September 11, 2006
Getting to know our neighbors…
Gotta tell you – today just wasn’t our day. It started out well enough. We got Maggie-Vera from her classroom first, and she really seemed to be in a pretty good mood. She wasn’t exactly dancing a happy dance when I went in to pick her up, but she did smile at me and take my hand without any coaching from her caregiver. It might not be much, but I’m taking it as a good sign.
When we picked Ryn up, though, we found a sleepy, grouchy little girl. Apparently she had slept late this morning, and she wanted to wake up slow. That’s my girl! She’s going to fit in just fine with the Hunter gang. We love our sleep and we like to wake up slow. Problem is, not only did she sleep late, but she definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed. She wasn’t even happy about cookies – and that’s not normal. Maggie-Vera was so disturbed by her grouchiness that she tried to cheer her up by sharing toys and handing her crayons. Unfortunately, that just aggravated Ryn and she kind of slapped at Maggie. She didn’t hit her or anything, but it was enough to hurt Maggie’s feelings. Then I had two grouchy little girls. Not even Leap could cheer them up. By the time we left today we had two grouchy little girls, one grouchy Uncle Dave and one grouchy Mommy.
But the day got even better from there. Sergey had brought us some fresh tomatoes from his garden, and we stopped by the market downstairs to buy some bottled water, a watermelon, and some bologna (which Dave says is the best he’s ever eaten. Great – it’s all his!) We were all excited about getting upstairs to have lunch, but no luck! When we got up to the apartment we realized we had somehow locked ourselves out. We still have no idea how we did it, but the inside door (which we didn’t even know had a lock on it!) was locked – and we had no key. We had Azel’s number with us, but we didn’t have a phone. We stood there with Dave trying to figure out how to unlock the door with his pocket knife and me trying to stay out of his way for about 20 minutes before the lady in the apartment next door came by. Dave tried to explain why he was attempting to break into our apartment, but she couldn’t get away from us and into her apartment fast enough. Now, before you get all worried and think that I’m saying she was being rude, slow down. She was just going inside to get her young son to come talk to us. Apparently he understands a little English – or was at least a little better at figuring out what our gibberish was supposed to be. He called Azel for us and explained what was going on – or as close as he could figure it. Nice folks! Of course, Dave being Dave, he tried to share our Sergey tomatoes with the boy (which normally would’ve been very sweet), but I don’t think it translated very well. He just kept shaking his head and backing away. I don’t know what he thought about the strange Americans trying to push their tomatoes off on him, but I do know he saved the day. Azel came back, contacted the landlord, and got us an extra key.
Once we got into the apartment we settled in to our regular afternoon routine. Lunch, nap, maybe a little TV, maybe another nap, dinner and then bed. It’s true what they say (or at least what I say), just nearly any rotten day can be improved with chocolate and a good nap. Now… where’s that chocolate?
