This is the second post in a series about our adoption trip. Read the first post if you dare.

Fast forward to Friday May 7th, 2010, 6:30PM at O’Hare. We were supposed to leave at 3:30, but we’ve had interference from a volcano, the plane was at the wrong gate, it’s tow truck busted, and now our pilot and first officer have had to go to the plane to taxi it to our actual gate because getting another tow truck will take an hour. This means we’re probably going to miss our second flight and have to wait an extra 12 hours in the Frankfurt airport. Fuck. Don’t freak out. The upside is that I’ll get to sleep, the downside is that means we’ll arrive the next day in Addis, and who knows what that means for our schedule in-country. This is the first reminder that we can’t control this at all.

On the plane This flight is packed, but pretty uneventful so far. Somewhere over the course of the next 8 hours I’ll finish Bargaining for Advantage and watch a movie I won’t remember. Lufthansa makes for a comfortable flight. I am getting a bit confused between the flight attendants speaking to me in both English and German. I think they’re testing me.

Frankfurt airport Crap! We have 30 minutes to try to make our flight to Addis. Why is this security check line taking so long? Why do I need to get re-security checked leaving one international flight to get on another international flight? Where was I supposed to get get a bomb? The duty-free shop? Grumble.

Somehow, we’ve miraculously made it to the bus to our plane with a couple minutes to spare. Now that I see there are only like 10 other people on this flight, I think they were trying to be a bit lenient to people late from their connections. I’ll watch 1/2 a Bollywood movie and get started on reading Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet before descending into my brain somewhere. I had wanted to do all sorts of stuff on this flight, but as it always does on long travels, my fatigue is getting the best of me. And, I’m getting a little bit worried.

It’s part not really sleeping and part fear of the unknown. Is he going to like us? What are we going to do if something bad happens? What if we forgot something, or brought the wrong size clothes or diapers? This is going to be interesting.

Addis Ababa We’ve landed, and gotten through getting our visitor visa. They definitely take corruption seriously here. After getting the visa, what must have been a higher official asks us how much the agents charged us. He departed satisfied with everyone’s answered, so apparently we weren’t swindled. Next up, exchanging some cash, a luggage cart with super lopsided wheels, and meeting the driver. It’s raining, almost pitch black outside and we’re exhausted.

Tomorrow we’ll get to meet Gavin for the first time…

PS. Both books were great by the way. You should read them!

It’s February 22nd, 2010, around lunchtime and I’ve just finished ordering a fancy ham and cheese at Artisan, a local fancy sandwich making shop. It’s my first time here, but I’m with two of my co-workers, and they’re regulars. I’m a bit confused because there’s no obvious good place to stand and wait for my fancy sandwich. So, I’m standing around trying not to look too terribly uncomfortable.

Wait, was that my phone? Crap! It’s an area code I don’t recognize and Cindy said we could get the call any time now. Call back. No answer!!!! Call Cindy. It is the call, and she conferences me in with our social worker!!! Our social worker congratulates us then tells us the story of how Gavin came to be in the orphanage, where he’s from, and when they think he was born. She’s emailing us photos and mailing a packet of paperwork that we needed to ger back to them ASAFP! I better get back to my desk to see these pictures!

Damn! They take a long time to make a ham and cheese sandwich. All this time I’ve been pacing in and out of Artisan, paying more attention to the phone than the world around me.

Holy shit, I’m a dad! I think this is the moment that it hit me that I was really becoming a dad. I mean, through all the process and the paperwork and the waiting, I knew that someday I would become a dad, but it always seemed there was so much that could potentially go wrong and make the process take longer and longer, that it never really hit me. But, that picture made it real to me.

Now, I just needed to figure out exactly what I thought it meant to be a dad. It obviously wasn’t just the feeding and the plumbing. I’m pretty sure it involves fishing and bicycles at some point. Thankfully, I still have a little time to figure that one out.

After that set in a bit, back to reality. There’s so much to do! I better call my mom, then dad, then my brother and sister. And we better go visit that doctor on Roosevelt that specializes in adoptions to look over whatever medicals they send us in that packet. Ugh, and we need to start pricing out travel. When do we find out what our travel date is? And we need to get a cashiers check for the final adoption fees. And we need a car seat. And who’s going to watch the animals? And…

I have no idea whether the sandwich was any good or not. I’m pretty sure it was cold by the time I ate it.

It’s been 2 weeks since we’ve arrived home from Ethiopia with this handsome guy.

Gavin smiles a lot, seems to like everyone he meets and gets very cranky when he’s hungry. He was born in Assela just over 5 months ago and he’s our first child. Right now he has a bit of a cold, or sinus infection of some sort that our doc is helping us work through, but otherwise we’re all doing fine after the trip.

Adopting Gavin has been an almost 2 year effort for us, and for me it was easily the most arduous undertaking I’ve attempted in my life. Since I’m really just around to carry things, it must have been even harder on Cindy since she did all the real work. Thankfully, all the big stuff went as planned and now we have Gavin as a part of our family.

Before I go further, I need to thank everyone that’s helped us along the way. We had great support from our adoption agency - Children’s Hope, our home study agency Lutheran Child and Family Services, her former employer, my employer - Viewpoints, our travel agent - Golden Rule Travel, family and friends. We certainly couldn’t have done it without you.

I haven’t written much about the adoption so far, but now that we’re home and a bit settled I think I’ll finally give it a shot. I may delve into it a little, but I don’t plan to discuss much about the paperwork side to the process. It’s highly specific to the agency, the country we adopted from, the state we live in, and is constantly evolving. If you are interested in hearing more about our experience on that side of the process (or anything else), please email me at jro@codegrinder.com, and I’ll be happy to recount it in as gory detail as I can remember.

Look at More Pictures of Gavin!

This series of posts will go on both my more personal blog and on my more tech blog. This has been an incredible journey and I feel that it’s significant to both sides of my life.