So on Thursday morning my little boy and Grammy headed for the USA. For as challenging as Lucas' behavior had been at moments during this trip, I found myself having a rather hard time letting him go with Grammy for his first plane ride ever without me and our longest time apart since he left Fana. From best I hear, he did a great job and seems to really enjoy being home with Daddy.
Here they were before I lost it.
So I went back to bed for a little bit after sending Lucas and Grammy on there way.. and when we all got up, I realized how much I had really gotten used to 3 little boys age 5 and under in our hotel room.. because 2 little boys was cake!! One has to be contained to a pack and play (AWESOME) if needed and uses a diaper and the other one.. well there is only 1 fully mobile person to pee in random places or escape from the room or poke someone in the eye or get their arm stuck in a window at a time.. rather than 2 of them. Ben and Sam are also interested in different things, so they almost ignore each other unless they end up in the same space for a moment, or when Sam would prefer Ben never come within 2 feet of me. Ben still has issues at meals, but we have worked out a system where I can feed them both like baby birds and if you miss your 2 second window as the spoon comes your way you just have to wait.
But anyway.. I digress.. we were having such fun one morning being semi-nude, that I thought you'd want in on it.
Am I the only one that things Ben has slimmed down.. and is looking more and more like a handsome young man?? Sam is a compact little fellow for now. Watch out ladies.
Friday morning I went out on a power walk and lunch out with the boys. Walking is much easier now that both people are contained so intersections are less stressful. Friday afternoon, at the close of nap, my attorney delivered my OFFICIAL Sentencia.. meaning the Defendor of Minors for Court 22 had offially "resigned" his post for this little guy, and he is henceforth Samuel Alejandro Sibley. Our friends the Fellermans also received their sentencia that day, and it was another families last night, so we decided to be crazies and head out to an interesting restaurant in Chia. I don't remember the name, but it seems to be a rather famous spot with lots of kids activities and a dance floor and all that. I think it was true with the kids activities but many of them were closed at that time.. what I recall was that every table had giant machete-esque knives and there was mucho open flame. If you know Ben, you could see why this would stress me out!! We still had a great time.. here is us playing outside before dinner.
We had a fantastic meal, and we borrowed some lovely flowers to throw up in the air and celebrate 3 families finally having Sentencia!! This is how Sam feels about being a Sibley.
This is how Ben felt about it.
This is the fire we accidentally kinda started..
And this is how I felt about Sam being a Sibley..
Don't judge, if you lived in a foreign country for nearly 2 months with 2-3 little boys in a hotel room, you'd be having a giant margarita out of a skull head thing too.
Changing gears:
Sam went to a pre-visit for the Embassy Doctor on Thursday afternoon to kinda knock out the exam portion of that requirement. The guy was quite nice, and was very excited that I knew where Sedelia, Missouri was from, because he was a foreign exchange student there. He was also very excited about my husbands work with Medical Ministries International out of Leticia, Colombia and that I didn't seem to be phased by much of anything he had to say about Sam's file. He said Sam had excellent documentation and records, and that the only vaccine he needed was Hep A because he was about to "lose" his first dose that he had a year ago. This is how Sam felt about all of that.
But then later he felt like this, so it's okay (with his strategically placed sock).
Now when we come back after getting his Colombian passport, we only have to give them the new documentation and they can write their recommendation letter for the embassy.
Both yesterday and today were spent hanging around here and wandering the neighborhood. Here is what Sam and Ben have been up to hanging out in the room and the park. In the room, sometimes Sam waits for Ben to go outside so he can sit on his bed like a big boy and touch his stuff. This brings a little brother great joy.
Both boys seem to enjoy sitting on the teeter-totter at our favorite park, but neither can figure out the sciece of how the magic is supposed to happen with these.
Today, Christie, Zahria, Julieth, and the boys and I wandered up Calle 116 to the Usaquen market where I had never been before! I purchased the token Sibley creepy item for the living room, this time a wooden statue of an Afro-Colombian king (intended to be part of a nativity set.. ironically the Ethiopian version). This was also a rather sunny day, so Christie and I as the whitey girls that we are got some awesome sunburns and glowed for all to see in the market.
Here are the kiddos hanging out waiting for us to get lunch.
Here are some street performers, dressed up as the guy from the horror movie with the pokies coming out of his face, The Mask, and the octopus head guy from Pirates of the Carribean.. if they are there next week I'll get a picture with.. but we didn't want all 4 of our young children to freak.
and now, a few words about how Sam is doing. He is doing WELL.. and by well.. I don't mean easy. Sam is responding very different to trauma than Ben.. almost the exact opposite. I think much of this is the difference in care centers as well as personality. As best we can tell after having him for nearly 2 months now, is that he is a pretty easy going guy really. In his world, people are safe and nice, and somebody will feed him. It also helps that he can understand me well, as I speak to him only in spanish for the most part... and I can keep him in the loop about what is going on, and who is doing what. The problem with this kind of scenario and personality, is that it doesn't built attachment to ME.. I'm just another good caregiver in a line of good women that have taken care of him. This is why it took him about 6 weeks to start behaving how Ben did on day 1. Now we are seeing all those markers of toddler grief and loss. This has made things significantly more challenging for me, but it is also a relief to SEE IT. Like tonight, he made it clear that he wanted to be held and walked by me.. period.. or he was not going to go to sleep. Period.
This is obviously hard to physically go through everything with him and to respond to every little arm reaching up for me and every cry, but these are the things that build trust. Fana is a wonderful place, and they fed him and cared for him to the best of their ability, but they are still a care center and that is that. They weren't and can't be "mama love" and now that Sam has gotten a taste of that, he is determined to test it out and communicate his preference.. and I need to be willing and able to enter into this stage of grief with him. He fell asleep in my arms as I paced through the room in the dark tonight, and this was a first.. that he even WANTED a person to do that. He usually just lays in his crib and plays peakaboo with himself, plays with his feet, and strokes his own hair to calm himself. These are standard behaviors for a child to learn to self sooth, but we want to re-program his brain that it is safe to ask Mommy and Daddy for comfort (and anything else). It's a lot tougher than I make it sound (particularly at 3am when I can't seem to calm him), but it is GOOD. This is the good work that will pay off later.
I leave you with some sweetness.
Tomorrow morning, me and Maria Teresa Perez are jumping on a city bus ride down to the southmost part of Bogota to where Sam's story began, and to show up at the registry to change his birth certificate (with my adoption decree in hand to authorize that). Hopefully by tomorrow afternoon, I will be considered his mother, even at the registry here in Colombia.
:-)
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