A Hungry Caterpillar - Max's First Birthday

Max is ONE!

I cannot believe our Max is a year old. The past six (almost 7 months) have been a blur. We hosted a sweet little birthday for our Max. Here are some pictures. 

I saw the balloon and cake idea on Pinterest and it turned out really cute. 

The cake shaped like a caterpillar. 

We bought Max the small hard cover of The Hungry Caterpillar. 

The kids were able to take goodie bags of candy or decorate their cupcakes.

I really wanted to make the icing for the cupcakes from scratch (which I did), but we were not successful at getting the natural vegetable dyes to turn the green and red we needed (the colors turned out more like 'poopie' green and 'barbie' pink, yeah not cool.) So I ended having to buy the colored icing to put on the caterpillar and left the ones I made without dye. Max throughly enjoyed eating this sugary deliciousness and I was happy he didn't eat the awful fake colors found in colored icing. Oh, and if you are wondering....he definitely touched the fire :)

He was extremely gentle with his cupcake.

He enjoyed it very much.

Considering I started planning for this birthday party one week before the date, I think it turned out really great. Thank you for all our friends who came out and celebrated our sweet boy. 

Life as parents :)

I must admit, I feel bad about not updating on Max for a month and a 1/2, but truth is we have been enjoying family time. Anthony and I have been on cloud nine, but can you blame us? Look at his sweet face. Every feature is perfect. His round almond shaped eyes which glisten with a hint of green when the sunshine finds them. And those eye lashes, lashes grown women pay top dollar so they can bat their eyes to handsome men. His lips are little mounds, which makes for the sweetest pouty face...don't trip on your lip honey :). His nose is as cute as a button, but my favorite, which I will miss the most, is his sweet toothless smile.

In the past month and a half, Max has learned SO much. When you say "yay Max" he claps away (this boy thrives from words of affirmation.) He shakes his head every time we say no; it is cute, but a bit frustrating when I say "no" to something and he thinks it is funny and shakes his head. We have to get creative when we are trying to say no. For example, instead of saying no we have to say stop, don't, enough and any other way to convey a "no." I think it is a good thing, it leads me to think creatively and stay away from the negative "no." Max has just recently (3 days ago) started rolling over from belly to back and is now trying to roll from back to belly, but usually gets stuck laying on his side. We are teaching him to wave and play peek-a-boo. I just love this sweet picture below.

Parenthood is great. In the past week, we have been able to sleep through the night. He goes to sleep at 8:30 p.m. and wakes up at 7:30 a.m. we are praying it continues. But he has been teething, a girl can dream, but fear this sleeping through the night will soon cease and we will be waking up often through the night. This past Friday was our very first time going on a date since May (thank you Bloom's). And on Saturday Max went to his first birthday party (happy birthday sweet Maddie) and at night we went to The Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant here in Orlando. It was a great time with great friends. Max tried injera and he loved it even the spice, but then he rubbed his mouth and got some of the spice in his eyes and he was not a happy camper. 

Max first birthday party :) 

First time sitting in a high chair. His face is priceless.

Beef fir fir and Chicken Doro wat.

Shital, Anthony and Jude getting ready to eat delicious Ethiopian food.

Auntie Kimberly with Max.

The sweet birthday girl, Grace, loving on Max.

First time meeting Ms. Amanda.

I will do my best to keep everyone in the loop more often than every month and a half. We love you all and thanks for reading! :)

Change

Waking up during the night has never been a concern; typically I'm the type of person who waits as long as possible to get up to use the bathroom. I am pretty sure when my head hits the pillow I die until my alarm goes off which of course is set thirty minutes before I have to wake up so I can lay in bed as long as possible. Now-a-days I wake up various times during the night and I'm usually up before my alarm, which I never turned off, rings. I even have a routine I follow every night and every morning. To make my life easier I leave the bottles, formula and water bottle (because we can’t use tap water) by my bed side. As soon as I hear Max start to wiggle or make a noise, I look at my clock to make sure it's around his feeding time and I start making the bottles. I do this in the dark (that's the laziness still wanting to stay alive) sometimes missing the small bottle opening, which really isn’t small at all, but in the darkness it feels like I am pouring powder through the eye of a needle. I usually get water or formula all over myself. One day, I had gone about my own business eating breakfast, talking with people because you all know I do that well, went upstairs and when I looked in the mirror I had dried up formula powder on my cheek and my eyebrow. I was so embarrassed. Things have definitely changed in the last few weeks. I genuinely don’t know how single mothers do it, more power to them, because I definitely can’t do this mother thing alone. During the first week Anthony was here he would make the bottles for Max while I soothed him and calmed him down. It has been difficult to do it all alone.

The biggest change these last few weeks has been not waking up next to Anthony. I miss seeing his face every morning when I wake up. But the hardest part is being alone in a new place, as a new mom without my  best friend. Our third wedding anniversary has come and gone. It was by far the most difficult day of this trip. Just when I thought I loved Anthony as much as I could imagine, Max came into our lives. What a wonderful three year anniversary this gift has been for us. Anthony is an incredible man. I'm not an easy person to love by any means and it is effortless for Anthony. I even struggle loving myself at times. So to Anthony, thank you for loving me unconditionally and for believing in me. You have loved me even when I didn't love myself and for that I am so thankful. You are my everything. The love I feel for you is one that moves mountains and I know Max will always have love from the best daddy in the world. I love you!! 

Day 5: Thank you ladies....you know who you are :)

Last night was  a difficult night for Anthony and I. Max had a rough few hours, but he finally calmed down after I rocked him to sleep. We tried everything for 2 hours; rocking, changing, feeding, playing, laying in his crib and nothing worked. At one point I felt like an awful mother, as if God had forgotten to give me the gift of mothering. Once we finally got him to settle down, I definitely felt overwhelmed and cried and cried and cried. Anthony and I prayed and I felt better, much better. Then today I received text messages from 5 wonderful women who lifted me up with such encouraging words. It really was a blessing. So ladies, thank you for those kind words. It is hard to be here far from all of your support, but I still felt the love thousands of miles away. I have a lot more to type, but haven’t edited and typed some of our day today. I will get to it tomorrow. Here are a few more pictures.

Feeding this sweet boy. Anthony has been the most amazing husband and father through this process, blessed to be married to this man.

Got out into the market in Addis. It was great!

Day 2: We meet Max Elias

The transition house is beautiful for a lack of better word. It has an open floor concept in all of its three grandiose levels with a gorgeous open wooden staircase allowing you to see all the way to the bottom from every floor and small shimmering chandeliers in all floors. It is a house many would desire in the United States. The perfect size living space to keep all their extravagant furniture which guest can’t even sit on and the perfect size bedrooms which no child would have to share. But instead, this house is simple only housing necessities. It has two couches with a t.v so tiny it requires binoculars to watch from the kitchen and a small dining room table with about six to eight chairs. The upstairs living room has about 16 beds in which all the older children sleep in and to the right of the house is an open air hallway with two rooms, one a closet and the other one a baby room housing six cribs with six babies. Here is where we first laid eyes on our sweet Max.

In the past 2 and ½ months I have imagined meeting him over and over again. I imagined my self-crying tears of joy and falling on my knees (haha, I know I am so dramatic sometimes.) I had also imagined not recognizing him, which actually led me to saving his picture as my screen saver for both my phone and laptop. Then I had the occasional thought of him crying or not wanting me to hold him, but none of those things happened. Instead, when we laid eyes on each other we smiled. He had such a huge smile on his face, almost as if he knew I was his mother and Anthony his father.

I know you are all wondering what Max is like, well; he is nothing less than amazing. He has the most contagious giggle and extremely ticklish. He loves to smile and look at me no mater where I am in the room. He seems very healthy and strong despite his past. His eye movement is intact and he loves attention. He is much bigger than the pictures we saw of him from March and is wearing size 6 to 9 months right now. He just discovered his hands today; it was so awesome to see him completely mesmerized by his hands and fingers. He has the softest skin and has the cutest little nose, which oddly enough resembles mine. But then again I am biased because he is my son. We can let you all be the judge of his cuteness.

Since meeting him this morning Anthony and I have fed him, changed him, taken a nap, ridden in a car (which requires no car seat), taken a walk, gone to lunch, laughed when we couldn’t figure why on earth he was crying, and finally put him to bed. Our first 12 hours with our son have come and gone in a blink of an eye. We are no longer just Kay and Anthony, we are momma and daddy, pretty scary stuff (there were some points today when Anthony and I would look at each other start laughing and say, “holy crap, we are parents.” )So crazy!

Overall today has been a wonderful day. We went to church with Dereje and the older kids in the house. Both of our hands being held by children we had only met an hour before. We listened to a worship and message in Amharic only understanding the words: amen, hallelujah, and Yesu Christo (Jesus Christ incase you need translation J .) The service focused on Matthew 6:20-25 and a few verses from John 5 & 6, which is no coincidence. Even though we didn’t understand a single word being able to read those verses made it crystal clear that this adoption is not an accident and there is no need for neither on of us to worry. God is in full control and He provides when you relinquish all to follow His plan.

Seriously, thank you all who read this blog. Thank you all for your love, prayers and support. Without it all, we wouldn’t be here.