Zoo time and a trip to the Ranch

Keeping busy in the sunshine of Cali after our interview with the ICBF at the end of last week. The interview went quickly and well, so the legal wheels are turning fully now on the way to our adoption judgement. As you can probably imagine, these things run on South American time and so we can probably expect this to be completed in not much less than two weeks. We have been entertaining Charlotte with trips to the Cali Zoo last Saturday, and a wonderful trip out to a horse ranch in the country on Sunday.

Off for another adventure with mummy


We have the help of a great interpretor, Valentina, which is helping things go smoothly for us. She also acts as our unofficial driver as we frequently take trips out in the Hotel minivan for one thing and another. In Colombia they seem to break jobs down to the smallest possible level (I´m sure this is to keep as many people employed as possible), we were amazed to find a simple trip to the notary to have a couple of documents signed meant that we had to pass through the hands of about five people. They even have people here who you pay to stand in line for you, they spend their entire day standing in queues at the bank and government offices so that you don´t have to! For a small fee they will do the waiting for you, and with the morning and afternoon siestas that these places take you really need their help!

The Zoo was a lot of fun, and since we are down near the equator, many of the animals are in close to their natural habitat. We found this a little disturbing when we met up with a six foot lizard ´wandering´ the Zoo grounds all on his own! Not a problem apparently, he has the run of the place.



The butterfly (Mariposa) farm was the standout attraction, and mummy tasted so nice that a couple of butterflies took a liking to her and had to be encouraged to disembark! Charlotte slept through most of the trip, although during a one on one with the monkeys they seemed to take a liking to her. Anyway, we have it all on video for her to watch later on.

Charlotte and mummy meet the Python (Charlotte looks for a quick exit!)


On Sunday we welcomed a new Australian family to the hotel, Albert and Rosanna, who are here to adopt two young children from Chiquitines. They already know David and Melanie and it was great for us all to once again share our experiences now they are here. We all took a trip out into the country in the afternoon to visit again with the foster parents of David and Melanie´s children.





They have a horse ranch called ´San Miguel´ and were wonderful hosts to all of us for the day. We got to meet their family and have a delicious, traditional Colombian lunch with them. Sebastian, David and Melanie´s son, got to learn how to ride one of the beautiful horses. We got to admire the fantasic scenery, and enjoy their old colonial style ranch complete with terracota floors, wonderful open plan dining room and antique furniture and decoration. It had a real last century feel about it, and we all felt like we had stepped back in time. Many of the trees in the grounds are hundreds of years old, and make for a stunning backdrop. What a memorable afternoon!



Sadly, we had to say goodbye to David, Melanie, Sebastian and Valentina today. Their time here is done and they are returning home to Australia via Bogota and Santiago, Chile. It was truly a pleasure spending time with them, and our trip here really wouldn´t have been the same, or half as much fun, if we hadn´t met them. Thank you, good luck and safe home to the Bradley-Kyps !!



Charlotte continues to thrive, and amaze us. Some of you will be sad to here that Charlotte is sleeping happily through the night, and averages around six to seven hours continuous, glorious and uninterrupted sleep each and every night!! Long may this continue, although she certainly has her moments between 5 and 8pm when a screaming demon takes hold of her and nothing seems to make a difference!! And today, for the first time she managed to roll all the way over onto her tummy by herself. Quite an achievement at 14 weeks, and she was rightfully proud. Only problem is now she can´t roll back the other way and so procedes to scream in frustration each and every time!! Oh well, you can´t have it all straight away. We love her to pieces and she has a wonderful smile for us, however some of the time she does wear a very serious face (example attached). We think somebody told her what the temparature is in Montreal !



We are off to the beach at Santa Marta tomorrow for five days, so this will be our last blog for a little while. We take a short flight to Bogota, and then a quick hop to Santa Marta which is on the Northern Colombian coast, in the Caribbean. We will be back in Cali next Saturday, when hopefully our adoption judgement will be a little bit closer.



We will update you on our travels then, and will be sure to have some great new photos to share. Hopefully you like the new look blog also, we updated the format and put a little more detail in our profile. Until then, take care and keep the comments coming. Estamos fuera aquí de mis amigos!

P.S. Dad - Good luck in the Engadin ski marathon this week, don´t push yourself too hard!!

Daddy´s Birthday!

Happy Birthday to Me !!

Birthday lunch with daddy (one of us taking a nap!)

Time for cake and cards as Garath celebrates his first birthday with Charlotte. Woke up this morning and opened a lovely card from Charlotte that simply said "My Dad" on the front, and had a lovely message inside. It was very sweet and quite surprising since at 14 weeks I wasn´t entirely sure that she could write yet! I think mummy may have helped her, but that is okay. (Thanks for the card Mum & Dad, Emma got it in time and brought it with her!)We had a very relaxing day today, and after a couple of days running around we thought we might help Charlotte get some quality sleep time in. It´s 34º outside and the poor baby does wilt in the heat.

It all got a little bit too much for this one...



Although it makes her very sleepy she also gets very hot and we don´t want to dehydrate her. As you can probably tell from the photos she has substantially more hair than her daddy, and when she gets hot her hair gets all wet. Aside from shaping natty mohican hair do´s for her (which is quite fun) all that hair seems to overheat her in this weather, although it should come in useful when we return to Montreal.

With one thing and another we didn´t quite make it to the Gold Museum, between changing travellers cheques (quite the endevour over here) and shopping for football shirts (go Deportivo Cali !) we didn´t quite fit it all in just yet. We´ve had some lovely lunches and certainly seen much of downtown Cali travelling in the minibus provided by the hotel. Our translator, Valentina, has been very helpful and accompanies us on both our official and unofficial visits. Tommorow we have a very important trip to the ICBF in the afternoon. The ICBF oversees the adoption process in Colombia, and our final adoption judgement (Citenzia) is started by them. We have an interview with them which is conducted through a translator. We shall put our best interview clothes on and hope that Charlotte doesn´t have a meltdown...

Charlotte putting in a bit of quality ´Baby Einstein´ time...



View of downtown Cali from one of our ´excursions´



Our Australian friends finally received their adoption judgement and will be leaving us on Monday. Before then we have enough time to go with them to visit a family who acted as foster parents to both their children before they were adopted. They live on a farm about one hour out of Cali, and since they have cattle and horses it should be exciting for the kids. We may even get mummy onto a Colombian horse...

Since our adoption judgement will take about two weeks to come through we will take a short trip to Santa Marta next week for about five days. This is a holiday resort on Colombia´s northen coast. It looks lovely in the brochures and will be a nice change of scenery for Charlotte, our first family holiday, and a chance to dip our toes in the sea and perhaps meet some dolphins!! Ciao for now !!

Mummy Time

Field trip to Gold museum postponed until tomorrow, went for a very nice, late lunch instead. The restaurant had typical Cali fare and was exceptional,the meat (similiar to La Milsa in Montreal) just melted in your mouth.
Our little Princess is showing her true personality, we are quite determined and ever so stubborn. We had our first pooh this morning, so all´s well with the world.Little feisty when we are over tired and have to be encouraged to sleep,we have a great set of lungs. We obviously love all these things about her,as when she smiles she could get away with anything.



Hopefully get to book our trip tomorrow to go spend a few days on the beach,either San Andres or Santa Marta.We are doing this as our adoption judgement will take at least two weeks to process, so rather than going stir crazy here ( our Australian friends leave this week) we´ll go and ¨relax`in the Caribbean sun with our little cutie. Ciao!

Tuesday´s Child

Hola, here we are into our second day of parenthood. Charlotte had a good night we woke at 12am then at 4am to have our bottles. Then we decided to sleep in until midday, just like mummy and daddy (not!). We were up bright and early playing with our feet and sucking on our hands. So we are all a little blearly eyed this morning, but her gorgoeus smiles make it all worth it. She is quite chubby and loves her milk, and so about two weeks before we collected her the orphanage had put her on a bit of a diet!! She was being fed every two hours at the orphanage, then they realised that she was putting on a little bit too much weight. So we are down to 5oz every 4 hours and jogging between feeds to burn up some extra carbs! The nuk/sus/dummy helps to soothe us when our hand won´t do. She is very strong and gets frustrated when she can´t roll all the way over, a very determined little girl it seems. We are still getting to know the different cries but have pretty much worked out the "I´m hungry feed me now cry" !

Later today we are heading off to the gold museum as Charlotte specifically asked for a field trip, so we will report on that this evening.

Charlotte´s First Day with Us

A few snaps of our first day with Charlotte.

Getting comfy with mummy



Cat nap !!



Feeding time with daddy



Bath time !!

.....here she is !!

We took the short trip this morning up to the Chiquitines to collect Charlotte. After a meeting with the orphange director and some of the people who had been taking care of Charlotte, there was a big fanfare and in she came dressed in a wonderful green dress with matching hat and pants. She looked great and everyone was so proud as they handed her over to Emma. We were both over the moon, and Charlotte rewarded Emma with a huge smile!


We will have a number of trips back to the orphanage of the next few weeks as the adoption is finalized so we headed back to the hotel after about an hour and here we are! Charlotte is lovely, very strong as she is already turning over and lifting her head well. She is sleeping peacefully on Emma right now, but since she has quite an appetite I am sure we will be feeding her very shortly! More updates to come...

Trip to the Sugar Plantation

We spent our second day in Colombia discovering the delights of the highways and byways of this region and learning a little about the history of sugar plantations.

We set off this morning with our new friends from Australia, and trusty driver Elduardo. After several attempts to get the minibus into reverse we began our journey. It was one of many bumps and lots of ohhs and ahhs and oh that was close... but we got there in one piece. The plantation museum was set in beautiful gardens,the owners very kindly lent us an English translation of the tour, so we could understand what we were seeing. It was fascinating to understand a little bit more about what is a major (legal!) crop growing industry in Colombia. Some of the buildings, tools and artifacts here date from as far back as the 17th century.

Thought for the day: If you see a tree, there´s almost certainly a strange and new fruit growing on it. In the yard alone we have an orange tree, a mandarine tree and a papaya tree (all in fruit!)

After a rather hot morning absorbing Colombian history, we set off for lunch. Of course the menu was all in Spanish, no one spoke any English, so we all blindly ordered what we could. I played it safe and went for the Caesar salad, Garath, well , we're still not sure what he ordered. It was, we think, bacon fat, with bits of bacon on, beans, rice and something else. He put on a brave face and ate what he could. Next time we won´t go without the phrasebook! This place is quite incredible, a real assault on all the senses. The air is quite polluted sadly and thick with diesel fumes, and people setting random fires as they see fit. We only get hazy glimpses of the imposing mountain backdrop due to the low cloud and thick smog in the air. It´s a real shame because the view would be breathtaking.

After a refreshing dip in the pool, we caught up on some reading and waited for our gourmet evening meal. Tonight, we really struck it lucky and got fish and chips, and rice(of course), and some lovely garlicky beans. We finished off the evening with an ice cream from Mimos, just on the corner of our street. Tomorrow is the BIG day, and we are obviously very excited, hoping to get some sleep tonight in preparation for no sleep for the next goodness knows how long!! Well, I will sign off now as I seem to have become the main course for the mosquitos!! We´re off to put out our best clothes for our trip to Chiquitines in the morning!

This is a picture of us with Elduardo at the Sugar Plantation (above), and a shot of our friends from Australia (right), David and Melanie, with their children Sebastian and lovely new daughter Valentina, who they collected from Chiquitines just last week.

Arrival !

Let´s get this blog going with a quick hello. We´re very happy to have arrived in one piece and very excited to be picking up our lovely daughter Charlotte on Monday from Chiquitines. Everyone here at the hotel has been very friendly and our pigeon Spanish is just helping us get by. We`ve met a lovely Australian couple who are here adopting their second child, so we`ve been spoilt for English conversation from people who have already been through this and we feel a lot more at home because of that. Anyway, I am sure we will have more of interest in the coming weeks as we discover more about Charlotte and what it means to become new parents in a strange, new environment.

This is a quick snap of Emma posing with Charlotte´s wardrobe FULL of clothes that we brought with us from Montreal (it was a 50kg case if you were wondering!)