Mother of the Year Payback

Well, a whole lot can happen in a 24 hour time frame when you are a foreigner in an unfamiliar country. Let me first begin by describing our night since I last posted...

If you recall, I was "bragging" about being the Mother of the Year, because I let my darlings stay up until 2:30 in the morning on the same evening that we arrived, because they wanted to watch a beloved TV show. Then, if you recall, I also ended my previous post going to wake up said darlings at 12:15 in the afternoon of the following day. Poor, poor sleepy babies...Fast forward to that evening. (Honestly, we didn't really do anything very "blog worthy" that day other than just lie around and try to get familiar with the house.) Well, by midnight of that night, my formerly sleepy babies were no longer very interested in sleep. Now, in Ashlynn's defense, she did have a very bad cough which did keep her up, but I knew that if she ever WENT to sleep, her cough would subside. So, Chris and I finally got them all in the bed (the same inflatable mattress-bed, mind you)at around midnight. I decided I was going to sit up and wait to see how Ashlynn's cough did before I went to sleep. Her cough didn't get any better, and at around 12:30, she showed up in our room. I let her crawl into bed with us thinking that she would eventually drift off to sleep and her cough would go away. (By the way, I had already given her some children's cough syrup from the ginormous suitcase full of drugs that we had checked at the airport.) Anyway, she continued to cough. And cough. And cough. And cough. And, then...at around 1:30, in walks visitor number 2. Aaron comes in immediately complaining that Ashlynn's cough had woken him up, and he just couldn't go back to sleep. Good grief. So, with Ashlynn hacking in our bed and now visitor number 2 about to crawl in bed with us, I suggested to Chris that he might actually get more sleep if he would relocate to the air mattress with child number 3. So, off goes Chris and in climbs Aaron. Meanwhile, Ashlynn continues to cough and complain that she is not tired. She eventually convinces me that she needs to go sit in Avery's room and play her DS so that she can "be bored and go to sleep." At this point, it is nearing 3:00 in the morning, and STILL suffering from jet lag, this sounds like a good plan to me. So, off goes Ashlynn. Aaron and I continue to try to get some sleep, but between him complaining that he is "hot" and "not tired" and "can't sleep because of Ashlynn coughing," I knew it was hopeless. I finally decide to get up at around 3:45 to go and give Ashlynn a repeat dose of medicine. Immediately, as I try to slide out of the bed without waking the giant, he grunts, wakes up and jumps out of bed to follow me, because he is too scared to stay in the bed without me. As we get to Ashlynn, Chris somehow intervenes and makes Aaron get in the bed with him. I gave Ashlynn another dose and took her back upstairs with me. I think everyone in our house was FINALLY asleep by 4:30. So, mental note...NEVER let your kids stay up until 2:30 AM after they've been up all night on an eight hour flight, AND then allow them to sleep half the day away the following morning. Lesson learned.

Our day continues...

The next morning, we all had to get up, because a lady named "Brenda" was coming to pick up all four of us to take us to two appointments to "officially" apply to become legal residents of the Netherlands. So, since "Brenda" was due to arrived between 9:00 and 9:30, Chris had set the alarm to go off at 7:00. So, after only having been asleep for two and a half hours, I was not very excited to hear that alarm go off...especially when the sound of it was totally NOT what I expected. The alarm sound was the sound of a ROOSTER! For real. And, then I couldn't figure out how to turn off the crazy thing. Good morning.

So, to try to wrap this up...the children and I went to our appointments, and we are now almost "official." We also had an appointment with our "tour guide of sorts" Riemke at 1:00. She showed up ready to answer any questions I had and to take us wherever I wanted to go. So, we went to the Blokker (the Dutch version somewhat of Wal-Mart), and I got my beloved coffee maker. Now, when that rooster crows in the morning, I'll be ready. :-)