What are pictures worth?

Ok, so I don't have a lot to say about today. It was a beautiful day here in Bogota and the weather was very comfortable as it is every single day and we had a fabulous time with Gabriela. Monica and cousin Rosario spent some time this afternoon at a relative of Rosario's house while I was planning on going, I had to catch up on some of my work back home. At the house, Gabriela discovered her new best friend.... a very hard breadstick. She can hold it, eat it, and it feels great on her painful gums. We will be buying some first thing in the morning.

I'm going to let the photos do the rest of the talking for tonight, so good night or good morning when you read this and we hope that everyone is doing well and we look forward to when we are able to see everyone again and you all can meet our little angel. There are two photos of Gabriela sitting in Monica's lap this morning and one with her best friend the bread stick. She is getting so much better as smiling even with the little red light just before the camera flashes and of course anytime we can catch her sticking her tounge out, we have to post one of those!

Coming to Bogota

Today, was as I post basically every time... another great day. It's hard to believe that this time two weeks ago that we hadn't yet met our daughter and now she is everything to us both. Tonight as we had helped her fall back to sleep after her poor painful gums woker her up, we both couldn't beleive how lucky be feel right now and just how beautiful she is. I can say that there are times that I look at her she is looking at me with those big brown eyes and I feel like I've been punched in the gut she is so beautiful.

Tonight we found out two wonderful things, first that our friend Amy is going to be coming to Bogota for a long weekend visit next Thursday! She had mentioned a while back that she was interestedin coming and we have been talking about it since then, but tonight she bought her ticket! It's is going to be so much fun to have her here in Bogota and we can't wait for her visit.

We also found out that a great friend in our Colombian Adoption internet group has been approved for their adoption and is being assigned to the Bogota office just as we were. It is possible that they could receive their referral for their child and be here before we leave! We have never met in person but have been of tremendous help to each other in our group and over the phone over the last several months so we hope we can meet them and their new child as well here in Bogota soon.

As you can see in today's photos, Monica and Gabriela look great together and Gabriela is already getting ready for her first Jimmy Buffett concert.

Let's go for a walk...

In the neighborhood we are in, we can get to pretty much everything we really need in a short walk. Even short enough for me to do on my old knee. This afternoon, after spending a nice morning working, drinking coffee and playing with Gabriela in our apartment; we decided to take a walk to the park which is about 3 blocks away. Well, Gabriela decided that it was time for a little sleep on the way there so we kept on walking. Later we met up with Rosario at a coffee shop in a mall, then we walked to the store for wine, crackers, cheese and Spanish ham.

It was another wonderful day here with Gabriela. She is doing so well although she is really starting to feel those teeth coming in but we are doing our best to help her through it. This morning she spent about two hours on the floor (on a clean blanket) with several of her favorite toys and she is really trying to push herself toward them and although she can't really move forward yet, she can rotate herself around on her tummy about 180 degrees or so.

Not that this was going to have been in doubt but Monica is really a natural mother already and Gabriela is so comfortable with her. It is really beautiful to see them together. She did fall asleep in my arms again in part due to my singing; which I can't say for sure is a compliment to my singing, but I like to think that I have a little fan.

I'll hopefully be able to post tomorrow how things are going with our papers through the court that our adoption has been assigned to. I should have more information tomorrow so anything that affects or hints at our timing, I'll be sure to post.

Well, I'm going to keep it short tonight because it is very late. We all hope that everyone is doing well at home and we miss everyone and we'll hopefully see everyone soon.

Bogota is Beautiful & Gabriela loves to see it!

In a very short time we learned something very important about Gabriela, she loves to be outside. When she is upset for one reason or another, we know that we can take her outside for a quick walk or just stand around and she calms right down. She is very curious wants to see everything with those giant brown eyes of hers and furtunately for her and for us, Bogota has a lot to see.

Yesterday, we moved from the hotel we were staying to a lovely two bedroom apartment that Rosario (cousin Jamie's wife) found for us. It is in one of the best areas of Bogota and is wonderful for walking around and is less than two blocks to a great super market and a less than 10 minute walk from Jamie & Rosario's home. Gabriela has a lot more room for us to put her on her tummy more for some great exercise.

We moved in yesterday afternoon and we have already been taking advantage of this great walking neigborhood. Gabriela and I took a quick walk to the store this morning for some juice and fresh Colombian breads. This afternoon we walked to Jamie & Rosario's for a great lunch and later a walk to the Juan Valdez coffee shop.

We greatly enjoyed our time at the hotel where we were staying and the people we met there both in the staff and the other adopting families were wonderful and it was an experience that we would not ever change for anything. We now have great friends in Norway and Holland to go along with all of the great Colombian friends that we have made here.

Gabriela right now is happily playing with "Tango", the Jamie & Rosario's 4 year hold Huskie. She is facinated by dogs and Tango is doing very well with her. We can wait until she gets to meet Zuny!

The photos in this posting are of Rosario who has been not only helping us with something nearly every day, but is also great source of entertainment for us and expecially for Gabriela. The other photos are Gabriela reaching for Tango and to respond to a specific request for a photo of me with my little angel Gabriela, one of the two of us just after I fed her a bottle and then sung her to sleep.

First Peluqueria.... Hair Salon!

It's pretty late at night and we are all exhausted; but today was another great day with our beautiful daughter. She doesn't like being hot at all but you have to keep small children bundled pretty well here when the sun isn't out and her hair was always making her very hot so today we took her for her first haircut (that we are aware of) at the salon (peluqueria) where Monica's cousins go. They did a very nice job of cutting her hair for all of $10,000 pesos which is a little over 4 dollars. Later that day when Monica went back to the salon for her own hair cut and style, one of the women there filed Gabriela's nails for her. She is going to be expensive one day I tell you!

Otherwise it was another great day and I'll just post some more great before, during, & after pictures from her haircut.

Busy Day & Good Day

Ok, so everyday is a good day right now, but today was a good day both because we had a wonderful time with Gabriela as always, but also because we accomplished a lot today.

We had our super early appointment with the Director of ICBF for Bogota this morning. It went very well and she asked us a few questions about how we were all getting along together. It was time for Gabriela's fruit snack, so Monica fed her while I held her in my lap there in her office. While Gabriela was eating her snack, she was laughing and showing how comfortable she is with us.

This morning at 8:00am we had our interview with the regional director of ICBF and it was a very nice short "chat" more than an interview. She asked us how Gabriela was doing and how we were doing with her and not much more. It was time for Gabriela's fruit so Monica and I fed her a mango snack right there in her office. So she was able to see how we are working as a team and see that we are all taking to each
other very well so far.

After the meeting, we did a little paper chasing at the home of our lawyer and then rounded up our full dossier for the courts and we headed downtown to the courts building. We were assigned to one of the courts (or judge) which our lawyer says som people don't always like him, but that she has a great working relationship with him and is pleased that he will be our judge.

Our lawyer also did tell us that not much will happen over the next two weeks or more, so if we want to head out to San Andres, Santa Marta, or Cartagena; now is the time to do it. We'll see how everything goes over the next few days and we'll look into a little family vacation.

I had some work today from the hotel in the afternoon so Monica took Gabriela to a pediatrician that was recommended by her cousin's wife. Monica and I wanted her to get a good checkup and she has seemed a little congested the last few days and we just wanted to get a qualified opinion on how she is progressing and her health. Monica really liked the doctor and Gabriela is in perfect health.

Here are Gabriela's latest stats:
Age: 6 Months 19 Days
Weight: 14.1 lbs (tiny little thing)
Length: 25.2 Inches

I am also just very happy to say that things are going very very well with us and Gabriela. She is an absolutely wonderful nina and everyone we meet is captivated by her calm and happy personality as well as those giant expressive eyes. She is sleeping through the night every night and we are getting better and better at giving her a working rutine of bottles, food, naps, & sleep. As we get better at these things, she is even more relaxed and happy.

It's been a long day and I'm berry tired!

As you can see, we are back with photos!

We've had very nice days the last two days spending time with Monica's cousins. On Sunday they took us to breakfast and then we had an evening cookout with their extended families as well. Today we spent a good amount of this afternoon running around Bogota, helping us with our camera situation amongst other errands.

So the camera is now in an authorized Canon service location being fixed and will be ready next Monday. Obviously a week with no camera during this amazing time in our lives is just not something we can stand for, so we purchased a new little Canon to tide us over and also to give us a more compact option for when we are out and about town. You might ask why did we purchase another Canon? Well, first of all we just plain like them and second the problem with the first one it turns out is not a result of poor quality. Let's just say that "user error" from nearly 18 months ago finally caught up with the camera.

Since we only got the camera up and running this evening, you'll have to enjoy this wonderful photo of Gabriela passed out cold after a long and fun day. We have an appointment with the Bogota Director of ICBF first thing in the morning tomorrow so wish us luck both with the appointment but also just getting up and out that early in the morning with our little angel.

"Mamma don't take my Kodachrome away"

Ok maybe our digital camera doesn't use Kodachrome but the lyric is quite fitting. This morning as I was about to load some new photos from our camera to the laptop and then on to Gabriela's loving fans the batteries ran dead in the camera just after giving it enough juice to turn on. No big deal we thought, we'll just buy some new AAs and we'll be good to go in no time. Well, when we put the new batteries in, nothing happened. It won't turn on, it's actually frozen with the lens extended since it never had a chance to shut it's self down before the juice completely ran out of those batteries.

We are doing everything that we can to either get the camera repaired or buy a new camera as quickly as possible. Not only do we want to be able to keep all of you involved with the addictive photos of beautiful Gabriela, but we also of course have to have a camera to record this amazing time in our lives. We don't want to have to buy a new camera here because electronics are not cheap down here at all, but we'll do if we have to. We actually thought about buying a new camera before we came down, that might be a little smaller for better fit in our pockets; but obiously we didn't buy one.

I have a few new pictures on the memory card for my camera so if I can at least get them off and onto a disk, I might have new pictures for you tomorrow night but otherwise, I'll let you know how it goes with the repair/shopping.

On to really important things, like an update on us and Gabriela! The past two days have been really special, she is really beggining to show her personality which is just wonderful. She is so calm and so very curious about everything. When we walk down the street with her, she just looks at every possible thing that she can see. She also has been talking a lot with us, no actual words but she is becoming more and more vocal, although there might be a "mamamamama" sound. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to be called "bababa" if I want to claim one of her sounds. My favorite is one that she was really getting into tonight, "blah, blah, blah, blah". Now obviously it's just her working on her ability to make language sounds, but the irony is so great for someone who can't talk yet to say.

That's all for now, she is sleeping welling and nice and early, and we are going to try to catch a little rest ourselves before we takle a new day. Monica is taking Gabriela to get a haircut tomorrow, so we hopefully will have a camera very soon. If anyone has any good ideas on the camera fix, please email us.

2nd Night a little more sleep

I first want to let everyone reading the blog how much we enjoy reading the comments that everyone has been writing. It's a little bit difficult that we aren't able to share a little of this time directly with our closest friends and family so everyone's warm and loving comments are really special for us. Keep em coming!

Yesterday Gabriela began feeling a little better although we had to take it easy on her tummy. We were invited to dinner at Monica's cousin's house here in Bogota and we had a wonderful meal with Jaime and his wife Rosario. Gabriela feel asleep just before dinner (late Colombian dinner) so didn't get to have any of the delicious steak and potatoes that we had. Jamie and Rosario have been so kind and very helpful for us and are very excited for Gabriela. The pictures here are from last night and one is with Gabriela, Monica, & Jamie; and the other is Gabriela sleeping in my lap at the dinner table.

Since Monica had to rush down here to Colombia so quickly last week, I ended up doing all of the shopping and stuff for Gabriela and that included all of her clothes. So please note the photo of her sleeping in her cool green shirt and kahki's.

Yesterday evening and so far this morning, she is feeling so much better. She is gulping down her bottles without problems, knapping in the late morning as she should, and in general her personality is coming out. She is very calm and playful and loves to see everything and try to copy us. Obviously she cries when she is ___________ (fill in the blank: hungry, sleepy, cold, hot, dirty, or wants Monica), but she is able to recover so much faster now that she is feeling better. She is also very comfortable now with both Monica and I and we are becoming much more comfortable with caring for her. That said, we are so very completely in love with her and we just stare at her and can't believe that this little angel is our daughter.

First night, good night...

After a long day for Gabriela without a nap and not able to keep anything down for very long, she finally decided that it was time to rest. She slept from about 11pm to 5:30am and Monica and I slept although lightly about the same amount of time.

She woke up this morning a bit refreshed and ready to start with some light amounts of milk and delicate foods. She had a morning bath and breakfast and mid morning snacks went very well. We later went for a walk around the neiborhood with Monica's cousin Juan Carlos who showed us where the 24 hour drugstore and all of the resaraunts are located.

Monica had her in the Bjorn and he was very happy to see the world around her with those big brown eyes. She has begun to attached to us both, however much stronger with Monica so far. I am happy to see her attaching so quickly and that Monica's touch can bring her so much calm so fast. Gabriela and I have had some wonderful moments as well, like this morning when she slept on my chest for about a half hour or so.

Several of Monica's cousins have already been to the hotel to visit with her and as you can see, those eyes have everyone in love with her.

We are trying to put her down for a nap right now and she has other plans, but we are working on it. Until later, all is "chevere".

Gabriela Sophia!!!!

This is going to be the short and sweet version with much more to come tomorrow along with more photos. Today we were presented with our beautiful Gabriela Sophia and I can honestly say it's been an amazing experience already. She is so beautiful and unlike how she appeared in her photo, she is a tiny little thing and is swimming in her 6 - 9 months onsies.

She has had an upset tummy this afternoon from her morning meal (we think) and was not feeling well. Even still she has been such a princess and is already lighting up our lives.

It's been a long day and I give us 50/50 odds on our chances of sleeping much tonight. I'll be back online tomorrow morning and tell you all the details, but for tonight all you need to know is that she is beautiful and we are completely in love.

In the air in a few hours, with my daughter in a day!

Well, I'm off to the airport now to meet with Monica and her cousin's family in Bogota. So I'm signing off probably until late Thursday night when I can take a few minutes to at least give a quick update on how everything went and hopefully a couple of photos of Gabriela Sophia.

Thank you to all of you for your support and of your heart. We had so many amazing people go out of their way to do such nice things for us this week and we are really very grateful.

I think I'm about to explode with pent up excitement!!!!!
I'll talk at you soon from Bogota Colombia!

An Adoption Visa in the hand is better than...

An Adoption Visa in the hand is better than......well pretty much anything at this moment. The consulate in DC processed my application very quickly (2 days) and this morning handed me my passport with my Adoption Visa inside. So in "legal" terms I am ready to go. In most other terms, I have a lot of work to do, but I'll get it done and be in the air 48 hours from now (knock on wood).

It's Official - Thursday at 1:30 pm

I truely can't believe that it's actually happening, but I better start because it's all set and confirmed that we will be presented with our little Gabriela Sophia at 1:30 on Thursday! If you want to mark the moment along with us, Colombia is in the Eastern Time Zone but doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time so right now they are 1 hour behind Eastern Time.

I'm starting to calm down from the high stress of this past week and I'm sure that the new stress of the trip will set in soon, but I'm enjoying the calm right now and just focusing on getting to Gabriela. Monica is doing very well in Bogota and is going to book our hotel in the next day or so and is searching for the type of baby blankets that come from Colombia that she loves so much. We actually have two Colombian baby blankets on our own bed so she really loves those blankets!

We received a wonderful gift in the mail today for Gabriela from one of the wonderful families that are part of the Yahoo Group that we are a part of. Thank you so much again Melinda & Moises; we can't thank you enough really.

Update from Bogota (via Virginia)

After beging very anxious all day having not heard from Monica yet about her meeting this morning, I spoke with Monica this evening and I am very happy to report that the meeting went very very well. She feels very comfortable that they are doing everything that they can for her to get her cedula quickly and that they are understanding of the situation. Obviously I'll feel more comfortable when we have our baby Gabriela in our arms and Monica has her cedula, but for now good news is good news and I'll just focus on Gabriela (as if there is anything else in the world I could be focused on right now).

So I'll try to sleep a little better tonight and focus on getting everything together for my travels on Wednesday.

Thanks again for the support.
John

The Air Up There....

Well I heard from Monica last night and she is safe and sound in Bogota now. I was worried about her because she does have asmah and she is a bit on the high energy side so going slow and taking it easy are not her style. She told me that she was a little winded at first but is doing fine and was heading to sleep early.

She is going with our lawyer today to meet with the people who are helping her with her Cedula so please keep her in your thoughts and prayers that everything goes well.

I also called this post "The Air Up There" because I'm definitely feeling the effects of, let's call it emotional altitude right now. I'm on cloud nine on one side, but I'm also very anxious and stressed about getting everything ready for my trip and everything. So I'm a bit winded myself and probably not sleeping very much, but how can I when I can't get the face of my daughter out of my head? I can not wait to see her in person, I look at the photo over and over and I keep trying to find something that helps me to actually begin to know her.

Thank you all again for all of the shared excitment and warm wishes, we really appreciate it so much.

John

On Our Way!!!!????!!!!

Well, Monica is now officially in the air on her way to Bogota. Her flight left a few minutes ago from her connection in Miami and we are at least a little bit calm for the first time this crazy week. Tomorrow morning, Monica and our lawyer are going to have a meeting to get her Cedula (Colombia ID) application processed expedited for her. They feel they can get it done quickly and be able to give her a cedula number or temporary cedula soon and then get her the actual cedula as quickly as possible.

They seem to be wonderful people who want to do what is best for a family trying to come together.

I went to the Consulate in DC this morning to drop off my application for my Visa. I brought my father in law with me as I was a bit worried that it was going to be difficult. The whole thing took about 3 minutes from when we walked in the door. I had everything already filled out and all of the documents that they asked for (and some extra just in case), and I'm supposed to pick up my visa on Monday!

We have our appointment now at ICBF to receive Gabriela Sophia on Thursday, ONE WEEK FROM TODAY!

Everything is so crazy!!! But our families and friends have been amazing and are stepping up left and right to help us out.

Thanks again to everyone for all of your support and help, we are really so greatful for everything.

What a crazy roller coaster ride!

Ok so the lastest update is that Monica just spoke with our lawyer who has spent all day trying to make things happen for us. Well, she wants Monica to fly down to Bogota tomorrow so that she can meet with the right person for what we need on Friday morning. After pleading our case and showing them how we have done everything by the book and the referral for our little baby girl; they are going to try to get Monica's Cedula for her in record time. It looks like I am going to be going down to Bogota as early as next Wednesday so that we can be united with our daughter on THURSDAY NEXT WEEK!!!!!

I'll have to scramble to get my visa and everything else ready and let's just say I'm not the spontanious one so I'm freaking out a bit but I know that I'll be fine once we have her in our arms.

This doesn't mean we are over the challenge, but it is good news and we just want to keep building off of that good news.

Good luck to everyone!
John & Monica

Introducing....

Name: Gabriela Sophia Hodson
Date of Birth: March 1, 2006
Weight at Birth: 6 lbs 13 oz
Length at Birth: 19.69 inches
Blood Type: AB

A healthy, beautiful, and happy little girl who is developing very well and is in line with where she should be with other children her age has just officially entered our lives and our hearts! Actually, the love that we have her for has been there since before we saw her picture or we read all of her medical files.

It truly is so wonderful and we continue to be amazed with how our adoption journey has gone. We are sure that many of you have read our postings yesterday and we are still concerned and stressed about what we are faced with at this moment; however, Monica will be traveling at any time to begin working aggressively with our attorney on the current situation. We have been praying and have been optimistic that everything is going to work out.

This is our daughter! It’s so wonderful to actually say these words! It seems that fate is bringing us together because as a number of you have mentioned to us, we began journaling our adoption experience on March 2nd – which it turns out was less than 24 hours from when she entered this world!

Because both of us are making many phone calls and doing everything that we can possibly do along with our other responsibilities we will continue to update the blog. So, please continue checking the blog as your source for updates.

The day we received the referral for our daughter...

So wow, now that you have seen the quick posting that we posted last night with the amazing news of our referral for our daughter in Bogotá, I thought I'd write something a little more "John" and well tell the whole story.

Monica and I went to visit a great college friend of ours over the weekend in New England who introduced us 11 years ago this very weekend. All weekend long anytime we talked about our future baby people were saying "she" and "her", and this was new to us as it had not been happening very much at all until this weekend. Then we received an email from our lawyer in Bogotá on Friday night that told us that she was going to go to the ICBF office on Monday (yesterday) and hoped to have good news for us. Then there was a posting from a great friend of ours in the Yahoo Group that we are a part of for Colombian families adopting from Colombia. She told us that sister in law in Colombia was told over the weekend that they matched a lot of families & babies this week in Bogotá. We were bouncing off the walls with nervous energy after that and driving the 8 hours back to Virginia today just couldn't happen fast enough knowing that there might be the biggest message of our lives waiting for us while sitting in traffic on the I-95 is painful to be sure.

But sure enough when we arrived home there was an email message from our lawyer letting us know that we had been blessed with a little girl. It was so amazing to begin to actually say that we have a daughter and it really still all just beginning to sink in.

But to tell this story of today or of this weekend doesn't begin to tell our journey that led us to today. It's both a unique story and a story that is echoed throughout adopting families. One of our favorite parts of the story though is how after finding out about this mysterious thing called Parent Initiated Adoption after finding a posting on a Colombian information site from a woman here in the US who called herself "kitsmom" who detailed a direct path to adopting from Colombia that is open to everyone but especially beneficial to Colombian families. While we were excited beyond belief we were also wondering if we could possibly pull something that unknown off, then a woman named Hillary started the Yahoo Group that I mentioned. She and her Colombian husband adopted from Colombia last year through Parent Initiated Adoption and she wanted to create a place for others to talk and learn about this small but wonderful path to adoption. This group has allowed us to ask every question that struck us and to share our journey with other couples who without a group like this we would have never known existed. Just knowing that we were not alone in all of this has helped so much to relieve the added stress that might have come otherwise.

Because of all of the support from all of our family and friends and from the Yahoo Group, we are where we are today, with a referral for our daughter.

Continued good luck as always and we will continue to update everyone with any and all information that we can.

John, Monica and "Baby Girl".