Brotherly love

Saturday night Biniam was crying really hard because we'd had to take a choking hazard away from him. All of a sudden Yosef sidled up to him and starting rubbing Biniam's back, to comfort him. Biniam instantly stopped crying, turned and gave Yosef this HUGE hug, which Yosef returned, and they stood there hugging and giggling.

I get so excited to see the bonds my kids have with one another!

Talkin' 'bout a revolution

I didn't want today to go by without acknowleding that it's World AIDS Day. Up until recently I'd never known of anyone personally with AIDS (that was not a celebrity) and would never have imagined that it could ever touch my life--no matter how direct/indirectly--but we now have two sons whose birthmother is HIV-positive. Sadly we've never met her but we do know her full name, her situation and her heart-wrenching story, perhaps a little unusual to have so much background information on internationally adopted babies. What a blessing and gift.

It is ultimately because of AIDS that this woman was unable to keep Yosef and Biniam for longer than the month and a half that she did. I wish their family's tragic story was an exception or an example of a really extreme situation. Unfortunately it's life as usual in many parts of the world, including Ethiopia.

HIV and AIDS have been off the media's radar screen in the US for awhile now, in large part because we are blessed by having access to amazing drugs that have led to HIV now being classified as simply a "chronic, manageable disease" as opposed to a fatal one. HIV-positive people who take the medications can lead long and fulfilling lives now.

But in other parts of the world these special drugs are not available. 6,000 new children are orphaned every day by this disease world-wide. Many, many children are also living with the disease themselves, and a lot of those kids are orphans, too. Basically, it is an understatement to say that AIDS is a major, major problem and that the Western world truly needs to wake up, reach out and help (starting with myself of course.)

This is an excellent article, written by Richard Stearns, CEO of World Vision. I think that like so many other things, fighting this disease has to begin with our hearts being transformed, people like you and me coming to a place where we recognize the huge need for help and where we commit to meet that need. One easy way to do that is by sponsoring a child at AHOPE in Ethiopia or making a donation to them. This facility does an amazing work, taking in orphans with HIV. We visited back in February and it is a precious place, and the children there are even receiving the ARV medications.

It is also possible to adopt a child from Ethiopia with HIV now! It is so exciting as more and more families are adopting children who happen to be HIV-positive. Check out this blog to read about Erin, whose family just brought home a two year old girl from AHOPE. This blog belongs to a family traveling to bring home two sisters from Ethiopia, one of which is coming from AHOPE as well.

One of my favorite books of all time is There is No Me Without You, which was just recently written by a fellow adoptive mom with kids from Ethiopia. It is an EXCELLENT book on the subject of AIDS and the effect it's having in Ethiopia. I treasure this book as well because it is a precious glimpse into the lives of my kids. I really, really recommend reading this; I couldn't put it down and it is truly an eye opener.

There's an old song by Tracy Chapman that the kids (and I) love called "Talkin' Bout a Revolution." The lyrics describe the poor rising up to take their share and includes the line "finally the tables are starting to turn/talkin' bout a revolution". I just recently did some research and discovered that our sons' birth mother's name means, of all things, "revolution" in Amharic. This floored me because this adoption journey, trip to Africa, all of it has brought so much revolution about in our hearts. We remain changed because of it.

And my prayer is that many, many hearts (including ours!) will continue to be transformed and desire to see revolution come about in terms of loving our brothers and sisters and reaching out to help them. I would love to see the tables start to turn, one heart at a time, fighting the stigma of HIV and AIDS, fighting the horrible notion that it's a "disease of sinners", finding ways to reach other countries with treatment so families won't have to be torn apart. I think God is all about revolution, bringing change and transformation, "making all things new." So on World AIDS Day I pray He can use me to help in this way!

Monopoly woes

I was at WalMart this past weekend with my mom and they had some board games on sale. I picked up Monopoly and Life, with the hopes that Kevin would be willing to play them with me. In the past he has always grumbled about not liking Monopoly, so we've never played together.

Sunday afternoon we played and I won--by a landslide! Monday he went to work and researched Monopoly strategies (gotta love Wikipedia) and I have not won since. :( We played Monday night and then again last night. Last night it was his hotel on Marvin Gardens that did me in. (Bummer when you have no source of income except for passing "Go" because all of your properties are mortgaged.)

Let it be known that I WILL win again. I had some bad luck last night but I think my strategy has gotten better (I can read Wikipedia articles too as it turns out). When my mom and I would play, we played "nice." No crazy strategies to block people from getting a monopoly, etc. But when I play Kevin, it is war.

Thanksgiving in pictures

This was taken at 9:30 p.m., the night before we were due to leave for Grandma and Grandpa's house. Anna had been in bed for hours although apparently not asleep. She came out of her room wearing shoes with her PJ's! When I asked why she had shoes on, she said "So I can go bye bye to Grandma and Grandpa's house!"

Biniam and Yosef in the kitchen before Thanksgiving dinner. Realizing the flowers aren't the most manly backdrop but the boys are man enough to compensate. :) (Yosef latched onto that doll, which used to be mine, shortly after we got there and never wanted to put it down.)

Anna before dinner.

Biniam is such a happy little guy!

Grandma, Anna and Biniam watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Note that Anna is "taking pictures" of Rudolph with the new toy camera Grandma and Grandpa bought her. I don't know why but this picture cracks me up!

Biniam loves his grandpa--it is the cutest thing!

(It occurs to me that Yosef has the fewest pictures taken of him this time around. It just seems to happen, but not to worry, next time it'll probably be one of the other kiddos!)

Heldt Thanksgiving and updates

Our Thanksgiving was nice and relaxing, although the days leading up to it were not! I was still sick with the stomach flu, and trying to get stuff ready to go spend a few days at my parents' house is not easy when you don't feel well. Not to mention I had the dreaded glucose tolerance test Wednesday morning...10 oz. of horrible lemon lime in less than 5 minutes. (While at the lab I got a call from Kevin saying Biniam had thrown up that morning. Ugh. However, he ate his breakfast and was his usual crazy, energetic self so we took it to be a fluke--not so smart as you will soon see.)

Somehow though, Wednesday evening we ailing Heldts managed to have the car all packed up, the kids bathed and nestled happily into their carseats, and the house locked up. Kevin and I were midway to the car to climb in ourselves when it happened...Biniam threw up all over his freshly-bathed self and his carseat...

SO we got Anna and Yosef out of the car and inside (poor Anna was really traumatized by the whole experience) and put on a video for them. I gave Biniam another bath while poor Kevin tried cleaning up the carseat best he could. A long time later, we reloaded the kids in the car (this time we laid a towel over Biniam just in case) and FINALLY set off to my parents'. Luckily they only live an hour away. (Biniam was fine the rest of the trip, must have just been the tail end of the flu for him or something. What was not fine was how the car smelled. Or the way those carseats are designed to be the most difficult things to clean.)

Fortunately the time at my parents' was a lot of fun--it was our first Thanksgiving with Yosef and Biniam! Our time there included lots of stories being read, the kids got their usual wheelbarrow ride from Grandpa, and there was lots of food to be eaten. Biniam is a little "Grandpa's boy" and spent tons of time cuddling with my dad. It is so neat to see our sons bonding with extended family and friends and forming those relationships.

Random Heldt updates:

Yesterday Anna moved up to the next Sunday school class at church, which she liked. They are working on learning "Away in a Manger" to sing at church in December! I am so excited about this (I know, what a dork) as it's the first "performance" for any of our kids in anything. I can't wait to see Anna up there not singing with all the other little kids not singing, but looking cute as can be.

I am quite pleased that Seinfeld Season 7 is out--why do they wait so long to release each one? Don't they know it doesn't take an entire year to watch each season? (For us it probably doesn't even take a month!)

We are finally all healthy and somewhat back to normal (though much of my house is in shambles, yuck. I hate getting behind on housework.) I'm 28 weeks pregnant today and have not yet grasped the reality that I will have a baby within three months. I wonder when it will set in?

My poem

Roses are red, violets are blue,
I have three kids, each of them two....
and the stomach flu.

I think the highlight of my illness was, while Kevin was at work and I was kneeling in front of the toilet with Anna hovering next to me--no privacy with three toddlers!--Anna proceeded to say very matter of factly, "Don't throw up on my toes, Mommy." Thanks for the tip, Anna!

It has, overall, been a brutal last few weeks for the Heldt clan! Luckily I am about all better, which is good for a number of reasons, including the fact that I am getting stir crazy and tired of killing time watching the ridiculous TV!

The arbitrary (sort of) birthdate

For parents of internationally adopted children, it's very common to not know the exact birth date of your child. In Ethiopia specifically, birthdays are not culturally significant like they are here, so it is not uncommon for even non-orphans to not know their birthday.

We had to choose a birthdate for Yosef and Biniam, because the one that AAI assigned them was clearly wrong. When the boys' birth mom relinquished them in December of 2004, she put on the form that they were one month and 15 days old. So we decided to just count back from the date the form was dated, which put the boys' birthday at October 28, 2004.

We had initially hoped to give them a birthdate that was significant somehow--but had a hard time finding something, which I felt disappointed about. The other day though I resumed my quest to find something special about October 28, and lo and behold discovered that on October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Cleveland. Pretty amazing, huh? I think October 28 is the perfect day to celebrate the birth and gift of our sons Yosef and Biniam.

(They also share a birthday with Bill Gates.)

Some updates

Sorry my posts have been so sparse lately; this has been a brutal couple of weeks. Anna is potty-trained now however, which is awesome. It was relatively easy, because she's old enough to understand everything and hates to have an accident, so when presented with the choice of using the potty chair or going on the floor, she will choose the chair.

Last Thursday however, what I had assumed was a terrible diaper rash (and what had precipitated the potty training) had gotten much worse, lots of blisters, etc. (in spite of the fact that she hadn't worn a diaper in days) so that evening I opted to take Anna to see the doctor at Urgent Care--I didn't want to have to wait until the next day, or later, to see the pediatrician (honestly this rash was HORRIBLE) and this way Kevin could watch the boys. I had been frantically looking around online to see what her condition could possibly be and concluded that the only thing it could be was a skin infection called impetigo (common in little kids.) SO, we saw the doctor, who looked at the rash and said "This is odd" (must be a technical term they teach you in med school). He said he had no clue what it was (at least he's honest?) but to put hydrocortisone cream on it and see if it goes away. I told him I thought the rash was really nasty and asked point-blank about impetigo. No, he told me, impetigo would look different. Um, okay.

WELL, over the weekend it kept getting worse, spreading, just horrible. Poor Anna was in so much pain (the blisters hurt to the touch), especially when she'd have to sit down on the potty chair. I didn't want to go back to Urgent Care because the doctor is clueless so we just toughed it out. And I do mean "we"--it is AWFUL to see your kid in that much pain. Finally, yesterday, I got Anna in to see one of the pediatricians in the practice. He looked at one of her blisters for about a split second before saying, "That's impetigo."

GRRRRRRRR! "Dr. Mom" had been right all along. I told the pediatrician about the other doctor, but this guy just shook his head and said no, that guy was not a pediatrician, so sometimes they don't know. BUT, I remain annoyed because every time I've been at the Urgent Care there have been several children, often toddlers, waiting to see the doctor. Impetigo is pretty common and straighforward, and adults get it too, so I'm wondering why this guy just totally wrote it off, sentencing my kid to three extra days of pain (and a co-pay for a whole lot of nothing.) He should probably be familiar with the basics.

SO, Anna's on antibiotics, will no longer be contagious after tomorrow, and hopefully things will return to normal around here. Meanwhile Biniam, Anna and I are all getting over colds. We're having a little birthday party for the boys Friday night, I have my montly prenatal appointment that morning, and we have our final postplacement visit with a social worker tonight.

Which brings me to my next update, about the boys' readoption. Thankfully, FINALLY, a solution has been reached (and one that doesn't involve suing somebody). The agency who did the interstate compact for the boys (essentially the people who picked up after ATWA's error in February) is now bailing us out of this situation too, and can legally do so because they were inolved before. Whew! The executive director of ATWA even apologized and assumed responsibility for the whole thing, which was much appreciated. So time to get cracking on all the forms I have to file with the court. I've been sitting on it for about a week due to the craziness around here.

So that's the latest with the Heldts.

Two long days

I know, I have not blogged in forever. We've been busy, I've been tired, and I am now currently knee-deep in the process of potty-training my daughter. Fun. Sort-of.

On the upside, she doesn't have "accidents" and totally knows how and is usually willing to use the potty. On the downside, she inherited all of her mother's stubborness and can apparently "hold it" all day long if she wants. It's been 7.5 hours today to be exact. What this means is that she won't nap (I won't put a pull-up or diaper on her for naptime because she will just hold it until then, and therefore there would never be an opportunity for her to use the potty.) It's only day two of the potty-training (I'm basically using the "potty train your kid in a day" method even though I've never read the book myself) and I realize I should remain optimistic and be glad that I'm not cleaning up accidents. However, I'm EXHAUSTED and wondering how long this kid can hold out. (But I can be stubborn too and I WILL remain consistent with this, there is so no going back now!)

Funny thing is, I was so not in a hurry to do the potty training thing. I don't mind diapers all that much and life is crazy enough as it is right now. However, Anna got a HORRIBLE contact rash from her Pampers diapers (I mean truly awful--another HUGE reason I won't put a diaper or pullup on her for naptime yet) and so I'm committed to doing it now. So all this week we are staying home and trying to get this thing mastered and her rash cleared up.

All good things must come to an end

Saturday the kids got two goldfish at a friend's birthday party. They were soooo excited about it, and on Sunday they had a blast feeding them and watching them swim around. These were the kids' very first pets ever. Anna named one of them "Daniel" and one of them "Fish."

Well, this morning at approximately 5:30 a.m. , Kevin came back into our room to say goodbye (yes he leaves that early for work.) He leaned down and said to me, "Some goldfish live up to 40 years. Ours maxed out at 2 days." Yep, both fish, dead as of 5:30 this morning! One was floating belly-up, the other laying on its side on the bottom of the bowl.

A couple of hours later I got up and told Anna the news. I showed her the bowl and said, "Anna your fishies died." She looked at them and wisely said, "They're not swimming anymore." I told her that I needed to flush them down the toilet. "I can help!" she proudly declared. So, we headed into the bathroom where my two and half year old dumped the fishies down the toilet all by herself, and flushed. Later she called Daddy and Grandma to tell them the news.

The great thing about goldfish, however, is that they are easily replaceable. I plan to get some more, mostly because the kids love having them, but also to prove to myself that we Heldts can successfully maintain a couple of fish!

It's a...

...GIRL!

22 Weeks

Yep, this is me 22 weeks pregnant. My sister in law (also pregnant!) did one of these posts recently so I thought I'd do one too.

Recent pictures

Us after dinner one evening last week. Yes my eyes are half shut, but we're all looking at the camera, so that's positive!

Yosef and Biniam enjoying their snack (goldfish, what else?) earlier that day.

Anna with her snack, all smiles.

Brothers and sister. They love hanging out!

Anna setting the table (all of a sudden she decided to do this all on her own!)

The finished product--note the lovely fork placement!

Motorcycle, anyone?

So I am selling several motorcycles on ebay. Think I'm kidding? I wish I was!

That's right, someone somehow hacked into my ebay account and under my username, they are "selling" several different motorcycles! I have all of these emails in my inbox from potential buyers asking me questions. What in the world? I need to get this straightened out!

Updates

Yet again I've been slacking off on posting. We've actually been pretty busy lately, so that is my excuse. :)

Not much is new. I'm currently reading an interesting book, The Shaping of Things to Come, about Christianity, the Western church, how to best reach people in this postmodern day and age, etc. Very thought provoking, it was recommended to us by the guy who used to be the care pastor at the church we go to. So much of it makes good sense to me and puts into words some of the thoughts that had already been swirling around in my head. I might post more about this book and what it's got me thinking later.

I am excited because something very earth-shattering will be happening this upcoming weekend. Kevin's work is having some family picnic type thing and, get this, they will be offering tours of the (gasp!) inside of the building! For the first time in FOUR AND A HALF YEARS I will see my husband's desk! Okay maybe that doesn't sound exciting, but for his job you have to have security clearance to get into the gate (there's even a rent-a-cop there I think, and all the employees have this badge they have to scan to get in), and therefore I have not once been inside. Kind of sad. But finally this weekend I will get a glimpse of what is inside those doors.

The kids are good. I think they are all having some sort of growth spurt because they are eating us out of house and home! We are still trying to sort out the boys' readoption. I have an ultrasound in the next week or two (I forget when exactly, I gotta look) where hopefully we'll learn the sex of our little baby. Quite exciting.

I think those are the only updates for now. I'm going to post recent pictures of the kids in the next day or two I think.