Ecuador Day 27

Saturday Dec. 31st

Why is my daughter up at 6am after a night of poor sleep? Good question! Guessing she is misskng her normal wake up with daddy time...We had a good morning as I am starting to see glimpses of more independent play with Adri...such a blessing!  Today a norwex cloth was her play choice and she went around the apartment cleaning everything, including her babies...so cute.

John picked us up at 10 to get groceries. ( I later found out he told Zac he'd keep us busy the first couple days so Zac wouldn't worry)  It was just  quick trip out, but enough to get us up and out of the apartment and pick up some necessities at the store...you know....mac n cheese....these yogurt drink things that Adri loves...

On our way home we ran into another New Years tradition...there have been these dummy dolls all over that you can buy and pick out a mask...well the men dress up as women, and then have a dummy doll look like their man that has died and they stop traffic and make you put money in their bag as they are crying over their dead husband...in this instance, they used a rope to hold across the street so we couldn't pass until we paid...so weird...
Each scenario is different..this man was dressed in a very short black skirt and top...other times the outfits can be very revealing....

I decided Adri needed a new movie...And they unfortunately don't have "real" DVD's here...only copied ones in lots of different stores all over town..not sur how they get away with it...but whatever,  so we walked down to one that is close to our apartment and purchased three DVD's...Toy Story, Dora,and Shrek...and each one has about four different movies on it...so it was worth the $4. =) Of course Adriana wanted to watch them right away, but I made her wait until her nap time...I'm slowly trying to set boundaries as I don't think she every really had boundaries...as it just wasn't needed when you are confined to a certain area all day.....anyways..she wasn't very happy with me but obliged after stomping her foot.  LOL

We had some chicken soup with bread and took a nice long nap.  We headed out to the common area and met a new family here that is considering moving here from Ohio and has two adopted children, ages, 7 and 8..from Guatemala and China...Adriana enjoyed interacting with the children and I enjoyed talking with the mom and dad about adoption.  

Adriana and I were planning on ordering pizza for dinner and the Ohio family was thinking the same thing...so we ended up all have Pizza Hut for our New Years Eve dinner...not the greatest pizza, but it was the only place open...

Adriana was starting to get a little bit squirley...I can always tell when she gets tired as she really starts to get disobedient and testing me a lot...

We heard from Zac and he made it safely to Chicago. He is spending the night with my little sis and brother in law before heading to Monmouth Sunday morning. He said he feels like he has traveled 20 years into the future...said it was similar to when he returned from traveling on a mission trip to Kenya, Africa...wondering how it will feel for Adriana..

Cuenca, Ecuador New Years at 11:50pm....the sounds begin....fireworks, bands, car alarms, dogs barking, people yelling, dummy doll burnings..this only lasted until about 12:45AM so it really wasn't as bad as  I thought it would be...Adriana slept through most of it just stirring when a really loud firework would go off.. I actually thought it would be much worse, but it didn't last all night long...there was still some firworks that went off throughout the night..but nothing that kept us up all night...thankful for that!