More Than Four Sides

Category: Family & Friends

  • He’s my brother?

    Over a year into our journey as a family, and our home is filled with happy noises of both of them playing together. S will frequently give “horsey” rides to J, or carry him piggy-back, and mostly they play really nicely together. Yes, there are arguments and bickering, but there’s also huge love and devotion,…

  • Language acquisition

    It is always fascinating to watch a child learn language, and many academic disciplines have extensively studied the systematic way that children learn to communicate. I wish I had documented the process with our boys better – it has been a fascinating process to watch. It’s been a two-fold experience, given that S had already…

  • Reconnecting with Big Sister…

    My 29yo daughter is visiting this week, after spending the last 12 months in the UK, where she has relocated and is thriving (at least financially and professionally!!).  Silly Sal has been having major adjustment challenges in coping with the idea that he is being displaced as oldest child in the family!! more later (it’s…

  • Meeting new family…

    It’s been a month of connecting with family! And, so sweet! for thanksgiving, we travelled to my sister’s in Portland, OR – this was the first time the boys were on a plane since our epic journey from Addis Ababa…I was anxious about how they would do, but they were both champs, and loved the…

  • First Thanksgiving…

    There have been so many firsts this year, with the boys – we arrived at the very end of January, 2010, and our first Jewish holiday was Purim (a little bit overwhelming for two boys with limited/no English!), and have cycled through the year, with Passover, the 4th of July, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur,…

  • Adding strands to web of my personal connections to the world

    The last two months have brought radical changes to our family, and, although I’ve “written” many posts in my head – none of them have made it to this space. I wrote drafts of posts on the first three nights of our week-long trip to Ethiopia to meet and bring home the kids, but couldn’t…

  • The flight home

    Our flight left at 10pm, which gave us all day on saturday to prepare and pack. Ron was tied up assisting our new friends at the hospital with the challenge of the measles outbreak that touched the orphanage so tragically (fortunately, our co-adoptive parents were able to bring their baby home, eventually). Silly Sal stayed…

  • Day 7 – Packing for Departure

    We awoke on Saturday morning, knowing we would be leaving that night.  I had planned on joining Dr. Rick Hodes on his hospital rounds, and was looking forward to seeing the patients that he was following, but it was not to be…we discovered that morning that one of the children of our cohort of kids…

  • Day 6 – Shopping Day & Coffee Ceremony

    Friday morning was shopping day. Ron was very organized about this, and had a list of folks at home to buy gifts for. I was glad that he was so disciplined about it. I was distracted the whole time with concerns about clothes for the boys – I had underestimated S’s shoe size, and needed…

  • Day 5 – Embassy day!

    Today was the day that we would go to the US embassy to get the visas for the boys that would allow us to take then home. We had been given a prep talk on the evening of the second night that we were there to fill out the forms correctly, and know a bit…