Chaos!

We had a group at our house this morning, and I had to share about our time. A year ago, there was typically one toddler with us. Now, we have a 2 1/2 year-old, a 7 month old baby, and a 3 month old baby. Things started smoothly as we gathered and chatted. Joshua was extra fussy as he has been lately, so I put him down for a nap as usual. No problem. A man rang our doorbell to measure our windows for screens, (yay!), so I showed him around the apartment. I was carrying the 3 month-old at this point. As our time progressed, the 3 month-old went down for a nap in our bedroom, and our landlord rang the doorbell to make sure the "screen man" had come. I showed him our water heater for the third time; he has been fixing it for 5 days now. His little girl wanted so badly to play in Joshua's room and didn't understand why she couldn't. 3 month-old is crying at this point, and our friends are carrying on in the living room. Potty training 2 1/2 year-old is whining and hollering about "Pee-pee!" and treats every 10 minutes or so. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. It was very lively and humorous.

We have takeoff!

If you read the title, you might think Joshua is crawling. If you read the labels for this post, you might think Joshua learned to say something. Sorry, but neither one is correct! However, Joshua now has a tooth! Well, can you call it a tooth if you have to look really closely to see that it's there? Anyway, the Arabic word used for the eruption of a tooth is the same word they use for going up a flight of stairs as well as taking off in an airplane. Whenever we see friends these days, they ask if teeth have taken off.:-) This morning I put my finger on Joshua's gums to show my neighbor that nothing was happening... only to find that there is actually a reason Joshua cried all day yesterday. David suggested we take him out for pizza to celebrate.

Becoming a Gerber baby

People do things differently here; that pretty much goes without saying. It has been interesting to be a new Mom in a foreign country. There are things that I have had to do differently than I would at home simpy because I have no other option. Most things are available to us in some way at some point. We may have to drive an hour to get certain items or pay three times the amount they are worth, but we can get a good variety of things here. One thing we cannot have is baby cereal without sugar. Since I have never started a baby on cereal, I never thought about this before. The cereal that Joshua has been eating since he was four months old tastes like rice pudding. Yes, I have tried it, and it actually tastes good! My Mom and Gary sent some Gerber cereal when my Dad came, and I was anxious to see how Joshua would do without the sugar content of the stuff here. I figured it wouldn't be that big of a difference.

We are on day three of experiencing this new version of rice, and my son who eats everything has yet to finish a serving! I don't think it is that it tastes badly to him. I think he is just used to finishing the first bowl of broccoli or potato or whatever I give him and getting on to bowl #2... the good stuff! So naturally, when I gave him bland rice mush when he was expecting rice pudding, he protested. He was pretty tolerant at first, but after a few bites, he turned on his "green bean face." This is the face he makes when he doesn't like something. We are now working on tricking him by mixing some fruit with the rice, and little by little, cutting out the fruit. We shall see if he falls for it!

An afternoon visitor

Our water heater broke a couple of days ago. It gave me an opportunity to remember again some of the things that I love about living here. David went downstairs to ask about who we should call. Our landlord came up to check it out. (He lives above us.) He said he would return after an hour or two with someone who would fix it. When he came back, his brother was with him carrying the appropriate part. They went to work in our little bathroom-turned-laundry room. They probably thought we were so strange... not using the squatty potty and having a machine to dry our clothes. While they were working, one of the landlords precious little girls came to the door. She came in, and I got out a couple of Joshua's toys for her. He was napping, and she asked if she could see him. I told her that he would wake up if he heard a sound, but that she could see him later. She said, "But I won't make a sound!" She is maybe four years old with huge dark brown eyes and Shirley Temple hair.

Her Dad and Uncle finished their work, and he prepared to leave with his daughter. She wanted to stay, and I said that would be fine. I think that Joshua's toys were quite interesting to her. So we continued to play for about 30 minutes until Joshua woke up. Our little neighbor loves Joshua, and he is fascinated with her! She wandered around the apartment asking me to put Joshua in each of his different "places." (He has a swing, a bouncer, a floor gym, and a small mat with his toys.) She wanted to watch him play in each spot. I took her upstairs when we needed to leave, and I hope she comes back to visit!

"Ajnabi"

This is the word that means "foreign" in Arabic. In our little community, everyone knows who the foreigners are and where we live because there just aren't that many of us. The sweet little girl I mentioned before went out on our balcony to call to her sister who is a year or two older. She yelled, "I am up here with the foreigners!" We have invited some neighbors to eat with us, and they declined several times. Finally, he told David he would like to wait until someone else had visited us in our home. I laughed when I heard that, but it also makes me sad. I don't know how we can open our home in a way that people feel comfortable here. I guess it will have to come with time. People here just don't like to try new things! For now I will just have to laugh and be patient as we will forever be "the foreigners" in this village.

A nighttime adventure of a different variety

I realize that "sleep" has been a more frequent subject of this blog, and I think that must be only natural for a new Mom. I will add another to the list. My Dad has been visiting this week, so Joshua has been sleeping in our room. He has done this before, but it was when he was younger and much less aware. I wasn't sure how this week would be; I expected him to wake up more often than usual in the night. Each night, David and I get completely ready for bed outside the room and then make our carefully planned entry. We ease into the bed as slowly and silently as is physically possible, and then we pretty much stay as still as we can until the morning. It has worked pretty well. Joshua has woken up a couple of times, but he goes back to sleep within minutes. I think he only cried the first night.

That is the necessary background information. Last night, we went to bed as usual. It was a little bit warmer than it has been, so I kicked off the blankets. I woke up with a pain on my ankle. I thought that something must have bitten me, but I didn't know how I should go about trying to find it without waking Joshua. At times, he seems a bit more sensitive to light than he does to noise. So I used my little watch light to look over the sheets. I didn't find anything, so I got back under the covers for some more protection. My ankle kept burning, so I finally got up to look at it in the light. There wasn't much to see. I went back to bed, but I couldn't go back to sleep. About an hour later, I was still awake when David started tossing and turning. I nudged him and whispered, "You are making a lot of noise!" (He had earplugs so I figured he didn't realize it.) He said something had bitten him, and it was hurting really badly. He got up to check it out as well. Now what we are thinking is that something has hurt each of us badly enough to wake us up, and it is somewhere in the room with Joshua.

We decided that we would have to move Joshua to check things out. I picked him up and took him into the dark living room while David combed the room. I was amazed that he didn't even budge as I held him... he even kept his thumb in his mouth. How incredibly lucky! What wasn't so lucky was that his pajamas were all wet. I hated to disturb him, but I had to change him! So what started as a bite on my ankle turned into our whole family awake at 3 in the morning... turning the room upside down, changing clothes, etc. We think it must have been a scorpion, and we never found it. I keep feeling things crawling on me now! Thankfully, Joshua cried while I change him, but he went right back to sleep at the end of the ordeal.

Don't leave me unattended!

Probably every kid in at least the last 30 years has one of these stacking ring toys. I never realized that it could be dangerous, but Joshua has found a way to make it so! He loves to take off the top ring and then shove the yellow stick into his mouth as far as he can. This timeless classic has become a "with adult supervision only" toy for our boy!