Out out, darn spot!

A few days ago, Kathleen dropped a basket on her toe and scraped some skin off.  The wound wasn't deep and so I gave her a kiss and saved the Band-Aids for a bloodier occasion.

Last night while I was cleaning the kitchen, I heard a wail from Kathleen.  She came limping down the hall to show me her bloody toe.  The girls had been spinning in our room (Sophia was the princess and Kathleen the prince), and the scab from a few days ago had popped open and was bleeding.  This time a kiss wasn't going to stop the blood, so I cleaned her toe while she wailed in pain and anxiety and fixed a Band-Aid on the bleeding wound.

Right after cleaning her up, Brandon came in from an errand, and we went back to our room to read scriptures and pray.  When I knelt down to pray, I noticed a spot of blood on the carpet.  And six inches away, another spot.  A foot away from the second was a third.  When I looked around, I discovered that we were surrounded by little red bloody spots all over our State-issued carpet.

As Brandon looked around to see what I had pointed out to him, I could see dollar signs flashing in his widening eyes while he tried to keep from shouting at Kathleen.

Only after I googled "get blood out of carpet" did I realize how suspect it looked, but luckily the blood came off easily enough with cold water, and the girls were happy to help wipe up the blood trail down our hall.  As I cleaned I was amazed at the places Kathleen had trod with her bleeding foot - my favorite was a spot almost behind the curtain.  Was she spinning for some time before the noticed the blood?  Or did she dance around our entire carpet in distress?

But, everything came out, at least until SPM comes around with the luminol.  And while cleaning, Brandon taught the girls a new phrase to use while cleaning up spots.  "Out out, darn spot!"

The Beginning of a New Era

This evening after dinner, a seminal event occurred: after finishing their dinner, the girls ran off to play.  Edwin, hearing their merriment, indicated he'd like to get down too, and then ran off after his sisters.  Brandon and I stayed in the kitchen and washed the dishes in peace.

Every dinner we've had previously has ended with somebody being forced to finish, the others hanging around the kitchen while playing, fighting, asking endless questions, making endless requests, and getting under the feet of anyone trying to do anything useful.

But we've reached a new stage in parenting, the new stage where our children enjoy playing by themselves.  Kathleen and Sophia have become, on occasion, more interesting to each other than their parents are.

It's strange, to reach the end of constant leech stage and move on to something different, and even more strange to realize that that stage will never come again.  I will have individual children who will find me so irresistible they can't leave me, but never again will all of them swirl around me constantly, satellites to my planet.  I won't be surrounded by a constant of little voices, moving wherever I move, and providing constant company.

And I'm thrilled.

No Roller Coasters for Her

This past weekend, we celebrated Memorial Day.  Because the workweek here is Sunday through Thursday, we didn't have Monday off, we had Sunday off.  However, because our guests were from Wales, England, France, and Canada, none of them had Sunday off.  So instead we celebrated on Saturday.  Got that?

When I was a child, we always spent Memorial Day at the pool.  Our pool opened on Memorial Day and closed on Labor Day, and both days were celebrated with a pot luck pig pickin'.  So I always associate Memorial Day with barbecue, fried chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, and my personal favorite, hushpuppies.

We couldn't find anyone to sell us a whole pig, and don't have anywhere to set up an oil-drum pig smoker, so we only had fried chicken for protein.  But of course we had the cole slaw, potato salad, hushpuppies, and for dessert, peach ice cream.

Our Saturday morning was spent in various food preparations, and the girls started the morning in our company.  They peacefully painted in watercolors (practicing the color-mixing principles they had learned at a friend's house that week) while Edwin wandered around the house, Roomba-fashion, picking up whatever was in his path.  After awhile, the girls got bored, so Brandon turned on an Abba CD for them in the study.

Our study had two spinning office chairs, and there are two girls, so two girls heartily amused themselves while spinning to the solid-gold seventies Abba tunes.  Who doesn't like Dancing Queen?  They were happy, and we were left in peace, and our work progressed well as Brandon chopped potatoes and I peeled and mashed peaches.

After twenty or thirty minutes of peace, Sophia started coughing.  I wasn't worried (I never am until the bones snap and the screaming starts in earnest), but Brandon was and went to check.  "I keep coughing things up," she told him, so he brought her into the kitchen.  And then the burps came, and we looked at each other and rushed her to the trash can just in time for breakfast to come around again, several times.

After she was calmed down and cleaned up, we catalogued all of the food she had eaten for the last twenty-four hours.  Nothing seemed suspicious, and nobody else was sick.  We felt her forehead, and it was normal.  She didn't complain of a headache or feeling badly.

And then I remembered: the spinning.  So now we know who in the family gets motion sickness.

So How's that Baby Coming Along?

I'm now four months through my fourth pregnancy.  I think I can now consider myself a fairly seasoned pregnant woman, having spent two and a half years (of my six years of marriage) pregnant.

So when friends ask me how the pregnancy is going, sometimes I have to stop and think for a minute and remember that yes, I am pregnant again, and it's going fine if I forget that there's a baby the size of my fist currently residing in my abdomen.

With my first pregnancy, Kathleen, I couldn't wait to fit into maternity clothes and felt like I had to wait forever until those parachute-sized shirts fit, and some of them never quite did.  Sophia landed me in maternity jeans before the end of two months, but with Edwin I managed to hold onto my normal pants, with some modifications until over halfway through.  I waited until the absolute last necessary minute before I started wearing those maternity clothes.  This time I'm hoping the extend my record even further.

During Kathleen's gestation, I checked the pregnancy book at least twice a week to see how my baby was developing.  This go around the only time I've ever checked it was to settle a dispute Brandon and I had about the size of the baby - apricot or small cantaloupe?  He won, and I haven't opened it since.

I got blood work done in the US before we left so that I wouldn't have to bother with it here, but I've yet to go to the Embassy clinic and confess to the doctor there that I'm pregnant - again.  Maybe I'll get around to it the week after next.

We haven't decided on a name for either gender, and haven't even talked much about it.  I could get an ultrasound whenever I feel like going down the Nile Diagnostics clinic and paying for it, but I'm considering not even bothering until I return to the US just to avoid the hassle.

I'm very thankful that I've been blessed with very easy pregnancies, and this one has been no exception.  Which is good because by the time this baby arrives I will have packed and moved out of three apartments, moved into three apartments/houses, flown on two transatlantic journeys, visited or lived in five countries, been evacuated for three months, on home leave for six weeks, and taken care of three children under five the entire time.

So, the pregnancy is going well.  Having three children already helps the time pass quickly, and moving in the middle keeps my mind off the constant mantra of how many months, weeks, and days until I stop increasing daily.  I'm looking forward to the baby coming, especially since it will mean that we're almost done with the Year of Craziness.

Swim Baby, Swim

Swimming season has officially begun (it was one hundred degrees today), and so the girls have started swim lessons during the week.  Last year I left Edwin with Rere at home and participated in the lessons with the girls since Sophia was only two.

This year, however, both are old enough to have lessons without my presence, so Edwin gets to come to the pool with us and have swim time with me.  Last year when we started taking Edwin swimming, I'd dunk him a few times every time we went swimming so he wouldn't be scared by going under the water.  He was young enough to not know the difference, and so the strongest reaction he ever had was surprise.

So this year when I plunged him under the water, he looked around, wiped his face, and then broke out in a wide grin.  And he hasn't looked back.  Now, at the ripe old age of seventeen months, he practically belly-flops off the side of the pool into the vicinity of my arms, often regardless of my nearness.  The last time we went to the pool, he thought it was great fun to flop himself into the baby pool face-first and then wait, quietly floating, until I came over to give him my hand so he could stand up.

I'm happy that he's so comfortable with the water, but he has no natural caution to keep him safe and I have to watch him like a hawk.  And I think he makes the lifeguards incredibly nervous too.  But when it comes to his turn for swim lessons I think we can skip the part about putting his head under the water.

So Much for Being Proactive

I've never owned a refrigerator.  Or a furnace, or air conditioner.  I have owned a washer and dryer, but those for less than two years.  My responsibility when it comes to appliances (and cars, for that matter) usually amounts to crossing my fingers, screwing my eyes shut, and hoping that nothing goes wrong with them until my turn with them is over.  Not very adult, but so far it's worked.

So when the refrigerator started collecting water in the bottom a few days ago, I didn't worry about it.  Refrigerators do that sometimes, and then they usually stop.  No problem.  Brandon mentioned it, and I theorized that the freezer was going through a self-defrosting cycle, so he stopped worrying too.

But this morning, when Rere showed up, she worried.  Because that's what she's paid to do. If it weren't for Rere, half of the things in this apartment (other than the AC) wouldn't be working.  And so when she suggested giving her friend in maintenance a call, I shrugged my shoulders and said why not, not wanting to be bothered about it for the next three weeks.

Twenty minutes later facilities was here, and ten minutes later they had taken my refrigerator apart.  They couldn't find anything wrong, put everything back together, and told Rere to give them a call that afternoon if the water showed back up.  It did, so by three o'clock a new refrigerator was brought by, and by three forty-five Rere had cleaned it and replaced my food.

I came home from swim lessons with the girls to a new refrigerator - narrower, shallower, shorter, and with one less row of shelves than my old one.  We had just finished cleaning out the leftovers and our refrigerator had been in that blessedly empty state, cleansed of its old odds and ends and waiting to receive new leftover deliciousness.  The new one, despite this lack of food, was full, almost overflowing.  I cursed facilities for their old, crappy appliances that they always pawn off on me, and schemed how I could at least get some more shelves.

This evening at dinner, I noticed water on the table.  I picked up a plastic half-gallon water container, one of several we keep filled in the refrigerator for ready cold water.  I wiped off the water that was pooling around its base.  And then I noticed the crack, so small I had overlooked several times.  But not small enough to keep the water from leaking out... for at least a week now.

Sophia turns three

Wednesday was Sophia's third birthday.  We celebrated the day by eating breakfast in our pajamas, going to the Commissary for a treat, and starting out the swimming season at Maadi House.

We had her favorite dinner, eggs benedict, and then had cake and presents.  I had worked the night before and that afternoon to make the cake she had specifically requested.  But even before the presents were opened, she and Kathleen both declared that they were not interested in cake.  By this point I shouldn't be surprised, as most times nobody wants cake after the presents are opened.  But still I make cake every time.

I find it strange to have Sophia turn three already - she was my Foreign Service baby, born right before we realized that Brandon might have a shot at a job other than lasagna making, and she really hasn't known anything but this crazy life.  One of the more common conversations is how old somebody will turn in what country.

I'm grateful to have Sophia in our family, brightening our days and so adorably lisping out her verse when it's her turn in scripture study.  I just can't believe she's three already!

Evacuation: In Review

Now that we're safe, sound, and back home, I feel that I can look back on the evacuation with some objectivity.  Being evacuated is something that I never would have ever chosen to do.  But with that said, it was manageable.  I think that if I had been separated from Brandon for the entire three months, I would have been saying something else entirely.  But, I wasn't, and I'm grateful.

Although we've only been back for a handful of days, our time in Virginia is starting to fade in the fuzzy unreality of events completed.  This is my reality, and living in the US was just some strange, long dream I woke up from in the Cairo airport.

But, despite the overall unpleasant situation - away from home, living in a random apartment, unstable situation, maxed-out credit card, husband gone - I can't say that the entire three months were complete misery.

I enjoyed being back in the US with a car, a GPS, somewhere to go, and somewhere to park when I got there.  We've been going to the same park every Saturday since we've been here, and the girls were absolutely thrilled about the change.  Every time I'd announce we were going to a whole new park the girls were happy for the rest of the day.

On the surface when I didn't think too much about our situation, life really wasn't too bad.  I didn't have any housework, any appointments, and pretty much every day was filled with whatever I liked (as long as it included three children).  We went to the zoo, the aquarium, lots and lots of parks, friends' houses, relatives' houses, and to grandma and grandpa's.  Spending the first three months of my pregnancy on evacuation wasn't the worst thing because I already had excuses not to cook, and once Brandon left, I could sleep in as long as I liked.  Once it got warm, a friend and I decided to have as many picnic meals at the park as we could.

But, of course, when I thought about the reality of the situation, it wasn't quite so rosy.  I didn't bring anything to do with me, and after awhile the feeling of sitting and twiddling my thumbs began to drive me crazy.  Not knowing exactly when all of this was going to end, was frustrating (although I had a pretty good guess which turned out to be true).  The endless, expensive trips to Target for things I already owned grew a little old.  And when my husband got sent back, things definitely took a turn for the worse.

But, the evacuation, like most things in life, ended.  Which is something to remember in any unpleasant situation - all things end eventually.  And when you're done, you're that much more grateful for the pleasant situation that comes in its place.

Home. Safe, Sound, and Incredibly Happy

Right now, I can hear Brandon's voice echoing down the hallway.  Interspersed with his mellow tones and Kathleen and Sophia's excited voices chirping at him.  "Okay! We'll be mustangs!  And we'll pull you across the prairie!"  It is so wonderfully nice to hear that again, after three months of bedtime without Daddy, and a month entire with no Daddy at all.

Tuesday while I read blogs and relaxed from our flight, he bathed the children. While I fell asleep on the couch, he got them ready for bed and put them down.  And then we spent the evening catching up and eating chocolate.  Forget globetrotting, exotic vacations, amazing locales.  I just want to be home, and with my family.  It doesn't get any better than this.

In twenty-four hours...

I'll be flying over the Atlantic, hopefully asleep (maybe with the aid of medication).  But right now, my apartment is a mess, with dinner still sitting on the counter.  The girls' clothes are strewn over the floor, I have a load of laundry yet unfolded, and I can't find my iPod to charge it.

And what have I done about it for the last few hours?  Nothing.  What have I been doing instead?  Reading a really good book.  Because by tomorrow evening, my things will be packed, we will be on the plane, and dinner won't matter any more.  Whether or not I kill myself to do it tonight.

And so, I'm taking the last few precious hours of alone time to relax and read a book.  Tomorrow will take care of itself, right?