Playing Like a Dream

Sometimes my kids, like, enjoy each other and play so well together. So I have to take a picture so I don’t forget.

:)

Easter Box

The kids got a surprise box of goodies in the mail from their Grandma and Grandpa!

Thank you so much, they love it!

Lil A’s First Un-Foods

I meant to blog about this several months ago. But the tiny bit of paper on which I had made this list disappeared and then reappeared!!! Glory!

So I didn’t give girlie real food until she was nearly eleven months old.

But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t eating before then…

Here I shall list the first eight items she ate, evidenced by the fact that each of these things was discovered in her diaper (TMI?!):

1. A leaf

2. A pumpkin stem (yes, she gnawed it off a pumped and swallowed a big ol’ chunk of it

3. A silicon hair band

4. A foam sticker

5. A length of plastic Easter grass

6. A length of normal green grass

7. A hole punched from a plastic sheet protector

and finally…

8. A  googly eye (and not a tiny on either)

Oh my. Well, even if I wasn’t giving her food, I was comforted that her digestive tract was in fact working just fine!!

Walking Through My Home

Tonight I sat on my couch and in my mind’s eye I walked through my home in Africa.

Then I cried.

I remember our comfy couch that we never had for the first six years living there and what a blessing it was when we got it. I remember what it was like to lay in my bed under the buzz of the AC and look out my bedroom window framed by thin white curtains. I remember the tall tree that would often be full of bright pink blossoms. The blossoms would blow of the tree and cover the balcony floor and dry up like fall leaves.

I remember the squeak of the bathroom doorknob. I remember the hallway cabinet and it’s thin caving walls. I remember the crooked nail that kept the living room window closed during most but not all dust storms.

I remember our big pink rug and our brown table that held a basket of baby toys on the lower shelf. I remember my striped curtains that I purchased in Qatar and brought back to hem myself.

I remember the fan mounted on the wall in Mike’s office.

I remember the toy shelf in the kids room. I remember their mosquito nets and the extra mattress under the bed perfect for pulling out to sit on. I remember how much I worried about putting one year old Sweet N in that room with H to sleep in the same room at night. And I remember how well they did.

I remember the dining room chairs that lasted us seven years. I remember the way they sounded when they scraped across the tile floor. I remember how ants that would swarm under the dining room table eating crumbs even before we could finish a meal.

I remember how the paint was peeling off the floor in the kitchen. And every other room.

I remember my white tile kitchen counter that my Dad installed for me when they visited. I remember baking Christmas cookies on that counter with my Mom.

I remember the way the stairwell would get dusty so quickly and there would be four sizes of footprints leading up and down.

I remember the creak of the porch swing that Mikey had made for me my first birthday living there. And I remember how the legs were a good 12 inches too long and my feet couldn’t even touch the ground from the seat until we sawed the legs shorter.

I remember how I used to peek over the side of the balcony hiding myself because I might have been only wearing a tank top in the house and if someone from the street saw me it would have been embarrassing.

I remember pulling our two plastic tables together on that balcony to host many-a-visitor. I remember the morning light on the balcony. I remember the dusk and the call to prayer on that balcony. I remember H riding his bike and N playing in her tripod on that balcony. I remember peeking out late at night to see Mike watering the plants in the dark while listening to a podcast.

I remember the wooden sideboard by the door where my mobile phone would sit all day so I could hear it ring from any room. I remember each shelf in that sideboard and I remember what I had stored on each one.

I remember the stains on our bathtub. I remember how filthy the windowsill in the bathroom would get. I remember filling our red baby bathtub and bathing my babies in that tub on top of the washing machine.  I remember that our bathroom mirror wasn’t made right and it was more like a funhouse mirror on one side.

I remember My boy H peering though his bedroom window into the hallway when he was two and he’d wake up from his nap.

I remember spending hours hanging laundry to dry on my two drying racks in the hallway.  I remember that pigeons lived on the outside wall of the house and made a mess.

I remember standing my babies at the kitchen window to wave bye-bye to Daddy as he pulled away to go to work.

I remember the way the kitchen faucet would spray water everywhere when I turned it on because it sometimes had such strong water pressure. I remember the way that same faucet would just gurgle when I turned it on to discover the water had been cut.

I remember that a box of tissues in the kitchen drawer was my equivalent of paper towels. I remember that I never had a microwave.

I remember all this. And so much more.

It’s burned on my heart.

And I miss it.

11 Things

1. I’m up to my ears in schedules these days. It’s a busy quarter around here!

2. I kind of like schedules. But this might have been overkill.

3. It’s official. The baby thinks my name is “Dada”.

4. My children do not know what “Khallas kwais” means. (Very basic Arabic phrase). This saddens me.

5. Four of us got the awwwwful norovirus over the weekend. It was brutal. And it made me behind on writing all those schedules!

6. Since the sickness, I can’t seem to get warm. Currently I’m inside wearing slippers, gloves and a winter hat. I think it’s 60 degrees outside.

7. I think things should calm down in a week or so.

8. I could use a nanny at times like this however.

9. Any applicants?

10. The baby is also in one of those stages where she waits until I change her diaper to poop. It’s not very polite, frankly.

11. Still accepting applications.

Easters Past

We had a great time celebrating Easter with our little family.

But as the evening wound down and the chaos that three little kids brings quieted, my heart turned toward Africa. Easter has been a very special holiday to celebrate there. Our community of co-workers and friends would all rise before dawn and meet on the bank of the Nile. The service would start as the sun was rising and we’d praise our risen Savior as an extremely diverse group of believers. And every year several would be baptized in the river.

It was so very special.

Then there would be sand sculpting and everyone would pull out their coffee, juices and breakfast items to share. There we’d have a delicious shared breakfast, spread on plastic mats and picnic blankets on the bank of the Nile.

It was a simple event but it drew our hearts together. Each year it was one of the highlights.

And I grieve the loss of it now.

A Finishing Touch

2009.

Our first trip to visit the Gulf.

On a break from our life and work in North Africa, we flew to Dubai, then puddle jumped to Bahrain. Returned to Dubai, rented a car and road tripped to Oman. It was incredible. My boy H was just a babe and he was such an easy traveler.

In Bahrain we wanted to be tourists and visit this mosque.

Yes, they let you do that, just like anyone can tour Notre Dame in Paris and Westminster Abbey in London.

Well kind of like that.

Like that except that there are certain hours.

And a dress code.

A dress code for women, specifically.

Certainly I was dressed modestly as we traveled in these parts of the Muslim world. But women in a mosque must be completely covered.

So how it works is you enter a side door of the mosque to the little visitor center. Mike and H waited in a small area while I was taken behind a fabric screen by a young woman. A long black hijab was chosen off a hanging rack and she helped me slip it over my clothing. My shoes were removed. Next a long tarha (head scarf) was selected and she carefully wrapped it around my head. She tucked strands of hair carefully behind the fabric, adjusted it under my chin and smoothed it down the side.

We stood eye to eye and she looked carefully at my face to inspect her work. She seemed mostly satisfied, even pleased that maybe she thought I looked better all covered up. I liked her. But then with no hesitation, she then licked both of her thumbs and slicked my eyebrows down flat.

That was my finishing touch.

Ha! I laugh about it to this day.

Beautiful, eh?