Gotcha Day

It’s been an amazing, wonderful and exciting day. At 8:45am this morning our driver picked us up and drove us about 40 minutes to CRAN. CRAN, our adoption house, is located in Bogota, up on the side of the mountain in a less dense part of the city. Because it has been raining so much here, the hillsides and pastures around it were so green. Julien and I were both nervous—different than with Esteban’s Gotcha Day, but nervous all the same. Our nerves must have been showing because Esteban had a really hard time getting ready this morning.

We arrived at CRAN and were taken into the office building. To get to the office building, we walked down about 100 stairs and past lots of children who were playing. Many of the kids greeted us with “Buenas Dias.” We met with the adoptions director to sign the most basic paperwork, and then with Isabella’s foster mother to learn about her habits, likes and dislikes. Our biggest surprise of the day was to find out that Isabella and Esteban had the same foster mother! We were so delighted to see her – and she was amazed to see Esteban so big. She gave us all the details on Isabella and we made sure to take a picture with her and Esteban. We feel so blessed to know that both our children had such good care with her.

Then we went back to the family room and waited. Esteban was feeling shy and didn’t want to go by himself to help get Isabella, so he stayed with us. We didn’t wait long for them to bring Isabella to us. She came right to us and was very fascinated by Esteban, who took a few minutes to warm up to her. We had about 20 minutes in the family room getting acquainted, and then we all got back in the taxi to come back to the hotel.

Isabella looks a bit startled in this picture. She´s had a lot of new things happening today and was getting tired. We´re hoping for many smiles in days to come!

At the hotel we were greeted with much excitement by staff and by other families. Since this hotel specializes in hosting adopting families, they have a special delight in meeting new children. The rest of the day has been filled with trips to the grocery store for formula and diapers, naps, meals and now bedtime.

It’s good to be in a familiar place (the Halifax Hotel), especially since we arrived later than we planned. It helps to know where to find the grocery store, and to know how wonderful and supportive the hotel staff is.

Throughout the day Esteban has gradually gotten more excited about Isabella. He is loving entertaining her, and helping with her. He was reading one of his favorite books to her at bedtime tonight.

Now I have to post this so Julien can get to the daddy duty of washing bottles!