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!

You Are just Here for the Cute Kids and Animals Part II

Greetings again! See, I really am back and posting regularly, as promised! I wanted to add a few more shots from our recent adventures with my parents. We did two trips while they were here, one was a return visit to what is rapidly becoming our favorite lodge (short-ish drive, great food, tolerate, and may even like, our kids), and the second was our first trip down to the local water feature. Both outings went quite well and everyone got to see lots of neat critters.

A troop of monkeys spent one night at the lodge, which meant they did a lot of frolicking during the day. We spent a good bit of time watching "monkey TV" which K and T both enjoyed.

The falls. It is hard to get a picture that even begins to capture how large the falls actually are. They were much cooler than I had anticipated.

I continue to be fascinated by the hippos. They are just such odd creatures. These are a couple we disturbed while they were sunbathing on a sandbar. They managed to hop up and scurry into the water with amazing speed and agility for creatures of their bulk. Once in the water they hung out and gave us dirty looks for a while.

We also had the treat of seeing two elephants amble into the river for a quick late afternoon shower.

T in her "safari" gear. I think I managed to dress her in animal themed clothing the entire trip, which is as close to "safari" as a 9-month-old needs to get.

One of the big crocs getting some sun. You don't see as many crocs as I had expected. I don't know if there is just less population density than you usually get with gators, or if the crocs or more shy, but it isn't like seeing a whole bank full of gators in Florida. You may see one or two over the course of a trip, but the ones you do see are usually impressive specimens.

K playing tour guide during our boat trip. She was much more interested in the animals this time around and excited to share them with her grandparents.

You Are Just Here for the Cute Kids and Animals Part I

Forgive me, I briefly forgot that the majority of my loyal readership is really just here to see K and T and the occasional elephant. Fear not, I can indulge that craving!

Hi! How are you! We missed you!

Apparently K thinks she is on a casting call for a part in "Almost Famous."

K destroying a very belated chocolate easter bunny. Apparently the package containing said bunny went missing, ended up in Paris, the South Africa and then traveled to us by truck. Highly unusual. And miraculously despite all of that all of the Easter candy, including the bunny, was still in perfect shape even three months late.

T practicing her reverse crawl/scoot.

All of us together at the falls. Don't we all look like happy campers?

Both girls sort of looking at the camera... pretty much the best you are going to get when trying to put a 9 month old and a three year old in a photo together.

All You Can Do Is Laugh

A message from your always gracious hostess: Let us all pretend that I did not just vanish off the face of the earth for over a month. Best to put that behind us and just carry on as if that had not happened, complete with whatever apologies I should make and promises to not disappear again. Though, if I ever disappear for that reason again then something has gone terribly wrong. Let me put it this way: previously I had one very firm rule for picking places we could live: no tsunamis. Walls of water freak me out! Now my rule has expanded to include no tsunamis and no countries eligible to host the conference we just finished hosting. Imminently reasonable, in my always humble opinion. Now, let us resume our regular blogging schedule.

A week to ten days before the big event the whole pace of the Embassy had shifted into high gear. The building was packed with short term employees sent out from various offices in DC, so suddenly you really did not recognize every single face you saw in the halls (both disconcerting and kind of fun. Variety!). Everyone was sleeping too little, drinking to much, and mostly subsisting on various types of candy handed out at meetings to try to keep the mob under control (I usually brought tootsie roll pops, and twizzlers to my meetings, I am just that kind of girl). I would leave my desk for 10 minutes to do something crazy like go to the bathroom and refill my water bottle and come back to 15 new emails in my inbox, the majority of them requiring some sort of response or action on my part, most of those making me want to stab someone with a fork.

Of course, all of this is exactly what one should expect when a whole bunch of VIPs descend like locusts in conjunction with a big conference. The best you can hope for is controlled chaos and that everyone walks away happy with little to no inkling of the madness going on behind the scenes.

So, one of the many things going on at the Embassy was that a ton of art was finally being placed. Some sculptured, some wall hanging quilts, some big photos of animals, a whole grab bag of stuff including, obviously, Elvis. I kid you not. A wooden ceremonial mask of Elvis in a nice plexiglass display case appeared, as if by magic, one morning. We are talking end of career fat Elvis, complete with big sideburns. He was the talk of the Embassy, with many, myself included, declaring him "creepy." And then, as if having Elvis in the building wasn't awesome enough, he started to move every night!!! Everyone had thought about it, several had mentioned the idea, but someone (or several someones, I still don't know for sure) was actually executing the plan and moving Elvis around the building at night. It was one of the best things ever!

The fact that someone was being clever enough, in the midst of all that was going on, to do exactly what everyone was thinking and actually move Elvis around was priceless. It was one of the funniest things ever. It made it ok that I was coming into the office at 7am on a Saturday because Elvis greeted me at the elevator! I was less likely to kill the very very young, very very obnoxious DC folks who seemed to always be checking Facebook in the control room rather than doing, you know, work (those damn kids today!) because I had spotted Elvis lurking by the water fountain.

And then, after the conference closed, and the last VIP was wheels up and it was time to rest and drink and work on rebuilding intra-Embassy relations after everyone had been angry and snippy and grumpy for weeks, Elvis made one last spectacular appearance: at the podium oh so recently occupied by someone Very Very Important, complete with his very own conference badge:

You Can See It From Space!

Much like the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids, our new playhouse, now complete, can also be seen from space. We just wanted to have something built that would use up a lot of the wood from the giant crates in which all of our stuff was shipped. We got a good recommendation for a guy who did a friend's playhouse and I messed around on the internet to find something I liked. If I am being kind I could say we took the original inspiration and ran with it. Or, more realistically, one could say that things got a titch out of hand...

At any rate, K loves it as do all the kids who come over and play. We have plans for additional after-market accessories as well. I think a cargo net on one side would be fun. And since we have some leftover wood perhaps a balance beam or something similar off to one side. We are having to get new tires for my vehicle so I think we will take two and half bury them upright as additional climbing/jumping devices. And a slide will probably appear eventually as well.

The real goal of the backyard has been achieved which is that I can sit on the patio and drink my coffee or gin and tonic (depending on the time of the day, though sometimes those distinctions can get dangerously tricky!) and passively watch the running amuck. Of course, in a couple of months when T starts moving around I will be forced to realize what a death trap I have assembled and will have to run after her like crazy... oh wait, no I won't, that's why I have nannies! Back to that G&T!

In other news, I finally got bored feeding T just pureed veggies and fruits and figured she was ready to move on to bigger and better things so she had banana bread today and liked it very much. Now we can slowly start to transitioning to just letting her eat little bits of whatever we are having, which is much more convenient.

Fair warning, things are getting really crazy here with work for both C and myself and will remain that way through mid-June, unfortunately. Lots of VIPs and VVIPs and VVVIPs and whatever other silliness all requiring various levels of handholding and generally much to-doing. So, its not that we don't want to respond to emails more... its that we are actually having to work at work, which is a real bummer.

Open House II

Welcome back! C and I have both had another crazy week at work, and things are only going to get more hectic until mid-June, but at least the end is somewhat in sight. K is doing well and loving her new playhouse (a topic for a later post). Poor T seems to have her first ear infection. At least, that is my uneducated guess. Low grade fever with grumpiness and no evidence of teeth that appears after 5pm on a Friday seems to almost always be an ear infection. We are keeping a watchful eye, holding her a lot, and planning to wait it out til we can get in to see the nurse on Monday, unless she seems to get significantly worse. Poor baby! Now, where were we? I believe I had shared our front exterior, our cavernous living room, the dining room and kitchen. Let's move on to the real heart of the house, shall we?

Welcome to the TV room. This is where the magic happens, by which I mean it is where we watch somewhat choppy Armed Forces Network (AFN) and cross our fingers and hope that something, anything, somewhat watchable is on. Surprisingly enough, there have been several Twins games on thus far this season, making me happy. Though with the cooler weather here I feel like I should be watching football, not baseball, but what's a girl stuck in the southern hemisphere to do, right? I should also add that the TV room shots and playroom shots to follow were all taken before noon today, Saturday. Both rooms had been spotless perfection yesterday evening when our staff left, so all of the assorted clutter and chaos is what K has managed to achieve in a mere few hours this morning.

The big batik is something we picked up here. It certainly adds a splash of fun color to the room. And that is our very old, very small TV. But we use it so little we can't bring ourselves to invest in anything larger/flatter.

From the TV room you go through a very short hallway into what was intended to be a mother-ion-law suite. It would make a great guest space, as it has its own bathroom, but while we are expecting lots of visitors (hint hint!) we don't expect them with sufficient frequency to warrant leaving this space as an untouched guest room. So, instead it is the playroom, which works out great, and the little connecting hallway is the changing table for T and spillover storage for some of her toys and clothes.

The playroom! K with her grandparent provided veritable stable of bouncy horses, Bucephalus and Toes. The owls are from the annual street fair in Del Ray and the curtains are shower curtains from Target. The sad, stained pink t-shirt is what K insists on changing into every single day after school. Because the housekeeper does the girls' laundry every morning it is always back in her drawer, just like magic! I have prohibited it from leaving the house, and I assume it will actually disintegrate into nothingness soon.

Two more shots of the playroom. I love the wall sticky things. The little forest scene and alphabet add some lovely color and fun, at a very reasonable price point. And who doesn't love a beanbag chair!!

Even with an ear infection she is happy, she is just that good of a baby (karmic payback expected in approximately 16 years).