Banana Adventures, Embassy and Pasta!!

Last night Engida slept 13 hours straight- poor little guy was tired from all of the stress I think! Plus our long walk to the park:). Not much progress on the food issues, BUT more importantly: he loves my hugs and kisses!!! After breakfast, we headed up to the roof to play. The roof 2 stories up, with the wrought iron railing. The railing whose spindles are spread about 12 inches apart.. which happens to be enough space for 2.5 year old curious boys to squeeze through. Fortunately there is a 10 inch ledge outside the railing where kids can stand and watch as their parents have heart attacks as they sprint to grab said child gently, yet firmly, and quickly, yet not in a scary way that would cause the child to step backwards. And then as all of the parents breathe a sigh of relief, we all attempt to stay between the perilous perimeter and our fearless children. Another danger are the wad of (live?) wires strung across the front corner. To distract Engida from these inviting-yet-no-quite-up-to-code elements, I brought out a banana for our snack. Who knew bananas could be SO incredibly messy!?! What mommy would put on a brand-new outfit for Embassy, and then give her son a banana!? One who did not know the banana would be used as face paint, the new sweater as a towel.

Cutie Bedalu also living it up on the roof:

After a bath and a fresh change of clothes, we piled into the van and head towards the Embassy. It was pouring, we walked a block getting soaked (with Engida snuggling in the Ergo!), and finally made our way through the security and inspections to wait our turn. Ato Teklu is awesome- we were first in line and he accompanied us the whole way. I felt bad for the other families, *none* of whom had an agency representative with them. They seemed confused and were asking Ato Teklu a lot of questions about the paperwork. When he went upstairs, the families were shocked to find out that he worked for WACAP, and not for the US Embassy! To celebrate everyone passing Embassy, we went out to the "Blue Drop," a tiny Italian-Ethiopian restaurant across the street from the TDS Hotel. Engida celebrated by enjoying a HUGE bowl of pasta with olive oil, parsley and garlic cloves, tipping his head back and dropping the spaghetti into his mouth by the handful while laughing hysterically.