Day 4: Wednesday
Wednesday we woke up with 2 kids in our bed. Whoa. That’s new. This was the first, and so far the last, time that [L] and I woke up before them and we were actually anxious for them to get up so we could play. That feeling had completely worn off by Thursday morning and, honestly, hasn’t returned. No offense to the kiddos but they are a lot of work when they are awake! And they are so quiet and peaceful when they’re sleeping. So very quiet.

So while [L] and I waited impatiently for them to wake up, we talked about the possibility that they would both wake up screaming, completely terrified. We figured it was pretty high and were bracing ourselves to deal with some of the adoption hell that we had been reading about and preparing for over the last several months. Imagine our surprise when they both woke up smiling and happy to see us. Seriously, we were incredibly surprised. Happy smiles from two adorable children. Hooray! Now what? You all should know by now that [A] and [G] are our first children so, other than sporadic nephew awesomeness, we have very little kiddo experience to draw from and we are pretty much just winging it. So, what do 2 brand new parents do when their 2 brand new toddlers wake up and look up at Mom and Dad expectantly? They turn on the TV of course! Total parenting fail, I’m sure. But we needed a few minutes to try and figure out what the heck we were supposed to do next! So we pulled up Sesame Street on the iPad and propped it up on the bed. Their faces were priceless. I’m so glad we are sorry parents because I will never forget their adorable expressions when they first saw those color characters on that tiny screen.

After just one short episode, [L] and I had figured out that these two kids probably needed two things: a bathroom and breakfast. We are such quick learners. We were happily surprised to find out that, not only is [A] extremely potty-trained, but [G] is pretty close to being potty-trained too. At two and a half, we weren’t really sure what her potty status would be, and she had a diaper on when we met her, so we were thrilled when she started asking to “kuyola” on a regular basis. Once potty needs were taken care of, we turned our attention to breakfast. I decided that I could quickly get a shower and be ready to go downstairs for our “complimentary breakfast” (remember that) in plenty of time. Wrong. The shower part went fine. The showers at HR are actually pretty darn wonderful. Either that or it’s just so nice to feel clean for 15 minutes in [Capital City]. But once I got out of the shower, I ran into a problem. Actually I ran into a locked door. That wouldn’t unlock. At all. I tried and I turned but I could not get that stupid lock to budge. I swear I didn’t do this on purpose. Since we’ve been home I may have locked the door to the bathroom once or twice and taken an extra long shower or two (maybe even on the same day), but on this very first morning with our children, this was not in my plans.

I called to [L] and explained my predicament. He sighed in a way that made he think he wasn’t completely surprised by this development and that was, I’ve decided now, pretty insulting. Then he asked if he needed to call the front desk. “NO!” Of course I didn’t want him to call the front desk. I had just got out of the shower and I wasn’t exactly dressed for company. To be honest, I was barely dressed at all. So, no, I did not want strange men coming up to open the door and see me in my skivvies. “Then how will you get out?” [L] asked condescendingly. Oh. Yeah. Out. How will I get out? I tried desperately for about 10 more minutes to get that door open before I finally admitted defeat and allowed [L] to call for help. [L]‘s French is eh, how you say, not so good so the first guy who came to my rescue showed up with a plunger. Perfect. He and [L] stood outside the bathroom door for 10 minutes while he tried to convince [L] to let me open the bathroom door so he could fix the toilet and [L] tried to explain that the toilet was fine and I would gladly open the bathroom door IF I COULD! And that, unless he could suck the lock off with that nasty plunger, we were gonna need some more help. Ten minutes later, 2 more men show up. And these guys brought tools.

For 20 more minutes I crouched in the corner of the bathroom covering myself with a towel while 3 [Home Country]lese men drilled the lock off of the bathroom door. Sitting on that cold tile floor, I was both incredibly anxious to get out and completely dreading the peep show I was about to give. Finally, the lock was gone and the door flew open. I threw a quick “Merci beaucoup” to the three laughing men and ran out of the bathroom and into the safety of the bedroom where I quickly found some clothes and put them on. Crisis averted. Door ruined.

Luckily, my 45 minute bathroom captivity didn’t make us miss our “complimentary breakfast.” So we went down and ate ourselves silly. The kids did great and ate pretty much anything we gave them. And they were very well behaved and incredibly cute. They had the entire hotel staff eating out of their hands. Of course.

The rest of the day we spent just hanging in the hotel and playing and getting to know each other. We were pretty much confined to our hotel room so we read books, played with cars, watched some weird French cartoons, and played games on the iPad.

They really did great for the first day in a brand new place with brand new white people. They lay down (actually we all did) and took a great nap and we had a nice dinner downstairs again that night. They got along great together and [A] was a super big brother and helped explain things to [G] in Swahili when she looked confused. For the most part she was very happy and giggly. This first day he was a little whiny and a bit of an attention seeker. I can’t count how many times he pretended to fall down on the floor so that he could cry and be comforted. But looking for love instead of clawing the walls to get away from us was a much better problem than we expected to have so we totally went with it and gave lots of hugs and kisses. And when the day was over, we all fell into bed and 3 of the 4 of us went to sleep. I got kicked in the face all night.