Photo by Erica Pelaccia WHFC

Elianshu has gained 5 pounds since we have arrived home. She is beginning to sleep through the night. She delights in everything except being told "no". She is imitating all sounds, (especially the cat's) and can make raspberries from the front and side of her mouth. She is climbing on stairs, beds and couches. She loves nature and is fascinated by each stick, flower, rock and leaf.

Her grandmother, grandfather (who is 85) and aunti Bec are coming for Mother's day weekend.
Her cousin Sujaya (6 years) is coming the third week in May.
Her aunti Marcy is coming for the first week in June.

All to see her and get their fill before we leave for India.

We submitted our re-adoption paperwork to the superior court clerk in Martinez today. Now we need to wait to schedule a hearing.

I have noticed that when I have to wait in line with my head banger I get a little hot under the collar. Especially when they tell you to wait in one line and when you get to the top (a half hour later) they say that you don't have to wait in that line just in the line to see the clerk. Then you get in the clerk's line and they see your little poop machine bouncing around and making cat noises and then they decide to close two windows. Which leaves one window free because the other window has been taken up for the last 25 minutes by an especially complicated case.

When I lived in Chicago I had a couple of jobs that required me to interact with "needy" customers, most of whom were women over 40. I can't count how many frustrated moments I spent listening to the hysterics of a demanding pet owner or vegetarian diner. What was wrong with these old washed out rags anyway?

Today I joined their minion.

Several days ago Elianshu Sanbate and I were cuddling on the futon bed and all of a sudden... crack went the frame. We had wrestled a little too hard but it seemed unlikely that a 150 lb woman and a 21 lb child would be able to do such damage. When I took a look I saw how the bed was designed (poorly) and could see how easy it would be to crack an inch and a half of wood given the proper pressure.

I was insensed! We paid good money for that bed! It looked so sturdy! It was only a year ago that we bought it and already it cheaps out! Criminal!

AFter calling the store for hours, (they don't use an answering machine) I got through.

"Do you have the receipt?"
"No."
"Well bring in the broken piece and we will see if it can be replaced."
"You mean I have to take it apart?"
"Yeah. Just bring it in on Thursday and I will have a replacement piece by Friday...."

Today baby and I show up at 11am when they are scheduled to open.
They haven't opened.
11:15 still closed.
11:25 still closed. Now I know why they don't pick up their phone. They show up when they feel like it.
I take squirmy worm for a walk around the corner.
11:45 We come back. The owner's wife is present.

"Do you have the receipt?"
"No."
"Well, you will have to pay for the piece."
This is where I start to get raggy and find myself telling her that we had been waiting for her to open the store at 11 am.
"You don't have to get mad at me. If you had a conversation with my husband then you can discuss it with him. Just leave the piece with me and I will bring it home. My husband will see if the supplier will give us a replacement..."

I was raggy. And it was because I felt they should be doing this for free. Not charging us or making us take the bed apart et al.

Back in the day when we listened to loud, disturbing music at work I was always bothered by the customers that complained and made us change it.

Now I am that customer.
Demanding.
Making a scene.

I came home to see if I could find the receipt.
No luck.

The house is clean! And I mean spotless. It has been some time since we paid someone to help us clean the house, (since I stopped working full time over a year ago).
Beauty girl is starting to sleep more calmly and without the urgent cries in the night. Our test came back negative, (altho' our pediatrician thinks we need to redo it in 6 months, sigh). Mr.D is in India and has found a place for us to live, and he is even excited about it.

Tomorrow we submit our re-adopt forms to the superior court and wait to be clear for scheduling a hearing date.

We still have the ringworm.

While exploring food preferences we invented a lovely recipe:

frozen peas
tofu (seasoned with sesame oil and tamari)
finely sliced rigatoni (with salt,melted butter, brewers yeast, yogert whey and acerola). It makes a pretty stack too. And see how she likes it.

Laughing


(Written for my friend Sharon)

Life has an interesting way of laughing.

Sometimes it is hard to laugh along,

and then

when you get it

you see how silly it is.



I thought when I had a baby the longing would end

but the longing is replaced by terror

for what "could" happen and

what DOES happen.

Do you want the good news first or the bad news?

I should have known it was coming when the Infectious diseases doctor praised Sanbate's xray results after requesting more lab work. I should have known that there is no end to a research hospital's need for answers and more proof that every child that leaves their borders is tracked like a wanted criminal.

There was a mistake on the blood test in that instead of doing a stage 1 hiv test they did a stage 2 test which came up inconclusive. That is there were some levels that were not "normal".

Now the doctor is recommending we do the hiv test again, even tho' the lab that originally did her blood work up in Ethiopia is a certified US laboratory.

"I am sure it is negative, but with this result it would be negligent to skip retesting."

So now I am as anxious as ever. We have an appointment with her pediatrician tomorrow because I couldn't bear to bring Sanbate back into the hospital to be jabbed again, ( they had a really really hard time getting blood from her when we were in prison there). We will get a referral for a lab and then do another test.

I am a wreck
but Elianshu has been surprisingly jolly especially since we escaped the hospital, yet again.

I am a bit of a clean freak and it is
distressing to see the little
explosions around the house and the sink full of dishes.
My mother raised 7 of us, cooked homemade meals every night, and maintained a spotless house.

I think one of the activities that is slowing me down is the daily making of the home made formula. I have decided that the powdered sh** that Sanbate has been drinking is just not working for her. We have been taking trips to the local natural food store to buy raw milk and cream. Other ingredients: olive oil, acerola, coconut oil, sunflower seed oil, brewers yeast, probiotics, whey, geletin, and filtered water.

This formula is designed to fatten baby and give her much needed animal fats. And every morning I am giving her a cooked egg yolk.

Caring for a newly adopted child while sleep deprived is about as much fun as a truck load of camels. We saw these on the road back from Awassa, Ethiopia.

Lots of crying. Her not the camels, but it makes a mom feel ineffective. And frankly, a poor educator, (after 20 years experience!)

While checking email from my friend and adoption mentor, bj, my girl started to cry again, after having been asleep for 20 minutes. Sanbate had been up all day.Bj's email strongly suggested I buy and read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. Well, that was an easy sell. As the screaming escalated I quickly purchased a copy from Nancy's website. I will let you know how it is when I read it.

This morning we went down to the Albany county clerks office and filed for Sanbate's US passport. In three weeks we should receive it in the mail which means we can go to India as soon as the re-adoption is finalized.

Our girl is gaining weight. Finally. She is about 20 pounds now, compared to 16 when we arrived home with pneumonia. This girl had only gained 1 pound in the orphanage over a period of 3 months! I still can't quite figure this out as she was eating like a sow and as far as we know did not have parasites. She does have ringworm, altho' I have no idea where she has it- just that she gave it to me. Ringworm, incidentally is NOT a worm but a fungus.

Stubborn? yes.
A quick study? certainly.
Lovely? Quite.
Mental? Um. I am afraid so, (Head-bangingly so).
Generous? To a fault. (Just today she offered me her pancake, AND LET ME EAT IT).
Expressive? Right down to her bowels.

Babies are workaholics!
No matter how tired, wet, hungry, sick or cold they are they continue to explore, experiment and experience life. It is amazing!

Sanbate has been sleeping better but still pretty weary throughout the day. The naps (now 45 minutes) just don't seem to be enough.




Well, at least her meditative practice is still in order.
Here she is at the bookshelf and the first book she decides to take out, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Shambhala baby!

Sleep.

Sanbate's schedule:
Sleeps 7pm -1am
Awake 1am-3am
Sleep 3am-5am
Awake 5am-9am
Sleep 9am-10am
Awake 10am-2pm
Sleep 2pm-3pm
Awake 3pm-7pm

Sleeps 10 hours
is awake 14 hours
every 24 hours

And it shows.She is tender and fussy.

I wonder if I should just let go of trying to have a rested baby.
It seems so important to me to help our one year old (eventually)learn to fall asleep without the parental circus we perform.
The bottles, the singing, the humming, the dancing, the walking, the soothing,the crib/our bed, the swaddling... This all would be wonderful if it actually worked.
I want to trust that my daughter will learn to fall asleep.
And comfort herself.
I want her to wake up joyful.

I have been told that young children should not be exposed to mirrors because they don't "get" what it is. Well we have big mirrors in our apartment and she lights up when she sees who is there. What can I do? Sanbate loves Sanbate.

When you use cloth diapers your child poops and pees more.
Or so it seems.
I am changing her diaper every hour but what joy it is to see a
(here I go sounding like an insane mother)
normal poop!
How beautiful!

And last night Sanbate slept from 6pm to 7am!
What a fabulous mood she was in this morning.
And she talked herself to sleep for her nap.

Today Jennifer from Adoption Connections came by for the post placement visit. It went really well I believe because I fed the baby banana pancakes just before arrival.

There was crawling, walking(with the walker), cooing, talking, laughing, playing and exploring.

She made us look so good.

There is the bubble test to see if a baby is really ill, (which works).
And then there is the lollipop test. Last night I tried the latter with success.

It has been a couple of days home from the hospital and Sunboo is still a little cranky. Altho' one must realize, (that is, I must realize) she is still reeling from being taken from her home. Still in shock from losing her Ethiopian "family" at the orphanage and subconsciously her birth family. Sometimes she is inconsolable and I have to set her down for a minute.

Today for her nap she could not be comforted. She was so tired and sad. I had to put her in her crib. When I came back in to check on her she would not let me hold her so I put her down again and this infuriated her. 2 minutes later she was asleep.

With no help from me. I feel terrible.

Hospital Days












We snuck out of the hospital undetected, (or so it seemed as we escaped from the isolation chamber), and saw the light of day. We also saw the sun.
And it was good.

Tests yesterday confirmed Sanbate's improvement (from white blood cell count of 30,000 to 7,000).
Her disposition is also greatly uplifted. Sleep is an amazing thing, and WHY don't they let the babies sleep in hospitals?

We were able to spend some time outside by the sea and in our back yard as the weather was gorgeous.

By 6 pm however, girl had a mild temperature. Hello tylenol and lots of liquids. By 7pm temperature was normal.

Easter

As he rose, she also rose.
Is a rose.
Ah Sunboo. You were very joyous today having had a real night's rest. All the machinery seems to be running smoothly again and if your blood test tomorrow is like your disposition today we are shining.
Dr. Brian Lee, who is an esteemed member of the Infectious diseases department of the hospital, met with us today to let us know that if the bloodwork tomorrow is improved from Thursday we can bring the girl home.
Push back that boulder and let us out!

Our sweet goose has been very sick. She had another febrile convulsion on the way to her doctor's appointment on Thursday and we have been at the hospital since. She has pneumonia, and something intestinal as well as other worse possibilities we are trying and hoping to rule out.
Tomorrow they pump her stomach to do a culture on what is in there. She will have to keep tubes in her little nose for a few days.
She has had almost every kind of test known to human kind.
And will be in the hospital until Monday at least.
I am home for a few hours to get some rest.
We are at the best children's hospital in our area and I am very confident of the doctors, altho' they do railroad a bit. We are in isolation which stinks because we can't walk around with her but it is a private room with a bathroom and view of the bay and the train so she and I have been sitting in the window and gazing at the street below. Very entertaining- no tv needed!

Happy Birthday!

On her Number 1 Day S woke up late, (430 am). She is tired and unwell. As she slept on and off throughout the day Mr. D and I became increasingly concerned, called the nurse practitioner and insisted on antibiotics. She had a fever the second half of the day and her belly was full of battle cries. I will not mention her diapers herein.
We did not give her the antibiotics however, as the international adoption clinic dr. advised us against taking any medication until the lab results are back.

Tomoca coffee is d* straight, 3 palms a pound, and I get excited when waking up at 3 in the morning with Sanbate to drink it.

The girl survived extensive bloodletting today. In fact, she walked away with her sense of humor fully intact.

Tomorrow is her birthday so we have every intention of spoiling her in every way. Lord girl! You made it through one year! Despite!

I am so grateful to sister Askale, the resident nurse pictured here with our coy smiler, for accompanying me to the hospital on our first day. I don't care what the statistics say, my experience with Ethiopians both men and women has lead me to feel devoted to them and to feel they are gentle and extremely loving people.

Yesterday Sanbate and I went to the International adoption clinic for an intense consultation which left us feeling a little bereft. The words, "failure to thrive" were used in reference to the almost nonexistent growth she has shown over the last 3 months. It is very possible that our girl has ghiardia or some kind of parasite/bacteria that is inhibiting her body from intaking nutrients. The girl eats and sleeps like a queen but still does not grow. Her digestion is also very challenged and one can hear the battle going on inside her belly after a meal. Mr. D and I are a little anxious about it especially after the febrile convulsion last week. So, we bought a temporal temperature gauge so as to keep track of any fever immediately and I am petitioning our primary care doctor for an appointment today so that we can get a referral for a blood panel and stool check.

None of this has stopped her from being an affectionate, curious, playful, and stunningly gorgeous lovebaby.

Another ED in the family.