Our Embassy Day!

Thursday, May 31st – EMBASSY DAY FOR US AND KEWOGO!!!!


We can finally post the name of our daughter! Her Ethiopian name is Kewogo, which is pronounced (Ku-WAH-GO). She also has several nicknames. They are Ku-Wah, Ku-Gah, and Cowa. It has been kind of difficult because all of the staff, special mothers, and other children all call her something different. We have alternated between Kewogo and Ku-wah mostly. We have slowly introduced Lila and we will see what she begins to prefer. Today we took Kewogo to our embassy appointment. This is when the US Embassy asks us a series of questions, gives her a passport and then tomorrow they will give us her visa. I will first back up and say that Kewogo had another great night of sleep. I am glad at least one of us is sleeping because it sure isn’t me! She ate a great breakfast and the funniest thing was to watch her eat samosas, which are little fried pastry triangles filled with lentils. They are one of my favorite things to eat here and Kewogo liked them, too. She would take a bite off of the corner and then shake the lentils in her mouth. It was hilarious! After breakfast we came back up to the room and I was holding her and singing to her when all of a sudden she fell asleep. I was surprised since she had only been up for two hours.

Not too much after that we were picked up to go to the embassy. It was a long bus ride and Kewogo was very quiet. Then, she fell asleep again. We waited two hours and were the last family called. Kewogo was very quiet the whole time and took turns sitting in our laps. She even fell asleep again!! We had just finished with our appointment and we were giving each other and Kewogo a congratulatory hug when all of a sudden she let out a cry and threw up all over herself and Matt!!! And I mean ALL OVER! Of course we had not one thing to clean it up with so we went back to the bathroom and Matt attempted to clean himself up and I basically had to strip her down and luckily I had a tank top underneath my shirt so I put that on her. I might add that I had dressed her so cute in a purple flowered dress in the hopes of getting some good pictures afterwards. Oh well. It was so sad to watch her silent tears roll down her face. Thankfully our driver had plastic bags on the bus because she continued to get sick on the ride back to the hotel. Poor thing! It was awful. Finally, she fell asleep yet again. She stayed asleep in the hotel room when we returned and slept for a long time. Now the only reason we found this whole incident slightly amusing is that it is a well known fact that our children are big pukers and have to get sick every time we go on vacation or any little getaway. We think that this was Kewogo’s way of saying that she is definitely a Bendick and will fit in with our family just perfectly!!

When she finally woke up she was smiling and playful and definitely had some energy back. We played for a little bit and then I gave her a shower. I was reaching for a towel when all of a sudden I look over at her and she had grabbed Matt’s razor and had shaved a piece of her hair off!!! I screamed and she held out the razor and piece of hair as though I should be proud of her! Scared me to death! I really expected to see blood somewhere, but when I examined her and found none my heartbeat began to resume to normal.

We then went down to dinner and met our friends for dinner. I had dressed her in an Ethiopian dress in a second attempt to get some good pictures now that we can FINALLY share them. We tried and tried but she would have none of it. Soon after we sat down for dinner she started getting quiet again. Scared that we would have another getting sick incident I took her back up to the room and Matt and I ate in shifts. She fell asleep again we believe she is out for the night. It was not quite the magical day that we had anticipated but we are thankful to officially be through with the legal side of this. We won’t really feel like everything is complete until we are home safely reunited with the whole family.