ashenafi

Perhaps working late and skimping on sleep make me emotional, but last week I was really feeling like a girl. I cried in the bathroom at work twice. The first time was out of sadness. I was let go by a boy that I had just begun to feel excited about seeing. The second time was out of joy and happiness for humanity and for myself. I am going to be an aunt!!

Ashenafi Desta is 5.5 months old right now and lives in Ethiopia. In a couple more months though, he is going to live here and be a part of my family. My brother Mark and his wife Sarah are adopting little Ashenafi and I get to be his aunt. We are all so excited to know who Ashenafi is and to have seen his photo. It's been a long wait.

I plan to be a cool aunt. The one who always has gum and candy in her purse (although currently, I carry neither). I want to take Ashenafi out to lunch, to the mountains and watch his track meets. Maybe he wants to learn how to surf? Right now however, I just want to pick him up, feed him applesauce and take him to enjoy the park. He is going to revolutionize our family. Christmas, vacations and every other day. I'm really excited.

I want to post his photo, but Ethiopia won't let us do that yet. I'll put it up later when he has cleared some more paperwork. I would post a second best photo of something from my trip to Ethiopia in 2003, but that was the pre-digital age for me and I don't feel like scanning my scrapbook. So here is a photo of Kenya, which is close to Ethiopia, and at the very least, African.