It's Sunday Already

Wow, where did Sunday come from? I swear it was just Monday. I guess time really does fly when you are back at work and adjusting to all of the assorted juggling that goes along with that transition.

Work is good. The learning curve has been very steep and this week was more like what I expected things to be like in another month as far as pace and stuff that needs my attention. I am in an absurd number of weekly meetings, and teleconferences, and video conferences with DC, all very fun to schedule what with the time difference and all. I even had to spend half a day this weekend at a big kick-off rally for the project. You know things are going to go well when the local government minister kept repeating that things were going to be different this time and that this time he doesn't want to see anyone getting arrested for procurement irregularities. Of course, this exhortations could be taken one of two ways: 1) things will actually be above board and done correctly, or 2) take your cuts, pay your bribes, but for the love of god don't get caught. I suspect it is the latter. Stay classy Africa!

The girls seem to be adjusting well to my absence during the day. I am very lucky that I get to pick K up at lunchtime and bring her home, get her settled for her nap, feed T and then head back in. This seems to be working out well for everyone involved so far. So I get to come home to happy kids, and a clean house. Sometimes I don't know where my nicely folded clothes or my clean dishes are, exactly, as the housekeeper seems to just kind of randomly put things away based on her whim at that moment, and not always in the same random place, but this is a small price to pay.

I hear singing from K's room, so she must be winding up nap time, which is my cue to wrap things up here as well.

K somewhat skeptically introducing the oh so creatively named Brown Bunny to the equally creatively named Little Baby Lizard. The lizard was also skeptical, for the record.

Gratuitous giant cute baby!

We are finally getting things set up in the backyard, so now there is one big swing, the water table (a converted sand table... I much prefer a wet mess to a sandy mess, and you can't really get play sand around here, so now it just gets a few buckets of water dumped in and K has a ball), the trapeze bar on the swing set, and, of course, a giant Armed Forces Network satellite dish. Fun for everyone!

K having some, um, difficulties with her new soccer net.

K helping my use the food processor to mix chocolate, sugar and spices together for the base of some damn good "Mexican" chocolate ice cream. It is really more inspired by Mexican chocolate ice cream, as the pepper spice we used was the local peri peri, but the end product was just as yummy. And yes, sticking her tongue out when she is focusing on something is genetic and runs in my side of the family.

Bitten By The Pink Bug

I think it is well established by this point that I don't love pink. I feel no deep need to dress the girls in head to toe pink, and I often actively avoid pink for them. Frankly, I think K looks better in blues and greens than she does in pink, especially in pale pink. My pink avoidance is part of my general wariness about all things Disney Princessy, Hannah Montana, girly-girly glittery sillyness. I have a toddler and an infant, not little living dolls and they will have plenty of time to worry about being "pretty" when they are older.

Unfortunately, K did not get the above memo. I don't know if it is just her age, or if it is playschool, or a few of the little girls she has playdates with but suddenly EVERYTHING must be pink! I can no longer count the number of fits we have had in the morning because she wants to wear her pink pants. Don't get me wrong, I do not care what she wears as long as she is not naked and it is clean,and vaguely weather appropriate. But she only had one pair of pink pants! And I will do lots of things for my kid, but washing her one pair of pink pants every night so she can wear them again the next day just isn't going to happen (and while I am sure my housekeeper would be more than happy to do just that, she only works from 7am to 4pm, so the logistics don't work out). So I caved and bought her more "girly" pants... a set of two shades of pink and one purple. Similarly, she only has a few pink shirts, but they are all she wants to wear.

And, if it isn't pink, then she wants to wear a dress. I really wouldn't mind the dresses in principle, except we are right at the tail end of potty training (so, so close...) and while she is getting pretty good at it, being able to navigate properly lifting up and holding up a dress without um, er, lets say issues is still a bit beyond her grasp.

The one and only upside to all of this is that she now wants me to do her hair in the morning so I am no longer fighting with her to make sure it is out of her eyes. Granted, she is equally dictatorial in this arena, insisting on picking out the color of the hair ties herself and she is currently adamant that she must have TWO with ALL HER HAIR (translation, all of her hair up and in two pigtails).

She hasn't actually started discussing princesses yet. And to date she has never watched a Disney princess movie. We just don't own them, preferring Fraggle Rock (the complete series generously gifted by my brother), some Yo Gabba Gabba and a few animated movies like Up, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (ok, she is still too young for that one). But she probably will so and that will make me sad.

Saddest of all to me, she now eschews her "socks that roar" (her dinosaur socks that she really did used to love and ask for all the time). I LIKED socks that roar. I don't know what to do with my pretty pink princess :(.

Happy Sunday

We are enjoying our first full weekend with all of our stuff unpacked and it is glorious! Everything arrived last Friday, which was a special treat because it was almost a month earlier than we had anticipated. It was also perfect timing because while I started work this week, I only went in for half days on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday so I had plenty of time to get things put away and organized. I really did not need that much time during the week because we had almost everything done over the weekend.

The state of our possessions as we unpacked left us scratching our heads a few times. For instance, a big plastic tub we use for either holding K's toys or keeping adult beverages on ice and ready to serve at parties was carefully wrapped in bubble wrap. Ummm, ok... But our mattresses were not wrapped up at all and our two really good pieces of art were similarly left naked. WTF? Luckily, with the exception of the one glass and one plate I mentioned before everything arrived in good condition. Note to self, be prepared to more closely supervise the movers upon departure.

I have never been so excited in my life to see a cast iron skillet! I really shouldn't complain, we were equipped with a perfectly adequate welcome kit, including linens and kitchen stuff to carry us through until our stuff arrived, and it really was fine, but wow it had the worst skillet in the history of the universe. Small, thin, prone to sticking and burning. Miserable. It made me dread cooking. But now I have my full set of lovely, well seasoned cast iron skillets again and life is good. I also rejoiced to see my casserole dishes since for some reason no such dish was part of the welcome kit and I was left trying to bake chicken or enchiladas or whatever in a little tiny loaf pan, which really does not work that well. So there was much celebration about once again having a fully supplied kitchen.

We did experience some drama trying to set up our bed. Before we left DC I checked online and confirmed that I could get an electronic version of the directions for assembling our West Elm bed. Yes, I am relatively handy around the house, and I did originally put the thing together all by myself, but that doesn't mean I don't need the instructions to reassemble it again. Well, that would be all well and good if we could actually access the West Elm website, but for some reason (a problem on West Elm's end, NOT on our end) the website would not load. Really West Elm, why do you hate Africa? I finally had to have my dad download the PDF and email it so we could assemble our bed. This did not amuse me. Boo West Elm!

We also assembled T's crib and K's new beds. They both have lovely canopy beds to accommodate the mosquito nets... or, I should more accurately say that the mosquito nets were an excuse to buy lovely canopy beds. Despite having a grand total of 5 bedrooms in the house, K and T's beds are in one room. As you will all see next weekend when I finally do a full pictorial of the interior of the house (we still need to hang art, and then it will be ready for public unveiling) the layout of the house is quirky. The quirks include a really, really long and winding hallway with the result that there is one bedroom right next to the master bedroom, but the next bedroom is like a quarter mile down the hall and around two corners. It seems too far away from us for either of the girls. So they are going to bunk together in one room, which precipitated much furniture rearranging such that for three days last week whenever C came home the bedroom was in a different configuration. He was not amused. But I think we finally found an arrangement that works.

T had never actually slept in a real crib before this week, having spent her whole 4.5 months in a pack n' play so we are slowly getting her used to it with naps and she is still in the pack n' play in our room at night. She is almost sleeping through the night, now consistently waking up only once, around 4:30 or 5am to eat, so we hope that she will stretch that out by another hour or so in the next few weeks and then we can toss her to the wolves... I mean move her in with K :).

Our living room, or great room, or whatever it is called is so large that it currently has two bookshelves, a side table, our faux Eames chair, a couch, coffee table, two arm chairs, and couple more side tables in it AND we still have plenty of space in which to set up and use our beer pong table. Keeping it classy, as always.

Speaking of classy, I am being confronted by a naked toddler which usually means I need to do something about something, so on that note I will wrap things up.

T sleeping in her actual crib, not a pack n' play, for the very first time in her life.

K enjoying her classic Cozy Coupe, courtesy of Moe Moe and Gia. Christmas in February!

K similarly enthusiastic about her new horse from the grandparents. We named him Bucephalus :).

Sunday Photos (Belated)

Crazy week and crazy weekend so just a few quick notes and photos:

I got a job! I will be on a 6-month contract working to help coordinate preparations for a big conference coming up this summer. It isn't strictly legal work, and it will certainly have its challenges, but it will be great to get out of the house. I work afternoons this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and start up full time next week.

Out big shipment of household effects came. I have never been so happy to see a cast iron skillet in my whole life. And poor little T will soon get to sleep in a real crib, not just a pack n' play for the first time ever. The only casualties were one glass and one plate. Not bad for a slow boat to Africa.

Gratuitous cute baby.

K "helping" with the unpacking process.

K doing her best "Princess and the Pea" impression on the giant pile of twin mattresses that we have piled up waiting to be removed.

This is sort of a "Where's Waldo" photo of our stuff waiting to be unpacked. Can you find the toddler in this photo?

From the Mouths of Babes

We are rapidly being schooled in just what keen little observers, and shrewd negotiators, toddlers are.

K, who is quick to tell anyone who will listen, that she is “two half” is *this close* to being potty trained, so we have really been hyping up that she is a big girl and all the things that big girls get to do, and that this is why she should go potty in the potty. The upside is, the potty training seems to really be clicking. The downside is she may have embraced this “big girl” thing a bit more than we anticipated.

Now I also hear, usually from another room, “I a big girl so I can pick up Teddie.” Nooooooooo!

Or, “NO! You can’t pick me up, I a big girl!”

Or, in response to offers of assistance getting dressed or putting on shoes: “NOOOOOO! MYSELF!!!!! Cause I a big girl!” There have been a lot of absurd outfits, backwards pants, inside out shirts, shoes on the wrong feet of late.

“I a big girl so I go swimming by myself.” Ummm, absolutely not!

More adorably, we get, “when I bigger, I cook dinner for momma and daddy.”

We are also becoming hyper aware that she is watching our every move and listening intently to what we say. This sometimes has very cute results, particularly in how she treats her baby dolls. She has one particularly favored baby, oh so creatively named “big baby” who she totes around. She will feed baby, pulling down the top of her shirt to mimic me breastfeeding Teddie. She also walks around soothing her baby, saying “shh shh shh” and bounces her up and down as she has seen me do with Teddie. Cute!

Then there is the dark side. Apparently, sometimes brown bunny hits baby and has to go to time out and this comes with very stern, sharp reprimands from K. This always makes me wince, because that must be what we sound like to her when she is in trouble. Similarly, occasionally at the dinner table she will start just babbling nonsensically, and loudly. When questioned, she informed us that is what momma and daddy sound like when they talk at dinner.

And in the funniest, and most disturbing example to date, Sunday morning we were watching a little bit of UFC (don’t ask. If you ever have to live with only watching what Armed Forces Network has to offer you to might find yourself watching a little UFC to break the monotony). She jumped up on an ottoman and started yelling, “get him! Get him! Get him!” Ummmmm… that would be my fault. While I have managed to stop using obscenities when yelling at the TV during football games, I am still prone to becoming a bit, shall we say, over exuberant and apparently someone has been watching me. How exactly this transferred to Ultimate Fighting, I don’t even want to know, but it did. Time to start really watching what we say around her and really limiting her TV time as apparently even sports aren’t quite as innocuous as I had convinced myself they were.

On the more manipulative side, now whenever she is in trouble for something she puts on her biggest saddest brown eyes in her most earnest face and asks “you happy momma?” And if I explain that no, I am not happy because she just did x, y or z and I would like her to not do that thing, then the eyes get even bigger and she says “ok, I be better momma.” Arghhh!

She has also taken to negotiating. “Ummm, I do that in 2 minutes,” or “tomorrow” or frequently “Saturday.” For example, we were informed last night that we could only get kisses and hugs from her “on Saturday” and only when she is going to bed. Way harsh! Or she will try to negotiate on behavioral changes. She was eating her yogurt with her spoon upside down and making a mess so I asked her to turn her spoon over and use it correctly. "Ummm, maybe after my nap I will turn over my spoon." There is also much angling for treats. For instance, “If I wake up from my nap, I get a tootsie roll?” or “If I put my shoes on, I get tootsie roll?” said with the greatest hope and anticipation. Uhhh… no. No, because you do those things because you are supposed to do them not for treats. And also no, because your pants are on backwards AND inside out, you are wearing a headband as a tiara with your hair every which way, and you have on upside down sunglasses and quite frankly, I just cannot even begin to take you seriously when you look like that. Sorry. Terrorists and toddlers; it is best not to negotiate with either.

On that note, here are this weekend’s photos, a day late. What can I say, it was really pretty yesterday and I didn’t feel like sitting at the computer waiting for things to upload.

Gratuitous T photo!

K with our Braai (grill)

K exhibiting scepticism about Mr. Snail (in front of her right where the grass meets sidewalk). She has been a big scared of the giant snails, which is funny since they are clearly not a threat at all, but she is a big fan of Mr. Flatty, a big, really fast, spider. Go figure.

K kissing one of our not quite ripe yet lemons. I don't really know why. Who am I to question the ways of the toddler.

The (Not So) Mundane Minutia of Daily Life

This started out yesterday afternoon as a post about how it had been an uneventful week I thought I would take this opportunity to comment on some of the more mundane aspects of our African existence. I should have known better than to say something so silly!

Things had been relatively uneventful, with K enjoying school and finally having consistently great drop-offs every morning, and lovely pick-ups in which she would tell us that going to school makes her “so very happy.” Our new nanny was getting settled in and she and T were getting acquainted. Things appeared to be running smoothly.

Until 9:30 last night when I went to rinse out my wine glass before going to bed and realized that we had… no water. Our water is city water, but for it to actually reach the house our borehole pump has to be functioning. It had gone out once before, but that was in conjunction with our hot water heater also going out and we were able to look in the fuse box and see that, oh, our water pump is also shorted out. This time I looked in the fuse box and all of the fuses were happily lined up as if nothing was wrong. Lying, lying fuses!!!

A brief interlude to further explain the water situation. The water here is tested frequently and is consistently found safe, but since the city water pipes, pumps etc. are not the most modern, and since the city does not treat the water with anything, and since during the rainy season there can be strange runoff and other potential problems, we are strongly urged to only drink and cook with distilled water as a precaution. We bathe in tap water, do dishes in tap water, and even brush our teeth with tap water, but for drinking or cooking we use distilled. As such, we have a nice big water distiller in the house that stays full.

So when the water went out last night it was highly annoying but not really a crisis. I knew that we would have enough water to get up, have coffee, get K to school and make it until the electrician got here. I might not get a shower, but we weren’t going to be thirsty.

But we aren’t the only people living on this here compound and using the water! Our guards, the two very nice men who work in 12 hour shifts keeping us safe, also use the water for drinking and to make their corn meal porridge that they eat every day. And guess what: they don’t have a nice, shiny distiller. My nanny’s family now living in the staff quarters is also totally reliant on our water, and they too do not have the luxury of a distiller. So last night, instead of calling it an early night as I had hoped (oh, did I mention that C was out of town for work? He is, just to add to the fun) I was scurrying around bringing bottled water out to the guard shack and the staff quarters. Only then did the guard inform me that the power had been totally out in the staff quarters for a few hours but our nanny was too polite to come and tell me. Arrgghh! So now those poor people have no water or electricity. Way to go team America!

I place the necessary calls and there are promises that the electrician will be here first thing in the morning. I send a petulant text to C, and there is really nothing else I can do so I decide to call it a night. I go to get ready for bed and WTF!!! What is that creepy crawly critter scurrying around my bathroom?! Some giant 2-inch long prehistoric cockroach thingy, of course! Gross!! Totally too big to squish so I chase him around with some bug spray until he finally succumbs. Now I have a headache, so I wander into one of our other bathrooms in search of ibuprofen and what do I discover but buggy #1’s brother making himself at home in there. You have got to be kidding me! I have seen my fair share of assorted buggys since our arrival, but these guys are new, and of course they had to show up tonight.

On a side note, it is quite possible that these brontosaurus bugs are, in fact, not new but that C has been aware of them for weeks. Something similar happened when we were living in Minneapolis. I woke up one morning and walked into the bathroom to discover a mouse happily going about his business. I expressed the appropriate amount of shock and dismay, to which C responded, “oh, that guy? I saw him a few weeks ago but I didn’t want to tell you and upset you.” Which would be all well and good, but he also didn’t do anything to remedy the problem, like go out and buy an absurd number and variety of traps, which was my solution. Similarly, I am left to wonder if C is well aware of these monstrosities, but has failed to either mention them to me, or to rain down appropriate shock and awe warfare upon them (watch out buggys, it is coming later today, hahahaha!).

Back on topic. I was totally creeped out by the critter visitors so it was nearly impossible to get to sleep as I imagined all sorts of nasty visitors slinking in under the mosquito netting. I finally start to drift off, and T, who has been consistently either sleeping through the night, or only waking up once, wakes up for what will eventually be the first of three night time wake ups. And, to add insult to injury, K also decided to wake up at 4am. Very sleepy arrghhh!!!

Another side note: I just looked outside to discover my gardener, who knows that the water is out because I just discussed it with him, trying to wash our truck. Doh!

None of this is a crisis, obviously. Everyone is healthy and happy and well (other than me being quite tired today) but it is frustrating because it would be nice if things like water would just work. And sometimes they don’t. And I know it isn’t going to get permanently fixed today. Whatever underlying electrical issue is causing these problems will still be there [updatred to include the photo below of the temporary “fix”]. Indeed, they may, or may not, actually make it worse. And, since Friday’s are a half-day I am going to have to call and harass them all morning to make sure they get out here before knocking off work at noon [it took 6 additional phone calls]. And it would be nice if there weren’t giant bugs in my bathrooms, but sometimes there are and it just means I need to stock up on bug spray.

But, it is a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and C gets home this afternoon and hopefully the weekend will be fun and I will have something less irritating and more fun to report soon.

Note the new power line strung from our house through the trees back to the staff quarters. The electrician, who was actually quite good, determined that all of our assorted issues (the pump going out, our hot water heater shutting off, and the erratic electricity in the staff quarters) were all caused by one bad line running underground from the house to the quarters. This is the fix until they can come out and lay a new permanent line.