Day 4

Whew. What a day.
I woke up feeling horrible. Terrible sore throat and I think a fever. I dosed up on ibuprofen and Zicam, but I still feel awful. Grant came down with it too- with a high fever. Poor guy. He was fine on ibuprofen but once it wore off he was miserable.

The day started off with a tantrum and ended with a tantrum and had lots of tantrums in between. We are beginning to enforce the rules (like don't say "No" to me, and don't walk away from me when I call you, and don't steal) so we were prepared for the battles. Still it is exhausting. Brent got all of them today, unfortunately. I was either in the midst of cooking or at the grocery store.

Cindy started the meltdown because I told her she couldn't have another bath- she had just had one. We let her roll around the room as she screamed and at one point she scratched Brent on the head pretty bad. It ended well and she finally listened sweetly. Win!
Jonathan has had multiple  episodes over anything he doesn't like, but they are getting shorter for the most part.
Luisa had her first tantrum with Brent and she tossed the whole room, but Brent sat in the doorway and whispered sweet things to her but didn't give in to her. Brent says that he could see a smirk on her face the whole time and the screaming wasn't terror, but she was trying to see if we would give her the same attention the other ones get during a tantrum. In the end, she was sitting on the floor near enough to him so he could stroke her hand. He said how much he loved her and that he would always love her no matter how mad she was, and she just melted! She threw her arms around him and showed respect with a "Si, Papi!". He told her the fight was over but she must clean up the mess she made and she happily did it! I think this whole thing was so important today. I hate the tantrums, but through them the kids see that we are in it for the long haul and their bad actions don't effect our love for them. They must obey, but they are learning we have their best interests in mind and only want things for their good.

Still the process is exhausting. I am so thankful for a hubby who is engaged in parenting and that we are united in our plan. He is an awesome papi!

The American kids (as I've started calling them when we talk about them with the dos Glorias) are hanging in there. Quinn cried over a few little things today but I think he might not be feeling well and he's feeling left out. So we snuggled for a little while this evening which helped a little bit. Poor guy. This is hard for him. He is so gracious but he is used to a lot of my attention since he's been my baby. Keep praying for him to feel loved and included!

In the midst of this crazy day, the Dos Glorias came over to take us to Pueblo Paisa a replicated colonial house. It was good to get out of the house but it was a waste of time in my opinion. There were about 3 historical rooms to see and the rest was full of souvenirs and junk food. It had a nice view of the city and mountains so that was the highlight for me.  Frankly, Brent and I were too distracted to enjoy it because we were on high alert for children melting down.

Once we came back to the apartment, I left with Gloria #1 to go to Exito. It is exactly like a Walmart. Other than not understanding what the costs were, it was fairly easy to shop. Gloria is a riot! It took forever to shop because she talked the WHOLE TIME! HA! She is very sweet and I like her a lot. She laughs at herself constantly which makes me laugh, even though half the time I'm not exactly sure what she is laughing at! LOL!

Unfortunately, the pool is closed on Mondays so Brent had to deal with disappointed children while I was gone.

At dinner tonight Brent asked if Luisa wanted to pray. Before she could answer, Jonathan piped up saying that he wanted to. It was so precious. He thanked God for each person in the family and especially for his hermanitos. (His little brothers!) Awww!

I was having trouble understanding something that Cindy keeps saying. It sounds like "Jello". Thankfully Gloria #2 figured out that she is saying "Yo quiero..." (I want...) but she still is only 3 so it comes out like "jello"!!!
Too cute!

Luisa is very interested in learning English and we sat on the sofa going through words in  a book and me writing the English words below the spanish. Hopefully she'll catch on fast. I am thinking that we need to all be in the same language as fast as possible so we can talk through a situation instead of it spiraling down into a tantrum. So I think I will start saying all the phrases I know in Spanish (the number of them is growing!) both in Spanish and English until they get used to hearing them.

Luisa has been hording other kids' toys and things in her purse. I've tried to be gentle about it and not make it a huge deal since I'm not 100% sure she understands that not everything belongs to her. We had a breakthrough tonight though. Apparently she had taken two Colombian coins from Brent's nightstand. She brought them out to Brent and gave them back. She quickly apologized for taking them. Yay! A little progress!

Also, we don't think she's ever seen a washing machine before since she feels like she needs to hand wash everything. There was also a bag of food leftovers on the counter and I tossed it in the trash. She said "NO!! We need to save it for the cows (vacas). When we go to Estades Unidos we will have them for the cows!" They lived in a dairy farm area so I guess this is what they did! So cute. But I think it is not going to be edible if we wait to take it to the cows in the USA!

We are supposed to drive for 2 hours tomorrow to see El Penol ( a meteorite from space that landed in Colombia thousands of years ago). There is a huge crack in the middle and they've built almost 800 steps to take you to the top where there is an overlook overseeing hundreds of lakes. I hope we can still go but if several of us have fevers, I'm not sure what to do...
Off to bed. Praying that this fever leaves and I feel better by tomorrow....