just thought I'd write a bit about Friday, July 11, not because
anything special happened but just to start writing about day to day
events instead of "deep" thoughts or significant happenings. (I also
don't know why I'm blogging right now since I have a ton of friends to
email.)
Yesterday Ben woke up around 6:15 so I took him to the bathroom and
then said it was too early to wake up so I slept in his bed while he
lay there. At some point he got out of bed and got himself breakfast
by eating the tops off of full loaves of pumpkin bread which is how I
found him. We played Lego for a while, he has 8 duplo blocks so there
are only so many tower, bridge, stair combinations that you can build
but he had fun and is certainly getting the hang of it.
As usual our gardener arrived at 8:00, our househelp, Mama Daudi
(Mama David), arrived at 8:30 and the milk sometime after that. (Our
normal househelp had a baby last month as well so she's on leave and
now the lady who normally watches Ben is helping around the house.
It's really a great situation but it's a long story.)
I was trying to do a little computer work in my office (in our
house) but I have an issue with the grounding in my house and kept
tripping a breaker. By the time I "fixed" the ground the electricity
really was off so I couldn't do that work anyway.
Carla went to CBHPP to just check in with everyone and say hi. She
met a volunteer who just arrived this week from Illinois, I'm not sure
what she'll be doing but she's here to help. I stayed home and
watched the boys. Ben's quickly learning his alphabet and has words
associated with almost all the letters of the alphabet. We spent the
morning stacking the letters and identifying them (flying for F,
muffin for M, tree for T, etc).
Carla got back around noon and fed Aaron while Ben and I had lunch.
Biscuit, chapati and cucumber for Ben, left over heuvos rancheros
(sp?) for me. Then Ben went for a nap and I wrote some emails and did
my MCC worker report. At some point Mama Daudi made ugali and sukuma
for herself and Carla and I had joined them for a bit more lunch.
(Carla and I are really getting addicted to the local food - even,
dare I say, ugali.)
I forgot to mention that these days we usually have on the order of
10-20 kids playing in our yard at our swing. Sometimes it seems like
mayhem, sometimes they are all in a line waiting their turn at the
swing. We did have a rubber ball that they played with a lot but then
one of them wore cleats one day and it got a serious hole in it. I do
have a really nice new soccer ball waiting for Ben's 3rd birthday and
I'm wondering how or if to bring that outside.
So speaking of the kids, after I had written some emails and
reports, Ben and I went outside to fly his kite. There was virtually
no wind but I got it up once for a few minutes. The next time I tried
running around the field to get it up but of course some trees snagged
it so it took about 15 minutes to get it down and then Ben had gone
off to his swing.
Later we drove to town to buy some curtain rod hardware and do
various errands. Going to town is always interesting because usually
it involves visiting a minimum of 10 little dukas because each one
sells this but not that. (For example, the main hardware store had
one curtain rod in stock, it was on the ceiling with plastic sewage
traps hung off of it. But they didn't have the ends for supporting
the rod. So I tried about 3 other hardware stores but no avail. We
also wanted chapatis so that we could have egg burritos for supper but
it took 3 "restaurants" to find one with chapatis.)
Now of course I've forgotten the details of the evening. But after
some great egg burritos (we brought back salsa from Nairobi) I'm sure
there was some playing with Ben's little tool station, some no-get-me,
aka tag, a bath, etc. I think the electricity went off for a while
and I also think I spent an hour holding Aaron watching an episode of
an 80's BBC series called "Connections" that I found on our computer.
And then it was bed for two exhausted parents but luckily we would
at least have a few hours to ourselves on Sat morning with only the
milk lady dropping by.
