The newest addition to the Hartland

Phew, it’s been so long since my last post I’m not sure I remember how to do this! To say the least, we’ve had a few changes around the Hartman household. As I’m sure many of you are aware, Jason and I traveled to Ethiopia the end of February to finally get our son Masamo. It was an exciting trip but I’ll fill you in on the details a little later.

The same weekend that Jason and I were headed to Africa, the rest of our family headed west to Texas to my brother Thom’s wedding. It was very hard for me to miss my little brother’s wedding to his wonderful bride Katherine. However, I was able to cope with it by having their blessing to miss this special occasion and having the big event of meeting our son to distract me. Everyone had a great time in Texas and things only went off with one “hitch”, the one that was supposed to happen!

I’ll spare you the boring details of the trip Jason and I took to Ethiopia. I will highlight a few moments for you though.

#1 Meeting Masamo for the first time

What words are there to describe the first time you meet your child? Much like a birth, this moment was full of emotion and wonder. Masamo didn’t want much to do with us at first but we knew from his caretakers that he is slow to warm up to those he does not know.

Our first glimpse of our new son

Here’s the VIDEO of our first meeting

#2 The culture and people of Ethiopia

It is always amazing when you get immersed in a new culture, the shock that you have over the differences that there are in the world. Although it appeared that many of them lived in little more than shacks made out of tin roofing material, their hospitality was not diminished. Many got their drinking water from streams going through fields shared by soccer players and livestock alike. There were absolutely no traffic signals or signs of any type that we could see. A lot of honking, beeping and light flashing of headlights was all that the cars used to communicate in traffic. People were packed into the public transportation (small vans) and walked everywhere else. Another thing we noticed was that there were not a lot of elderly people around. Lastly, the love that the Ethiopian people had for their children was very apparent. Everyone who saw Masamo would say hello to him and try to interact with him (not that he responded to them).

Masamo's Homecoming

#3 The adjustment at home

I’m including this as part of the “trip” because it is certainly been an adventure! I think we’ve hit every range of emotions imaginable, from inconsolable crying to a full on belly laugh! Jason and I knew that this was all a part of the adoption “package”. Raising an adopted child is a whole other ball game compared to raising a biological child but the joys and pain feel just the same. Jason and I have had to make a lot of new changes at home. We’ve had to alter our regular comfortable habits to make things easier for everyone, especially Masamo. From waking to sleeping and eating to bath time, everything seems to have changed. I’ve had to dive back into entertaining a toddler and having him hang on me almost all day. I’m not complaining, it’s all for the greater good but it’s different and that takes time to get used to. I’ve described Masamo as having issues (good and bad) that you would deal with from a newborn all the way up to his chronological age of three and a half, they’re all rolled up in one cute little guy!

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Here are a few of the highlights from the past two months, along with some photos. Once I’m done with that, I’ll introduce Masamo to you a little bit more.

1. Ella’s accident
Ella was riding her bike in the driveway when she failed to use the brakes in time and slammed into one of our garage doors. You can see the result. She did have some nasty scrapes on her arm but thankfully nothing serious!

2. First time out of the house for Masamo (March 9th)

I took David and Masamo to Walmart for our first venture out together. Masamo did very well considering how overwhelming Walmart can be to the senses. I held him the whole time and he wanted to see anything that had a horse on it!

3. David’s kindergarten “fiancee”

David took a bubble gum ring to his "girlfriend" at kindergarten and told her it was the wedding ring she was to give him on their wedding day. (He has hers stored at home in a safe spot) Don't laugh, these kindergarten romances sometimes work out! I know, I'm living proof!

4. Masamo’s first trip to Mc Donald’s

Jason and I took David and Masamo to the “musical” McDonald’s. It was Masamo’s first taste of fast food AND his first time in the playland. He wasn’t sure what to make of the playland at first but after Jason showed him the slide, he caught right on!

5. Watching a movie and eating popcorn.

Masamo’s first movie was “Home on the Range”. We chose this because of the horse and many animals it featured.

6. Masamo discovering sunglasses and a rocking horse. I’ll let the photo do the talking.

7. Garden helpers

I was excited to get out into the garden and start cleaning for a new season of growth, the boys decided to help.

8. David’s sixth birthday!

Party at his favorite restaurant

David's "dino-mite" birthday party.

This included a dinosaur egg hunt, a dinosaur pinata, dinosaur feet wearing game, cake and of course presents!

9. Watching Masamo become more interactive with the family

March 26th - Calling out to Ella for a kiss and then waving bye to her as she gets on the school bus. This is now a morning routine!
April 8th –Hugged David when he got hurt and tried to comfort him

10. Scraping and painting the garage

11. Masamo’s first trip to the zoo (April 3rd)

12. Easter!

The egg hunters

13. Testing the waters with leaving Masamo in someone else’s care (April 6)

I first left Masamo at home with my mother and David. I went to a local coffee shop and got some hot chocolate and wrote thank you notes. I was gone 1 ½ hours, I don’t think he missed me at all!

14. Masamo’s first time camping at "the land" (April 9-11th)

Learning to relax in the hammock

Painting, it's actually fun when we're camping!

Riding the "tractor"

Emily being studious, getting some homework done while camping.

15. Emily’s birthday party (April 16th)

– 10 teenage girls (13 kids total) under one roof – CHAOS!

16. Masamo’s first haircut (not technically) but it was his first with us!

Masamo HATED this. He struggled the entire time but seems to have recovered well.

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Here is some personal information on Masamo. These are just glimpses that Jason and I thought you might enjoy about what Masamo is like when you get to know him.

1. Spent his first three days glaring at us, so if you get his “death glare” don’t take it personally , he just doesn’t know you.
2. He loves “makinas” or in English, cars (really anything with wheels on it).
3. He has recently discovered monster trucks and is in love with them, he spent a lot of time with Jason on You Tube watching videos of them!

4. He loves horses and the first words he decided to learn were almost all animal names and their sounds.

5. He loves to be outside, temperature doesn’t seem to be a deterring factor either!

6. He loves to swing.
7. He really looks up to his older siblings, especially David, he emulates almost everything David does. One example is that I could not until recently get Masamo to say “please”. I decided to use this emulation to my advantage and have David model how to say “please” and it’s results. And…. Voila! Masamo is now saying please!

8. He has picked up English very quickly. By his second week home we counted 57 words that we knew he used and understood their meaning. The number now is too high to guess at. His first sentence (thought up by himself and not repeating someone) came a week ago (April 12th) when I placed him in a swing. I started swinging him and he said “I like swing!” He understands just about everything we say too, God has made little children so amazing, they're sponges when it comes to learning!
9. He loves music, singing and dancing. He’s even making up his own lyrics to the songs he really likes. He’s changed the end of one song about the moon from “lemon pie” to “mommy pie”.

Here’s a video of Masamo singing and dancing to “I like to move it”. Masamo however pronounces it “I like to mool it, mool it!”

10. He hasn’t met a sweet that he doesn’t like!
11. He will eat very few fruits and NO vegetables.
12. He loves to laugh, whether it be because of a tickle, doing something silly or just imitating his siblings, Masamo likes an excuse to laugh.



Oh, I almost forgot! Here are photos of the newly redone bedrooms! Just to remind you Ella switched rooms so that the boys could share a larger room. Ella’s room is now yellow and David and Masamo share a blue room.

I think that’s all the new news from the Hartland. I will do my best to keep the blog updated more regularly now. This post took me a combined 6 plus hours to complete. I did not do it in one sitting either but rather multiple sittings. I hope you enjoyed this lengthy post! Until next time!

Plans and Preparation

This last month has flown by! We've had our nose to the grindstone getting ready and preparing for the expansion of our family by one very adorable three year old boy!

I guess first I should take a step back and let you know what we've been up to this past month.

Soon after my last post we had a little bit of snow, well it was enough to cover the seemingly dead grass and that in my opinion is a "good" snow. The kids were off of school for a few days and David was the only one to venture out with Jason to play in it. They had a wonderful time sledding, and here's the proof!

Next we decided it would be prudent to get moving on switching the kid's bedrooms (Ella and David's) in preparation for Masamo's pending arrival. We started by emptying out David's smaller room, which by the way all his things went into the upstairs hallway and bathroom, and changed it from an olive green to a cheery yellow for Ella! Jason and I decided that since we were hard at work with the room that we would play Jason's favorite home improvement game of "What's Under the Carpet?" David's room was the only room in our house to remain carpeted and we were told that the wooden floor underneath sloped into the middle of the room and so another floor was built on top and carpeted.

David helping to paint his old bedroom yellow for Ella!

Jason playing "What's Under the Carpet?"

Having that challenge in front of him, Jason proceeded to pry the carpet, padding, and subfloor up to see what the original wooden floors looked like. We were happy to find that the slope we had been told was so drastic really wasn't that bad. Once we had everything up and out of the room it was certainly apparently that the slope was there but as a couple decided the floor was worth resanding, finishing and leaving original to match the rest of the house. Jason spend the whole next day (a Sunday) sanding the floor, which needless to say made a very dusty mess.

The room (almost) finished, just needed the polyurethane!

Our home improvement projects were put on hold over the next weekend as we as a family were gone from home. Jason did sneak in putting down a couple coats of polyurethane on the bare wooden floors in David's old/Ella's new room before we all left. Jason and Emily went on a ski retreat in Pennsylvania with our church's youth group. I went to NY to visit my best friend and her family to help out after the birth of their fourth child. Ella and David spent a fun filled weekend with Mimi and Boppy watching movies and going to Build-a-Bear!

Me with the newest member of the Apthorpe family!

Emily on the ski trip (photos taken from Facebook, so the quality isn't that great)

The next weekend we were back at painting. We emptied Ella's room into her new yellow room to make room for painting. It was a challenge to cram all of her things from the larger room into the now smaller room but with some creativity we did it! Ella's old purple and lavender room was soon transformed into a nice blue room for David and Masamo. It was a nice surprise to find that it only took one coat of paint for this room unlike the three coats of paint we needed to make Ella's new room yellow! Just a FYI, it turns out that the shade of blue that we chose for the boy's room was the exact shade of blue we painted our upstairs bathroom two years ago (a fact we did not discover until we had already started painting).

Sorry no photos of this room yet!

David and Masamo's room was halfway put together the next day with David's things put into place. I am in the process of getting a bunk bed and all other necessary items together for Masamo so that it's ready for his arrival.

Speaking of Masamo's arrival we were informed on Tuesday January 26th that we passed our Ethiopian court date and that we were officially granted custody of Masamo! His birthfather obviously made it to court and all paperwork was in order for the judge to be able to make his decision! This absolutely wonderful news was also delivered with the dark cloud that Jason and I would have to be in the country of Ethiopia on Febuary 20th (as long as Masamo tests negative for TB). This is the exact day that my brother Thom is getting married to his wonderful fiance Katherine.

It took me some time to process all of the information coming at us and for me to deal with the grief of missing my little brother's wedding but after talking to him, getting his and Katherine's blessing and working out a few details I am feeling much better about the whole situation! Plus, it will be a day to celebrate for years to come, gaining two family members on the same day!!! I can honestly say that the days are passing in a flurry as Jason and I try and make all types of arrangements and packing for this exciting, life-altering trip. There are so many things to anticipate and plan around it's almost overwhelming!

We also had another fun event in the last month, the annual Pinewood Derby at our church. We had both Ella and David participating this year. Normally with David being in kindergarten he would not be qualified to join in the derby but because he attends the Wednesday night boys activities with Jason he was allowed to enter!

Ella decided to make a mouse car this year! Here it is below!

She ended up getting sixth place in craftsmanship for the girls (getting a certificate) and I'm not even sure where she placed in speed!

David and Jason also decided to design a car centered around craftsmanship and so made David's car into a wrench! Here's his car!

David ended up in second place in craftsmanship for the boys and was thrilled to get a trophy in his first Pinewood Derby! I'm also not sure where David placed in speed but I do know that both of them did not end up in last place in that category!

I'm sure that my next post will not be until we arrive home from Ethiopia with Masamo. I apologize now for the delay that the next post will probably be but I'll make it as intersting as possible once I do post it! Here's praying for safe travel for us all! Until next time!

Winter Wishes

Has it really been so long since I last posted?! I didn't post at all in December. Ugh, where has the time gone? It seems the more I try to do the faster time flies. Despite my failing to post, I do truly hope that your Christmas season and New Year's were enjoyable, safe and filled with family and friends. We had a fun holiday season and have some great news to share.

On December 16th, we received a call from our adoption agency letting us know that they had a three year old boy they'd like to tell us about. I was at work when Jason called to tell me this, he was the one they got ahold of first. I could not contain my joy at this news. I started to cry with tears of joy and excitement and my boss let me step out of the OR so that I could find a quiet place in order to call the agency back and find out more information.

I got on the phone with our case worker and she three way called in Jason so that we could both listen about this precious little boy. Here is some of what we were told.....

His name is Masamo (we don't know how to pronounce it, we just have a spelling). His birth date is stated as October 16, 2006. His father relinquished him to an orphanage in southern Ethiopia after his mother disappeared. Masamo has three biological siblings, aged 12, 8 , and 3 years old. He appears very healthy and his labs all came back negative for any serious blood transmitted diseases (HIV, Hepatitis, etc). All this information is very basic and have no detail beyond what we have in the papers sent to us. We do however have four color photos of Masamo.

We were told that he was grumpy when they were taking the photos and so gave him a lollipop to cheer him up!

Jason and I discussed and quickly came to the decision that we were interested in pursuing the referral of Masamo. Once this was communicated to our agency we were sent another round of paperwork to complete specific to Masamo. We had ten business days (starting December18th) to get it all done. Mission accomplished! We are very, very blessed to have an International Adoption Clinic here in town at one of the local hospitals. They and their staff were very invaluable in their help to us and answering questions we had about these types of adoptions.

We had another call with our agency tonight (Jan. 5th) and were told that our case to adopt Masamo has been given a court date in Ethiopia! Our case will go before a judge there on January 26th. There are multiple variables involved in order for this case to move forward including Masamo's birth father showing up for the court date, the paperwork all being in order, etc. After this point (if all goes well) the judge will decide on whether or not to give custody to Jason and I of Masamo. Once this happens there will be more paperwork to get in order for Masamo to travel and a TB test to be performed on Masamo. We will be given tentative travel dates and will not confirm them until the results of Masamo's TB test are determined to be OK for him to travel. We are required to attend an US Embassy appointment and for our agency they only happen twice a month. This is what our travel will be planned around.

There are still so many unknowns at this point. I'm becoming anxious about Masamo's grieving and attachment issues that he will face and is probably already facing at this moment. We would appreciate your prayers. The first several months or more at home will be intense and we won't be leaving the house very much. We were told this is called the "cocooning" process where we will try and establish ourselves as Masamo's forever parents and family.

The day after we got our phone call about Masamo in December, David was (in his words) very busy "practicing to be a good big brother". He had his favorite stuffed bear on this pillow with a blanket on it. He was carefully carrying it around and asking him what he wanted to do next. It was just so sweet. David is really excited to be a big brother!

Phew! Now that I've explained all that I'll let you know what our holiday season looked like. It included.............

Cookie Baking and Decorating at Mimi and Boppy's house

The final yummy result!

Decorating the Christmas tree

I'm not quite sure what they were doing under there. Hmmmmm......

Going to see the downtown train display

Multiple Christmas Celebrations with family

** See the slide show at the top of the page! **

New Year's Eve Party

Thom and Katherine's Visit and Bridal Shower

Unfortunately this time was overshadowed by the fact that Katherine caught the stubborn stomach bug that has been being passed around our family for the past couple of weeks. This is not the type of present we intended to give her! The shower was very pleasant and it was nice to be surrounded by people who are all truly wishing this young couple a promising future. We are now counting down until their wedding on February 20th!!!!

Throughout this entire season we were playing mouse trap. We were not playing the board game but the actual thing! It started in mid December and we think (knock on wood) that we have caught all of the little rodents who decided to make our kitchen their home. I lost track of how many critters we actually caught but know that we caught not just mice but also shrews (Jason and I both though that we were catching baby moles). We were proved wrong during a trip at the museum center where they had rodents from our area in a display case.

There is a story that comes with this adventure. Because we are parents to an avid animal lover (Ella) we were trying to be humane in our attempts at catching these pests. We were successful in our first attempt when Jason just happened to catch sight of a mouse one morning. We were able to trap it, I'll spare you the details, after a half hour of effort. David and Ella quickly named her (yes we looked under her tail) Mary and we were doomed. We had an extra 10 gallon aquarium in the basement and since Ella has a gerbil we already had the makings for a cage. Mary, who is very tiny, is needless to say very wild and is not shy about biting anyone who tries to hold her. We told the kids that we would keep her in the 10 gallon only until the weather warms up and she won't freeze to death outside. Fortunately they were agreeable to this solution.

I guess that's enough of an update. Hopefully I will update again before another month comes and goes. Until then we plan on doing a lot of rearranging and painting at our house. I'll also be busy reading up on what we need to be doing to help Masamo transition into our family more smoothly. So long for now!