The road from Addis to Denver

Here is Maren at the guest house saying goodbye to the nanny who has been with him since the beginning- she started out in Sodo with the children and was moved to Addis to care for the children there. He was shy about letting her hold him at first and just clung to daddy- but he would ask about her during the week "Ama Ejigadu" (Give me Ejigadu) and it was clear that he really thought she was special and vice versa- she worked hard at getting him to let her hold him one last time- but when he did it was very cute- he fed her some cookies. It is an Ethiopian cultural norm to feed each other- even adults do this and a women on the plane explained it is a sign of love and respect and that once you have eaten food fed by another you can never betray them. He said its like, "you would not betray the hand that once fed you." So its pretty cool one of the last things our boy did before leaving his country was to feed the woman who fed him for the last 5 months.

This is Yabsera. We dressed the boys in their traditional Ethiopian shirts to say goodbye to everyone. They left Ethiopia in these shirts. This photo shows Mesfin, the CWA accountant, he was really in love with Yabsera and was really crying saying goodbye. Everyone said "this was his baby." They said he would not start work before spending time with Yabsera. I wrote him a note and also told him he needs to give that kind of attention to another baby now that "his" little guy is going. That his attention has wonderful long term effects and thanked him for loving my baby so much. Yabsera clearly knew and loved this man- he was just giddy when he saw him after a week.
These next two photos are from the airport. They left Ethiopian their traditional Ethiopian shirts and landed in Denver in their traditional American tie dyed tee shirts. Here is Madeline with Yabsera and below is Maren and his new buddies. Yes- yabsera is a chunk- he weighed 19 1/2 pounds when I weighed him on the scale I donated to CWA in Ethiopia!


This was this morning- our kid looked like a typical American tourist- he had on a NYC Tee shirt, a USA Flag baseball cap and Mickey Mouse sneakers. It doesn't take long does it? He loves cars- actually anything with wheels- he is just fascinated. This car was dear Madeline's when she was a baby and has come through 4 moves!