So Hard!!

I am so thankful that my parents were able to spend the last week with us.  They leave here in 4 hours and I am so sad to see them go.  It is so great to have company here but so hard to say "good-bye"!  I know I won't be sleeping much (if at all) tonight so am going to do a quick update here.

Mom and dad arrived Sunday evening ~9:30PM.  Gustavo stayed up late to greet them and go through their suitcases.  It was fun to get so many things from home such as food that we can't buy here and also some special toys for Gustavo from mom, dad and Sohrab.  I loved having them here as they were such a big help with the boys and with the cooking and cleaning :)  It was nice to have some breaks from everything.  It was also great to have my dad here as we really took advantage of his Spanish and accomplished so much in his short time here.  It is so difficult to communicate here as it is very uncommon to find anyone that speaks English here.  I think more people speak English in Bogota but not many do here.  I took a backseat throughout the week and turned over almost all communication with the outside world to him.  It was such a nice break for me to have someone translate and figure out some things I have been unable to figure out on my own with my limited Spanish skills.

We met with the attorney on Wednesday and received some bad news again.  I was hoping that we would hear something good so I was crushed by the news.  On Tuesday our attorney called and said that the judge has requested more documents.  When I asked her if this is bad news, she assured me that this is normal and just part of the process.  I then asked if we could meet in person so we could get a better understanding of the process.  When we met, she said that the judge has requested that all of the documents on David from ICBF need to be the original documents.  ICBF did not want to provide these documents until they received a letter from the judge.  The attorney has been going between the judge and ICBF to try to figure out if the documents were submitted.  ICBF did not receive the letter from the judge but someone there took pity on us and said they would gather the documents and present them to the judge on Friday (May 11).  We were then told that the judge would need to review all of the documents and then the procolador (this is the extra step they added into the process) would get involved in the process.  She said that it would take 15-20 days after this point and could be more or less days.  This is the point that I lost it and started crying.  It was so disheartening to hear this as we were really hoping that things would finally start moving for us.  I am glad my parents were there to ask the questions that I wasn't able to ask and keep the conversation going.  I felt bad as this was the first time I've cried in front of the attorney but once I started, it was hard to stop.  The judges are being extremely careful here and taking their time to ensure that each case has been investigated fully and that all relatives have been notified of the child(ren) and given the opportunity to raise the child(ren) here.  We think the possibility of someone stepping forward to take David away is probably small but it still hangs in the back of my mind.  We are not sure how much time they will take to investigate our case.  Once the judge does their investigation, the procolador can still choose to investigate further if they feel the need to.  There are only 2 procoladors for 14 courts and we are told that neither of them are nice people (putting it nicely).  We only know of one other adoption case here so they shouldn't be too busy.  If our case continues to drag on, we have some difficult decisions to make.  We are waiting to hear what happens with our case this week before making any decision, though.

On the good news front, our friends Rikke and Thomas received their Sentencia last Friday (May 4) and were able to finally leave here to go to Bogota this past week.  They were here 11 weeks!  We are so happy to have been able to meet them and spend some time with them!  I am glad they are finally home with their family!

I have to apologize for this blog as it's not as happy as I wanted it to be when I started it.  I had envisioned this being such a happy blog that we could use to share our adoption of David, pictures and happy news.  I never thought we would be going through so much so am sorry that there's not a lot of good news.  I hope the cute pictures of the boys balance everything out :)

I'll post the details from my parents' visit and pictures later this week.  I am not looking forward to the next 4 hours as I am going to have a difficult time saying "good-bye".

If anyone is on Skype and wants to chat sometime, let me know.  I am looking for friends that I can talk to since my days here are spent talking to a 4 and almost 1 year old :)