First weeks back

I’ve been back for 10 days now. I have to say, it’s been a little harder than I expected. Not that I thought adjusting to being a family of 6 would be a walk in the park, but Omara’s almost 6 weeks old already. I thought we’d done a lot of adjusting already! There haven’t been any major issues, but normal every day life here can be issue enough to make anyone crazy. And it’s all the little things, you know? Like trying to get kids to school on time, and all the stores running out of milk, and Isaac being back in the world of needing 2 baths and 4 changes of clothes each day, and mud everywhere, and flies swarming, and killer mosquitoes on the attack (Omara is too small to take malaria-prevention meds). Oh, and that’s not to mention the unbelievable headache of having our modem-phone stolen (which eliminates our internet access from the desktop) at the same time the lap-top crashed (again!) so we’ve been frantically trying to get back on-line to submit year-end budget and ministry reports as required for work. I’ve decided that living life on Africa-time (AKA…no hurries) is fine as long as you don’t have to meet deadlines from the world of efficiency. But it’s a perfect storm to have American standards to meet from here, and last week we surely got stormed on! After a few tears and several rants and raves, we got it taken care of thanks to flash-drives and coworkers letting us borrow computers and internet time.

The kids are now out of school for a month, so we not only have 4 kids, we have 4 kids under-foot. Thankfully they all adore their new sister and we haven’t had any jealousy issues. But our nanny, who is also 6 months pregnant, got hit by a taxi and thrown into a ditch on Monday. She and baby are fine, other than bruised ribs and a strained knee, so after just 2 days off she’s back and insisting on helping out so much I feel like I have to watch her as well. Yesterday I caught her on her hands and knees polishing our floor, and I can’t get her to stop!

But tomorrow my parents and my brother and his wife arrive to spend 10 days with us. It will be wonderful to see them, and for them to see us. They haven’t seen Isaac since he was 6 weeks old…he’s now running around collecting creepy crawlies and we have a new 6 week old! We’ll finally celebrate Isaac’s 2nd birthday (he doesn’t know we skipped it last week), go to the lake, and maybe a game park. We’ll have a big family Christmas again, though we’ll miss my “baby” brother and his wife who are back in Oregon. And they’re bringing cranberries…seriously, what can go wrong when there are cranberries involved???