Day 14 - A change in the weather

Although it is still hot, today it has been raining here, the way the weather forecasts have said it would every day since our arrival. So for once we've had to stay indoors all day, and have dropped our planned trip to a playground this afternoon.

Exploring the hotel, Ulf and son ventured into a hallway hitherto unvisited by us. There, on a coffee table, they found several magazines in Norwegian! They were from July and September, so they had been lying there for some time. Still, a nice surprise for daddy.

It didn't rain the whole day. Just before lunchtime we had a couple of hours of sunshine, enough to dry the tiles outside completely, so we could play soccer together. That's when the youngest member of our family kicked the ball while standing on the edge of the step in front of our door, and toppled over forwards when there was nothing on which to put his foot down after the kick.

Daddy was standing less than 1 m away, but it happened too fast. The boy landed on his face on the tiles, too surprised to use his hands to reduce the impact. Ulf thought he heard a sickening crack and feared the boy's skull had cracked open, or at least that the nose was broken, but to our relief the boy was breathing and crying and not even bleeding.

It was almost siesta time when this happened, and the boy immediately cried himself to sleep on daddy's shoulder. After that he slept for an hour and a half. The end result was only yet another bump on the forehead, twice as big as the first two! We put an ice pack on it, and some ointment, and the swelling soon started to subside. But if there is another inspection by the child protection agency today, we'll probably be suspected of beating our kid on a regular basis!

The ointment was provided to us by a very friendly couple from Southern France, Alain and Bernadette, who spend seven weeks here every two years of their retirement. Bernadette said she always carries some arnica ointment on her, in order to always be prepared in case she or her grandchildren fall and hurt themselves.

Alain (who bears an uncanny resemblance to a smiling garden gnome) was born in Morocco, while his wife was born in Algeria. They have lived their whole lives in hot places, and could not imagine living in a place with snow. I think they are feeling sorry for the poor boy who will be taken away from Cali to spend possibly the rest of his life in Norway and Russia!

The other Norwegian guest here, Knut Harald (or "Kanut Harald", as they spell his name here), turned out to be a retired marine officer, who lives in Spain for 9 months of the year, but in a town where everyone speaks Scandinavian. He is here on holiday because he has a friend who was adopted from Colombia as a child and he traveled with him to Colombia, but now they are doing separate things here.

Although we have been told not to put pictures of the child on the net before we are legally his parents, we have decided to make an exception today and show a picture of him from when we were playing peekaboo today! So, without further ado: Here is the first photo of our son!