Travel day from hell

Things have been going so well here that I should have known we were due for a day like we had on Friday. As sweet as Tiana is, she is equally as rotten when bored. Imagine sitting next to a seven year old girl who loudy moaned in feigned agony for half of the five hour flight to Guangzhou. Just as my nerves thought they couldn't take any more and just as the captain said to stay seated in preparation for landing, my precious little angel began repeating the phrase "la ba" which means "get me to the crapper" in Chinese. We thought she might have been crying wolf, because before we even got on the plane, she said "niow, niow" (I have to pee) three times in 20 minutes while sitting in the terminal. Apparently she thinks it's fun to make her new parents scramble to find a pisser whenever she gets bored. Well, our hunch on the plane was right. When mama found a bethroom in the airport, Princess Tiana miraculously did not have to poop at all.

The ride to the hotel was uneventful, with the exception of watching Tiana upchuck all over herself due to car sickness. I thanked her for not warning us. I praised her for ralphing in a reclined position, making sure to cover her shirt and pants in puke. A few minutes later in the hotel lobby, she started pleading "niow niow" again, with a smile on her face and vomit covering her entire ensemble. The hotel messed up our reservations, putting our two rooms on two seperate floors, so Bethany spent over a half hour getting a new room on the same floor as the other. During this time, the kids were all bored and exhausted from a full day of travel. The boys started arguing loudly in the lobby of the five-star hotel. Tiana picked her nose and made a grandiose production of eating it in front of all the hotel guests waiting patiently in the registration line behind Bethany. When I scolded our not-so-lady-like daughter, she laughed and ran over to a sitting area, grabbed a table lamp, and tried to yank it to the floor. Finally, we headed up to our rooms. The key cards didn't work in the new one, so we waited in grandma's room for the bell hop to bring a new key. When we eventually did get in, we discovered that our non-smoking room reeked of cigarettes and cheap perfume. (I didn't bother to look for the dead hooker.) It nearly made our eyes water. When Bethany went to the front desk to complain and get yet another new room, the only one available was three floors below grandma's. We took it and went to bed harried, exhausted, and in my case ready to snap.

Today is a new day. Tiana is singing "Happy Birthday" in English. The kids are all rested and in a good mood. I don't feel like killing people. I'll post an update about our first full day in Guangzhou later today. Hopefully, it will be much better than yesterday. It couldn't get much worse--could it?!