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Espera! Espera!

I’m trying to think of words – what with our limited vocabulary – that we keep saying. One is “espera”. These girls are all energy (as kids often are) and we seem to tell them to wait for their Mami and Papi to catch up. Communication is so key. Thank God we’ve Spanish skills.

Yesterday was complete fun. We’re finally getting a bit of a schedule down. It goes something like this:

  • 6:30 or 7ish, wake up (the girls are fantastic sleepers). Cuddle together in bed for 20 minutes or so. Monica takes everything in right away. She’s processing the cuddles. Kelly Jo is pretty much confused. We can tell she’s finally awake when she starts laughing.
  • 7-8 work on getting out the door for a ridiculously expensive breakfast at the hotel. The girls love poached eggs – slurping them down as quick as can be. We joke, bribe, mime for 5 minutes to get them to eat some bread. (Ren and I eat all our food in about 3 minutes…we’re working on trying to get them to slow down so we can have time to chew.)
  • 9-10:30 play time! This usually involves jump rope, bubbles, Papi chasing the girls into Mami’s arms over and over, a dozen trips to the bathroom, piggyback rides, dancing, and some coloring books.
  • 10:30 La Piscina (another phrase that’s said every 5 minutes!). Finally we get to the pool. For an hour we play hard. Monica loves to hold her breath and to actually swim (albeit in a life tube). Kelly loves to throw herself into Papi’s arms (she also likes a cool superman version called “super kelly” where she gets lifted into the air and flies).
  • 12ish we head to the supermarket. On the second floor is a playpin for kids. They run around for a 1/2 hour or so. Right next to it is a cafeteria where we eat lunch. This is always an adventure and one we’ve had to change. Right now I go and buy the food (no more asking the girls…that really gets us nowhere) and set up the table (making sure to find a table with a wall on one end). Then we place the girls between us and the wall and proceed to watch Kelly eat just about everything and Monica turn lunch into a game of economics. They leave well fed (and we’re usually still chewing our food).
  • Then it’s resting time. Every day the girls have clunked out pretty consistently around 1:30. It’s pretty funny. They’ll go from 100 mph to dead sleep in, like, 15 seconds. Maybe this is normal for kids.
  • 2:30ish we wake up. Again there’s some hatchout time. More coloring, role play (both girls love to role play), bubbles, perhaps a few minutes of a DVD. We drink a yogurt, maybe some juice and crackers.
  • 4:00 La Piscina! Swim hard again. The suns usually starting to go down (around 5) so the pool is in the shade. Ren puts up a good fight even though she’s all goosebumps for the entire time. The girls usually get cold enough they want to leave after an hour or so. We’re walking raisins.
  • 5:30-6:30ish Bath time. They’re ratons de agua. Oh how they love the water. Bath time is crazy! After the first day everything was covered in water. We’ve gotten better at keeping it in the tub. After bathing we put lotion. The girls, Monica in particular, have dry skin (especially around the face).
  • 7:30 is supper on the floor. Sandwiches, potato chips, fruit, a yogurt, but no juice. We learned that the hard the first night. Juice is fuel for the fire.
  • 8:30 is cuddle/settle down. Asleep usually by 9.

Not a bad routine.

We’ve passed the proverbial day 3 when “true” personalities come out. It hasn’t been so bad. Both girls have started to push boundries. Monica, in particular, pushes and then pushes harder. We’ve had a number of time-ins on the chair. This is where the language gets to be difficult. You really want them to understand why you’re doing things. It breaks our hearts to see little Monica wail away, but fortunately it doesn’t go on for very long. She really wants to be the boss!

Our lawyer stopped by on Thursday and this completely freaked Monica out. She was terrified that we were going to leave her. It took a lot of caresses and hugs to settle her down. And the la piscina. There’s always the piscina!

We love them so much. The lawyer doesn’t seem to think we’ll have any problems come Monday (when we have the intagracion). We meet with the social worker at 11:00. The lawyer will start the paperwork right away. She said to pray that we don’t get Court 4 (which is notorious for being slow).

7 replies on “Espera! Espera!”

Wonderful to hear that things are going so well for you all. Thanks for sharing it with us. We love reading about it all and seeing the pictures. Just a thought to file away for when you get home: Jon Felipe doesn’t really have dry skin, but in the winter the dry indoor air which is so different from what he was used to Bogota is really hard on him – itchy dry skin, cracked bleeding lips. Hard to keep him proactive on this, but with girls it might be easier to convince them to keep up with body lotion and lip balm.

Sounds like these little peanuts are going to be keeping you on your toes! And desperately needing naps yourself…
Love you and miss you and KEEP with the blogs and the fabulous descriptions of the girl’s personalities. I feel like I know them already!

I ditto Auntie Leah! Karis was the first to check the updates this evening and find the videos. She was so excited! Praying for Monday!

So much fun to read about your experiences and so happy that it’s all going well. The girls are adorable. We’re thinking of you guys! We even stopped at 9:00 a.m. (which was 8:00 a.m. Texas time) and had an e mail celebration with Rob and Courtney to take a moment and acknowledge that you were meeting your girls for the first time. Ken, Sharron, and Adriana all send their best and think (like we all do) that you are fabulous parents!

Wow…so amazing! It sounds like you guys are having a blast. Can’t wait to see you all back here. You are all in our prayers.

Hey there VanderVeen…all 4 of you! It’s so awesome to read about your wonderful bonding adventures with Kelly and Monica. Can’t wait to meet them in person. We’ll certainly be praying for tomorrow and any court but 4!
Love to all,
Bonnie 🙂

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