Aliens

Our kids, I will call them Nick (9), Adam (5) and Sasha (8) came to live with us in May. We had a long, tiresome, rather unpleasant transition. Why was transition unpleasant? We were there for a long period of time, in a hotel room. Need I say more? I love travel and hotels, etc, I really do. Its fun, usually. It is NOT fun when some of that time you have three kids to get to know and entertain, you are far from home, running out of money and just want to get them home and get on with your new lives together. Our transition was three weeks long, with us staying in their town, which is about 8 hours from ours. To be quite honest it was pretty miserable. I actually cried myself to sleep a few nights; I just wanted to get my kids and go home. I admit it, I also missed my dogs. My substitute "children".

Anyway, our first meal out with them while in transition was interesting. We observed their table manners at the foster home and they were quite nice. So either (a) aliens invaded their little bodies when we went to the restaurant, or they were (b) testing right off the bat. I'm guessing it is (b), since I'm not even sure aliens exist. Although, since I have kids now, a lot of my beliefs and views of the world have changed. I know now what it feels like to be driven crazy. Any way, I digress. Sort of.

They were all over the place. Sitting, standing, crawling under the table, trying to crawl over the table, and even going to talk to waitresses at other tables. We thought "who are these kids?". At one point our daughter, who had brought in a doll that we had given her (rookie parent mistake #1), and had thrust it across the table at her brother, like a sword. I told her that if she did that again, I would take the doll. She did it. Not like a minute later either, almost as soon the words stopped echoing in my head. I took the doll and she just shrugged, like she was saying "OK, so she meant that". Testing already? Where is the "Honeymoon Period" I have heard so much about? I want a honeymoon, I want to go to Vegas (or wherever it is that people go now, I don't even know).

It was a Mexican restaurant and they took to the chips and salsa as if they had never had food before. It was nuts. Not at all the manners we had seen at the foster home. On second thought...it had to be aliens.

After we dropped them back off at the foster home, my husband and I just looked at each other. And we smiled. We love a good adventure.