We signed sentencia!

What a stressful, exhausting, wonderful day we have had! It started out bright and early this morning when Owen woke up for a bottle around 5:00 am and decided it was time to play. It was rather surprising that he was so wide awake considering he didn’t sleep well last night, which also meant his mom didn’t sleep well either!

After a couple hours of play time, the phone rang. It was Elizabeth calling to let us know that she was able to find a nurse to baby-sit Owen this morning. Thank goodness! The nurse was going to be at our apartment at 9:00 am so that we could be at FANA by 10:00 am for our tour.

When the nurse still hadn’t shown up by 9:20 am, I was getting nervous! Maria Teresa told us to arrive promptly at 10:00 am in case we were able to sign sentencia this afternoon. So I gave Elizabeth a call and she called Christina, the nurse, on her cell phone – Christina had just arrived at the reception area of our apartment! I quickly ran down to get her since finding your way around the apartments is very confusing.

Although my Spanish skills are horrible, we chatted a bit and I found out that Christina had spent some time caring for Owen at FANA. When we got to our apartment, I was interested in seeing Owen’s reaction to her when she arrived. But being the mama’s boy that he is, he didn’t want to leave my arms!

Unfortunately, we were running very late, so we quickly left Owen in Christina’s capable hands and headed to grab a cab. With all the last minute chaos, we had to run back to the apartment twice – once to have Christina call Elizabeth to let her know that everything was OK and the second time to grab the address to FANA which I had taken out of the bag when I had called Elizabeth.

We were running really late now, but luckily the cab knew where FANA was (or so I thought) and we sped off. The cab made great time, but he had some problems finding the last turn (that turn has caused problems for most of our cabs!) The cab got us close enough that I was able to guide him the rest of the way and we miraculously showed up right on time!

After arriving, we were taken on a tour of the facilities. Our tour guide even took us to some places that I hadn’t seen on our first tour, like the auditorium...

And we got to see all sorts of adorable kids...

By 10:30 am we were done with the tour and went to see Maria Teresa Maldonado, who told us that we were ready to sign sentencia today! Hooray!! She got Maria Teresa Perez (our paralegal/driver) on the phone and told her to meet me at our apartment at 11:15 am.

With no time to spare, we took off to our apartment, paid the nurse, grabbed the required documents and I headed off to find Maria Teresa. Traffic had been a bear, so it was 11:30 am by the time I got to her car. She then notified me that she was having some car problems and we’d need to take a cab. So we drove off to find a parking lot to leave her car in, grabbed a taxi, and off we went to sign sentencia! We showed up at 12:30 pm which only gave us 30 minutes to get everything taken care of (the courts close from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm). God was definitely watching over us today – we got everything completed with merely seconds to spare!

Next we were off to get Owen’s birth certificate so we headed to the notary. My lawyer met us there to get his payment. He couldn’t find a parking spot, so Maria Teresa and I went out to the street and handed over a stack of money. I’m sure it looked extremely shady! We then waited for Erin Sibley to arrive so she could get Lucas’s birth certificate. She was running a little late since Lucas was puking up some formula that didn’t agree with him.

Soon after Erin arrived, we left with birth certificates in hand! I must say, it was such a wonderful feeling to look down at an official document and see “Owen David Slominski”!

By 3:30 pm, I was finally back at our apartment, exhausted and starving since I hadn’t eaten anything since 8:30 this moning! Unfortunately for me, Owen has just woken up from a 1 ½ hour nap so no nap for Mom! It was time to play!

The rest of our evening will be spent relaxing at our apartment. Mom and Owen need to be ready to go by 8:45 tomorrow morning to get Owen’s passport pictures and passport. Anything before 10:00 am is a struggle for us, so it should be interesting!

We're still trying to figure out our return flight. Our original flight was booked for Saturday, September 6th, which would work out perfectly! Not sure how we pulled that one off!! We'll be coming home soon!!