In Process - Part Deux

I've decided that if I can blog in little chunks, 10 minutes at time, I may actually get to tell you the story of our Ethiopian adventure and update you on the little ladies. Anything more than 10 minutes starts to seem unrealistic at this point! In each post, you'll get two nuggets - one from our Ethiopian adventure and one from "Yuppie Goes Mama". So, here goes.

Ethiopian Adventure Nugget: Our trip started off with a phone call from our travel agent as we were boarding the plane to London. It turned out that the travel agent had booked our flights in error and had us leaving from London to Addis on the same day we were leaving from LA to London. Oops. Given that our mountain of luggage was already on the plane, we had no choice but to fly to London with no idea of how we were going to get to Addis or what we were going to do in London when we got there. When we finally got to London, our travel agent was MIA. We tried calling him a million times but because of the time change he didn't answer. This then forced us into our very own episode of The Amazing Race as we hoofed it around Heathrow airport pushing the Luggage Mountain trying to find another flight to Addis. If we delayed our trip (the agent had casually mentioned that we just "hang out" in London for a few days and make the best of it until he got things worked out ... yeah, great idea given that we didn't even have jackets packed!), we risked not meeting Eden's birthmother which was the main reason we left early for Ethiopia in the first place. Missing our meeting with her was a totally unacceptable alternative. Hence, the amazing race. We finally booked ourselves on a flight via Brussels and arrived just one day later than we had planned. The additional flight cost us $2000 which was the amount we had saved by booking half of our trip with frequent flyer miles (it took days to put that together!). This extra financial expenditure was a total bummer and we are doubtful that the travel agent will give us any of our money back. However, that extra flight allowed us to have an absolutely PRICELESS day with Eden's birthfamily. We called it the $2000 day. More to come on that...

Yuppie Goes Mama: The girls are doing surprisingly well. They are very at home and are clearly becoming sisters. Junia is notorious for stealing Eden's sippy cup. I was pleased to see today that Eden stole Junia's snack cup. I wanted to high five her. It was about time for Little Bear box out with Big Bear. Speaking of high fives, Davis has already taught the girls "gimme high five" as well as "gimme knuckles (a la Obamas)" and "gimme 'bow (elbow)". It's pretty hilarious. They are both very extroverted and seem very connected to us which is a blessing. I carried Junia through a crowded mall last weekend and she waved at all the random people we passed saying "Ciao" and "Bye Bye". We're hoping it's not a bad sign that they like people so much. We've heard we may need to limit their contact with others for bonding sake but they seem to clearly understand who Mommy and Daddy (especially Daddy...they LOOOOVE their Daddy) are. It just seems that they are very social. Junia is also very smart and is learning English very quickly.

Mommy and Daddy are doing ok too. This has been a HUGE adjustment and last week I had an absolute breakdown wondering what we had done. But what a difference a week makes! We are slowly figuring out our new routine and the girls are learning boundaries that we hope will give them security. It's a major life change though, particularly for a two parent working family who has no other children. Going from zero kiddos to two toddlers can prove to be interesting (or to use my other favorite word of late - gnarly). Our biggest hurdles right now are figuring out how to make sure Mommy has time to get her work done (this is even harder when I'm trying to work from home) and how to see that the poor dog feels some inkling of love in a given day. The girls aren't wild about him so our first "child" finds himself banished more often than not. This makes me feel horribly guilty. We're hoping all three members of our little brood will make peace soon. I'm also not sure if I will ever get used to the staring and the random comments. I try to be gracious but it really bugs me. Davis thinks I need to get a t-shirt to wear out that says "What?! My children are black?" (as if this was a surprise to me). I know people are just curious but when you are just trying to eat your burrito in peace (the girls LOVE Mexican food - true Californians!), it gets really old. So my kids are a different color than me. They are still cuter than yours so you eat your burrito and I'll eat mine. More rants on that later.

We are really grateful that our transition is going so well. Things take SOOOO much longer than they used to but little by little we are adjusting to life with the little ladies. This picture is from our first Sunday back at church. The ladies had been home exactly one week at that point!

10 minutes are up. More to come when I find another 10 minutes...