Sunday, July 31, 2011

Ben Coming home from Ethiopia- Post 1

Written May 25, 2011

After our embassy approval to travel that we received on May 9th, things got a little frazzled at our house. Although I had spent a lot of time preparing for Ben after we had thought we had passed court in December, I had to put in on the shelf for a long time for sanity reasons. Looking at and thinking about things just made the uncertainty more difficult to handle. So in the flurry of things, I tried to tie up our life as a family of 3. This involved some silly little projects (such as updating all photo albums to be current up to the day) and getting Lucas’ 3 year old pictures taken. We also needed to buy some specifics for Ben for his development stage and prepare other supplies for the trip itself. I went through his clothes for the 3rd time to get ready for a big baby as well.

On the Monday before travel, Lucas was packed into the car early in the morning to make his accent to Iowa to be dropped off with my Dad and step Mom. He was excited to spend time with his Grandpa so this helped with the transition and no crying on his part. There was of course, a few misty-eyed moments on my part because it means my “baby” that I had waited for and obsessed about for so long is now my big boy and a new little baby is coming. Lucas talks about baby Ben, but we don’t think he has a concept for just what this means in his life. For the first time, he will have to share Mom’s attention.

Once Lucas left with my Dad, I had some Indian food with my best friend from high school in Des Moines and headed to Perry to spend the evening preparing Mom’s packing stuff and chatting with Randy. I had been awake so long the night before that I was able to get some good rest which was much needed. Mom and I left early in the morning with my Mazda 5 stuffed with pushy toys, a double stroller we had been storing there, and my Mom bound for Africa.

I’m very glad that I gave myself an extra prep day because I ended up using every piece of it. We had a packing party and uploaded Ben’s video of pictures to the internet. We ate. We spent Monday at Walmart on all the last minute things. We watched the Biggest Loser finale which is obviously super important…. And there was champagne. Ted and I were both awake at 4:30am just due to nerves and he kissed me goodbye on his way out the door to the hospital.

It was officially Mom and me and an empty house that we were ready to leave!

I didn't take enough pictures of the packing, but I did need to brag just a little bit about my level of organization :-)


Tying up the loose ends

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