Miss·Elaine·eous: 6 months

Considering that my last post was about a Christmas party and we’re now deep in 2012 and Valentines has come and gone, I should probably step up my game on here.

Elaine is well past her 6 month mark and I breathed a sigh of relief when that milestone whizzed by.  She can now wear sunscreen, eat food, and take malaria meds.  Somehow I feel like some of the pressure of keeping her alive is off of me, but at the same time I’m also more exhausted than I have ever been.

As I type this she’s sitting on a mat beside me, singing to a throw pillow with a big cheesy grin on her face.  It doesn’t take much to entertain this little ham.

This past month has been one of the more difficult ones for me.  Trying to figure out sleeping routines, solid food, and mobility.  This girl can m-o-v-e.  As frustrating and sleep-depriving as this past month has been, it’s also been one of my favorites.  She balances her absolutely terrible nighttime routine with being a gregarious, lovable, easy-going baby during the day.  If she’s awake and not crying she always has this huge cheeseball smile on her face and I love it.  I mean, how can you not?

Ethiopians love her and her gummy grins just egg them on.  If I go to the grocery store or a restaurant it’s not rare to have her whisked away and oogled over in the kitchen or backroom.  Sometimes they ask, but most of the time she is just taken.  I’m not gonna lie, I’ve even gone to church just to have a break from Elaine because I know she will removed from my arms the minute I walk through the door.  I often have to hunt her down when I’m trying to leave somewhere as she’s usually up to no good with one of her loyal fans.  As much as I love her ability to go to others so well, I also love that Ben and I are her favorites.  She can pick us out in a crowd and she squeals with excitement when our eyes meet.  Too much cheese?  Ok.  Moving on.

This month has marked all kinds of milestones that I have completely neglected to write down anywhere and swore I’d remember…but have already forgotten.

She has started eating food and, surprise, surprise, she’s a fan.  I could go on and on about my love affair with making baby food, but I’ll hold off for now.  Surprisingly she loves zucchini, squash, and green beans, and isn’t really a fan of bananas or avocados (which we have coming out of our ears over here).

Elaine has also mastered the art of sitting and can now pull herself up to a sitting position.  After her nap I can usually hear her talking to herself and when I go in she’s sitting up flipping through pages in one of her books.  This little lady is 6 months going on 30.

She has also become a pro at crawling backwards, and has started going forward just a bit.  Yesterday she was showing off by pulling herself up to a wobbly standing position…without any help.  Slow down, woman!  I was enjoying the immobile stage.  If she’s like her dad, she’ll be walking in a few months.  Now that is a scary thought.

At the risk of being redundant, these moments are just flying by.  These have been the hardest and best days.  I have never felt as unprepared for any role in life as I have for motherhood.  I have a degree in Child Development.  I majored in babies.  But I can’t remember a single thing when it relates to my own.  The majority of the time I feel like I have absolutely no earthly idea what I’m doing.  I don’t know if these are normal feelings or if they are exacerbated by the fact that I’m figuring this whole thing out in the middle of a third world country, a billion miles away from my family and the closest Target.

But somehow in the midst of all these feelings, God has given me great joy in the fumbling.  I find myself on my knees much more often, praying over mosquito bites and fevers and tears. And I am so thankful that I’m not doing this alone.

And a few more photos from the past month or so…

Mac Love

 

Telling a very animated story to cousin David’s picture.

Ebenezer Grace

Down the dusty street from my house is a little orphanage that my friend, Rachel and her husband dreamed up and started, Ebenezer Grace Children’s Home.  Just 5 minutes down the road from our home live 16 of the cutest little kids you will ever see who have, for one reason or another, been orphaned or abandoned.

I wrote about one of the little girls, Yirgalem, a few months back.  When I first met her she was a dirty, bruised, and helpless newborn- found in the trash in a town not far from here.  Flash forward 8 months or so and when you walk into Ebenezer Grace you see a strong, healthy, beautiful baby girl.  And those cheeks….my goodness, those cheeks.  They were made for squeezing and smooching on.  I couldn’t help but think about how much her life has changed.  Adoption is an incredible thing and even though she does not have parents, she has been adopted into the Ebeneezer family and her life will be drastically different because of it.

Over Ethiopian Christmas a few of my friends and I decided to host a little party for these kids. In the craziness of the season the planning got sidetracked and the details were thrown together at the last minute.  As I drove up I did not have high expectation for this little event that at one point had sounded like a good idea, but had kind of fizzled in my mind.

But I should have known better.

Just walking up to the house I was smothered with hugs and squeals.  We didn’t have to bring one activity or treat and they still would have been completely thrilled.  But once the party really got started they were over the moon.   There was popcorn stringing, ornament making, face painting, kite flying, cookie decorating and lots of laughing and singing and running and being crazy.  I baked some old-school clay ornaments for them to decorate and hang on their tree and they turned out so cute.  Even the house mamas got in on the action.

I also got to man the face painting station.  I am not an artist, by any means, but they didn’t care one bit.  I loved sitting in the grass under a shade tree, painting flowers and balloons and lions on little brown faces.  I loved how still they would sit as I tickled their cheeks with my brush.  How they would giggle shyly as I showed them their reflection in the broken mirror- and then how they would steal glances throughout the party, just to remember how pretty they looked. I loved how the onlookers would ooh and ahh and say “betam konjono!” and rave about how beautiful my current customer looked.  I loved seeing their grin spread across their face in pride.  It’s just face paint, I know, but I loved that they felt adored and beautiful at that moment.

As I was sitting there I was wishing that I could go back and paint over every bad memory in their past and steal the hurt and fear and replace it with the joy that they felt sitting under the tree, paintbrush on cheek.  If only it were that easy.  I cannot even begin to understand the feelings tied to being orphaned.  I am so thankful that God has woven the lives of these children into Ebenezer Grace…and woven my life into their stories as well.

Looking for a project to support in 2012?  They are just too cute to ignore, don’t you think?

Ellie’s 2nd Christmas & Other Celebrations

Our lucky girl has already celebrated 2 official Christmases and one New Year’s day in her first 4 months of life.  December/January is packed full of festivities.  Here in Ethiopia Christmas is celebrated according to the Orthodox calendar on January 7.  (We’re also only in the year 2004- so technically Elaine is -8 and Ben and I are still in our teens- well maybe not technically, but still, how strange is that?)

So we celebrated the start of 2012 and Christmas 2004 all in one week.  Who needs time machines when you live in Ethiopia?

For New Years we had some North Carolina friends, the Posts, from Addis come down for the weekend.  It was relaxing and refreshing and a great way to start the year.  They were so patient as we badgered them with parenting questions.  Their kids are so well behaved- and cute to boot.  We tried to soak up all their advice.  Meanwhile Elaine was thoroughly doted on by their daughter Kiki.

The Post fam

Hike up Mount Tabor over Lake Hawassa

Elaine also got to meet her little boyfriend, Levi Hall.  Laura and Brian Hall live in Langano, about an hour up the road from us.  Laura and I were due with our babies the same week and shared pregnancy notes over here.  Levis is the cutest little thing.

After the New Year’s celebration, we hopped right into Ethiopian Christmas.  We got to celebrate with two great families- the Grays that live in Soddo (where my grandparents lived many, many years ago) and the Swarts that live down on the Omo River near Kenya.  We had 6 adults and 6 kids running around the house- never a dull moment.  Elaine loved the excitement and even got her first mouthful of hamburger (whoops) and had her giraffe stolen by a monkey. TIA.  Ben and I don’t get a lot of time with people around our age and it was so nice to just relax and laugh and speak as fast as we wanted to.

Grilling out with the gang

We also got to celebrate with our co-workers and neighbors at two different gibshas (feasts).  The meals were full of doro watt, dulet (goat intestines) and tripe (more innards).  My stomach does not get along with other stomachs very well.  But the doro watt (spicy chicken stew) I love!  Elaine got passed around and loved on and was on cloud 9.

The men and the kids…lots of kids!

My sweet friends Liya and Tsehay and our babies.

Sometimes I’m just blown away by the community God has lavished on us.  Who knew that out here in the middle of Ethiopia we would find such good friends.  As a new mom I am so aware of how lonely this journey could be out here- And I’m so, so thankful for the women that have come alongside me for this season.  Seriously.  It blows me away.

Happy New Years, Friends (a wee bit late).  Love from Ethiopia!

 

Miss·Elaine·eous: 5 months

Over breakfast Ben and I were marveling that Elaine is only 5 months old.  It feels like we’ve had her in our lives for ages.  She is the sweetest thing around and we are completely taken by her.  I feel like a stuck record when I say she is changing so stinkin’ much.  Especially right now.  Everyday we’re obsessed with her latest expression, sound effect, or trick.  We think she’s pretty brilliant…genius even;)

A little look into her latest quirks and talents…

She sucks her big toe like there is no tomorrow.

She can sit up all on her own.

Rolling over is a piece of cake.

She can beatbox like no otha.

She is ticklish like her mamma.  And her laugh makes us crack up every time.

She loves the wind and sticks her tongue out and belly laughs when it hits her.

She loves to pull on macs ears, eyes, whiskers..whatever she can get ahold of. (and he takes it like a champ)

Bath time is a big messy, splashy, event…and she loves it.

Ahh, are all babies this cute?  Here are a few shots of her latest month of life…

Parenting just gets better and better.  Those early months are great, don’t get me wrong, but there is something so relieving about getting past that newborn, fragile, what-the-heck-are-we-doing stage.  We can just take a breath and enjoy her- and celebrate the fact that we have kept her alive for five whole months!!  Hallelujah!

Christmas in (H)awassa

When we moved to Awassa it was just that- “Awassa”.  But now (and by now I mean the last few years-we’re a little slow) the thing to do it change the name and/or spelling of towns and cities back to their pre-communism name.  Thus we should now be “Hawassa”.  It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks- especially when that trick is a silent “H”.  So we vacillate between Awassa and Hawassa.  But it’s the same place.  So bear with our fickleness.

Anywhoo.  Christmas in Awassa.  It was a first.  Not my first in Ethiopia.  I think it was my 14th?  Maybe?  Something like that.  My 17th or 18th in Africa.  But my 1st in Awassa and my 2nd this far away from family.

We really celebrated on Christmas Eve.  In the morning, Ben got a call that we had packages to pick up from the post office.  A Christmas Eve miracle.  And one of the reasons it’s nice that Ethiopians celebrate on the 7th of January and not on the 25th of December- the post office was open!  So Ben went and picked them up and put them under the tree.  Two USPS red, white, and blue boxes nestled under the tree.  It was beautiful.  Really, it was.  My mom and dad had also brought us Christmas gifts when they visited so they were under the tree too.  We felt so incredibly loved…and remembered.  It was perfect.

For Christmas Eve dinner we went over to celebrate with our friends at the Helimission compound.  We had an American/ Swiss/ German/ Canadian feast.  It was delicious.

And there were plenty of kids to entertain and love on Elaine.

Can you tell her dad dressed her?  Those shoes….

We spent the afternoon relaxing with friends and the kids even got to go on a donkey ride.

The big kids got a ride too

Christmas Eve night we read Twas the Night Before Christmas to Elaine and put her to bed while we watched White Christmas (my all-time fave) and sipped on apple cider (ok, maybe it was really hot apple juice, but we pretend).

Christmas day was really low key.  We spent the morning making and eating a delicious breakfast, reading the Christmas story and opening our gifts.  It was exciting and relaxing and fun and anticlimactic all at the same time.

In the afternoon we went to a Christmas service with our fellowship group.  Elaine got all dressed up in her beautiful Christmas dress that a friend made for her.

We also got to skype with our families.  I don’t know if this technology makes it easier or harder to be so far away.  99% of the time it makes it easier, but seeing everyone together, actually touching each other- not just looking at each other through a computer screen, with a big, glowy tree in the background and blocks of cheddar cheese and turkey sandwiches in hand did make us incredibly homesick.  (Ok, they didn’t actually have turkey sandwiches and blocks of cheddar cheese- that would have just been mean.  but you get the point?)

Overall it was a great Christmas…just the three of us.  Celebrating the birth of a King that came into the world in a place that probably looked pretty similar to what most of Ethiopia looks like today.  Animals everywhere, dirt, dust, inadequate healthcare, oppression, no running water (if you’ve delivered a baby, the no running water thing is especially painful to think about).  Even I left this place to have my baby.  And as wonderful as I think Elaine is- she is no King of Kings.  And God sent His son here…for us.  The undeserving.  The depth and pain of that sacrifice was especially evident to me this year.

It’s now January 4th and Christmas is long over and I’m just now getting around to posting this.  Ethiopian Christmas is this weekend- so if you think about it, I’m actually ahead of the game.  We’re looking forward to spending the weekend with friends and celebrating Christmas all over again…this time with a lot less cookies and a lot more injera ba wat.

Merry Christmas from the Taylors!

Tis the season

This past weekend, in the absence of all things Christmas, I decided to host a Ladies Christmas tea.

It was so much fun celebrating with people from all over the world…Ethiopia, India, America, Canada, Sweden…and I’m probably forgetting a few.  It was fun to hear how each culture celebrates this holiday.  We all feel especially far from home at this time of year.

Ben helped me whip up some Christmas goodies to share.  Not so easy to do out here in the middle of a sugar shortage.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

It was a special time with some special people.

While we were having our little tea party, Ben and Elaine were doing their own thing…which looked a lot like this:

She’s is definitely a daddy’s girl.  And his identical twin.  I’m finally starting to see what everyone has said since the day she was born.

This week the Hawassa gang also got together to make Christmas cookies.  We went over to our friend, Gitte’s home to make all kinds of Danish treats that I can’t even try to spell or pronounce.  (I was going to make up fancy names, but then I realized my Danish cousins, Erin and Niels, would totally call my bluff.)  They were little vanilla buttery ring things and gingersnap-esque things.  Know what I’m talking about Erin?  So delicious.

 And, if we weren’t getting a Christmas cookie overload already, I decided to make and decorate gingerbread men with some of the kids we know.  Their mom, one of my good friends, has been under the weather and stuck in bed for quite a few weeks and I thought the kids could use the distraction.  And let’s be honest, gingerbread men are just fun.  A big thanks to my friends Rachel and Charlotte for actually doing most of the work:)

And that’s a little bit of what the pre-Christmas activities have looked like around here.  Ben and I have been kind of down this season.  Just missing home I guess.  Kind of ready for it to be over with and for the new year to start.  How’s that for a very un-Christmasy attitude.

And on that note…Merry Christmas!  I hope it’s a cold, snowy, white one, surrounded by all the people you love…oh man that sounds nice.

Making Christmas

It’s easy to forget that Christmas is coming up out here in Ethiopia.  There’s no chill in the air (to say the least) or Christmas parties to go to.  No holiday shopping frenzy or familiar tunes on the radio.  I’m guessing it would be entirely possible to get to January 1st out here and realize you completely missed Christmas.  It doesn’t help that Ethiopians don’t celebrate Christmas until January 7th.  And even then it’s not as big of a deal as Easter and some of the other holidays.

Growing up my mom always made the holidays special.  We had a beautiful tree.  Believed in Santa.  Made Christmas cookies out the wazoo.  Our house even smelled like Christmas during the holidays.  Now, as a wife and mom living back in Ethiopia, I’m realizing what a feat that really was.  There are no stores to run to for lights, no fun ingredients to make beautiful Christmas cookies, no pageants or Christmas concerts to go to.  It’s either a made-from-scratch Christmas or no Christmas at all.

This year Ben, Elaine, and I are celebrating our first Christmas on our own in Ethiopia.  Our first year out here we went back to the US for my sister’s wedding and celebrated Christmas on that side of the ocean.  Last year we had an epic Christmas in the Maasai Mara while on safari in Kenya with our closest friends from UNC.  This year it’s just the three of us- and it’s fun, and lonely, and exciting, and peaceful- all wrapped up in one.

I’m married to Mr. Christmas, so that takes some of the pressure off me.  He actually spent part of Saturday morning making a garland for our front porch from some shrubs from the office.  Yes.  Indeed he did.  I can’t make fun of him, because I loved it….and I also spent my morning making a wreath from those same shrubs.  We’re quite a pair.

We have our supermarket tree up.  Decked with African ornaments from our travels…and whatever else we make or find to hang on a tree.  We’ve also started Elaine’s Christmas ornament collection. Growing up, my parents got my sister and I a new ornament each year from their travels or a major event that happened or a hobby we had (like the little wooden girl with a plate full of food. yup. my favorite hobby was food. no joke).  When we moved out of the house and had our own trees, we were fully stocked with a beautiful collection to hang.  It takes ages to hang them, much to Ben’s dismay, because I have to tell the story behind every single one.  He is a very patient man.  Well we didn’t lug those across the ocean, so he lucked out this year.  Anyways…we started Elaine’s collection.  A beautiful corn husk angel that Ben picked up in Uganda.

One of my favorite parts of Christmas this year has been our Advent study.  I’ll be honest.  I wanted to do the whole Advent thing because I thought it would make it feel more like Christmas.  But in the midst of my selfishness, God decided to do something beautiful.  He’s good like that.  This is the first year that I’ve really studied what Advent means.  The anticipation has been building- not just for Christmas, like I had intended, but of the coming of Christ.  And not just the warm and fuzzy image of a little baby Jesus asleep in a manger, but the whole glorious and powerful and earth-shaking idea of Christ’s upcoming arrival.  Takes my breath away just thinking about it.

This Christmas will be different for sure.  Being this far away from family and friends leaves a very evident hole in our hearts during this time of year.  But we’re trying to embrace the empty space and turn it into something great…something that it probably was supposed to be in the first place.  Blank slates are good, right?  Remind me of all of this on Christmas day when we’re skyping with our family and watching them open presents and eat turkey and being merry together a million miles away.

What could be better than celebrating out first Christmas as a family of 3 in the motherland?  Well I can actually think of a few things, but that’s besides the point.  What I’m trying to tell myself is that it’s a good time to start new traditions and maybe focus a little more on what this whole season is really all about.

So here’s to our first Taylor family Christmas on this side of the ocean…

Melkam Genna! (Merry Christmas!)