Dear Friends and Family,

As we prepare for the arrival of our daughter, we have learned that while decorating her room and stocking up on girl essentials is important, even more important is the emotional health of our daughter. In her short life, our daughter will have gone through more changes and life altering experiences than most adults could handle. Imagine how much harder the changes will be for her. While she may not consciously remember the events, she will still experience immense loss, including feelings of grief and trauma. She's already experienced the loss of a birth family and will soon experience the loss of familiar and comforting caretakers as well as the sights, smells, and language of her birth country. Her world will turn upside down. She will struggle with feeling safe and secure and she may lack the ability to trust that we will meet her needs.

We have prepared to meet her emotional needs so that she does learn that we will always take care of her and we will always keep her safe. We need your support. In order to form a strong and healthy attachment we will allow her to regress so that she has the opportunity to go through all of the emotional stages with us despite her chronological age. Although it may appear that we are spoiling her, we have been advised that it is best that we meet every need quickly and consistently. Until she has learned that we are her parents, we will need to be her primary caretakers at all times. It is essential that we always hold her, feed her, and do all of the nurturing. You may wonder how long this will take, but the timeline is different for every child. We will follow her lead and trust our instincts as her parents rather than worry about what society expects.

We have all been waiting anxiously for our daughter to arrive but she has not been waiting for us. She may show her grief and confusion in many ways and we are prepared to help her through it and prove that we are a forever family and this truly is her last stop. We trust that as our family and friends you will help us to do what is best for our daughter, and we thank you in advance for your support and understanding.

Karen and Rich

T shirts

Hey, check out the button on the left. Here's another family with Ethiopia adoption tshirts. I love the fact that they are red!!!

Just because

Finally...

We got a new computer in the midst of all of our Terefech excitement. I tried to upload pictures but couldn't seem to locate them. Now, I have it mastered (albeit accidentally). So now some pictures of the red head.

We waited until we were through court to tell Declan. Although it was difficult to not tell him before that, we felt it was best that we knew Terefech was really his sister before we told him. He was so excited to find out.

Giving it a try!

My friend Jill informed me I can email in blogger posts. Little did I know! That will make it so much easier in Ethiopia to be posting. So, let's see how this works...

Will we or won't we?

We have gotten a very tentative, non committal travel date! I ask these questions with the understanding that I will never hold anyone to the answer. With teaching and Rich having a new job, we are trying to plan for a trip we just can't predict. So the latest would be that we would need to be in Ethiopia on May 6th (Happy Birthday Uncle E.). If that is true, we would probably leave May 1st or May 2nd. Our hope is that we will get to be there a few days early which would allow us to take maybe a day trip, shop, and experience the culture of Ethiopia before we meet Terefech. Once we are with the agency, much of our time is spoken for.

We are so excited, scared, and a little panicked! Today we are painting Terefech's room and beginning to put together her furniture. We are so excited to welcome her into the family!!!