New start in Texas

Whenever I am anticipating an upcoming move, I say I'm excited for three months after the move, when the dust has settled.  And we are just about there!  I still have a few tasks to do (like find a dentist, tune the piano, etc) but most of the move-related things are done.

We took advantage of this move to implement a few changes that are noteworthy for our family.  Because when you're changing states, houses, schools, climates-- what are a few more things?

Bottles
We had thankfully already transitioned our kids away from actual bottles, but prior to our move, they were in a terrible habit of wanting warm milk or chocolate milk every morning.  And often at bedtime.  And sometimes during the middle of the day.  Tiago was practically addicted to hot chocolate (our trip to Colombia didn't help that!) and the girls refused to drink cold milk.  They all used sippy cups, but it was obnoxious to continually heat up milk in the microwave.  Obviously, our move and trip made it impossible to have warm milk every morning, so when we got into our new house we decided to hide all the sippy cups and just not warm up any liquid.  (Except for the occasional hot chocolate party.  It's a thing at our house.)

Snacks
When we realized we could stop heating milk daily, we tried to implement better eating habits.  If I think of my life a year ago, it involved a lot of goldfish crumbs all over my house.  For a year or two, I was too exhausted (and my kids were too young) for me to really care about where my kids ate and when they ate.  They were picky eaters, and as long as they ate something and stayed alive, my standards were met.  But at 3 and 4 years old, I knew they could start eating scheduled snacks, and not carrying bowls of food all over the house at all hours of the day.  Now we have one morning snack and one afternoon snack.  It worked great for a while; I've gotten a little lazy, but this is a reminder to keep this going!

Quiet time
During our travels I listened to a podcast about doing quiet time for the child's benefit (deeper creativity, a time to re-charge, etc) so I decided to give it a shot.  (You know, for the kids.  Nothing to do with my OWN need for a quiet hour! haha)  There was a learning curve of about a week, but now it's pure magic.  We put them each in their own room with toys to play with, and make them stay for an hour.  (We worked our way up to that much.)  In the beginning we bribed rewarded them a lot with chocolate chips, but eventually they learned to just stay in their rooms.  Mila liked to listen to audiobooks, and it was interesting to see how unaccustomed the girls were to playing by themselves.  (They had never done it before.)  Tiago started drawing really intricate things, and building legos more.  Unfortunately Tiago's school schedule at the end of August meant he didn't often get quiet time, but we still do it every day with the girls.  I'm so glad I took that leap of faith and see it paying dividends for a year or two.

Movies in the car
In Colorado Springs, my kids begged me to turn on the car's DVD player almost daily.  We drove 15 minutes to and from the gym most days, so I think they just saw that as a great time to catch up on their favorite shows.  And I often didn't want to fight them.  But I hated it.  Precious screen time shouldn't be used up in the car!  During our move, and while looking for a house, they logged a lot of hours watching movies.  But when we got back from Colombia we made sure it was off, and have only turned it on for long stretches.  One thing I did that helped was getting music cd's from the library that the kids were excited about -- Halloween songs, or Disney music.  That entertained them pretty well and they haven't been asking for movies (as much.)


So what does all of this mean for my parenting perspective?  I'm realizing that there are always annoying things our kids do (or maybe better said, annoying things that we, as parents, permit).  But they don't have to go on forever.  When we feel like we have the bandwidth to make a change, we can.  And until then, we can just chill about it and not feel guilty about a life-supply of goldfish under our couch cushions.

last 3 days in Bogota!

Tuesday:  Before heading back to Montserrate, we ate at a little restaurant across from our AirBnb.  Everyone was loving the hot chocolate and arepas.  Hyrum got eggs.  And before we left, Tiago started to cry and asked for more.  So we grabbed another hot chocolate and arepa to go.  (That type of thing might only be significant for parents of kids who generally don't eat.) [This first picture is actually from Monday night-- Tiago was trying pitaya, a fruit that tastes like Kiwi although it looks quite strange.  He loved it.]

At Montserrate there were significantly fewer people-- two people in front of us in line, instead of 200.  The gondola was closed, but we rode the funicular to the top.  It was foggy but it cleared enough for us to show the kids how far Bogota stretches.  The church was closed, as was our favorite food cafeteria, but we saw what we could, and left to cram more into our day.

Our second stop was the Museo de Oro (the Gold Museum.)  It was a quick walk-through of just a few rooms, but it seemed important to show the kids how much gold this country has. 

All was well until Mila-monster decided to make an appearance.  We were trying to take a family picture in front of a statue, and something snapped.  She was inconsolable (and SO loud) and I literally had to grab her and run out of the room, down two levels, and out the front door.  Our circus got a lot of stares, but it happens.  Once we were out of the museum, I cared less about it.  

Our next stop was to a park across town at a park where Hyrum was meeting his friends to watch the England-Colombia soccer game.  But we were all starving.  So after a few minutes of the kids playing on the playground, we decided to go find a restaurant where we could watch the game.  Almost everything was full but we found a little place.  It started to rain, and at half-time we decided to go find somewhere else to watch.  Everyone at the park had the same idea; there were people flooding down the sidewalk in the rain, looking for cover.  There was a shopping mall a few blocks away, so I carried Mila, Hyrum's friend carried Siena, and Hyrum carried Tiago.  We sprinted all the way there, sweating in the rain, weighed down by children.  

I entertained the kids while Hyrum and his friends kept moving from one place to another, in search of the biggest TV.  We found a play area where the kids could play for 20 minutes for only about $5 total.  Then we went to get ice cream.  No sooner had a I paid then we heard cheering outside.  The employee all but jumped over the counter and everyone was out by the stairwell jumping up and down cheering for a Colombian goal. 

With our ice cream, we joined everyone else watching the game in the food court.  It felt like the game that wouldn't end.  They went to over time.  The kids were restless.  This time it was Tiago's turn for a tantrum.  I took him to the back of the crowd where he tried to his and kick me.  A mall security guard walked by, and I told him he couldn't hit me in front of the policemen.  He calmed right down... for about 2 minutes until that guard was out of sight. 

Of course the game had to go to penalties.  You've never seen a more enthusiastic group of fans than Colombians during the World Cup.  So much cheering and singing.  So much passion.  People were up and down in their seats.  And then the second the game ended (Colombia lost) everyone just stood up without saying a word and walked away.  Hyrum may have nodded goodbye to his friends, but that was it.  No one wanted to talk about it, and I guess it was easier to act like nothing happened. 

I took that picture of sad Tiago in between penalty shots when no one was paying attention to the screen, but it represents how everyone was feeling just a few minutes later when the game was over.  

Hyrum's Tia Ines and her daughters came to visit that night at our apartment.  We ate pizza and cake together, and visited in the little bit of time we had.  

THANK GOODNESS it was a little easier to put the kids in bed that night.  Hyrum was off playing soccer with his friends (in his new Colombian jacket) and didn't get home til after 11 pm.  I think playing soccer with his friends is always a highlight of the trip for him.  It's just like old times, except they're a few decades older than they used to be.  

Wednesday: This was our last full day in Colombia, and we hoped to take it easy.  It started that way, but ended quite stressful (for me, anyway.)  We spent the whole morning wandering around Bogota's biggest park-- Parque Simon Bolivar.  (It's bigger than Central Park.)  The kids played on several playgrounds, we watched a heron at the edge of the lake, and watched the Army band practicing for a while.  We ate ice cream multiple times, which of course was a huge mess but made everyone happy. 

It's funny to compare my experience at a particular location to a previous trip.  The first time I visited this park was on a weekend-- so it was FULL of cyclists, runners, kites, picnics, etc.  The day we visited was relatively quiet.  (Same was true for Bogota's main plaza.  My first visit was a weekday, so the square was empty.  When we recently visited on a Sunday there was practically a rave going on.)

As we neared one of the park's exits, we saw one last playground for the kids to enjoy.  There happened to be a little girl there with her dad, and they were all immediately BFF's.  They played baseball, and kept launching a spinning thing in the air then running to catch it. Hyrum and I literally sat on the park bench watching them for an hour or two.  During that time, the weather changed multiple times: umbrella for rain, coat for cold, take it all off cause we're sweating from the hot sun.  Repeat. Eventually it started raining harder and we loaded the kids in the umbrella and ran to the main road to catch a taxi.  In an effort to avoid tantrums, we bought the kids cotton candy (again) and Doritos (which they called dinosaur chips for the next several weeks, because of a Jurassic Park promotion.)

We went to eat one last time at Crepes and Waffles.  I think by that point our kids were sick of eating out.  We ran to a grocery store to return some towels.  (Long story.)  Everything we were doing felt like it was taking longer than anticipated, and transportation between places seemed to take forever.  We were supposed to be meeting up with a friend of Hyrum's, but we still hadn't purchased any soccer jerseys for the kids.  Besides books, that was the one souvenir we had planned to buy.  Since Colombia was out of the World Cup, no one seemed to be selling them, and it was causing me stress, and being late was causing me stress.

As we walked out of the grocery store, Hyrum asked a random person selling stuff outside if they knew where we could find anyone selling shirts.  (A few days before, there were more than a dozen vendors in that very spot!)  A nicely dressed man, pulling a suitcase, approached Hyrum and asked if he wanted to buy jerseys.  He'd overheard him asking, and had several he was trying to sell.  We stepped off to the side, and found everything we wanted in his suitcase-- including two identical sizes for the girls, one for Tiago, and one for both Hyrum and me.  What are the odds!  So that was a small miracle.  On top of finding this guy right when we were feeling desperate and out of time, my debit card wasn't working in the store's ATM.  (We have had so many problems at that particular ATM!)  We didn't have any Colombian pesos left.  I did, however, have a few hundred US dollars I brought along, just in case.  The guy let us pay in dollars, and we gave him a little extra to cover the exchange fee. 

Shirts in hand, we raced over to a public library where friends were waiting for us.  They have two kids, about the same ages as our kids.  Hyrum knows the husband from living in Colombia, and both he and his wife studied for a while at BYU (and had their kids there!)  So it was easy to talk to them and we had a good time comparing the two completely different lifestyles for a mom Provo vs a mom in Bogota.  Margarita said she tries to get out with her kids almost every day (she home schools) and they have to take taxis everywhere they go.  That blows my mind.  But paying for parking on a second vehicle is cost prohibitive in the city.  (It gave me so much appreciation for my van, and being able to load my kids in the garage and drive wherever I want.)  But there are obviously advantages to a big city, like the awesome library they showed us. 

Outside was a playground and sand pit.  Inside was a big castle and pirate ship, plus a toy room for kids. Tiago kept hoping, "Maybe our library in Texas will have a pirate ship, too."  (It doesn't.)

Just as everyone was getting settled and having fun, we had to rush off to another thing that we were late for.  (This day seriously needed just a few extra hours inserted here and there.)  As is typical for a big trip, the night before leaving everyone wants to say goodbye.  The non-emotional side of me totally doesn't understand that.  I'd rather sneak off in the dark of night.  But Hyrum wanted to give his friends a chance to meet up one last time.  Of course, everyone was getting off work around that time, and non-commital, and I wanted to get the kids home and in bed at a reasonable hour.  A few people ended up coming to dinner, and we had a good time (although we were still full from a late lunch) and then we hurried out into the rainy night to find a taxi right along with everyone else in the city.  (Rain has a way of making taxis popular.) 

Finally we made it home, packed, cleaned, and got the kids in bed (in no particular order.)

Thursday: Our last morning in Colombia!  Our last bucket list item was to visit the LDS Temple, which was a short taxi ride from our apartment.  It was the relaxing end to our trip that we desperately needed after the whirlwind afternoon on Wednesday.  Hyrum and the kids danced around for quite a while and burned some energy before we headed to the airport. 

When we left our apartment, Tiago was really sad and insisted on saying goodbye to 'his' bedroom, and all the items in the kitchen, and the TV, and whatever else he felt attached to.  While I wasn't quite as sentimental, we did love the apartment!  It had two bedrooms, plus a pull out sofa, TV, internet, and a washer/dryer. 

We got to the airport several hours early, so we weren't rushed to get through all the lines.  Once inside, I saw an airport lounge that I thought I might have access to through one of my credit cards. Sure enough, I did.  Plus, I could bring all my guests in for free.  I am very new to the world of airport lounges, but this one was nice!  We had about 45 minutes to just relax on their sofas and eat free food.  For our kids, that of course meant bowls of fruit loops and hot chocolate.  Hyrum and I enjoyed the classier items from the buffet.  And then we didn't have to buy lunch. :)  During travel days it's a little difficult to take pictures because my hands are completely full of bags and kids, and my phone is packed away for safe keeping. 

Thursday was the day the national team was returning to Colombia from the World Cup.  On our way to the airport we'd seen crowds lining the main street to cheer them on.  At our gate, we saw the team's buses leaving the airport.  There was quite a procession and crowd. 

At take-off, Hyrum told Tiago there were people running behind the airplane pushing it.  Tiago laughed and laughed and kept saying, "You're kidding!"  But he secretly didn't know if he should believe it. 

We had a layover in Florida, then arrived in Dallas at abou 10:30 pm.  The kids had of course all fallen asleep on the last flight, and no one wanted to wake up.  Instead of gate-checking our stroller, it was no where to be seen in Dallas.  Meanwhile, Siena had an accident in her underwear, and Tiago was furious and kicked a can of soda in the backpack; it exploded and made a mess everywhere.  I gave the employees at the counter a piece of my mind and demanded a wheelchair or something to transport all my kids to baggage claim.  (My back was killing me.  I couldn't carry them much further.)  Eventually we made it.  And we collapsed in our beds.. at the hotel.  Ready to start our next adventure of getting into a house. 

The trip was everything we hoped it would be.  The kids were as exhausting as we expected them to be, but we hope that the family memories we made will stay with them for a lifetime.  (Thanks in part to my detailed write-up!)

Turistren to the "savannah"

The last few days of our trip were spent in Bogota, primarily by ourselves.  Bogota has a train that heads out to the plains/savannah on the weekends, and since Monday was a Colombian holiday (something like labor day) we got tickets to ride the train.  We thought it would be memorable for the kids, and something low-key.  

One unique cultural experience happened when the band came to play traditional music.  All the Colombians voluntarily were singing along.  And it's not because they're good singers (dare I say most aren't?) but because I think that the country just generally has less inhibitions than we do in the United States.  There was dancing, clapping, singing, from at least 90% of the people-- old, young, male, female.  Didn't matter.  

We were on the train for an hour or two before stopping in Zipaquira, a town famous for it's salt mine cathedral.  Hyrum and I went in 2011, and knew it wouldn't be fun for kids (dark, wet, long tour, etc) so we just took the kids to walk around and relax in the main plaza.  Tiago saw some kids playing soccer, so he went to ask if he could play with them (we helped him say it in Spanish.)  He had a great time.  We bought cotton candy, walked through a shopping mall and let the kids ride on those cheap rides (one played a song they're familiar with, el payaso plin plin, which was fun.)  And many pigeons were chased.

Then the train dropped us off in Cajica, a small touristy town with plenty of restaurants trying to make customers of the train passengers.  We were so hungry.  But while we were walking away from the train, Siena pulled on my necklace and broke it.  I took it away and she freaked out. And instead of us getting to eat lunch, she laid on the sidewalk and threw an epic tantrum for 45 minutes.  I don't remember exactly what it was about.  Maybe she wanted to hold my hand instead of Hyrum's?  Or she wanted to hold no one's hand, but we were next to main road?  Something dumb, but it really set her off.  I took the 'behaving' kids to a playground down the street, and eventually Siena calmed down, even though I'm sure all her blood vessels in her eyes were shot.

We hurried to eat lunch with our remaining time, and I hurried back to the train with the kids.  Hyrum stopped in at a bakery to buy us dessert for the train ride.  And... this was a highlight of my trip.  He bought not one... but THREE huge cakes.  One was merengon, which is a merengue thing with cream and fruit.  The other was a fruit cake.  And the last was dulce de leche / arequipe, and it was so so so good.  We ate a few bites of each before we were stuffed, and continued to eat them over the next 24 hours.  Maybe that was the blessing for having put up with our child??

The trip lasted from 9 am until about 5 pm.  So the return to Bogota was just filling time.  The thrill of being on a train had worn off.  It was interesting to watch the change of scenery, from cows and fields to mountainsides filled with buildings.  There was one area, in particular, that was fun with bright colored houses that created a rainbow.

It should come as no surprise that Mila had her third insane, crazy-person freak-out that night, making us wonder how many nights until she'd be sleeping in her own bed.  (And we had no idea what the answer to that question was.)