January 23, 2009 - Sitota!!!

We met Sitota!! (Spoiler alert…he is freakin awesome!)

We are sorry there are no pictures. We are not allowed to take cameras to the center where the kids are housed, so pictures will have to wait a few days. They did shoot a lot of film of us meeting him for the first time.

So this morning we met for breakfast at 8:00 AM, after getting to the guesthouse about 1:00am the previous night . Great flight last night…turned out to be a nice big jet, not just a puddle jumping thing. We were the last one’s in from our group. Most folks are suffering from serious jet lag however, and we are just a bit tired from not quite enough sleep. Anyway, after breakfast, we were off to the CHSFS offices to sign two consent forms…one that says we are allowed to be video taped, the other that says we will not give any gifts of any kind to any of the workers. After the papers were signed, we were off to the Center.

First of all, the center is gorgeous. It is a huge house that they have turned into an orphanage. There were so many beautiful children waving to us from the windows. They were a bit older than our little guy. After changing out of our shoes into some house shoes, we were taken downstairs to a big open room. Then they began to call us one at a time upstairs to meet our kid, all the while two cameras were rolling. You can imagine the feelings of anticipation in the room from the 8 to 10 couples (I need to count) and one single Mom who were waiting to meet their kids. Thankfully, we were called second!

After a quick wash of the hands, up we went and met Sitota. He was so easy to recognize from our photos, and he was all smiles. We got to take him downstairs and basically hang out with him for about 2 hours. He is beautiful, happy, and was really comfortable with us. I think he would be comfortable with just about anybody at this point…he really seems laid back. But Shelli was able to get him to laugh a lot with her hair, and Aaron was able to get him to crack up by being, well, Aaron. We touched his beautiful hair (we think he will be able to have the afro like Uncle Raspberry), he smiles with his whole face, and he is just about perfect.

After playing for some time, we had to take him back upstairs for his lunch and a nap. He rubs his eyes like Isabel does when he is tired. We attempted to feed him, but he wasn’t having it. It was the only time we saw him fuss. We think he didn’t like the funky stuff they were eating…he was literally fine until we picked up the spoon…each time we did, out came the fuss. The caretaker said we needed to feed Sitota fast, but we decided to watch first. Sure enough, she got him to eat just about the whole bowl of good. What a good eater, and only a few fusses.

We just had lunch, we have a stop at the office to turn over a bunch of paperwork for the embassy later next week, and then back to the center to hang with Sitota some more. We keep thinking about introducing him to his sisters, to his Grandparents, to his extended family of so many who read this and have prayed and supported in so many ways…y'all just wait…his name means “gift” and he is about the best gift we can imagine.