Que Es Eso

The day started bright and early today when the phone in the boys' rooms rang at 5am today...a wrong number!  The kids never woke up, thank goodness, but we had a tough time settling back in after that. 

Breakfast in the hotel restaurant went a little bit better today.  When we first started together as a family, the kids would sit at the table and shout at me when I went in the buffet to fill up plates of food for them.  They would yell, "Mama!!  Quiero jugo de mora!!  Mama!!  Quiero arepa!!  Mama!!!  Quiero coco crispies!!"  etc., etc.  It is actually kind of funny because even Christian joins in chirping "Mama!!"  It is like a nest full of hungry baby birds!  I always go to breakfast in my tennis shoes because it is usually a race.  Jason typically stays at the table with the kids and holds down the fort there.  We have really worked with the boys on not yelling in the restaurant, so now they sit at the table and still say all of those things, but with more expressive faces and lower voices.  And we are SO glad when the waitress comes with coffee.  We always try to be generous with tipping there since we seem to leave a mess in our wake.

Today at breakfast we were talking with a Norwegian family that are here adopting their second child.  The man said that everyone looks at us and our 3 boys and think that we are very brave.  All of the families that are here now for adoption are adopting only one child, most are toddler age.  It is fun for our kids to play with the other kids in the pool or on the playground, and so cute when the little kids say to each other "Hola nino, hola nina."

We have been struggling with nap time for Christian.  They told us that he is accostomed to a 2 hour nap every afternoon, but when we try to get him to nap, he screams his head off.  We have tried letting him fall asleep in our lap and then moving him, but he always wakes up, and then starts that battle royale.  He stands up in his crib, throws everything on the floor, and yells at everyone and everything.  So, we have decided to stop trying to force the nap, and if and when he falls asleep, great.  We are tired of seeing him so upset, and truthfully, it is just exhausting for the whole family.  We think he is just really nervous about being separated from his brothers, because at night when all of the kids go to bed, Christian lays right down and doesn't even make a peep.  He is usually fast asleep within 2 minutes of putting him in the crib, before the boys have even finished their evening prayers.  (His crib is right next to the boys' bed.)

We played in the pool for a couple of hours, Juan Manuel had to have a 30 minute pool deduction today.  Jason stayed in the room with "napping" Christian because he needed a break from the sun.  Even though we put on SPF50, being at the equator, having no base tan, and being at 5000ft altitude, definitely makes it difficult to endure much time in the sun. 

We tried to play "old Maid" today, but Christian kept trying to steal the cards, and the kids just weren't getting the hang of it because I couldn't explain it well enough in Spanish.  They kept showing each other the cards in their hands instead of keeping them a secret.  We will put that one away for now and revisit it again later.  So we went back to memory, which is a huge hit.  In one game, Santiago was looking for a pair of moon cards.  He knew where one of them was, but kept turning over the wrong card when looking for the second moon.  After about the 10th time of doing that, Juan Manuel just couldn't take it any more.  He smacked himself on the head, started ranting in Spanish about where the card really was and flipped over the second moon and just threw both cards at Santiago.  As hard as we tried not to, Jason and I couldn't stop laughing.  Both kids took it in good stride.

Margarita came and took us to a shopping mall today, Tesoro.  She dropped us off and showed us how to take the taxi back to the hotel.  We had to go to the 1hr photo there and get some pictures made to give to the kids' foster family.  We were a little bit nervous that the kids would misbehave in the mall, but they actually did really well.  There is a grocery store there too, so we stopped and picked up some more food for the room.  When we were walking through the grocery store, Juan Manuel did really good at holding mama's hand, but he did not stop talking THE ENTIRE TIME!!!!  He was just rambling on about which things he likes, and asking what is this and what is that.  He is so extroverted and just loves to talk to everyone about everything. 

We had dinner at the mall, and the kids did pretty well in the restaurant too.  It is tough to order for them at the restaurant because they sit down and just start saying "papitas" over and over and over and over!!!  (Papitas are french fries)  Juan Manuel will eat just about anything, but Santiago is very very picky.  He doesn't like anything spicy, tart, or any kind of sauce besides ketchup.  He doesn't like cheese.  He said he wanted a hamburger, then took the hamburger patty off of the bun and looked horrified and said "Ques es eso"  "What is that"  Are you kidding me?  It's the hamburger that you just told us you wanted!  We just fed some of the hamburger patty to Christian, who loved it, and then Jason shared his dinner, salmon, with Santiago. 

We took the taxi home, and the kids were sit-dancing in the backseat the whole way back to the hotel.  They all wanted to help me unload all of the groceries into the refrigerator.

Tonight the kids told us that they are afraid of the dark and they are afraid to get out of bed at night to go to the bathroom.  We put an extra light on for them, and told them to yell for us if they need us and are afraid.  They are just through the door of our adjoining room, and we usually wake up to any little peep that they make over there, so hopefully they will call us if they need us.

A pretty good day today, and we are tired from all of the fun.  Tomorrow we don't have anything scheduled, so are just going to hang out in our "golden cage".  Thanks again to everyone for the comments and emails, it is so helpful to us to hear supportive words from everyone back home.  We are hanging in here, and are grateful for all of the small steps that we can see every day.