Haiti Day Five

Before I start today’s update, I do have one more thing to add to yesterday’s events. Last night I was able to speak with Tara Livesay who is a missionary here in Haiti with her family. We were hoping to work out a time to meet, but as it turns out our hotel is not very close to where they live and they have guests arriving for a few days. At any rate it was fun to connect and hopefully one day we’ll be able to actually see one another. I enjoy reading their family’s blog and recommend it!

Today began as a repeat of yesterday with an early morning ultra messy diaper wake up call. Unfortunately, we discovered that the knob that turns the water on and off in the shower had malfunctioned (it was old and it got stripped so that it no longer gripped correctly to turn) so we couldn’t give Alec a bath; instead he had a cramped little bathing experience in the bathroom sink at 5 a.m.! To make a long story short, later in the day we actually had to switch to the room next door because the technicians were unable to fix the knob right away. (The new room is kind of musty and damp, and the air conditioning doesn’t work so well … sort of a bummer.)

We sat outside for awhile this morning and talked with a Haitian nurse who lives and works in Miami but who travels here every two month to be with her husband. She told us we had chosen a good time to come because things were pretty calm in Haiti; last March when she stayed at this same hotel, she said that with the rioting people tried to force entry but were held back by armed guards! Yikes.

Pedro and I went separately to breakfast to make it a little easier with the boys; today’s featured item was Creole soup, sort of a goulash with potatoes, meat, hot peppers, carrots, etc. Not what we’d normally eat first thing in the morning, but it really was good! There is a young waiter on staff here who always asks about the babies and wishes God’s blessing on them; he was serving this morning and greeted us both with a big smile. Breakfast is included in the hotel price so that is a nice perk!

We try to eat only one other big meal to save a little money, so around 3 p.m. we went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Ian tried gumming some of the bread I offered him but eventually made a mess and got bored of it. Alec as usual was fascinated by the fans and was singing a little song to himself for a while before he got really tired and a bit fussy. It’s always interesting trying to eat with babies on your lap; we tried laying them in the extra chairs next to us but they didn’t appreciate it too much because they were both awake – yesterday, on the other hand, they both fell asleep before the meal arrived so we pushed two chairs together and laid them down head to feet and had a lovely quiet lunch together!

For most of the day today, we stayed indoors because even though the day was overcast the heat was really strong. Pedro was in football heaven because there were so many games on television (in Chile we don’t have cable so he basically has not watched football for a year.) I told him that if either of our boys turn out to be NFL players, we can always point out to them that it all started right here, this week together in Haiti! We did commit one cultural faux pas today I think; after seeing the price of laundry service I decided to wash all the kids’ clothes by hand in the bathtub last night and hung them out on our railing to dry this morning. Sometime this afternoon, there was a knock on our door and a lady came to take the clothes away and dry them – she didn’t charge us anything and told us anytime we washed them to call laundry to dry them … she was very nice but Pedro pointed out that we were probably perceived as real cultural clods to hang out our laundry publicly at this nice hotel. (Oops!)

We were able to touch base with each of our kids as well as my sister Jenn and my parents (have I mentioned how thankful we’ve been for free internet this week??) Owen gave us the cold shoulder/silent treatment for the second time on Skype. He sat in front of the camera on my sister’s lap but refused to look at us or talk to us. I guess he’s ticked off that we left him for so long, or maybe he’s jealous seeing us with the babies … either way, he wouldn’t even crack a smile! Today I alternated between feeling that three days is a really long time until I see my kids in Chile and that two more nights is much too short a time to have left with our babies here. I got a little teary over my lunch as I held the boys and thought that I only have one more full day with them. We will miss them so very much.