The six-month mark

Hi all:
It has been great reading your posts—and seeing the twins. 21 pounds. Ethiopian children are just big, I guess. Denbele is 30 pounds! We have another Ethiopian friend here who is 20 months and was brought home as an infant and she is bigger than Denbele.
Denbele loved her first holiday here, had a blast lighting the Hanukkah candles (and crumbling the unlit ones) and enjoyed her Christmas with Grandma and New Year's celebration with friends. Plus, she totally ignored the buffet table to play with her sister and the neighborhood kids, which was huge for her. We had our last post=placement visit and now we begin our re-adoption, which, in New York, is a nightmare process with as much paperwork and headache as the dossier itself. But this is my chore for the next few months. In the mean time, here are some pictures from the holidays. I love this blog. Keep posting, all.

XX
Gayle


Willa and Denbele lighting the candles


Denbele on her second birthday in November


Denbele practices her jumping skills.

A few more photos because i couldn't attach them all to the email with the update...

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Happy New Year!

Since we are way overdue in making our first post, we figured it's a new year so we need to get off to a good start.  We can hardly believe that we have been home with Meaza and Abu for nearly 6 months!  The time has absolutely flown by but we have been having loads of fun.
 
The kids are doing great.  They turned a year old the day before Thanksgiving.  They have both grown so much since arriving home.  At a doctor's appointment a couple weeks ago, Meaza weighed 21.6 lbs and Abu weighed 20.8.  Yep, that is not a typo.  Meaza outweighs her brother by nearly a pound!  What he doesn't have in weight, he makes up for in length because he is 2 inches longer than she is. They were both a little slow to start crawling but now Meaza is getting close to walking.  Over the holidays, she manipulated her grandparents, aunts, cousins, etc. to escort her on many walks wherever she wanted to cruise.  Abu has learned to pull himself up to a standing position and loves to stand for long stretches but hasn't quite mastered the walking.

They are both amazingly happy almost all the time.  They often entertain each other, us and pretty much everyone they meet.  Abu has a wonderful belly laugh and it's not uncommon to hear him laughing at something that Meaza is doing.  Abu is laid back, sweet and affectionate.  He easily gives kisses and we even see him spontaneously kissing Meaza while they are playing -- very cute!  Meaza is determined, fearless and wants to be in charge.  She loves attention and we think that she will be the class clown when she gets to school.
 
While they are non-stop when they are awake, we are very lucky that they sleep well at night and usually take two naps a day.  The transition for us was a little challenging and we were always exhausted by the time they went to bed each night.  The fall was extra tough because I went back to work for a couple months and John stayed home with the kids.  My return to work was temporary and i have now resigned from my job and will be staying home with the kids for the next couple years.  While we're still pretty darn tired every night, we at least now feel like we are in a better place and we can really focus on Abu and Meaza and being a family.  
 
We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and we wish you a very happy new year!
 
Elizabeth (and John)
 

We took Deg skiing. Great time was had by all.