MONDAY - day 5

We had set aside today to go sight seeing and to check out the local culture.

That was yesterday, before our night from hell began...

I posted late last night because I had the 10:00 feeding which wound up being 11:00 (not so bad). Amelia was very fussy during this feeding and drank about an ounce (out of the 4 that I made). She fell asleep around 11:40 at which time I did the blog update. Not to mention that James was up until after 11:00 for some reason extremely restless. He usually is sleeping by 8:30.

I was exhausted and went to bed around 12:45 about 7 minutes before she woke up crying. So I got up and walked her around the hotel for 25 minutes until she fell asleep. I laid back down around 1:15 am.

She woke up around 2:30 am at which point Linda got up, I think. I was so delirious I can't really remember. Linda tells me now that she was up for about 30 minutes.

Amelia than woke up at 4:00 am which was my turn. She was up for about 20 minutes.

She then woke up around 6:00 am, my turn, again ( I can't really figure out the math because I am still delirious). She cried for about an hour and 15 minutes straight. She drank about 1 ounce of the 4 ounce bottle that I made. She wanted nothing, except to cry hysterically, which by the way she is very good at.

At around 7:15 am I woke Linda up to relieve me. After making the handoff, I got back into bed and passed out. Around 7:45 my son woke up and climbed on top of me.

A A A A G G G H H H !

Actually this is where it all gets better...

James and I fell back asleep until about 9:00. Linda was able to work her magic and get the baby to stop crying.

I got up and made a fresh pot of Colombian Coffee, mmm! We sat around for a while. That's when our translator called to see what time we would be ready to hit the road for some sight seeing. We had to pass and rescheduled for Tuesday.

At this point Linda gave the baby a bath. After which the baby needed some naked time. Nothing is cuter than a baby cute little naked butt.

Needless to say James was already acting a little goofy, because he didn't get his usual 11 - 12 hours of sleep. I decided to take him down for some breakfast. Which was like trying to drag him off to be deloused or something. He wouldn't let me leave without him. but he wanted to go. Again, A A A A G G H H H!

Okay, actually this is where it starts to become the best day we have had here so far.

After James and I had breakfast, which consisted of one omelette each, (he didn't eat his) and about 10 pieces of french toast, which James ate half. We decided to go on an adventure.

We started our adventure at the hotel bullring. James was cool about it until he heard a noise and I told him I think that it was the bull, at which point he ran like it was Pamplona and the running of the bulls was about to happen.

The hotel has this really cool brick path that zig zags down a steep hillside. And of course beautiful scenery all around you.

At the very bottom of the path which took us about 10 minutes to get to was a very cool bamboo forest. These things were huge up close.

After that, James realised how easy it was going down hill and that we had a long way to go before we would get back to the top. We finally made it and James thought maybe now was good time to go tell Mommy about our adventure. We finally got to the elevator and the boy was sweating bullets.

After James did some homework and after the baby napped we all went down to the pool. All of us stayed by the pool for almost 5 hours. We had a pizza delivered to pool side. We sat under the palm trees.

We actually sat with another family that just adopted a baby girl. While we were hanging out a 4 1/2 year old boy, named Santiago came over to talk to us. Turns out he was from California. So James was so excited to have some one to play with. The two of them played in the pool for about 2 hours. This little boy knew how to swim very well. And I think James was embarassed that he was wearing swimmies.

Well, the knuckle head decided he didn't need the swimmies anymore and took them off. And proceeded to swim the entire length of the pool. If you look closely you can see his head in the background by the pool steps. He did this two more times. And I was like, ooh baby, this kid will be sleeping before dinner if he keeps this up. Afterward he was, of course, pretty exhausted.

And the entire day, this is how the baby acted. She was all full of life and happy as a clam.

We than met another family from Denmark, who just got their baby girl today. They also had a son, Simon, who was five years old. The little boy didn't speak english, but the parents did. So the kids all had somebody to play with, which was probably the best day for all of them.

Linda was hanging out with the other moms all sharing experiences. It was really great meeting everybody else.

I gotta say this trip is absolutely fantastic. We have seen so many Americans here, most of the help speak english. Communication is a lot less stressful.

It turns out that in the year 2000, when we came down for James, Colombia was having a very hard time with their civil war and the rebels were actually bombing in some of the larger cities. Tourism was almost non existant during this time. So we only saw about 10 other people here at the hotel. We were so scared we barely ever left our hotel room.

This time it is completely different, in 2001 there was a cease fire with the rebel forces and a new president has been elected here. The economy is booming, Colombia is apparently a hot bed for the textile industry. This past weekend here at the hotel they had a huge convention for the textile industry and there were people from all over the world here. That's why we had to change rooms after the first night. They kept all of the convention people on one side of the hotel.

Anyway, it is now my usual 12:30 am bed time. And we all know how fast that 4:00 am feeding comes around.