Children are the best teachers

Some days my children make me cry. Some days they make me laugh.

But most days they make me wonder how I ever lived without them.

These two little people have been dragged around for the last five days in a foreign country, looking at houses in areas far flung, being spoken to in Spanish and manhandled by strangers in a way they are unaccustomed because the people here can’t get enough of them. Yet they have maintained grace, patience and for the most part understanding way beyond their years of five and three.

Their adaptability amazes and inspires me with courage to move forward into this journey of the unknown, which has already proven to be a rollercoaster that every day takes us to new heights before sending our stomachs turning with a plunge downward.

Today, at his wits end with the whole house-hunting business, my little boy began to cry and begged to go home — but he meant the villa where we’ve been staying for the last nine days, and said so.

Although he’s barely old enough to grasp the days of the week let alone a month at a time, he somehow understands that this is our home now, or at least for the foreseeable future. On our “way home,” he even said that he wants to stay here and learn Spanish, before spitting out a few words that we had to look up in the dictionary. And be darned if he wasn’t exactly right. Seems TV has a place in our lives after all.

My daughter, meantime, the Imalda Marcos of preschoolers, has been busying herself with the few small toys we’ve brought and simply shrugged her shoulders when we told her that she couldn’t wear the sparkly dress she asked for because we’d left it back home in Canada.

Although most of days have been busy with other errands, what time we’ve had to fill has been spent with the kids playing horses, riding around on a pair of home-made stick ponies given to us by the new Canadian friends we met last week.

Children have much to teach us when it comes to adapting to new situations and making do with what’s available. It’s unfortunate that most of us don’t stop long enough to pay attention and learn from them.