What Goes Up Must Come Down

Today seemed to be a continuous cycle of melt-downs and time-outs for both of the older 2 boys.  It has been a very trying day, and I am so glad that the kids are in bed and we can recover and regroup a little bit.  We went through the normal morning melt-down with Santi.  If he doesn't have an all-out 20 minute crying fit by 11am, something is awry.  With Santi, it usually builds and builds until he really acts out.  Today he pitched some crayons at my head...instant time out.  We are trying to get him to verbalize his feelings instead of lash out physically, but we think that he is frustrated in that department because we can't always understand what he is saying.  We thought/hoped that he was done having tantrums for the day, but we were WRONG!! 

We went to the park in the late afternoon.  Santi was running way ahead of us, and Jason yelled for him to stop and wait for us to catch up.  Instead of waiting, he looked at Jason and ran the other way.  When Jason caught up to Santi and told him what he did was not ok, we were in the midst of another tantrum.  He laid on the ground and raged for about 20 minutes.  I had Jason continue on to the park with Juan Manuel and Christian, and I sat down in the grass with Santi and he wailed.  I am sure that lots of people at the hotel wondered what was going on, but we were quite a ways from our room, and it would have been pretty difficult to carry him safely all the way through the hotel kicking and screaming.  Oh joy.  After he was done, he apologized to Jason and we went the rest of the day without any trouble from Santi, thank goodness!

Juan Manuel had one heck of a difficult day today.  I'm not sure if he behaved worse than usual, or my tolerance for his misbehaviors was less than usual, but with him it was one thing after another.  He had 2 time-outs in the morning.  He had his pool privelages revoked and Jason had to carry him back to the room.  He had his toy privelages revoked for his favorite toys, and finally, he was sent to bed one hour early.  By that time, my nerves were so shot that I knew we needed some repreive from the struggle.  With Juan Manuel, he definitely tends to rev, and things were just unraveling.  He fell to sleep though, and we wonder if he was over-tired and just needed some quiet time.

It was a really hard day.  Jason and I had to take turns giving each other a break, and it was the only way we could keep our sanity.  One of the best moments of the day though was when I was coming back to our room after stepping out for a short sanity-check.  I came in the door and Christian came tearing across the room with a huge smile on his face chattering away "mama, mama, mama" and gave me the biggest hug.  I guess those are the moments that keep us going as parents, because the rest of the day was kind of the pits.  At least it didn't rain today though and we could get out of our room for most of the afternoon.

The kids played so hard in the park.  When we first met the kids, they were terrified of dirt and mud and would cry any time they got sand or dirt on their hands, clothes, or shoes.  Today was the first time that the kids really played without any concern about getting dirty.  There is a big hill all around the back side of the playground, and the boys got brave and were climbing up to the top.  Well...what goes up must come down!  And they came down on their rumps - full of mud and grass!  But they had so much fun and really burned off a lot of energy running up and down the hill.  After we got back to the room they all needed a bath and a change of clothes.  They played and splashed in the bath tub, and had a great time.

Tomorrow we have to take the kids to the doctor, and they will need to have vaccinations checked and updated for their US visas.  We haven't told them about it yet, because we don't want them to be afraid.  We will explain in the morning.  Depending on how the kids are doing after the doctor's appointment, we may go to have their passport photos taken, or we may just skip it, we will have to wait and see.

We are hoping for a better day tomorrow, or at the very least not worse than today was.  Keeping our fingers crossed!!