Today was day two looking after two toddlers and a 12yo and making it to lights out was challenging to say the least. The two little ones are still getting over some sort of bronchitis so they are constantly coughing. Our apartment sat at a stuffy 30c all day so tempers were short and many toys were argued over. Nobody wanted to eat anything Dad cooked, hopefully the result of the sickness and heat rather than the actual food!
Later in the day we had a good time in the park even if Ryan did manage to get completely covered in sand. After a nice bath, small hen picks at dinner and nice quiet games with big brother it was off to bed with milk as usual. As I settled into the mountain of washing up that the day had created Ryan had a coughing fit and threw up in his bed. Luckily I managed to save his blanket and put him down again in my bed while I cleaned up. Of course round two kicked in and he managed to get sick on EVERYTHING after doing a face plant into the pool of goupy milk and macaroni. Bath time again!
By the time I’d made an enclosure of heavy pillows and laid down the last set of linnen he was ready to play. I spent the next hour fetching Teddy who was thrown over the edge of the bed many times. For the record… he was given fair warning each time! “Teddy, that’s all…!” toss! I would have left him there if there wasn’t so much begging for him to come back.
With the two of them finally cutely asleep I finally settled into my relaxing beer after what seemed like a 24 hour shift. I reflected on how hard many, many single parents work every day. If you are one of them I wish you a very sincere well done!
The last few days at our place have been a little out of control. This morning Elena caught James with a bunch of 100ruble notes that he managed grab from the top shelf of the dresser. She noticed him carefully feeding the notes one by one through the small gap in the ajar balcony door and letting them flutter six floors to the street below. As James noticed her noticing he hid the bunch behind his back, stuffed one more note out and blamed Ryan!
During the lesson about not throwing anything out the window that followed, I don’t know why but I asked James if it would be ok to throw his favorite teddy out too? Without thinking he nodded and motioned approvingly toward the window. Elena with her quick wit applauded me for not volunteering Ryan in place of Teddy!
Later in the evening it was Ryan’s turn to do something silly.
Ohh man these kids are hard work at this age! My age, not theirs!!!
Winter started more than six weeks ago and finally there is enough snow to take out the sanki (sled) and give James his first ever sanki rides! They weren’t without incident though, as you can imagine.
Long lost in a pile of junk paper of bank statements, 4th grade homework, unpaid bills, etc. I just found this classic hand written note.
When J wakes up
Change diaper
feed the boy: 4 spoons (spoon is inside the tin) of “Kasha” and add milk (2%, warm).
can give him some banana (if still hungry)
Play time
then around 2h later can give a litte snack (cheese or bread) a little drink (juice is on the tbl) * mix water 3 * 3oz.
should sleep now.
I’ll be on the phone or online
Kiss
Hope be back for lunch.
So after the shock of waking up in the deep end of the pool I got to, following the list to the letter. Things were going well for the first few points and I was thinking that I’m a super dad until the food wasn’t enough and the begging started. So i simply repeated the steps so far that had worked well pouring more food, juice, food and milk into the kid. Problem solved for another 30mins or so until it was poo time. Hey, that wasn’t even on the list! Negotiated the situation well enough though and with just one more oz of milk he was back to sleep.
During an enjoyable evening meal at the Barcelo River Maya Resort just south of Cancun James started a debate with Richard. At first it seemed like a general conversation but actually (after checking Wikipedia) it seems that they actually followed general debating rules pretty well. OK so James did all the talking and acting and Richard just sat there but all the motions were correct and fully in character.
While Richard and I were at the Monster Jam this afternoon Tatiana was busy training James. By the time we got home he was already walking around with semi-confidence. The icing on the cake was the little dance at the end!
It’s been a while since I posted but nothing really jumped out until now. Elena’s mum finally got her US visa last week so we went for a drive up to Texas for some shopping. On the way we stopped for a few photos with one of the daily stunning texas sunsets.
Of course I couldn’t resist putting the first one up on facebook and it got some classic comments. . .
Jose Angel Cantu Guzman baby on the road
Peter Speight Place of birth, I-35 South Texas
Jose Angel Cantu Guzman At least it’s the road and not on a mc donalds
Rod Saclier Are you serious? I seem to remember you tempting the gullible but really???
Gene Hewitt she did not…..nooooo!??!
Tim Benson You’ve put on a bit of weight since I saw you last Peter …
Alice Duijnhouwer Ouch that looks awfull
Peter Speight The Parkes and Garden guy (complete with gun, hand cuffs, lights on his truck) stopped to assist which was great. Elena’s Mum was trying to speak English to him and he was trying to speak Spanish to her while I was busy with Elena.
Juan Pablo Leal G nice picture
Alpaslan Bazlamatçi Elena is having pain and you take your time to take picture of her while you should hold her hand !!! çok ayıp
Alison Speight So, a Mexican child at last But what you had to go through to get one…hai raab!
Helene Uys Are you serious? Did she actually have the baby on the I35?
Bryce Bishop That’s an excellent pic…
Dylan Speight REALLY!?!
Sabrina Bazlamatci you guys are funny yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Dmitry Garin You are a man, Peter! Congratulations!
Natalya Maximova Oh my God!!! Peter, tell to us truth. Are you serious?
Alice Duijnhouwer Where are the pics of the little one? is it a girl or a boy? Anyway congrats all of you and Richard and James!!
Here is the actual photo that we stopped to take. . .
We had a great laugh the other day setting up our profiles in the Wii Fit. I was as to be expected “a little over weight” but Elena’s was funny after the balance section. It asked. . . “Do you find yourself tripping over while you walk?” Must be true because she was shocked and said with eyes like dinner plates, “that’s BS!”.
So we had a week to kill after finishing a difficult 7 month project and ended up in Cancun. Being low season there were great deals on boats to hire and hotels were as I like them, comphy and cheap! We couldn’t get the Cat that we wanted which would have let us sail up and down the coast as we pleased but Allen Mason from Cancun Catamarans was good enough to scout us out another great deal with Luxury Motor Yachts Cancun who put us on a 45′ Sea Ray motor yacht with two crew and all you can eat and drink for three days and three nights.
Being a motor yacht and our super deal we couldn’t ask them to sail too far away from the lagoon. As it happens the weather was against us for most of the time with storms and or rain every afternoon into the evening. As you can see from the photos it was still a very cool time which I recommend to anyone. We also made it out to Isla Mujeres where Dylan had a quick dip in the ocean with a shark.
Of course what first trip to Cancun doesn’t have the obligitory day trip to Chichen Itza. Allen also set this one up for us a little cheaper than the fast talking Mexican guy with a heavy American accent in the lobby of our hotel. Unfortunately our hotel was last on the pick up list so I was squashed in the back seat of the otherwise comphy bus between two huge guys for the full 2.5 hour journey. The way back wasn’t much better!
All in all a great week without busin’ the budget. Well ok, we did go a bit over the original plan but a good time was had by all.
Ok, so it sounds pretty easy. Just go to your nearest pharmacy, take a face front and eyes open picture against a white background and resize them for the passport. I think we went wrong with timing the photo shoot during is morning nap time!
Here are a few photos taken from my camera after the girl couldn’t take enough photos fast enough on the pharmacy’s point and shoot. I put the camera on sports and took around 70 photos to get this selection.
Today was day two looking after two toddlers and a 12yo and making it to lights out was challenging to say the least. The two little ones are still getting over some sort of bronchitis so they are constantly coughing. Our apartment sat at a stuffy 30c all day so tempers were short and many toys were argued over. Nobody wanted to eat anything Dad cooked, hopefully the result of the sickness and heat rather than the actual food!
