06.12.10

So, Joy met us at the Guesthouse today at 10am, and we thought we were going to go with her to meet Tezera (his nanny & caretaker) and Elsay. But then, all of them were with her. Surprise, surprise! So we met sweet Elsay for the first time. So grateful for Tezera’s eager care for him and love for him. He loves Tezera so much. ​

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The big surprise was not that we would meet him, but that we would keep him. So, I imagine the first days are harder than others as he does not know us. It still feels like that. We’ve had him all of 4 hours, trying to figure out as newbie parents what he wants. Does he want to play, eat, or sleep - those are pretty well the options. So, we’ve fumbled through it trying to prevent his cries. Eileen has him right now out on the porch in the Ergo carrier sleeping, and he seems to be doing well - after finally realizing he needed some food and then a sleep. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the day and night.

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That was from Byron’s perspective, and now here is from Eileen: Oh my goodness today was a whirlwind! We got in late Sunday night...who even knows what time it was on our bodies, but it was after about 30 hours of travel! We arrived at our guest house where we were greeted with traditional Ethiopian hospitality...which consisted of fresh roasted (right in front of us) coffee and some popcorn. For those for you that know me this was a little daunting because I don’t like coffee ad have somehow made it to 31 years old and 7 SBS’s without ever having drank a cup of coffee! But I was surprised to find out it wasn’t that bad, and then I had another cup this morning! I finally feel like a grown-up:)

So I woke up early Monday morning, excited, anxious, hopeful...and tried to journal and get ready for the day but I was so antsy i couldn’t focus on much of anything. It was our understanding that Joy- our contact from the adoption agency- was going to meet us at our guest house, go over some things with us and then take us to meet Caleb (by the way we think we decided on calling him Caleb) and his care-giver Tezera. So we walked outside to meet the van, and Joy tells us he is in the van! IT all happened so fast, they bought him out, put him in our arms, took a bunch of pictures, told us a few things about his schedule and they were off again! It felt like 5 minutes, in reality it was probably like a half an hour, they had to hurry away because they had some blood work they had to drop off at the hospital for some abandoned babies they had just taken into their orphanage.

So there we are, Byron, Caleb and I in our little hotel room, laughing, smiling, feeling nervous and shaky...and then he starts to cry. We didn’t know what to do, is he just sad that Tezera left, is he scared because he doesn’t know us, is he hungry, is he sleepy, maybe he needs his diaper changed...so we went through all of that for the first couple hours maybe and then finally got him settled in the Ergo baby- carrier and he slept for like 2 hours in my arms, it was so precious! So he’s awake and playing with Daddy right now, I want to say we’re getting the hang of it but it might be a little soon for saying that, let make it through the first night first!

I love you guys and am so excited to share this journey with all of you!