Researchers at the University of Alberta are looking into the language development of young children adopted from Ethiopia. Cool!

“Speech-language pathologists and early intervention specialists are increasingly involved in assessing the communication skills of internationally adopted children, and in many cases providing language stimulation or speech therapy services. “

These researchers are looking for “volunteers who have adopted children from Ethiopia.

If your child is between 9 and 42 months of age and has been home less than 12 months, you are eligible to participate” in their on-line survey.

To learn more and fill out the survey, click here.

hmmmm…

We celebrated the holiday with two Ethiopian fmailies that live in our neighborhood… unfortunately, I was taking video the whole time and this is the only picture I got! Not even one of all the adults in their cool Ethio clothes. Oops.

When we were making the injera for our celebration, my friend M taught me, blow-by-blow, how to make her amazing, better-than-most-restaurants injera! Yeah!

And the BEST news is, we’re going to make it into a how-to video and sell it as a fundraiser for Vulnerable Children. Stay tuned on that!

I thought it’s been a while since I posted about some serious adoption topics.

So why not start with the hardest one? Loss.

I remember the first time I saw my daughters. Actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever described that here before.  Well, we (my mom and I) were lead, exhausted, anxious and nervous, in the living room to meet our kids. We sat and chitchatted with our friends (and friends-to-be) while waiting for the kids. I paced.

Then, they came.

Two little girls holding Kalkidan, the social worker’s, hands. They were so unbelievably tiny – it’s almost hard to even recal now how tiny they were. And they were scared… they shuffled their feet and looked at their toes. Spice looked like she was going to burst out crying – Sugar hid her face behind Kalkidan’s legs. They were so beautiful. So lovely. And so tiny and afraid.

Over the next few days, I learned what mettle an adoptive mom of two grieving toddlers must have. The girls cried and cried. They flung themselves against the hotel door and screamed “Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!” until they litterally passed out, exhausted. I tried and tried and tried, but it was only after a few days that they would even let me pick them up while crying, much less comfort them.

The picture below was taken after 2 hours of straight crying, when neither of them would let me put them down. That was about 2-3 weeks in…

My mom, who is a tough lady herself, woulc excuse herself from the room when the girls would start crying… (mainly so I didn’t have the added pressure of an observer.) But one time she was gathering her knitting and she said to me “I don’t know how you stand this (for the hour or two of crying she knew was coming.) “It breaks my heart, and I’ve only been here 5 minutes.”

My point is, that although that day you see your kids for the first time is a miraculous, wonderful day for you – it’s usually the worst day in their lives.

The theme of loss is recurring in adoption, and it shows up all the time, still. But in more subtle and profound ways.

Take permanency – I think it takes months and months for children to get a sense of what it means to stay in the same place. There were months in the spring when I would be asked several times a day “Will you be my mama forever?” To which, of course, I replied “Forever and ever.” But several times a day – for months. And that was when they finally trusted me enough even to ask that question.

The second subtheme to loss is trust. It was this summer, more than a year since we got the girls, that one of my daughters finally fessed up some fears to me. She was having a fit about something she didn’t get, and but as per usual, she didn’t melt and let it out. So I decided to push it… I pushed every emotional button in her body/brain by asking (the shortened version from a 45 minute sobbing blubbery mess of a conversation:)

Why are you angry?

Because she’s worried.

Why?

Because she’s worried mommy will leave her.

Did anybody leave you before?

Yes – …

And are you worried that mommy will leave you?

Yes

Because you do something wrong?

No – because she’s a good girl.

And then, with much button-pushing, she tells me these crazily vivid memories of her time in the orphanage and the transition home, when she had deep losses. And when promises made were not promises kept. And the crazy thing is, we know this is all true, but we didn’t know she remembered it. Until I pushed every button and she had an emotional breakdown on an alpine mountainside more than a year later.

I guess the moral of the story is that adoption is based on loss. Children often have no sense of permanency – and that only comes when they continually experience ” permanent family,” over and over again. Because their new family has to earn that trust. You have to fill up the deficits in the love bank before you can ever consider making withdrawls.

Adoption can mend loss, but families have to tend those wounds.
Sometimes, by purposefully reopening them.

While we were in Victoria, Jrock was also on the west coast – but south! He traveled to San Francisco with his brother to watch a couple of NFL games.  Jrock is a San Francisco 49ers fan; his brother D is an Oakland Raiders fan (just across the bay.)

He came home with a hoarse voice from all the yelling and screaming he did at both games, a good indication of his level of enjoyment, lol. I think it’s great that he spends this time with his brother… they did it two years ago and it’s nice that every once and a while they get to burp, scratch themselves, yell and generally be mannly men together!

I thought it was cool that they wore each other’s (mortal enemy) jerseys, don’t you?

Congratulations! So far, we are almost a third of the way to our goal of sustainable, on-going funding!

To support Faya Orphanage, we need approximately $1700 Canadian (at current exchange rates) per month in on-going sponsorships. This amount is crucial for the children to be taken care of at Faya, as well as the administration of the House 2 House program. (Additional direct costs of the community House 2 House program are on top of this.)

Thank you so much to the wonderful people who have signed on as sponsors, and to the other wonderful folks who have made a one-time donation, which is helping us meet our obligations this month!

Please encourage your friends and family to get involved as well.

You can learn more about Vulnerable Children Society here.

You’ll recognize the spokes-kids… lol

Please pass this video along to your friends… and consider being a sponsor through the Vulnerable Children Society!

The girls and I went on a whirlwind trip down to Vistoria this weekend. We didn’t have much time, but we did what we set out to do: we joined First Nations chiefs and elders, farmers and environmental advocates from across BC to protest the proposed Site C dam.

I’ll share some pictures when I get organized, but for now, here is some of the media coverage for the event. Unfortunately, our headline speaker, David Suzuki, was fogged out and they couldn’t land his float plane. Still, I hope our message got through.

• Site C dam critics rally support at legislature
• Northeast natives rally against dam
• Assembly of First Nations and Treaty 8 First Nations call for Full Panel Review on Site C Hydroelectric Dam and fulfillment of Duty to Consult with First Nations

A friend sent me this video… I don’t think I’d heard it since the nineties onn the radio! But just as good of advice as ever.

It’s strange trying to balance everything… days off and spending time with the kids.  I haven’t had a 9-5 job for years and years… and now my flexible job I am making into a 9-5 job just so I don’t take anything home and have time for the kids.  The things you do for love, I tell ya. Because I am NOT a 9-5 gal.

Jrock also has a weird schedule (we both work a night a week… and finding time to spend together as a family is at a premium right now. So we’re trying to “do” stuff… not just hang around the house and do laundry.

So last day off, we rode the bus (the truck was in the shop but the girls love it!) downtown. We checked out the new bear sculpture in downtown Kelowna
(ca-lo-na means grizzly in the Okanagan First Nations language,) ate out at Earls, and checked out the exhibit at the art gallery. The kids food was pretty good at Earls… Often restaurant kids menus are too bland for our kids, but their pasta and pizza were delice.

It was a good day, and a good way to spend a dreary cloudy day.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I’ve attended paddles (canoe rallys) to protest the building of the Site C dam in Northeastern BC. This unnecessary dam will destroy valuable wildlife habitat on the Peace River Valley, break wildlife corridors, flood some of the best agricultural land in BC, and erradicate the way of life for many farmers, ranchers, and First Nation residents.

The Wilderness Committee and the Sierra Club, and Daid Suzuki himself, have joined forces with the communities in the north to bring this to the attention of the provincial government in Victoria.

And my girls and I will be there.. right beside Suzuki. Jokin! (But only sort of…..)

If you are in the area… please consider attending the rally and showing your support!

If you are not near Victoria, please write an email to the Premier here.

On Sunday, September 19th, join the Wilderness Committee, the Peace Valley Environment Association, Sierra Club BC and the Treaty 8 First Nations to say No to the Site C Dam.

The rally will begin at 10:00am on the front steps of the legislative assembly building in Victoria. Speakers include David Suzuki, Treaty 8 First Nations leadership, and more!

Then join us for a 1.5 hour paddle up the beautiful Gorge Waterway. This family friendly outdoor event is the perfect place to get your kayaks and canoe in the water, and support an important cause.

To register for the paddle please email khalilah@Wildernesscommittee.org.

There is more than a new Faya Orphanage website. There is an entirely new non-profit organization providing support and managing donations for Faya Orphanage. Introducing…

I’m so happy to share this with you, and to inform the adoption community, who have been such good supporters of Faya Orphanage in the past.

I’m one of the board members of the Vulnerable Children Society…

…and you will recognize some of the others as well. Many of us are long-term supporters of Faya Orphanage, as well as active in the Ethiopian adotpion community.

We are now the exclusive sponsorship managers for Faya Orphanage.

Many of you had posted and emailed over the last few months, wondering where the Faya Orphanage website went. The previous non-profit, Faya Fund, is now on hiatus. But yours truly and the other board members have been busy like crazy bees to get a new non-profit up and running and ready to continue the good work that they started.

We are in real need of new sponsors!

There are children to feed and families in Adama to support… and we need your help. Please visit the website to find out more, and consider becoming a sponsor for the wonderful children in need in Ethiopia!

www.vulnerablechildren.ca

Thank you so much!!!!!

Happy New Year!

September 11th is the beginning of the Ethiopian calendar year… it’s a celebration and a holiday in Ethiopia. Here is a little about Enkutatsh.

Ethiopia still retains the Julian calendar, in which the year is divided into 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of 5 days and 6 days in leap year. The Ethiopian calendar is 8 years behind the Gregorian calendar from January to September and 7 years behind between September 11 and January 8.

Enkutatash means the “gift of jewels”. When the famous Queen of Sheba returned from her expensive jaunt to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem, her chiefs welcomed her bolts by replenishing her treasury with inku or jewels. The spring festival has been celebrated since this early times and as the rains come to their abrupt end, dancing and singing can be heard at every village in the green countryside.

But Enkutatash is not exclusively a religious holiday. Today’s Enkutatash is also the season for exchanging formal new year greetings and cards among the urban sophisticated – in lieu of the traditional bouquet of flowers.

And here’s a little video about some of the celebrating… I have yet to see the hockey-like game played. But I know it is not a happy day for the sheep.

This is my favorite modern New Year music video…