Just another Manic Monday

Monday mornings are simply painful at our house.  I think it is because we are so LAZY on Saturdays and Sundays.  And then Monday morning crashes in.  Lana and Theo both go to pre-school on Monday mornings so there's a lot of running and dashing around to get dressed.  I wish I always had their bags pre-packed the night before but usually not.  The twins wake up at 7am and want to have something to eat and lately are crawling all over the place.  Generally Monday morning is chaos.

For example.

Theo comes down stairs and strips off his diaper.  He's potty training. Himself.  No I'm serious.  I really would rather he keep the diaper on his rump but off it comes. And then he's running around screaming.

I'M NAKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

He usually likes to run a full circuit of the first floor.  He goes around the furniture in the living room then careens through the foyer and into the dining room then into the kitchen, then into the pantry.  The entire time, he very loudly exclaims his bare-bottom-ness.

Lana comes down stairs next (usually).  Lana is a bit like me.  Well a bit like me BEFORE I had children that catapult me out of bed.  She would rather not be bothered for 10 or 15 minutes when she wakes up.  So usually she tries to wake up and then hangs out in her room until she's ready to face all of us.  On days that she doesn't do this...

Lana: Theo STOP screaming! Are you CRAZY! I'm SERIOUS.  BE QUIET!!!

Cue Theo to run by screaming his head off.  Oh! He has to PEE!!!

Theo: I HAVE TO PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Lana: Theo! Shut your MOUTH!

Theo:  I need the POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTY!!!!!!!!

Me -- Eyes still closed, shuffling to the kitchen and to go make coffee espresso.

Theo: I MADE A PEEE PEEEE!!!!!  I GET AN M&M!!!!!

Oh did I mention that Theo likes to drip like 5 drops of pee in the potty?  Since he figured out that he gets ONE M&M for peeing he likes to maximize his profit.    He then "goes peepee" like 20 times in the space of 10 minutes. My little economist.

Lana: Can I have an M&M too?  I was helping him to get the potty!?  I opened the bathroom door.

Me: unhg? 

Theo&Lana: Make a pee pee! M&M!!!

Now all the racket has woken the twins who add to the noise level.

Zeke: "RAh! Rah! Rah!"

Amani: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMoooommmmmmmmmyyyyy!?

Dear God what TIME is it?

6:50am

I want my coffee. Pout.

Good friends help

So this is a blog I've been meaning to post since December.  Forgive me for letting it slide.

Friends. I used to think I was someone who had a lot of friends.  Now I realize that I'm not.  I'm someone who has a lot of family and some of them are related to me.

We were truly sad to find out in December that we were not going to be able to go home to the US for Christmas. We are in the middle of adopting our twin boys, Zeke and Amani and although we'd submitted our paperwork to the embassy for review at the beginning of December, it seemed that the 'plan' of the office workers was to go on vacation and get to it, oh, never.  Me being who I am... I was understandably frustrated.  Or in layman's terms PISSED OFF.  So we weren't going home for Christmas.  We were. STUCK. IN. KENYA.

fine. Fine. FINE.

So not fine.  But I had had this thought. That it would be really fun to be stuck in Kenya IF I had someone fun to be stuck with.

So Neil and I called the Giles Family in Turkey and convinced them that the best way to spend Christmas was...

WITH US!

And thankfully they agreed with our obviously unshakeable logic.

This is Theo and Clara obviously in it to win it in the dirt.  LOVE the African Wildlife in the background.

 Jamie and Marie on horseback.

James and Elise.

So I just wanted to say that we had THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER! I will remember this Christmas for as long as I live. 

Although my FAVORITE memory will have to be.  Neil, James, Jamie and I gathered around a picnic bench having dinner at the cabin we rented near Lake Naivasha.  Neil (as usual) was engaging all of us in a story which he ends with...

"and there's a HIPPO right THERE!"  Pointing behind Jamie and I.  James, Jamie, and I whip our heads around to see a HUGE HIPPO perhaps 100 feet away from us.   Ambling up the side of the property on its way to dinner. 

I have NEVER seen James move so fast, who virtually VAULTED from the picnic bench to the back porch.  Jamie was not far behind and I honestly couldn't tell you where Neil was in all of this.  For some reason I felt it more important to focus on gathering up some dishes before rushing to the back deck. 

We had made pork chops.  And I liked them.  I don't know, I guess I didn't want to tempt the Hippo to come explore our leftovers.

I wasn't thinking clearly. OK?

Still makes me giggle just reflecting on it.  Probably always will.  Anyways, I love my extended family.  They are some good people.

Today we got news that the US Embassy has approved our adoption. 

They probably set an efficiency record on this one.