It's Been One Year!!

A year ago this week Bear was placed in our arms for the first time. I will let the video below do the talking.

We love you more than we can say kiddo.

To celebrate, we had the honor of spending the evening at an Ethiopian restaurant with our friends and travel buddies the Andersens. There are so many significant memories packed into December 27, 2009 and almost all of them include the Andersens. They took the video above. As you might gather from the video, they had already met their two gorgeous twin girls and still managed to play photographer and videographer for us. It was truly awesome to spend gotcha day with them and a little bit surreal to be together again with our children on this side of the world.

Who are the three Ethiopians looking at? :)

It doesn't get any sweeter than this!

Holy Night

There is a reverance about Christmas Eve. What this night represents frequently causes me to suck in my breath and cry. The night before the world changed. God was about to enter this planet as flesh and blood. Impossible to fully comprehend.

Christmas Eve 2009 was our last night in the house as a family of two. Molly called it Ethiopia Eve. We were packing, preparing, praying. The next day we were leaving for Ethiopia.

Tonight, with Ethiopia Eve heavy on my mind, I wait in anticipation of my God's entrance as a vulnerable baby. My awe runs deeper tonight, my head bows lower, holding this child He's given us in my arms.

Holy night indeed.

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O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,

It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

O night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!



Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.

O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,

Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.

The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;

In all our trials born to be our friends.

He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!



Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

With all our hearts we praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

Firsts

So much going on around the Miller house. I am having a hard time getting the details of our lives recorded so we can remember this busy, happy time. With the holidays here, together we are experiencing lots of Firsts.

Here's one of the Firsts. Oshkosh overalls! I fully admit these are for my enjoyment and not Bear's. Probably since I was a teenager, I have regarded Oshkosh as one of the guilty pleasures in having a boy. Moms of girls look forward to the Christmas and Easter dresses, moms of boys (or so I thought) look forward to Oshkosh. I bought these for him a long time ago, and all Kohl's had left was size 18 mos. They seemed huge at the time and I half thought he would never be big enough to wear them. Well he is big enough, and he's wearing them. I took a picture to commemorate the donning of the overall. Here is his chubby belly in Oshkosh.
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We got our first snow of the season in Wisconsin yesterday. I was happy it came on a Saturday. This is the first time Bear can play in the snow and I couldn't wait to introduce him to it. Although I've lived in Wisconsin for many years, I did not grow up in the Midwest. I am originally a California girl, where playing in the snow at Christmas seemed dreamy. So this was my first time prepping a child for snow play. It took at least 30 minutes to get both of us dressed to go out. I was exhausted before we made it out the door. And I realized I didn't really know what I was doing. Hmm, do you put sweats on under the snowpants? How do you keep snow out of the boots? How do you keep mittens on a 16 month old? How do you keep up with the runny nose? Maybe he will be too hot? Maybe he will be too cold? Does it matter?

I thought our little tornado would love playing in the snow, but as it turned out, he was quite unsure of it all. He ran from the garage straight into the snow, fell, rubbed his hands in it, then turned around and ran straight back into the garage. First bite of snow below.

Some friends gave us the cute little sled below before Bear came home. Again, this California girl with idealistic thoughts of Midwest winters thought he would have a blast walking with me through the neighborhood in a SLED! Well, I would say he tolerated it. He was strangely quiet on the ride and just held on to the sides of the sled with no expression like, what IS all this? I think he was confused that the yard, the house, the neighborhood looked so different blanketed in white. I am not sure he knew where he was.

I am confident there's more snow in his future so he will eventually have fun with this.

Here is my handsome boy figuring it all out.

More Firsts to come!

Fall Photos

I am posting a few cute kid fall photos before too much more time gets away from me and he looks nothing like this anymore. Enjoy!

Visit to the CSA farm

Goofball

Sinister phone call face.

LittleLeopard.

Trick or Treat with school friends.

Trick or treat with mama at work.

Mr. Handsome

Tornado

As gusty winds blow through the Midwest this week, I thought I would share a photo of what it looks like when a tornado blows through your house.

Adopted Again

This past week we turned one of the final pages in Bear's adoption process. We went to court to readopt him in the US and the state of Wisconsin. The end result of the hearing is a legal name change and a Wisconsin birth certificate.

Currently, US Immigration considers him a permanent resident with Ethiopian citizenship. Now that we have the Wisconsin birth certificate, we will file to make him a US citizen. Among other things, this will make voting, travel, and student loans easier for him in later years.

The agreement between Ethiopia and the US says that the adopted child cannot have dual citizenship. So in becoming a US citizen, he will no longer be a citizen of Ethiopia. This makes me sad. I wish so much he could have both. It also makes me sad that because he was not born on US soil, he is not eligible to become President of the US one day. Every kid in the US should have that possibility. We'll just have to settle for Secretary of State.

This day was really really fun and special. Dodd and I took off from work. I even managed to get all 3 of us dressed in coordinating attire. That rarely happens in this family. I've told Bear for the past few weeks that we would be going to court to see the judge and it would be fun.

He apparently thought that meant a party.

Bear clapped happily when the judge sounded his gavel and closed the case which made all of us in the courtroom laugh.
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Almost a citizen kiddo.



My friend Sharon, also a mom through adoption, shared this happy day with us and took some of the photos you're looking at. She told us that morning that her girls were adopted on the same exact day 17 years earlier!





After court, we had breakfast at an historic little restaurant along the river to celebrate. The sun was fresh and warm. The leaves continued their fall. We took our time. I sipped capuccino and Dodd sipped fresh oj while our boy scattered food about and waved to each new person who entered. And then he crashed. The End.



Great Map Resource!

This is for anyone struggling to locate a birthplace on a map.

My dear friend Julie works with a humanitarian relief organization and recently shared the ReliefWeb website. There is so much information here!

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc100?OpenForm

I labored a long time to locate Bear's birthplace on a map after his referral. I eventually found it thanks to another adoptive father with a child from the same region. He sent a UN relief map that showed the dirt roads that lead to Kacha Bira and surrounding areas. I had not thought of researching through a relief channel but was so glad he had.

On the ReliefWeb website, there is a tab just for maps, and it can be filtered by country. Besides locating a remote village, these maps will also tell about circumstances effecting a region. Issues of food security, relief programs, policy, drought, floods, conflict, transportation, migration, and many others. The information is current so it's possible to follow what is going on in a region of interest. I am intensly interested in the connection this provides us to Bear's birthplace and the place his birth family is living right now.

For fellow families out there with children from the Kembata region, also called the Kembata Tembaro Zone or KT, search for any Ethiopia maps with SNNP in the title. You will see KT in the middle of the region.

I hope this helps with the search!