Sentencia Finalized

Stop the presses! Great news late last Monday. Our Sentencia (Adoption Judgement) was passed down in the courts here in Cali.


Yeah! Open the wine, we're headed home soon!

We can now go to the city with our lawyer to collect this, and finalize Charlotte´s passport. Exciting stuff for us and we are heading out for pizza to celebrate. Our time here in Cali is coming to a close and we will head to Bogota shortly to put the last pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together and we can think about heading home with Charlotte.

There are two other families with us here at Hotel Arboleda, both adopting children from Chiquitines. One family is Australian, and the other from Finland. Comparing notes only helps confirm what we all already know, that this process takes way to long for everyone involved and that there are many children here in need of a family and a home.



Go! Go! Familia Umansky!

The wait is certainly worth it, but not something we are likely to forget in a hurry. It´s also great to think that there is a network of Colombian children all from Chiquitines, and mostly from Cali, growing up around the world. There is nothing more fascinating than listening to a Colombian child speak fluent Finnish after spending their childhood there.

Fact 1: Charlotte looks at her feet every time a camera comes out, it took 10 attempts to get her passport picture.

Best to take the pictures from here if you are going to look down...

Fact 2: Charlotte giggles out loud now, and we have spent most of our time coaxing these out of her by blowing rapsberries on her belly

"...so an Englishman, an Irishman and a baby walk into a bar..."

Fact 3: Now Charlotte can roll over expertly she only wants to sleep on her belly, and despite our anxiety there doesn´t seem to be much we can do about it.


"Don't even think about turning me over"