Tick-Tock

It's been 32 days since we first laid our eyes on a photo of our daughter.  Luckily we have been keeping so busy that the days are passing by fast.  We are praying that the rest of our paper work comes together quickly and that we'll hopefully be able to travel in a few weeks.

Today the boys and I headed over to a nearby clinic to meet with a travel doctor about our trip.  It was a rather long appointment and at the end we were all treated to a typhoid vaccine.  I could have opted for the pill form, but instead decided to be the first to get the shot so that the boys could see that it wasn't all that horrible.  Cole went second.  Luckily he does really well with shots and he only uttered an "ouch".  Owen had wanted to go last.  We had talked about whether he wanted to take the 4 pills or just do the one shot, and surprisingly he agreed to take the shot.  But once it was his turn, his nerves got the best of him.  I had to bear hug a screaming and crying Owen while he got his shot.  When I helped him up, he looked surprised and asked if it was over.  He didn't even know he had gotten a shot!  He said to me, "I didn't even feel it!  I was crying for no reason!"

We weren't the only ones to get a shot today.  Rose got her polio vaccine.  Even with a sore leg, she was in a good mood.  We've been fortunate to have been put in touch with Marcella, an adult adoptee from FANA who is currently doing a year long internship at FANA.  She works in Rose's nursery and has been sending us lots of photos and videos of our sweet baby girl.

Rose playing with Marcella

Adorable baby legs!

A video of Rose playing with her toys:

Rose loves to suck her two fingers at the same time.  It looks just like she's signing "I love you"!  She's so cute!!

Rose signing "I Love You"

Sucking her fingers

We also found out that last week Rose started to sit unassisted.  She's getting so big!  From the photo, you can tell she's pretty impressed with her new talent!

"Look at me!!"

Owen's teacher had asked him if he wanted to share some information about his new baby sister with the class.  So today Owen brought with him to school some books about Colombia and a photo album with both Rose's pictures and Owen's referral picture.  It was the same green photo album that I carried his referral pictures in when we first found out about our handsome boy.  He told his class all about his sister and Colombia and his upcoming trip.  He is so excited to get his baby sister!

We are still waiting to get our assigned case number from the National Visa Center.  I contacted them today even though it was highly unlikely that they would have our numbers ready (I'm very impatient!) and they didn't have them yet so now we wait.  Hopefully Thursday they'll be ready!

The other big to-do is to travel to Chicago to get our visas.  We have our appointments booked at the Colombian Consulate for March 16th.  It's spring break week, so we'll be road tripping to Chicago with the kids.  On the way we're making a pit stop in Madison to stay at a hotel with a water park.  It'll be our last vacation as a family of 4!