El nino, el nino, poquito bambino

And we’re back!

The trip was great…the hotel was good (but won’t recommend it)…the food was fantatsic…

Everyone had a great time, the kids especially which was really good. It was unbelievable how many kids were there…it was as if March break was last week!

What would a trip be without some drama? Not a trip! So the one bit of drama for our trip was that we lost one of the little ones…

Kaiden (who was always in someone’s arms or in his stroller) – check

Kaira (who was always in someone’s arms or holding Isaiah and Noah’s hands ) – check

Isaiah (who literally ‘Uno-ed’ everyone out) – check

Noah – no check…yuppers…we lost Noah on the resort. While we’re not sure exactly how long he was missing, we’re hoping it wasn’t any longer than 10 mins (not minimizing at all at the 10 mins felt like 5 hours!). Here’s what happened…I went for a little walk and left everyone by the pool playing, by the time I made it back around…I did a quick scan and didn’t see Krissy or Noah. Then after a couple minutes I saw Krissy, but no Noah. I asked Rob where Noah was he quickly did a scan and said ‘With Krissy’. I said ‘Nuh-uh, Krissy’s coming back here and Noah’s not with her’. At this moment, I have no idea how to explain what was happening with my heart…it felt like it stopped beating, but in reality it was beating at 1000 beats a second!

So then I’m like ‘Guys…Noah’s missing’. Everyone stopped drinking, talking, playing Uno, playing Connect 4…everyone literally stopped and started looking around. When the chairs, tables and stroller around us were checked, everyone went into ‘search-and-rescue’ mode. Rob went one way, Dad went another, Kwesi went another, Krissy went another, Mom and Wina stayed around just in case he found his way back.

I started walking towards the front lobby and half way there, I thought to myself “I can’t do this, I can’t look for my son”, in reality I was too scared to hear or see anything bad, so I turned back to walk towards Mom and Wina. Then it occured to me, just how bad it will look, if everyone was searching for Noah except me. So I decided to be brave and I turned back around to continue my search, praying in my head for him to be safe. As soon as I was enterng the lobby, a lady who worked at the hotel started smiling with me. Trying to be polite, I smiled back…and she kept smiling…and then right behind her was another man who worked at the hotel holding Noah’s hand walking him towards me.

Noah looked at me and I looked at him and while I was expecting the scene from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when he and Jazz were running towards each other on the beach while Chariots of Fire was playing, it was quite the opposite! We were both hestiatnt…almost like ‘Noah…is that you?’ or ‘Mom?’ It was really surreal now thinking about it. Then the shock snapped and I ran and picked him up and told him everything was okay. He looked terrifed, but relieved…the hotel’s employees were very gracious as we were trying to thank them despite the language barrier.

As we made our way back to tell the others we found him, Noah tells me that he was scared, I told him me too, but it’s all over now. We get back to ‘Our Spot’, Mom and Wina (Kaiden and Kaira by default) were still there and so happy to see Noah. Then we went to try to find the others to let them know we found him. We found eveyone except Kwesi! So now the search for Kwesi started…lol. When we did find him, Kwesi was telling us that he was amazed at his Spanish abilities as he went out to the lobby and boarded all the buses that were parked outside the strip, saying ‘El nino, el nino, poquito bambino’…while everyone probably looked on at him in awe.

So that was the drama….the rest of the trip was pretty calm in comparision to this event.