Day 5- Foster Home, Coffee and Lunch

Touring the Gladney Care Center has mixed emotions. I so wanted to see where my boy had been all but a week of his life. I wanted to take pictures for those who are still waiting to make the trip. I wanted to see for myself the care that Jude has received. When we go tour the Care Center, we give an opportunity for the caregiver to say good bye to the child that they have cared for. One of the things I love about Gladney is that they assign a certain women to

to care for specific children . They even call them the child's special momma. Bonding occurs which is an amazing blessing to both the adopted child and parent for future bonding.

So while we tour, we handed Jude back to the woman who had cared for him for the first six months of his life. She met us at the gate and took him into the house to say good-bye. She dressed him in his traditional outfit.

We ran into them in Jude's room but she wasn't ready to let him go yet. I feel very honored to have this picture of the two of them. It is so obvious that she loved him and did an awesome job caring for him. I am tears as I type this as I am so grateful for all she did. I have admit it was so hard to let Jude out of my sight and yes, he was gone for almost an hour. We can't give gifts to specific people at the Center only to the center as a whole, which they do things like a special meal for everyone. I tried to look at this time as my thank you gift to her.

Jude Fekadu was back in arms in time for coffee. I gave him a bottle and things just moved on. It may have been confusing for him but I am glad she had her chance to say goodbye. We had her write him a note which we had translated. We discovered that they didn't call him Fekadu in the Center but Baby. In English. It was fun to see him respond to it.

We are coffee people, so we really enjoyed the ceremony. It was fun to be reunited with Jude and to get to know the other Gladney families during the ceremony. We asked if we were being rude, talking to and getting to know others while she was preparing the coffee. Genet reassured us that relaxing and enjoy the company was what the ceremony was all about.

We finished the morning by going to lunch as a group to a restaurant called Topview. The view is amazing and we able to take the children with us. They had a playground so it made waiting for the meal a whole lot more fun for the little people.

The rest of the day was spent back at Bejoe. It was good to relax and reconnect as a family.