It Started With An Olive

Ashagre is an adventurous eater.  He will and does try anything.  Tonight at dinner I had some olives on my plate and he wanted to try one.  When he popped it in his mouth recognition quickly washed over his face and a grin spread from ear to ear.  He remembered the first time he tried an olive and happily began telling us about it.

We remembered it too.  Brent and I had bought some green olives for a snack in Ethiopia when we traveled to Sidama to meet Ashagre's relatives.  We opened them up and ate them on the way back to Addis after an intense couple of days down south.  Ashagre was tired, emotionally exhausted, and a wee bit grumpy but still interested in trying new foods.  I don't remember exactly how it happened but an olive ended up floating around in his water bottle and he continued to drink his water, floating olive and all, until he fell asleep in our laps in the back of the car.

It is so wonderful to finally have enough shared language to converse with our children.  Ashagre went on for the rest of dinner, completely ignoring his food, recounting our first few days together as a family of three before we picked up Elsa and became a family of four.  He remembered the most minute details of our trip to Sidama together.  I could feel his relief and growing excitement as his impressions and memories poured out of him.  

Now don't get me wrong, we're not having deep, emotionally packed conversations here - we didn't touch the visit with his relatives at all - the kids' English isn't quite there yet.  At this point its more like nostalgic stories of times past.  But the fact that we have a past together, a past that took place a little over three months ago when all four of us took the biggest leap of our lives to date, and that we can sit around the dinner table and talk and laugh about it feels pretty dang good.

I am LOVING my family these days.

I can't get enough of my loving little boy from Sidama.