Father's Day!!!

It's father's day so it seems fitting for me to write my first post!!! Let's begin by rewinding to last night and setting the stage for today... I don't think Holly or I slept for more than 10 or 15 minutes in a row last night. All three of our little angels took turns fussing, rolling around, coughing, and making just enough noise that it was impossible to totally drift off and get a good night's sleep.

So after a night of fitful rest, our little Cate woke up shortly after 6am and let us know it was time for her to be liberated from her crib! Holly got to her before she really started howling (I call her our little bearcat) and I hoped both boys were still sleeping so I could sleep another 15-20 minutes. I glanced right at Sebastian (still sound asleep, bless that angel) then left at John. John, John, John. There he was, sitting straight up with huge grin on his face, looked at me and said “ooouuughhh!” If you remember Tim Allen’s TV sitcom “Home Improvement” Tim would do this grunting noise during the show. Anyway, that’s pretty much the same noise John makes. Who knows where these kids pick this stuff up...*ahem* Anyway, papa had enough sleep so it was time to get up and get going!! Our plan for the morning was to get cleaned up, grab some breakfast, head out to church and later out to an open market with another family.

Everything was going well, kids were in good moods, everyone had relatively clean diapers and we were headed downstairs for breakfast in record time! Time for the first curveball. Sebastian has been using a couple small pillows as a booster seat (John and Cate are in highchairs) but today he started whimpering as we were setting up his chair. We’re getting better at the mental chess matches and understanding what the kids are trying to tell us so we quickly figured out he didn’t want the pillows. No biggie, pillows are gone, problem solved. Second curveball. It starts pouring out. We talk to the staff and in our broken Spangish we find out that it’ll likely rain all day long (which it did) and when we said we were going to church/market the staff was appalled that we’d even consider taking kids outside on a day like today. One of the things we’ve learned about the culture down here is that people are not shy about coming up and either scolding you for not properly dressing your kids or adjusting caps, zipping jackets, etc. We haven’t had anyone touch our kids yet but we’ve gotten some pretty cold stares whenever we’ve been out and the kids didn't have jackets or sweaters on. It probably doesn't help that I've got a tee-shirt and shorts on and everyone here is dressed for the next ice age (average temps are between 62 and 75 during the day). But I digress. My point was that we didn’t make it outside to church, the market or to play at all today. Third curveball. We noticed shortly after breakfast that Sebastian seemed to be reverting and almost becoming more introverted (didn’t want to play with his favorite car, color, etc.). Finally after a few hours of trying to figure him out he let us know his groin was hurting. Poor little guy had a bit of a rash. Good thing we’ve got a virtual pharmacy in our room so we were able to get a little ointment on him and he seemed to feel better. Unfortunately it didn’t help very long and was uncomfortable most of the day and spent quite a bit of time resting in papa’s lap. Fourth curveball. Today John told us “no” almost all day long. He isn’t forceful about it and if we gave him a little space he went along with whatever we wanted so I’m pretty sure John is very comfortable with us and appears to be testing all boundaries!!

Well folks, I've just finished my beer, had a chance to listen to some Van Halen and know that my wife and kids are safe, sound, and are (hopefully) all asleep! So with that, I’m off to bed to get reasted and ready for another action-packed day of diaper changing, nose wiping and playtime!! Buenos nachos everyone ;-)