One Day at a Time

Days spent in Riga:  13

Days to go in Riga:  11

Pout Count:  173

Smile Count:  173.6

May the odds be ever in our favor.

Dude, parenting is hard!

It looks so easy from the outside in.  Every night when I go to bed I think, "Sweet sassy molasses, I've got to get up tomorrow and do that all over again."

But as the above stats would indicate, the good is definitely outweighing the bad.  

Today, in fact, was our very first pout free day!

It's a legit Latvian miracle!

Yesterday, however, not so much.

It was a true battle royale.  I'll try to sum it up.

We were leaving to go grocery shopping.

We need food to live.

He didn't want to go.

We said, yes, you have to go.

The pout heard round the world commenced.

The lip came out.

The arms were crossed.

He plopped himself on the couch.

We said again, with increased firmness, let's go.  We are leaving.

No movement on the Latvian front.

This went on for a long time. 

Fans and I would huddle in the kitchen trying to figure out what to do.

"Oh my gosh, he's seriously not moving?!  Are we supposed to force him?  Do we pick him up?  Can we even touch him?  That's probably against Latvian law since he's not officially ours yet."

He had always given up rather quickly in the past and eventually came with us.

This time he was not having it.

Things were getting tense.

Our main concern was that if we backed down and his pout won out, he would think that from now on a good solid pout would get him out of doing whatever he doesn't want to do.  And what he didn't know was that we had to take him to a doctor appointment later that evening, which is something he probably would opt out of, or pout out of, if given the chance, so this time was for reals...he had to know that we mean business.

So after much back and forth, with both sides getting angrier, he was sent to his room, or rather, forced into his room.  I stayed behind and Fans went to the store.

He eventually came out.

He said, "I'm sorry Mom."

We spent a good amount of time using the phone translator.  He would type a sentence. Then he'd hand me the phone and I would respond.  We talked about good behavior and that he needs to listen to Mom and Dad.  And that sometimes he will have to do things he doesn't want to do.  One of his responses was "Well, we always act bad in the orphanage."

And I said, "Well, our family is not the orphanage.  We expect good behavior and good attitudes in our family."

He actually seemed to understand.  It was a really good silent conversation.

I typed, "We love you.  We want the best for you.  And we are the ones in charge."

He said, "I didn't want to go because I can't walk.  My legs hurt."

At first I was like, wait a minute…come on, is that really true?  But then I thought, well, we have been walking a ton and maybe we are going too hard and maybe his legs do hurt.

So I said, "Then you need to use the phone and tell us that, you can't just pout."

He was much better after that.

And has actually been much better since.

Except this morning when we asked him if he felt like walking around Riga 

he said, "No, my legs hurt."

And then Fans said, "Well, I guess we shouldn't go ice skating then."

And lo and behold..."WAIT, NO!  My legs…they ok today!"

Well, hallelujah, it's a Christmas miracle!  God bless us every one, D's legs have been healed!  Thank you Jesus!"

It was confirmed:

We fell for the oldest kid trick in the book.

The old "my legs hurt but if you ask me to do something I really want to do then they don't hurt at all" trick.

We are such rookies.

But today he really did great.  He seems to finally understand that he's in charge of his attitude and if he chooses to have a bad one, life is not as much fun.  

It was actually pretty hilarious today, because as we got ready to leave for ice skating, Fans pretended to have the exact same pout attack that D did the day before.

I think D really realized how annoying his pouting really is.

Fans even refused to put his shoes on, which is what D had done.  When D had refused, Fans had to physically put his shoes on him.

D tried to do the same and found out how hard it is.

Pouting is NO fun, whether you are the pouter, or the poutee.  

Good lesson for D to learn.

Here's to hoping it sticks!

We celebrated his newly healed legs with some good old skating.

We practically had the whole rink to ourselves and it was awesome.

D worked for almost an hour on his backwards skating.  

Fans worked for almost an hour on his twizzle.

Then we headed to the very popular Lido restaurant which is attached to the rink.

We've done lots of other fun things since Friday.

We went to the Riga Circus, which was great.

The circus clown picked Fans out of the crowd to do a caricature of him.  It only took like two minutes and I think it is spot on.

After the circus, we had a hot cocoa at the top of the Radisson.

The next day we took an overnight trip to Jurmala, which is a popular beach town on the Baltic sea.  It took about 45 minutes on the train to get there.

From what I could tell, this was D's first time in a hotel.  He spent the first 15 minutes in the bathroom fascinated with the blow dryer attached to the wall.

We swam for a long time at the hotel pool.  I don't know if it's Jurmala or Latvia or Europe in general, but they love their spas.  There's not just a hotel pool, there are steam rooms and saunas and places where you rub yourself with salt and little pools with rocks in the bottom that you are supposed to walk on because rocks on your feet are good for your organs or something.

I didn't know that.

Which is why it now makes sense that I got so many weird looks when I got in the foot pool and sat down in the middle of the rocks.

It didn't feel quite right and I had a feeling I was doing it wrong.

Should have listened to my gut.

But my gut probably wasn't working at full capacity since I wasn't walking on the rocks.

Spas are super confusing.

D loves to swim.  You can tell it is an absolute thrill just to be at a pool.  I don't think he has gotten to do that very often in his life.  And of course, every two minutes it was, "Mom!  Watch this!"

So many tricks to show me.  It was cute.

After swimming we had pizza in a red bus.

The next morning we walked to the Baltic Sea.  

I mean, how many chances in our lives will we be able to touch the Baltic Sea.  

It was very cold.

We did a little more exploring in Jurmala.

And of course, some geocaching right on the main drag.

And then we headed to the Livu AkvaParks, which is a great waterpark in Jurmala, and the main reason we wanted to go there.  I have no pictures, as it was too fun and too wet.  

It was four hours of pure fun for D.  

Unfortunately, there was a major pout fest approximately two minutes after leaving the waterpark, when we wouldn't buy him ice cream before dinner.

I was like DUDE ARE YOU SERIOUS?  YOU JUST HAD FOUR HOURS AT A WATERPARK AND YOU'RE GOING TO PULL A POUT FEST ON US?

Have I mentioned what an amazing day it was today when we had no pouting?

Ah, sweet glorious pout-free days. 

Please come into my life more.

Today after ice skating, we went to the top of St. Peters church here in Riga, which dates back to 1209.

It was beautiful inside, as was the view from the top.

The four buildings you see in the below photo are old Zeppelin hangars that now house Riga's Central Market.  When it opened in 1930 it was the largest and most progressive market in Europe.  It's like the biggest farmers market you've ever seen.

St. Peters is in Old Riga, which is my absolute favorite part of the city to walk through.  

So beautiful and so much history.

And so many great coffee shops.

Some other things we've covered in the last few days…

Learning English via the Post-It Note Method.

Climbing more walls.

Finding geocaches hidden in trees.

And hidden right on our street.

We've found ways to kill time.

And laugh while we're at it.

And, yes, he still sleeps with his hockey puck every night.

We really are having a great time in Latvia.  Even learning some new words.  And D is doing pretty well learning English.  We had our weekly visit from the orphanage director and her translator this morning.  When they asked D if he had been teaching us any Lativan he said, "No, because I am worried if I do they will forget English."

Too cute.

On the first day we met D, we learned in our pre-meeting that they had some concerns about his heart.  According to previous tests, they had found some abnormalities which has raised concerns and prompted them to make him an appointment for an EKG.  Being an orphan, he was on a waiting list for months and his appointment happened to be yesterday, so they recommended we keep it.

We nervously went to the appointment, not knowing what sort of issues we were facing.

I was in the room with him, desperately trying to see the screen that the technician was looking at, watching his little heart beating as he nervously looked at me.

I had no idea what I was looking at.  

Each picture looked the same.

After she was done with the test, she sat at the desk and wrote what felt like a novel, all in Latvian, without saying a word.  When she was finished, she looked up at me and said something in Latvian.  I opened the door to let the translator back in, and listened as the technician gave her report.

The translator looked at me and smiled.

"It's very good. He has a very good, strong heart.  She can't find any problems."

Relief washed over me.  

A good, strong heart.

I gave D a high five.

The romantic in me would like to believe that whatever problems they had seen before, whatever issues had prompted the concerns, were simply the result of a broken heart.

Thanking God tonight that our D is healthy.

And that his heart is on the mend.