Friday March 23 2012

So, we had our appointment yesterday back at Casa de Maria.  We met with the social worker and the psychologist from the orphanage and also a rep from ICBF.  Our assistant's husband, Mario, did the translating for us.  It was an interview to see how David is adjusting to our family and what our future plans for David our. They asked a lot about Gustavo and were excited to hear that he will be going to the Spanish Immersion school next year.  They said we were a great family and have already notices a lot of changes in David.  The psychologist said she heard David talk more in the 1/2 hour interview than she heard him ever talk in the orphanage.  It was a great interview and a document will be wrote up and submitted to our court file next week.

So, now for the bad news.  We must be the unluckiest family here as our case ended up getting submitted to the court where the judge is against adoptions.  Remember in my last post, I said there is one court out of 14-15 that you do not want to be submitted to?  Well that of course is the one we are submitted to.  We figured there was bad news coming as our Attorney wanted to meet with us in person.  The courts are now closed until next Thursday so she can't pull our file and resubmit until then.  She said she has never had a problem doing this as she only submits the cases with one parent's name attached so that she can resubmit with the other parent's name.  I am trying not to think of what will happen if she submits with my name next week and we still get assigned to this court and judge.  She said that she has talked to this judge and asked why he is against adoptions.  He has stated that he doesn't like seeing families look completely different from the children and doesn't feel it is right.  She didn't think it would be an issue for us but we don't want to take any chances.  Of course after she resubmits next week, it will be Holy Week (Semana Santa) and everything will be closed so no one will even look at our case until the week we thought I would be coming home.  Then on top of it we'll have the extra delays while the judge scrutinizes us and David.  Once he signs off, then it will go to someone else to scrutinize everything.  I have no idea how long I'll be here.  The Attorney is representing another family that has been here 2.5 months already.  When we said something about being here 3 months, she laughed and said she didn't think it would be that long but who knows.

I'm trying to keep a positive outlook but it is hard to think about being here so long without Sohrab.  Sanaya will be coming down for ~1.5 weeks around April 16th which will help and allow us to move about the city again.  I think I'll feel better after we find a different apartment for me closer to one of the malls.  All of the malls have a grocery store and it would be nice to have somewhere that we could go walk around.  Ideally, I'd like to find a place close to a park for Gustavo but it doesn't seem like that's likely.  The assistant and president of the orphanage are putting together a list of apartments so hopefully we can start shopping next week.  I love our current apartment as it has everything we need (except an oven) but it just too far away from everything.  I don't want to have to rely on taxis all the time.  Also, the taxis always seem to get lost finding our building.  I've got a lot to do in the next week since I have not exchanged money yet or even charged anything.  Sohrab's been taking care of all of the money so far.  I also hope we can get a lot of exploring in before Sohrab leaves.  I think the earliest I would be home would be mid-May but have a feeling it will be longer.  If everything works out and baby David comes home, it will all be worth it in the end.

On to happier subjects.  On Wednesday, we took the metro to the end of the line and then rode a cable car up the moutain side.  The cable car was put in to bring the people from the moutain side into the city.  We are in El Poblado which is the richest part of Medellin.  By going on the metro and cable car, we saw a totally different side of the city.  There is such a class difference here.  We walked right by a school and it was neat to see all of the kids in their uniforms.  It looked like at lunchtime that everyone goes home to eat and then comes back to school.  It was sad to see the kids that were not in school, though.  We ended up having good weather (no rain) but it was cloudy so we didn't get a ton of good pictures.

Yesterday (Thursday), we hung out at the apartment until our interviews and meetings.  We were finally able to meet our agency's in country rep, Cecilia as she was visiting the orphanage with our MN rep, Bettina.  They had flown in from Bogota for the day.  We'll work with Cecilia when we go to Bogota at the end of our process.  Last night we celebrated the good and bad news by walking to a burger place close by.  We were headed to El Corral (big in Colombia for burgers) but next door was Firehouse which Sohrab had read was better.  We had a nice dinner and enjoyed listening to all of the 80's music!

I started giving David Cheerios and he kept himself busy trying to get them in his mouth last night.  He is getting much better at it.  It is pretty funny when he picks one up in his fist and then is unable to get it into his mouth.  He instantly sticks his thumb in his mouth and I can envision him saying, I meant to do that!  He is a really good eater.  If there is real food around, he wants nothing to do with the bottle.  I am running out of the baby food I made last week so need to get some more made up and get some more variety for him.  David is a really good sleeper and can sleep most nights at least 10 hours through the night.  When he doesn't want to sleep, he recently "learned" how to scream but at least he doesn't cry like Gustavo used to with real tears.  He is up now and we are off to the Botanical Gardens as it is beautiful and sunny here today.  I'll post pictures later....