Our first try cooking Ethiopian food.

Since we are all (for the most part) on vacation this week we thought it would be a good time to try making some Ethiopian dishes for dinner. Last night Tom and I made Doro Wat (chicken stew), Ye'abesha Gomen- a dish with green peppers and collard greens, Ethiopian Ginger Vegetables with potatoes and green beans, and Injera (the bread that you use to pick everything up with). The kids tried everything and seemed to like it (except A didn't eat the chicken since he's a vegetarian). Our injera came out more like pancakes than traditional injera so we'll work on that for next time. We also didn't have the Berbere spice that they use in Ethiopia so we're going to order some online, couldn't find it even in Whole Foods. Though they do have Teff flour in whole foods which is what they use to make injera in Ethiopia so we will use that next time. Overall we were happy with the dinner.

It's official!

We're now waiting to be matched with 2 little siblings. Either twins under 18 mos. or more likely one child under 5 years old and the other an infant. We are told the wait is about one year from official wait date of July 6, 2007. In other adoption news we are getting to know others in the area who are waiting to be matched with their children and who have already brought their little ones home. The Central Mass Ethiopian families group is expanding and we will have the next parent meeting at our house. We will discuss parenting/adoption issues and hopefully watch an adoption or Ethiopian related movie and try to make some Ethiopian food. It's a great group of families and we are excited to get to know everyone. Until next time...
Laura

More on siblings...

Last Friday we met with our social worker to discuss changing our request to a sibling pair. The meeting went well. We have fulfilled all the other requirements and are waiting our final approval for the switch but don't anticipate a problem with our request. What is our request? Right now we are thinking a sibling pair with one child being under 5 years old and one child being 0-12 months. We are also requesting to be put on the list for twins up to 18 months old. There is still a long wait for these requests. I believe the wait is about one year and as you can see from our ticker at the top of this blog we have been officially waiting just over 5 months so we probably have about 7 months left to be matched and then we would travel to Ethiopia 1-3 months after that. There are no concrete estimates for wait time though as it is impossible to predict what the ages of the children that will come into care at any given time. The current wait time for infants is about 16 months. We'll keep you posted!