Category — Wonderful

Enough is enough.  It’s getting ridiculous.  The book must be written before it dies a sad death.  I must invest in this.  I will invest in this.

There has been an unexpected and welcome turn of events here in our house.  We have a babysitter!

I’m actually looking for someone more long term who can travel with us and hang out with the kids.  Just enough so that I can write, and sometimes hang out with Chinua while he plays concerts in the evenings, or go to a meditation in the middle of the day. It’s a bit of a pipe dream, but we’ll see.

For the time being, I’ve been asking around here.  “Do you know of anyone who can watch kids?  They have to speak good English.”

Many of you might remember Jaya.  Since we moved out of the house that Jaya lived in, I’ve always had a neighbor helping me for a couple of hours in the mornings.  For me, the things that are oh-so-necessary, but really bust my butt when I’m homeschooling with a baby and daily meditations happening on my rooftop and communal lunches (in Goa) are the floor cleaning and the dinner dishes.

In Goa, my next-door neighbor, Maria, helps me.  I love Maria, oh how I love her.  She is like a brilliant shining star in my day, always laughing and joking.  (She was on my dad’s Happy Birthday video, in the beginning.)

When we first got here, we met a woman named Tripta who lost her husband to cancer two months before we arrived.  She is responsible for her elderly in-laws and her three teenaged kids, and now her husband is gone.  He used to run a shop, but she is dependent on their guest house for income now, a house that is heavily mortgaged.  We have been looking into other ways that we can help her, but when I asked her if there is anyone she knew who might want a cleaning job, she almost started jumping up and down with her hand in the air.  She needed the job.

Tripta calls Solo “Giptu.”  I truly think that “Giptu” has become such a healing part of Tripta’s life.  In the end, playing with him for a few minutes every day doesn’t really make her life better, but it’s one time that she is really really smiling.  She’s always suggesting that when I go back to “Israel” (I keep telling her that I’m not from Israel, but she either forgets or doesn’t believe me) that I leave Solo with her.  And then she tells him that I’m not his mama, she is.  He is such a perfect little baby for India, too, where everyone pinches cheeks and talks to him.  When Tripta talks to him he smiles back and touches her face and gabbles away and gives her round-mouthed baby kisses on her cheeks.

One day a girl came over who was interested in watching the kids.  She was with another neighbor of ours.  She was very shy and wouldn’t really talk to Chinua or I.  I mentioned that we could give it a try, having her watch the kids.  But all she would say to the neighbor was, “What time do I come?  And how much will you pay me?”  Chinua was pretty sure that it wouldn’t work.  The kids are pretty rambunctious.  I mean, they are kids.

Tripta was at the house at the time and the next day she brought her thirteen-year-old son over.  Ankit can watch your kids, was the gist of what she said.   At first I was skeptical, because he’s only thirteen, but then we came up with a plan.

So now Ankit comes over every morning with Tripta, and plays with the kids outside for a couple of hours while she works.  I sit in my back bedroom with my manuscript strewn all over my bed, writing, and the kids run and scream and play.  Sometimes they play soccer, sometimes they climb trees, and sometimes they hide behind boulders.  It’s pretty much perfect in many ways.  Tripta is here for back up, I am here for back up, and the kids have someone a little more mature than them to play with, someone who is also almost a kid himself.  It’s pretty fun.

The one bit is that I don’t trust him with Solo yet.  So if Solo is sleeping, woo hoo!  If not, I type with one eye on Solo while he does the inch worm around the room and chews on my books.  It’s still better than nothing.

In this way I’ve been writing 1000 words a day.  Not the super greatest, but not bad for a homeschooling/cooking/community-minded/mother of four.

The other practical change I made to my life I made the day before yesterday.  As I mentioned, someone is not in the daily family picture for a couple of weeks.  So grocery shopping has been an issue.  Grocery shopping means walking down the mountainside with a backpack, usually in the morning when the vegetable sellers still have vegetables.  The other day I was completely stressed out, and I had to sit back on my heels and investigate why.

I was trying to get the kids working on personal schoolwork while I got ready to get the groceries, so my sister could supervise them working, and I was keeping one eye on the clock so that I could be back in time to write.  It was not all that sustainable. So I gave the owner of one of the shops down the hill a call.  And forty minutes later, my groceries were delivered.  It was like magic.

I’m known for doing things the hard way, at least in my family.  So this easy thing of asking someone to bring me my groceries was an amazing discovery for me. And like that, school time got much easier.  Things are often time-constrained here.  I can’t go in the afternoons because often the veggie stalls are all out of spinach, or peas, or carrots.  And I can’t go in the mornings because of school, and all that it takes for me to get my family ready in the morning.  So it was amazing to find a solution.

Now all I have to do is find the right tailor… starts and stops and starts and stops.  Life.

You should have known what kind of day it was going to be when the tears sprang into your eyes at the sight of a man losing his shoe.

He was walking on the side of the road and his sandal slipped off. When he turned to retrieve it, the motion felt like falling. It felt like sighing, like shaking your head as you stare at the pebbly ground, like being just a person, after all, a person with feet that sometimes let a shoe fly, so carelessly.

Days like this are particularly vivid, when a rooster scurries across the road in front of your scooter, and he is not merely someone’s future lunch, out for a jaunt, he is all of Creation in a small flightless bird.

The trees are your brothers, every leaf made by Him just as every cell of you is quivering with His breath. You are called out of your body by fields, by gardens and water drops flying, by haystacks so casually symmetrical and golden.

Flowers are almost your undoing, on this kind of day. You almost can’t look. It’s not decent to be that beautiful.

An old man with glasses sits on a wall in his undershirt and slacks, belt hitched to a comfortable place above his waist. He looks up as you pass, his wrist, roped with veins and tendons, resting on his knee. Jackfruit slowly ripening, palm groves as tall as a cathedral that calls you to come and worship, a woman threshing her rice, clouds of chaff flying out from her. She is the center.

The women at the well, drawing water.

You remember that there was a time when you wondered if anything would ever be as beautiful to you here as home was.

Not every day is exquisite, most days end up having too many pees on the floor, but today is unspeakable. In the cool of the early morning, you drive on and on, wondering if at some point your wheels will just leave the pavement completely and you will be in the sky.

A few weeks ago, the kids and Renee and I got in our little white van with a friend and her daughters to travel in the sun to a nearby Banyan tree. A Banyan sends shoots and roots up throughout a large area, many of which look like other trees, but are in fact all part of the same tree.

My friend was from England, from Devon, with daughters so round and brown-eyed and freckled that I wanted to scoop them up and keep them forever. (Not to mention their accents: “It’s all rather muddled, isn’t it?”) She’s gone back since, so this was a special farewell trip, to a tree that another friend had told us about.

“The canopy is as big as this whole restaurant,” he said, throwing his arms out expansively.

We drove along, our directions limited to: “When you pass the petrol station and then look off and to the left, you’ll see it out there, in the middle of a big field.”

I wasn’t ready to stop driving, we reached it so quickly, so I drove a little farther and got myself into a bit of a pickle trying to turn around, while small British voices in the back called, “I want to go back to the tree!”

We parked. As we approached the tree, about 20 huge Langur monkeys departed, swinging down effortlessly and loping away to a distant spot. They watched our invasion of their perch impassively.

I thought the tree would be kinda neat, but it was not merely neat. It was majestic. It was peaceful, it was shady, it was a perfect play place in a hot field. Perfect for monkeys, perfect for people. The Banyan is quickly becoming one of my favorite trees. Like the Madrone, or the Sequoia. Or the Oak. Well, I could go on and on. I guess I just like trees. Big surprise.

After I wandered around for awhile with the camera, I handed it to Kid A, so that he could take some shots. Later, when I looked through them, I was happily surprised by what he saw and snapped.

Here’s the day through Kid A’s eyes.

Then YaYa took the camera for a while. Here’s some of the day in her eyes.

At the end of our time we all joined hands and wove in and out of the branches singing, “The Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, God made the Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, the Banyan tree, lots of shade for you and me…”  And there were other verses, but I won’t trouble you with them here.

It was one of those days with prospects in it that make you grit your teeth, just to get started. When rolling out of bed feels like moving in slow motion.

One of those mornings when you hold the baby and hold the baby, and oh gosh he’s just so fussy, and the dishes are piling up and the kids are outside in their underwear again, playing in the sand pile, pretending not to hear you when you call them in.

It was one of those mornings when everyone needs to get ready to go into town to do some errands, town being forty-five minutes away on a drive that curls your toes every time; the potholes, the narrow misses, the cows stepping out in front of the car.

It was one of those mornings when for the life of you, you can’t get anyone ready in time to leave so that you won’t hit the market in the heat of the day.

It was one of those days when the thought of wrapping the baby onto you like a wonderfully efficient body-heater makes you have to grit your teeth again to force yourself to do it. You tell yourself to get up and go, to be an adult, to get it done.

It was one of those days when you hit everything at the wrong time, so that everyone is prematurely hungry, thirsty, and tired. You walk in the market with the heat draping itself around your shoulders, pressing down on your head, slumping you and making you dull and dusty.

Your children grow flushed and cranky.  You eat food, but it is too spicy for the kids.  The baby fusses.

It was one of those days when the amount of time and energy it takes to get simple things done like groceries and kids’ clothes bought, the time, the dusty time- it seems to spin out in front of you in a never ending loop.  You will always be tired and in the midday sun.

It was one of those days when the kids fight in the backseat of the car during the entire ride home, when your husband is exhausted and you start to make dinner but then just ask him to finish because it is too late and the baby is wailing and you really want to just put him down and walk away but that is generally frowned upon.  The house is still close with the heat.

And all your efforts all day, all the smiling and kindness wear on you, making grooves that are good but not exciting, brave but not sparkling.

And then the tides turn a bit.

Before, when you turn into your tiny jungle road it feels remarkably like home.  Your neighbors are in their coconut trees, harvesting young coconuts, and they ask if you would like any.  The climber nimbly heads back up and chops a few down for you, then makes sure that he tells your husband that one of them is “only for your wife.”  You drink the coconut water and feel refreshed.

The children go to sleep.  The baby finally drops off.  You want to go for a swim in the darkness, but it’s not safe to go alone.  You ask a friend to come over and do her reading on your porch, so that you and your husband can go together.

It’s dark and you cling to him as you walk.  You can see the milky way, thousands of stars, and one star falls as you step onto the sand.  The ocean is different at night.  It is huge and you can’t see where it is-the line of sky is gone–there is a solid inky black sheet, everywhere you look.  The white breakers are like a roaring mouth to you, and you hesitate before walking in.

But it’s warm and glassy and you aren’t as afraid now.  Suddenly your husband yelps as he drags his hand through the water and at first you think he has been bitten, but then you see what he sees.  Thousands of sparks, like the sparks that shoot up when you throw a giant log on a bonfire.  They trail after his hand, they are all around you.   It is phosphorescent algae, lights and lights in the dark water.  They glow as you move, and there are millions of them.

Now you are laughing and making huge arcs with your hands, lights trailing after, both of you have turned into children again, and there are stars above you, stars beneath you, stars all around you.  When your husband swims away from you, under the water, you see the angel’s wings that his arms make; he is glowing as he moves through the dark.  When he stands up, there are stars in his dreadlocks, clinging to his beard, running off of his skin.

You stay as long as you dare, before you head back home to the kids, thanking God inside and out loud, glad for this cooling, for this beauty, so much beauty, so much of what you need, above, below, and all around.

(I’ve done that frustrating thing where I ask for advice and then just choose something completely different.  Solo is a derivative of our baby’s real name- I don’t care if you guess, by the way, I’m mainly trying to keep future employers of my kids from discovering their newborn poop habits while googling their names- and in meaning speaks to me of him being his own musical piece, not just the fourth, but a violin or a cello making music all of his own, even in the midst of our chaotic orchestra.)

The monsoon this year came with a bang that had us falling down in puddles as big as lakes, splashed from head to toe by buses, and standing on our porch watching the wet madness in disbelief.

Then it trickled off. For weeks there were showers briefly, showers at night, humidity constantly, but not the consistent heavy rain that normally forms the season known as monsoon. In the last few weeks, it returned, with another shout and bang and crash, and with it, our baby came.

My labor was a lot like the monsoon of this year. I started with a bang! And then it trickled off, leaving me mostly dilated for hours and hours while I piddled around with contractions that wouldn’t get the work done. And finally, there was a bang and a crash and a sweet baby was in my arms, warm and mine and whole.

We went into the birthing center on Sunday night at 10:00, spent that night and the next day and the next night laboring, took a break for an hour, kept laboring, and finally had the baby at 1:00 on Tuesday.

I would never have thought that my fourth baby would come like this. Simple! We all thought, she’s had three babies and it’s always been quick and on time and this one will be a breeze. But instead, I was given something that I couldn’t comprehend. I couldn’t keep having contractions. I couldn’t lie down, or they would stop. I couldn’t get into the tub, or they would stop. I walked in circles, for hours and hours.

When we first arrived, it was dark at the birthing center. There were nice lamps, and lemongrass oil in the oil burner. There were candles next to the tub, lit and joyfully flickering. We were excited. This was finally it! As I write this it still seems so fresh. What would happen wasn’t what we planned.

We were inside, most of the time. I walked around the small room for hours, a room that I had always been so happy with because of its simple beauty. I can barely think of the steps I took without getting tears in my eyes. The room became a prison as I realized that nothing was making my labor advance. I desperately wanted to get home to my children, I desperately wanted to sleep. After a certain point, when they were guarding me because of a possible need for a cesarean, I desperately wanted to eat.

I prayed a lot. Chinua hugged me a lot. The midwives did everything they could do. I was banned from the tub when it appeared that it would stop my labor every time I got in. This had never happened to me before. I have always been incredibly spurred on in labor by water. With Kid A it was so powerful that it took me from three cm to ten in an hour and a half. I was not prepared to not be able to use water.

It was me, in my bare feet, walking for days. It was me, breaking down because I couldn’t understand what was going on, me saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” while the midwife became very uncomfortable because of my tears. It was nighttime and then daylight and then nighttime and then daylight.

It was me, calling to the baby. “Baby… I want you… come out.” Feeling like maybe it was my fault because of my fears about having a forth child. (Sidenote: When have I ever not had fears about a new baby? We fear the unknown, but then we move on… in my exhausted state, this was hard to remember.) It was Chinua, hugging me and loving me and looking at me with understanding when I cried. It was me, singing softly. It was my sore, sore feet, moving and moving and moving.

There came a point when I was completely undone. It had been twelve hours of being at 9 and a half cm. The last bit of cervix would not disappear, and so I could not have the pushing contractions I needed, could not get the baby out. We had been there for 30 hours. I wanted to just get someone to take the baby out. However, because of my surgery experience, I was a little afraid of what the transfer and hospital would be like. Okay, I was terrified. I was literally afraid of dying.

The midwife was exhausted too. We also come from very different cultures. After 30 hours of doing everything she could to help me, she was not comfortable with another emotional breakdown from me. She kept trying to tell me to close my eyes, and I was crying and asking questions and turning away from her to look at Chinua, saying his name with urgency. He finally asked if we could have some time alone.

I calmed down as he told me that he was scared too, that he didn’t think my emotions were unreasonable. We talked about what to do. And we decided to call our friend Diane. Diane was a superhero as a doula in our birth with YaYa, and throughout this labor I wanted to talk to her many times. Chinua left the room to call her. It was about 5:00 in the morning. He couldn’t reach her.

He came back in, and the midwives came back in, and then there was a knock at the door. “Do you want to talk to Diane?” someone asked. We did! Chinua took the phone for awhile, then came back and handed it to me. As soon as I heard her voice, my eyes filled with tears.

The baby wasn’t in any danger. His heart beat was steady, he was not far down in my pelvis, he seemed active and at peace. I was also not in any danger, just exhausted and frustrated because I couldn’t understand the stall. Diane’s advice was to lie down and sleep for a few hours, then get up and start again. She told me that this was not completely crazy, that women have things like this happen for strange reasons, that this baby had a unique way of coming into the world. Somehow her voice soothed my fear of death. The dark exhaustion lifted a little. She prayed for me, and her words were like rain on my hot face.

We all decided to wait and take a break. Chinua and I lay down and slept. After an hour I woke up, and couldn’t go back to sleep.

I called Renee, and told her it would be a while longer. I called my parents and asked them to pray. Then I decided to get down to business. Again.

There are many moments in our lives when we make choices. I did not choose this difficult labor, but in the quiet hours of the morning before the midwives came back in I had to choose to continue, believing that it would turn out. I felt God speaking to me in that bright morning. This is the verse I turned to, as I tried to gather strength inside myself to return to the pain of labor, to return to the walking, to the unknown, and try to have the baby.

It’s from Psalm 40:

I waited patiently for the Lord,

He inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,

out of the miry bog,

and set me feet upon a rock,

making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear,

and put their trust in the Lord.

It was a turning point for me. Labor is like a small version of life, in many ways, where we run that crazy rough race in order to get the prize at the end. This one was teaching me lessons that I didn’t even want to learn, lessons about waiting and the ways time can stretch and lessons about being given things that you don’t want, with no way to hand them back.

But He turned to me and heard my cry.

So we started again. Every few contractions the midwives would come over and give me a shot of oxytocin by nasal spray. I felt like a drug addict. I walked, and I walked. I walked into each contraction. I asked for more pain. I breathed and I leaned on my husband, but I was inside, deep inside, walking to the end, not stopping this time. I sang softly to myself. I smiled to think of my baby. I believed, hard, I trusted, hard, that at the end of all this walking I would be able to hold my baby. And that I wouldn’t be ready to faint from hunger anymore, because they would finally let me eat. (Fasting for days when you are nine months pregnant is no small thing. They were putting glucose in my water, but it wasn’t exactly what I was wanting.)

I can’t even begin to tell you about the focus that it took. I really almost can’t think about it, because I feel exhausted all over again. But trust is a beautiful thing, because I wasn’t trusting in the air. I was trusting in God, who has never forsaken me. And his heart is for me, not against me.

The pain got bigger, the contractions grew stronger. I reached the point again where I felt like I would faint, but I didn’t want to stop. It was like this for about another three and a half hours. We had given ourselves a time limit- we would only go until midday.

Then the midwife was able to break my water. And our prayers were answered in a gust of pain that threatened to lift me off my feet and throw me backwards. During the next half hour I could barely hold on. But it was what I needed, what I had been walking towards. And I felt that crazy urge again and walked over to the birthing stool and on my hands and knees I used all my strength to push that baby out.

When I heard the midwife laughing, I knew that it must be good. Another push and my baby was there on the mat and the midwife was handing him to me and we could see that he was huge and he was crying and I was cooing to him and at 1:00 it was over.

He was beautiful. I’ve never been so happy in my life. We called the kids and they came over with Renee and saw the baby being bathed (“Count his fingers and toes,” the midwife said, and they solemnly did) and weighed, and they checked out the placenta. Everything swung into its right place again. And we went home soon after.

And my baby, my sweet baby? For my present on the night of his birth he slept for eight hours in a row. The three of us lay in our bed zonked out and snoring, maybe. Thankful, so thankful.

(Photos by Chinua)

After a whopping 39 hours of labor, we have a boy, born on August 19th, at 1:00 in the afternoon, weighing 9 lbs 4oz. I’m tired and happy. So, so happy to be done with that labor. Oh gosh.

He looks a lot like Leafy did, with YaYa’s color of complexion. He fits right into our family perfectly.

We are in love.

I promise to tell you more about the labor, but right now I have to nurse a wee one. Any ideas for a good internet nickname?

Thanks to all the lurkers who gifted me with their comments. I’m working on responding, because I so appreciated your words.

(“Lurkers” sounds so derogatory, doesn’t it? Maybe we should do something about that. Like we could call those who don’t comment “Internet pixies” or “Hoverers” or “Hummingbirds” or something pretty. Just so you know, I love lurkers. Because there just isn’t always something to say. And if you have nothing to say, then better to be a hummingbird.)

Anyways, for the last couple of months, on any given day you may have looked into the bedroom that my kids share and seen this:

Because it is so very rare that we have enough sun or even dry weather to dry our clothes outside.  So it would end up that we let them dry in the kids’ room, under the fastest fan, for approximately 48 hours, after which they still weren’t dry and they smelled like the dog’s tonsils.  I’m not kidding.  (The other day the recorded humidity here was 98%)

We were coping.  Then the rains started in earnest again, and it started taking 72 hours to dry the clothes, and at one point all the clothes in the house were in the washer waiting to be dried or on the line, waiting to dry.  Waiting and waiting.  And Leafy was underwearless not because I chose it, but because there was not a single pair of dry undies.

I have a bed-wetter.  I have a potty-trainer.  And I have an older kid who still, at times, simply CANNOT TEAR HIMSELF AWAY FROM WHATEVER HE IS DOING ON TIME TO MAKE IT TO THE TOILET.  You know what I mean, if you have boys.

And the idea of adding a bunch of baby diapers and clothing to the mix, adding nursing wear and the overall generosity of fluids that accompanies Newborn Land into our drying kerfuffle simply overwhelmed me.

I’ll add here that we will be attempting to be infant potty training.  But even here in India, the babies use diapers.  There are some fairy tale books about women who know instinctively, every single time their baby needs to pee or poo, but really, it’s just rather messy.  It’s just that you are committing yourself to the mess with the idea in mind that if you pay attention and run to the potty a lot, you can teach your kid to use it early on.  I’ll write more about that later.

There is no way around a lot of newborn laundry.  We looked at dryers, and they were all very expensive. For us.  (I was actually shocked to see a dryer in India at all.  I had never seen one before.)

So, I was talking to my mom about this stuff, and she happened to be sitting next to my grandfather.  They were all sitting and perhaps looking at the ocean at my parents’ new house in Victoria, B.C., the one that I can’t wait to visit.  And I got on the phone with my dad and then part way through he said, “Hey here’s some news.  Grandpa’s going to buy you a dryer.”

And my dear wonderful Grandpa did it.  He sent the money.  Which is why we have this:

The first time Chinua pulled sheets out of it that were dry, he wept.  And then Renee began to dance.

No baby yet.

Just because I know that’s the first thing on your mind. Jeez, don’t you think about anything else? Me? I’ve moved on. Just because this baby prefers the inside doesn’t mean that I have to think about the birth every day, hope for labor to start, jump up and down a little, complain unceasingly about how uncomfortable I am, look at my new stretch marks every day to see whether they’ve grown…

See how composed I am?

Anyways, it came to my attention that I missed my third anniversary of keeping this blog.

I am endlessly glad that I started it. Here I have grown as a writer, I have kept records of years of my kids’ lives that I might have otherwise whined my way through, and I have transitioned through major things with the help of my blogging community friends. Thank you so much for reading and commenting, and there are things that I maybe wouldn’t have been able to get through without you.

Community is a grand thing.

Like the way I can tell you about the fact that the water hasn’t come for three days now, and we are hauling water out of the well, and you’ll sigh and sympathize. (Maybe. Maybe you’ll say, “buck up, woman, what did you expect when you moved to India?” And then you’ll say, “we’re hauling? Don’t you mean, Chinua’s hauling? He’s the one who needs our sympathy. And you should be glad that you have a well.” And then I’ll say, “See- that’s exactly the kind of thing that I needed to hear! Now I’m going to go kiss Chinua- or the Well Man, as I’ve begun calling him.”)

So, since I’m celebrating doing this blog thing for three years, I’ve been peering into my archives and picking out favorites, which you can see in my new Favorites tab up there. See it? I have a looooonnng way to go and they are in no particular order right now. Maybe later I’ll put them in a comprehensible order. For now, just be blessed by the chaos.

And for my present, if there are any lurkers interested in delurking… I love you! Leave a comment, if you’d like.

That’s all. Have a lovely day and think of me when you turn your tap on.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that Kid A took the photo of YaYa and I on the steps. He’s doing a pretty good job, isn’t he?

I told him about all the compliments. He smiled, one of his big beaming smiles.

I have letters buzzing around my head, lately, so I may be posting more. It’s that taking-stock thing that happens, I think. I’m thinking a lot about my kids and my life with them, waiting in these last days for a new child. Another one of these big-eyed things.

So, what’s new with us?

Well, we are not so successfully beating the jungle back. There were hundreds of thousands of army ants in the kitchen the other morning. They bit us as we tried to get them out.

I have bites all over my legs. Bed bugs. Hmmmm.

My cowboy hat has gone on to glory. I tried and tried, but couldn’t keep the fungus off of it.

And the biggest deal? Our everything lens, the 24 to 70 zoom, the very first lens we bought for our camera, has fungus inside of it. This is not good, to say the least. We take very good care of our camera gear. We just didn’t know that we were moving onto the set of a National Geographic documentary.

But we are learning about how you deal with this, step by step, and none too soon. Because I can’t be down about the cowboy hat or the bedbugs or the spider bite on my arm when our things arrived today!!!! Our shipping, but as Kid A said, “Can’t we just call it our stuff now, since it’s not on the ship anymore?” So, our stuff. It’s here! It may seem silly to be so, so excited over some books and toys and instruments, but we are silly folks.

So now, trying to take care of our stuff in the jungle. Books need to be flipped through and aired out, a couple of times a week. The pages get soft and easy to tear, so you need to be very careful of them. I can’t say that it doesn’t make me feel sad, to think of my books getting smelly and soft and wilty, but things are things, right?

We will protect the guitar with our lives.

The mattress is like the very clouds of the heavens and is wrapped in plastic.

I’m really happy with the few toys I chose to ship. Legos, K’Nex, PlayMobil, Puzzles, and model dinosaurs and animals. Great stuff. And after three months of playing with about five beanie babies and a plastic monkey and polar bear, the kids are thrilled. THRILLED. Leafy can’t believe his luck. He was very sad to stop playing and take a nap this afternoon.

Renee may come up for air eventually, but she has dug into the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for the first time (the books, of course) and so I doubt it.

There is nothing sadder than Chinua for four months without a guitar, and I was amazed to hear him play and realize that it is what has been the itchy feeling at the small of my back, all these long musicless days.

Today I went to look through the drawer for that one steak knife, the one that we usually use to cut everything, before realizing that our knife set is here. OUR KNIFE SET IS HERE.

And the homeschool stuff. Ahhhhhh. I’m such a nerd, but I could just stroke the books and smell the paper forever.

In short, we are very, very blessed to have our things.

And we would like to have a moment of silence for some stolen goods. For the computer box, which came to us empty.

For the guitar strings and peg winder and wire cutter. We are very glad that they were they only things taken out of the guitar case, and not the guitar itself.

Thankfully the computer (a laptop) was empty (of documents or important files). It was broken and we brought it to fix, to use as a back up and as something for the kids to work on. Somehow it never made its way to us. Stuff is stuff, right?

(Perhaps I will write about this on the other site at some point, but take my advice and use a Relocation Company, if you need to move your stuff.)

Does anybody want to tell me any stories of life in your climate or culture or country? Difficulties keeping things safe or nice? Maybe your lips are always chapped? Or there is sand in your teeth?

Or you are backed up with laundry but you can’t do any because it’s monsoon and the lines that are strung across your children’s room are already full of stuff that won’t dry for 24 hours, even with a very strong fan?

Oh wait. That’s me.

(Wrote this yesterday and then couldn’t post it… so here it is!)

Today I spent my 28th birthday in Antalya, Turkey. It was… a birthday to beat the band.

I don’t know what it is- whether it’s just spending the time making the kids’ birthdays special, or just getting older, but I find lately that I just like to do quiet, happy things with my family and friends on my birthday. Which is to say, I’ve gotten stodgy. No parties for me.

We left Istanbul on the 9^th, leaving this delightful room behind.

What the photos don’t show is the smell of the toilet, across the hall, or the five (six) of us sleeping like sardines in there with all our bags around us, or our children jumping around in a tiny confined space until our brains were all shaking rapidly in our little skulls.

Nor does it show the price. Does anyone want to guess? Hint- it might not be what you think.

But we headed out of Istanbul and flew to Antalya taking a one-hour flight that barely felt like flying. The flight attendants rushed to get the snacks out and pick up the trash and then we were landing.

But wait wait wait. I didn’t tell you anything at all about Istanbul. Let me backtrack and give you some of Istanbul in a few choice photos.

First, let’s talk about Turkish Delight.

The White Witch tempted Edmund for nothing. All he needed to do is go to Istanbul.

Because there’s plenty of Turkish Delight for everyone.

And it is truly delightful. The kids are waiting for their share.

If you prefer baklava, don’t fret, you could throw a bunch down on the sidewalk and roll in it, if you choose.

Here’s our good friend from back home contemplating her baklava choices.

But forget about Turkish Delight for a minute. Check out the Grand Bazaar.

It’s very, very old.

And cool.

You can buy beautiful lamps, but you won’t be able to afford them. Or-er- I won’t.

You could also buy brass stuff, if you wanted.

But forget about the Grand Bazaar, because there are also cool buildings and sights in Istanbul.

Like old pillars.

Or the Blue Mosque.

Or this beautiful wood building with decorative flower boxes.

And there is plenty of Turkish Coffee.

But back to my birthday. Okay, so we landed in Antalya, only to discover that the guest house that we had planned on staying in was closed. We stopped in our taxi to get out and try to get our bearings, and happened to stop right beside a guest house that had two adjoining beautiful rooms for us, run by a Dutch woman who had immense sympathy for me as I waddled in with a sleeping Leafy in my arms.

I felt like maybe Antalya was heaven. The air was balmy, there was a garden for the kids to play in, with real live tortoises for them to feed, and a beautiful room with space! And a shower! We ate a late dinner under the trees (never managing to wake the jetlagged Leafy Boy up) and met up with a bunch of the friends that we will be camping with. It was wonderful.

And then, this morning, I woke up to the sun. Oh, well, okay, I actually woke up to the jetlagged Leafy deciding it was time to play at 5:30, but forget about that. Anyways, Chinua got up with the kids at 6:30 and let me sleep longer.

We had Turkish breakfast in the garden: a plate consisting of a boiled egg, some bread, cheese, jam, olives and a couple of fruits and vegetables.

Later we walked around Antalya and picked up some stuffed bread to eat by the water. By the Mediterranean. I think this was the point that I realized how truly amazing it was to be spending my birthday in Antalya.

Then one of our friends watched the kids while Chinua and I took a little scooter ride around the city, dodging traffic, both foot and on wheels. We’ve done this before, a few times, and it’s always so special for us.

And then, the crowning touch:

Which is a whole story in itself and may have to wait another day. I’ll just say that it involved being punched in the backs of the thighs by a strong Turkish woman with oils on her hands, having previously had water thrown on me while I lay on my back in a 600-year-old dome. Also being scrubbed red from top to bottom, and rubbed down with soap like a little baby. Well, that’s pretty much the whole story. I guess it didn’t have to wait.