Our first glimpse of Belly Boy

 This was the Care Center where Belly Boy was staying. It's hard enough to be half a world away from your new brother and only knowing him from pictures, but to suddenly be within a mile or two of him and not being able to SEE him, that's horrible! The camera zoomed in on this picture, but you could see the Care Center from our window and it was really within walking distance. It was crazy thinking your brother was over THERE and you were HERE! Not fun!

This was after we met Belly Boy! The Care Center was gorgeous! See!

Think Before You Speak Part 2

You can read Part 1 by clicking here. I wrote part 1 last August, but reading through it, I still completely agree with what I wrote then.  Sometimes people just don't think before they speak and it can hurt kids and families.

But although strangers may say some pretty unneccessary and unthoughtful things, it concerns me a lot more when an adoptive family has this same sort of attitude. For example, I hate it when someone is introducing me to their family and then points out their adopted kids with the words, "They're adopted." Sometimes this is pretty obvious when the child has different skin color than their parents, but it's not something that needs to be pointed out, especially in an introduction. It's not important enough. It's like their nametag should say, My name is ___. I'm adopted by the way.

There really is no difference between the adopted kids in a family and the biological. Really almost the only time I really think of my siblings having a different skin tone is when I'm picking clothes for them that I know will stand out and look really cute against their darker skin. Miss Bossy is my little sister, I don't treat her like she's not a part of the family or that she's an outsider. She's my little sister that I love. If I had a little biological sister, I would treat her completely the same way.

I totally understand that the adopted kids in a family may have some mental, emotional, or other problems that may set them in some ways separate from the other kids in the family, but just like if they were born into the family with these problems, you don't treat them differently than if they were born to you. There may be birthfamily that may be a part of the child's life, but that isn't neccessary enough to mention during an introduction.

So, there's my opinion and I've had a good time writing this. Ugggh, this issue bothers me so much!

By the way, the other day a friend asked my mom if Miss Bossy and Sports Dude were blood related. We get this question a lot, but it mostly comes in the form of  "Are they brother and sister?"  Yes, we know what you want to know, but if you think more about that question, how really does that sound? Bad! Yes, they are brother and sister. Now that they have been adopted into this family! And they always will be brother and sister now! So Mom was pretty pleased when she got this question. It was a nice way of asking THE question.

I know I've asked you before....

You may have noticed that I am running out of ideas to write about on this blog. Now that the paperwork's done, Belly Boy's home, and everything's pretty much normal, I have no clue what to write about! So... if you have a question or have an idea to help a bloggerblocked 16 year old, leave it in the comment section and thank you so much in advance!!!!

New Experiences

When we brought Belly Boy home from Ethiopia, we kept him at home for a long time so that he would attach to our family and everything. (Remember how long ago in another post, I said that I wouldn't be able to let Belly Boy get really attached to me because it would be really hard when I left for college? Forget that! He's pretty attached to me! AND I've finally been able to start to feed, wake him up, change his diaper, [oh fun!], and dress him. This was all stuff that Dad and Mom were ONLY able to do for attachment reasons.)

But after we felt he was very attached to us, we started taking Belly Boy to new places and new experiences. This has been a lot of fun, especially introducing him to our friends and family! (We've found he likes blonds!!) He hates car rides, but LOVES going to new places!

Yesterday we took Belly Boy to his first store.(Baby's R Us, I love that place!!!) Dad put him in a cart and slowly started pushing him. Belly Boy went "Weeeee!" very softly! He loves to be pushed on things! It was so sweet! Then he pushed Dad's hands away and pushed at the metal bar in front of him, trying to push himself! The kid's never been in a cart before!

It's so much fun seeing his reaction to things! He had his first french fries and hamburger bun yesterday! He sucked the potato and salt from the fries! And I didn't think I was gonna have any more bun left to my cheeseburger with the way he kept asking for more!

I love it! I love HIM!

Addis Ababa Pictures

We've got, let's see...okay, not gonna count them. We have 800-900 pictures of our trip to Ethiopia. Unfortunately with how the trip goes, only the last hundred or so are of Belly Boy. But that's alright, we've made it up with tons of pictures at home.

This is a view of the streets, but it doesn't show the traffic very well. Okay.. picture a busy intersection without streetlights. Chaos, right? I saw very few stoplights, and if there was one, it was either run over or not working. So if the intersections weren't the roundy type, they would just be full of beeping, slowly moving cars fighting their way through.

I think this picture KINDA shows how crowded some of the streets were. People walked in front of cars and cars pulled in front of other cars. It was so busy!!!!!

This too kinda shows what I was talking about.

This building was kinda interesting with it's meshlike material on the outside. It was under construction.

Here's a close up of the building. Another thing you might notice are the branches that crookedly hold this thing together. Instead of using 2 by 4s or whatever, they used branches from trees.

And here's someone near the guest house demonstrating how they put together the framing. That branch is looooong!

Some Women in Ethiopia

This was a picture taken on the bus on the way home from Hosanna. These women loved having their picture taken and looking at it after! They really struck some poses!