August 7th

Another slow news day. Enrique suggested that everyone stay in the hotel because the new president of Colombia was sworn in today and that in the past the guerrilla groups have tried to cause trouble in the cities to show that they still have power. They really don't hold power any longer because of the outgoing president. Nothing happened as was expected but it is better to be safe than sorry. The outgoing president is leaving with a 75-80% approval rating.

So, we stayed in the hotel and because of that we had to be a little more inventive in how to keep Xander entertained. We played the pull yourself up to standing game. Then we played the walk to mommy game. Then we played the walk to daddy game. Then we played all those games about 20 times in a row.

That got a little repetitive after awhile so to mix it up we turned on the tv. He really likes having a lot of noise around him, if it's too quiet he gets bored rather quickly. We saw the Colombian knock-off version of Sesame Street, some show that had characters that looked like pinheads, the Flintstones in Spanish, and a Scooby Doo knock-off that that instead of Scooby Doo the dog had a gorilla and a weird pink bat with a pig snout that would fly around and talk to the other characters. Of course we couldn't understand anything but it was entertaining nevertheless.

Around 5:30 we had had enough of staying in the room so we ventured out to the porch and ran into Lee and Manuela and the kids coming back from a walk. Lee and I went out to get a couple of bottles of wine so have a farewell drink since they are going to Bogotá tomorrow. A lot of the other families happened to come by so eventually we had about 15 adults and kids hanging out in a little impromptu party and it was a lot of fun. The "party" ended about 7:30 because everyone needed to eat and the kids need to go to bed.

We brought Xander upstairs for a bath, then I read a book to him, Kristin sang a song to him and placed him in the crib around 7:30. Within one minute he was completely out sleeping peacefully.

It's about 9:00 right now and he just woke and is crying. Poor little guy, he's so tired he doesn't know what to do with himself...

9:12 - whew, back to sleep. Yay!

We had this really tasty and interesting fruit today at dinner (we've had it before but I hadn't taken a picture). I have no idea what to compare it to, it's pretty creamy and mild tasting with large black seeds around the size of Pumpkin seeds (but thicker). Kristin and I have been eating dinner in our room since dinnertime coincides with Xander's bedtime. This is better than shoveling food down our throats because he gets fussy from being so tired.