It's now Tuesday morning in Addis Ababa. We've all slept through the night (minus two required feed times for Colin but we all went back to sleep just fine).
John and I studied the schedule and menu provided by The Care Center staff. I thought I had it down but mixed the boys up right off the bat. They keep all the kids on formula so Seth gets two glasses of formula a day. One at 6AM and the other at 8PM. I accidentally feed Seth's formula to Colin. No real harm done so I dusted myself off and got two kids dressed for breakfast.
The dining room at the hotel is already busy with lots of new families trying to hold it all together. All the adults look frazzled but the kids are happy.
Our itinerary has "spend time with your child" listed for the morning and then "Visa appointment" listed for the afternoon. We all headed up to the room to play and relax (yeah right!) until lunch.
We brought some toys from home but hoped to save some of them for our return flight. The boys burned through most of them in no time. Shoot!
Lunch goes smoothly and we prepare ourselves for our visa appointment at the US Embassy. The other group staying at our hotel had their appointments the previous day and we hear about a family that was denied a visa because a notary on one of their forms expired the week before they arrived in Ethiopia. It's such a minor detail in the mountain of forms and paperwork but apparently it's not minor enough to be overlooked by an officer at the US Embassy. This makes us all a bit more nervous.
We all pile in the vans - now with our kids in tow. I prayed they would both fall asleep in the car, which would make our time at the Embassy so much easier. The group that went the day before took 3 hours to get everyone processed. I kept whispering to Colin, who was on my lap, "You're getting very sleepy...You're getting verrrrryyyyyy slllleeeepppyy." It worked but only temporarily.
We enter the Embassy and sit on long benches just outside the door. There are a few hundred people in line - our group sticks out like a sore thumb. We made it inside, through security, and then we waited for each family to be called. We've rehearsed answers to possible questions the officer might ask. Most of the questions are easy to answer (Are these the children you intended to adopt upon your arrival in Ethiopia? Do they have any serious medical conditions?) But it still feels like a test you could possibly fail.
Each family that's called, returns to our group waving the birth certificates and approval form (except one but their issue was resolved the next day). We were there around 3 hours but the boys did okay.
We returned to the hotel for dinner and bedtime. Night number two goes just as smoothly.
This post has much fewer pictures for two reasons. One, we couldn't take any pictures at or near the Embassy and two, our focus was on not being overrun by two toddlers.
Coming up on Day 7 - Kim breaks under the pressure (you won't want to miss this)
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