bodhi tree swaying

Taken May 27, by my wife.

Maia in the grounds of Aryaloka, last fall. The picture was taken by the very talented Julie Burke.

This is from last week: July 23, 2009. This was the first time we’d ever seen Malkias crawling, or at least using his feet to push himself forwards. Up until this point we’d only ever seen him rolling to get where he wanted. My iPhone was the bribe that we used to get him to move forwards. (The strangulation hazard isn’t always there, by the way.  My wife had been vacuuming and hadn’t got around to putting the machine away).

He’s making good progress. When we took charge of him (May 30, 2009) his legs were very floppy and dangly. He’s now developing sturdier legs and although he’s not ready to bear his weight he’s moving in that direction.

July 25, 2009. Prescott Park, Portsmouth, NH. My daughter and her fellow classmates (all about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 years old) from the Portsmouth School of Ballet, in their very first recital. They’re all very young and I think the most they had had was four lessons, so be prepared to encounter more cuteness than artistry! Maia’s one of the youngest, apparently.

We stayed on for a lot of the other dances, some of which were very good indeed. It was obvious that Maia wasn’t much interested in watching the ballet, but she loved anything more contemporary, from jazz tap-dance onwards.

I’m using the Wordpress iPhone app, which I’m not too familiar with, but if all has gone well you’ll see a picture here of my son, last week, having his first solid food. Today he crawled for the first time, and we even managed to get it on video.

1. I got a decent amount of writing done today, on the Air Element. About 1,000 words. I’m not sure about the quality, but at this stage the thing is just to forge on, and then to edit and rewrite later.
2. Discovered the word "usufructuary," meaning someone who benefits by using something that belongs to others.
3. Glenn Greenwald asks a powerful question: "Did Sam Alito’s ethnic background influence how he voted in Ricci? Why isn’t this question asked?"
4. I’ve been following the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. I wonder if the entire week will be spent trying to make Ricci into a "reverse discrimination" case that it never was and talking about "wise latinas"?
5. It seems I’m number 14 on William Harryman’s top 10 list of Buddhists to follow on Twitter. I don’t

…

• Inspiring article by Nick Kristof on Charity: Water
• Maia, my two-year-old, has discovered the "Why? … Why?" game. So far asking her "What do you think?" has managed to stop her in her tracks…
• I’ve been studying Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara at my regular Sunday evening study group with other members of the Western Buddhist Order. We use Tokbox to videoconference. I really didn’t enjoy the first chapter and the first half of the second chapter, although I’ve studied the text several times. And I was on the verge of suggesting that we find another study text when the Bodhicharyavatara suddenly kicked it. It shifts from hyperbole about the benefits of bodhicitta to talking about our existential situation as impermanent and suffering beings. And that moved me.

"Night and day, without respite, more of life

…

So Maia went to her first ballet class last week. Here she is in her tights, leotard, and ballet shoes, looking very cute.

It came to my attention today that I’ve only posted one picture of Malkias here since I got back. Until we’d finalized the adoption we weren’t allowed to make photographs public, and I guess the poor thing has been affected by "second child syndrome’ (child number one has every smile and gurgle recorded — by the time number two comes along it’s all old hat). Anyway, here are some recent pictures.

He’s a very happy wee boy. Smiles all the time.

This is him a month ago. June 7.

He adores his sister, Maia. Especially since she stopped biting him (sibling rivalry).

Here they both are with their cousins from Connecticut, Hannah, Hailey, and Ryan. (Ryan dropped Malkias a moment after this picture was taken).

Nice post in the NYT about holding children to their commitments. This distillation seems reasonable:

"If you commit to a team you have to see the season through. If there is a financial outlay you have to promise a certain time commitment at the start. Dabbling is not failure, it is the only way to find a ‘fit.’ And if you want to quit because you are being hurt, physically or emotionally, then that cancels out all of the above."

This is the window of Malkias’ aunt’s house in Aleta Chuko, south of Awassa. She had a lovely, spacious house, with a bamboo floor and a large garden to the rear.

In Oromia province, south of Addis, I saw a lot of men plowing with oxen. It was hard to get pictures because by the time I’d spotted them we’d have zoomed past.

There are loads of these storks at the fish market at Awassa. It’s hard to get decent pictures of them; every time I would point a camera at one, some “helpful” young boy would throw fish at it, hoping for a tip. It’s hard to photograph a stork when it’s running to get a piece of fish….

I’m typing in an internet cafe on Bole Road in Addis on one of the world’s oldest and most rickety keyboards, so please excuse any typogaphical anomalies.

We moved in to Horizon house on Friday and took charge of malkias on Saturday. BY that time he knew us quite well since we’d been visiting him every day for two weeks, and we’ve had no problems with him accepting us. in fact he’s very calm and happy with us. By the time we moved in he was smiling broadly when he saw us.

He’s well, but is cutting a tooth (top left) and the excess salivation is causing him to cough, especially at night. This has caused some lack of sleep, but we’re all doing fine.

Maia’s showing some signs of jealousy, but she also loves him. She’s learning which way his body doesn’t bend.

We had our trip to the US Embassy yesterday (monday) …

We’re at the end of the stay at our funky guest-house, which means we’re moving to a lovely suite at the orphanage guest-house and won’t have to schlepp across town anymore. Hurray!

Yesterday we went to visit a shop that sells goods made by former women wood-carriers, who have very hard lives lugging wood from the countryside into the city to make pitifully small amounts of money. We also visited Entoto market. So we’re now well stocked on souvenirs. We took Maia to the Ghion hotel, where there was a fairground. And then we walked over to Horizon House to spend some time with Malkias.

Maia’s getting very good at football.

She loves holding her little brother.

So do I….

Here’s a picture of me, Maia, and Malkias.

We had a great trip down to Awassa (actually Boracha, just outside the city) to see Maia’s aunt Manjitu, and then down to Aleta Chuko, another hour south, to see Malkias’s aunt, Yeshi. Here’s Maia and Manjitu.

We found out that Malkias is probably only 9 1/2 months old, and not 13 1/2 months old, as we’d been led to believe. That makes a lot of sense when you take his cognitive development into account.

The days after the visits we went to the fish market (much more interesting than it sounds and fed the monkeys. We got some really great pictures. Here’s a colobus monkey.

We’re going to start spending more time with Malkias this week. We’ll probably …

So tomorrow we’re off to Boracha, which is just outside Awassa, and to Aletachuko, which is about 90 minutes further south, to see Maia’s and Milkias’s birth families. We’ll be back sunday.

The stay here is going well. We’ve been doing a lot of walking around town, and everyone comes up to talk to Maia, who is “konjo” (beautiful).

There are rolling power blackouts that seem to come about every three days and last for just under a day. We dine by candle-light. I love Addis and could easily live here. For a while at least.

It’s nice to have some simplicity, and I’m finding that being offline is very good for my writing. I’ve finally tightened up the thesis of my book on the six elements, which is a relief. I think I needed to get away from the distraction of daily life in order for new ideas to percolate through.

Maia’s …

Yesterday (Tuesday) I spent the morning catching up on emails and then managed to get some writing done. In the afternoon we walked the four kilometers from our guest-house to Horizon house. Given that I was carrying Maia in a front-carrier it was a fairly long walk, but much more interesting than taking the car. We were able to notice things like boys beside the road, roasting corn on hot charcoals, and women selling candy by the roadside. My trouser cuffs were covered in mud by the time we got to HH, because of all the construction sites we passed. We tried to find out the names of the streets we passed, but many of them had no street signs. Maia slept almost all the way.

We spent more time playing with Malkias. Hopefully he’s becoming more familiar with us. Did I mention before that he’s babbling? He often says …

We arrived in Addis two days ago after a relatively comfortable journey. We all managed to get some sleep on the 12 hour flight from JFK to Dubai, and then we got some more solid sleep in the Millennium Hotel there, although we had to be up at 5:30 after getting to sleep at 11:00. The hop from Dubai to Addis is only three hours, and was also pleasant.

A driver from our guest house picked us up. The place we’re in is clean and bigger than I’d expected. The people that run it are very friendly and welcoming, and take good care of us.

Of course our first priority was to go see Malkias. Yonas, a taxi driver who does a lot of business with Horizon House, ran us over there. It’s a little under four miles away. It’s closer as the crow flies, but there’s no very direct route.

Malkias …

Tomorrow we set off on our journey to Ethiopia, during which time we’ll meet our adopted son, Malkias, for the first time. We’ll be there for three weeks, which we hope will be ample time for him to get used to being with us, and to let go of being cared for by the nannies at the orphanage.

It’s been a long process, and I’m glad it’s coming to fruition!

I’m also looking forward to seeing Ethiopia again. It’s a beautiful country full of kind and intelligent people.

I’ve been rather busy with other things and haven’t updated my blog recently. But here’s a great way to break the silence!

We just heard that our adoption cleared the Ethiopian courts and we are now the legal parents of Malkias (his birth name is Milkias but we’re making a slight change to accommodate his name to US pronunciations). We’ll be flying over there, with Maia, who was also born in Ethiopia, in the next few days.

Today my grandfather would have been 99 years old.

This picture is marked as having been taken in 1928, when he was 18. He’s on the right, and we don’t know who the other young man is according to my parents the other young man is probably his friend, George Warden, who was also a painter and who had ran a shop on the Hilltown with his brother, Bert. His wife, Mae, is still alive. I also don’t know what the fancy occasion was or where the photograph was taken, although it was most likely in or around Dundee.

This is my grandfather, grandmother (my nana), and my uncle Alan. Alan was born in 1953, and he looks like he’s about four or five years old here, so I’m guessing this was taken about 1957 or 1958. (Claire, …