Sibling Reactions

I always think it's fun to go back and remember what Victoria and Austin's reactions were when we got Samara's referral so I want to remember how the kids reacted when we got Denver's referral too.

After the phone call was done and we had checked out his pictures, Victoria went back outside to play. She was so excited that we FINALLY got to see her new brother's face. She kept knocking on the window and mouthing the words "he's so yummy!" to me. The next day she was so excited to take his picture to school to show him off.

Austin, despite not feeling well, was also very excited to know a little more about his new brother. He was pumped that the gender was 100% confirmed and that he really would have a brother. (We had kind of warned the kids that there was a small chance we would be referred a girl. It wouldn't be the first time that someone got the opposite gender of what they requested). At one point the following day when Austin was still kinda sick, I walked past his room and peered in to see him lying on his bed just looking at Denver's picture. How cute is that?

Samara wasn't as impressed with the whole thing. I'm not sure she knew exactly what was going on. We had been talking about "the baby from Ethiopia" for a while but she's pretty young to understand the whole thing. So now that there's a picture and more talk about this baby that's going to come live with us, she's not sure what to make of it all . . . especially at first. Everytime we would talk about Denver or anything having to do with him, she would say "no!". Finally a few days later when we were praying at dinnertime, Mike said something about Denver coming home and Samara looked at me with a big grin on her face and said, "Den Den - home!". It was so precious and it felt like she finally approved of the whole thing. I guess she just needed a little time to process the whole thing. Now we often hear her talking about "Den Den".

Another funny thing was when we first talked about Denver, Samara kept saying "Opi". We laughed so hard because we assumed she was calling him that name. So it was a joke for a few days that our baby from Ethiopia was going to be called "Opi". That didn't really last very long but all of a sudden today, I clued in. This afternoon Samara and I were talking about Denver and I asked her where Denver lives. She said "Austin's room" (because that's where he'll live when he gets home). I then asked her where he is right now and she said, "Opi - ahhhh". So that's her way of saying Ethiopia!!! So now I figure that's what she was saying all along when we thought she was naming him Opi.

Two weeks later, the excitement hasn't worn off at all. The kids still keep saying how cute he is and "I wonder what Denver's doing right now". We all stare at his picture a hundred times a day and can't stop thinking and talking about him.