What a Day

Today has definitely been one of the most full, emotional days we've ever had. What an experience it was. The day began with Alemu picking us up around 8am for our trip to Debre Zeit. An hour later, we arrived at the orphanage for a meeting with Mikias' birthmother. Right when she saw us she showered us with hugs and kisses and was genuinely happy to see all of us…especially Mikias. We spent quite a while at the orphanage talking, playing, and looking at a picture album we gave. We were able to take tons of pictures and video of the meeting that will definitely be valuable in the years to come. Then we learned that all of us were going to get a drink at a local café/juice bar so we all piled in the car together. It was a surreal experience looking in the back seat and seeing Joanna, Mikias, and his birthmother sitting side by side. At the café, there was a small playground that Mikias loved. We all played for a while, had some mango juice, and were able to have a few more small conversations. We dropped Mikias' birthmother off on our way back to Addis and part 1 of our day was complete. We are so thankful to have had this experience and consider ourselves very lucky to be able to share this with Mikias someday. This 1.5 hours this morning made it worth bringing Mikias all the way back to Ethiopia. We're so glad that all the details worked out.
 
After arriving back in Addis and decompressing a bit from the full morning, our group met at 2pm in front of the hotel to get our rides to the orphanage. It was obvious that everyone was a bit nervous and tense as we loaded into the cars. This was entirely different experience than before since there were seven other families with us and we weren't alone. It was actually very comforting (and exciting) to be able to share this experience with all of these other people. We arrived at Enat Alem orphanage and we were all waiting in the courtyard taking pictures and prepping ourselves. We were then told that we could come in to the room and get our children. So we all headed in scanning all the cribs looking for our children. I was worried we wouldn't be able to spot Sintayehu from the pictures we had seen, but when we found him sound asleep in the third crib we looked in, there was no doubt it was him. We hesitated a moment since he was sleeping, but after waiting about 5 seconds we scooped him up. What a cute little guy! It was so awesome because all around the room you could see other families finding their children and lifting them up. It was suddenly very noisy with all the talking and laughing and crying. Everyone was taking pictures of everyone else and we were all so happy for one another. Sintayehu didn't really fuss at all and we even got him to smile a few times within those first moments.
 
Afterwards we spent some time talking to the nurse and caretakers about Sintayehu's schedule. We then all gathered in the courtyard for a traditional coffee ceremony. Meanwhile, a lot of the other children in the orphanage came out and a lot of people in our group were playing with them. Sintayehu took this time to spit up on me a few times. It seemed like everytime I held him he spit up but Joanna always came away clean. Oh well, I certainly didn't mind. We also fed him his first bottle as we were waiting for the coffee to finish. The experience at the orphanage was simply amazing.
 
After a quick trip back to the hotel, we were reunited with Mikias and our parents on the front steps. The entire group waited for us so we could have our reunion with our family before they came in to the hotel. I can imagine that it was quite a sight with all of these families returning with new children at the same time. For the next few hours we all hung out in our room getting to know Sintayehu. Sintayehu kept surprising us. We had him on the floor playing and then he suddenly rolled over and stuck his head up and started grabbing for things. We really didn't know what to expect since we're not exactly sure what he can do yet…I'm sure we'll find out soon enough! Mikias has been pretty good around him so far. He hasn't gotten too close to him, but they've been playing near each other and I think that's a good thing. Joanna got Sintayehu to laugh out load and then stick out his tongue which we all thought was hilarious.
 
Tonight we had dinner with all of the other families here in the lodge. Sintayehu had a bottle while we were eating dinner and has now been sleeping for 4 hours. That's pretty good. I'm sure he'll wake up starving soon. We finalized the paperwork we need for Sintayehu's embassy appointment tomorrow afternoon. That should go pretty smoothly. Other than that, we're just basking in the excitement of the day. I don't think we'll ever have many days better than this.