when the clouds break on a warm November day

Sixty degrees at the end of November. God is kind to this Florida girl. The gray drizzle gave way to blue sky and sunshine, incentive to eat your lunch! so we can get outside.

Tamagn was contentedly sucking his thumb in the stroller until his big brothers started stomping that lovely muddy water. Why I bothered to roll his pants I do not know. He was the wettest of them all.

And soon a bigger puddle was found, it might classify as a small lake, and oh, they had fun! I'm glad none of the neighbors were out. I'm sure they'd have called CYS to report the neglectful mother letting her baby toddle in such filthy water. Hey, they are from Africa. Just a couple  of months ago I let them play on the floor of a plane outside the more filthy restroom for hours on end.

That flight changed me.

Permanently.

After Tamagn face-planted in the puddle for the third time we loaded up and booked it home for warm baths and beds.

I had Bereket all soaped up with sudsy baby wash, scrubbing those curls I love, and Josiah pipes up, "Hey Bereket, you look like a white man!"

When he's 16 he'll understand the humor in that.

 I figured after playing hard, baths, and going down for naps an hour later than usual I could count on some good sleepers.

Ha. Silly me.

he's still smiling

Bereket's surgery went very smoothly yesterday. Thank you all for caring for our little one. He won the hearts of all the docs and nurses with that smile of his, and he never cried or fussed once. Adenoids, also called pharyngeal tonsils, sit directly posterior to your nose, at the back of your throat just above the hard palate, and are rated 0-100 based on the percentage of obstruction they cause in the pharynx. Bereket's were a whopping 100. So, we were glad we opted for surgery and are even more glad it is over and he is  back to his happy little self. Hoping this reduces his snoring and the number of times he is up during the night. And the number of times we are up during the night.

Josiah sent George along with Bereket for moral support. 

He thought the gown and little socks they gave him were really pretty cool. 

two months home

Since we've been home two months now, I'll stop thinking about all the things I wanted to share in my "one month home" post that I never wrote. Two months!! Can't get my mind around that. That plane ride home seems like a blurry, very distant memory that happened a lot longer than just two months ago. Repressed memory? We flew half-way around the world with two little strangers and now they're our kids. We know them. They know us. They call us mommy and daddy and they like us! That is good.

These two months home have been filled with firsts. Lots of really fun firsts. They have also had their fair share of doctors appointments and paperwork. Bereket has an adenoidectomy scheduled for next Friday, which should be a fairly simple, quick surgery. Casey has been diligently working on our post-adoption paperwork and preparing for our follow-up home study in a couple of weeks. Part of this new round of paperwork includes collecting pictures of the boys in their new home, with their new family members, reassurance to the Ethiopian government that they are happy and healthy and well-loved.

In selecting pictures for this, I came across the results of my third failed attempt to get one really good picture of the boys, one that I love. Mom came up to visit back in October and brought the boys a couple of pairs of sunglasses and won my middle son's heart with them. Something I now know about Bereket: he loves accessories. Shoes, jackets, hats, sunglasses. And he loves lots of accessories.

When we met him last May, I blogged about his unbelievably bright smile underneath of my own sunglasses on his little face. That smile, as he looked back over his shoulder at me in the common room at Acacia Village, burned in my memory. That's what I saw all of June, July and August until we went back to get him. So, I share the following pictures because they remind me of that first meeting, when we weren't permitted to use our cameras, and for our friends and family who have not yet gotten to meet our little ham.