And now there are six

Last Sunday, Brandon declared that it was time to decide on a name for the baby.  I turned to the girls who were coloring at the table and asked them whether they would like to name the baby William or Joseph.  "Joseph," Kathleen declared.  I turned to Sophia.  "Jospeh," she confirmed.  Brandon turned to me.  "Joseph," I agreed.

"Fine," he returned, "you win, but I don't have to like it."

And so without further ado, introducing Joseph, the newest member of our family.

He arrived without any trouble and is happy and healthy.  The girls are delighted with their new brother, constantly begging me to be able to feed him with a bottle, bathe him, change his diapers, and feed him.  Edwin loves to hold him, for about thirty seconds, before he dumps Joseph off his lap to go do something else.

I am doing well, and enjoying the wonderful help of my dear sister who has taken a week to come and help out.  The children have enjoyed more walks and parks this past week than in the past month.

We're all happy to have another addition to our family!

It's time

This last week has been busy.  On Wednesday I sent off two tons of food to be shipped to Baku.  Then in the next few days I baked six loaves of bread, made a gallon of granola, switched all of the maternity clothes out of my closet and drawers, pulled out the baby clothes and things, took sent the children off for a sleepover, went out for one last evening with Brandon, took him to the doctor (bronchitis), cleaned out all of the random boxes from my stairwells, and set a new record for loads of laundry washed, folded and put away in one day (ten loads).  Today we went to the grocery store, and I picked up my sister from the airport this evening after taking the children to the park.

I think that I'm ready to crawl into my hospital bed and let them poke me with an IV of pitocin just so I can get some rest.  Wish me luck!

Bringing Baby 'Home'

This morning as I was scrolling through Facebook, I looked through some pictures that my cousin has posted of her new baby.  As I looked through the pictures, I noticed the background - nice couches, a fire burning in a fireplace, attractive built-in bookcases, and a general sense of somewhere happy and lovely, filled with a happy family.

And then I thought of pictures when I bring my baby home.  Someone else's couch, someone else's artwork on the wall, paint I didn't choose, and a borrowed bassinet.  I thought about bringing home my other babies - same story with every one except Sophia.  And of course, six weeks after that baby comes 'home,' we'll leave for another 'home,' one filled with Embassy-issued furniture and Embassy standard white walls.

There are many many things I love about being in the Foreign Service.  So many, in fact, that we plan on staying with this gig for the next twenty years.  But, just as with any situation, there are downsides.  That's life; nothing is perfect.

And one thing that I realized when I looked through those lovely pictures of a lovely baby in a lovely home is that I'm not going to have that home for decades.  I'm turning thirty in a few months.  Since I left home at eighteen and went to college, I have lived in exactly one location where I owned everything inside.  And that was a little hole that turned from a place for a few months into a place for almost two years.  Every other place I've ever lived in I have had someone else furnish just about everything.

And that's not about to change because I'm too cheap to 1. buy nice furniture 2. pay to have it shipped around and 3. pay to have it fixed after it's shipped.  And I'm okay with that - it comes with the territory that includes household help, employer-provided housing, and weekend trips to Turkey.  So don't feel too sorry for me.

But I do look forward to that long, long-off day when I can ruin my own couches, choose (and pay for) the exact appliances I want, and choose my own dang light fixtures.  One day.

Consumables Saturday

Last Saturday, it snowed in northern Virginia.  Well, first it rained, then it turned to freezing rain, and finally snow mixed in with the rain.  It was a nasty, cold, day - the coldest day we've had since coming here.  It was the sort of day where you put on a movie for the children, get out a book for yourself, and everyone drinks hot chocolate.

However, it was also the last Saturday before our consumables shipment is scheduled for pick-up.  And so that is how I found myself driving to Woodbridge in the rain with my entire car empty and ready to receive the bounty of my credit-card melting day.

My first stop was Sams Club, the only locally available source for McCormick chicken base (fifty cans), bulk Ghirardelli double chocolate chips (twenty-four pounds), and popcorn (one hundred fifty pounds).  Some very kind men took pity and helped load the car with my chocolate chips and various and sundry other items, including the obligatory and very necessary Charmin.

After a short stop at Aldi for milk chocolate chips (I had made sure to stock up on butterscotch earlier in the week) and sliced almonds, I continued in the drizzling rain to the Bishops Storehouse for 250 pounds of wheat and fifty pounds of black beans.  Once again a kind soul took pity on me and loaded my now quite-full car with the twenty-five pound bags.  I should shop more while thirty-eight weeks pregnant.

My last stop was Costco, this time in the rain mixed with freezing rain.  I rounded up my flat-bed cart amid the thronging Saturday crowds and started piling.  Paper towels, laundry detergent, dish detergent, whole grain penne and rotini, macaroni and cheese, napkins, contact solution, toilet wet wipes, goumet chocolates (I can't go two years without my tasty chocolate), and the all-important two hundred pounds of brown sugar piled my car higher and higher.

By the time I reached the register, I could barely push my trolley piled to the height of my shoulders, and I was nervous.  My car was already full when I came to Costco, and I had just as much, if not more things than were already in the car.  After fifteen or twenty minutes of checking out, I handed my cart over to a very nice man and fetched my car for loading.

Thankfully, he couldn't speak much English, so we just made wry faces at each other through the snow and started rearranging and packing the endless pile of stuff into my already-overloaded car.  By the time we were through twenty minutes later, I literally had boxes of penne crammed to the roof and my front seat was full of freshly-scented boxes of Bounce dryer sheets.  As I backed out of my space, I prayed that nobody would foolishly decide to walk behind me as there was no possible way for me to see them.

As I drove home, I called Brandon to warn him of his long, hard slog up the stairs to our townhouse carrying the fruits of my labor.  In the snow.  After an hour and a half of unloading, everything had made it into the living room, piled neatly and waiting for the movers and Brandon was soaked with snow and rain.

And now I can go into labor with one less thing to worry about.

Celebrating Halloween in the US

I've never been much of a Halloween celebrant.  I blame my mother.  We were banned from trick-or-treating after fifth grade, and the older I've gotten the less festive I've become.  I was quite happy to live overseas and miss out on all of the excitement.

Brandon recalls trick-or-treating once when he was five, and for every Halloween after, his father would cover the windows with blankets and pretend they weren't home while the family watched movies and ate candy.

So I blame Brandon for this Halloween.  We started the season early with a visit to a pumpkin patch.  And then for Family Home Evening we actually carved the things.  The last time we carved pumpkins was when Kathleen was two and I ended up scraping it off the porch in February right before we moved to DC for the Foreign Service.

Then on Saturday we went to the ward Halloween party where the girls dressed up as princesses.  Of course it was pure coincidence that I gave them princess dresses for Christmas last year and they dressed up as princesses for Halloween.

And tonight we lit up our pumpkins and dressed the girls up again.  Edwin and I stayed home (he went to bed) while Brandon led the girls around our little complex.  They came home after ten or so houses thrilled with the candy they had picked up and made a grand evening of stuffing themselves with more candy they had ever eaten in their short lives and making candy trails across the floor.

So that will be their only memory of Halloween, at least for the next few years.  And when they ask why we don't celebrate Halloween, I'll point out that yes, we did once, and I'll show them pictures for proof.

Midnight thoughts

Last night, in between multiple bathroom trips, I was woken up by a strange pain in my abdomen.  After a few seconds, I realized that I was having a contraction.  As I've never had a contraction without pitocin before, I panicked.

My first thought was 'Ow!  This hurts!  A lot!'  My second thought was, 'I can't go into labor, I have that consumables shipment to get together!'  Then I started thinking through how much time I'd have to send Brandon to various stores after we'd gone to the hospital, gotten the baby out, and come home again.  I supposed that he could do it, but it would be a lot of trouble.

My third thought was, 'I can't go into labor, I don't have any good books to take with me to the hospital!'  I considered that the hospital probably has WiFi and I could take my laptop, but really, there's no substitute for a good book.

Thankfully, the pain went away and I went back to sleep, at least until the next bathroom break.  But now I've been put on notice and I have some things to do.  Like go to the library.

Why I can't hack it in the US

We've now been actually living (not traveling or visiting) in the US for seven weeks.  There are a number of things that I love about being in the motherland.  Public libraries are amazing.  Same with public parks.  Although sometimes illogically bizarre, having a GPS makes getting around much easier.  And of course, Target, as always.

I looked forward to being back to the land of Wonderful Things, but one thing I didn't think about when looking forward to all of the amazing things I could do was that in order to do those things, I'd have to leave my house.

In Cairo, we had a lovely, large apartment.  So on days when I didn't feel like leaving, the children had lots of space to ride bikes, push strollers, build houses, make cushion mountains, and scatter their toys.

I think that the townhouse we're renting (at a price that I'm not going to name, but let's just say that it's a good thing State pays housing) could probably fit into the front room of our apartment.  And that includes the staircases and three bedrooms and bathrooms.  We have a deck, but it opens onto a communal hill, and even Edwin can easily unlatch the gate, so I have to be downstairs in my room to supervise if they want to go outside.  So the children have the kitchen, the living room, and their room to play in.  And any time they bring out a toy or two (of the three we brought with us) the entire house immediately looks like a hurricane went through.

So yes, the parks are amazing.  I love the library, and maybe we'll make it to the zoo.  But when doing any of those things involves loading three children (soon to be four) into the car, unloading them, keeping them from running away or being run over, putting them back in, driving home, and unloading them again, I think I'll actually take my apartment in Cairo some days.  I guess I've been spoiled.

Why I love language training

When we first realized that Brandon was going to need language training, I was apprehensive about it.  I had heard unpleasant things; that he would be in class all day and doing homework all night, I would never see him again, or he would go crazy with all of the language he had to learn in such a short time.

Now that he's been in training for over six weeks, I can officially say that I Love Language Training.  It's fantastic.  It's wonderful.  I haven't bathed my children in weeks.  If we didn't have to live crammed into a tiny townhouse without much of our things and living on base pay, I'd be happy to have Brandon in language training perpetually.  And so would he.

Some days he has to stay really late, like until four o'clock.  Then he doesn't get home until almost four thirty, after leaving at seven in the morning.  Those are the rough days.  At least once a week, he'll get off early enough to meet me and the children at the park and we'll walk home together, often after spending some quality rock-throwing time at the creek next to the park.

The other day I had an OB appointment at one in the afternoon.  Brandon told his teacher that he had to leave a few minutes early, and he was home in time for me to go to the doctor all by myself and read a book while waiting.

And to make life even better, Brandon really enjoys learning Azerbaijani.  He is in a class with three other men, all Russian speakers, so they spend half of the time speaking in Russian so he gets to work on that also.  According to Brandon, Azerbaijani is a very logical language, and even has the added bonus of the odd Arabic word thrown in, and so  he is happily doing quite well.  I asked him a few weeks ago how long it took him to get to this point in Arabic (after majoring in Arabic in college), and he looked at me and replied, "never."

In a few months, we'll move on to post where Brandon will have to work a real job again with real hours and I'll have to bathe the children again.  But until then, I'm really enjoying the break.  And so is he.

What's in a name?

In three and a half weeks, if nobody decides to make a surprise entrance, we will have a new member in our family, a little boy.  In three and a half weeks, I'll have to fill out the information for a birth certificate, which I will then use to procure all of the documents necessary to transport our little boy to Baku.  I have all of the necessary information - after all I've done this three times already - except for one thing.  A name.

Back, back a long time ago before I was even pregnant with Kathleen, Brandon and I talked about baby names.  He asked how I liked the name Edwin, and I said that I liked it just fine.  Edwin is the middle name of his maternal grandfather, who Brandon got his first name from.  And so we decided to name our first son Edwin.

Then we talked about my Aunt Kathleen, who I've always been close with.  As a child, I used to drive my parents crazy be claiming that I'd really been meant to go to her and not the crummy family that I'd been stuck with.  Then we decided to name our first daughter Kathleen.

We both liked Sophia, and its meaning, wisdom.

So when Kathleen was announced to be a girl, it didn't take any time to decide on her name.  Sophia was named just as easily, and Edwin didn't have a chance to be anything but Edwin.

This baby, however... I suppose that's what happens when you have a larger family.  All of the good names get used up early, and then you have to stretch for the next ones [sorry baby, when you're old enough to read this.  We love you just as much].  Brandon knew a family whose fifth son was named Quentin.  Sometimes creativity fails after awhile.

I've had a name that I've like for quite some time now, but Brandon just isn't sold on it.  And every time we try to discuss names, nobody can quite get serious and choices like 'Thor' and 'Ignatius' are thrown around.  So baby boy is still referred to as baby boy.

I know we'll have to make some sort of decision soon - as in three and a half weeks soon - but I have no idea what that will turn out to be.  I do know, however, that it won't be Ignatius.

Consumed by Consumables

In the LDS church, members are encouraged to have a one-year food supply.  My parents have always had cans of wheat lurking underneath the stairs, buckets of sugar in random closets, and tins of salt in cupboards.  I have never been that organized.

When we lived in Cairo, I tried to have three months' worth of non-perishable food stocked in my cupboards in case of emergencies, which is about as adherent I'd ever been to the one-year food storage guidance.  Previous to moving to Cairo, we had lived in various places, all small and all thought to be temporary, so I never invested in a supply figuring that I would be moving soon, so what would be the point?

I now have the opportunity to make up for that laxity.

Over the past few weeks, I have been filling in a several-page spreadsheet.  I've driven my children crazy at the store, slowly perusing all of the aisles while jotting down prices in a notebook.  I've just about driven myself crazy trying to find the absolute cheapest price for coconut.  Despite owning a Costco membership, I'm buying one at Sam's for just one visit, because they stock Ghirardelli chocolate chips, McCormack chicken stock, and fifty-pound bags of popcorn.

In the next few weeks I get to put together not a one-year supply, but at two-year supply of everything I can think of that can't be found in Baku.  When we were in Cairo, we had a lovely commissary, but in Baku no such luck.  So instead, Brandon is entitled to a consumables shipment, 2,500 pounds of whatever we can use up and think that we can't live without.

Think of whatever you go to Target to buy.  Ziploc bags, diapers, shampoo, laundry detergent, plastic wrap, toilet cleaner, deodorant.  And then think of buying it for the next two years.  Then think of all of those American foods that you enjoy so much.  Chocolate chips, black beans, whole-wheat pasta, cold cereal, goldfish crackers, peanut butter.  Two years of those also.  I've made sure to put two years of root beer on our list.  And brown sugar.

Which is why I've been driving myself insane filling out my spreadsheet, figuring out the price per ounce of vanilla, or oxy-clean, or coconut, or butter-flavored Crisco.  Because when you're buying two years' worth of brown sugar (approximately two hundred pounds), an extra twenty cents a pound starts to add up.

So when you come to visit in a few weeks, don't be surprised to see toilet paper and dishwasher detergent as our new accent pieces in the living room, with wheat decorating the upstairs hallway.  I'm hoping that our new home in Baku will have a little more space than our townhouse.