Four boys under four

Life has been extremely busy lately. (More than normal, if that's even possible.) In mid-February we agreed to foster a newborn baby. Kai was at least two months premature, and his mom and twin brother died during delivery. Don't google "preemies born at ____" because you will just panic. But if you were stupid enough to google this at, say, 2am, you would (after panicking) start to realize that EVERYTHING about this baby boy is miraculous.

Not only does he fit into our family SO well (We have so many boy clothes! We have an affinity for twinless twins! I have breastmilk to spare!), but he is in perfect health. He was nursing and swallowing and breathing at an age when he should have needed intubation and a g-tube. He was around three and a half pounds when he came to us. Now he's 10 lbs and thriving. Everything we know about him is another answer to prayer.

I was able to manage nights with Isaiah and Kai for two months before I got desperate and we asked for help. We have a rotation of women who are spending the night in our guest room each night, sleeping next to Kai and giving him bottles (both breast milk and formula) so that I only have to get up with Isaiah. They are happy to have extra work and extra money, and I in turn am thrilled to be getting a couple more hours sleep each night. We are trading in our savings account for the sake of my sanity, basically. (I am sharing this lest anyone think I am superhuman and managing nursing two babies every night. I am not.)

David and James absolutely love Kai. Isaiah is busy learning to crawl, stand up, and eat solid foods, so he's been too busy to notice him. In addition to having FOUR BOYS, a new school term started, and I am teaching English four hours a week! Did I mention we are busy? Luckily most of my lesson plans are ready to go, from when I taught two years ago. And I LOVE having an excuse to get out of the house for a couple hours and talk to grownups. In complete sentences! I taught two periods yesterday and not once did anyone mention poop, snacks, spiders or slugs. It was glorious.

Abram finished his dissertation at the end of February, and is waiting to hear if he passed or has revisions, and will head up to Nairobi sometime this month for his defense. He also wrote two articles for publication in theological journals. He has a few revisions left to do on these articles, but overall, his PhD work is ALMOST done. He has been working around the clock, and we are so relieved he's almost finished. We can't wait to celebrate his graduation in Nairobi in July!

James's birthday came and went in March, and we didn't even celebrate until two weeks later, because on his actual birthday we were all sick with the flu. As in influenza, and no, the flu shot is not available here, and oh my goodness we were SO sick. It was bad.

So when we were feeling better, I made him a little cake, and we had a few friends over, and we gave him a train set and some books that we had bought while in Nairobi (thanks mom and dad!). He also got cards from each of his grandparents in North America, so he was one happy and loved little boy.

The months of March and April were extremely discouraging for us. In addition to getting the flu, everyone but me and Kai had malaria more than once. Isaiah has had it twice, David and Abram and James have had it FOUR TIMES. (Sometimes it's a new occurrence and sometimes it's a resistant strain that keeps coming back.) Caring for sick kids is hard, and Abram has so much on his plate in addition to not feeling well. I've also been struggling to believe we are really called to live in this beautiful place, and do work we love, and watch our boys continually struggle with a disease they wouldn't have if we lived in North America. (No one gets sick in the US...right?) Thankfully, the past week everyone has been HEALTHY (give or take a light cold), and I'm feeling a lot more supported and a lot less discouraged. Thank you to those of you who prayed for us and for our health!

I will try to keep blogging every so often. I have also shared more about this adventure on instagram. We are keeping his little face offline for now!

Please be praying for us, if you are the praying sort. This parenting stuff is HARD! Getting malaria is hard! Nursing two babies is hard! Teaching English is hard, because as it turns out, our language is crazy.

Four month old Kai 

Super-Baba

James's birthday party. He was graciously and magnanimously greeting his guests. 

James's birthday cake (note big brother standing by so as not to miss anything!) 

Mr Cool 

Baby toes

James gave himself a black eye...he got in a fight with his crib and his crib won. 

I left the watercolours out...whoops 

James copied David...sigh. 

Isaiah at 8 months 

Bookworms

James visited my English class yesterday! 

Catching up- September

Whooooooa. Another 10 weeks have gone by since I blogged. Again. I'm sure very few people care. But I do! I'm determined not to give up. I post lots of random stuff on facebook, and people get to see pictures of us, but I like looking back over our blog, because it's more of a summary of major events in our life, you know?

So, while I have internet (hooray!) and David is out playing in the grass (hooray!), I'm going to try to post a few quick updates of the past few months. Here's September.

Two major things happened in September (I think. Who can remember/):
~I started teaching at the bible college- my first time teaching adults. Ever.
~And, David turned one! We survived a year of parenting! Hooray!

I am teaching English to the first year students here at Nassa Teological College. The students have to have a certain amount of English to get accepted, but they usually still need some brushing up (don't we all?), so the first years take a 5-hour, year-long course, currently taught by yours truly. The most challenging part of this is that there was no curriculum, syllabus or even standards for the course. So I did some digging around online (mostly on my phone...or, when we have electricity, I am working on English, and hence no time for blogging...) and looked up other school's suggestions. Then I mashed together an outline of what I wanted to teach them, and went from there.

The first term was a ton of work- covering grammar and writing, vocabulary and reading comprehension, figurative versus literal language, etc. There are a lot of resources online, but most ESL classes are geared towards people who are learning English and are living in the US. So a lot of the context - the stories, examples, figures of speech- don't apply to my students here. In conclusion: planning the class was a LOT of work.

Teaching was actually pretty fun, and I think I'm doing pretty well. My students are amazing, and they all did really well in the first term! I'm very proud of them. And I'm looking forward to teaching them again next term.

Abram taught three courses this last term: Hermeneutics, Isaiah and Hebrews. He taught almost every morning, and in the afternoons, he keeps busy with his dissertation, ministering to people in our village, writing sermons for occasionally preaching on Sundays, and helping with some of the vision and development for the college. Abram also keeps track of our family finances, so he is always, always busy. He's such a hard worker, and still finds time to spend with me and David! I married a good one, you guys. A really fun twist in the plan is that he's been having significant computer problems. This makes it hard to work on school or his dissertation, in case you were wondering.

But none of that is as interesting as baby David eating chocolate cake for the first time.

See what I mean?

David's birthday is on September 25th, and he shares a birthday with Abram's Tanzanian sister, Neema. So on the 26th (a Saturday), we threw a small party for the two of them. This is, in the long run, so unimportant, but I spent a lot of time thinking about how we could celebrate David's birthday in a culturally appropriate way. I wanted to find a balance between North America and Tanzania, and I think we managed it! (Most everyone who was at the party has probably never had their own birthday cake before.)

For those interested, I baked a small, paleo chocolate cake for David (and myself). Almond flour, cocoa powder, honey... I melted chocolate chips and made icing out of butter and honey and decorated with sliced bananas, since those are David's favourite food. It was SO GOOD, you guys. Probably the best cake I've ever had- gooey and creamy and rich and sweet. If you notice a huge amount of cake missing in the pictures, that's because I ate most of it.

Because almond flour is a precious resource, I made a larger, normal cake for Neema and our guests. I don't think it turned out as well- it was really dry- but I think Neema appreciated it!

Our gift to David was custom-made wooden alphabet blocks. He loves them and plays with them every night before bedtime. They were pretty expensive, but we hope they last years and years. We didn't give them to him at the party, but later, when there wasn't a huge audience. (We already have more nice things that a lot of our neighbours, and I'm sure to them, David is quite spoiled. And he is. We have been so blessed.) The other gifts David received were: a card and cash from our next door neighbour, some eggs from another neighbour, and a (live) chicken from Neema's parents (David's Tanzanian grandparents). Pretty fun gifts, for a one-year-old! (The chicken is no longer with us. She was delicious, though.) We also got a book from Abram's parents in Canada (which he loves), and some clothes, toys and books from my family. Thanks, guys! We felt so loved.

This is much longer than I planned- thanks, D, for playing nicely outside- and I'm pleasantly surprised at my pregnant brain's ability to remember anything that happened 3-4 months ago.

Here are a few more pictures of David's birthday party. (Thanks Abram for grabbing some photos!) They uploaded out of order, just for fun.

We are so grateful that he has such a loving community and family here in Tanzania. And in Kenya. And in Canada. And the US. What a loved little boy.

David and his Tanzanian Grandpa (Babu)

Digging into the frosting.

The birthday twins and their cakes.

I didn't think to take a single photo with David during his party. This was afterward. Oh well.

Singing happy birthday- D was clapping along.

Being efficient. This eating style was a hit and people still talk about it.

Another family photo taken after the party.

He ate every single banana slice off first, before digging into the cake.

Neema, David, Baba and Ashby

Carrying out the cakes. (Like I said, the pics uploaded out of order.)

Normal

We've been home for four weeks now, and are finally getting settled into a routine, which means that I'm getting settled into my role as Homemaker and Stay at Home Mom and Missionary Wife. 

This means cooking and playing with the baby and texting my sister and answering the front door and going to church on Sundays and reading To Kill a Mockingbird with Abram in the evenings. It also means being watched all the time, struggling with language and friendships, forgetting to buy enough vegetables on market day and having to stretch the menu for a couple days at the end of the week. Abram is home in the afternoons, and he's so good with the baby, but I'm supposed to be letting him work, and shouldering most of the babycare. I do get to attend one of his classes (eschatology), which is fun because it hurts my brain and gets me out of the house three days a week.

Sometimes my life is frighteningly normal and I fear I will get bored, and it's probably something other mothers can relate to: diapers and diapers and dishes and...diapers. Did I brush my teeth this morning? Where did I put my phone? Did I wear this shirt yesterday? It's fine, but I forgot it has spit up all down the shoulder, but it doesn't matter because there's no one here to notice, but-- did I? I honestly can't remember.

But there are other days where I realise that our life is pretty bizarre. Filling up our bathtub with water to wash the dishes in later, because the pump is broken. Wondering which language David's first words will be in. Curtsying when I run into the school principal. Changing David's diaper on the steps outside of the church building, with about forty witnesses.

We tuck a mosquito net around my son every night as he goes to bed. We boil or filter all our drinking and cooking water. People bring fish straight from the lake, which is outside our front door, to our kitchen, and our friend Mary cleans the fish, guts them and fries them for dinner. A friend of ours lost his job because he is a Christian, so Abram is giving him work any way he can: cutting grass and planting tomatoes and washing the car and watering our lime trees. The mangoes are fresher and larger than any in North America. The rice we eat was harvested down the road.

It's a strange contrast. On any given day, if you ask me what's on my mind, the answer could be 'trying to figure out what to make for dinner', or it could be 'wondering if our friend's son/baby/mother will live through the night'. Will we get enough rain for the crops to survive? Will David get malaria? Will our neighbours have enough food to feed their family? Where did I put my phone?

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'm writing this at a restaurant in the town of Mwanza, the nearest city to us and the nearest source of fast internet. David is in his car seat, on the table, casually gazing at the largest lake on the continent.

I know it looks like he's facing away from the lake, but he's not. Promise.

I want to romanticise his life; I brag about his passport stamps, his first safari, his friends from many countries. But we are not the first couple to raise a baby overseas. He's not the first baby to visit Lake Victoria. I'm not the first person to blog while my baby naps. He may or may not appreciate his life, and he may or may not grow to love Africa as much as we do. (Don't you take your homeland for granted? At least at first.) I would love for him to grow up as an 'African boy', barefoot and tree-climbing, and maybe work or minister here when he grows up. But I would also love for him to know his grandparents, and to crawl around his aunt's kitchen floor. Both have their perks.

Our decision to live here comes with its privileges and sacrifices and difficulties and rewards. This is not a novel concept; every couple makes choices that have their pros and cons. Every family has fun memories and adventures and every homemaker has experienced joy and boredom all rolled into one. Every mother has changed diapers in unusual places.

As I process this, I am grateful for routine, grateful to be home. Grateful that we have just enough adventure to mix up the tedium of a 'normal' life.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind taking a nap here, either. Or...taking a nap anywhere.

Doing his best hippo impression.

Studiously ignoring the elephant that is maybe 30 yards behind him.

Safaris and lake resorts are fun, but let's face it. We spend most of our time here, changing diapers.