The drama queen has taken her throne

Sorry it has been so long since my last update, but moving has taken a bit of effort.  As of Thursday we are now tucked into our apartment at Plenitud (La Fontana).  Getting setup took a few days - Josie didn't have a crib until today, we didn't have a kid's bathtub until last evening, and we're just generally getting the hang of things.

First, news on our process.  We have our first major step on Thursday with our appointment with the Defender of Minors.  This interview gets the process started in the courts.  It's a little late by normal standards, but because there is a glut of people here coming off of the strike and the normal holiday shut down, they're taking us all in the order we arrived.

On the Josie/Andy front, it seems that Josie has now approved of Andy's presence.  She's still a bit more comfortable with me, but she has opened up incredibly in the last few days which is great.  The trouble we now face is that she is definitely an almost 2 year old.  We have had some major standoffs on the topics of hitting, food, and the destruction of property (Lucy's book).

Not that we were stupid enough to think that both girls would be the same, we are SHOCKED at how different they are.  Lucy has always been a compliant kid with very little drama.  While we are still getting to know Josie, we already know that she will bring plenty of drama our way.

Josie seems to be getting more comfortable, given that she will fall asleep in the middle of the busiest mall we have ever been in.  

An early trip to Maku, the artisan superstore, yielded a pair of maracas.  Josie is a big fan!

A very large green space park that was carved off of the local country club has a pretty large play ground.  We love that  the lack of giant buildings gives you a good view of the mountains.

Josie learned the art of sliding and had a major melt down when some other kids wanted to use the equipment.  Sorry kid, we can't slide all of the time.

It's pretty great that all of the playground equipment that we grew up with is still available here.  Lucy seemed to be overwhelmed with this structure, at her age I would have been dangling off the top by my toes.

Now that we are on our own for food (El Refugio fed us all of our meals) we have been exploring some of the local spots.  This was a restaurant/bakery (Yanuba, complete with a windmill on the top for the Dutch husband) that we didn't visit last time and was pretty delicious. 

Our new apartment is part of a giant complex that seems to be overrun by dance troupes this week.  The girls loved watching this group bounce around.

And this happened on our terrace while the kids napped.