Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Lizards are our friends, poisonous caterpillars are not.

Today I was back in the nursery from 8-12. Someone donated some diapers and I was so beyond excited that they were the kind that Velcro closed, not the plastic-maybe-stick-once-and-never-again diapers I used on my dolls when I was little. These diapers are softer, they stay closed and they contain much more than the others. All the babies seemed to be doing well today. I think Rahim is getting over his malaria and Clara’s thrush is better. Now if we could just get their lungs clear so they can breath! Emmy, one of the smallest babies has a hernia that Susan another volunteer discovered. She pushed it back in and hopefully it will stay but we will see. Today I was working with a nanny whose name I could never get right, but she shared her tea and half a piece of buttered bread with me which was nice. She also seemed to talk to the babies and interact with them more than most. We have upped the ounces of formula we are giving the babies and that has helped them stay a sleep a little longer so we can get them all fed before the first one gets hungry again.

Kimberlie and I have both been having weird dreams. Not nightmares at all just a little strange. Two night ago I dreamed about trying to decide what to put James in for our Christmas card picture! Most the others are too strange to explain but I’ll keep you posted. Not sure if it’s the malaria med or just being somewhere different causing them, who knows.

I have tomorrow completely off and Kimber is on the night shift so we both have from 8am until 5pm off together. We are hoping to brave a dala dala and head to Arusha without Ilse for the first time. There is so much we want to see and do that we have to start braving it on our own.

I brought an old phone and purchased a sim card to go in it but could not get it to work. Sweet T-mobile locked my Nokia so I cannot use it. But Ilse had an extra phone that we got working and she is letting us use. So we have a phone and we know a number for a great taxi driver/DJ/tour guide, Almas.

Today for lunch we made guacamole with some avacados from the huge tree on the property. They are the biggest and best ones we have ever had. It was so good!

Last night I got to talk to Adam and Candace for the first time since being here. It was nice but we had bad connections and lost internet very quickly. The internet only seems to work at all late at night here, it is so slow and rarely works.

Today was the first day that we have been cold. All the other days it has been really nice weather but I woke up chilly this morning and it has stayed cooler all day. Our room tends to stay warm so I think we slept better last night.

Kimber just got home and is cooking some rice and beans for dinner for us. Sounds like they ran out of nappie pins downstairs for her babies so they told her to just wrap the cloth diaper tight and put the cover over it then some underwear. Could be an interesting morning for Kimber to see how that holds up through the night.

We realized we haven’t really talked to you all about what the kids eat. When they get up in the morning they all get a bottle of milk, then have breakfast which is porridge, lunch which is porridge, some juice, dinner which is porridge and before bed the older ones get a “snackie”. We have seen pancakes, cucumber, or bread with peanutbutter for snackie. One night when I was on night shift, they gave out pieces of cucumber for snack and when I came back and work the kids up at 6 the next morning, many of them still had a clinched fist on their cucumber and were chewing on it for quite some time. The other night when they had bread and peanutbutter I just wanted to give them all a drink because the bread was so dry all you could hear was their sweet smacking and them trying so hard to chew and swallow. When they were done with the bread they all frantically searched the matt they were sitting on for crumbs of bread. The oldest ones always try to steal snackie from the younger ones so we really have to watch.

Lazaro, one of the oldest and one of my babies is so funny. He is full of personality and definitely the man of the house. On my first night shift when I was getting ready to bath, change and put the kids in jammies he was my first. He is very good with English and Swahili. He could tell I was clueless and confused so he bossed me around and I was very appreciative. He told me to put him up on the counter, put him in the sink, he turned on the water, washed himself with soap, told me to get him out, put him on the towel, dry him off and on we went. It was awesome and so funny. If one of the other babies is being bad and needs to sit in the naughty corner but is not listening, the nannies tell Lazaro to go tell the kid what to do and even if they won’t listen to a nanny, they know to listen to Lazaro. Kimber’s favorite thing he does is when he looks up at you, points his little finger and you and says in the funniest way “what’s your name?” He asks you about a million times a day and we are going to try to video tape it for you all. I am taking over for a nanny named Rachel so you think the kids would not have a hard time with my name but they do.

As Kimber is cooking dinner right now we just learned that we have lizards in our apartment! They have names and are a family. I looked shocked when we heard this and Kimber about had a panic attack, apparently she does not like lizards. But they are good, and eat misquitos. They are terrified of us so we will hopefully never see them. Had we seen them yesterday, we would have screamed and killed them so I am glad we now know they are our friends.

I just finished reading “Same Kind of Different as Me” yesterday, I read it in two days since Kimber was working and then it was raining. It was a great read! Very inspirational. I have always thought I hated reading but I have found that I like it. Having no T.V. or internet will do that.

Lastly, many of you will be excited to know that having my hands in and out of baby poop and who knows what has cured me from my nail biting habbit of 20+ years! Woooo. We both just feel so gross all the time and you could not pay me to have my hands in my mouth right now. (Stop crying Mom and Dad).

4 comments:

  1. Rach - your dream about what to have James wear for your Christmas card picture is easy to interpret...you want to bring him home with you! :)

    Loved, loved, loved, Same Kind of Different as Me!

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  2. Love reading the blog!!! Side note - YEAHHHHH for no nail chewing! I'm so proud of you.

    Hope you two are doing well, thinking about you. :)

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  3. Yeah for making lizards your friends and super yeah for no nail biting! So proud of both of you and all of your hard work.

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  4. Rach - Like TJ I'm so proud of you for the nail biting! Love all of your updates :)
    Miss and love you!
    xoxo

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