January 13/14

So today is Wednesday and we fortunately have nothing planned. Last night was a bad sleep night. We got Elizabeth off around 8:30PM and we soon followed after. We were awakened by a phone call around 10, then Elizabeth began coughing around midnight, so I got up to check on her. Back to bed and then up again at 2AM because Elizabeth was howling up a storm. Nothing would get her to stop except for Mommy to hold her so she fell back to sleep on my stomach and I laid awake the rest of the night. I was able to move her onto the bed for about 3 hours and then she began howling again. We have a feeling she has an earache, she still has a cold but it seems to be getting better – we are going to the SOS International Clinic tomorrow for her checkup so we’ll find out for sure.

Yesterday had been a really great day. I went off in the morning to apply for her passport leaving her in Daddy’s capable hands. Well, Daddy fed her breakfast for the first time and ended up wearing it! Yup, rice cereal and applesauce! Greg was thinking of starting a new fashion trend. Well, when I got back, I was thrilled to find out that our little princess crawls! When Greg went to wash out a bowl in the bathroom, apparently Elizabeth wanted to see where he was and proceeded to crawl across the room! She also can stand herself up.

Another first for us is that she loves Cheerios. I put a few in a bowl just to see what she would do. Well, you should have seen the look on her face when she began chewing! Pleased as punch and finished them off in record time. I gave her a few more and put the bag away in the tv cabinet where I am storing her food items. About 10 minutes later, she crawled over, pulled out the bag, looked and me and said, “Unh!” I guess I know now whose boss.

We met up with our Canadian friends for dinner – had a bit of an adventure.
We took a cab to the restaurant, found out the place didn’t open until 6:30, it was 5 at the time. We asked the owner if another restaurant that we had been recommended was nearby and he said, yup, about 500 meters. So we set off, occasionally asking a guard on the street if we were heading in the right direction because it seemed to be taking forever. Meanwhile, mopeds and cars are whizzing by, horns honking continuously when we finally got to one man who said the address we had didn’t exist. The numbers on the buildings didn’t go up to 118 which was what we had on the paper. So we figured, it was getting close to 6, let’s head back to the first place, there was a whole bunch of stores with artwork, we’ll take a look and then have dinner. We are really glad we did because the place was wonderful, food was great, atmosphere lovely, and they had highchairs for the babies! Elizabeth fussed for about a minute about not being on Mommy’s lap until she saw the little bag of Cheerios that Mommy brought – oh yeah, I got her number now!

Today we are just going to hang around – really too tired to do much else. I went out to the local grocery store to pick up some cereal and milk and Elizabeth was hysterical all morning because apparently I was supposed to be sitting with her, not getting ready or cleaning up the room. Greg, (God bless him) remembered the stroller we brought and put her in it and took her for a stroll around the hotel. Now we have something that he can do with her when I need to go somewhere or just get a break. Only problem is that he got chastised by some of the staff here because she wasn’t wearing a jacket and her pants weren’t pulled all the way down to her ankles. (They’re not mean about it, very respectful, but very insistent that we follow through.) That is one thing it takes getting used to here. Greg walked down the street yesterday in a shirt and shorts, but Elizabeth has to have on long pants, long sleeve shirts, socks pulled up as high as they can go, a jacket zipped up and a hat and gloves. I refuse to do the gloves because its 65 degrees here. I got yelled at yesterday by an old lady because her hands weren’t covered. Oh well.

Anyway, we go to pick up her passport tomorrow, we are rushing it because the US Embassy is closed on Monday and we’re not sure what the deal is with Tuesday with Obama’s inauguration. We will then go to the clinic to have Elizabeth get her checkup which is required for her visa. We hope to apply for the visa on Friday.

Took some video of Elizabeth doing the whole Cheerio retrieval thing – pretty funny and oh yeah, she loves the movie Happy Feet! I had turned on HBO just to see what was on and she whipped her head around when she heard the music!