South Africa, Family of Three, and Katy Perry

My plan was to blog in South Africa during our adoption.

No one ever told me that having a 6 year old would not allow for that..easily. 

Touche Parenthood. Touche. 

But, in an effort to bring some news and updates to all of you, I decided to put down my obsession with Candy Crush (post bedtime), grab a glass of wine and go sit outside on the patio of someone's house to capture a few minutes of stolen internet! Boom. This is Africa. 

The last 2+ weeks have been a complete whirlwind. I liken it to the part of the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy has not yet figured out that she is in a dream and a house just crushed a witch. Oddly exciting, somewhat confusing. Definitely foreign. 

We arrived in South Africa after a long 37 hours of travel through too many different countries to list. The day following this, we met our daughter. Our beautiful, vivacious, energetic, independent, and amazing daughter. She is beyond anything we could have ever dreamed. God absolutely knew what he was doing when He weaved our family together.

We spent our first week visiting her each day at her orphanage, getting to know each other, and eating a lot of hamburgers and french fries. (Don't criticizes this unless you have a adopted a 6 year old from a foreign country. You literally do whatever it takes.)

Enter Katy Perry. We found our first days of bonding with her to be quite difficult. She didn't really want anything to do with us after Day 1. We tried everything. We were super cool. I mean, pullin' out all the "cool parent" tricks. I was like "Dang, Erik. We are awesome." Nosipho was like, "Not so much."

Who knew that Katy Perry and her Prism album would single handedly open up the door to instant bonding. With 1 (or maybe 500) plays of "Roar" and "Darkhorse", we were a VonTrap family miracle on our car trips to fast food. I'm 100% convinced that Katy would want us on stage with her. We have hand motions. 

After a week, we broke through. We officially took her to our temporary residence to live with us permanently. We spent another week in Durban and on February 27th, she officially became ours according to the courts of South Africa. It was...perfect. 

We headed to Cape Town the day after, where we will be for the next several weeks. Here we will be doing her US Immigration Medical Exams, applying for her Visa and Passport, and rounding up all loose ends to get us to our exit interview in Johannesburg (hopefully by the end of March). 

Erik will leave on March 12th to head back home and back to work. (I may have had a complete emotional breakdown today about being a single parent for 2/3 weeks. I mean, maybe.)

Our time has been sweet. The girl is a riot. A firecracker. I think she wants to be Katy Perry (perhaps Juicy J, we aren't sure). But, she has brought some serious life to this family. She is strong, beautiful, and will definitely change the world. We know it. 

We are proud parents of our sweet daughter, Nosipho (No-See-Po) Ruth Anderson, and would not/could not wish for something different. 

We will try to update you all more than we have, but for now, prayers prayers prayers abundant for bonding, paperwork, the African process, and each steps forward as we learn to parent, love, and grow as a family! 

And, if anyone didn't get tickets to the Katy Perry concert, you are welcome to come over to our home when we are back. Free show.