Troy and I had 6 planned stops in Port today. We asked B and P which kid they wanted us to take with us. Paige immediately offered up Isaac. The girls have a theory that the boys are way easier when at least a few miles separate them.
We think they're onto something.
Because we left at 6:30 and Isaac happened to be the only one awake, Paige's vote was approved and off we went.
We had the truck full of folks going to visit Mme Felius. Pastor Rony asked Troy to stop at his sister's house in Port for just five minutes on the way to General. Troy said, "Sure" to Rony and, "I should know better by now" to me.
Pastor Rony is a dear, dear, sweet man. He would never raise is voice or say anything in anger ... he turns away no one in need -he is such a loving and kind guy. It is hard to find fault with a person of such temperament.
BUT, since we're jerks, we still find certain nuances a bit annoying. :)
We only had to ask three people where the house was located, then there was all sorts of confusing things that happened. People got in the truck, people got out ... we never really understood what was happening. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the hot truck wondering what the goal of the stop was and if we were anywhere near reaching it, Rony came over and said to Troy, "Do you still have a little patience?" HA HAAAA. I was very entertained. Not too long after that we were on our way to General, as near as we could tell we did not pick up anyone, the people who had gotten into the truck had all eventually climbed back out and we had our original crew of hospital visitors.
Our kids all seem to know that when you come to Port you get treats and the rule is, don't go home and rub it in to the others. Isaac spent a lot of the day saying "So, I should not tell Noah about this, right????" Most of the time he was on the mark. But when he saw a VW Bug and flipped out over how exciting it was to see a Herbie car, he said "I cannot tell Noah, right?" Troy assured him it was okay to tell Noah about it.
Maybe we're reinforcing dishonest behavior at this point --- when the kid does not even know how to differentiate between what is interesting news to share with his brother, and what is rubbing things in his face. We'll work on that.
At one stop where we sat down to have a drink and a snack, Isaac said, "Oh boy. (pause) What a WONDERFUL day it is for a guy ... (long pause) ... and his mom ... and his dad. It suuure is quiet without Noah." :)
All our stops went well. We found almost everything we need for next week. We even got home at a decent time.
When we arrived home Paige said, "It was so quiet without Isaac."
We spent the entire day chatting and chatting. Isaac loves to talk and all those hours in the truck give him a captive audience. He has tons of questions, deep and curious. Many meaningful thing were discussed.
Conversations took us from babies, to adoption, to his story, to the conditions of the roads in Haiti vs. America (incidentally - we came home to see the sad news about the bridge in Minneapolis collapsing - making us wonder about Isaac's opinion that Haiti has inferior roads), to the team coming next week and back to adoption again.
All questions posed were answered --- save one.
We thought he had gone to sleep on the way home. He had been quiet for three minutes, which would typically indicate sleep or serious head trauma ... When, from the silence came...
"Daddy, daddy?"
"Do pirates like hamburgers?"
He had finally stumped us. Then he slept.
Now we must sleep. Goodnight.
