Visitors

K was obviously much more interested in the visitor above than the one below.

Turkey, Crocodiles, and Termites, Oh My!

We had a lovely holiday weekend out here, even if we were at work all day Wednesday and Friday. Thanksgiving itself was a low-key, family-only affair, after having spent Tuesday and Wednesday night out with friends at other events. This meant we had a lot of food for two adults and two small people. We kept things pretty classic: Turkey, flown in to our Commissary through what lengthy, expensive, and circuitous route, I don't even want to know (brined overnight before roasting); mashed potatoes (which K actually ate and liked for the first time meaning she might be related to me after all as I have never met a potato I didn't like); gravy (probably my first real success with making gravy, I was very excited!); stuffing (from a box) cranberry sauce (from a can); spinach cooked with onions and bacon; and, of course, the always traditional loaf of crocodile shaped bread! As you can imagine, we barely even put a dent in the food day of but we have been working through our leftovers with a great deal of dedication.

Know who likes Thanksgiving? T does! Well, more accurately, she likes almost everything and is just a happy kind of girl.

After working on Friday we took off down to our favorite lodge just to get out of town for one night. The rains have finally arrived so it poured for the whole morning, but was just easing off as we arrived, and by the time we finished lunch, and group nap (everyone actually slept at one time, a holiday miracle!) we were able to go out on the boat. The girls enjoyed their new life jackets. And yes, it took me four trips down before it occurred to me that life jackets would probably be a good idea for my small, non-swimming children while boating around in waters literally infested with hippos and crocodiles. I may just miss that mother of the year tiara this year. Oh well, such is life, better late than never.

C made several attempts at taking a photo of me with both girls... this is the only one in which two of the three of us look half-decent (and I will leave it to you to decide which two!).

So we got a nice dose of hippos and elephants, probably for the last time until after the rainy season, so sometime in March or April. The lodge was lovely, as always, and they take great care of us. The one small hiccup in this trip was that while we had already had a few heavy rains up in our home town, this was the first heavy rain down on the river which meant... flying termites! Apparently, once a year, after the first big rain, the termites come out, fly around, then lose their wings and pair off to go and start happy new termite families. They are harmless... but creepy, and their wings are really loud, so when they started swarming about I was trying very hard to stay calm to keep K and T calm but was inwardly freaking out. The show only lasted about an hour and then the ones that survived went about their newly wingless business and the others were eaten by frogs, lizards, ants, people, etc. We survived, had an interesting experience, and some of us were very tired on the way home today.

A Conversation

C and I were lucky enough to get out of town down to see the falls for one night without the girls. We got back and were excited to share our adventures with K and T. While we spent most of the time relaxing by the pool and catching up on reading and sleep, we did go out on a walking tour of an island by the falls, that also includes the opportunity to swim out to something called the "devil's pool" which is a natural feature at the very top of the falls that is almost like a small swimming pool which allows one to jump in and be literally at the top of the waterfall in relative safety (I was, and am, skeptical, and, as many know, do not like swimming in rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, etc. so I remained behind on dry land). So C went out and did the devil's pool and though it was totally amazing and was excited to tell K all about it over dinner. The conversation went something like this:

C- Can I tell you about my what I did today?

K- Sure

C- Do you remember the big waterfall? The one we went and visited? Well, I swam out on the very top of it how cool...

K- Daddy, that is very very dangerous, I don't like that.

C- But it was really cool and...

K- Swimming on waterfalls is not safe, you shouldn't do that. I am really not happy. I am a little sad.

Me (trying not to laugh but unable to resist the urge to join in)- K, I just want you to know, Mommy did not go swimming by the waterfall.

K- That is good mommy, I am very proud of you, but not of you daddy, that was very not safe!

This went on for a good 15 minutes with K scolding C in the greatest of sincerity with much finger wagging and expounding upon how it wasn't safe and he could have fallen and gotten very hurt and gotten lots of bad germs and there were monsters. Pretty much all of the worst possible things her little mind could come up with. All of this totally unprompted by me, I swear. And C and I just sat there trying sooooo hard to take her seriously.

I still think she is right, and it does look not very safe...

An Owl and a Peacock Walk Into a Bar...

We just wrapped up a weekend involving two really fun Halloween themed events. One was a "Trunk or Treat," which involved parents parking and decorating cars in the school lot and then handing out candy. That was Friday night and started a bit late, so because we had a car and had to stay for the duration K spent at least half of the event in the front seat watching video on the iPad. She does not do well much after 7pm, but was a trooper nonetheless. The Trunk or Treat event also involved a lot of locals and other international folks which was funny because many clearly had no idea about proper trick or treat protocol. Such as saying "trick or treat" or opening up your bag so I can drop candy ("sweets") into it. No really, release your death grip on the top of the bag! Opening it is the only way to get more candy. That being said, pretty much everyone was in costume, some of them quite elaborate, and everyone seemed to enjoy. And it was a heck of a lot nicer than the shake down style of trick or treating we got in our Minneapolis neighborhood when teenagers not even attempting costumes would just show up at the door. Not wanting our house to get egged (or worse!!) of course we forked over the candy. So this was much better than that!

The second event was in a small neighborhood (think less than 10 houses) where the kids could just wander around safely. Everyone donated candy so the residents weren't on the hook for candy for all the kids. And the kids could do as many loops around the neighborhood as they could before candy ran out. K did not quite fully grasp the candy collection concept and kept wanting to just stop and eat the candy (not a bad idea, really).

So, for those lucky few of you who have not had to suffer through our pedantic description of the origins of the girls' names, it is important to know that K's middle name is the name of the Greek goddess of war while T's middle name is that of the Greek goddess of peace (feel free to go and look those up, I'll wait...). As such, the owl is K's emblem or icon of sorts. And T is also named after a Byzantine empress and those folks were all about the peacock in their royal iconography. So, the owl and the peacock! I decided to take advantage of what will certainly be my last opportunity to influence T's costume choices and of poor T's small helplessness in general to put them in the costumes I wanted for them, which also happen to be darn cute if I do say so myself. I did briefly consider letting K pick her own but the conversation went something like this: Me: "What do you want to be for Halloween?" K: "A princess!!! No, a lion!! No, a dinosaur!!! No, a princess!!!." And, repeat...

So, without further ado, I present the Owl and the Peacock in all their avian splendor.

Weather Report

Lusaka, Zambia- 97 and Sunny

You will find us enjoying Zambian Independence Day here:

One!

Happy Birthday Teddie! Successfully kept more or less in one piece for a whole year!

Under the Weather

We have all been felled by some sort of nasty stomach bug so all of our fun and exciting weekend plans devolved into watching many many movies and C and I tag teaming watching the kids while the other one napped. Because while both K and T were also sick, they weren't lounge quietly on the couch and do nothing sick. Oh no, they were we feel great and are going 100% during the day but we will puke repeatedly all night long sick. Awesome! How do little kids manage to only puke at night? Though I am not being totally fair. K did manage to vomit all over C once during the day without any forewarning whatsoever. It was pretty amazing. A nice flashback to his fraternity days, I am sure. At any rate, we seem to be on the mend and ready to face the week, though I am mourning the loss of my weekend.

T figured out how to get into the little red car and, of course, K started pushing her around.

I kept saying, "slow down!" and K kept responding, "but she likes it!" Well, yes... but still, slow down!

K helping to water the grass.

Yup, that is an efficient way to water the lawn.

Happy baby!

Dry and Dusty

I understood the whole wet season/ dry season thing. Or, at least I thought I did. For a while it rains every day. It is a lot like being in the South Eastern part of the U.S. in the summer, really. Hot and humid for most of the day and then a storm or shower will roll in and cool things off for a few minutes before things get all steamy and sticky again. Ok, got that, not big deal. And I thought I grasped the dry season things as well. From about mid-May to November no rain. Not a drop. Zero.

However, I failed to account for some of the other interesting features of the dry season. For one thing, the dry season encompasses more or less what we would think of as fall, winter, and spring as far as temperature goes. Once the rains stopped it started cooling off. Then it got "cold" (maybe down in the 40s at night for a few nights) and now it is getting hot again. All of this transition without precipitation is a bit disconcerting. Especially as now, as it is getting warm again, the plants are acting like it is "fall" and dropping all of their leaves... except for the ones that think it is "spring" and are flowering. All of which means there is a ridiculous amount of vegetation in my yard, on my driveway getting tracked into my house, and in my poor pool which is finally getting warmed up enough to be swimmable but is full of leaves and petals.

The other downside to the dry season which I though about but did not really fully understand was the dust. Oh my, the dust. Swirly, whirly dust dervishes everywhere! From the wind! Because apparently late dry season is also terribly terribly windy season, about which I was not forewarned. I already dislike wind, I especially dislike it when it is carrying a ton of dust and dirt around. There is one upside though. Those amazing Africa sunsets? They are so pretty and so vivid in part because all the dust in the air creates the bright colors. So that is nice, but I am still looking forward to some good rain and less dust.

Until then, lets see what the girls have been up to of late...

Attitude, much? We were heading out to a birthday party and I wanted a quick photo of her in her pretty dress. Cooperation was not forthcoming.

Mainlining sugar via pixie stix at aforementioned birthday party.

We are totally in the thick of the pretty pink princess phase. Interestingly, the only "official" princess movie K has see to date is "Beauty and the Beast." The good thing about K is sometimes she is the Beast (a GENTLE beast, not a mean beast!), sometimes she is Gaston (an odd character to identify with, but she likes that he gets to fight), and only sometimes is she Bell. Today her bear was "Baby Bell" and she was "Mama Bell." I am not really sure how that works exactly, but we try to roll with such things around here. More often than not I find myself saying something like, "Beast, I understand that you are a gentle Beast, but I still need you to go and brush your teeth now, please."

Trouble and a giant purple plastic squirrel. Best push/ride on toy EVER, especially if you have older kids. It has some ridiculous 200lb weight limit so when a couple of the older ones pile on it (which of course they inevitable do) it escapes unscathed.

More trouble... she so wants to walk, and just can't quite do it yet and then she gets MAD because she can't. It is quite funny.

No drawer or cabinet is safe...

Umm, yeah, busted!

Back to Normal

Monday marks the real end of school holiday, my first full day at my new job, and a general return to normalcy after a whirlwind of travels and visitors. It was hard seeing people go, and I hope everyone had a great time. For those of your considering a trip out, be assured that we are carefully honing our hosting skills and suggestions so future visitors will get only the best of the best (sorry to those of you who were the initial guinea pigs). At any rate, it is undoubtedly going to be a long week of settling in and I am too tired right now to add anything more of substance but wanted to share a few photos to wrap up the weekend.

"Same Same" courtesy of Granny J

We stayed at one of our favorite lodges for a few days and the highlight is the boat safaris. You get just silly close to the elephants and hippos, and we saw ample numbers of both.

K is starting to really get into watching the animals, and it is amazing watching her watching them.

We saw more crocs on this trip than previously. This big guy was not the slightest bit scared of our boat. Usually, as you get close they startle and slither into the water. He just stared right back at us.

We rounded a corner and a whole family of hippos was sunning themselves on the sandbar. The hopped up much more alacrity than you would think a basking hippo capable of and were watching us carefully while considering whether to go into the water or not.

More Zebras Than You Could Shake A Stick At

We are lucky enough to have more family in town and have a number of different fun adventures planned, some involving the whole cohort and others limited to the past preschool set (which means that *some* people who I won't name saw a bunch of lions and leopards today while I drove back and forth between playdates).

We kicked things off by heading to the local water feature. Unfortunately it is a 6 hour drive to get there and it isn't a particularly interesting one either. If it weren't for the total lack of places to stop for food, the scarcity of places to stop for gas with adequate toilet facilities and the not infrequent goat or cow wandering into the road you would think you were somewhere in the midwest. Ok, so the frequent brush fires are another tip off that you aren't in Kansas. And the termite mounds. And the fact that traffic might cruise along at a nice clip or you might suddenly find yourself behind a truck filled with 30 people moving about 20 mph. So there are a few differences, but for the most part the drive is unremarkable and long.

At the end of your trek you find yourself very obviously entering the first real city since leaving the capital. And then after you go through town (which isn't really all that big) you are back out in the bush and then you see what at first looks like more smoke from a brush fire and then you realize it is actually the mist from the falls. And that is pretty cool! Once we were settled into the resort (which of course took much longer than it should have, you would almost think that they don't check people in and out of their hotel all day every day... sigh...) it was a beautiful 5 minute walk and there was the waterfall in all its splendor. The water is still pretty high for the dry season, though clearly lower than it was at our visit a month ago. We all got some nice photos and watched the beginning of the sunset before walking back to the resort.

I should note at this point that to get from the resort to the falls you walk out a gate and have to sign in and out of a little book so they can keep track of everyone. Fine, perfectly reasonable. We dutifully signed out on our way out and were waiting to sign back in when I look up and realize there are a bunch of zebras right through the gate hanging out, probably about 50 yards away. We did not see a single zebra last trip. My parents saw a few, but we missed out so I was all excited to show the zebras to K, but this required getting through the gate. And the stupid woman in front of us could not find where she had signed out to put down the time and sign back in. She is flipping pages, the guards are trying to help her and I am practically jumping out of my skin because ZEBRAS! Over There! I want to see the ZEBRAS! I mean, my kid wants to see the ZEBRAS! And stupid woman is continuing to fumble with the sign in sheet so I finally grab K (no easy feat since I am also wearing T in her carrier) and push past, telling the clearly irritated guard that C would stay and sign us back in (which was also news to him) and we scurry out to see the zebras. Which was cool! But, as it turns out, my haste and anxiety may have been a bit overblown as we ended up seeing tons of zebras during the trip. They were wandering all over the place. We were practically tripping over them. To the point that by the last day I was almost irritated to see them since it meant I had to wrangle K, who had been happily running around like a maniac. We also ended up seeing several giraffes, who are special, in K's words, "because they have long necks and polkadots!" Overall, it was a great trip.

Afore mentioned zebras.

Ummmm, related much?

K really liked hanging out on these big rocks and watching the zebras and giraffes at feeding time. Feeding time that happens twice a day but somehow no one managed to mention that to us on our last visit. But now we know!

K showing off her new Afri-crap jewelry. Her Aunt had on several bracelets and K totally fixated on them and declared that she wanted her own brown bracelet (I don't know why brown). Easiest request every to satisfy! A few minutes at the junk market and she had a brown bracelet, plus a couple of necklaces made of seed pods. She was happy as could be and declared herself done with shopping. Clearly not her mother's daughter in that respect!

Well, hello there sir!

Pretty!

Evil, zombie zebras!!

Small Victories

School holiday is dragging on and things continue to be slow here. My jobs is still tied up in HR limbo so I am hanging out at home, or ferrying K from playdate to playdate, our scouring the local grocery stores for supplies to make things with all of our fresh tomatoes. I also spend a lot of time at the gym mostly to get out of the house and let the poor nanny and housekeeper have a beak from me. I have no doubt my being around all day is totally cramping their style.

There have been, however, a few exciting goings on. For instance I spent three days going to ever grocery store or market I could think of to try to and find horseradish so I could make homemade Bloody Mary mix with yet another huge pile of tomatoes from our garden, having already done two vats of pasta sauce and one experiment with salsa. My failure to find horseradish was particularly depressing because at one store I found the place on the shelf where it was supposed to be, but there was none, and at a second store when I asked about it I was told it was "finished." I love this particular response to a query. I also heard it a couple of weeks ago regarding my attempt to find a humidifier for the girls' room. Those too were "finished." What does that mean? They are gone for now but there will be more? You won't have it again until some more fall off a truck? You have some in back but are too lazy to go and get them? Who knows, but the horseradish was finished and I was sad. I even purchased fresh a white root called "white radish" in the foolish hope that perhaps it was horseradish (forgive me, I have never seen fresh horseradish so did not really know what I was looking for. Wikipedia told me that I was the proud owner of some daikon root. Not exactly what I was hoping for. But then the ever helpful Wikipedia told me that horseradish is frequently dyed green and used in cheap versions of wasabi paste. I had seen wasabi paste several time sin the course of my vain quest! Sure enough, I got my hands on some "wasabi" paste and the first ingredient: horseradish! Huzzah! Bloody Mary mix successfully concocted. so I feel like me week was fairly productive.

And I am not alone in my accomplishments:

T learned not only to take off her socks but also to shove them into her mouth. So proud!

K made some good progress learning to ride her new bike once we got her out in a nice empty parking lot for practice.

This is one of the best photos I have managed to get of the squirmy worms. As usual, K looks ever so slightly like she might be about to eat T.

The girls reading together... or at least in the general vicinity of one another.

T is successfully removing the rings from the ring stack. Not so much putting them back on as flinging them about gleefully but we will take what we can get.

Gratuitous sleepy spiky haired chunky baby!

School Holiday is the Devil

As I look at the calendar this morning I realized much to my chagrin that we have another full month until school starts up again. Sigh... Not only does K not have a daily structured activity, but the kids she plays with the most have both gone back to the States for extended vacations. We do have a number of playgroups scheduled, including a weekly one on Friday afternoon's at our house, but it really just isn't the same. As a consequence we are facing a daily battle against boredom, not to mention trying to make sure K has enough interaction with other kids that she doesn't become totally feral over the summer. So, without further ado, a small sampling of school holiday activities!

K with the only friends she has to play with because everyone else is out of town :(.

K and T helping me make a giant vat of homemade tomato sauce using tomatoes from our garden. The texture wasn't quite right (a little watery) but the flavor was great. In addition to the basic herbs and olive oil I also added in some olives and capers which added a very nice dimension. We froze a good bit of the sauce and used some last night to make eggplant parm also using eggplant from our garden, so that was pretty cool. I think I will attempt salsa with the next batch of tomatoes. Matching aprons courtesy of grandma!

We did have one very exciting event recently. The Binky Fairy came! After a good month of hype, the Binky Fairy arrived and took all of K's pacifiers and left her with her very own blue big girl bike! This whole exchange was remarkably successful. We met with some resistance at nap time and bedtime on day one without binkies, including a claim from K that the Fairy had taken the wrong binkies and was supposed to have taken T's instead (good creative thinking there!). However, after that things have been smooth sailing. The bike ended up being a bit big for her despite my attempt at careful research, but she will grow into it in no time.

K is dealing pretty well with T as she becomes more interactive and mobile and leaves her days as a lump behind. Often K will play with her, as she is here patiently attempting to show her how the caterpillar car works. Equally often she will just steal her toys. So there is some jealousy, but things are mostly working themselves out.

As this scene was explained to me, it is a birthday party for baby dog (who, it is worth noting, is actually the stuffed polar bear K is holding and I have no idea why it is "baby dog" and not "puppy" but she is quite adamant on that point), and the purple tub upon which she is precariously perched is a bouncy castle (a common feature at birthday parties here). Happy birthday baby dog!