Sarah has made some big strides in the last couple of months. The main one being that she is actually striding around now: walking everywhere she can and attempting to go most places she should not! (video is a few weeks old, she’s much steadier now!)

What really helps around the house is that she knows the meaning of the word “no” (probably because she hears it a lot). She’ll think about it a bit and then put it down or stop doing what she’s doing. If its said in a particularly harsh way to her though (especially from me) she will immediately stick her bottom lip out as far as possible and wail for a few minutes.

Even though her first word was “dada” a few months back she has all but forgotten that. Now everything is mamma mamma mamma. Its used for both Meghan and anything that she wants you to give to her. Her vocab is still limited: “Up” comes out as “uppa” and “more” is just “maaahhhh” accompanied by an emphatic baby sign language gesture for “more”. She does a great job entertaining herself…unless “mamma” is anywhere nearby. Then she is the only entertainment that will do! She’s still a great traveler, mostly because she has the “fall asleep instantly” in the car gene.

She made a bit of progress in the height/weight department: 21 lb 6 ounces and 31 inches tall this go round. She received 5 vaccine shots and a prick of the finger to draw some blood. She was not happy about any of those, but a sucker made her all smiles again!

Eden and I flew to Nairobi today to pick up her Humanitarian Visa at the embassy. We were in and out within 15 minutes! They don’t normally do appointments on Fridays, and so I was the only one they were expecting. At each security checkpoint along the way I was asked: “Are you Mr. Wolfe?” It feels nice being a VIP…

Eden on the Fly540 flight. She LOVED flying “up up up in the air” “like a birdy” and going “up and down up and down” (turbulence). She had a lot of trouble with the concept of the us being above the clouds:
What are those white things Daddy?
Those are clouds Eden.
But they’re down low.
Because we’re flying above the clouds, we’re way up high.
But I’m lookin down, they’re down low.

Eden was a great traveler and I lucked out with her being hyper during the should-be-nap-time instead of a terror. She fell asleep 5 minutes into our car ride home at 4:45.

She started being a three year old while we were laying over in Kisumu. She was trying to figure out why we couldn’t fly straight to Eldoret and every response from me was rebutted with the same statement except “Why…” affixed to it!

Our flights back to the U.S. are scheduled for the 18th of January. That was the only day Delta had available for both my ticket (paid) and Eden’s ticket (mileage award seat) on the same flight in the same class. She did give me the option of the 9th…with Eden riding up in Business Class but me in Coach!

January 18th is a lot later than we wanted to be reunited, but it does allow me time to get things sorted out with the house, van, packing, work, and all of our stuff. Its amazing how many things a woman can collect in a short 8 months in Kenya. You heard me right, none of this is mine. 😉

I just got some good news from Susan at Little Angels! Well, first she toyed with me and gave me the bad news: the national committee STILL didn’t hear our case in their meeting on Wednesday. Their backlog apparently goes back to last April. Susan heard of this at 9am on Wednesday, though, so she quickly wrote up another letter for the Little Angels committee that was also meeting on Wednesday afternoon. She listed out all the extra steps we did, the headache from the national committee, etc. And they did it! They approved Eden “clear for adoption” and approved us as able to adopt! It would have been nice if they had given us this approval 6 weeks ago…or even 4 weeks ago after we got the paperwork they asked for! I’m super happy they did approve us though, the backlog from the national committee is not looking so good.

Next Steps:
Our lawyer takes this letter to court next week and hopefully is seen on a Certificate of Urgency (2 days wait instead of 3 weeks). This first hearing is the appointment of a Guardian Ad Litem. This person is supposed to come visit and observe how amazingly wonderful we are with Eden, how she is thriving in our home, etc. We then have another court hearing 1-2 weeks after that where the guardian and a little angels’ social worker present their reports and (hopefully) the court grants the adoption. Its unclear if we have to go back to the national committee at that time or not. If we do, well, hopefully they’ve worked through their backlog! Worst case scenario is that we have to wait 3-4 weeks for the first visit, then 3-4 weeks for the second visit, then 4-8 weeks for the national committee…but thats where the humanitarian visa would come in: we could at least come back for a little bit to see Meghan/Andy/Gracie/family in the middle of all the waiting.

Eden turned three years old today! Saying that, 3 seems so much older than 2. (at least 50% older) And really, Eden acts it and then some. She does a great job expressing herself with words instead of just tantrums now. She loves to make conversation with anyone around her that will talk back with her. She plays with the “big kids” in the compound whenever they’re around (and they like playing with her). The best thing in the world, though, is to have things match: her hair ribbons, her shirt+pants, her shoes, her fingernail polish to her toenail polish, and the nirvana: her outfit to her doll’s outfit!

We celebrated with a grand ol’ party last night. Nearly everyone in the compound came for pizza, cake, and ice cream. We did an Elmo theme. He was splattered all over the plates, cups, noise makers, hats, gifts, and food. For some reason though, Eden and I were the only ones that wore our Elmo pants. But that was ok by her, at least we were matching!

Getting ready to sign for Eden

Chrissie's amazing homemade Elmo Cake

Izzy and Eunyoung made Elmo Cookies. They tasted even better than they looked!

I gave away the punchline of this post in the title, but oh well! Its too good to keep you all in suspense! The high court justice today said that he has no objections to giving us the same travel order that we recently got from the lower court. He also said that the Children’s Office in NBO and the embassy should have accepted the lower court order, but that they tend to not trust the lower courts because they think some monkey business happens there.

Our favorite DCO was asked by the justice to come to court and give his thoughts on the matter. He arrived and gave no objections. Outside Were and I were trying to convince him to help us while our other favorite DCO was on leave. He was hesitant to do that. Lets hope we’re past the point of needing any more DCOs…

Meghan will be applying to USCIS for a Humanitarian Visa for Eden. Now that we have the high court travel order, the only reason they will might not approve that is if they still think we will keep Eden in the US forever. We’ve tried to prove otherwise every way from Sunday, but even that might not be enough.

There is a very slim chance we can get the actual adoption pushed through before Christmas. If we can get the heard by our agency’s committee this week, get a very speedy high court visit, and then get seen by the national adoption committee the first week of December, then the adoption is finalized and we can go wherever we please without a need for a Kenyan travel order. (Unfortunately we will still be locked out of the US unless they give her a b2 temp visa or i130 immigration visa, so we might go to Canada, eh?)

I foresee very little work getting done by me in the next few weeks. 🙁 Meghan used to handle most of the adoption things, but now its all on me with her and Andy back in the US!