Life in Colombia as a Family of 4: Updates & Prayer Requests

Our hotel room door when we brought Luisa home.

Well, it’s hard to know where to start.  I know a lot of people are wondering about how things are here and all day long, I think, “I should blog about that,” but now that I sit down to write I don’t know where to begin.  So this will probably be a stream-of-consciousness sort of post…just getting some thoughts down.

First of all, Luisa is great.  We love her and she cracks us up  all the time.  She has the most awesome facial expressions and loves to laugh.  She is also super strong-willed and feisty.  Overall we can tell she has a happy, contented personality.

Our smiling girl.

She is definitely going through a grieving process, though.  Please pray for her.  Imagine if you were such a tiny person and you were suddenly taken from the only home you ever knew and placed in the arms of strangers, never to return again.  She has been with a foster mother since October and when she is sad, she cries for this woman: “mama.”  It is a wonderful thing that she bonded with her foster mother so well.  But she is definitely grieving her loss.  This means she is a little wary of me – I am sure she’s thinking, “Who is this woman that’s  telling me that she’s my mama?!?”  She is warming up to me more and more, though, so we are thankful for that.  The main things I say to her, over and over, are “Mama esta aqui.  Yo soy tu mama.  Te amo.”  (Mama is here.  I am your mama.  I love you.)

After her first bath.

On the other hand, she completely adores Shaun.  She cries everytime he leaves the room (thankfully, I can calm her, though).  She loves being held by him and sitting with him and is basically totally smitten.  So we are thankful for that, too.  She also loves her big sister – they play and giggle a lot.  Another thing to be thankful for.

The hotel where we are is great in many ways.  All meals cooked for us (delicious!), laundry washed and returned folded, room cleaned every day – whoo hoo!  It’s like a vacation.  Except it’s also really exhausting to suddenly be a family of four and dealing with sibling rivalry issues while not speaking the local language, not even speaking Luisa’s language, eating different foods and dealing with different currency, being all in one hotel room, with no car of our own or any way to get around the city without hiring a driver…these aren’t things a family usually has to deal with.  So it’s a trade-off of struggles.  Overall, we are pretty tired.

The dining room at our hotel, complete with plantain painting.

Passion fruit: weird and delicious.

Molly had a really rough day today.  Please pray for her adjustment.  She is feeling the loss of being the only child and we are struggling with balancing our love and time and attention between the two girls.

The proud big sister.

Luisa requires a physical therapist because she is still learning to walk and needs a lot of work on her fine motor skills.  The therapist has been coming everyday for an hour to teach us the exercises that Luisa needs.  Luisa hates it – she cries pretty much the whole time.  And we sort of have to ignore Molly while the therapist is there, which today meant that Molly pretty much cried the whole time, too.

Molly is also under-rested.  She is waking with the sun at 6:30 or so, and then we can’t really get her in bed before 8 at the earliest because they don’t serve dinner until 6:30.  At home, she normally sleeps from 7-7 or so, so I can tell it’s affecting her – plus she has a cold, so she really needs her sleep – so please pray she either starts sleeping later or maybe napping when Luisa naps, after lunch.

Thankfully, Luisa sleeps well!  Hallelujah.  :)

Our hotel is not what you would consider a true hotel – it has just 7 rooms and there are 4 families staying in it right now, including us – all adoptive families.  Molly has a friend that she plays with sometimes – another little girl that is 5 years old.  We all eat our meals together and get advice from each other – it’s a great place to be.  The people that work here are amazing and treat us all like family, especially the children – lots of affection.

The dining room and its collection of plates from around the world.

We are in what is considered a very nice neighborhood of Bogota.  We can easily walk to parks, a grocery store, the bank, other shops and restaurants.  It feels very safe.  It is beautiful weather every morning, and thunderstorms every afternoon – consistently.  The city itself is also beautiful – urban yet mountainous and very green – except that the air pollution is terrible.  I can feel the smog just settling in my lungs every time I breathe.  We are at 8,000 feet so it took a couple of days to adjust to the altitude.

Tomorrow we go back to the orphanage where Luisa lived from age 3 months until just this past October.  We will tour it, meet her caregivers, and also meet and talk with her foster mother.

Well, I can’t think of much more for now.  Thanks for reading.  We miss and love you all.  Thinking of the many weeks that we still have to be here  - well, it feels hard.  We wish we could just come home now.  But we can’t.  :)  So prayers for that would be appreciated too.

Much love to you all.

Another interesting collection.

Molly with a big map (of Colombia). We’re in the middle of the mountain range on the right.