Day 6--The Highs and the Lows

I woke up this morning to the loveliest little high.  It was very early, probably about 4am.  Baby L was crawling around in circles, but I kept my eyes closed hoping she'd just lay down and go back to sleep.  After a minute she stopped moving so I opened my eyes to see if she had settled in and there she was staring back at me, her little nose almost touching mine. 

And then she said it.  "Mama".  Oh my heart.  This girl is gonna have me wrapped around her little finger.

The morning took a steep nosedive from there.  Brian started feeling bad and then worse and then "this is the sickest I can ever remember being"!  We think it might be food poisoning, but there are so many things that can make you sick while you're traveling that there is no telling.  We think the culprit might be a coconut creme cake.  He ate it, I did not.  Even if that's not to blame, I bet he never eats coconut again!

So in the midst of Brian throwing up, and everything else you can imagine that goes with food poisoning we get another high--our exit letter is ready. Which means we are done and we can leave the country and take our girls home as soon as we like. Except we can't leave because Brian is throwing up all over the country and it is obviously not a good idea to have him throwing up all over a plane. It is hard enough to travel with two infants, but if you are not feeling 100% ready for it, it will turn into one of those stories that you tell your drinking buddies about--"I remember the time I flew home from Kinshasa with food poisoning and two babies with diarrhea. Ha ha ha, those were the days!"

No thank you.

So for right now we are playing it by ear. If Brian wakes up miraculously cured of his symptoms, then we may try to get a late night flight out. But if he is still puny we will probably just fly out when we were scheduled to this weekend.

Either way I am pretty OK with it. I definitely want to get home to my kids and get this party of 8 started, but they are all doing well with Grandma and her team of cracker jack babysitters. On the other hand, just knowing that I can leave at anytime makes the stress of being her significantly less. And there have been some lovely people here helping me out. They helped me wrangle the girls while Brian took nap number 37 of the day. They walked with me to the market so I could fetch keep-Brian-alive supplies. They offered me extra toilet paper. Now in Kinshasa, that's real friendship that will last a lifetime. Thanks B :)

So whatever happens tomorrow, tonight we are a family according to all the people who had to sign off on it and make it official. And according to Baby L, I am Mama!

Oh my heart!

Below, as promised, some pictures of the backs of some very beautiful heads.  I know you're dying to see the fronts.  Oh yes you are, they are gorgeous!!

Day 3--Bring on the Babies

I got to bed about midnight last night.  Then I tossed and turned all night long.  I was too hot, then too cold.  The bed was too hard.  The room was too bright.  My body was all achy from too many hours on planes.  And I am allergic to Kinshasa air.  Already, I was coughing all night long.  But all of this I expected, so I'm not whining, just reporting :) 

After all, this long night of discomfort was bringing me a few minutes closer my baby girls.

We got up at 6:30am since breakfast is served each day at 7:00am.  I took a long needed shower.  Good water pressure, but no hot water.  When you turn the knob not even a trickle came out.  So it was nice long COLD shower for me.  I'm pretty sure Brian did not mention there was no hot water when we decided which guest house to stay at. But there is great air conditioning, which is always his priority.  Maybe I just won't get all hot and sweaty the rest of the week so I can avoid another cold shower.  Yeah, right!

A few minutes after 7:00 we headed down to breakfast.  There was seating and food for probably 30 people, but not a soul in the dining room.  The breakfast today was toast and something sort of like bologna.  According to Brian it is not even that good.  So we headed back upstairs to eat a granola bar and to wait for the big phone call.

While waiting we reminisced about the buffet breakfast at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China.  If you're a China adoption parent you know what we mean.  More buffet tables than you could fit in my living room, dining room, and kitchen combined.  Traditional Chinese and American breakfast fare.  Piles and piles of fresh fruits, scrambled eggs, fried noodles, bacon.  Cup after cup of lovely Chinese tea.  A far cry from white bread toast and bologna.

Finally at about 8:30am the girls arrived with Papa L, Mama J, and 2 of their teenaged daughters.  These are the people that have been foster family to all 5 of our Congolese kids. They are amazing, generous people who have literally saved the lives of dozens of babies, mine included.  We met them in the lobby.  Brian videotaped while I hugged Mama J and whispered thank you in the small amount of French I still remember.  It doesn't matter much because she doesn't really speak French either, only Lingala.  So I just tried to squeeze her as hard as I could to let her know what a blessing she is to our family and how much I love the babies she is entrusting to me.

Then I move on the babies.  I pick up Baby K first.  She is 7 months old.  She is bigger than I expect, but also floppier.  She comes right to me and lays her head on my shoulder.  She has big Congolese eyes, very dark skin, long curly eyelashes. I think she favors JoJo a bit.  Baby L is a bit more reluctant.  She is 11 months old and clearly more attached to the family.  She is about the same size as K, but much further along developmentally.  Papa L says she eats a lot and though she is small she is very strong.  We chat about the babies for awhile and then it is time for the family to leave.  Their youngest daughter, she's about 16, was the primary care giver to Baby K and she starts to cry as we say our goodbyes.  This just tore me up.  Haven was Mama J's first foster baby so when Brian came to take him home she cried very hard and didn't really speak to Brian.  When we came for Manny and JoJo there were 10 other foster kids in the house.  They loved our boys, but 2 less babies wasn't such a big deal.  But these 2 girls, Baby K and Baby L are the family's last 2 foster babies and they have been the only 2 for about a month now.  So letting them go was clearly a little harder. 

I have so much respect for foster parents.  They make such a huge difference in a child's life.

After the family left we headed upstairs to settle down a bit.  L had a very hard time seeing them go.  She didn't  want me hold her and she was reaching out to them as they walked out the front door.  She is old enough that the loss of this family is going to be hard for her.  We got to the room and changed some diapers.  Both girls have some less than perfect poop and L has a pretty gnarly rash.  We discovered K has a hernia.  L has a slight cough and they both have a few mystery bumps here and there on their skin, but overall they both seem to be in good health. 

They did a good bit of crying and mourning.  L was especially checking out my strange white face and trying to yank off my mole.  She'd turn away and then turn back and cry a bit harder when she realized I wasn't the right woman holding her.  But after a while they both settled down and all 4 of us snuggled up for a long nap.  And as usual, everyone was happier after a nap.  After nap time we wondered around the building a bit, had a nice tepid bottle of Coke, and met a couple of other families who are adopting.  We got some sweet smiles from the girls this after noon.  L has at least 1 dimple and 4 giant sized teeth.

Right now it is about 7:45pm and everyone is settled in for the night.  Both girls are sleeping and so is Daddy.  I'm crossing my fingers that we get a few long hours of good sleep.  I will try to post some pictures tomorrow, but until we get our girls home for good you'll only be seeing the backs of their beautiful heads.  Sweet dreams!

Family Reunions--China Meets Congo

Since we grew our family through adoption we have had the amazing blessing of also growing our extended family.  For the past two summers we have spent time with other families that look a bit like ours and July was a big family reunion month for us.  We spent a weekend in San Antonio with our China Sisters group and then a week in Indiana with our OFA/Congo Family and friends.

For Brian and me, it is a community where we can let our hair down (so to speak) and spend time with people who really get us and the way our family has been grown.  For the kids it is pure and simple: FUN FUN FUN!



Grace sports some lovely braids in San Antonio



Thanks, Aunt Lauree!



Congo--the good, the bad, and the sweaty--Part IV--the Ken and Barbie of Kinshasa

I a am theatre director.  Which translates to control freak.  And international adoption takes away all your control.

So as I mentioned in my last post I had a really crappy attitude about the trip once we found out our visas would be delayed.  I was mentally prepared for 2 weeks in Congo, but it was not in my plans to stay for 3 weeks.  It was not in my plans to have a loud and tearful discussion at the embassy office.  I did not like the way I fell apart each night when I saw my kids falling apart on the other end of skype. 

In short, I was not in control of the events before me.  I was going to have to roll with the flow. 

It sure is a good thing that I was staying at the same guest house with such a lovely assortment of characters.  Very few people in this world will ever really understand what a trip like this is like, what raising a family like mine is like, but these people will get it. 

First there was Ken and Barbie....I mean Joel and Kristie, the cutest couple in Kinshasa, and their adorable son Kayden. They were long timers.  When I arrived they had already been in Kinshasa for 5 weeks.  We would spend another 2 weeks together.  On the surface there wasn't a lot to laugh about on our trip, but these two had me rolling on the floor night after night.  We laughed about scabies, and bad food, and how Papa L couldn't understand at least half of what we said.  We laughed about "Bon Soir" ladies, and crazy taxi drivers, and probably a lot of things that would not have been funny if we weren't so sleep deprived and sweaty and bored.  But oh did we laugh.


Is that Angelina?  No, this woman is way prettier.  We're visiting an orphanage and Kristie still looks good!

On top of her great sense of humor Kristie is stunningly gorgeous.  She's tall, has long wavy hair, and a natural glow.  She always looked like one of those movie stars who had come to rough it in a 3rd world country.  I, on the other hand, looked more like the overwhelmed, sweaty, and slightly androgynous tourist who ended up on the wrong flight.  Kristie looked completely comfortable traipsing through orphanages, kissing babies and spreading good will.  In every picture of me I have a ridiculous plastic smile on my face.  Cameras have that effect on me.  I am not photogenic and my inner "cheese" always shines through.


Say Cheese!!!

For a couple of days we got to spend time with Shon and her wonderful mother.  Shon was on her first trip to meet her son.  He was a beautiful and shy boy.  I was so impressed that Shon's mother had traveled with her to Kinshasa.  My relatives would not have signed up for that trip.  They both were sweet and gentle women, just charming to be around.  I hope that we will have a chance to reunite someday.

Our roommate on this trip was Kelly.  That's right we had a roommate.  We shared an apartment with her to save money.  Kelly was AWESOME.  In great part because she put up with our family and never complained for a second (at least not in front of us)  She was a single woman who had adopted Elijah, the boy who would not sleep.  He was sweet and funny by day, but at night this kid could scream for hours.  Kelly could not have gotten more than 3 hours sleep on any night that we were there.  But she was patient and calm, a real super mom.  As big a baby as I was and I had my husband there to take care of me, Kelly was so strong and wonderful.  On more than one occasion she let me vent and cry and I will always treasure her for that. 

Our wonderful roommate Kelly and her cutie pie Elijah 

After Shon left, Amy and Shawny arrived.  Amy adopted Nicolas, possibly the most attractive OFA baby yet.  OMG, this kid is adorable.  And he was the easiest baby there.  Lots of smiles, ate well, slept well.  I might have hated Amy if she hadn't been so cool, so smart, so lovely to spend time with.  Brian especially loved to sit around and talk theology with her.  Nothing like a really smart and spiritual person to lift your mood.  I also admired what a faithful blogger she was.  Amy posted something every night on her blog (while I spent each night googling pictures of rashes, trying to find out what dread disease Manny had all over his feet) and every post was funny and interesting.  I should have just linked my blog to hers so you guys would have had some good reading while I was gone.



What a beautiful mama Amy is to sweet Nic 

 When Shawny arrived I was totally expecting that she was going to have the hardest time of us all.  She and her husband have adopted a beautiful toddler girl named Jovie.  I got to see a lot of pictures of Jovie before we traveled and Brian actually met her on his first trip.  We fully expected that she was going to be the kind of toddler that kicks butt and takes names.  But Shawny was ready!  She charmed that little girl with flowered headbands and pretty dresses and so much love and patience.  I was really in awe.  Jovie was no doubt scared and headstrong, but by the time we left she was so in love with her Mama!  They were a beautiful pair.



Shawny and her pretty girl Jovie



We also spent just a few days with Kori and Jonathon, who had come for their first trip to bring home their second child from DRC.  Their daughter, Lila Ruth, was tiny and sick.  It was a very scary time for this couple, but their faith shined through and they have loved that little girl back to health.  They are also doing amazing work to revitalize a United Methodist Church orphanage outside of Kinshasa.  It has been a dream for many of us associated with OFA to have an orphanage that is sort of all our own and it looks like Jonathan is close to making that happen.  Dennis and his twin daughters were also with us a few days.  H is girls were a bit older and there was a huge language issue because of it.  But Dennis just hugged and kissed and played and tickled right into these girls hearts.  Adopting older kids is not easy, but he was amazing and patient with the twins.  It was wonderful to watch. 



Looks like Dennis wanted to take this sweet boy home



Kori and Jonathan apparently worked hard to avoid my camera.  This was the only shot I got.

In addition to the other adopting families, we spent a lot of time with Jules, our interpreter, gopher, navigator, and all around go to guy.  Jules speaks several languages and was invaluable to our work at the orphanages.  He knew where to go to buy anything and got us good prices.  He held our hands and comforted our children.  He was especially helpful with the older kids that were already speaking Lingala.  I don't know how our families survived this trip before Jules came on board.  He is hoping to come to the US to study to become a pastor.  We certainly hope that dream comes true for him.  He has helped so many families with their dream of bringing home a child.
So to all the wonderful people who helped me make it through the day and some long nights: thank you, thank you, thank you!  We will probably never all be in once place at one time again, but the time we all spent together will provide a lasting treasured memory!

Our new extended family

Coming up I'll be doing a post about the orphanages I visited and where this trip to Congo has taken me.  Thank you to all of those who are out there reading.  And thanks for your comments.  I got a note from someone yesterday who is going to adopt from DRC.  Every night Grace and I pray for all the babies in the world still waiting for families.  I love to hear about one that gets to actually come home!

Congo--the good, the bad, and the sweaty--Part III--finally in our arms

And just like that they were ours.

When Papa L dropped us off at the guest house he said he would be back to pick us up at 7am and take us to the babies.  I spent the night in an absolute fog.  I was exhausted, but didn't sleep a wink.  I was going to meet my boys. 

I'm pretty sure we did not leave at 7am.  Nothing happens on clock time in Congo.  Everything is on Congo time! 

The driver pulled up in front of our foster family's home and I was crying before I could even get out of the car.  Yes, I'm a crier.  Happy, sad, angry--whatever my emotional state, it comes out in tears.  Mama J was waiting on the front steps holding one of the boys.  I got out and threw my arms around her.  As much as I had been waiting to meet my babies, I had also eagerly awaited the chance to meet the woman who was the first mother to all of my boys, Haven included.  The woman who fed them and carried them and nursed all three of them through cases of malaria.  My boys might not be alive had it not been for her and I just fell apart in her arms.  She doesn't speak any English, but she held me in her arms and whispered to me in a mix of French and Lingala.  She will never know what she means to me and to so many other families.

And then I held my boys.  JoJo was first.  He came to me easily, but from the start was the squirmiest baby ever.  While we sat on the couch inside he tried to climb out the window.  After that, I passed him to Brian.  Next, our sweet timid Manny.  He didn't want to be held by strangers.  He was sad and hot and hungry and sleepy.  I held him for a few minutes and then let one of the daughters take over and comfort him a bit. 

I was trying to soak in all the sights and sounds of this home.  It is very humble.  There is no pastor in the US that lives as humbly as this family.  And besides there own 6 kids living at home, the day we picked up the boys there were 10 other foster kids.  A few of them had only been there a few days, transferred in from an orphanage in another part of the country, but the sacrifice this family makes for other people's children is just overwhelming to me.

That morning we took pictures of all the kids living in this foster home, weighed and measured, hugged and cuddled.  Some have come home to their forever families, some have families in Congo right now waiting to finish up the process, and some have families traveling in the next few weeks.  Beautiful children all moving from the safety and security of this amazing foster family to the stress of a new home here in the states.  They will probably never realize how many people have loved them along the way.  I pray that every family has as smooth a transition as we have had.  It feels like the boys have always been in our family. 

So here is where I am going to gloss over a lot of our trip.  That afternoon we made our first visit to the US Consulate.  We thought we were getting the boys visas that day.  We didn't.  Or the next day, or the next.  After several very long, stressful, angry, tearful visits to that office we finally got the visas on Thursday.  Which set us back almost a full week.  Our trip was supposed to take 2 weeks.  Now it would be 3.  Now we had to explain to our children back home why Mommy and Daddy were not coming home.  We would miss Grace's 4th birthday.  We had to scramble to make sure we had enough money to cover an extra week of food and lodging.  We had to reschedule flights.  I mean, you know there is the chance that things will not go exactly the way you plan them on a trip like this, but I did not handle this change of plans well at all.  Brian and all the very nice people that we were staying with were probably ready to vote me off the island!

I was so incredibly angry and I missed Grace and Haven more than I was prepared for.  I cried. A lot.  And the boys were both sick and it was hot and the food was NOT amazing.  Really, I'm embarrassed at how depressed and whiny I got in that first week.  Every night we would skype with the kids at home and every night I would go back to our apartment in tears.  I don't know how I would have made it through this trip if it hadn't been for the extraordinary people who were living through it all with us.  Having that group of parents and their kids to lean on and share with made it all so much more bearable. 

And so that will be my next post--an ode to the wonderful families that shared my adoption journey.  After that I'm going to do a post about the 2 orphanages I got to visit and a post on the random details that have stuck with me since the trip. 

Keep reading!!!

Congo--the good, the bad, and the sweaty--Part II (are we there yet?)

So where was I?  Oh yeah, Congo!

I don't love flying.  I'm not terrified of it, like I was when we went to China (that trip cured me) but I don't love it.  And just knowing that we would be en route to DRC for more than 24 hours straight certainly is daunting.

Our first stop was George Bush International Airport.  I think half of my anxiety of flying is just getting through the airports.  We arrived with our 200lbs of luggage (2 checked bags each), just praying that our scale at home had been accurate.  We flew from Houston to Newark and then on to Brussels, Belgium.  A nine hour flight to the lamest airport I've ever been in.  We got their at the crack of dawn, the place has no restaurants and nothing to do but shop in the duty free store for chocolate.  Then from Brussels on to Kinshasa, DRC. 

That flight was weird.  It was incredibly noisy on board.  A large group was traveling together and they were making a party of it.  There was somebody sitting a row behind us that had a raging case of BO.  Holy smokes the air was thick and stinky!   And this leg of the trip was also nine hours long.  Now I probably didn't smell like a rose at this point either, but it was distracting to say the least.  About an hour before you get to Kinshasa there is a stop at Duala, Angola where everyone stays on the plane and a cleaning crew comes on before the next batch of passengers loads in.  Right before you take off the flight attendants walk down the aisles spraying some kind of insecticide throughout the entire plane out of these little hand held bug bombs.  That freaked me out.  Not exactly sure what they were spraying for but I sure don't have that bug anymore!

One thing I must say about Brussells Air--they have the best airline food, ever!!! 

So we finally arrive in Kinshasa.  It is 10pm and about 90 degrees outside.  It is a very tiny airport so you unload the plane right onto the tarmac and then get onto a shuttle bus that takes you to the one terminal.  And now the panic really sets in for me.  I am now in a third world country.  I am now somewhere that most people don't speak English (and my high school French is beyond rusty).  I am now somewhere with armed guards greeting me at the entrance to the airport.  And I am so freaking sweaty I can hardly hold onto my carry-on bag!

As you enter the un-air conditioned airport there are two lines--Congolese citizens and everybody else.  We get into the everybody else line and we are frantically trying to fill out those enter the country cards (what are they called).  But its all in French and even the questions I can read I don't know the answers to.  Suddenly we hear someone calling from behind us "Brian Wood--Brian Wood".  A man in some kind of official uniform was calling out to us.  As if we didn't look conspicuous enough, yell our names across the room why don't ya!  In his very broken English he explained that he had been sent to help us through the airport. 

HALLELUJAH!!!  Our own airport guardian angel.  He got us through all the right lines and then pointed us in the direction of our luggage.  We miraculously got our bags with no problems and none got lost. Then as we are starting to head towards the parking lot to find our escort (in the dark, that had me freaking out some more) a strange man came up and was insisting on carrying my luggage.  Now I had been told DO NOT let anyone help you with your bags or they will quickly disappear.  So by golly this guy was not gonna get my suitcase!  But he kept pulling and saying his name and "good, good"!  No, not good.  Get off of my bag!  Then, duh, we realized this was the same guy who had helped us get through the lines earlier.  At some point he had changed out of his uniform into a dress shirt and tie.  He rushed us out into the darkness (no lighting of any kind in this parking lot) where we were greeted by Haven's (and Manny and JoJo's) foster father Papa L, our interpreter, and a driver with his small 4 door sedan. 

The 6 of us, plus four 50lb suitcases, 2 carry-ons, and 2 backpacks squeezed into the tiny car and drove off into the darkness of Kinshasa.  They call Vegas the city that never sleeps, but they're wrong, its Kinshasa.  We drove for not quite an hour through city streets filled with people.  I suppose it is just too hot to sleep so you might as well take a walk in the dark.  People everywhere walking along side the roads, people sitting at outdoor bars and restaurants, people attending all night revival services.  So crowded and overwhelming, even in the dark.

And it was strikingly dark.  There were lights on some of the businesses and on the other cars, but it was a dark night with no moon, no street lights, no traffic signals.  The smell of smoke was incredibly thick in the air and the road was the bumpiest I have ever driven.  But I'm pretty sure that from the moment we got of the airplane until the moment we drove up to the gates of the guest house that I had a ridiculous grin on my face.  I was trying to soak up all these sights and sounds and smells, but all I could really think about was in just a few short hours I would finally get to hold my baby boys for the first time!

That seems like a good place to stop for tonight...

Come back for Part III!

Congo--the good, the bad, and the sweaty--Part I

For those of you who have known me since BG (before Grace) you may know that I am not one for roughing it.  Not that I live in the lap of luxury or am a real high maintenance sort of girl, but I like a shower every day, I'm not a big fan of insect life, and I like to eat what I want to eat when I want to eat it.

Congo was not my dream vacation.

Brian went to Congo by himself when we adopted Haven.  I didn't have enough leave days to go with him, plus we weren't sure how Grace would do with no parents at home, and we didn't really know how long the trip would be.  It turned out to be just 11 days.  When Brian got home he said it was he like being on the worst camping trip you could ever imagine....but he couldn't wait to go back. 

And neither could I.  So when we decided we would be adopting 2 babies at once we knew that we would both have to travel.  And right away I starting making lists and plans.  I was packed and ready weeks in advance.  My big plan was to travel at Christmas.  The DRC courts had other plans.  One of boys was ready to go and one was not.  So we waited.  And with each new family that made the trip to Congo, the trip got longer.  By the time it got to be our turn to travel the trip looked like it was going to be around six weeks long.  Six weeks away from Grace and Haven.  Six weeks with no pay check.  Six weeks on "the worst camping trip you could ever imagine". 

Holy Jamoly, I started to panic.  All of sudden I did not want to go on this trip.  But I desperately wanted my boys to be home.  They were both about a month old when we got their referrals and now suddenly they weren't little babies anymore.  They were about to be toddlers.  They had both had cases of malaria.  They were growing up without me. 

So then it all happens like a tornado. You get the call from our director and she says be on a plane by Saturday, your appointment is Tuesday, don't miss your appointment.  Hurry, hurry, hurry.  And then once you are there....wait.........

I don't know how the plan was hatched, but just a day before we had to finalize our flights we decided that Brian would travel by himself to DRC for a very short trip to turn in our first set of paperwork and be interviewed by the US embassy.  I think we were the first family to do the two trip option.  So he flew in on Sunday and flew back out on Tuesday.  He got to see the boys.  And then he had to leave the boys.  So.Very.Hard.

When he got home we waited for the boys US visas to be issued.  Once they were ready we would go back to Kinshasa and wait for about 2 weeks for one last document that has to be issued by the Congolese government.  Piece of cake.  Two weeks in DRC.  I could do 2 weeks, right. 

Brian's first trip to Kinshasa and his first moment with Manny.

JoJo is really checking him out--"Are you my daddy?"

He is still a great sleeper.  Brian said it was at least 100 degrees in the foster families home that day.

Yep, he's hitting the Fanta bottle already.  Manny still goes wild when he sees a glass bottle. 

Be sure to stay tuned for Part II.