Random updates

• Around town: In the last two weeks we've done a lot of exploring around the Philly area. Part of it is for the boys, to provide them with new experiences, and part of it is for me, to get to know our new home. We have gone to the John Heinz wildlife refuge, the Philadelphia zoo, Ridley Creek state park, the Schuylkill environmental center and the car museum. We've also explored lots of the playgrounds and libraries nearby. I love that the boys like getting in the car and going places. I love that they like ponds with frogs and turtles and birds. I really enjoy being outdoors and I'm trying to nurture that in them, too. They still get tired quickly - you don't get much chance to build endurance in the tiny walled courtyard of an orphanage - but they're getting stronger every day. They walked half a mile investigating frog ponds in NW Philly and rode their bikes for a mile with their Maryland cousins at Ridley Creek.

• New skills: D has learned to get himself on his bike, get himself moving, pedal, brake and turn. A seems ready to take the training wheels off, but when he tried it he didn't like it at all, so they're back on. Both boys LOVE their swimming lessons. On the first day A swam the width of the pool wearing a floatie, with no help from the teacher. A has also learned to pump on the swing. We are so proud of both of them, and they are proud of themselves.

• Language: Six weeks in, we have switched to using mostly English with a small collection of Amharic phrases thrown in. We're very conscious of how tenuous the connection to Ethiopia already is, so we're making sure to take the boys to Ethiopian restaurants and to the Ethiopian church, and to read books set in Ethiopia. I've found a new Amharic tutor. So far I met with him once and it went well. He and I read a children's book in Amharic at the library while the kids were occupied with story time, then they wandered in and out of the lesson, interested, but not ready to commit themselves. 

• Grief: I realize now that on some level I expected grief over the loss of everything familiar to look more like, well, grief over the loss of everything familiar.  But mostly it has looked like whining (one of the boys has days where he whines from morning until night). And a child crawling on his hands and knees on the sidewalk wailing for his family would be heartbreaking. But change the scenario so he is wailing for TACOS (loudly and with a two-block walk still ahead of us) and it becomes - I feel so bad for saying this - kind of amusing.

• Cuteness: When A likes something, instead of "I like..." he says, "My name is..." as in "My name is taco!" D, almost every night as he is going to sleep says, Ke mommy gar. Hulu gize ke mommy gar. - "With mommy. Always with mommy." (Melt). Both boys love acting out feeling words. We'll say, "happy," "sad," "confused," "angry," "scared" and they will give us the cutest faces (though after a while A just ends up looking constipated).

• Burji qonjo now?: We have some large framed photos of Burji on the wall and from the start the kids have asked us Burji qonjo now? - "Is Burji pretty?" At first we always answered by describing how beautiful Burji is, with its mountains and farmland, but the boys would vehemently disagree and say it was ugly and dirty. We asked our social worker and she suggested that maybe the boys were afraid that if we liked Burji so much we would send them back there. We followed her advice and now we say that Burji is very beautiful, and it used to be their home, but now their home is with us here in America. That seems to have worked and now the boys are agreeing that Burji is indeed qonjo.