Settling in as a family of 4:)

Aside from me not being back to work quite yet, I would say we're pretty settled into regular life as a family of 4. It's one of my little goals to try to have a nice family brunch at home on Sundays. We've managed to get right back into that routine since we've been home and I'm pretty tickled pink about that:) I made a batch of home made belgian waffles last Sunday for brunch. The recipe I use makes a ton of waffles. We usually eat about half of them and then I freeze the rest of the batch. Works great to throw them in the toaster for breakfast just like you would a store bought frozen waffle. Or if you have a big old sweet tooth like me, you can also eat them for dessert smothered in Nutella spread and vanilla ice cream;) Athena likes hers with whipped cream only, strawberries on the side. Apparently Alton thinks thats pretty darn hilarious! If you ask Ena to help set the table, you may end up with a few extra guests for brunch. Prepare to be stopped by every person you pass so they can tell you how cute your kid is when you take an already cute baby out in this cuter than cute winter cap! I remember the same thing happening when Ena wore this cap too. They both have those huge brown eyes and round cheeks, and then add the hat to it yet too. Irresistible!

Time is flying by!

I can't believe we've been home almost 2 weeks already! It seems the older I get, the faster life flies by. With each addition to our family, time seems to go by even faster and faster! I'm trying to soak up every minute of my family leave home with the kids before life gets even more fast paced in a few weeks when I go back to work. Ena went back to preschool this week and will go 3 or 4 days a week until she goes back to full time when I go back to work. We toyed with the idea of having her stay home with me for my entire family leave, but decided it was best for her to get back into a routine of school and seeing her playmates again. It's good for me to have some time alone with Alton to help him get settled in and work on some things with him and run him around to appointments too.

Alton is not the biggest fan of winter coats or mittens. His eyes seem to be saying "Are you kidding me? Take me back to Santa Marta where I don't need to dress like a flippin' marshmellow!"

Come on! Where are my hands?!

Laundry baskets are always fun times.

I love my new little people cars. Thank you Auntie Jessie and Uncle Andrew:)

Thank you:)

This post is for the awesome staff at my work. Thank you so much for the beautiful flowers to congratulate us on arriving home with Alton. They were delivered to our house at about 10:30 this morning. The delivery man handed them to me and said "Wow, someone really likes you!" They're beautiful! They look awesome on the mantle and brighten up the room:)

The first few days home:)

I've been trying to keep our first few days at home quiet to let Alton get used to his new surroundings. He seems to be settling in and even slept through the night in his new bed twice so far! John went back to work right away on Tuesday, but I have another few weeks off of work.
I took Alton in for his combination 1 year check up/post adoption physical. We have a new pediatrician as our old one retired just before we returned home. I have to say, I LOVE our new pediatrician. She seemed to be more pro-active and thorough with Alton's post adoption physical than our other one was with Athena when we brought her home. She has experience with international adoption and really took her time going through all of his history and explaining the tests that she likes to have done for the kids and why. As a kudos to the Colombian care system and to Ayudame, she said she was very impressed with his medical records. In particular she said his immunization record was the most detailed, thorough and complete one she's seen for an internatinally adopted child. She said she was very happy to hear that he already had 8 teeth at 10 months old when we recieved him because she feels this is a good indicator that he recieved good pre-natal care and good nutrition as an infant. He's still small, only 7th percentile for weight and 19th for height. He doesn't seem small to us, so I was a little surpised by this. Maybe it's those cheeks that make his seem bigger to us:) She said she wants us to keep him on formula for at least another month yet because of his small size combined with him being premature. Other than that though, she said he's doing fine:) Nothing major to worry about aside from a few small intitutional/orphanage delays that can be expected. The sucky part about his appointment was that I needed to hold him down for shots and to have blood drawn. I think he was tramatized by all of this because when we returned home from the appointment, he was doing his self-soothing humming noise that he used to do when we first got him. He hadn't been doing it for the last few weeks since being with us, but he went back to it yesterday afternoon. I also need to take him back next week for his tb test:( Hopefully that will be the last of the needles for him until his 15 month appointment!
He likes his new highchair and starts getting excited when I put him in it because he knows it's time to eat:)

Happy Birthday Alton!

I said I was hoping to have Alton home before his birthday and we made it:) We made it by about 2 hours! Nothing like cutting it close;) I didn't have time to run to the store to get eggs and such to make a cake, so grandma Kathleen and grandpa Mike picked up some birthday cupcakes at the store for lunch. Alton loved it and chowed his down!

We also got visits from grandma Janet, grandpa Ralph and Uncle Joe for dinner on Monday night.

Yay! My first tractor:)

Grandma and Grandpa surprised the kids with matching big sister and little brother John Deere sweatshirts:)

Alton seems to be settling in pretty good so far. We weren't sure how he would react to Amber. He was hit or miss with dogs while we were in Colombia. Sometimes he seemed to like them at the park and sometimes he seemed freaked out. We were relieved that he is fine with Amber and seems to like her:)

The only thing he is not adjusting to so far is his car seat. In Colombia he would sit on our laps in the cars. He cried at the top of his lungs the whole way home from the airport. We didn't go anywhere yesterday, just hung out at home letting him get used to the house. Tonight he needs to come along when I take Athena to dance class though since John won't be home by the time we leave. We'll see how it goes;)

We're coming home!

John picked up Altons visa on Friday and our representative stopped by just now with the last of our documents to bring back home for everything we need to do once we get back. We are all set to fly home on our original plane tickets for tomorrow!! We're being picked up from the hotel at 6:00am for our 9:30am flight. We have a 5 hour flight from Bogota to Atlanta, then have a 3 hour layover in Atlanta. Hopefully just the right amount of time to get through customs, immigration for Alton, re-check luggage and get the kids something to eat before boarding the next flight to Milwaukee. We get into Milwaukee at about 8:30pm:) My mom and John's moms will be picking us up:)
We're enjoying our last day in Bogota with our friends. We're heading out for lunch at Archies again (the place where the kids make their own pizza), then running to some stores for a few last minute purchases of things we want to bring back with us.
Watch for our next post from home:)

I like cake!

And oblea's too!

We have a 20 lb. cookie monster on our hands. Perfect for this baking mama;)

Look who has a passport!

We (our representative Luz actually) got all of our paperwork snafoos figured out now, so today we got a lot accomplished with our final paperwork:) We picked up the final clearance papers from the ICBF main office. This is something new since Athena's adoption since the Hague was implemented. We also applied for and got Altons Colombian passport. Next we had our last meeting with the director of Ayudame to get final permission to travel home with Alton. Later tonight we have a doctors appointment for Altons medical clearance to apply for his visa.

Tomorrow we take his spiffy new passport to the American Embassy to apply for his visa to come home. We should be able to pick up his visa on Friday & that will be our ticket home!

Slowly making progress!

We're working through some things with our paperwork to be able to fly home on our original tickets on Sunday. Some things have come up and we definately will not be in a position to bump up our tickets to any time before that. Luckily our representative is very organized and proof reads everything with a fine tooth comb. She noticed on Monday that we were only issued one copy of a certain document that we were supposed to be given 2 of and today she noticed another one of the documents was accidentaly dated for 2010 rather than 2011. We are working on getting everything fixed to be able to pick up the final visa for Alton on Friday. Send us some more luck please:) We'll keep everyone updated on our progress! We're almost home!!

Butterflies, crepes & waffles:)

We had another fun day out and about today. Now that we have Sentencia and know our time remaining here is limited, we're trying to squeeze in as many fun things as possible before we go back home to the reality of work and double day care bills:) We're going to be running to lots of appointments this coming week to get all of our final paperwork done, so we did 2 fun things today that we've been meaning to do before we go.

First we went to the Bogota Botanical Gardens this morning with the Jaenesch's. By some miracle it didn't rain at all the whole time we were there, so we spent the whole morning walking around and enjoying the park:) We saw lots of beautiful plants and snapped tons of great pictures. They even have an awesome butterfly exibit going on right now!

Alton getting in his daily 'boob nap' as John calls it when he falls asleep in the carrier when we're out walking.

The guide got a butterfly to land on his finger and he passed it onto Athena's finger and let her hold it for a minute.

It was so incredibly hot and humid in the butterfly building because many of the butterflies are from tropical areas of Colombia. They need to recreate the right environement for them at the gardens. Many of my pictures look a littel hazy like this one because my camera lense kept steaming up.

BIG cala lillies.

This beautiful fountain is in the center of the enormous rose garden area.

As I mentioined earlier, Alton is a daddy's boy and prefers John right now. Today though, he kept reaching for me all day and wanted me to carry him:)

I heart this picture:)

After returning from the Gardens, we headed out to lunch. One of the restaurants that everyone loves when they are here is called Crepes and Waffles. Somehow in the 11 weeks total that we have been in Bogota adopting both of our kids, we have never been there. We couldn't miss it this time:)

We ordered 2 different types of crepes and split them. This crepe was cold and filled with smoked salmon, cream cheese, avacado, dill, red peppers & cucumber. The other one was hot and saucy and filled with chicken, cheese and spinach. Both were to die for! We also split a huge waffle sundae, smothered in Nutella and ice cream!

Athena's kids meal (a ham and cheese pita) came with a strawberry smoothie and this fun sundae!

Those of you who are friends with me on fb and have seen my food album, you know I"m going to copy this sundae as soon as we get home:) This awesome kids meal btw only cost about $5! The entire bill was not very big at all. Seriously, we need a Crepes and Waffles at home:)

Recap on Thursday

Like I said in the previous post, we spent Thursday out being tourists at the gold museum and candelaria area in Bogota. In part of the museum there was a huge visual time line that outlined the history of the different parts of the world. As we were reading through some of it Angie's dad Roger found this:

Fun! Kenosha Wisconsin mentioned at the Museo Del Oro in Bogota.
I also had to take pictures of these items for all of my stamping friends:) Check it out-embossing and stamping has been around for a long long time ladies!

We ate at an awesome restaurant just a few blocks from the museum.

If anyone visits the gold museum on your trip to Bogota, we highly recomend this place for lunch or dinner. The best home made guacamole and sangria! Steak and chicken was awesome too. As usual I was so impressed by the hospitality and friendly-ness of the staff. I needed to take both of the kids to the bathroom to change Alton and have Ena take a potty break. The bathroom was on the second floor and the steps were a very narrow, winding spiral staircase. Athena was having a hard time with it and I was trying to help her by just holding her hand as I was carrying Alton. A waiter ran over to us (literally ran), picked Athena up and carried her the rest of the way up the steps. People here are so sweet and helpful when they see you have little kids. You do not wait in any lines when you have little kids along. People insist you go ahead of them. Always. It's not just employess in restarants and stores who are doing their jobs either. People on the street and other customers in stores and the airport do this too. It's heartwarming:)

SENTENCIA!!! SENTENCIA!!!

We had a super fun day out being tourists with Angie's parents Judy and Roger and came home to the best news:) We have sentencia!! John is going to go sign the papers tomorrow morning at 8:00 am:) Not sure when we'll be flying home at this point. Our return tickets right now are for next weekend. We'll see how many days it takes for all of the final paperwork. We got Athena's done in 2 business days, but that was pretty fast. Everything happened to fall into place and fly along with hers.
It's a hefty fee to change the flights though ($250 EACH) so we may just hang around and enjoy our last few days and wait it out & fly home on our original tickets. I'll keep everyone posted when we figure it out!

Hotel Paris

For those who haven't been here and wonder what our living situation is like, I took some pictures to share. We're staying at a place called Hotel Paris. It's not like a hotel in the US though, more like a bed and breakfast or a hostel.

The inside of our room. Our temporary home sweet home!

The dining room where we eat every meal. The food here BTW is deeeelish! They even make home made baby food for Alton. He has yet to not like something they've made him:) He did gag and throw up on mashed potatos when I tried them with him for the first time at lunch today though. Other than that little mishap, he continues to be a little garbage disposal, chowing down whatever we try with him.

One of the living rooms just off the dining room. We spend a lot of time out here before and after meals chatting with the other families and hanging out.

The other living room area. Athena and her friends play house in here a lot.

The court yard.

Daddy and Alton chilling on the bed.

We were planning to go to Lake Guatavita today with 2 other families, but we ended up having to cancel the tour and re-schedule for next week for a few different reasons. One of the families needed to cancel because they had some paperwork snafoos that needed their attention at the last minute and the other family has a sick family member:( It ended up being a rainy day today though, so maybe we'll have better luck with the weather when we go next Tuesday anyway:) There have actually been quite a few sick kids and adults here at the hotel in the last few days. We're really hoping our family is lucky and escapes catching anything!