Little sleeper

During one of our first nights in Ethiopia with Kayla, I pulled her into bed with me because she was fussy and I decided to give her a bottle. As we snuggled down in bed we both dozed off to sleep. A couple hours later Gary and I were fully awake and surprised to find our baby girl had completely made herself at home in our bed. These pictures were taken only minutes later as we were discussing how we should get our bed back. Do we risk waking the baby or do we try to sleep scrunched up at the foot of the bed? I think Gary gave up on further sleep and called it a night and I scrunched up with Kayla for another hour. I am happy to say that since we arrived home from Ethiopia Kayla has slept quite peacefully in her own bed!

A warm summer day

This is our happy girl.

Lana never gets tired of giving Kayla hugs!

Lana and Bryant collecting rocks and sand. This is obviously a very important project.



Kayla and Mommy hanging out on the blanket. Kayla is trying to lick my nose, I think that means she loves me.



Kayla and Mommy enjoying a laugh.



These are a bunch of pictures I took outside yesterday. With the weather turning warm we have been spending more time outside with the nice breezes.

Bloodwork completed

Good news! Kayla's hematology specialist has finished looking at her bloodwork, and he has no concerns for Kayla's health. Apparently there are not enough spherical red blood cells to cause problems, now or in the future. This is the best possible news! He also checked for some other disorders that are more common among Africans, and she is negative for all of them. He saw no reason for concern at all, and no need for any further testing. God has blessed us again in this process. We are now only waiting for a little more stoolwork to be completed before Kayla is done with all of her medical evaluations.

Two little cuties

The girls were so cute in the 'earthquake' pictures I took the other day that I wanted to post a few more!

God's blessings

This is a picture of the girls in our 'earthquake' chair. This fun old chair has been a source of many wild rides and laughter by our kids. Gary started a game with Bryant a couple years ago where he would shake the chair (with Bryant sitting in it) and call it an earthquake. The game has evolved and now includes hurricanes.


For those of you who are interested, I am going to share some of my thoughts on our little Kayla and how she is adjusting to her new life. Kayla has such a sweet, mellow personality. She sleeps through the night (some of you may remember the horrors of sleep deprivation we went through with our first 2), she plays well by herself or with her siblings, she eats well, she rarely cries but smiles quickly and has the cutest deep belly laugh! She is a delight to us all and is already deeply loved by her brother and sister. I am continually amazed as I look at her that God would give us such a sweet gift! We went into this process with hearts ready to love the unlovely, yet God has blessed us tenfold instead! We are truly rejoicing at God's good gifts to us!

Hematology update

Kayla had her appointment with the pediatric hematologist this morning. The doctor didn't seem too worried about any of the results so far, which was a little reassuring. He is supposed to call us by Friday this week to let us know the final analysis. He seemed familiar with African blood issues - apparently Africans are genetically a little more likely to have certain problems than other races. The fact that Kayla is not anemic is a very good thing. I will update when we know more.

One side-note though, if you have to have blood drawn any time soon - try to avoid the nurses with the "too much caffeine" shakes (I suppose that goes for barbers and surgeons as well). We had a guy from LabCorp last week who was great and only had to find one vein on Kayla, and was done in 2 minutes. The guy today worked for nearly 15 minutes, tried 3 different places, and left blood all over everything. Kayla handled it better than I did...

Acacia Village

Christian World Adoption has a sister organization called Christian World Foundation. They have a rather ambitious project underway in Ethiopia called Acacia Village. Their website is at http://www.acaciavillage.org/index.htm. The Acacia Village video is worth a look. This project will provide housing for orphans, healthcare, classrooms, housing for traveling families, and crisis pregnancy counseling. We love the concept of this ministry effort, and I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the site one day on our trip. The pictures below are from the site. They have a long way to go, but it is a worthy effort in our opinion.


This is the first of the major buildings that is planned. The foundation is largely complete and they were working on the vertical columns when I was there. Men and women worked together on the construction crew.

One of the CWA dads giving a ride to one of the two kids they adopted on this trip.

This shows the scenery around the Acacia Village property. I thought it was a beautiful place with the trees and rolling hills.

Some silliness, Bryant style

We took this video shortly after we got back from Ethiopia. Bryant is being rather silly in the background. We finally figured out that he was doing his version of "stepping on a tiger". We have no idea where he came up with it. He was certainly glad to have Mommy and Daddy and Kayla home.

These are a few pictures I took in the house today.

Mommy and Kayla playing on the floor.

Kayla is not able to get food into her mouth yet, so Lana is helping her eat some Puffs.


Lana loves to give her baby sister hugs!

A little yuk and the wonder of grace...

Kayla has officially been diagnosed with giardia. We expected this, and will be picking up some prescription medicine for her this morning. She has some more stoolwork yet to be completed at the lab, and hopefully nothing else will turn up. As we are working through little Kayla's issues (and gladly!), I can't help but think about how much yuk God has to deal with in us as we are adopted into His family. Surely a little giardia and some nights of poor sleep are nothing in comparison. Indeed, it is "All of Grace", to borrow the title of one of my favorite Spurgeon books.

We will try to get some more pictures up later today or tomorrow. Jamie keeps reminding me that pictures are what people really want to see...

Bloodwork issue

Well, it seems that Kayla's bloodwork has indicated a problem. Apparently some of her red blood cells are not shaped correctly. They should be like little donuts, but she has some that are like little balls (spherical). Wikipedia calls this condition Spherocytosis. Our pediatrician thinks that Kayla's case is minor, which we hope is true. Nonetheless, he recommended that we see a hematologist (blood specialist). We have an appointment with one for Monday morning. Hopefully we will know more then. Internet research indicates that the big risk for her for now is anemia or possibly jaundice. Fortunately, she has no symptoms of either of these. We'll post more on this issue when we know more. Thanks for your prayers.

Adopted for Life

This post is simply a plug for a great book that I was able to read on our trip. Long plane flights are good for reading books. In fact, they provide about the only significant blocks of reading time I have anymore! Anyway, the book title is Adopted for Life, written by Russell D. Moore. I loved this book, and I highly recommend this book to anyone, whether they have any interest in adoption or not. Moore spends a fair amount of time showing just how integral the concept of adoption is to our Christian faith. He weaves in some of his own family experiences, as he and his wife adopted two boys from Russia. I got a good chuckle out of several of his stories, and I fought back tears on a few others. I'm enclosing a link to a review of this book, as well as the Amazon link for this title.

http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/adopted-for-life.php

http://www.amazon.com/Adopted-Life-Priority-Adoption-Christian/dp/1581349114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244690104&sr=8-1
.

Some of the other CWA families

These are the other 3 CWA families that stayed in the guest home with us. We really enjoyed getting to know all of them!

Addis and Coffee

The blue booth in the middle of the picture is a phone booth. I think there were 4 public phones in it. The guys on the rail are waiting to use a phone. Waiting in lines over there was different than over here, maybe because lines don't really happen over there. You just bustle forward whenever there is an opening for most things. It was a similar feel to when I was in Russia in the mid-90's. This was a little surprising to me, because by and large, the Ethiopian people were very friendly and considerate. Very much so in fact. They just don't do lines.


Check out the scaffolding. Would you want to be working on the 4th or 5th floor of this? Construction was everywhere in Addis, which is a healthy thing I think. Most of the in-work buildings had this same kind of scaffolding. The individual poles were joined together with a combination of nails and lashings. Scaffold poles were for sale everywhere on the sides of the main roads.


This picture is taken at our guest home shortly before we left. As a going away gesture, two of the staff (all wonderful people by the way) performed the Coffee Ceremony for us. I don't like coffee. But, I enjoyed the ceremony. Ethiopia claims to be the origin of coffee (although there may be some in South America who would beg to differ), and the ceremony has some history to it. They were honoring us by performing it for us. I really don't like coffee. The ceremony started with them burning some incense (pointy black jar in picture). Then they roasted whole coffee beans over hot coals, followed by grinding the beans and pouring them in hot water. I hate coffee. This was then served to us as a token of goodwill and friendship. Hmmmm.... which would be worse.... turning down a special cup of coffee, or retching violently after drinking it? Did I mention that I had been up half the previous evening with a stomach bug, kneeling at the porcelain throne? I prayed and drank the coffee, in that order. And you know what? It stayed down. God blessed yet again. Coffee consumed. No mad dash from the room. No international incident. I wonder if there are any countries that have a cherry coke ceremony?

Doctor visit today

Kayla had her first US doctor's visit today. We like the pediatrician a lot - he's pretty laid back, seems knowledgeable, and has experience working with internationally adopted children. Kayla is a remarkably healthy kid, considering her recent history. She is 20.6 pounds (80th percentile), 28 inches long (65th percentile), and her head size was 97th percentile. She does still have a respiratory infection, but nothing that some antibiotics shouldn't be able to take care of. She has an umbilical hernia, but it is minor and of no concern for now. If it doesn't heal on its own, we may have to have it surgically repaired, but that's down the road a ways. The doctor wasn't concerned at all about her not having any teeth yet. Her fine motor skills are fine (duh), but, as suspected, her gross motor skills are somewhat behind (but certainly not gross). She still has a little trouble sitting up straight and tends to be a little floppy when she is being held. But, this should improve rapidly now that she is no longer living in a crib all the time. Her bloodwork and stoolwork are underway, and we should have those results in the next week or two. God has blessed once again as Kayla has no significant health concerns!

Some video of Kayla (and Mommy)

Here's a little video of Jamie and Kayla that we took at the guest home. Not much going on in it, but at least it verifies that Kayla isn't just a doll that we've been taking pictures of...

Around town pix

These 2 pictures are taken from our 3rd floor room at the guest home. The green structure on the leftmost hill in the top picture is an Ethiopian Orthodox church. You may also notice a lot of water tanks on raised structures. Due to the regular power outages, water pumps are not reliable, so most people had gravity fed water systems that didn't require pumps. A truck would come around and fill the tanks as needed. Apparently Addis generates much of it power hydroelectrically, and is therefore dependent on rainfall to keep water levels high. Most of their rainfall comes from late June through September, so the water levels were low when we were there, thus the power outages. Sorry lady readers, not much mush-n-gush in this paragraph, but there might be some guys who care about this sort of thing...


Pedestrians, animals, and cars all made use of the roads. One of our group reported having seen a man pull up in a little car, open the trunk, and proceed to remove a full grown live cow that had been "packed away" for the ride! What a hoot! I would love to have seen that.

Even more pix

Here are 4 of the CWA moms with their new babies at Bole Airport in Addis Ababa. Everyone was waiting for the same Ethiopian Airways flight, which left out about 10:15PM that evening. This flight went from Addis to Washington DC, with a brief stopover in Rome, Italy. We were on the plane for 17 hours. Oh my, was I ready to get off that plane! One of my prayer requests was that Kayla would sleep on the plane. God gave us a Yes on that for the most part, and we are grateful. Kayla did remarkably well. Better than me I think. We had about 21 hours on airplanes getting home to Colorado, and Kayla slept for all but a few hours of it.


Here's daddy and Kayla on the plane. Daddy is smiling, so this must have been before we took off... or maybe right after they served dinner...

One more picture for tonight...

This was one of my favorite pictures from the trip (you can click on it to get a bigger version). It's of one of the other CWA dad's and his four sons. They adopted two boys on this trip. I think this picture is a wonderful challenge to one's concept of family. Aren't we glad that God's family is not limited by our skin color, or our personal history, or even who gave birth to us?

Some more pix

This picture was taken just a few minutes after we were introduced to Kayla for the first time. They had her "dolled" up in a fancy dress for us. Kayla seemed to be a particular favorite of the Ethiopian staff. Everybody knew who she was and had to come say goodbye and give her kisses and tweak her pudgy cheeks. There is no doubt in our minds that Kayla was well cared for by the staff there, and we are grateful for it.


This is a somewhat fuzzy picture of one of the CWA foster care nannies. She asked to hold Kayla one more time and held her for probably 20 minutes before giving her back to Jamie. We don't know this woman's name, but we are so grateful to her for taking care of our child and loving her so much. What a gut-wrenching and yet needful ministry these women have - pouring love into orphaned babies and children, knowing all the time that they will have to part with them in a matter of weeks or months. Wow.


This was Kayla's first evening with us, back at the guest home. We think this may have been her first bath ever in a bathtub. She LOVED it! At least until we would try to wipe her nose. Then she HATED it...

INTRODUCING KAYLA ETENESH GILCHRIST

We're back, safe and sound! God has been so good. Sorry for not having posted while we were gone. We had every intention of posting once or twice a day while we were there, but things were not as expected. No internet. No phone. No power every other day.

Kayla's given name was Etenesh, which is not an uncommon girl's name in Ethiopia. It means something along the lines of sisterly love, or supportive one. She is a healthy 20+ pounds and is approximately 8 months old. Her birthday on her passport is listed as September 18, 2008, and we're guessing that's fairly accurate. She's actually rather chunky of all things. We really expected to be adopting a somewhat malnourished child that was underweight. Instead, well, she's hardly that! She doesn't have any teeth yet, which hopefully is not indicative of a problem. We will be taking her to a doctor on Monday for a thorough physical, and should know if there are any issues then. She smiles readily (which we didn't expect) and is already very attached to Momma, which we also didn't expect so soon. She is very strong, but seems to be a little behind in motor development. We think this is due to her not having had much opportunity to move around at the orphanage. Probably, she was always either being held or put in a crib. She has shown improvement in this area already though, in less than a week. She has beautiful soft hair, which is not as kinky as we expected. Jamie has been doing research on how to take care of it. I think that will be fun for them... well, for Jamie at least.

We know only a little of her history, but we're not sharing all of it with anyone at this time. We would like to share it with her when she is older, and we don't want her hearing it from someone else first. So, no offense to anyone by any means, but please understand that we won't be giving out very much detail on that end. What we can share is that she WAS an orphan, but now she is a Gilchrist, with all the full privileges that come with being a part of our family. Are not all believers adopted into the family of Christ, and have we not been given all good things through Him? Likewise, Kayla is no second class citizen in our family. She is not "our adopted child" - she is simply our child. She is not "Plan B for adding to the family", she is simply Bryant and Lana's sister. We are so grateful to God for having grown our family through her.

Let's see. A little more info on Kayla. She is from the city of Awassa, which is south of Addis Ababa by 150 miles or so. She spent several months in an orphanage there before she was referred to us. After we accepted her, she was moved to a foster care facility in Addis, which is run by our adoption agency (CWA). The Ethiopian courts awarded her to us on April 21, 2009, after doing their research on her case. We met her for the first time on Monday June 1. I will write more about that later. Can you imagine what it is like for 5 couples in a small room to all at once be "handed" their children for the first time? Children that they have prayed for and worked for and hoped for and loved for a long time? One family's process took 4 years. It was one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed or experienced...

We stayed in a guest home in Addis and unfortunately didn't get out a whole lot, but that's ok. There were 3 other families staying there - all were Christian and working with CWA. It was really enjoyable getting to know them. After a couple of days, some sort of stomach bug began working it's way through the group. Not fun. Especially with no power and unreliable water. You can imagine what some of the bathrooms became in a hurry. Yuk. I got it on Wednesday, and Jamie got it yesterday - she is recovering today at home. Oh how we love hot showers, and cold beverages! Sleep was a little tough at times. I can confidently tell you that the roosters start their racket at 3:00AM each morning. The locals burn their trash at night outside our guest home. The approximately 99 trillion dogs in Addis (slight exaggeration) bark out the day's gossip to each other all night long. Some nights I thought I was beginning to understand them.... "Did you hear that Lulu ate another mangy cat this afternoon, that must be 10 in the last 2 days...", and "Mutt found a flea the size of a locust today, he's keeping it under his water dish." At about 4:50AM, the call to morning prayers is played over speakers not far from our guest home. It is the Orthodox call to prayers rather than the Islamic one, but it sounded the same to me. Kind of a wobbly sounding chant with a somewhat melancholy feel to it - no doubt the feel was due to the time of day! I was right there with it.

Sickness aside, we enjoyed our stay in Addis. It is not really what I would call a beautiful city - it actually reminded us a lot of what we saw of Tecate and Tijuana, Mexico. Lots of buildings and houses, but nothing particularly nice. Lots of concrete and corrugated metal. Not a lot of, shall we say, precision. The newer roads were very nice though. There are a lot of cars in Addis, and not many bicycles, which surprised us. Taxis (painted blue and white) were everywhere. Toyota seems to be the brand of choice by far. Our primary driver carried us and a few other families around in a van, which he drove skillfully, like a New York taxi driver I think. Had I been driving, I would have killed several pedestrians (and their donkeys) and totalled the van on the first day, no doubt. Our driver used the horn as much as the wheel, and both to good effect. There were lanes designated, but they were often ignored. Every few miles was a big circle, with roads coming in/out like spokes of a wheel. These were particularly fun. No rules. Force your way in, force your way out. But I never saw a single accident. Lots of donkeys, cows and goats were being herded or just wandered along the side of the road. Many people would just let their cows go in the morning to forage for food, and then the cows would come home on their own in the evening.

Will post more pictures and write more soon.

Thanks for all your prayers!