Let's Be Fair

I just reviewed this morning's post. And let's be fair - she does not spend literally half of her waking hours crying. You probably already identified the hyperbole. I would say that she spends half of her waking hours quite happy. The other half, alternating between 2-5 minute happy spells and 5-15 minute crying or screaming spells. I'm at my wit's end.

One challenge is the hotel. I have very few complaints about where we've been put up. In fact, as far as living in a hotel goes, we've got it quite nice. We enter in a galley kitchen of sorts. After a small turn, we walk by the dining nook and into the rather spacious living room. Off of the living room are 2 bedrooms. The master is quite large with wonderful lighting and a master bath. Each room has a wall of windows, all with a fantastic view. The tub drain doesn't work fully, and either allows the water to quickly pile up in a shower or makes bathtime a race against the clock to finish scrubbing and rinsing each slippery baby before the water disappears. But otherwise, my only complaint is that we've only got 2 doors to hide behind. L-- has her own room, because she sleeps the longest shot. S-- wakes up for an early morning bottle, so she sleeps in the living room. Were she to sleep in our room, we would be going to bed at 8:30 with them. Not a good option. This arrangement works well from bedtime through to when L-- wakes up - around 9:00 in the morning. At that point, S-- is already down for her morning nap. Should we wake her, we will have a grumpy baby all day. If I leave L-- in her room until S-- awakens, L-- often skips her afternoon nap. Then I've got a grumpy toddler all evening. Today, I managed to grab L-- from her room without waking S--. S-- slept until 11:00, which boded quite well for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, she disproved my theory that her grumpiness arose solely from lack of sleep. The other problem was that L-- and I were stuck in my bedroom until 11:00, making breakfast late and not allowing our threesome out of the hotel until nearly 1:00 in the afternoon. Lunch was late, naps were late, girls were grumpy. And on top of it all, I was up late last night with a sinus headache. No Nyquil in the house. What's a girl to do?

But we did have some very good moments today, too.

The three of us walked to People's Square, a park facing the Shanghai Museum. The photo linked to People's Square above shows it as a concrete park, which is the largest portion. On a beautiful fall afternoon, we made this short walk. I picked up some food from a vendor, and we picnicked. We sat on the edge of the circle in the picture, looking down upon the depressed part. Just as the sun came out from behind the clouds, loud musical-style Chinese singing began over an intercom and the depressed section became a large fountain. People flocked to the fountain with cameras, and adults jumped around between the shooting water for good pictures. A bit of a surprise, but it was an enjoyable sight.

People flew kites and stopped to talk to the girls. We had a lovely time.