Our Fun Faith Filled Family: One Month!

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

One Month!

I was driving to have coffee with friends last night when I realized that today is our one month anniversary of meeting Sunshine and Little Buddy. That was the fastest month of my life. While in Ethiopia I was sharing with Almaz (the wife of the orphanage director) about some of the difficulties we were having with Little Buddy. She said, in her beautiful broken English, "One Month, be better!" She was right. Thank you Almaz.

Don't misunderstand. We are still in the major adjustment phase and I am anxious for them to know more English, but things are so much better than a month ago when they didn't know us and we didn't know them. I think they are doing amazingly well.

Sunshine has proven to be more of a parenting challenge than Little Buddy. Her issues are so emotionally based and come up when you least expect it. She understands much more than her brother about the adoption and I believe is grieving more than he is. She pursued me from the first day to bond with and that has been helpful as we rock and sing and pray together. We have a lot of pictures of their life before America. This has proven to be an invaluable resource as they share their world with us and we lovingly honor their past. Please continue to pray for their transition and that Stand-Up Dad and I could know the best way to meet their needs.

Christmas is a very difficult time to bring new kiddos home. We have tried very hard to stay home and not overwhelm them with too much stimulation. But it is Christmas and we have to celebrate a little bit.

The pictures below show all the fun we have had over the last several days. My favorite memory of the week happened today when I helped them wrap gifts for their siblings. We had not planned on them giving gifts to us as I did not think they would understand why we were doing this. Sunshine has informed me that in Ethiopia, "No presents at Christmas." I sat them both down and talked about the gift that God gave us at Christmas. They are very aware of the whole 'Jesus birth' story. I explained that in America we give gifts to each other to celebrate the gift that God gave to us. I took them in our room and showed them all the Ethiopian clothes that I had purchased for the whole family and asked them if they would like to give these gifts to their siblings and Daddy and I? They were so happy to help wrap the gifts. Tape is so much fun! They were rolling around on the floor giggling, they were so excited!

May God bless you all as you celebrate and delight in the wonder of His birth!

This is the favorite after dinner activity...Climb On Daddy!!!