Our busy week is almost over ...

It's Sunday night here in Addis, and our week is drawing to a close.  Since I last wrote, we have done many things - some fun, some hard.  On Friday, all of the Gladney families had their birth-family meetings, so that was very emotional.  We had a wonderful meeting with Ruby's uncle, and it was really nice to have closure and have a chance to convey to him how much we will love her.  After that tearful meeting, we spent a few more hours crying as we visited three government-run orphanages.  It is really hard to put into words all of the things we saw and felt, but needless to say it was very hard to leave those children.  Finn and Gus did great through it all - they played soccer with the older boys at the boys' home, and the let the little toddlers hug and kiss them at the children's home.  I think they are probably still young enough to block out most of the bad stuff somehow.  At least I hope so.

We also found out Friday morning that we would not be getting our transit visa, so we had our very helpful mothers working as our travel agents to change all of our flights.  Sadly, we will now be leaving at 4:45 am on Tuesday morning and stopping about 4 times before we get to Charlotte 30 hours later, but at least we'll all be together.  Once we got that sorted out, I felt a great weight lift and have been much happier here in Ethiopia.  I think I was probably conflating alot of different emotions onto the transit visa, but I did shed quite a few tears over the course of the week as we kept hitting road blocks with it.   

Saturday morning Ruby, the boys and I hung out at Bejoe House and played in the lovely yard while Matt and Katie went to shop at the Merkato.  We are having so much fun watching Ruby come out of her shell!  In less than a week she has gone from not even crawling to walking, not making any sounds to laughing and babbling, and being completely passive to being very bossy and demanding.  I am sure it will still be a bumpy road for a while, but we are just excited to have such a funny little person in our midst. 

In the afternoon, the whole Gladney group - including babies - went out to the mountains for a dinner at Dreamland, a restaurant on a mountain overlooking a lake.  It was great to get out of the city and see a little of the country, and the air felt much better than it does here in Addis.  There were still plenty of rickety vans belching out plumes of black smoke on the road, but it just felt a little more spacious.  We were exhausted by the time we got back around 6, so we called it a night and all went to bed early.  Just when we are all on Ethiopian time, we're about to turn around and go home!

Today, Matt and I took the boys to the Sheraton Hotel to swim and play for a while.  It is a beautiful hotel, and the pool was fun & relaxing for all of us.  We were sad that we are not allowed to bring Ruby out on the town, because she would have had a blast in the water.  It's very odd to have just adopted a baby and then have to leave her at home when you go out to do anything, but at least the caregivers are wonderful and sweet with the babies.  Today Katie stayed home with Ruby, so they had a little party of their own. 

After we got home and had lunch, Katie and I went out to do more shopping.  Our driver took us to a good area near the Post Office where there are a ton of stores selling everything you might want to bring back for friends.  The only down-side to shopping with Katie is her love of haggling - she will argue over what would amount to a quarter just on principle.  I know that's the thing to do - and our driver was laughing at me for paying whatever the people asked, but I'm so bad at it!  Finally I agreed to try, and I got totally shut down, so from now on, sticker price for me. 

Tonight Matt and Kate took the boys out for Italian and I stayed home to put Ruby to bed.  If you've been reading my blog, you may remember that we are really bad parents when it comes to sleep training.  But so far, Ruby has been a sleeping rockstar so far - she sleeps all night and then just hangs out in her crib chatting when she wakes up.  Tonight, I think we started heading in the wrong direction.  She cried when I put her down, so I held her until she fell asleep.  Then she woke up a few minutes later, so I rocked her until she went back to sleep.  Now I'm waiting & hoping this is not the begining of the end of her good sleep habits!

Tomorrow morning we say good bye to Kate - which will be sad for everyone, and then start getting ready to head home.  I a little sad that the week is almost over, but I'm also excited to get back to our house and start real life again, now with five ...

More in a few days!