'm asking in your grace and mercy to give us just a portion of that justice here on this earth for the sake of our family and this baby."

Then we went to bed, and I slept until 10:00. Yes, you heard that right: when I can sleep, I sleep, even if that means into the late morning. Please don't judge me. I'm prepared to have this change with the presence of Abe in our lives, I promise.

When I woke up, I checked my phone and saw that Mary had called twice within five minutes of each other. She's been so great about calling just to ask how we're doing, so I figured that's what this was, that she was checking in the day before our court date. I went to check my email, figuring she would have written when she couldn't reach us, but there was no email from her.

That was the first clue that something was up.

So I went to call her back and when she actually picked up her phone, that was clue number 2 (it usually goes straight to voice-mail). I said, "Hi Mary, this is Lori Rooney." She answered me in a sing-songy sort of way, "Oh hi! Are you sitting down?"

Clue number 3.

She then said, "It's done, Lori! Go get Ted!"

Uh, clue 4.

So I jumped up, ran downstairs to find Ted and saw him standing outside on the deck. I ran across the living room and ended in a long slide in my slippers across the dining room until crashing into the back door and dropping the phone. I opened the door and blurted something out to Ted about "It's Mary! It's over! It's done!" then picked the phone back up and heard Mary laughing.

It turns out that what happened is that Belay and Dr. Tilahun, Gladney's lawyer, decided to go early to court last Thursday to petition for an early court date. They didn't tell anyone they were doing this, otherwise Mary would have told us. They went back Friday. Then they went back Monday (these men have gumption and persistence).

On Monday at the court of appeals, in what wasn't even an official "court date," the right someone looked at all the documents, and asked a few questions, one of which was something about, "Why wasn't this adoption approved two months ago? What's the problem here?" Belay and Dr. Tilahun tried to explain what went down on that awful January 4th court date, which apparently baffled this court official (as it has baffled everyone else involved).

Gladney had gone out of their way (major understatement) to gather together additional proof that this adoption was nothing but 100% ethical, but the court official didn't even ask to see all these additional documents. The official said that there was no reason this adoption should not be granted, whipped out a couple of stamps, did his judicial magic, and finished the thing, a day early and without the big scary "court date."

Crazy, huh? From that point, Abe became officially Abe Rooney. Belay and Dr. Tilahun are officially our heroes. There is no thank you big enough for them.

So for any of you Gladney families out there who are in difficult circumstances of waiting, wondering what's going on, unsure of the next step, please know this: You can not be in better hands. This team of people will do everything possible to bring these children to their families. Do not fear.

We've had our moments of frustration at these lost two months thanks to a very bad decision on January 4th which was based on suspicion and not facts, but I try not to focus on this. Nothing will change it, and we are just so thankful that God brought justice now. That was my prayer, and the God who loves us and Abe very much showed us mercy.

So we spent the rest of Monday calling people and reading all those amazing comments of congratulations from friends, family, and people we've yet to meet (but hope to at the blogging union this summer). Abe is one loved little boy, no doubt about that one.

We ended the day by opening up the most expensive bottle of champagne we've ever had, given to us for our wedding by our L.A. neighbors Grant and Katherine (hey guys!). In fact, I think it may have been my first time drinking actual champagne: we usually go for the $10 bottles of "sparkling wine."

Yes, the photo is cheese-bally, but don't we deserve to be cheeseballs?

So now we're making our travel plans. Keep sending in those SD cards for anyone who wants pics of their kids. And thank you again for all the support and prayers. We are happy, even when we have to share the laptop.