We bought the book

Being the materialistic girl that I am, I always start and end life's adventures with purchases. The final part of every trip, consists of me double checking that I both got everyone I ever knew a token present (this can backfire on me) and making sure that I have enough trinkets as well. One item that AMP and I always buy, is a coffee table book. We legitimately have a coffee table book from the Parthenon replica in Nashville, TN, because we stopped there once, and heaven help us if we hadn't bought the big picture book. So, today we ended the Barranquilla portion of our trip - we bought the book. And not just the pretty Colombia picture book that we bought the other day. The 25lb, picture of every pretty house in town, and every park in every season book, that is totally going to max out the weight on our luggage. But now, my son will have some nice pictures of his birth town, and I think that is well worth AMP breaking his back carrying it through the airport - because of course, he isn't going to check it - we might get....fees!

So Part One of our trip is done. We arrived in Barranquilla on the afternoon of the 3rd, and tomorrow afternoon we leave. We have spent the past 10 days in the Hotel Majestic, and it has worked for us. Here are a couple pictures of the room (we never managed to catch a pic of the lizard - he's in here - somewhere).


This is the dining area/kids bedroom - though it only looked like this about 2 minutes of everyday. From 3:04 to 3:06, immediately following the cleaning ladies departure, and then it would dissolve quickly - notice that Chicken Little IS in this picture, at least her feet are.




















They have a really nice pool area downstairss, in a center courtyard, with an alligator fountain. Pretty much every morning was spent with me ferrying Pollo back and forth between the beach ball, the ladder so he could get out and jump like Sissy, and to the bano. Chicken Little now knows how to do a perfect cannonball, a great back flip in the water, and how to flirt with Italian young men in the pool (actually not kidding on this one). Chicken Nugget, on the other hand is a little seahorse - she treads water through the pool perfectly upright and screaming bloody murder if Mommy comes near her to check and see if she is drowning or possibly assist her in anyway. Here is Chicken Nugget posing on the alligator - I have really great pics of the three of them on the alligator that I am dying to post, but must wait.

Anyway, adequate space for the 5 us. Pretty much every dinner lately has consisted of cereal around this table, as the kitchen doesn't open until 7pm, and Pollo has some medicine he has to take with food at 6pm. I vow to never again touch Frosted Flakes, and Corn Flakes might be next on the list. The best thing about meals is that now Pollo is obsessed with praying before the meal - he wants to say "ah-men". We usually have to stop the meal several times to re-bless the food - which might not be a bad idea after all.

So, we spent the last 10 days here meeting Pollo, and spending the first week getting to know him. This last Tuesday we had an official meeting by the pool with the social worker, the child pscychologist, his nutrionist, our translator, and our lawyer, and of course all three loco ninos. This rather formal meeting, with snack and drinks even, was to make sure that all was going well in Pollo's transition, and that we were all happy together. I didn't have to say much - the three kids pretty much made our case for us, as they terrorized the entire pool area together. Now, our case has been submitted to the court here in Barranquilla - and we wait. We are choosing to wait in nearby Cartagena, at the Hilton resort on the end of the private peninsula in the Carribbean, with three pools, and a playground. I am suffering so much on this maternity leave - honestly!

Next time from paradise!

PS. - I updated some of the posts from the trip with pictures that I finally just downloaded. I realize now, that I am not taking near the pictures I took with the first adoption - I don't know if it is the setting, or the three crazy chicks running around and over me!