My first post as a mommy :)

I had great intentions of updating our blog all the time, but being a parent is super time consuming! Here is a recap of all that has happened now that we have been in Bogota over a week...

Tuesday-Arrived very late at 11:40, and settled into our hotel

Wednesday-Met with Brielle's caretakers and went over all their information about Brielle.

Thursday-Spent the whole morning getting our 'cedulas' (Colombian ID card), and then went at 3:00 to get our girl! I don't think we told many people, but they actually had a professional film crew in the room with us. We will be part of a French documentary showing the importance of special needs adoption.

Friday-Spent our first full day with our girl! It was wonderful, and really hard. Lots of tantrums, but a few giggles too. She mostly just wants to be held, and carried around. We strolled around the mall, and learned that she loves riding in elevators.

Saturday-Spent the day at home just relaxing and playing. She is getting more relaxed each day, with less tantrums and meltdowns.

Sunday-Went to Vida Bogota church, and met our friends Nick and Jennifer. They've adopted 3 kids from Bogota! Went to lunch at the mall with some new people from church. It was so nice to be out with friends, even if missing nap caused a bit of a meltdown.

Monday-Our first Monday holiday in Colombia, and there are a lot of them! Seeing more progress each day with Brielle, and she is bonding more and more with us. This girl loves her bath! Sometimes she gets two a day because she gets out so much energy with all her splashing.

Tuesday-Her first doctor's visit. Not fun, with a TB test included. Plus the traffic in Bogota is horrible, so it takes forever to get around. Another afternoon with no nap, but she is sleeping 10-12 hours at night. Hooray!

Wednesday-We had a meeting with her psychologist and some people from La Casa (her orphanage). They said her progress in six days was amazing. They almost cried at our video of her crawling and feeding herself. Those were skills they have been working on for months, but she had never done either. They just kept saying 'love makes all the difference'! Very encouraging.

Thursday-We went to the park and lunch with Nick and Jennifer. Their kids are super cute, and it is so nice to be with people who have the same experiences with adoption. Then we had to go back to the doctor to read her TB test (she was negative), and get papers notarized for the US Embassy. What could have been a quick trip took three hours because of traffic. I am just glad to get these errands done now instead of when we're trying to get home.

Friday-Today we got brave and took the bus across town. We have passes and an app that tells us our route. It took almost 30 minutes to catch the right bus, but Brielle was a trooper. The trip was about 45 minutes each way, but we went to a huge park in the middle of Bogota. They compare it to Central Park. We had a picnic lunch, played on the playground, went to 'la playa' by the lake, and walked around for a while. It was nice to get out on our own, and now we know we can do it again! Next we want to visit the Botanical Gardens.

Sleepy girl in the Ergo! We love all the mountains around Bogota!

It has been truly wonderful having so much time to just bond with our girl. I cannot even list all the ways that she has become a new person in our short week of having her. The Lord is truly healing her, and seeing progress is so encouraging. My favorite time with her is putting her in bed with us when she wakes up because she just snuggles and stretches, and plays. It is so sweet to have that time with her, when I know her last three years she was kept to a strict schedule. Thank you for all your prayers and support, and we'll try to keep updating more!

PS. We cannot put up any 'identifying' pictures (of her face) of her until she is legally ours, which is the very end of the process.

She loves when Daddy plays the guitar!