Getting to Know Each Other

One of the first things you do as an adoptive parent is buy shoes. We brought down a pair of Reds flip-flops but they barely fit his feet so we headed on over to the Carrefour and tried to figure out Colombian shoe sizes. The ladies in the shoe aisle thought us peculiar (“You don’t know his shoe size?”) until we explained that we’ve only been parents for a few hours. He wanted Spiderman genericcrocs, but they didn’t have his size. This didn’t faze him much and he was happy to get boring old white crocs (although we did return the next day to buy Spiderman sneakers).

And that’s the thing about Diego, he pretty much takes everything in stride.

Getting to know one another is fun. Diego is shy, slow to talk around new people. He does love to smile and when he gets excited (like when watching a movie), his whole body jumps with belly laughter. He doesn’t say his “S”s and “R”s, but we do alright communicating. He likes kicking the ball around in the park, coloring, blowing bubbles (Mami very wisely brought “spill proof” bubbles this time), and watching TV.

With a lot of adoptions you have this honeymoon period where things are wonderful and everyone gets along (followed by a hard work period where everyone figures out how to function as a family). We didn’t have a honeymoon period with the girls (it was all hands on deck from the first day), and it’s too early to tell with Diego. This is a long way of saying that I don’t want to read too much into these past days, but all in all, he’s a pretty easy kido.

Now our challenge is fighting the waiting and filling up the day. Just as I remembered it with the girls, this is one of the hardest parts of the trip. We live such packed lives in the states (between family, school, and work) that it feels very foreign (pun intended) to have so much time on our hands. We fill it getting to know each other, walking a lot, creating elaborate ways to obtain food (which supermercado today? which panderia looks safe enough to eat at?), walking to the park and playing futball (see below), and chilling out.

Tuesday will be here before we know it and then (hopefully) our paperwork enters the courts. On that note, please pray that we don’t get placed in Court 4 which, apparently, doesn’t move fast at all (Court 1 is the jackpot).