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 !!