Mountain harvests

An heirloom zucchini from our garden. I swear I looked just two days ago and there were nothing but wilted yellow flowers.

The baby the baby the baby the baby

I wrote in my last post how ... oh, something about how I "can't let myself go there" (to the love love LOVE phase) with this newest little one quite yet, how the next few months would be just unbearable if I did. How I'm really not that type of person, anyway. Etc.

Nonetheless. Somewhere around last week, I fell off the end of the earth for that little being, and I am still in freefall. What happened, mostly, is that we received three new pictures, and something about those pictures, her eyes, the sad bags under her eyes, reminded me of Dessi's first pictures, her scared little 2-month-old face, and somehow that little girl became so real to me, and so OURS to me. And so now I'm in this impossible position of scheming of ways to get this child home sooner (there are none) or speculating on court dates (we have none) or how our family can relocate to Addis between Ethiopian court and Embassy appointments (which is a loooonng shot, but at least it's not based on total and complete fantasy, so I spend a lot of time with it).

So, so strange. How can a heart just open like this? How can I be so in LOVE with just a few pixels' worth of a baby?

Dessi, at any rate, remains mostly unmoved by the concept. We thought she'd be THRILLED! A baby sister! (She'll be so great at this!) Yet the first time I brought it up, so excited to finally be speaking about it with her, I asked, "Would you like to have a baby sister?" I didn't really think she'd understand the concept or know what it would mean, but in fact her response was: No. I just want it to be you and me and daddy.

Being slow learners we asked and were turned down a few more times until Eric suggested that I stop asking. That was last month (before the referral, actually). We instead started talking about it obliquely -- reading books on big sisters and baby sisters and how cool it is to have a sister without mentioning (or asking) any specifics. She started warming up to it, and we started talking about it as a fact, like, "You are going to be such a great big sister!" and "Your baby sister is going to poo in her pants, but you can show her how to use the potty!" Etc.

This morning, she referenced "when I'm a big sister," and so I told her. The whole story. (!) A baby sister! I showed her the referral pictures and I said, "We are going to go to Ethiopia and adopt this baby." And my sweetest most amazing child said, very quietly so as to not dash my big plans, "But I think she might need to stay with her mama."

We printed a picture for her to keep. She was so happy. She talked all morning about it. She went to school this morning and told all the kids and the teachers that SHE was going to have a baby sister!!

Then she peed her pants twice in three hours.

These are, admittedly, confusing times for all of us.

At long last

CHI called Monday afternoon and told us to expect an email. THE email. Which led, of course, to my pressing the refresh key about once a minute for the next seven hours (!!) until finally, at 10:30 pm, voila.

Our sweet little pumpkin arrived. We looked at those pictures and were completely stunned. She is perfect and beautiful and ... wrinkled ... and seven pounds ... because ... she's three weeks old. I have never heard of such a thing before, such a young baby. Three weeks! I want to be so happy, and I AM so happy, but at the same time my heart can't help but break for this poor child, three weeks old and no mama. At three weeks, all you KNOW is your mama. But, we are so happy, and Eric in particular is fully head over heels in love already (I just can't let myself go there so early in the game or I'll be out of my mind within a month).

She is already at the Thomas Center, getting the same amazing care and love that Dessi received so many moons ago. So we do feel peaceful, knowing she's there, picturing the crib she sleeps in and the women who feed and snuggle her, the dimly lit quiet of the nursery and the caring administration of Abdissa. So, that's nice. But also, to hell with that! We just want to leap up from our chairs and go get her NOW!

Courts are, however, about to close (aug. 6 is what they're predicting) and I don't know what that means for us in terms of court appointments and travel dates. I've always felt so sorry for parents who get referrals before the court dates. Like, how could they possibly live through that long of a wait with absolutely nothing happening?!?! Sigh. :)

So, it's 11:54 pm over here and I'm going to try to sleep (I didn't go down 'till 3 am last night).

Namaste, peace and love from Whitefish. I'll post as soon as I hear more news!

Next on the list!!!

Holy crap!

So, once a month (on the 7th), I ask where we are on wait. We've moved one a month for the past nine months. Inquiring has mostly been for kicks.

Suddenly today, Jessica said we're first. As in next. As in, the next child will come to us.

This is such a confused and beautiful time, of gratitude and tenderness and of hooking into the sacredness of this process. My heart is just bursting open trying to send love and support to our little one and her caregiver as our roads wind their ways to each other.

Namaste.

Crunchy or creamy?

Recently I came across the PB&J Campaign. It's rooted in the idea that we don't need to be vegetarians to save the world. What we "pay" for our meat is unfathomable. In fact, every time I read the statistics (half the water used in the US goes to raising animals for food; it takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat, while growing one pound of wheat takes 25 gallons; animals in factory farms in America produce 20 tons of fecal matter each year for every US household), I think, What? Those numbers can't be right.

So the PB&J campaign is just saying, can we all just cut back a little? Here are some factoids from their website (I love the part about the low-water showerhead. I truly do hate those things):

Each time you have a plant-based lunch like a PB&J, you'll reduce your carbon footprint by the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions versus an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. For dinner you save 2.8 pounds and for breakfast 2.0 pounds of emissions.

Those 2.5 pounds of emissions at lunch are about forty percent of the greenhouse gas emissions you'd save driving around for the day in a hybrid instead of a standard sedan.

If you have a PB&J instead of a red-meat lunch like a ham sandwich or a hamburger, you shrink your carbon footprint by almost 3.5 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

You'll conserve water at lunch too! How about 133 gallons of water conserved at lunch versus the average American lunch? To put this in perspective, five PB&Js or other plant-based lunches per month would save more water than switching to a low-flow showerhead. If you're replacing hamburgers, it should take you just three lunches to conserve more water than the low-flow showerhead.

Don't forget the land you save from deforestation, over-grazing, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution: about 24 square feet at lunch.

Here's the link to their website:

http://www.pbjcampaign.org/how

The Waiting List

We are seventh on the list. We were eighth last week. Which sounds good. Like movement. But we were also eighth in January. We have been waiting since October 5.

It's slow. We'd love to think it's because all the orphans in the world are otherwise occupied. We are pretty sure that more people are adopting from Ethiopia, and yet the courts can only process a certain number of children each day.

Although we are patient (there's so many other chores), we are never far from this particular distraction. Of wondering everything there is to wonder about The Little One, as we have taken to calling her.

We are so ready. We're excited to talk to Dessi about it, but we won't until it's much closer. Like, passed-court closer. She has three wooden butterflies, all different colors, that we bought at a craft fair here last year. We hung them on her bedroom wall, and she immediately chose one as the daddy, one as the mama, and one as Dessi. Six months ago I started searching for the butterfly artist again, to buy a fourth. I think it's a graphic that a 28-month brain could wrap itself around. A fourth butterfly. The Littlest One. We have that now. It's yellow, just like Dessi's, but the markings are different.

So you see, we're ready.

You Lie! Maybe! I can't tell, actually!

A Senegalese man knocked on my friend's door this morning. He was crying a lot. He said that his son had just died of meningitis and he needed 75,000 cfa ($160) to bring him back to his village to be buried. Could she help him? She had never seen him before.

"He really did look upset," she said. "He really was just crying and crying. I gave him 10,000 cfa and hoped that he was lying."

On the one hand, the high-road hand, you give some money and hope, I guess, that you're being had. That there's no dead son, just a good actor, making his rounds through a rich neighborhood, to whom you gave the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you don't start thinking about how that sure seems like a lot of money to ship a body home. Or that, even if it is a reasonable amount, and even if it's a true story, it's not the best use of your money (you could feed 30 streetboys for three days with 10,000 cfa).

Dakar, Senegal, is a scammer zone. Now that my aura of newness has worn away, I don't see them anymore. But when I first arrived, despite what I thought was a foolproof, traveled-the-world-and-have-seen-it-all visage, I was swindled in 15 minutes by a man, Amadee, to whom I gave 30,000 cfa ($70), basically because he asked me to. And then within seconds he disappeared into a crowded street while I "waited" for him on said street. I spent about five minutes reviewing whether the French words I had learned thus far (My name is Linda. I live in Virage. I am fine, thank you) could in any way be combined ask anyone for help. And who would they be? And what would they possibly do for me? Then I went home.

What's so sad to me, even still, is that I had thought Amadee and I were going to be friends. He was a musician, he spoke English, and he seemed cool although, looking back, he definitely did a few odd things. I looked for Amadee on the street for months (he is graying and missing one front tooth) before finally forgiving him and more or less laughing it off. But it did not feel very Buddha-like. It did not feel like generosity. It was humiliating. The idea that one might consistently give people the benefit of the doubt here, well, it's not a reasoable approach. Which leaves you somewhat coldly assessing the story of a man bawling on your porch.

In the past few years I have taken to never lying for my own convenience. (I will sometimes, if pressed, still under-guess a person's age.) But if I have an appointment scheduled and I can't find a way to cancel it with integrity, I make myself go. I remember one hike I was reeeaaallly dreading, I went on about it for two days, I could say this, I could say that, but all my excuses were either misleading or just not true. (The truth was, I didn't like this person and didn't want to spend 90 minutes with her.) Then the morning of the hike, she sent me an email which said, "Not gonna make it for today. I'm sorry." Voila! No lie, no explanation. A lesson learned.

Lies are never harmless. If nothing else they erode the public trust. When you live in a place where scammers abound, that truth becomes very obvious very quickly. Although it does provide the unexpected comfort of leaving us to hope that some sad stories aren't true.

Update April 19th: General consensus seems to be, it was a highly unlikely scenario and almost definitely a scam.