Jan. 3 - Ethiopian Christmas Celebration at the Orphanage

Ethiopian Christmas is celebrated on January 7, and Wednesday morning was the Christmas party at the orphanage. It was a big event with dancing and singing, the older children acting out the Christmas story, traditional Ethiopian outfits and other small toys given to each child, treats and a meal of injera and wat. It was great to see Yabi interact with his friends and come to life. He mingled easily, sometimes going to an older child to sit on his lap, sometimes being cuddled by a staff person, sometimes joking with his friends, and even coming over to sit on our laps. We saw him smile for the first time. He went freely between his friends that he knew so well and his new strange family, which was reassuring to us. I can clearly remember him putting his arm around one of his friends and pointing over to us, probably whispering something like, “hey, check out my new family.”

Wednesday night was another challenge, though, as Yabi cried in grief for over an hour and a half, again spending most of the night sleeping on top of Kim and me after he had settled off to sleep. Another family that is adopting siblings and staying at the same guesthouse said they had about a month of crying when they adopted their first from Vietnam when she was only 5 months old. In some ways it is good to see him grieving, but obviously very hard when it is happening. He is now going to sleep without any trouble and not displaying any noticeable grieving. Rather, we're seeing the expected occasional fits that a normal 2 year old may exhibit, around the mainly happy, joking, talkative little boy that he is.