A Letter to Ethiopia

Dear Children,

Your prayers have been answered!!! If all goes as planned, meet your new family.

The Wolfe Family

We know you will love being Wolfe cubs!

With all the love in Texas,
Rick, Becky, Landree, Channing, Jordan, Carson and Kali

Look what we got!

Such a beautiful surprise we received last week from our sweet Aschalew! Scott and Emily Lydick returned from Ethiopia just a few weeks ago and brought this beautiful oil painting for us from Aschalew. He had a friend paint this from a photo he had. If you look closely, you'll see the elephants in the bottom right corner ... we were at the Ft Worth Zoo.

This painting will definitely take a place of honor in our home once we have it framed! What a wonderful tribute from one of the kindest, sweetest young men we have ever met! And a very special thanks to Scott and Emily for bringing this home to us ... even when the airport officials made you take it off of it's frame.

On the home front, we have a comedy team on our hands. These two kids keep us in stitches. I know I keep saying that it is amazing how well Kali speaks English now, but it is true. People who now meet her would never know that English was not her first language and that she has only been immersed in English for 8 months. So, she has re-discovered Dora and Diego. The little girl who previously could not sit through 5 minutes of any other TV program or movie will now sit and watch Dora or Diego videos for hours ... that is, if we allowed it. It is the first thing she asks for when she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she asks for after school, and the last thing she asks about when she goes to sleep ..."Tomorrow, I can watch Dora?" She interacts with everything they say and ask and she can even count to 5 in Spanish now ... except for the 3 ... she jumps straight from dos to cuatro. And then tres pops in after cinco. But hey ... 3 languages now! Aschalew would be jealous ... he asks me to teach him more Spanish in every letter he sends.

Anyway, last night we took them to see a show and got into an interesting conversation in the car on the way home. We decided that we would all have a race today to see who was fastest, and Dad and Carson began a battle of words ...

Dad: "Hey Carson, my friends call me Lightning."
Carson: "Well, my friends call me Speedy the Racer."
Kali: "My friends call me Dora!"

What a character! Rick has decided he is going to handcuff Kali to the couch when she turns 16 and make her watch a marathon of Dora videos so she knows what we have been going through now!

Hair & Skin

I know that I, like many people adopting African or African American children, panicked at the very thought of caring for the hair and skin of these beautiful children. After considerable trial and error, and some great advice from other women, we have hit on some things that work for us. Thought I'd share what we have learned.

Hair: We wash Kali's hair only once a week with a normal tearfree baby shampoo. After washing, we put a good quality conditioner in her hair (we've been using Pantene for curl definition), comb it through, let it sit in her hair for a few minutes and then rinse. Those little curls just perk right up after this washing and her hair is sooooooo soft!! Throughout the rest of the week, I will get it wet every other day and spray a good leave-in conditioner in it before it dries. I have been using Carol's Daughter Black Vanilla. It's a little pricey, but it too leaves Kali's curls very soft ... and it smells really good too! And that's it. As for hair styles, her hair is still pretty short so we're not at the braiding stage yet. Most mornings it's a headband or a few barrettes. On weekends when we have more time, she may get puffs, but she really doesn't like it when I put puffs in. I think she prefers the natural, care-free afro!

Skin: Kali has very dry skin. We do give her a bath every night and use baby wash for cleaning. But we have to immediately lotion her up after her bath to keep her skin from getting too dry. I've run the gamet on trying to find the right lotion ... my personal favorites for myself have always been Lubriderm and Aveeno, but neither of those worked for Kali. In the mornings her skin would just be too dry. I finally hit on Eucerin Plus. This one works very well, but I have to warn you ... it is very greasy. Now I use Gold Bond Ultimate with Shea Butter. This one is not greasy at all and it keeps Kali's skin very soft and supple. I like this one the very best!

Face: This poor little thing has not been able to get over a cold and allergies for at least the past 3 weeks. Her nose has been running like a faucet, it seems like forever. Needless to say, with all of the nose wiping, the skin under her nose and around her mouth had become EXTREMELY dry, to the point of being flaky. I advise against putting any kind of regular hand or body lotion on your child's face ... it will make their face break out. So I hit the face products aisle at Wal Mart. Do you know how hard it is to find a good face lotion that isn't supposed to be geared toward fine lines and wrinkles? Don't think I need to worry about that with this little girl for quite some time. I tried Aveeno, I tried Neutrogena, I tried Oil of Olay, I tried the Wal Mart brand ... I even tried the good stuff, Estee Lauder. None of it seemed to work. So here's the funny part ... I remembered that Vitamin E is very good for your skin and for helping scars heal. Wouldn't you know it, it's also much less expensive than any face product ... and it worked! Just a drop applied to her skin once a day and after just a few days, the dryness and flaky skin was gone! Her nose is still running, but that's another issue altogether!

Just a few side notes ... Kali has a tendancy to get these small warts, called molluscum, on her face and neck. She had several on her eyelid and the edge of her lip when we first met her that she soon scratched off. Over the past 8 months, new ones developed on her chin and her neck. The pediatrician kept telling us these were nothing to worry about, and everything I read tells me that this is quite common in children and eventually goes away. But still, it drove me crazy to see these things, seemingly getting bigger every day, on her pretty little face. Thankfully, she did end up scratching them off on her face and now we only have one left on her neck. I asked Belay about these when we were in Ethiopia and he too said that it is very common ... and he suggested using Compound-W to get rid of them. On her face??? NOT!! I hope new ones don't develop, but at least I now know that when they go away, there is no discernible scar left after they heal. The other item is the ringworm ... another common little pest. Kali got this lovely fungus right in the middle of her forehead ... a week before picture day at the daycare too!! Lotrimin ... works wonders!! Even says it right on the label ... "for ringworm". Keep some in the medicine cabinet ... you just never know.

Happy hair and skin care!!