The truth be told...

...I kind of have it easy with three kids because I have an ayi. She's been gone for over two weeks, though, for the Chinese New Year. I just haven't felt like myself here lately with the kids. I felt like a monster demanding, yelling and ordering around three wild heathens. I have searched websites on how to keep three children, all at different stages in their lives, entertained to no avail. But today was wonderful. I don't think I've had to yell once. I even got Elias to practice piano and Ezra to read without many problems. Elias has also read, we had a lunch play date, they've helped me bake a pineapple upside-down cake and make gumbo for dinner. Zuri has listened and not made too big of a mess. I've had patience and have entertained them. They helped me clean with no fuss. I don't know if it's my patience changing them or because they listen that is making me more patient and tomorrow, it may fall apart again, but either way, I feel like the kind of mother that I want to be.

I wanted to catch up on a couple of blogs: for the Chinese New Year, we went over to our friends' house who we also went to Guilin with. Sarah cooked a delicious dinner and bought a huge box of fireworks and sparklers. We went outside with the box, thinking there were many different kinds of them to set off like in America, and lo and behold, the box was one HUGE firework: it set off 49 explosions and sent them well above the 20-floor buildings! It was so funny. The kids enjoyed it.

Later, they also had bought these lanterns that the Chinese set off for good luck. You light this box in the center, it fills up with hot air like a hot air balloon and you let it go and away it flies. It's supposed to be good luck. Well, somehow, Brad became in charge of this. Now, why the most nervous person around would be put in charge of something that you set on fire, in hindsight, we have no idea. Not only is he nervous about fire, but he also hadn't really thought through how it worked.

So, he lit it, let it stay there for a few minutes and then kind of threw it off the balcony. There wasn't enough hot air in it and it sank, right onto the neighbor's balcony's satellite dish where the WHOLE THING CAUGHT ON FIRE! I could tell Brad was internally freaking out...they finally had to get water and poured it down onto the flaming lantern. It became dislodged and floated away...along with all of our good luck, too! Obviously, Brad didn't do anymore and I was very relieved when Song said they would wait until later to do the rest because otherwise Brad would have been a nervous wreck and probably insisted we go home because he wouldn't want to be anywhere near responsible for setting a building on fire!!!

My camera was acting up that night so all of my pictures are blurry but here's a picture of Brad letting the lantern go, just so you get an idea of what we were dealing with!


Later around midnight, the fireworks were going off full-blast, non-stop and I was outside taping it. (It is really an amazing thing and I have a video of it up over at http://www.dropshots.com/carleigh from February 2007 if you care to look.) He came outside, too, and when he went inside, he shut the door all the way, thus locking me out. No amount of yelling or screaming was making him hear me out there over the bursting of all of the fireworks. I had on no shoes or coat and it was around freezing. I threw things at our bedroom window (which probably dented cars below) and I tried to turn on the water hose at our window. He just could not hear me.

I knew that if I didn't get his attention in the next few minutes, he'd fall asleep and I'd die or end up with hypothermia out there overnight because once he's out, HE'S OUT. I thought about climbing up to Elias' balcony and even though it wouldn't have been a great fall (only one story because his balcony is above ours), I remembered a story about an expat boy who sneaked back into his apartment by climbing to the balcony and fell to his death, I just couldn't do it.

Luckily, there is a window that is semi-hidden behind a swing on our balcony that was unlocked and I pulled it open with my fingernails and crawled through. I was hysterical when I saw Brad. I said some things that weren't too nice and later had to apologize for but my GOSH, I was seriously AFRAID. :)

Anyway, it's dinnertime, Brad will be home soon and we're off to enjoy some gumbo and pineapple upside-cake a la Elias, Ezra and me. Cheers!