Finally, a Happy Baby!

Marisol playing games while talking to her grandparents on Skype.

Marisol clapping and laughing during lunch.

Today has been the best day of our adjustment so far. Marisol is finally warming up to us more and even laughing and smiling, which is something we hadn't seen much of these last few days. I cannot even begin to comprehend how difficult this transition is for her or for any other adopted child. To finally see her happy has meant everything to us. Hopefully she will continue to get comfortable with us and show us more of her personality.

We've gotten into a comfortable routine these last couple of days. As many adoptive families before, we spend time at the malls, just walking around. Today we bought groceries at Exito, which is like a Super Walmart. I think we like this grocery store better than the one we'd been going to. Most businesses will be closed the entire weekend for Easter, so we were warned to stock up. Having an apartment means we can cook so we've been buying a lot of food. We brought a couple of those giant reusable shopping bags from Target to make hauling groceries a lot easier. After the first shopping trip, we've found it easier to let the bag boys bag the groceries like normal and then outside the store we re-bag everything ourselves because they think we are crazy Americans asking to use our own bags when their bags are perfectly fine.

The two big malls are a really nice way to kill some time! The stores are nice and there are a lot of baby stuff available. We also found a Colombian version of Build-a-Bear, which we may have to go back to some time in the coming weeks. It was closed for Easter today.

Most of our days are spent watching Mari play and repeating everything she's doing in Spanish and in English (I do the English and then just repeat whatever Joe says in Spanish). Mari says a few words in Spanish and even one in English (bye). She keeps babbling something like "zhazha" but we have no idea what she's saying (Ever the jokester, Joe tells her Eva is the cooler Gabor sister, but she doesn't get it. . .). She's also starting to crawl around the apartment, something she hadn't felt comfortable doing before. Maybe we can get her walking before we come home.