Papaya Mommy

Don't you love my mirror photography?

2008-11-04T08:11:00.002-07:00

There's at least one great thing about living on an Indian reservation where there's almost zero interest in national politics (I haven't seen a single sign for either presidential candidate on the entire reservation): when you show up to vote, the number of poll workers will almost certainly outnumber the amount of people waiting in line. This morning, Papaya Daddy & I were the lone voters, with about 10 workers at the polling station to help us along. It still felt good to be a part of the national democratic process, however.

Happy voting day, America!

Daddy-son adventure time

2008-11-02T13:39:00.006-07:00

We missed church today, since the Banana was down with a diarrheal illness yesterday & we didn't want to infect anybody (she seems much better today).

Papaya Daddy was going a little stir crazy by lunch time today so, as I put the two girls down for naps, he & the Papaya headed off in our car to find a nice place to do some hiking.

It's fun to see them go off together to pursue adventure, even with the inevitable (but slight)worry I can't help bearing (two adventure-loving males together). I'm sure they'll come home having had a wonderful and exciting time.

Last Saturday, we headed off with our church friends to the edge of Third Mesa for a cookout. About half the group headed over the edge of the mesa for a hike/rock scramble. They had a wonderful time, & Papaya Daddy was blown away by how agile and reasonable the Papaya was in his climbing. He had confidence and skill, but stayed away from ledges & dangerous situations. We were both proud of him, and I'm sure it was the beginning of many heart pounding adventures to come for the Papaya & his Daddy. Sometimes, as a mother, you'd just rather not look or know.

See the Papaya stuck to the steep rock?

We've heard that this is one of the caves that the Hopi used to hide out in to keep their kids from being taken away to government boarding school about 100 years ago (it used to be mandatory, and some of the parents who resisted were actually taken to Alcatraz!). Evidently it doesn't have much in it now except for rat poop (yes, they explored it).

Here's a just plain gorgeous picture, professionly taken by Papaya Daddy:

Goodbye!

Lost in Translation

2008-10-22T14:47:00.002-07:00

They say that you've really mastered a foreign language when you begin to understand humor in that language.

If that's true, then I haven't quite mastered my kids' language yet.

Breakfast this morning became a joke-telling fest for the two older kids. Here are samples:

***

Banana: Mommy, can I tell you a joke?

Me: Sure. Tell me a joke.

Banana: How do ducks fly?

Me: How?

Banana: They flap their wings! [Ha, ha, ha, ha!!]

Me: Was that your joke?

Banana: Yes! That's silly! That makes my tummy full from laughing!

***
Papaya: Mommy, I have a joke.

Me: Okay, what is it?

Papaya: While I'm eating breakfast, people are being buried underground! [Ha, ha, ha, ha!]

***
They're a barrel of laughs, those two!

Proof that she's a drama queen

2008-10-19T14:41:00.002-07:00

Our car ride home from church this afternoon was suddenly interrupted with loud, shrill, and tragic crying from the Banana. It sounded like somebody had seriously hurt her.

Me: Banana, what's the matter?

Banana: [Waaahhh!] Papaya say something to me!

Me: What did he say to you?

Banana: Adagio!!!! [Waaahhhh!]

Where DO our children pick up this kind of language?!

Because the obvious thing to do when you're having trouble keeping one blog current...

2008-10-18T10:18:00.003-07:00

...is to create a new one!

Yes, since I was posting too frequently on this blog for my computer to keep up with me, I've created a new blog for the overflow inspiration.

Actually, the real reason I created a new blog is to keep a digital scrapbook of our homeschooling adventures. I hope it will act as a kind of report of what we do, a place to record the kids' work and accomplishments (more "portable" than boxes of papers), and possibly a source of the occasional idea for another homeschooler (I know I've certainly gained a lot of inspiration by reading other people's ideas online).

It may be completely boring for those not interested in homeschooling, my kids' weekly educational activities, or our choices for curriculum, so I'll try to keep interesting, general family posts on this blog.

Anyway, for those who are interested in our homeschool, I present to the world...

....[drum roll]....

3 R's on the Rez

Enjoy!

P.S. Hey, Kim & Jordana - how about starting your own?

Happy Birthday, Banana!

2008-10-16T09:16:00.005-07:00

Our "pretty in pink" girl is 3 years old now! And so very different from her brother. She's the drama queen of our family - definitely no understatement with her! The most musical family member, too - it does my heart good to know there will be at least one of us who can carry a tune! Strong willed, she's already turning into a bit of a leader. During her NaiNai's visit last week, she was making up her own games & songs & teaching them to NaiNai. We predict a girl who will be very clever in school in the future - she's very sharp and articulate and already shows an ability to concentrate (when she wants to, which is not particularly often).

Unlike the Papaya, who was heavily "into" trains and cars at her age, the Banana has shown no particular passion for any theme - she's not into princesses, dolls, cars, or anything specific for long. This can make present-buying more complicated! The upside is that when she does receive a present, she is gratifyingly excited and appreciative, no matter what the present is. She does like make-believe, though (like her brother), and (also like him) enjoys making and serving meals to an eclectic assortment of animals, vehicles, living human beings, and random inanimate objects.

She has almost perfected the art of frustrating her brother and getting him into trouble, but also plays beautifully & happily with him for long periods of time. It's fun to watch them together. She is fascinated with her infant sister (and mostly gentle), and the Portabella loves watching her and following her every move. She was the first to make the Portabella laugh.

The Banana loves books, poetry, songs, and drama, which makes her a fun participant of our home "preschool". We look forward to seeing how she'll develop and grow in the next year. We love you, Banana!

Random Quote of the Day

2008-10-16T09:14:00.001-07:00

From the Banana at breakfast this morning:

"Mommy, I'm chewing like an animal in trouble!"

Potpourri

2008-10-14T11:14:00.004-07:00

Random Musings from a lapsed blogger:

We just returned from a lovely 4-day vacation in Flagstaff. It was a much needed break for a much-worked Papaya Daddy & Mommy. We got sore necks staring up at the beautiful golden aspens high up in the peaks, then descended to red rock Sedona to complete a fairly strenuous 5-mile hike into Boynton Canyon. The Papaya hiked the entire 5 miles on his own, with only one minor whine during the first half. We were all incredibly proud of him. Way to go, Papaya!

Speaking of the Papaya, during our second night in our Flagstaff hotel, I heard a bump in the dark, coming from the direction of the kids' room. I walked over to investigate. Both kids were asleep, but as I came near the Papaya, I saw that his pillow was covered with blood. "Are you okay?" I whispered. The Papaya stirred & said "Yes, Mommy, but I fell out of bed." Bending closer, I saw a gash on his left eyelid. I awakened Papaya Daddy & we pulled out our flashlight to investigate further. Shrinking away from the light, a very sleepy Papaya protested, "I'm shy!" and immediately fell back asleep again. However, the gash was gaping enough to require a stitch or two to avoid a large scar. Wanting to avoid the trauma of the ER at 1:00 in the morning (not to mention a needle in the Papaya's eyelid), Dr. Daddy drove out to Walmart & returned with Superglue. I held the Papaya (still mostly asleep) still while our expert physician superglued his eyelid gash together with three separate applications that we blew on to dry. It's healing beautifully, and the Papaya never shed a single tear over the incident!

The Papaya is old enough now to begin exploring some of the deep questions of life, specifically the afterlife. A couple months ago, it dawned on him that we all (including him) will die someday, and after some tears and discussion, he decided to focus on the excitement of Heaven rather than the horror of death. Since then, there's been a lot of speculation about Heaven & exactly how we'll get there. When NaiNai (Papaya's paternal grandmother), who just completed a two week visit, asked him how he could get to heaven (she was interested in teaching him about the salvation process rather than the mecanics of transport he was pondering), he thought for a few seconds, then answered very seriously, "Well, first you have to die. After that, I'm not sure how you get there." She tried to explain about asking Jesus into your heart, and he responded with absolute gravity, "But NaiNai, how do I do that after I die?" After some further thought, he decided that there was probably a big tube between heaven & earth, and that after you die, you get sucked through the tube, all the way to heaven.

Our efforts at religious education also include teaching the two older kids a Bible verse every week. We try to make sure they remember the reference as well as the verse. The Papaya's pretty good at this, but the Banana (who just turned 3 - Happy Birthday!) has a little bit of trouble. "Can you tell me where it's from?" is a common question from us after she recites a verse.

Well, last week the kids were watching a Netflix Reading Rainbow DVD about immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century. It included a lot of old footage of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, and concluded with the playing of the famous 80's song with the refrain, "They comin' to America! Today!" The kids found this song quite memorable, and during snack, the Banana sang the refrain & asked me, "Mommy, where does 'Comin' to America' come from?" Absently, I replied, "from Neil Diamond." The Banana triumphantly declared, "Neil Diamond 15:16!"

I don't think Neil Diamond is quite that authoritative.

The Portabella is growing by leaps and bounds & just hit her 5-month birthday. She got her second round of immunizations two weeks ago and weighed in at 12 pounds. She's becoming quite the extrovert and loves to give dazzling smiles to strangers, something that garners her quite a lot of public adoration when we're out and about. Those strangers had better not try to hold her, however - she's a definite Mommy's girl when it comes to that.

Cultural tidbit of the day for all my readers: our long weekend in Flagstaff was made possible by Papaya Daddy's comp days that followed a grueling 10-day work stint (something that happens about once a month). This "Ward doc" rotation includes a weekend of running the ER and the inpatient wards. The ER was a busy place weekend before last, in part because of the annual Hopi "basket dance". This is a harvest-type celebration dance that traditionally included tossing baskets (the Hopi are excellent weavers) into the dancing space as an expression of joy in the harvest and bounty. These days, the throwing of objects has extended past just baskets to encompass just about any kitchen implement you can think of - toasters, coffeepots, and pans are all fair game. Papaya Daddy had his hands full repairing lacerations (with stitches, not Superglue) - caused specifically by a flying platter, a muffin pan, and some unknown object. Only at Hopi!

Stay tuned for a birthday post & pictures of the Banana & fall aspens - hopefully sometime in the next month!

Another Overdue Update

2008-07-28T14:07:00.013-07:00

Enjoy the pics for now, & come back soon - I'll add commentary on each family member within the next day or so!

Garden pictures

2008-05-29T10:59:00.008-07:00

Per the request of my sister, here are some photos of our beautiful garden. Everything you see is a result of Papaya Daddy's blood, sweat, and tears. Gardening here is not easy, but it definitely gives you a sense of accomplisment when you succeed in ekeing out anything that's not a weed!

The grass is greener now, after a good rain & some more Papaya Daddy work.

A profusion of poppies!

Our front walkway during a freak hailstorm last week, and in the sunlight.

Happy Birthday, Papaya!

2008-05-29T10:40:00.005-07:00

In all the excitement over the Portabella's arrival, I don't want to neglect the Papaya, who is celebrating his fifth birthday today! We had a party for him at church on Sunday, where we enjoyed a chocolate cake with Saturn on it and played a solar system parcel game with rocket balloons in the center. We started off this morning with crepes, and plan to have gyoza (potstickers) for lunch and pizza for dinner (all at the Papaya's request). He received his main present from us this morning (ironically, a medical rescue helicopter, purchased a couple weeks before my little adventure with a real one), and is going to open a super-fun present from his grandmother this afternoon. He and the Banana are helping her make a cake right now. Papaya Daddy has the day off to help celebrate. So it looks like it's going to be a pretty good day for all concerned! We'll have to post a couple more pictures when the festivities are over.

We have really enjoyed watching the Papaya grow and develop over the past year - it's been so exciting! He's learned to read (basic words and sentences), write, make up fun stories, and do math at a 1st grade level. His personality has become even more his own, and he shows a special capacity for generosity, compassion, appreciation of natural beauty, impulsivity, and thinking outside the box. We are proud of him and love him so much!

Putting a candle in a birthday crepe this morning. The Papaya chose his own outfit - notice the pointsettia in his pocket! Very dapper!

Helping to water our thirsty lawn a few days ago.

Welcome to the Portabella!

2008-05-29T10:10:00.008-07:00

I'm back again! The last two weeks and two days have been anything but boring! Hopefully I'll have a little more time later to post the Portabella's birth story (unexpectedly exciting). But for now, here are some recent pictures to satisfy eager family members!

By the way, her first check-in yesterday, at 2 weeks old, revealed that the Portabella has passed the 6-pound mark! At 6 pounds, 1 ounce, she's gained 10 ounces since her birth on May 13 (when she weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces ). It's nice to know all my nursing over the past two weeks has done more than help me fit back into size 8 clothes.

More later!

Yes, she's scrawny, all right (but gaining weight fast)!

She already has plenty of personality!

The Banana suddenly looks huge next to her little sister!

Not much happening...

2008-05-02T14:55:00.003-07:00

How's that for an exciting blog post title? Really makes you want to read it, huh?

But it's true. We haven't been stuck in any washes lately. I haven't gone into early labor. Papaya Daddy just keeps on working. I keep on mothering the kids, housewifing the house, & homeschooling the Papaya. The wind just keeps on howling. The dust just keeps on filtering through every crack in the house. We keep on getting stuck in the house all day because of the duststorms outside. And my belly just keeps on growing.

I'm ready for some excitement. Like, say, a new baby arriving soon. This month, in fact! Life feels a little tedious right now.

That's about it. Our major excitement of the week will be attending our neighbor's bar mitzvah in Flagstaff tomorrow (and we are looking forward to it).

I'm 37 weeks pregnant on Tuesday - full term! I'll make sure to take & post some pictures.

To increase the interest level of this otherwise dreadfully boring post, I'll close with a story the Papaya composed & dictated to me yesterday. He was using a "story starter" picture that came with the Language Arts kindergarten curriculum we've been doing together. This small picture showed two boys together in the woods, examining a tree that was missing the middle part of its trunk (i.e. there was a stump, then a blank space, then the rest of the tree continuing up through the top of the picture). Here's the Papaya's story, in his own words:

Two Boys Took a Walk

Once upon a time, there was a tree in the forest. The middle of the tree was gone, but it was still standing up.

There were two boys. Their names were Cottontail and Peter. The first boy said, “Hmm, it’s nice outside. Let’s take a walk in the forest.” The boys found the tree. The older boy used the flashlight to figure out why the middle of the tree was gone. He discovered that the tree was still growing, even though the middle was gone. Aliens were growing an upside-down tree in their magnet thing. The magnet thing was up there in the sky. It’s yellow, and it has some silver on it, and you can stick the two silvers together and make something. You don’t live in it, but you just grow trees out of it.

The aliens were in their rocketship. They didn’t see the boys, because it was dark in outer space. The boys saw the aliens. When they saw them, they said, “I won’t take a rocketship. I will take a car.” Then they went home and took a car to the restaurant. They ate there.

The aliens watered their tree. Then they flew to the moon and took the tree with them. Their rocketship landed on the moon. They watered the tree some more and they planted it on the moon. It grew well there.

The End

Respect the wash!

2008-04-17T14:58:00.012-07:00

Last weekend the incessant, abominable wind that’s been plaguing us for a large part of this Spring season took a break. Saturday was a beautiful day – highs in the low 70’s, a brilliant, cloudless sky, and only a light breeze. Of course, we had to do something outdoors!
Papaya Daddy, after some meditation on various options, came up with a brilliant idea – something that would effectively balance my advanced state of pregnancy & lower energy levels, the young ages of our children, and his own perennial desire to do something non-standard. We would pack a picnic & drive out on dirt roads to a new section of the wash that runs near our house. Then we would park our vehicle, shoulder our food, & explore the wash, enjoying a delicious outdoor lunch when we found a nice spot.

So we packed a lovely picnic (leftover homemade portabella mushroom pizza, cut-up apples, & homemade sugar cookies), included plenty of water, strapped the eager kids into their car seats, & headed out. We drove about five miles down the main highway (paralleling the wash), turned onto a dirt road, and within a quarter of a mile, were crossing the wash at a new spot. As we drove down into the wash, we saw a faint track that actually followed it. Papaya Daddy turned off the dirt road & into the wash, followed the track for about 100 meters, decided he had found a good place to park, turned around, pulled to the side of the track (just in case another vehicle happened to come along while we were parked) & came to an abrupt stop.

Something about the way our vehicle stopped caused Papaya Daddy to try to start again. We did not move. He tried a little harder. The wheels turned but we didn’t really move. He got out of the car & tried pushing us while I pressed the accelerator. Initially it felt like we were moving. However, upon closer inspection, we came to the sinking realization that our movement had been a downward rather than a forward one. We were stuck in deep sand.

Not the kind of picture you see in magazine advertisements!

Considering that we were bound to get our new SUV stuck sooner or later, this was not a bad situation. We were stuck in a fun spot the kids would love exploring. We had a great lunch packed. There was plenty of daylight and nowhere else we had to be that day. It hadn’t seriously rained in 2 months, so flash floods were highly unlikely. I probably wouldn’t go into labor. We even had great cell phone reception, so if our efforts at extricating ourselves proved useless, we could call for reinforcements. So we released the kids & hunkered down. (Actually, Papaya Daddy did most of the work I’m about to describe. Owing to strong Braxton Hicks contractions that assailed me every time I tried to do any serious digging out, my efforts were confined to occasional digging, material gathering, child care, and operating the Pilot from the driver’s seat when applicable.)

After digging the tires out (the front tires were buried 6-8 inches), we attempted to build a little “road” for them, hoping to get out of the hole we were in. We started exploring the trash in the wash, and scrounged up some old clothes & underwear, a few torn roof tiles, the front of a stand-up fan, and a small piece of particle board. The kids helped us build about three or four feet of “road” in front of this, made from dry, dead, stick-like weeds we pulled from the wash.

The kids help make a "road"

Papaya Daddy got his feet firmly planted behind the car, & pushed again while I tried to drive. We moved about three feet & started spinning down into the sand. So we dug out, rearranged our trashy “road” materials, and tried again. And again. And again. And again. Each try, we moved two or three feet. Occasionally, I’d think we were really starting to get going & would press down excitedly on the accelerator, only to spin the front tires & bury them deeply – a reflex that sorely tested Papaya Daddy’s patience!

"Couldn't you tell the tires were just spinning down???"

Papaya Daddy trying to smooth out the sand in front of the Pilot

INTERMISSION: Meanwhile, the kids were having a marvelous time exploring the wash, climbing the sandy cliffs, & enjoying our nice picnic. We did take a break to join them for lunch, then got back to our work.

After about 2 ½ hours & many attempts, we had moved about 20 or 30 feet and were almost back on the original track going through the wash. To our discouragement, however, it turned out that this track was only a thin crust over more deep sand. We had driven on it without a problem when we already had momentum, but it seemed doubtful that we would be able to get up on top of it from a position of complete inertia. The kids were past their naptime & beginning to tire, Papaya Daddy & I were definitely tired, I was beginning to suggest calling for help, and the adventure of being stuck was losing its sheen. But Papaya Daddy wasn’t willing to give up yet. All we needed was a longer “road” to give us the momentum we needed to navigate the sand.

All our road materials were shredded by this time, so we made a new exploration of the wash. The abandoned couches & rusty stove didn’t benefit us much, but we did discover a couple of true treasures. Papaya Daddy unearthed two large pieces of absolutely disgusting, stained, half-burnt carpet (about four or five feet long), & I proudly returned with a three or four foot long piece of old particleboard that looked like it had, at one time, been the wall to a rabbit hutch (it had a window cut in it). Never before have we appreciated the wash’s trash so much.

Our first try with these reinforcements was still a wash, but got us further than anything thus far. And on our second try – oh, joy – the Pilot actually continued moving past the end of the “road”! The tires fishtailed & spun in a disconcerting manner for about 50 feet, and then, as I continued to move forward & gather speed, I sensed the wondrous feeling of the tires actually gaining purchase on the track. We were going to make it! Of course, I didn’t stop the car until I reached the packed down dirt road crossing the wash. Papaya Daddy & the kids ran jubilantly behind me, & we broke out the cookies (as we drove home) to celebrate.

Papaya Daddy re-lays the road prior to our final, successful effort! (You see only a part of the track of our previous efforts.)

It wasn’t the picnic we had envisioned, but it does make a great memory. And we learned that deep sand & 2 wheel drive vehicles (even SUV’s with high clearance) aren’t a good mix. From now on, we will respect the wash & explore it on foot only!

"When do we get to eat cookies?"

Belly pics! (33 1/2 weeks pregnant)

2008-04-12T09:17:00.004-07:00

Here are pics taken this morning at 8 months pregnant. Note the incredible Arizona sky!

Finally, an update!

2008-04-09T11:06:00.005-07:00

Hi, everybody! I'm back from a very, very long hiatus! Maybe, now that I've broken the ice, I'll start blogging once a week or so again! Anyway, here's a quick recap of the past four or five months:

* Morning (all-day) sickness finally petered out around Christmas time, although it still bothers me if I get too tired. It did last long enough to help me get excused from jury duty in early December (I was extremely close to actually being selected for an attempted murder case being tried at our county seat, a good two hours drive away)! So at least the nausea had some redeeming value!

* I am currently 33 weeks pregnant & will be full-term (37 weeks) in a month! Due date is May 27, but I expect this baby to follow the path of her siblings and come a week or so early.

* I am great with child. Not quite as great as the tape measure says I should be, but reasonably great. I finally bit the bullet & attended my first doctor's appointment ever for this pregnancy about a month ago (bad, bad, example, Ms. Public Health Degree Holder, wife of MD) We had a bit of a scare when my belly measured almost 7 cm. smaller than it should have (i.e. my belly measured 21 weeks pregnant when it should have measured 28 weeks). I got an ultrasound the next day & the baby was exactly on track for dates, measuring in the 50th percentile for a 28 week old baby in every measurement taken! My amniotic fluid levels & everything else was normal. I'm not sure where my body was hiding the extra 7 cm. of baby, but it's bloomed since then & I'm now only measuring about 3 cm. small (which is not worrisome since I was 3 cm. small for both of my previous pregnancies). In any case, I don't feel or look small! I've finally achieved the stage where even strangers (for the most part) feel safe commenting on my expectant state. I'll try to get a good belly shot sometime!

* We appear to be gestating another little girl. That means that when we get together with my sister's family, the poor Papaya will remain the only male among 6 cousins! The Papaya seems to be dealing with the news with equanimity, and we are very happy about another girl. We have a name picked out, but we have to keep something secret until delivery! I'm afraid that unless we get incredibly creative, it won't rhyme with a tropical fruit. We may have to expand our produce options as far as nicknames go.

* Exciting travels since my last blog post include a Thanksgiving trip to visit my sister & family in Pennsylvania as well as my parents (and a multitiude of other gathered family) in Maryland. My family then convened in Arizona for a wonderful late Christmas & New Year's celebration. In February, we packed up & headed out to Germany for a week with Papaya Daddy's family (his parents live in Bavaria). We had an easy trip there, a wonderfully relaxing visit with family, and a hellish trip home that required about two or three weeks of recovery time. It included 48 hours of constant travel, punctuated by about 3 or 4 interrupted hours of sleep. Only two hours after finally arriving home again, Papaya Daddy succumbed to an intense bout of food poisoning that kept him up for a third night & landed him in the ER, hooked up to IV fluids & antibiotics, by the morning. I can't say I'm enthused about international travel again anytime soon.

*I love homeschooling the kids! Both kids enjoy our times of reading great books together, our "trip around the world" theme, and our nature walks. The Papaya is learning to read & write at a leisurely pace, and is showing a decided aptitude for math. In fact, he enjoys it so much that we use math lessons as a bribe to get him to nap ("If you nap, Papaya, you can stay up later than the Banana & have a math lesson!") - and it works! Granted, we have a really fun math curriculum we use for the late night sessions that includes a lot of games and no workbook work. Papaya Daddy & I try not to get too obsessed planning out the next 12 years of school!

* The health center here is currently shortstaffed & Papaya Daddy has been working way too much and too hard. We hope this state of affairs will end soon, as three new physicians are scheduled to begin work between June and September. For now, we're just enduring & plowing through.

That's all the news from our little corner of the Colorado Plateau. I really do play to update more frequently in the future - maybe I should even try to commit to every week! Keep your eyes open for some great pictures of last weekend's trip to Grand Falls, Arizona - coming soon!

P.S. Here are some recent pictures of the kids - taken at night in dim lighting, but still fun!

Maybe Freud was right...

2007-10-18T07:47:00.001-07:00

A recent conversation in our house:

Papaya: Mommy, you're going to get a new husband!

Me: A new husband?! But I don't want a new husband! I love the one I already have! I plan to keep my current husband as long as we're both living.... (out of curiosity)... who would my new husband be?

Papaya: ME!

Me: But if you become my husband, then who would be your daddy? Right now my husband is your daddy. Wouldn't you be sad if he weren't your daddy any more?

Papaya: I will be my daddy!

Young sexist

2007-10-18T07:44:00.001-07:00

Since I got pregnant, we've been teaching the Papaya a simplified version of the birds & the bees. As a part of this, we explained to him that the Banana & I both have wombs - places where babies can grow inside our bodies - but that he doesn't.

After some thought, he dealt with his womb envy by composing the following song and singing it to me (my brother-in-law the poet will be gratified to see he didn't feel the need to make it rhyme):

"I have a brain
And you have a womb
But when you look deeper
We both have a head!"

So much to share!

2007-10-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

After a shameful and eventful 2-month hiatus from this blog, I'm finally back - with a lot of news. It's always hard to know where to start after having been away so long, so I'll use the easy method of showing pictures (each worth 1000 words, so as to make up for all my non-blogging) and filling in the gaps in-between to share about our lives for the last 1/6 of the year.

Soon after my last post, in which I gleefully introduced our new family member (the Honda Pilot, still not named), we decided to try her out with a family camping trip to Oak Creek Canyon.

All our gear fit beautifully, and we were happy to learn, after a strong thunderstorm erupted right after we got it set up, that our tent really was waterproof, as advertised.

Our campsite was right next to beautiful Oak Creek, and we could hear the creek as we went to sleep at night.

The hot air balanced the freezing creek water nicely, and was great fun to wade and spash in. The Papaya & his Daddy tried their hardest to do things that would put a bit of a scare into my heart:

We started off our first morning with a scrumptious pancake breakfast, accompanied by real maple syrup and great coffee made in a French press (yeah, we really rough it on these camping trips)...

...and then we hit the road, excited about taking the Pilot on a Sedona back road we had always wanted to explore with the Corolla but been unable to. Passing all the professional Pink Jeep tours as we drove further into the backcountry made us feel adventurous.

The Pilot & the model:

We parked our vehicle and hiked to one of Sedona's famed "vortex" rock formations. New Agers believe vortex sites have especially concentrated cosmic energy & seek them out. All we've noticed about them is that they're all unusually beautiful. Despite the plebian name of this vortex site ("CowPies"), it was no exception. It was full of shallow depressions that had been filled with water during the thunderstorm the day before and reflected the red rock spires all around:

The kids, surrounded by enormous puddles surpassing their wildest dreams, drew their own inspiration from the scene:

Things gradually got muddier and muddier...

We did the best we could with baby wipes and less-muddy water from the puddles. But it's safe to say the kids have done as much to break in our new Pilot as the bumpy roads we drive it on.

The Monday after our camping trip was Labor Day, and we celebrated it with our church by a cookout at the edge of Third Mesa. This has been the best workout for our new Pilot so far. We really navigated some big rocks & grades! But we made it, transporting a few people while the church's pick-up and attached trailer took the rest:

The kids clambered all over the boulders & had a wonderful time, while the adults built a fire, cooked hamburgers & brats, chatted, & hoped their kids wouldn't plunge off the edge of the mesa. Save for a few minor falls, nothing of the sort happened, and it was a wonderful and beautiful evening.

Here are a few of the cute church kids (including ours):

Labor Day this year is eventful for more than the church cook-out. Spurred on by some problems the local mission school has had this year as well as by observing the somewhat fun atmosphere of the homeschool going on at our church (they're now schooling 10 kids, including one high-schooler still reading at a 2nd grade level after going through the local schools here), I had started to consider, just a little bit, in the back of my mind, the idea of homeschooling. On Labor Day I decided to use my free time (Papaya Daddy had both kids) to browse online and see what kinds of homeschooling curriculum were available. I ended up finding a literature-based curriculum (it has an unfortunate name, in my opinion) that I fell in love with. I showed Papaya Daddy & he was very impressed, as well. Their educational philosophy mirrors our own and boy, do they have a great selection of books! We also love how flexible they are, while at the same time saving their customers a lot of work putting together their own curriculum. We're impressed with their intercultural & international focus. It seems a little pricey, but you're paying for a lot of great books that will be in your house forever, plus it's completely re-usable for each successive child.

To make a long story short, we ended up ordering the Core B package for the Papaya, as well as some extras (language arts, handwriting, math) that will allow me to stretch it out over two years to cover his kindergarten year next year. We also ended up getting most of the fabulous Core A books (pretty much everything we didn't already own). Since we live 2 hours from the nearest decent library and rarely get there, I'm thrilled to suddenly have a great preschool literature collection! We've been doing informal "school" since then - basically, just reading & a little other work each day. It's been great fun & it's nice to have a little more structure to our days. We all enjoy it. The kids love the books & it's fun to see Papaya interacting with (acting out, talking about) something other than the Cars plot & characters! Papaya Daddy teaches a little bit of math some mornings before he runs off to work & this, I think, is the Papaya's favorite part of the day! I'm so impressed with this curriculum & am having so much fun with the idea of homeschooling that I'm ready to do it indefinitely. I think it will be good for the Papaya, especially, and it will really fit in with Papaya Daddy's schedule (he often works a weekend, followed by a four-day comp weekend. With homeschooling, we can do the same thing and enjoy his time off together without pulling kids out of school!) I'm excited about getting into some of the more advanced cores (like this one) - I want to read the books myself!

Receiving all the fun boxes of books, getting started with a bit more of a structure in our house, and planning out the next few years of homeschooling pretty much consumed the next few weeks our my life. It is nice to have something a bit more focused to do with myself & the kids during the day - they go much faster!

Before we knew it, the Banana's second birthday was upon us! She's grown up fast. Sometime I really will write a longer, more pointed entry just about her and what a fun little girl she is. Here she is, enjoying the birthday cake we took to the church potluck a few days before her birthday:

On her actual birthday, she got sweet cereal for breakfast & that evening, some ice cream with candles stuck in it as well as presents. She had a great time opening them & said a satisfying "Whoa!" after tearing open each present or card.

Despite having reached the great age of 2, the Banana remains petite and can actually fit into a smallish mailing box:

Here's the Papaya, looking dapper the morning of the Banana's birthday:

On the weekend after the Banana's birthday, we began to suspect that our lives and family might be changing dramatically and unexpectedly in the next year (and for many years after that). As the days continued to go by, our suspicions deepened. Finally, by Wednesday, I couldn't stand the suspense any more. Not wanting to drive 80 miles to the nearest grocery store or pharmacy, I made a trip to our local shopping metropolis - a tiny, rather dingy, and overpriced convenience store. With great embarassment and little hope, I waited until all other customers were out of the way and asked the man behind the counter if he had any pregnancy tests (since all pharmacy-like items were stored off limits). He actually did, and sold me a "Western Family" test on the spot. Despite our attempts at family planning, it was decisively conclusive, and the Papaya Daddy and I have been adjusting to the news (with increasing degrees of of happiness and excitement) ever since. Our new family member is due just about the time of the Papaya's birthday next May.

The day after I found out I was pregnant, we left home for an intense 16 mile round trip hike down to Supai and back. Supai is a small town on an Indian reservation at the bottom of a contributary canyon to the Grand Canyon (not the national park, but a portion of the Grand Canyon west of the national park). As well as being the only place in the United States where the mail is still delivered by mule, it's also famous as being an access point for the breathtakingly beautiful Havasupai waterfall and a couple other waterfalls formed by Havasu Creek. We were fortunate to have two good friends (formally mission school teachers) who are now living there and doing some tough teaching work at the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) elementary school. And we thought we were isolated - they have to hike 8 miles out of the canyon and drive 1 1/2 hours to do their grocery shopping, then drive back & carry everything 8 miles back down to their apartment!

We took Papaya Daddy's brother, both kids on backpacks, and all of our stuff for two nights, as well as 8 quarts of water and some snacks. Papaya Daddy & his brother carried a child each, while I took everything else. Since I was pregnant, they also tried to take most of the water - kind of nice for me (although I still ended up carrying close to 30 pounds)! We also brought a ton of groceries with us for our two friends. These 2 women hiked up 8 miles from their home in the morning, carrying a ton of the school's recycling with them (it only took them 2 1/2 hours!), loaded those into our vehicle, loaded down their backpacks with 50+ pounds of groceries & school supplies, hiked back with us, and still had the energy to cook supper for us while we collapsed in their apartment in various states of exhaustion and pain! They're our heros.

It was a tough but beautiful hike. We had to watch out for the mule trains, which paused for nobody, but that also added some interest. Here's the view from near the beginning of our hike. Our trail follows the canyon and our stopping point is right at the foot of the smallish butte you can barely see in the distance.
Here we are, taking a much desired break:
The next day, after a refreshing night in our friends' apartment, we hiked a couple miles further and came to the beautiful waterfall that made it all worthwhile:

The travertine (a kind of mineral) in the water makes it that incredible blue-green color. I've never seen anything like it! The water was a little cold for me, but Papaya Daddy went swimming right up to the foot of the waterfall. It really was paradisically beautiful (a sharp contrast to the enormous and ugly social problems our friends deal with in their classrooms every day.)

The hike back up (2000 feet elevation gain, 8 miles long) was not as bad as we thought it would be (although the final climb was still fairly brutal), and we made it in five hours.

The part of the trail that followed the creek in the early morning was, again, breathtakingly beautiful:
We were disappointed that no matter how long Papaya Daddy's brother & I waited at this point, mid-hike, the bus never came.

A few days after returning from the hike (right around 6 weeks pregnant), pregnancy hit me full-force. I have been dealing with constant, all-day nausea and exhaustion ever since. It really is not pleasant, and seems a lot worse than with either of the other two children. And it's going to continue for several weeks to come (I'm not even at 8 weeks yet)! I try to take it a day at a time.

Luckily, there are still distractions from the unpleasantness, like this recent hailstorm (anyone who knew me from childhood will understand my fascination with hail):

Last weekend, we took a trip to Flagstaff and drove up into the mountains to see the fall colors. And to you folks in the East complaining about a brown autumn, I have to say: come to Arizona. It's beautiful here!

It's a good thing you can't tell how we're freezing our toes off. The temperature was hovering around freezing, with stray snowflakes, and all we were wearing under those fleecies were short-sleeve shirts. There was also a cold wind blowing. After a decreasingly pleasant mile of hiking in which we just got colder and colder, we turned around and had an increasingly miserable hike back to the car. It took about three hours for me to thoroughly warm up!

It's much more comfortable to admire the beautiful resulting photos from my warm living room.

And that brings us pretty much to the present. In just two months, we've not only had numerous varied adventures, but we've become pregnant homeschoolers. I hope to have some less eventful months in the future!

Quick update & introduction

2007-08-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a long time since my last entry. I don't have a lot of time right now, but here's a quick update, as well as an introduction to our newest family member and a farewell to a long-time, much-abused but faithful-to-the-end family member.

In the last few weeks, the following notable things happened to our family:

*I bravely caught a wolf spider & humanely removed it from our house, instead of squishing it flat. Although I'm not yet comfortable with the idea of cohabitation (especially since it crawled out of a toy the Banana was holding), I've come a long way since this entry.

*A psychiatrist and his family (currently living in Alaska) came here to interview this week. They like it, and will probably move here in early December. They have a 4-year-old! Boy! And they're nice! It's hard to tell who's more excited - the Papaya or I. Either way, it's an answer to prayer, since he's been getting lonely lately without any playmates.

*The Banana completed her last free airplane flight as a lap child. Since her birth, she has taken 11 free roundtrips through the skies, including one all the way to Germany & back (actually, we had to pay a little for the international portion of that). I'd say we've gotten our money's worth. I can also say that my lap is looking forward to being empty on the next airplane trip.

*We had a great trip to North Carolina that included a lovely night with appdaddy & Queen Felicia (aka our wonderful aunt & uncle) and a fabulous week in an oceanfront Kure Beach house with all my family.

*We survived yet another on-the-road vomiting virus, which struck the Papaya first in the middle of the night and spread (with varying degrees of intensity) to most other family members.

*We received word via cellphone, halfway through the beach vacation, that our '98 Toyota Corolla workhorse, dropped off at a garage in Phoenix prior to our departure in order to have an oil leak assessed, required extensive repairs that would cost more than it was worth.

*We spent several hours over the next couple days employed in the following fun beach activities: huddling over my brother-in-law's computer in McDonalds (where we could pick up wireless), analyzing vehicles on Consumer Reports; engaging in deep discussions with each other & soliciting advice from the extended family; making scores of calls to various Phoenix car dealers & waiting for them to call us back; and agreeing to buy a particular vehicle (sight unseen) over the phone.

*We arrived back in Phoenix last Saturday evening & picked up our faithful Lydia (Corolla) from the garage. The next morning, we drove her to Showcase Honda to trade her in & buy our pre-reserved Honda Pilot 2007. To our great relief, the vehicle was as described (brand new), and the absolutely incredible price was as promised. Within three hours, I was transferring all our luggage & junk into our beautiful new SUV. Soon afterwards we were driving away, slightly dazed that it had all been so easy. We didn't even have our checkbook or the title to our old Corolla with us (we hadn't been planning to buy a new car). No problem! We were still the proud owners of Papaya Daddy's dream car. (We did promise to actually mail a check to pay for the vehicle when we got home.)

*Within the first two hours of driving the Pilot from Phoenix to Flagstaff, we accomplished what it took six years of driving Lydia to do: we doubled the mileage (it helped that the Pilot's mileage was 126 when we bought it, as opposed to the 80,000 miles that were on the Corolla when we purchased it!)

*I have become something I never thought I would be (and still regard with some sheepishness): the owner of a new SUV. We will, however, use this SUV for the purpose for which it was intended: we hope to explore the many enticing dirt roads that surround us, that have hitherto been denied us (or should have been denied us). Although so far, I haven't done anything more than try various dirt roads (about 100 meters long) connecting the main highway to the post office.

*We now have a vehicle that is actually large enough to accommodate guests (it seats 8)! No more renting cars for visitors (if they number more than 1) or contorting my body in a poor attempt to crookedly and uncomfortably squeeze my hips between the two car seats in the back of the Corolla (if it is a single guest). No more jigsaw puzzle maneuvering to fit our mammoth grocery purchases in a small trunk & roof box! And, most tantalizing, we now have ample car space for a third child - a possibility that creates emotions in the Papaya Daddy ranging from ambivilence to palpable fear & trembling.

Farewell, faithful Lydia...

Welcome to the family, [still unnamed but definitely male - any ideas?]

You never know what a day will bring...

2007-07-19T15:48:00.000-07:00

This morning, the kids were still dragging on with their breakfast at 8:30 a.m. (they had been up since 5:45). We had already mopped up almost a quart of homemade hummingbird nectar (sugar liquid) that the Banana pulled off the counter, spilled all over herself, slipped, & fell in. I had showered the Banana & started a load of laundry. Papaya Daddy had spent a good hour pulling spent sunflower plants from our yard, shaking out the seeds on the barren areas of our property, & throwing them into the desert behind our yard. He had run off, late, for work, and I was sitting with the kids in a grungy T-shirt & pair of sweat pants, alternately interacting with them and working on a Sudoku puzzle before tackling the dirty breakfast dishes. In other words, it was a pretty normal morning.

Then I got a phone call from our pastor's wife. "They need a piano player at a K-town funeral at 10:00 this morning!" she said. "Can you do it?"

A little background: we don't go to the K-town church, nor do I know anybody connected with the funeral (they don't know me, either). I'm not that excellent a piano player, and not that great a sightreader. I never practice these days, although I occasionally play on Sunday mornings at our church. K-town is about a 20 or 25 minute drive away, it's already 8:40, & I have two small children who can't just take care of themselves during a possible 2 hour funeral service. The songs requested are all from the Hopi hymnal, & there's only one that I know I've encountered before.

So I say, "Sure! I think I can get there on time! Can you guys help with the kids?"

I jump into hyperdrive - I call the Hopi man in charge of the service to let him know I'll be there, dress the Banana, stick the kids in front of a video, shower & dress myself & try to look presentable as a funeral pianist, get the diaper bag & water ready, sunscreen the kids, get the Papaya to the bathroom, buckle them in the car, and head off with time to spare. I hope I'll have a chance to try a couple of the hymns on the church piano before the service begins.

Lest you feel overly impressed by (or shocked at) my alacrity at accepting such an invitation, know that I've done this once before - when the Banana was exactly 6 days old. My mother was there to help with the preparation & child care, which made that instance a little easier - but at least this time, I don't have to squeeze a freshly post-partum body into appropriate non-maternity funeral attire, or cross my arms over my chest to avoid let-down midservice when I hear the Banana crying in the back of the church. I also have a little less stage fright at facing around 100 mourners & knowing that I'm completely unprepared and will probably make mistakes.

Once I arrive at K-town church, I do have about five or ten minutes to look at the songs & practice before the service starts. I practice in fits & starts, as family members begin to trickle in & my kids pound on the treble & bass regions of the piano. It turns out that from the four songs selected for the service, I am familiar with two, slightly familiar with one (translation of "Oh, Happy Day!" with some difference in the rhythm & a line or two of Hopi musical addition thrown into the middle of each verse - I end up accompanying the church choir for this during the service), and have a hard time feeling like I "get" the meter & rhythm of the final song, which I have never heard before. I end up having some serious problems with this in the actual service, since it appears that the way it is actually sung differs from the way it is written (i.e. long pauses over several of the notes, an actual meter change from 3/4 to 4/4 for a couple of bars.) By the time we get to the last stanza, I am basically on the same wavelength as those singing. It's a pity it was the final song!

During the long service (it turned out to be almost 2 hours with spontaneous eulogies in the middle & the viewing at the end), the kids have a wonderful time with the 20 year old pastor's son & a pre-teen girl (a member of another family living & helping at the church) who show up to babysit. Such a good time that I start to tense up as the kids' squeals of enjoyment from the Sunday School room attached to the sanctuary threaten to distract from the eulogies. I finally stick my head in & they end up moving the operation outside, to my immense relief.

After the less-than-successful final song & a prayer, the service leader coordinates the viewing - something like a receiving line at a wedding, except the open coffin takes the place of the wedding party. As people begin to line up, I sit awkwardly on the piano stool and wonder if I can sneak away. But no - one of the organizers leans over to me and says, "Can you play something?" This is very awkward - I don't know many songs from the Hopi hymnal, have no idea how to find the songs I do know (because I don't remember their Hopi names), & definitely don't want to pick one at random and struggle through sightreading it during the viewing. After some quick anguished reflection, I start to play through the songs we have already sung (except for the last one). By the time I get through those, I feel a little calmer, find a Hopi song I know from church, & start to play it. Unfortunately, the melody ends up sounding a little too upbeat and I get the uncomfortable feeling that the Hopi words are expressing how happy the singer is (by this time, people are crying pretty hard as they look into the coffin only about ten feet away from me). I quickly finish that, play what had been announced as the deceased man's favorite song again (ironically, the Hopi version of "Oh, Happy Day"), and search for new inspiration. By this time, people are wailing & throwing themselves on top of the coffin & I am really feeling awkward. I pick up the English hymnal & look up "Amazing Grace", because at least I know it well, then work on from there. Finally, it looks as if things are winding down, so I ask the orgainizer if he needs more music. He says no, so I thankfully slip out, pack up the kids, and drive home while heaving large sighs of relief. I haven't felt so much displacement in a while!

At least it was a break from the ordinary!

Rain at last! (Photo essay)

2007-07-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

The kids rush out joyously to greet the first real rain of the season (no thunder). Rain dance time!

As the rain lessens, the kids venture past the safety of the driveway and the garage shelter to the alluring gutter puddles.

The Banana removes her shoes for maximum gutter puddle enjoyment.

Ready to join the gang!

Making big splashes. A kid's life during an Arizona summer doesn't get much better than this.

A brisk wind picks up & the Banana heads, shivering, to the shelter of the garage...

...but ventures out again (sans wet skirt) to check out the Papaya's stationary gutter bike riding.

"Okay, this is it - I'm cold & I want inside!"

Warm & clean at last

A hot holiday

2007-07-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

Arizona is experiencing a heat wave. Near record temperatures. An Arizona heat wave in July is pretty brutal, let me tell you. We've been having temperatures over 100 degrees for the past few days, coupled with an intense sun, no clouds, and a burning, dry wind. It hasn't rained in a month.

We recently planted some grass & wildflower seed in our front yard. Every evening, we water the area we planted until it is sitting in a pool of water. By noon of the next day, the ground that held a puddle the night before looks like this:

At least there's some green there - a near miracle, in this weather!

Papaya Daddy is off today, but it's too hot to do much. Understandably, Independence Day is not a huge holiday among the Hopi Indians (although it is more popular than Columbus Day). They do seem to love fireworks, though, so we might see a few of those if we sit out in our yard tonight. Hopefully, the pyrotechnics won't spawn any real fires in this crispy environment.

Here's hoping that the summer monsoons begin soon! Even a few clouds would be welcome!

Deutschephilia

2007-06-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

We are back from Germany. We loved it! A beautiful, fascinating, green, clean country. I am certain that my sister, a comfirmed Anglophile, might also become a Deutschephile after a visit (especially considering her love of good beer, great bread & cheese & chocolate, bratwurst, Ikea style furniture, and lovely gardens).

Considering the challenges of long airplane travel, a 9 hour time difference, a virus that got us all but hit the Papaya especially hard, and a painful emerging incisor for the Banana, the kids were great travellers. We spent the first few days (at a friends' house in Kaiserslautern) mostly enjoying the green humidity, walking to the excellent local bakery & buying cheap, fresh bread, watching the five kids (ours & our friends') play together, and admiring the beautiful flowers everywhere. We spent the next few days in the green, rolling hills region of Bavaria, staying with Papaya Daddy's folks & visiting small villages, castle ruins, and large cathedrals in bigger towns. We did a beautiful, short river cruise with towering cliffs on either side of us and enjoyed a little bit of Germany's wonderful rail system. Then we traveled to the mountain region of Bavaria & took in the breathtaking scenery of the Alps. We rode a cog rail train that ascended a couple thousand meters towards the peak of Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak (on the Austria border), then got on cable cars that took us almost the rest of the way up (some stairs, a ladder, and a few well placed cables facilitated our climb to the very summit). We rode more cable cars to an indescribably lovely alpine hiking base called Alpspitze. We toured the bizarre Wagnerian-opera fantasy castle that Mad King Ludwig built in the late 1800's. On the way back to Frankfurt for our flight home, we stayed the night in a converted monastery inside Rothenburg, an amazingly preserved medieval walled city.

We packed a lot into a short two weeks! And we are tired.

Things we loved about Germany:

1. Nice mix of the old and the modern. Lots of history - almost every town has its own castle ruins, cathedral, or both. But the houses had (on the indoors) a nice, modern, clean-lines, Ikea-like style that we favor. There were all kinds of well-made, convenient features - like heated floor tiles, roulades at all the windows, cool toilet flush mechanisms (you could choose big flush or little flush each time), big bathrooms, heated towel racks, etc.

2. Child friendly. There aren't enough children being born in Germany, so the government actually subsidizes (generously) its citizens to bear them. The corollary to this is that the country itself felt welcoming to children. Kids under 6 years old were pretty much free of charge everywhere and on all public transport, which is usually not true in the States (although the States wins out as far as kids meals in restaurants go). There were lots of public playgrounds everywhere.

3. Good, cheap bakeries. Good cheese. Great cheap produce. Cherries everywhere, basically falling off trees (it was the season for them). Very good, cheap chocolate. You can buy great food from all the EU countries without paying import tax.

4. Relatively green (as in environmentally friendly) - compared to most places in the States, anyway. (The fact that gas is about $7.00/gallon probably has something to do with this.) Bike & pedestrian paths everywhere. Great train & public transport systems. Huge windmills everywhere. Lots of solar panels. Subsidized biodiesel at the gas stations. Smart cars are ubiquitous. Virtually everything is recycled, even garbage scraps.

5. Small fear of dumb lawsuits = more fun for kids. The play equipment available in parks, as well as the super-fun preschool attractions at the Playmobil theme park we visited, allow kids to do fun things that they never could in the States, because of the possibility of hurting themselves & suing the pants off somebody. Basically, Germans expect parents to use their common sense & be responsible for their kids rather than trying to ensure safety by allowing only boring, safe play equipment.

6. Wonderful gardens & beautiful flowers everywhere. Fragrance & the smell of verdancy in the air. (Of course, we came at the right time.)

7. Friendly people (on the whole). Nice to Americans (at least to us), even though we speak almost no German.

Things we didn't like about Germany:

1. The beds. After sleeping in three different German "double" beds, we can see why the government is paying such a premium for babies. It seems like Germans really like their own personal space at night. All the "double" beds we saw or slept in were really two twins pushed together, with seperate fitted sheets & separate twin duvets on top. Invariably, either Papaya Daddy or I would sleep (badly) in the crack in the middle, and both of us would end up with uncovered legs at some point(s) during the night in our effort to sleep with our bodies touching while using two personal-sized covers.

2. The small, slow washers and dryers. It takes about 4 hours to do one small load of laundry. I was very glad to get back to my own nice equipment. If I lived in Germany, I might not enjoy doing laundry quite so much.

3. Icky meat stuff (mostly pork tidbits) mixed together & encased in tubes. Everywhere. Lots and lots of it. I asked a waiter about a "salat" I saw on a menu, only to find out that is was a salad of cold, sliced sausage in a vinaigrette. My sister, who craved bratwurst in pregnancy, probably would have loved it - but we, vegetarians-that-eat-meat-on-vacation that we are, couldn't quite stomach them.

4. The Frankfurt Airport. What a mess! We arrived 3 hours early for our return flight, and by the time we got to the gate they were already boarding the plane. During those 3 hours, our passports were checked & scanned four times, we went through three different security-type checkpoints, and each one of us was wanded & frisked thoroughly. And I mean thoroughly. The security lady even squeezed the Banana's diaper, front & back, to make sure there was nothing scary in there (besides the expected, which is often scary to us). She stuck her hands down my pants & underneath my bra & made me remove the scrap of paper she detected in my back pocket & show it to her. The next time a security breach happens concerning air travel, it will probably not be at the Frankfurt Airport.

5. Second hand smoke. This is the non-child friendly part of Germany. They are still in the dark ages as far as non-smoking areas go. There is smoke all through the airport and hanging thick in the air of almost every restaurant. In fact, restaurants have cigarette vending machines at the entrance and they are also ubiquitous in hotel lobbies. We were very glad it was summer so we could eat outside most of the time.

6. Germany is 9 time zones away. Enough said. We are zombies.

Money saving tip in case you ever visit Germany: Learn to pronounce leitungswasser (tap water) well enough so that waitstaff can understand you. You will save a fortune, since a glass of bottled water costs the same as beer.

Okay, enough disjointed reflections. On to the pictures! What follows is but a sampling of the wonderful things we saw. (Any of the pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.)

Waiting in the Phoenix Airport, full of energy & excitement (at least the kids are).

On the 767 in Chicago, destination Frankfurt. Energy is beginning to wane.

An ancient ruler of Speyer - and us

The jetlagged Papaya sacks out in the Speyer Cathedral. Roman emporers are entombed in the catacombs beneath him.

The small, nontouristy village of Kalmunz in Bavaria (we were climbing down from the castle ruins)

Skipping rocks at the destination of our short Donau River cruise from Kelheim

The Banana amuses herself on long van rides.

Num-num fountain in Regensburg

View of Eibsee from cog train (on the way up to Zugspitze)

Standing on top of Germany (summit of Zugspitze)

View into Austria from Zugspitze cafeteria (Austrian side)

Heaven (aka Alpspitze) - see the cable car?

More heaven. Hiking trails everywhere, from easy to expert

Not a bad place to kick up your feet

Coffee & cake break

"Climb every mountain..."

Picking a dandelion bouquet for Mommy

Walking the old city walls in Rothenburg

Papaya Mommy family air travel tip #37

2007-06-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

Even if you are accustomed to remarking to your kids, at the end of a long & boring experience, “Hey, kids, let’s BLOW this joint!”, refrain from saying it loudly & enthusiastically as you wait to deboard an airplane after an international flight. You will, at the very least, receive strange & worried looks from your fellow passengers. You will feel fortunate (as we did) to escape further notice.

Off to Germany!

2007-06-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

This morning we are attempting to get ourselves together to get out the house & on our way to Phoenix. We are on the dawn of the largest trip our family of four has ever attempted - a 2 1/2 week vacation to Germany!

Needless to say, the long plane flights there and back, as well as the jet lag from a 9 or 10 hour time change, are not at the top of my list of fun activities, especially since the Banana is still a lap child. The trip back, especially - a 10 1/2 hour daytime flight - promises to be a trying experience.

But we plan to have a great time while we're there! We'll be staying 5 days with my dear friend & her family in Kaiserlautern (she has children the same ages as my children), then another few days with Papaya Daddy's parents in a Bavarian town near Nurnberg - Nuremberg in English. (Papaya Daddy's dad teaches at a Department of Defense high school on a military base there). Then we'll spend four nights at a military resort in the Bavarian Alps (near where Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" used to be), right on the border with Austria and with views straight up Germany's highest mountain. We're pretty excited.

Will our plants still be living when we return? That is the burning question, and the only regret we have about leaving for such a lengthy trip. (We are paying a couple of teenagers to water, with a bonus for each plant that still looks good when we return. Let's hope this is enough motivation for them to pour it on. It almost never rains here in June, so they'd better.)

Probably no blogging while we're gone. Auf Wiedersehen!

Gardening blog entry (before & after)

2007-06-06T07:25:00.001-07:00

In response to my sister's repeated requests for pictures of our yard and gardening efforts, here they are - a last minute effort before we are off for Germany. What follows are pictures that portray the result of hours and hours of tough toil that went into making our yard a pleasant place to look at. (Please forgive the weird formatting of text in this entry. Blogger doesn't always do what I want it to.)

First, the before pictures. The two pictures below show what our back yard looked like about 2 weeks after we moved in (try to ignore the very pregnant woman and just notice the beautiful yard). We don't have a picture of our front yard, but be assured - it looked exactly the same!Okay, after a year and a half of dragging in various found objects (rocks, wood, rain barrels & a swingset) scavenged off the yards of people who moved away, pulling hundreds of thousands of bad weeds, collecting a lot of seeds from plants we liked in the desert & sowing them last fall, and spending a few hundred dollars and a few hundred hours on more nice plants, trees, & soil amendment, here is what our back & front yards look like now:

One of the biggest projects we did in the past month was to (attempt to) begin a lawn in our back yard. We blew almost $100 by ordering 140 plugs of Buffalo grass over the internet - a miracle cultivar that's supposed to love clay soil, love intense sun, stand a lot of foot traffic, need only a fraction of the water of more conventional Kentucky Bluegrass, and shoot out "aggresive runners" to spread fast around the yard.

I'll let Papaya Daddy tell the story of our planting. Before I cut & paste the email he sent to his dad explaining the process, let me just tell you a little about the soil in our yard. It is hard, heavy, cement-like, grayish black clay. The best tools for working with it are the pick-ax and the jackhammer (the man who installed our satellite dish for the internet used a jackhammer). Anyway, here's what went into planting about 120 square feet of grass. We:

pulled weeds
used a spade fork to loosen the hard clay down to 10 inches
spread on sand, gypsum, all-purpose fertilizer, whole wheat pastry flour (that's right, it had gone bad, so we figured...flour comes from wheat and wheat is a grass, so...you are what you eat?)
Mixed in above materials with the spade fork
Sifted the mixture with the fork, bringing the big clumps to the surface
Pulverized the big clumps by whacking them with the fork
Loosened the clumped roots of the 140 grass seedlings (or "plugs", little tufts of sod), by cutting shallowly with a pocketknife (suggested to release growth & repair hormones)
Planted the plugs
Stomped on the plugs (suggested to improve root contact)
Watered with "root stimulator" (diluted seaweed extract & "Superthrive" vitamin concentrate)
Stood back and admired.

Our lawn - now you, too, can stand back & admire!

Believe it or not, after three weeks of heavy watering, the plugs are actually starting to green up & put forth a few runners. I think they actually might make it.

After the lawn was finished, we received our next internet order from High Country Gardens - 33 little plants. I also got 12 dianthus plants at church for Mother's Day, and it was time to transplant the little herb seedlings we had been growing inside (into five different planned herb gardens). Although the seedlings were little, they were all supposed to grow into large perennials, and so required a 12-inch square hole each. As we found out, that's a deep hole, especially when you're chipping away through cement. This is how the sequence of our perennial planting went (for each of the 33 plants):

Use all of the muscles & tools at our disposal to excavate a 12 square inch hole. Use a measuring tape so we don't fool ourselves (what I thought was 12 inches was usually only 8 or 9).
Amend dirt before refilling hole. Measure out 3 gallons of native clay. Mix with 3 or 4 gallons of coarse sand (we collected about half a ton of it from on top of the mesa and filled up our Corolla, almost killing our suspension to get it back down). Mix in about a gallon of planting mix from nursery in Flagstaff, 2 handfuls of YumYum organic plant food, 2 handfuls of gypsum (to soften the soil further), and a heaping tablespoon of phosphate. Try to get it all mixed up.
Pour amended dirt back into hole.
Try to find a place to dump all of the native clay we're not putting back in.
Unmold plant, scratch out roots with knife, and actually plant it.
Form a well around the new plant.
Fill well with clear water & let drain.
Mix up root stimulator & fill well again; let drain.
Mulch plant (fill up well) with coral colored gravel (again, picked up in Flagstaff) - any other kind of mulch would blow away on days like today (the wind has been blowing 35-50 mph since this morning).
Shake out arms & start on the next hole.

We found that it was one thing to admire plants online and click them into our shopping cart, and another thing altogether to actually receive them, plant them, and take care of them. But they're all in now (and still living), and we're excited about what will come of them. Here are a few sample pictures:

This will one day be a lovely patch of blue & purple flowers (lavendar, salvia, blue flax, & one Arizona Sun gaillardia for contrast) -

note the abundance of mint behind (the sunflowers are native & all came up from the seed we scattered last year)

This will one day be a lovely patch of red and orange flowers (agastache, penstemon, dianthus, & gaillardia)

Our mini-Stonehenge in the front yard (2 types of lavendar & one penstemon)

Our Maynight Salvia - favorite plant so far (because it's flowering!)

While I was typing this, the wind blew over the Oranges & Lemons gaillardia flower in the front yard that was just starting to open up - snapped off half the plant. We've been watching it & anticipating for almost two weeks now, and we are pretty upset. Hopefully, the other half will come back again. This is not an easy place to garden - but that makes it all the more exciting when we do succeed!

Our happy, happy back yard

Arachnophobia (aka Home Alone at Night Fears)

2007-06-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Usually, only the vomiting of one of my children can give me an adrenaline rush strong enough to keep me awake most of the night. I'm ashamed to say that despite both my kids sleeping the night through, I probably got as little good sleep last night as my husband, who was running the ER.

The reason? Just after I got both kids safely in bed, I sat down on the couch to do some reading. Glancing up from the Bible, I saw a great, big, dark brown spider walking across the floor and disappearing under the couch. Although our house is home to many innocuous cellar spiders, it was the first time I had seen something of such ugliness and magnitude. It didn't look like a black widow, so my first thought was that it was a brown recluse, which are endemic around here. (Indeed, last year our pastor & his sons brought a brown recluse they caught on their kitchen counter to show us, telling us the story of how Mrs. Pastor had been bitten, was severely ill for over month, and narrowly escaped serious necrosis of her hand.) I started feeling a little skitterish about walking around the floors barefoot, and started worrying about my kids in bed by themselves with such scary predators roaming our house. I decided to leave the spider to await Papaya Daddy's discretion when he returned home the next morning and headed to bed, where my feet would be safely above the floor. I stood on the couch to turn off the lamps next to it, just in case Scary Spider decided to dart out from underneath and bite my bare toes.

In bed, I thought about how brown recluses like to hide out in piles of clothes and wondered if there were any under the covers. I turned the light on and checked. The bed was clear. I turned the light back off and was on my way to falling asleep when I decided I needed to visit the bathroom. I turned the light back on, looked over the side of the bed before getting down, and saw another large, dark brown spider. This time, the adrenaline hit me like a brick wall. Our house was infested by scary poisonous spiders! I picked up my bedside book and tried to drop it on the spider. I think Jane Eyre must have made some impression (although it wasn't a direct hit), because the spider appeared stunned & didn't run off immediately. I tried to pick up the book to repeat my attack, but the spider had regathered his (her) wits by this time, and ran under the bed. I shakily grabbed a flashlight & a flyswatter, and spend 10 minutes pushing around the dusty detritus under our bed, attempting to deal a death blow to this invader of my safe home. Finally, I succeeded in my death wish. With shaking hands, I used the flyswatter to pull the dead spider out and put it in a dish to show Papaya Daddy the next morning.

Hapless victim of irrational nighttime fears

I still couldn't figure out what kind of a spider it was (especially since it was, by this point, all curled up & covered with dust bunnies). However, both my nerves and my imagination (both of which tend be a bit unreasonable, anyway, when Papaya Daddy is away for the night) were strung sky-high by this point, and I lay in bed with a racing heart, knowing that I killed a brown recluse and that others were probably crawling over my innocent children in their beds, biting their faces pressed so trustingly into blankets and pillows. The Banana had cried when I dressed her in her sleeper before bed - maybe it was because a brown recluse was inside the footie & was biting her. Oh, how I regretted putting a bedskirt on the Papaya's bed. Such a convenient way for a spider to access him. My mind filled with elaborate plans for how we were going to move all the furniture the next day and clean thoroughly under each piece, with one of us grasping the flyswatter to do away with any more Evil Spiders. We would start with the living room couch.

How I wished for the presence of my cousin, the Fearless Spider Hunter, the one who happily lets venomous arachnids crawl up his arm. He could not only identify the spider for me, but would almost certainly lay my fears to rest (or at least attempt to, with the best of his reason and zeal). Unfortunately, nobody was around to quiet my head and so I lay awake for a large portion of the night.

When morning finally came, I did what I should have done right away - a Google image search of various types of spiders to figure out what I had killed. Although I could have done without the horrific pictures of necrotized brown recluse bites, I'm happy (and somewhat sad, for the spider's sake) to say that the poor spider I murdered was most likely (as those of you in the know have probably already figured out by my picture) an innocent wolf spider. When I read that wolf spiders come out at night to go hunting (for bugs, not for people), my conclusion seemed even more certain. Even my husband (after initially jumping back about two feet when I showed him the dead spider - he has his own share of arachnophobia) agreed with me.

So, in the brave light of daytime, knowing that my husband will be guarding the house with me tonight, I'm (mostly) sorry I swatted the wolf spider and feel much better about the possibility of cohabitation. And so, brave arachnophile cousin in Virginia (if you read this blog), please forgive me for killing a spider and do your best to lay my remaining uneasiness to rest. Does the above look like a wolf spider? Are wolf spiders a menace to my children? Will they crawl over them at night and bite them? Will they dart out from under the couch to attack unsuspecting bare feet? Should I even bother to remove them from the house, or simply turn a blind eye and try to summon a hospitable spirit towards them?

In other unwelcome visitors news, we finally found the mouse in our garage whose nests I've been destroying and whose food stashes I've been removing in an attempt to "starve" him out and encourage his departure. He got starved out, all right. He climbed through the neck of an empty sparkling lemonade bottle (same size & shape as a wine bottle) in our recycling bin. By the time we found him, he had been there for a few days and the bottle no longer smelled like sparkling lemonade. We decided that some glass bottles are not worth recycling, and felt glad that the trash was being picked up soon.

I much prefer live human visitors in our house.

Happy Birthday, Papaya!

2007-05-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

There are many reasons I've been a terrible blogger lately: my mother-in-law's 10 day visit, our insane planting and yard work mania (which deserves an entry to itself), and last but not least, the Papaya's 4-year birthday party, which was yesterday (his actual birthday is today).

It was, of course, a Lightning McQueen birthday party, and it was a lot of fun to plan and host. Since Memorial Day is not a great day to host a birthday party around here (most people get away for the long weekend), we only had two families show up. But those families brought 7 kids between them, so it was the perfect number for the Papaya. I made 2 large pizzas, the cake (pictured above, a race track scene with Lightning pushing the King across the finish line - the Papaya's idea), and cupcakes with "wheels" made out of Oreos on top. Papaya Daddy made a large wok of yummy fried rice and some cold lemon-mint tea using the abundance of mint growing in our yard. For games, we had a spare tire beanbag toss & the ever-popular pinata (a birthday party tradition in this neighborhood). It was a fun, low-key time and most importantly, the Papaya loved it. In fact, he spent the entire afternoon leading up to the party just staring at the cake and Cars-themed decorations. He wouldn't even leave to watch a video. And the guests brought more Cars-themed toys as gifts. Life doesn't get any better than that.

It was fun to honor the Papaya with a party. He's a sweet, imaginative, and lively 4-year old (if a bit manic at times). He seems to have grown up so much lately, wanting to do everything himself now. I look forward to seeing how he's going to grow and change in his 5th year with us. He is so dear and so loved.

Kids are gross (or is it just boys?)

2007-05-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after sitting and laboring successfully on the toilet, the Papaya informed me that he wanted to continue sitting there while he flushed, because he really liked the feeling of the dirty toilet water splashing his bottom. A painful admission for a mommy to hear - the Papaya was quite upset that I did not encourage his plan.

Pretty gross, but not quite as bad as a couple months ago, when I walked into the bathroom to discover that the Papaya's hair was dripping wet. After using the toilet (and before flushing), he had dipped his entire head inside the bowl. Dirty toilet water was running down his face and neck. Hopefully, his swift removal to the shower and the cold water that immediately drenched him, clothes and all, dampened his enthusiasm for a repeat performance.

Are all kids this gross? Is it innate? Or is it just the Papaya? Perhaps he's one of the few who will find satisfaction and success in a future career of sewage processing and management.

Strength-building Saturday

2007-05-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up with sore arms, very sore shoulders, raw fingers, tired legs, and a bruise on my inner thigh. All completely worth it, and gained in the course of a very full outing with the kids to Jack's Canyon yesterday (pictured above). We joined a group of fellow health center employees, a few other kids, and half a troup of boy scouts on a hiking & rock climbing expedition. Sadly, Papaya Daddy had to work yesterday, and missed out on our fun & action filled day. To his credit, he was the one who spurred me to get ready and basically shepherded us out of the door & into the car before he left for work. Without his selfless encouragement (he would have loved to go himself), we would probably have left hopelessly late or not at all.

The Papaya Daddy's absence made things just a little more complicated. Usually when we hike, he carries the Banana on his back, and I carry everything else (water, food, extra jackets, kid stuff) in a large and beautifully ergonomic backpack. Papaya Daddy's absence meant I was the only beast of burden available. After quite a bit of contemplation concerning how to carry everything, we settled on the arrangement pictured to the left (add a 19 month old in the child carrier on back, and a bit more bulk to the green backpack, and you'll know how it actually looked on the trail yesterday). The green hiking pack wasn't quite as ergonomic when hanging from my front, especially when loaded down with over half a gallon of water, a picnic lunch, and various other necessities when taking a significant hike with two small children. Now picture me in this get-up climbing down (and then back up) a very steep, crumbly, rock-laden trail into a canyon, unable to see my feet, with a Papaya clinging onto one of my hands and using me for support whenever he slipped or jumped down a rock step, and you'll understand my sore shoulders & tired legs.

Jack's Canyon is about a 1 3/4 hour drive from where we live (via Winslow, where we did some shopping & recycling on the way), and so we arrived after everyone else (who camped the night before) descended into the canyon, and left before they hiked back up. Otherwise, I'm sure somebody would have helped me do a little carrying. The weather as I drove between Winslow & the turn-off for Jack's looked truly menacing - I could see about five storms to the west and even drove through about 3 minutes of rain & hail. It seemed inevitable that one of those storms would hit us. Indeed, I almost turned back.

But somehow, despite my best rational arguments about two wet and miserable children, a possibly violent storm in a remote canyon, and several miles of muddy, unimproved road to get back to the highway, I couldn't bring myself to do that. We ended up gearing up & hiking down into the canyon to find the others. And what a good decision that was! Yes, a few storms did hit us, but they were short and consisted primarily of wind and a little hail-snow (weird precipitation that was a combination of the two). Jack's Canyon was verdant - full of green trees, bright red penstemon growing out of the rock, hummingbirds, and countless other wonders. The Papaya had a fun time playing in the dry wash with the other three children present (he even did his own bit of rock climbing, as pictured above), the Banana had a great time toddling around & flirting with the men, and I had a lovely time just being there (once I got over my worry about the weather). Despite the many boy scouts rock climbing for the first time, I even got to ascend three routes.

This was my fourth time rock climbing - each of the four have been in Jack's Canyon, initiated by another health center family who let Papaya Daddy & I borrow their equipment and show us the ropes (literally). I've been surprised at how much fun it is, and how pretty much anyone reasonably fit can succeed (or at least succeed enough to have fun) with a lot of encouragement and supportive belaying. Jack's Canyon is a sport climbing location, with bolts already attached to numerous routes throughout a good mile of canyon. One of the experienced members of our group leads a route or two, anchors the rope at the top, and then we take turns being top roped & climbing to the top. Yesterday, I sailed up a 5.6 route I'd done twice before, found a 5.8 route to be a fun challenge, and inelegantly clawed my way to the top of a 5.11 route (an accomplishment made possible only because of some very aggresive belaying down below). The 5.11 ascent didn't really count, but it was fun to make it to the top!

Last week was a long, mostly house-bound week (two days of strong winds and one night of heavy rain that made it too muddy to get out the next day). It's impossible to express just how good it was for my soul and body to get outside and away from the house - worth every bit of inconvenience. I just wish Papaya Daddy could have been there.

The 5.11 route I kind of climbed (made it to the top of, anyway).

Cold frame progress

2007-05-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Exactly three weeks ago, I posted a picture of our cold frame looking pitiful. Here's the close-up (from April 10):

Here's our cold frame today:

Talk about a miracle. The lettuce is actually ready for harvest, enough to make at least three good salads (it's a lot bigger than it looks in this wide-angle). And there's even a little cilantro coming up (still too little to see). Want to come over to our house for some nice fresh salad?

Trip to The Tree & dust devils

2007-05-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was a perfectly blue, still, early summer day, leaning toward actual heat. The perfect day to get outside with the kids. So I spent the necessary hour getting both kids sunscreened-up, putting together a hike-survival kit with diaper change materials, water, snack, camera, hats, sunglasses, cell-phone & first aid kit, and blowing up the flat tire on the Chariot (pictured above). Finally, we were all ready to begin our big hike to The Tree.

The Tree is well-known to all members of our housing community here. A large cottonwood, it is the only tree of size within at least a five mile radius. It's almost exactly 1 1/2 miles away, so walking or jogging there and back makes a perfect 3 miles of exercise. It's on the edge of a sandy wash that is a lot of fun to play in and explore. During the few times a year when the wash actually flows, it is a lovely picnic spot where you can bathe your senses in the sights and sounds of running water and rustling leaves. Of course, the walk there and back is completely exposed and shadeless, and is therefore a rather thankless hike with kids in the heat of the summer or the violently windy spring. It's not something we do very often. But last Friday was perfect.

The Papaya walked excitedly all the way to The Tree, while the Banana fell asleep in the Chariot. When we arrived, the Papaya & I had a snack and water while we looked around us (see picture above). The leaves weren't out yet, but there were buds and birds, the sky was a deep cloudless blue, and it was very lovely. As I looked back the way we had come, I saw a large dust devil whirling right over the health center compound (where our house is). It looked like it was headed straight towards us, so I closed the plastic Chariot covering over the Banana, pointed the dust devil out to the Papaya, and warned him that it might get very windy for a little while. (If you look closely at this picture - the view from the tree back towards our house - you can faintly see the dust devil in the distance. It looked more impressive in real life.)

In case you've never experienced them, dust devils are weird things. They're like mini-tornados, but usually just arise when it's still, hot, and sunny. They can really take you by surprise. Last year, one blew into our backyard, picked up our solid plastic slide, and deposited it on the other side of the yard. If you get caught in one, you'd better cover your eyes and mouth if you don't want to be spitting out grit for the rest of the day!

As it turned out, the dust devil changed course & passed quite a distance to the south of us. The Papaya, however, was much impressed, and has been talking about it ever since. I didn't realize how much he had been influenced by it until I found him napping that afternoon with the duvet pulled completely over his head. I pulled it down so he could breathe, but later found it over his head again. When he woke up, he began walking around the house with his hands over his eyes, saying, "I don't have to be scared anymore. I don't have to be scared anymore." When I probed, he told me he was scared of dust devils and that he slept with his head under his covers so they wouldn't get him in his bed. I assured him that dust devils couldn't come inside our house, or our car (we were about to drive to the post office).

As we drove to the post office, he listened to the song I was playing (a contemplative song by Fernando Ortega) and said, "This is a sad song. It's about the dust devil that went away and didn't come back."

"It sounds like you're not scared of dust devils any more," I said.

"No, I'm not scared of dust devils! I love dust devils! Dust devils are my friends!" replied the Papaya emphatically, spreading his arms wide and then crossing them over his chest.

The Papaya's fascination with dust devils has not waned. In Sunday School day before yesterday, I attempted to teach him and a couple other preschoolers about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Desirous of making a Meaningful Connection, I emphasized that when Jesus' followers heard the sound of a violent wind inside their room, it was just like a dust devil was inside their house. Well, it was a Connection, all right (although I'm not exactly sure what meaning he got out of it.) When the preschoolers got their take-home papers to color, they were supposed to draw tongues of fire over the pictured apostles in the upper room. The Papaya picked up a crayon with enthusiasm. But instead of drawing tongues of fire, he drew dust devils.

The Papaya at the tree, contemplating the dust devil he just saw.

Been there, done that, you can have it!

2007-04-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Well, we're back from Las Vegas. It truly was a world unto itself - a pretty sordid world. Never before have I seen quite the level of open encouragement to indulge yourself in all your basest vices, as I did in that city. Signs glimpsed by Papaya Daddy & myself: "Seven deadly sins: one convenient location", "Seven deadly sins? We demand a recount!", and "Finance your fun with our bank!". [Aside: can you name the seven deadly sins*? We looked them up when we got home. They really aren't all that glamorous or exciting - my guess is the sign makers didn't know what they were, either.]

There were fun things to do in Vegas. But the enormous casinos you had to drag your kids through in order to get anywhere bothered me, the endless smokiness everywhere bothered me, the crowds bothered me, and the in-your-face money extraction industry bothered me. (Evidently 86% of Vegas visitors gamble, with the average visitor spending $626 just on gambling! And I didn't see a single gambler who looked like they were enjoying themselves. That's a lot of money to waste on something that isn't fun!) But all this paled in front of the shameless peddling of women, everywhere, all the time. I don't consider myself a prude, & I'm not just talking about the enormous billboards and flat panel displays of almost-naked women everywhere. I'm talking about the newspaper vending machines (free) every fifty feet or so, chock-full of open pornography flyers & details on how to buy the women pictured (okay, so the women had small stars over their nipples to keep this from being "frank" porn - not a lot of difference in my book). I'm talking about the men handing out "business cards" with pictures of naked women and their prices ($49 special)! I'm talking about the way these cards were strewn over every single sidewalk, as well as stuck into railings, trash can cracks, etc. I'm talking about the guys wearing T-shirts that said, "Hot Babes - Delivered to your door in 20 minutes!" who accosted you as you strolled. I'm talking about the billboard trucks that drove slowly up and down the Strip all day long, picturing naked women in suggestive positions on beds & the number to call so they could appear on your bed. I'm talking about the almost 200 Yellow Pages of "escort services" in the phone book. It really made me angry (one of the seven deadly sins, by the way, but maybe it was an appropriate anger).

To my surprise, I found out once I got back that prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas & Clark County (although it is legalized in smaller counties of Nevada)! Obviously it is a law that is not taken very seriously - from what I can find out, enforcement is limited to occasionally arresting the prostitutes themselves. This seems to be missing the point. Maybe they could do something about the demand, the nauseating advertising, the open invitation to "Come & sin all you like! It's fun and there are no consequences here!" - perhaps occasionally arrest somebody who hires a prostitute? The US State Department suspects that Las Vegas is one of the main US hubs of international human trafficking (modern slavery), with most victims forced into the sex industry.

The one thing on the Strip that I really loved were the fountains at the Bellagio. There were hundreds of jets, covering an enormous area, and occasionally they "performed" a choreographed routine to a piece of music. The talented fountains expertly interpreted a fairly wide range of musical genres, sometimes spurting up to 200 feet in the air. It was delightful, fun, awe-inspiring (for a water-lover like me), and helped to wash away some of the visual pollution paining my eyes. The one irony of the fountains occurred when they "performed" to a somewhat sappy, sentimental song with the refrain, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free." I thought it was an odd choice of song in a city that celebrates one's worst instincts, where thousands of people are encouraged to further enslave themselves to gambling addictions as they lose their savings to large, rich casino owners ("finance your fun"), and where human trafficking thrives in an openly supportive environment.

We were so glad to get away and gaze upon wide, open, clean spaces once again. The kids & I did have fun, but I do not feel the need to return - ever. Even though I never did get to see the volcano at the Mirage erupt!

***The seven deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath (or anger), envy, and pride (worst of all). They were believed to lead to deadly deeds & destroy the life of grace in those who indulged in them.

Off to Vegas, baby!

2007-04-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

I spent my childhood and adolescence exploring various countries around the world. After marrying Papaya Daddy, I finally ventured beyond the Eastern and Midwestern states in the good old US of A and have been amazed to discover how much there is to see and do in my very own home country. Imagine, I used to think the entire Southwest was one big boring flat desert with an occassional Saguaro cactus bettering the landscape. If you had asked me where the Grand Canyon was, I would probably have said "Colorodo" - because how could something as spectacular as that be in a wasteland like Arizona? And I thought California was all Hollywood - I had no idea it contained landscapes like Yosemite or the Sierras (which amazed me on our honeymoon). How wrong I was!

Well, tomorrow I get to continue the exploration of my incredible home nation by venturing into Nevada and Las Vegas. Papaya Daddy is attending a snazzy medical conference called "Got Resus?" at one of the big casino hotels on the strip, where he will learn various advanced ways and means to resuscitate various ages of people in various situations (and will even practice invasive trauma procedures on either mannequins or chunks of pig flesh, I'm not sure which). Meanwhile, I will tow the two kids around to see and do what there is to be seen and done in Vegas (for free). I have been trolling internet sites to find out what you can do in Las Vegas if gambling doesn't appeal to you and you don't need to get married or divorced, and I have am amazed. This city is a strange country and culture unto itself! It's like a weird, off-color Disney World for adults with exhorbitant prices for the more spectacular attractions.

Just one example: there's an entire Venice streetscape inside one of the hotels, with canals and gondolas and gondoliers. For a mere $18 per person, you can stand in line for a couple hours and take a 10 minute gondala ride. I've been to the real Venice before, and I think it costs about the same there for the true experience. (Needless to say, this isn't one of the things I'll be doing with my kids.) Crazy, crazy!

Thankfully, we won't be staying in the strip, since I'm not sure how long I could stand to be near casinos. We'll be in a nice, clean, chain inn and I'll navigate the Strip traffic every morning to get Papaya Daddy to his conference. We plan to have fun. I'll let you know when we return what we think about yet another new experience in this fascinating & varied nation!

P.S. I'm certainly not sad to be leaving the Hopi Reservation tonight. Currently (according to The Weather Channel), the wind is blowing steadily at 37 mph and gusting to 58 mph. You get painfully sand-blasted every time you step outside and visibility is about 1 mile. Even though it's sunny, everything (including the sky) is brown. Just the sound of the wind constantly whistling around and through the windows is starting to drive me crazy. The Papaya asked if our house was going to blow away. Our metal folding chairs are blowing across our yard. Time to go pack. GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!

Like Magic

2007-04-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

For over a year now, I have halfheartedly, now and then, attempted to teach a disinterested Papaya the letters of the alphabet using various disjointed methods (there may be a direct correlation between his disinterest and my halfheartedness). As a result of my labors, he reliably knew about half a dozen letters.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I finally followed the advice of both a friend and 378 Amazon reviewers who collectively gave this film 5 stars, and purchased The Letter Factory, a DVD by Leapfrog.

Let me tell you, it's magic for our family.

After not many more than half a dozen viewings, the Papaya knows all his letters as well as their most common phonetic sounds. Even more importantly, he's excited about them and picks them out everywhere, proudly telling me what they are and the sound they make. He's even beginning to get the idea of sounding letters together into words. Even the Banana seems excited about letters and sounds and sits in rapt attention for the length of the video (extremely rare for her).

I really don't know what it is - this DVD lacks the charm and cultured adult entertainment value of Sesame Street. But somehow, it delivers! Who says watching TV (or in this case, our new flat screen monitor) isn't good for kids? (Although I feel vaguely guilty for so successfully abdicating my role as alphabet teacher to a DVD.) Highly recommended.

And one more picture...

2007-04-10T17:57:00.000-07:00

These are a couple of the Hopi Buttes (actually on the Navajo reservation) that we passed as we drove home from Winslow last Saturday. You really can't beat the sky here.

(By the way, can anyone tell me how you put borders around pictures in Blogger? I haven't been able to figure it out.)

The desert is green!!!

2007-04-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

Winter before last (our first here) was incredibly, unusually dry - so dry that most Hopi (traditionally farmers) didn't even bother planting any crop in the spring and summer. As a consequence, nothing grew in our yard last year except a lot of tumbleweed and pigweed (both thorny and nasty), some hardy mint, and a few glorious sunflowers. This last winter, however, has been a lot more normal, with a few good snowfalls. As a result, our warm weather lately has catapulted the desert, and even our backyard, into a lush greenness (at least to our eyes), somewhat evident even in the aftermath of this late snowfall a week ago.

Here you see our amazing mint and brave peach tree, as well as the detritus blown against our fence after a full day of 30-50 MPH winds

Keep in mind, the above are pictures from over a week ago. Check out these pics of our trees now: a blossom from the peach tree and our happy Navajo willow with the desert behind it the greenest we've ever seen:

And how are the poor abused plants in our cold frame doing? Well, they're markedly better and actually growing daily now, but it still may be awhile before we're enjoying a home grown salad (although I did hopefully plant cilantro last week in the sad blank spaces):

And to close, we've gotten four more flowers from our bulbs (since the blue iris that bloomed a month ago)! I haven't yet taken photos of the two yellow irises (or crocuses, I'm not sure) out front, but here are the two red tulips that came up in our backyard. See if you can guess which one bears the Papaya's loving touch (he's obviously inherited our black thumb-ness).

Our dining room table these days...

2007-04-10T17:22:00.000-07:00

Need I say more? (See this entry if you don't get it. At least in this picture there are 4 socks that actually go together to make pairs.)

And one more picture...

It's Lightning McQueen, hanging from barbed wire.

It's here, and it's beautiful!

2007-04-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

We've finally (I think) finished just about everything involved with getting our new computer set up. We are in love with the screen. So are the kids:

We spend hours playing with Google Earth (I even found the very maisonnette we lived in in Nairobi, clear as day!) & watching scrambled slide shows of all of our pictures, back from 2003. Now that the novelty is wearing off a little, maybe I can get back to mundane things again, like updating this blog...

Tax return = new computer

2007-04-05T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, after about six frustrating hours on the Dell website and about 698 hours of Papaya Daddy's research and contemplation over the last year or so, we finally completed our order for a new computer. It should arrive today. He is Very Excited and I am Pretty Excited.

So, dear readers, enjoy this last blog entry from our old computer. The next one, I'm sure, will look extra snazzy and shiny because it will emanate from a beautiful new computer with a bunch of fancy stuff like dual core technology (which I really don't understand and care much about even though it excites Papaya Daddy) and a 24 inch ultra-sharp flat screen monitor (Papaya Daddy's long term dream and something I'm excited about too). We won't be watching Netflix on our little old TV any more!

And now I need to sign off and finish backing up all our files onto CD's, disconnect this old computer, and carry it to the guest room before FedEx arrives. (So far I've backed up about 20 CD's of photos. I'm sure there is a better way to transfer information and maybe our new computer will provide it.)

So farewell from our old faithful computer. Next post, from the new one!

The downside of character underwear for kids...

2007-03-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

...is that the pictured character is almost always on the back (at least for boy briefs). Which means that the Papaya always wears his underpants backwards. Why sport Mater or Lightning McQueen on his bottom when he can simply look down and enjoy seeing them? What were the manufacterers thinking, I ask you?

Amazing what first class postage will do!

2007-03-29T14:58:00.000-07:00

When we received our new camera about 2 weeks ago, its box was wrapped in a sheet of bubble wrap – the kind with really big bubbles – and ensconced in a much larger box for shipping. The Papaya was fascinated and enchanted. “May-wee will weally like this,” he said. (Merry is his cousin who had just completed a visit with us.) “No, no, no, Mommy – don’t pop it yet! Save it for May-wee. She will be weally happy to get it. She will get it and she will say, ‘Thank you for the poppie-things, Josiah!’ And I will say, ‘You’re welcome!’”

I told the Papaya that we would save it until we went to the beach house in August and saw Merry there. He considered this possibility for a few minutes, then decided that August was much too far away. The following is his monologue (repeated several times since), punctuated with occasional affirmations from me:

PAPAYA: No, no, no, Mommy. We won’t wait until the beach. We will send the poppie-things to May-wee in the mail. We will take them to the post office and we will give them to the lady there and she will get on an airplane and go to May-wee’s house in Pennsylvania and wing the doorbell and give them to May-wee and May-wee will be SO excited and happy for the poppie-things. [I guess my previous explanation of how the US Postal System worked left out some important details.] We will put the poppie-things in a box and we will use lots of tape and be ve-wee careful to make sure that they don’t break. [The first time I’ve ever heard of anybody going to extra lengths to protect bubble wrap in the mail.] Come on, Mommy, we will go wight now!

The Papaya put the bubble tape into the large outer box that held the camera, closed the top flaps, and put on a single piece of Scotch tape. Then he found his shoes and went to garage door. “I’m weady to go to the post office now, Mommy!” Happily, the post office was already closed for the day, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend good money to fly bubble wrap across the continent. I put the bubble wrap on top of the refrigerator and told the Papaya that the post office was closed and we would think about sending it later – hoping, of course, that his ardor would have diminished by the next morning.

I was wrong. Every box that the Papaya’s gotten ahold of over the last two weeks, he’s filled with the bubble wrap (he pulls a stepstool up to the refrigerator to retrieve it), taped up with Scotch tape, and tried to take to the post office. I’ve held him off by telling him that the boxes were much too big to mail (very true), but he hasn’t forgotten. I even tried to get him interested in popping the bubble wrap himself, but this got him very upset (“No, no, NO, Mommy – those are May-wee’s poppie-things!”). We ordered a birthday present for Merry’s mommy on-line (to be delivered to her house) and told the Papaya that the poppie-things that came with her birthday present would be for Merry. But that didn’t seem to really satisfy him for long.

Finally this morning, when the Papaya tried to lug a very large Pampers Cruisers box, covered with long pieces of Scotch tape, to the garage door to go to the post office, I gave in to the inevitable. I located a modestly sized box, and the Papaya wrapped up the bubble wrap (not in a sock) and affixed a tag to it indicating that it was for Merry. We then took a walk through the house and found a couple other things to include with the package, because it really did seem wrong to mail just bubble wrap to Pennsylvania (maybe I simply have too little imagination). And we took the box to the post office, handed it over to Sonya, our postmistress, and asked for Priority Mail.

So tonight the Papaya can dream of Sonya on an airplane bound for Pittsburgh, precious bubblewrap in hand, ready to deliver it into the hands of a delighted Merry. Enjoy the poppie-things, Merry!

Christmas in March

2007-03-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

When I was six or seven years old and living with my family in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I remember my sister and I getting ahold of a lot of butcher paper and deciding to have Christmas in April. (I don't really remember the actual month, just that it was nowhere near December.) We wrapped up an enormous amount of our little toys and put them all into a basket for my mother to open. I still clearly remember the intense sense of excitement I had, creating all of those fun little gift packages. I was so sure my mother was going to be thrilled and excited, too. I don't remember my mother's reaction, but I'm sure it was satisfactory, even though she probably felt very little true enthusiasm over opening multiple packages filled with her daughter's toys.

I'm glad I have this memory, because it's helping me empathize with the Papaya and the obvious thrill he gets these days when he wraps up his cars and presents them to me as presents.

One thing I can't empathize with, though - why, oh why does the Papaya insist on using his dirty socks as his primary wrapping medium?

When I read my sister's decorating and home design magazines, they recommend wrapping presents in non-traditional materials - cloth napkins, baby blankets, brown paper, etc. This seems to be the trendy and classy thing to do. So maybe the Papaya is trying to flow with the times. I have never yet, however, read a single article that suggested using dirty socks to enclose gifts. He is clearly avant-garde.

To fully comprehend my distress at the Papaya's choice, you must know that laundry is the one household task that I really enjoy - that I really excel at. Making dirty clothes clean - it feels like magic. And then folding fragrant, clean clothes & linens and putting them away - it gives me such a feeling of riches. All those clean clothes, nothing dirty any more - wow! Part of my laundry prowess involves never losing an article of clothing. If socks or breast pads don't match at the end of the laundry cycle, I feel incomplete until I find the pair and will often search the house until I find satisfaction. My floor may be filthy and my end tables bathed in dust, but hey - all my household's socks match! Life is good. Am I quirky? You bet! But wouldn't the world be boring without quirky people?

Anyway, imagine how painful it is for me to see a dirty sock with a car inside, wrapped in scotch tape and sitting on my dining room table, when I know that its pair is far from it and that my next dark wash is coming up tomorrow. Can I get that dirty sock into the wash by tomorrow so that it can be cleaned with its pair? Can I get them together again?

It's not as simple as just opening the present, pulling the car out, and throwing the sock into the laundry basket. Oh, no. The Papaya insists that his special presents cannot be opened until it is Christmas time.

"But Papaya," I cajole, "Christmas isn't for months and months and months! You don't want to wait that long!"

"No, Mommy - you can't open it until Christmas time," he responds with gusto.

"How about we wait until Daddy comes home tonight?" I suggest. "Then it will be a special time."

When Papaya Daddy returns and we are eating supper together, I make another attempt to free the dirty sock sitting in front of my dinner plate. "NO!" the Papaya insists. "It isn't Christmas time yet!"

"Why don't we pretend it's Christmas tomorrow?" Papaya Daddy suggests, obviously enjoying the situation. "We can even sing Christmas carols."

The Papaya seems doubtful but I grab at the suggestion. The next morning at breakfast, I announce that it is Christmas and that I get to open my present after we sing a carol.

"NO! It isn't Christmas time until winter comes! It isn't winter until it snows!" The Papaya has been listening to me only too well.

I desperately grab our powdered sugar shaker from the cupboard and dust powdered sugar over each of our cereal bowls. "There! There's snow! It's winter! Let's sing 'Jingle Bells'!" I immediately dive into a rousing chorus and Papaya Daddy joins me. The Banana loves it and claps along. The Papaya looks disapproving. This isn't fooling him. I still can't open my present.

I grasp at the last straw in my arsenal. "How about if we find real Christmas paper, Papaya, and you can choose the kind you want and wrap a present in that instead of a sock?"

He immediately perks up. "Open your present, Mommy!" Music to my ears. Gratefully, I peel off the 12 pieces of tape and pull out green Ramone (from the Cars movie). "Thank you, Papaya! Does Ramone belong to me now?"

"No - he's my Ramone. Merry gave him to me." I guess we still have a few pointers to teach the Papaya about gift-giving. But what I really cared about was that those red socks got back together again in time to wash them both and reunite them, clean and dry and good for another wear (and wrap). Life is good.

Signs of Spring

2007-03-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

Our new camera arrived around the same time that our Navajo willow produced buds. It survived the winter! Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? Leaves - in our own yard! I can't wait for our cottonwoods to follow suit.

One of those days

2007-03-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

I didn't really have anything planned for yesterday, and that was a good thing. It wouldn't have happened. It was one of those days. Since I wasn't trying to pack or prepare for guests or do anything in particular, it wasn't actually that stressful, and I almost found myself enjoying (with a kind of bemused enjoyment) the absurdity of it.

I think we may have had a bit of intercontinental virus exchange after all, since both kids have bad coughs and crusty eyes that look very similar to the eyes of their cousins when they arrived a week and a half ago. Anyway, some combination of her bad night-time cough, incoming molars, and the fact that I forgot to turn the heat on before we went to bed night before last (it's been warm during the day but still hits the 20's at night) meant that the Banana woke up screaming at about 12:30 yesterday morning and continued on in fine form until 6:00. Papaya Daddy & I each made at least two, and possible more, nocturnal trips to try to comfort her during this time period. We had very short-lived success.

Finally the clock hit 6:00 a.m. & we brought the Banana into bed with us, where she usually nurses before beginning her day. She nursed away, then vomited all over me and the bed. Since I'm a vomit-phobe, I always nurse the Banana on top of a towel, to prepare for exactly this type of eventuality. The Banana, however, cleverly evaded my precaution and rolled over to a non-protected section of bed right before she vomited. It went all over my feather pillow, as well as the sheet and the mattress cover (Thankfully, I ripped up the mattress cover before it went through to the mattress). The Banana then managed to vomit the rest of her morning milk in two more spectacular locations - all over her high chair, and then all over the new outfit Papaya Daddy was attempting to put on her. I had my morning's laundry cut out for me.

We hoped that the vomit was simply a product of exhaustion and coughing (the Banana had coughed pretty hard at the outset of each attack), so we wiped off the high chair & put the Banana back in it (in a 3rd outfit), and fed her a little bit of cereal. Meanwhile, I washed my hands well, then cut and wrapped up the cranberry white-chocolate blondies we had made for the health center's Commisioned Corps bake sale. I hoped that no vomit germs had drifted over to them. One of the blondies had stuck to the bottom of the pan a little, so I wrapped it up for my husband's lunch & he put it in his bag (he worked in the ER yesterday, which meant he wouldn't be home for lunch and would probably work late). We let the Banana (who didn't want much cereal) down, and five minutes later, she wandered into the kitchen, handed me a piece of plastic wrap, and said, "Thank you!" While I wondered where in the world she found plastic wrap, she held up a blondie and took a large bite, with an enormously self-satisfied look on her face. It's exactly the kind of food you hope you child will wolf down after three vomits in quick succession - cranberry white-chocolate blondies!

Husband left for work (with a much smaller blondie) & I began my day of coping with a possibly sick and definitely fussy Banana, as well as doing several loads of laundry. Everything went well for a while - the Banana took some Tylenol and a nap and was much better afterwards (no more vomit), the Papaya was well behaved and fun to be with, and three loads of bedding and towels went past beautifully. Then I washed our feather pillows. They did well during the initial washing cycle in our high-efficiency front-loader, but I probably shouldn't have tried to run the extra-fast extended spin at the end, considering that the tag on the pillows instructed me to wash gently. When I opened the washing maching door, it appeared that a large goose had thrashed around the interior of the machine for quite a while, eventually giving up the good fight. One of the pillows had split lengthwise from end to end, releasing all of the feathers and down in its outer layer, as well as quite a few from its inner layer.

Luckily, the inner liner, though pathetic at holding in feathers, appeared to be intact, and to still contain the majority of the pillow's feathers (hard to believe, considering the volume of feathers in the washing machine). I put the good pillow in the dryer, and decided to try to salvage the torn one.

First, though, I put both kids down for their afternoon nap. The Banana went down easily, but the Papaya decided to make things a bit more exciting by sucking out the entire contents of his sippy cup (in little bits) and spitting them out all over his shirt, his mattress, and his pillow. His shirt and pillow were completely soaked through. I stripped his shirt off, confiscated his pillow, and sent him back to bed with the understanding that he had not done a praiseworthy deed. I wondered whether I should try to wash his pillow, too, since it had spit all over it. I eventually decided that I had had enough of pillow laundering, and that he could live with it.

With both kids finally asleep, it was work time (again). I pulled out the shop vac & cleaned the inside of the washing machine as well as I could (I repeated this a couple of times more as the feathers continued to dry). Then, rueing my lack of a sewing maching, I pulled out my dusty cross-stich supplies (last used way before the Papaya was born) and did the best I could sewing the split pillow back together from end to end. It was no easy task, and let me tell you - a wet feather pillow smells BAD! Finally, with wet stinky jeans from the pillow sitting on them, I finished and put the salvaged pillow in the dryer with its twin. (Our pillows were wedding gifts, and pretty nice, & I hated to give one of them up, if only because of the sentimental attachment).

Our feather pillows are fairly large, and take about five or six dryer cycles to completely dry. So I dried them throughout the afternoon, occasionally checking them and congratulating myself on my excellent seamstressing job. Finally, near the end of supper & after my husband finally came home from work (he was three hours late), the buzzer sounded at the end of the sixth dryer cycle. Since it was almost time for bed, I was eager to pull out our two clean, warm, and fluffy feather pillows. I opened the dryer door, then jumped back and screeched as several dark insects flew out at me. I took another look. An entire gaggle of geese had just duked it out in our dryer. My seam had held, but the pillow had split in a different place. I sadly concluded that perhaps that particular pillow was not meant to be. At least our marriage is proving more durable than our wedding gifts. I felt happy that I hadn't bothered to put the shop-vac away yet. The facility with which it sucked up dry feathers and down was immensely satisfying.

While Papaya Daddy snoozed on the couch, I researched down pillows on Amazon.com. Finally, my purchase complete, I dragged my husband into our bed. Although it contained only one nice feather pillow, it was at least covered with fragrantly clean linens. And we all slept the night through.

Spring has Sprung! (At least for this week)

2007-03-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

Before my sister and her family arrived & we debarked on our Northern Arizona Mini-Tour a week ago, I envisioned titling my post-trip blog entry "The Transcontinental Virus Exchange Program". This is because when our two families met each other, we were each in the end-throes of some pretty nasty colds and it seemed inevitable that we'd trade them. However, we somehow seem to have avoided spreading the germs, and had a really lovely trip together. We saw many beautiful things, experienced some dramatic weather changes typical of the Southwest (including a freak cold windstorm in the middle of an otherwise idyllic sunny day, right at the time that we attempted to hike a little of the way down into the Grand Canyon), and simply had a wonderful time being together. The four children (ages 5, 3, 18 months, & 15 months) played together the best we've ever seen them. It's always good to have wide-eyed guests remind us of how fascinating and cool our surroundings really are.

If you want to read more about our trip together, check out my sister's blog. Hopefully, she'll be writing more about it & posting some more pictures. The cool '98 Toyota Corolla pictured in this entry (named Lydia), with the San Francisco Peaks behind her, is our good and faithful beast of burden (and the extent to which we burden her, especially with the roof box attached, is truly outstanding). Despite our occasional abuse (such as letting her oil run out or switching to reverse instead of overdrive as we accelerated to 65 MPH while driving down the side of Second Mesa), she's gone from 80,000 to over 150,000 miles since we purchased her, without a single problem. We hope she continues to like us. We're not excited about buying another vehicle.

But I digress. Back to the blog title I did choose. When we returned to our house late Saturday afternoon, it felt like Spring had arrived in our absence! The sun was warm and bright, and the wind was slight. There was even a beetle (a warm weather bug) scuttling across our backyard. And even better - there was Green in our yard! (Unfortunately, most of it will have to be plowed up with our scuttlehoe, because it's completely undesirable, thorny, and invasive*, but at least it's Green!) Our mint is quickly coming back from its winter slump. The native orange globe mallow we noticed last fall is starting to return, and may even have flowers before too long. The trees planted last year have buds and I have high hopes of seeing real leaves soon. And - joy of joys - one of the bulbs we purchased from High Country Gardens & planted last fall is blooming - a gorgeous deep blue iris! I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture & post it (we will soon, but it may have wilted by then).

Part of the excitement of actually having something we planted bloom is that Papaya Daddy & I both have pretty Black Thumbs. Another is simply the enormous amount of work that went into planting the bulbs. The soil behind these health-center houses is not native soil (which is, itself, not super-fertile). Instead, it's thick, heavy clay that was trucked in for some indecipherable reason. When people try to dig it (unless it's soaked, an uncommon occurance), common tools used are (I kid you not) pick-axes & jackhammers. My strong husband dug down about two feet (with a shovel) before he planted the bulbs, mixed the soil with sand (to help it drain better) and soil conditioner, then put it all back in before he planted his bulbs. To see something actually come up is wildly exciting. We succeeded! Hopefully, more will follow.

If it seems like Papaya Daddy put a lot of effort into planting a handful of bulbs, you should have seen him set up our cold frame. After building it, he dug a hole, big enough to hold its area, and about 3 feet deep, in our backyard. Then he placed the cold frame in the hole so that it was angled towards the south and banked some of the extra soil around the sides & back to help maintain warmth. Then he got the soil ready. He drove down to the wash & filled our trunk with sand. We drove to Flagstaff & bought some fertilizer. He drove down to the local corral & filled our trunk with horse manure. We pulled out the leftover soil conditioner from the garage. Papaya Daddy mixed everything together with the leftover clay soil in an old plastic wading pool, then returned it to his 3-foot hole. Then he finally planted the seeds we had purchased - lettuce, arugala, and chard. After a week or so, beautiful little green shoots began to appear, and we felt flushed with success.

But do not forget that we are Black Thumbs. This past week, the one we spent away with my sister & family, we forgot to ask somebody to water our cold frame for us. Unfortunately, the lovely warm weather that worked such wonders for the mint, bulbs, and tumbleweed in our yard proved deadly for our poor cold frame plants. When we opened it up upon our return, we were greeted by the pathetic sight of brown soil. When we looked closely, we saw sad little wilted plants. It looks like a handful might have survived, and Papaya Daddy planted new seeds yesterday. But if you come visit us anytime in the next month, I hope you don't expect a fresh-picked salad.

I feel like I've rambled enough for one blog entry, so I think I'll sign off now. And maybe post news of my kids soon. They continue to do and say cute, hilarious, and sometimes completely exasperating things. Before I sign off, though, I'll conclude with a bemused rant that fits this entry's loose theme of growing things.

*I mentioned our yard being filled with nasty invasive species. The main offender is tumbleweed, also known as Russian Thistle (guess where it originated). It's one of the worst plants you could imagine - it completely takes over, it's covered with horrible, needle-sharp prickers that fall off everywhere and pierce your foot if you walk barefoot, and it keeps nice native species from growing. Which is why I was amazed to find this website and farm selling tumbleweed for high prices (especially to Japanese, it seems). What nerve! It's the equivalent of running a kudzu farm & export business in the southeast. The "farmers" actually live in a subdivision, and "harvest" their tumbleweeds by grazing fence lines, according to this article. I have to admit, though, that I admire them - it's entrepeneurship at its best. I wish I had the nerve to sell the tumbleweed around here for $15-$25 each, plus shipping. I'd be a rich woman!

Losing weight on a cruise ship is no fun...

2007-02-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

...especially when you're just 1 year old - or 3 - or 31.

Especially if it is caused by five days of vomiting and diarrhea (for the Banana; the Papaya had only 2 days; Husband and I had mild illness).

The first 2 days of our cruise were a lot of fun.

The last 5 nights and days could have been better.

Sometimes the things you dread really do happen.

We spent $25 on self-service laundry on the cruise ship.

At least somebody else was washing our linens every day, and cleaning our room for us.

We gave our cabin stewards generous tips. They deserved them.

We are glad to be home again, even if it is cold and the wind is gusting up to 50 MPH, and you get sand and dust-blasted every time you step outside. The children are even happier to be home.

It will be a while before we cruise again.

It wasn’t all bad. It was beautifully warm and humid in the Mexican ports of call, and we even dragged the sick kids off the ship for the last two stops (Mazatlan & Cabo san Lucas) and managed to have a good time on the beach. We saw a humpback and a few gray whales from a distance, along with several blowspouts (although my hoped-for zodiac trip with Husband was nixed). Our obstructed balcony cabins were wonderful, especially since we were stuck in them quite a bit. Just watching the water of the Pacific was lovely.

The formal night in the Goodwill dress happened before the sickness, and was a lot of fun. Husband and I had portraits taken for fun, which turned out so well that my mother-in-law plunked down $20 for one of them. And despite a clingy Banana, an open-backed stretchy dress, and no bra, I managed to avoid entertaining the entire dining room with another wardrobe malfunction*.

I’m hoping we’ve gotten all the sickness out of our systems, so that the upcoming visit of my sister and her family (from Wazoo Farm in Pennsylvania) won’t be a repeat of either our ill-fated cruise or their visit from last year.

*On our last cruise (two years ago, courtesy of my brother-in-law’s great airline benefits), I wore a silk wrap-around skirt that my mother-in-law brought me from Thailand, with a blouse that just came down to my waist. For the last 20 minutes or so of the formal dinner in the dining room, a tired and bored Papaya (less than 2 years old at the time) snuggled and went to sleep on my lap, kneading his feet into my belly. When we finally got up to leave, I took a few steps away from the table and realized, to my intense embarrassment, that the Papaya’s feet had completely undone the tie of my skirt. The entire skirt fluttered to my feet, creating quite a show for the scores of diners behind me. Since I was holding a sleeping Papaya, I couldn’t grab it, and was reduced to communicating my distress with hysterical laughter. My mother-in-law and husband grabbed the skirt and wrapped it around me as quickly as they could, then ushered me out of the dining room to the sounds of great hilarity from my fellow diners. I was comforted by the fact that at least my underpants were not old, and matched the color of the skirt I had been wearing. My brother-in-law definitely saw a lot more than he probably wished to, but at least my father-in-law missed the show. Happily, there was no repeat offense this year.

"Heads Carolina, Tails California...

2007-02-14T14:23:00.000-07:00

...Someplace greener, someplace warmer..."

To satisfy a fairly inexplicable desire I had to listen to country music, my brother-in-law downloaded I-Tunes and put together a country music mix for me last Christmas. "Heads Carolina, Tails California" really resonated with me, and has been playing through my head fairly constantly for the last couple weeks of cold & brown here. [Side note: the Papaya loves that song, too, because Lightning McQueen went to California in the Cars movie, and therefore the song must be about the Cars movie.]

And by brown, I mean brown - there is virtually no (natural) green in sight at all - no evergreens, bushes - nothing! Only the few hardy mint leaves that survive the cold, as well as the beautiful little shoots of lettuce, arugula, and chard in the small cold frame my husband built in our back yard - but you can't see those without opening the top. And that, my friends, is it as far as green goes in the great outdoors in our neck of the semi-desert.

And by cold, I mean cold inside as well as outside - our propane tank got down to 5%, and with our next fill-up not scheduled until Thursday, we turned the thermostat down low to conserve fuel. With all tile floors, this means cold! And it snowed 6 inches last night! Brrrr!

But there's an even better reason the song has been playing in my head - we are going to California! Leaving tomorrow for Phoenix! Flying to Los Angeles on Friday! And even better - we're not going to stay in Southern California very long. Taking advantage of our military benefits to procure great low-cost fares, we plan to spend next week sitting out on a balcony (obstructed, but still a balcony) of the Carnival Pride, basking in warm breezes (and humidity, I hope - I really miss humidity!) and watching whales breach in the waters of the Mexican Riviera.

I am very excited. We will be cruising with Husband's brother & mom (who get cheap fares using airline benefits, since Husband's brother is a pilot) and plan to have a wonderful, relaxing time. Husband has been working really hard lately (including two full nights in a row last weekend), and it will be nice to unwind with him. And since the cruise ship has two formal nights, I'll finally get a chance to wear the sexy velvet black dress my mom bought me for fun from Goodwill a couple of years ago! Husband's even going to dust off his suit to wear with me!

Since I'll be dressing formally in my elegant Goodwill gown, I decided I should hunt up some make-up to really look the part. I went searching, and found: lipstick, bought on my wedding day almost 7 years ago; blush, given to me 9 years ago by my aunt who used to sell Mary Kay; mascara, which I bought 7 years ago from a strawberry farm employee who was trying to raise money to go on a missions trip; and foundation of indeterminate age & origin (but at least 7 years old). I actually did buy new mascara & foundation (the cheapest I could find - WOW! make-up is expensive, even from Walmart!) but figure the old blush & lipstick won't kill me.

I'm going to fit right in with all those southern California girls on the cruise!

Next post after the cruise! Goodbye!

P.S. The propane guy just came - a day early! I just turned up the thermostat to 66 degrees! I can take a long, hot shower! Vacation is beginning already!

100 Great Things About Living Here

2007-02-06T17:07:00.000-07:00

The post I just wrote (about schooling blues) seemed pretty negative to me, so I thought I'd see if I could quickly list 100 of the things I love about living here. It really wasn't that hard. Here they are (although I'm sure I'll think of many more over the next few days):

1. Sunshine almost every day.
2. Looking out my back window and seeing for over 100 miles.
3. The ever changing, enormous sky. Sky-watching.
4. Being able to see almost all of the sky (no trees).
5. Summer thunderstorm clouds.
6. Monsoon season with spectacular summer thunderstorms.
7. Watching our kids enjoy the puddles (sitting water is a great novelty) after a spectacular summer thunderstorm.
8. Badger Butte (the beautiful butte about 11 miles away when I look out my back window).
9. Nipple Butte (also out my back window; a distinctive landmark that is aptly named).
10. The Hopi Buttes (a whole landscape of old volcanic cores – we can see some of them out our back window and others as we drive to Winslow.)
11. Spectacular sunsets filling the whole sky.
12. Spectacular sunsets that make Badger Butte glow crimson.
13. Med-evac airplanes landing and taking off on the airstrip about ¼ mile out our back window (my kids love them).
14. Med-evac helicopters that sometimes come, as well.
15. Walking to The Tree with my family (about 1 ½ miles away).
16. The Tree itself (a lovely big cottonwood).
17. The wash The Tree sits in (a place of dry sandy fun most of the year; very occasionally, a rushing river).
18. Walking anywhere behind our house with our family.
19. Finding beetles as we walk (in the summer).
20. Watching harvester ants in the summer.
21. Watching hummingbirds fight each other off at our feeder in the summer.
22. Watching other little birds congregate at our seed feeders the rest of the year.
23. The fact that despite night time temperatures in the single digits and brown clay soil, our outdoor mint has continued to produce edible leaves throughout this winter (did I mention the sunshine almost every day)?
24. The fact that our house faces south (thus taking good advantage of the sunshine almost every day).
25. The beautiful, open architecture of our Southwestern-style house.
26. The abundance of light and sunshine that fills our house every day.
27. The sense of community among the medstaff living here.
28. The wonderful informal potlucks residents here host for each other fairly frequently.
29. The incredible vegetarian food served at those potlucks (people here can really get into cooking).
30. The many Hopi runs that take place and the fun sense of community expressed at those runs.
31. The Hopi Wellness Center (an incredible, free workout center that includes high-quality, free childcare), and that I, even though I am a pahanna, am somehow eligible for.
32. Bacavi Community Fellowship Church.
33. Our wonderful, informal, never-know-what-to-expect, flexible 2-3 hour church services.
34. Singing congregational-chosen hymns and choruses for an hour each Sunday morning at our church.
35. Singing Hopi language songs at church.
36. Not feeling overly self-conscious when I badly attempt to sight-read strange hymns as I accompany worship with the piano (because nobody is being critical).
37. The wonderful and dedicated Christians, both Hopi and pahanna, that we know from our church.
38. The spectacular view from the windows of our mesa-top church.
39. Potlucks at our church (usually NOT heavy on the vegetarian food, unless we bring it!)
40. Amazon.com & free shipping (yeah, you can get this wherever you live, but it has special meaning to us here because of how far away we have to go to shop).
41. Netflix.com (see above).
42. Priceline.com (we do enough travel that this has become an incredibly useful and fun way to plan our trips and stay in nice hotels).
43. Curling up with Husband after the kids are in bed, putting on a Netflix, opening up a pint of Haadgen Daz, & feeling like it is a Grand Occasion.
44. Learning to rock-climb from other medstaff in Jack's Canyon.
45. Burning the local cedar, pinon, and aspen we bought in Flagstaff in our back-yard fire pit.
46. The clear night sky on the reservation and amazing star show that is available to us.
47. All the Really Cool Places there are to visit within a four hour driving radius of our house.
48. Going camping in some of those Cool Places.
49. 30 days of paid vacation for Husband a year.
50. Having the time and expendable income to do some cool vacations.
51. Having the time & expendable income to treat friends & family to some sight-seeing when they come to visit us (hear that, friends & family)?
52. Living in a place that actually makes friends & family want to come visit us for reasons other than just us (this never happened when we lived in York, PA)!
53. Military benefits without really being in the military.
54. Fort Tuthill Military Recreation Area in Flagstaff.
55. Staying in a cabin or A-frame at Fort Tuthill.
56. Enjoying the snow tube run at Fort Tuthill.
57. Bright sunshine almost every day.
58. The San Francisco Peaks, our own personal mountain range.
59. Gazing at the San Francisco Peaks almost every day, even though they are over 100 miles away.
60. Watching the sun set behind the San Francisco Peaks and turn the sky red; seeing them silhouetted against the burning sky.
61. Visiting Flagstaff & getting onto the flanks of the San Francisco Peaks.
62. Hiking in Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon.
63. The West Fork Trail in Oak Creek Canyon.
64. The fascinating, picturesque mesa-top villages on the Hopi Reservation.
65. The wonderful celebration and sense of community and pageantry expressed at Hopi social dances (although the jury – i.e. our Christian Hopi friends – seems to be out on whether or not Christians should attend those dances).
66. The fact that my husband can walk to work.
67. The fact that my husband usually walks home for lunch, even if it’s only for five minutes.
68. The cottonwood & Navajo Willow trees my husband planted in our yards.
69. Watching our Hopi Christian friends make their faith their own.
70. The sense of adventure our friends here have; their appreciation for a lot of what we believe is important in life.
71. Not having any kind of TV reception at all!
72. Watching our kids grow up less exposed to what we believe are some of the negative aspects of American culture.
73. Having a health care center, staffed with friends, within easy walking distance.
74. The fairly laid-back, positive experience of delivering a baby in a health care center staffed by friends, and being able to walk back home right afterwards.
75. The bright, yellow wildflowers that sprang up in the desert and in our yard last summer.
76. Driving to the post office with my kids to pick up our mail (it’s always something of an occasion).
77. Navigating the pockmarked, seen-better-days road through the village of Polacca to get to the post office, while seeing how fast I can drive without hitting any big potholes. (Answer: not very fast.)
78. Helping the Papaya open our PO Box & watching both the children excitedly pulling the mail out.
79. Finding a package slip in our PO Box & the excitement of redeeming it at the window for a package!
80. Never knowing whether our trash is going to be picked up on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. I actually like the quirkiness of the system!
81. Learning about the local flora, fauna, & systems & figuring out how things work here.
82. Seeing life as an adventure.
83. Having lots and lots of space.
84. Idyllic summer evening weather.
85. The fact that going shopping is a family occasion (Husband would not consider this a positive, but I usually enjoy our shopping marathons in Flagstaff, as long as I’m not alone).
86. The fun of stocking up, then making do (sometimes creatively) until the next shopping marathon.
87. Spending the night in a Flagstaff hotel & splashing in their pool & hot tub with my family.
88. The excitement of a winter snow and watching the San Francisco Peaks become snow covered.
89. Exploring ancient cliff dwellings and discovering petroglyphs at nearby Canyon de Chelley, Betatakin, and Montezuma's Castle.
90. Slowly making friendships with other Hopi.
91. Taking a tour of Walpi Village, the 2nd oldest continuously inhabited village in the United States (the oldest village is also on the Hopi Reservation, but is not as spectacular).
92. Taking friends on a tour of Walpi Village.
93. Singing Hopi language Christmas carols at the electricity-less homes of elderly people in the villages at Christmas time – a truly cross-cultural experience.
94. The novelty, excitement, and sense of accomplishment of actually helping something nice (besides mint) to grow in our yard.
95. Learning to appreciate the beauty of rocks as a primary landscaping medium.
96. Watching trains and experiencing the green grass and wonderful food at La Posada in Winslow.
97. Suddenly having the Little Painted Desert open up in front of us when we take a short turn-off off the road from Winslow to the Hopi Reservation.
98. The somewhat quirky honor of being asked to be the local leadership of the Mennonite Voluntary Service, even though we’re not (nor have we ever been) Mennonite, just because there was nobody else who seemed to fit the bill.
99. The Hopi Mission School, which brings back happy memories of small missionary schools I grew up with.
100. Often having the feeling that we’re living in another country, but without being too far away from a lot of our friends & family.
101. (Bonus) Did I mention it already? Wonderful sunshine streaming into my house almost every day of the year!

Schooling Blues (also Titled, “Why It’s Hard to Recruit New Doctors With Families to Live Here”)

2007-02-06T15:10:00.000-07:00

When Husband & I first moved here (a year and a half ago), we started out with a three year contract. This would conveniently allow us to move somewhere else the summer before the Papaya became kindergarten material, thus expanding our school options for him.

Last September, however, Husband (with my blessing) signed a four year contract, making our total stay here five years, two of which the Papaya will be school-aged. So the theoretical question of whether or not we’ll send him to First Mesa Elementary School has become not-so-theoretical. On top of this quandary, we’ve added the question of whether or not we should send the Papaya to the Head Start program here this coming Fall.

In response to the schooling debate over on Jordana’s blogsite, I’ve been inspired to type out some of our own struggles regarding school options for our children. While I’ve learned recently that our dilemmas are in no way exceptional to us, but that even parents in suburbia struggle with how to school their kids, I think that living here has presented us with some unique concerns.

If someone had asked me those two questions (from paragraph before last) the first month we lived here, I would have answered, 1. “Probably”, and 2. “No way! Who needs it?”. After a year and a half of living here, these answers have changed to 1. “Almost certainly not”, and 2. “No way, but I wish there was something of some sort available to us.”

The reasons we initially considered sending the Papaya to First Mesa Elementary included the following:

1. We really wanted to fit in here, and not be seen as the high and mighty Pahanna (white people), too good to send their children to school with everybody else. After all, we came here to serve and to try to befriend and live in community (to some extent) with other Hopi.

2. We thought it would be neat for the Papaya to go to school in a multicultural setting. The schools here really do try to teach Hopi culture, and even some of the Hopi language, to their students. We plan to spend most of our lives living & working in cultures different from our own, and we really want the Papaya to play and be friends with kids who are different from himself.

3. The elementary school building was brand new, and beautiful. We were hoping that the nice facility might draw some higher caliber teachers.

4. We know that (for a variety of sad reasons) most reservation schools are ranked near the bottom of any list. But we planned to teach the Papaya a lot at home, anyway. We figured that even if he didn’t learn anything at school, what we could teach him at home would be sufficient for his early years.

5. Our MD friends who sent their children there had mostly positive (or at least not a lot of negative) things to say.

The idea of sending my child to Head Start (or that a child with a parent earning an MD salary would even be eligible for Head Start) seemed crazy. But I soon found out that not only was everyone living here eligible, no matter what their economic circumstances (because there are NO other preschool options of any sort within 80 miles), but that it was the expected thing to do when your child turned 4 (or even 3 ½). My next door neighbor and good friend of last year, who was also pahanna (and whose husband was another doctor) sent her 4 year old daughter to Head Start, and it was a great experience for all concerned. While it’s doubtful whether or not her daughter learned anything academically she hadn’t already learned at home, she matured socially & became a much nicer person to be with, and my neighbor finally developed friendships with Hopi women, something she had been hoping to do for over two years. She urged me strongly to send the Papaya there as soon as he was eligible (he actually has been eligible since Christmas).

Meanwhile, over the past year and a half, just about all of the families with kids that lived on the health care center compound moved away. It’s hard to express the isolation here to somebody who’s never visited. We lived on a compound, attached to the health care center, that is owned by the Hopi Tribe and houses health care center staff. There’s a playground at the center of the compound, which, for my first few months, was a real social center for parents & children during the day. But now all but 3 of these families have moved away (and two of the remaining families are moving in the next few months) & the playground is usually empty. On the entire reservation (a fairly large area), there are 2 gas stations and 2 small food marts that I know of, as well as one convenience store. There’s not even a library. The nearest town with real services is Winslow, 80 miles away, and the nearest town that’s really fun to go to is Flagstaff, about 100 miles and a 2 hour drive away. Our small church is a 30 minute drive away. When I look out my back window, I can usually see for over 100 miles (there are no trees) and there is not another house in sight.

Before moving here, we lived in downtown York, PA. I don’t recommend it (the downtown area) as a place to bring up kids – it has a gritty, Eastern inner-city feel; we had no yard and sometimes heard gunshots from our house; we could watch drug deals taking place in our back alley. However, even from inner-city York, the Papaya and I could walk to a nice library, where he could play with other kids and we could read together. We could walk to the YWCA and take a Mom & Tots swimming class together, where he would interact with other kids & I would interact with other women. We could walk to a church where I went to a Tuesday morning Bible study. He would play with the other kids in the nursery & I would enjoy relationships with other women. We could get in our car and, within 15 minutes, drive to a grocery store, the mall, and several lovely parks/ playgrounds.

I actually love the place where we live – after all, we chose to extend our time here. There are many wonderful things about living here, and I’m starting to build some relationships and beginning to feel a sense of belonging. But I hadn’t really thought about how much all of the things I just mentioned had become part of the fabric of my day, and how much the Papaya (& the Banana) & I would be left to our own resources here, especially when the majority of the other families moved away.

So, mostly for the social interaction aspect of it (for both of us), and because enough people were recommending it to me, I played around (just a little bit) with the idea of sending the Papaya to Head Start. But over the last few months, I’ve heard enough negative things about it (some just unbelievable) that I’ve gone back to my original “No way!” Moreover, Husband & I have gotten uncomfortable enough about the school system here in general to pretty much decide on an alternative for the Papaya when he enters kindergarten.

For one, the nearest Head Start program (First Mesa) runs all day (including breakfast & lunch), four days a week. This just seems like an awful lot for a 3 or 4 year old. You are not allowed to enroll your child “part time” – it’s all or nothing. This, by itself, is enough of a reason for me not to send the Papaya. Unfortunately, there are more:

Last year, there were three occasions in which the Head Start school bus driver just didn’t show up to pick up my neighbor’s daughter (or anybody else, for that matter) for a few days. He didn’t even call in to say he wouldn’t be able to do it – he just completely disappeared. “He’s got to be in jail,” my neighbor reasoned. “Why else can nobody reach him?” “Yeah,” I joked, “he’s in jail for DUI!” Well, as it turned out, he was in jail for DUI – three times throughout the course of the school year. The administrators knew about it, but kept on giving him another chance. And it turned out that this had been going on the previous year, too! My neighbor, slightly guiltily (see reason #1 above that we considered sending the Papaya to public school), started driving her daughter to Head Start. Not until the statewide Head Start evaluation team showed up & heard about it (because of some whistle-blower teacher) was the driver fired (with no one to take his place). And this was almost at the end of the school year!

Despite her & her daughter’s good experience with Head Start, my neighbor was disgusted & angered at the end of last year because the bad teachers were retained or promoted, while the good, dedicated teachers were not. This had to do with clan connections and local politics.

A Head Start teacher from the Third Mesa program who goes to our church complained to another church member (a HVAC specialist) that the staff & students at her Head Start had just been feeling sick and dizzy and tired all day, for several weeks. The HVAC guy went to check things out. Although he was not allowed to make any repairs or get too close, he quickly ascertained that the school’s heater was not installed properly, meaning that carbon monoxide was being piped into the building all day. There were no detectors.

Two of our Christian Hopi friends pulled their children out of Head Start last year, largely because the Hopi religion was pushed so strongly & their children were not allowed to express their Christian religion at all. This is a tricky thing – it seems that the Hopi religion is tied so closely into the Hopi culture, that when a Hopi school tries to instill a sense of cultural pride & belonging in its students, it nearly always involves teaching & promoting Hopi religion. For example (from what I’ve heard), our friends’ children were not allowed to say grace over their meals, and were asked to leave some of each meal untouched, for the kachinas (spiritual messengers, almost like gods). This is one of the main reasons we’re reluctant to send the Papaya to public school here at such an impressionable age. I don’t think public school should promote any religion, Christian or Hopi or anything else, and it makes me uncomfortable that they do (although I understand and even sympathize with the reasons behind it).

Homeschooling sounds somewhat fun, but I’d really like us to have a little more contact with the reservation world. We’re isolated enough as it is.

Happily, it looks like there is an option that, starting in kindergarten, would allow the Papaya to still interact with other children, different from himself, and even learn some of the Hopi culture (but not the Hopi religion). It would also provide a small class size (this year, I think there are about 6 students in the kindergarten), and, hopefully, a more flexible environment and dedicated teachers than the public school. The Hopi Mission School is a small school (about 50 students, grades K-6), founded about 50 years ago by the Mennonites. Though no longer officially Mennonite (it has a local board now), it is still staffed largely by Mennonite teachers. It really is a small school, and brings back happy memories of small, fairly informal schools I went to in Bangladesh & Kenya. It seems to be pretty good academically, at least compared to surrounding schools (my husband works with a nurse whose husband is a teacher at the public elementary school, but sends their son to the Hopi Mission School), and has dedicated teachers. I’m actually pretty excited about the option, and hope it proves to be a positive start for the Papaya’s academic (and social) experience.

And as for preschool – I’m still hoping I can work some sort of “co-op” thing out with a couple of my Hopi friends with preschoolers (all girls). Now, if we could only find a boy around the Papaya’s age for him to play with…

A Redemptive Imagination

2007-01-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Papaya is obsessed with the Pixar Cars movie and all of the Cars characters. We have fed this obsession by buying him (or encouraging others to buy him) assorted characters from the movie in the form of die-cast vehicles and awarding them to him as airplane surprises, Christmas presents, etc. He also owns the DVD (Christmas, again), the soundtrack CD, a Cars calendar, a Lightning McQueen puzzle, Cars band-aids, toothbrush, and toothpaste, 3 books, various articles of clothing and Big Boy Underpants depicting characters from the movie.

The good thing about all of this is that it really helps feed the Papaya's creativity and imagination. He sees a lot of life though the lens of Cars; when he's taking a walk, he'll start running and pretend he's driving up to see a waterfall with Sally the Girl Car, or he'll start pushing me and pretend he's pushing The King over the finish line at his last race. He stays pretty observant when we go driving, in hopes of seeing a vehicle or scenery that reminds him of something from Cars. He'll pick out random objects around the house and put together a story with them (sometimes copying a scene from the movie, and sometimes making up his own story.) While there are probably more worthy and classic stories to obsess about, we generally like Pixar, the Cars storyline, and the fact that the movie takes place in a setting similar to where we live. The Papaya's small character vehicles are easy to transport and can hold him captive for hours in his car seat or on an airplane as he makes up different stories involving them. And it certainly beats out a Disney Princess fascination (no, Banana, do not fall prey to that, please)!

The unfortunate side of this obsession is when we try to interest or redirect Papaya to something else and fail because he's so caught up in a Cars imagining, or when his imagination gets the best of him and becomes more real than reality. The latter is what I had to deal with a couple nights ago, when Husband was working all night long at the hospital.

The scene from the Cars movie which most terrifies and fascinates the Papaya involves Lightning McQueen (the protagonist of the movie, a hot-shot race car) and Mater (an old tow truck) going tractor tipping at night. It's a hilarious scene, and ends with Frank, an enormous, angry combine mower, roaring with rage & chasing both mischief-makers out of his field. Red and backlit, Frank comes within inches of catching Lightning and Mater with his blades. Later on in the movie, Lightning has a nightmare in which Frank is racing with him (actually, chasing him). In his dream, Frank actually does catch (and "eat") a competing car.

The Papaya cannot stop talking about Frank. When we're taking a walk and I ask him to hurry up, he'll start running and yelling, "Frank is chasing me!" He wants to hear the portion of the soundtrack that includes the tractor tipping & Frank chase over and over again. When the music suddenly turns scary, he always jumps and says with great excitement, "That's Frank!" When he watches the scene on the TV, he sits, frozen and riveted, until Lightning & Mater escape. Then he erupts with loud, relieved, uncontrolled laughter (not true laughter, but rather scared cackling).

Two weeks ago (yes, it has been that long now, although it was a lot closer in time when I started to write this post), the Papaya's daddy was working all night at the hospital. I foolishly let the Papaya watch Cars as a special treat when he woke up from his nap. All went well, until right after supper. I was getting the Banana ready for bed when suddenly I had a terrified little boy clinging to my legs.

The Papaya's fear of Frank, in a dark house and in the absence of his daddy, had grown to such proportions that he refused to walk on the floor or go anywhere without me carrying him. I tried rationally explaining that Frank wasn't real, but was just a picture that some people drew. I tried praying together. I tried taking a flashlight & looking in the closets and under the beds to prove that Frank wasn't anywhere in the house (which only served to convince the Papaya that Frank might be hiding in our closet). Nothing worked, and the Papaya's fear only grew. I finally disentagled him and planted him on a chair in our room (surfaces above the floor seemed safer for him) where he could see me while I finished bedding the Banana. I gave him books to read but he didn't open them - he just stared into space with a terrified look on his face. I resigned myself to a long night ahead.

With the Banana safely in bed, I returned to the Papaya & tried to reason with him some more. Nothing was working. Finally, I decided that we should just start the normal going-to-bed routine and hope that it would jolt the Papaya out of his funk. So I asked him to go choose his special treat (if he takes an afternoon nap, he gets to eat a piece of his Halloween candy stash during his shower). At first, he refused even that, but finally the promise of sugar overcame some Frank-fear, and he dared to walk across the floor (holding tightly to my hand) to the kitchen to choose his treat. We then proceeded to the bathroom, where suddenly, with a flash of inspiration, the Papaya turned to me and asked, "Frank can't get out of his field, can he?"

I grasped at this straw & quickly changed tactics from trying to convince the Papaya that Frank was non-existant to convincing him that Frank wasn't a threat. "No, of course not!" I answered. "Frank couldn't follow Lighning and Mater once they went through the fence because he couldn't leave his field. He was stuck there."

The Papaya took this reassurance and ran with it. "Frank got hurt trying to get out of his field," he said. "I picked him up. I helped him. I gave him a Cars band-aid." As we continued with the Papaya's shower and the other parts of his bed-time routine, he repeated and refined this story of him helping Frank. When I turned off his light and left him alone in his room after reading and praying with him, the Papaya was relaxed and telling his story to Mater, depicted on the calendar hanging over his bed. As far as I know, he fell asleep right away, since I didn't hear him at all until the morning.

It was amazing. The Papaya dealt with his fear by making Frank needy, and eventually, by making the scary, angry combine mower into a friend. My imagination is rarely so charitable to people who anger or frighten me!

When my husband was working another two nights last weekend, the Papaya sat on the couch and read bedtime stories to Frank while I put the Banana to bed. He even broke his special treat in half and offered some to Frank while he showered (after a few seconds of watching half of the Papaya's small chocolate bar melt as he held it out into the hot shower, I suggested that Frank was politely refusing, and the Papaya gratefully ate it himself). While putting on his pyjamas after his shower, the Papaya said that he would help Frank get his pyjamas on, too. He made helpful comments while he put his hands out in front of him and pantomined helping Frank into his PJ's.

I wish I could have seen what the Papaya was seeing at that point. I tried to imagine a 10 ton combine mower putting on red pyjamas, but I'm afraid my imagination just wasn't that fertile! Luckily, my son is helping me get it back into shape.

A story to make you feel good about those long airport security lines...

2007-01-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

As we stood in the security line to begin the first of our 4 airplane trips this past Christmas season, my husband realized, to his chagrin, that he had forgotten to remove the little Swiss Army knife from his keychain. It was a nice and useful knife with about three blades, scissors, and the like, and had been a gift from me. We both felt sad about having to surrender it to a TSA official.

My husband decided he wasn't surrendering his knife without at least an attempt to get it past TSA. So he surrepticiously opened our roll-on and slipped his entire keychain in, just before we got to the guy checking our ID's. I didn't have much hope for it.

Sure enough, as I helped both our children get their shoes back on (because even my one-year-old was required to remove her little slip-ons) after the chaos of getting both of them and all of our assorted hand luggage through security, I saw a TSA official wave my husband over to the bag-search area. With the manner of somebody who knew exactly what he was looking for, the TSA guy opened the luggage, rummaged through, and triumphantly pulled out our Nalgene bottle, which had about an inch of water sloshing around in it. He made my husband pour out the water (he wouldn't even allow him to drink it), handed back the Nalgene, and sent us on our way with the knife still in our possession. I looked around at the thousands of other holiday travelers in the airport and wondered how many more knives were hiding in their carry-ons.

But at least we could rest assured that there was no dangerous water coming on board with us that originated outside of the "sterile area"!

Note to any TSA staff, air marshals, or other law enforcement officials who might happen to read this post: It is fictional and cannot be used against us in a court of law. My husband would never really try to smuggle a knife past airline security.

Note to anybody else reading this post: It really happened.

Hooray! I remembered my password!

2007-01-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

You know it's been too long since your last blog post when it takes four tries to successfully log in.

But I made it in & I'm back! And right on cue, both the Banana & the Papaya have just awakened from their naps and begun to cry. I'll try again soon!

One way Jesus is different from dinosaurs

2006-10-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

This happened 3 weeks ago but I didn't want to let it go undocumented:

While my mother-in-law was visiting, we decided to explore the Petrified Forest National Park with her (less than 2 hours away). We had never been and will probably not go again - as far as national parks go, it ranks down at the bottom of my list in just about every category. In a land of amazing wonders and breathtaking scenery, it just wasn't that exciting. (Maybe it was more impressive 100 years ago, though, since visitors steal about a ton of petrified wood a month, and used to take much more.) If we had paid the $30 entrance fee rather than using our National Parks pass, I would have felt seriously gipped.

The area immediately surrounding the park was full of Route 66 kitchiness, mostly dinosaur themed. There were "statues" of dinosaurs lining the interstate leading up to the exit (including one hilarious depiction of a T-rex crunching down on a man), as well as various "dinosaur parks" and "dino museums" at the exit, all looking as if they hadn't changed in the last 50 years or so. Even the park's visitor center had scale models (better done, at least) of what the dinosaurs that once roamed the area might have looked like. The Papaya was greatly impacted.

The one redeeming aspect of the park was the Painted Desert - the landscape of pink, red, black, brown, and white hills going on and on, with practically no vegetation anywhere, was definitely other-worldly and awe inspiring. As we gazed down from the overlook before hiking the steep trail into the desert and doing a bit of exploring, the following conversation took place:

Papaya: Think there are dinosours down there!

Me: It really looks like that, doesn't it? But you know what? There aren't any dinosaurs around any more. All of the dinosaurs died a long time ago.

Papaya (relieved): The dinosaurs died?

Me: That's right. The dinosaurs all died a long, long, long time ago. There aren't any dinosaurs any more.

Papaya: The dinosaurs all died. They're all gone now.

Me: That's right. There are no more dinosaurs.

[If you repeat the last two statements over and over again, you'll get an idea of what the next 10 minutes of our conversation was like. Then it got a bit varied:]

Papaya: Jesus died.

Me: That's right. Jesus did die. But he came alive again.

Papaya: He is risen!

Me: Yes - isn't that happy?

Papaya: (Worried silence)

Me: But the dinosaurs didn't come alive again. They stayed dead.

Papaya (very relieved): They stayed dead.

Me: That's right - they stayed dead.

The rest of our day was punctuated every 2 to 3 minutes by the Papaya's musings that "the dinosaurs are all dead, Mommy/Daddy/NaiNai. They stayed dead." In fact, three weeks later, he still vocally meditates on that fact fairly frequently. It's the enduring legacy of our trip to Petrified Forest National Park.

Butternut Squash Bonanza

2006-10-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

On my last trip to Flagstaff (a little over 2 weeks ago), the natural foods store had a great sale on organic squash. I left the store with 10 pounds of butternut squash, a bounty that impressed my check-out clerk and even surprised me.

I've spent quite a bit of time over the past two weeks thinking of new and interesting ways to cook with butternut squash. These included a fabulous bread pudding (which had the added value of using up various bits of leftovers, including half a loaf of stale whole-wheat double-cheese bread and an old corn muffin), a chili (butternut squash works pretty well in chili, just in case you were wondering), a pasta toss, and - my greatest success - an amazing pizza.

Just in case any of my many readers have an overabundance of winter squash and want to make a delicious and unusual pizza (delicious for two vegetarian squash-lovers, at least), here is Papaya Mommy's Special Recipe for Butternut Squash Pizza:

Start with a homemade (with help of breadmaker) whole wheat-cornmeal pizza crust. Cover with a generous layer of mozzerella cheese. Then spread on your butternut squash combo: cubes of squash tossed with a coarsely chopped onion, sage, salt, pepper, and olive oil and roasted in the oven until soft. Top this with large pieces of toasted walnut (pinenuts would be good, too). Your final layer is a sprinking of fresh Asiago cheese. Cook the pizza and enjoy a fabulous autumn taste sensation.

Next time I feel led to purchase double digit pounds of squash, I will have to refer back to this entry.

So absurd, I had to post

2006-10-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

I'm excited about voting in November, not so much because of the candidates running for office, but because of all the ballot propositions I get to help decide. I could have a part in raising the minimum wage, or banning smoking in all public places here! We just received a nice fat publication from the Secretary of State that detailed all of the propositions on the ballet, as well as "pro" and "con" arguments submitted by various invested individuals or groups.

By far the most original and crazy proposition on the ballet suggests using unclaimed lottery money to create a $1,000,000 voter's jackpot. That's right - vote in Arizona for the chance to win a million dollars! This prize would be awarded to a randomly selected person who voted in the primary or general election - retroactively applied to this election and valid in upcoming years.

While I personally think this is a Very Bad Idea and will vote against it, I was highly entertained by reading the "pro" arguments, so much so that I have to quote one of them. Here it is, verbatim, the "WWJD" argument:

"Some criticize 'Voter Rewards' as being morally wrong. If that might be the case, we should look to the ultimate authority on morals and ethics. What does God say? Do what you are supposed to do and I will REWARD you with eternal life in heaven. What are we saying? Do what you are supposed to do, vote, and we will REWARD you with a chance to win a million dollars. If incentives are good enough for God, they are good enough for the voters of Arizona!"

As a lover of the absurd, it made my day.

Banana's boring view continues...

2006-09-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

The majority of babies are eligible for a forward facing car-seat position at 1 year old, thus enabling a view that's a lot more varied and interesting than the back of the seat in front of them. I'm afraid it will be a while, however, until the Banana enjoys that luxury.

We just took both kids in to the health center for well-child check-ups & vaccinations. The Banana, while in the 40th percentile for her height, is falling off the growth chart weight-wise. She's 18 pounds at 12 months, & barely makes it to the 5th percentile. We're not worried, though, since she's being compared to a lot of babies who haven't been walking for 2 months & aren't climbing up to the top of everything in sight. But the sad upshot of not reaching 20 pounds is that the poor girl has to endure a pretty monotonous car view for a couple months more. At least she has her brother to look at.

The Banana is going to give me a heart attack, if she doesn't give herself a concussion first. We don't have any stairs in our house, but she still seems to find plenty of things to climb - our kitchen step stool, the child size chairs & table in the kitchen, the lego bench... She's so excited when she gets to the top of something that she usually lets go of any handholds and does a little hopping dance, often accompanied by small squeals. Since she's not very good at getting down yet and our floor is composed entirely of very hard tile, this performance is usually followed by my own hopping dance, as I try to get close enough to her to prevent grave injury. I'd like her to fall enough to hurt herself a little and thus learn wisdom, without hurting herself seriously anywhere. It's a fine balance!

Miscellanea

2006-09-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm back! For another lengthy blog entry, quite probably followed by a long dry spell. It's just hard to find the right combination of time, energy, and motivation to do this. (Although I enjoy it while I'm doing it, and am always happy after I've blogged. It's kind of like working out.)

Here are some of the notable happenings of the past two or three weeks:

1. The Banana turned 1 year old! This past year has gone by at the speed of light. It's hard to believe she's the same tiny 6 1/2 pound baby I walked home from the health center with just a few short weeks ago (okay, 52 short weeks ago). She's still tiny (she wears her 6-9 month sized sleepers at night), but is no longer the infant who was happy to lie in my arms or nestle in a Baby Bjorn for hours at a time.

Her most recent passion is climbing. There is a playground in our housing compound, and yesterday she was able to climb to the very highest slide and go down it, all by herself (the only two times I guided her were holding her hand over the bridge without any sides to it, and helping her get into a sliding position with the least likelihood of painful injury at the bottom). She did this 5 or 6 times and was incredibly proud of herself. "Up, up!" she squealed as she climbed. When she wasn't climbing, she was busy stuffing her onesie with the rubber chips that line the playground. I pulled out all I could find before we left, but still cleaned a few more off the bathroom floor when I undressed her that night. One had even found its way into her diaper. At one point, toddling around the playground, she stumbled and put her hand down into a tumbleweed (a truly horrible plant), and I had to pick about 8 stickers out of her palm. She was so excited about her new accomplishments that she neither cried nor complained (usually, she's a bit of a drama queen).

The Banana is still a bit shy of lots of strangers (stranger = anyone not in her family), so she had a fairly quiet birthday. Husband's mother was visiting, and I made a cake and decorated it simply. We sang to her and she did the requisite make-a-huge-mess-with-the-birthday-cake-and-smear-it-everywhere routine, enjoying it greatly. Then, while I was putting her to bed, we invited our neighbors over (a Hopi family of 12) to eat the rest of the cake and ice cream - that was the real party! The Banana was so full of sugar that she refused to nurse and just bit me instead. Nothing would please her, so I finally had to just put her in bed. She cried for about 1 minute, then conked out and went to sleep. I think we'll avoid giving her large pieces of cake right around bedtime for a while.

I'm unhappy to report that the Banana is a very strong-willed night awakener. Despite the fact that we haven't responded to her at night for over a month now, she still cries an average of an hour each evening (sometime between midnight and 5:00, when I finally go in to her). We have a three week visit/trip coming up in October, and I'm not looking forward to the nighttime aspect of it. If she's this bad at home, she will definitely regress to 2 or 3 night awakenings by the end of the trip. But I'm optimistic. At least I don't have to get out of bed until 5:00 a.m., and the Banana's complaints don't bother me quite so much anymore. Maybe we should put the Papaya in our closet for awhile, and move the Banana to the crib in his room.

2. The Papaya is now sleeping consistently in his big boy bed! We bought a bed rail at Target, and it seems to have made all the difference. This is convenient when we travel, since we no longer have to tote two port-a-cribs with us everywhere we go!

The Papaya's potty training is progressing beautifully. He can now stay dry/use public bathrooms on long car trips and Flagstaff shopping marathons. Naptime and nighttime are not dry yet but we're not pushing that. The last time the Papaya pooped anywhere but the toilet was a couple months ago and we dare to believe that even he considers it normative at this time to put all his poop in the toilet. We continue to offer incentives, since the wet accidents increase by an alarming amount when there are none. Thomas & Friends engines (the incentives) are actually cheaper than diapers, and they last longer and smell a lot better. They're more fun, too!

The Papaya's stage of defiance seems to be waning a bit, much to our relief. We bought six or seven books on parenting and strong willed children from Amazon.com. I read them all, shared their contents with Husband, and some of the new ideas we gleaned seem to be a little more effective than our old techniques. Or maybe his stage was just coming to an end, anyway. In any case, we're happy that it is passing.

3. We just signed a four year contract, meaning that we'll be on this reservation 5 years in all. Our first year here went so fast, and spending only three years (our original contract) seemed too little. We prayed about it and hope we are making the right decision. We hope to build some meaningful, longterm relationships, both with our friends and between my husband and his patients. I'm starting to think in the long term. (Five years in a row is the longest I've ever lived anywhere, and feels like a very long time indeed.)

4. My mother-in-law just completed a 10-day visit with us. It was a very good and happy visit, and the time went fast. There's always been a certain amount of tension involved in her visits, but there wasn't much this time. I'm happy not to be cooking quite so much as I did during her visit, however! I was busy.

Husband's mom stopped here to visit en route from Guam to Germany - she & her husband are moving (in fact, just moved) there. Very exciting for all of us - Germany is a lot easier & cheaper to visit than Guam, and the thought of exploring Europe is exciting. While Husband's mom was here, we purchased tickets to take a 2-week trip to Germany next June. I dread the thought of the airline trip & jet lag with two children, but am thrilled about the upcoming visit. We've got to get a passport for the Banana now!

5. Right before my mother-in-law arrived, our family did our first ever camping trip! We finished purchasing the necessary equipment a few months ago, but never had the nerve to take the plunge. I was a little apprehensive, but we all had a wonderful time. We went to Navajo National Monument. The campsite was free, clean, and beautiful. At 7300 feet, we were a little chilled in the early morning (the temperature was in the 40s), but we all snuggled together and it warmed up quickly with the sun. That morning, we went on a 5 mile guided tour to the Betatakin cliff dwellings (the only way you can access them). We climbed about 1000 feet down into a canyon, which of course meant we had to climb back up again. Husband and I each carried a child most of the way (the Papaya hiked about a mile but did not climb at all; the Banana, on my back, didn't hike at all), as well as a picnic lunch for 4, camera, binoculars, diaper changing equipment, and 5 quarts of water. There was very little shade and we were seriously bushed by the end - and then we still had to break up camp and drive home! But it was very much worth it - the cliff dwellings were pristine and stunning and we were able to climb up into the alcove and walk among the ruins. We're all eager to do another camping trip.

6. I decided that if I can handle the kids on an overnight trip into Flagstaff, I can handle them alone on a cross-continental airplane trip. We're going to visit my sister and her family, in Waynesburg, PA, in late October! Her husband is very busy with teaching right now (he's a college professor with a fairly new job) and we're going to keep her company. I think we'll even drive to my parents' house, in Baltimore, over the weekend I'm there. I'm wildly excited about the visit and a little apprehensive about the trip to get there (another strong-woman trip?!). Just preceding my departure for Pittsburgh, our family will be in Sedona, AZ for four days for my husband's conference. And just preceding that, my dear friend from Germany and her family are visiting us for a week, and we'll be taking them around the state to do some sightseeing. Life is full. I'm going to try to enjoy these next two quiet weeks as much as I can, before our family's next round of busyness begins!

A Strong Woman Trip

2006-09-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

The children and I took an overnight trip to Flagstaff last week. Even before its denouement, I was thinking of it as a strong woman trip - because I was having to be a strong woman to survive it. Then it got worse. Here's the story:

It was 3 1/2 weeks since our family had bought any groceries except for milk. While this situation resulted in some good things, such as opportunities to be creative with frozen foods and a sparkling clean refrigerator (all of the food in there filled half a shelf, so it was the perfect opportunity to scrub it down), it was not a state of affairs that could endure much longer. Moreover, it was almost 3 months since our family had bought non-grocery purchases (i.e. items from Walmart/Target/Home Depot). It was time to shop.

Usually, when a crisis like this arises, Husband and I strap up the kids and head down to Flagstaff for the weekend. But not this time. Some dear friends from North Carolina were staying in Flagstaff from Tuesday to Thursday, and I had the bright idea to drive down there with the kids, do our shopping, spend the night, visit with my friends and perhaps lead them on a Sedona tour, and then drive back to our house. So I made up a shopping/to-do list (2 pages, typed, single spaced, involving 7 stores, the recycling center, and the library), helped my Husband install the box onto the roof rack of our tiny Toyota Corolla (our only car), loaded the car down with 3 months of recycling (they don't pick up here, so we have to haul it to Flag), strapped the kids in, and headed off bright and early last Wednesday morning.

Just in case you're wondering, taking two very young children on a 2 hour car trip, followed by a marathon shopping day, especially when one of the two said children is not only incredibly active but is also going through a pronounced stage of defiance - I don't recommend it. The day had many highlights, but the one I remember best is when I told the Papaya we couldn't return to the toy section at Target because he was disobedient and whiny (I had warned him of these consequences) and he took off running across the store, screaming "NOOOOO!!!" at the top of his lungs. I grabbed the Banana from the full shopping cart and took off after him as fast as I could while holding a baby. I finally intercepted him as he rounded an aisle, grabbed his arm, and dragged him back, literally kicking and screaming, to the cart. Mercifully, he fell asleep soon afterwards. The next stop, Walmart, was the most peaceful part of the day: I put the Banana in her backpack, balanced the Papaya on the baby carrier attached to the shopping cart (it was a tight fit for a 3-year old, but it worked), and shopped in blessed silence. You know things are bad when you find peace and rest in a crowded Walmart.

I finally got the shopping finished and checked into a small cabin in a county park. The cabin was rustic and nice, and there was a great playground for the kids. Unfortunately, the Papaya repeated his running off and screaming act when I tried to give him a time out for throwing pebbles at his sister - I had to chase him down and drag him back to the cabin to discipline him - and he lost his favorite car, Lightning McQueen, by burying him in the pebbles and forgetting where. (Hopefully, he didn't lose too much of his faith as well, since we asked God to help us find Lightning and we never did!) But the evening did have its nice moments, and we all managed to get a decent night of sleep.

The next morning's trip to Sedona did not go as planned, since our friends' RV had mechanical problems and they had to spend the day stranded in a hotel room while attempting to get it fixed. I took the kids to the hotel room to meet my friends, where I soon felt like the World's Worst Mom - the Papaya was hyper and disobedient (literally bouncing off the walls, the couches, the drapery, his sister), while the Banana, beset by seperation/stranger anxiety, screamed bloody murder every time my friends tried to look at her or talk to her. One of my friends sat in the Corolla's empty passenger seat and helped me complete my shopping - I still had Sam's Club to go, as well as fresh produce and cold things to buy at the grocery store. By the time I was done, the car was so full that I was stuffing fruits and vegetables into every imaginable little space in the trunk and at the kids' feet. The car was packed within an inch of its life.

"What will you do if you get a flat tire?" my friend asked me jokingly as I prepared to drive back home. "Hope I have cell phone reception!" I replied blithely. Because of course a flat tire couldn't happen to me, alone with two children in the car and a trunk packed as full as it could get. I was going to have a peaceful, restful drive home, with the two children taking their long-postponed naps in the back seat, listening to nice adult music instead of nursery rhymes. Husband may make the money, but I really felt like I was the one bringing home the bacon. I couldn't wait to get there with my haul!

The kids fell asleep immediately and the first half hour of the drive went exactly as planned. Then, behind me to my left, I heard an awful noise that I hoped was simply a car with serious mechanical problems trying to pass me. Eventually, my brain accepted what it really didn't want to acknowledge - the noise came from my car! I pulled over and sure enough, my back tire was as flat as it could be. I was on a road in the middle of the vast Navajo Nation and was pretty isolated. And - here's the part I'm embarassed to admit - I had never changed a tire before and wasn't sure how to do it.

At least I had fleeting cell phone reception - enough to call my husband (at work in the ER) and tell him my problem, but not enough for him to return my call after he was finished with his patient. I emptied out every last bit of groceries and purchases from my trunk onto the side of the road, bid a mental farewell to my hopes of bringing home frozen ice cream, pulled out the instruction manual that came with the Corolla, found the section on changing tires, located the proper equipment, and set about removing lug nuts (the hubcap had apparently flown off when the tire suddenly went flat, and was nowhere to be seen).

At this moment, an extremely nice young man from Illinois, on a road trip vacation across the US, stopped and asked if he could help me. I decided that my strong-woman status did not preclude accepting help from nice strong young men, took the screaming Banana out of her carseat, and let him carry on. I'm happy to report that more Good Samaritans stopped to help, including a Navajo family with an air compressor in their pick up truck. Even if I had figured out how to change a tire, it turns out that my jack wasn't tall enough for the back wheels, and the flat tire was so stuck it took two men to wrench it off. Moreover, the air compressor people ascertained that the tire's problem was a blown air valve and told me where in the tiny town of Leupp, just 11 miles away, I could get it replaced. I reloaded the trunk, stuck the big wheel in the back seat between the two car seats (the only place it would fit), and crawled to Leupp.

I was very grateful to know where the Leupp auto repair shop was, since it was a true local joint, without even a sign announcing itself. It consisted entirely of a small half-pipe type building with a few pieces of equipment inside, a concrete slab, and a guy in an old white Cadillac. I told him what my problem was and he fixed it in 20 minutes, charging me only $6! God certainly took care of us through the whole ordeal, even if He didn't let us find Lightning McQueen!

There was no way I was going to unload the trunk again to put the spare back, so I put it between the two car seats and turned towards home, now about 1 1/4 hours away. The Papaya, newly awake and grumpy, objected strongly both to the placement of the spare tire and the Banana's screams at being put back in her car seat. He started screaming and spurred the Banana on to new and greater screams, which in turn encouraged higher pitched screaming from the Papaya. They egged each other on like this for most of the ride home. In one of the few quite moments between the screams, I tried to get a whole deep breath in before they started up again (I failed). In another quiet moment, I heard a random line from the Caedmon's Call CD I was trying to listen to: "You knew this day long before you made me out of dirt". "Yes," I grumbled to God, "and you laughed sadistically!" But I laughed, too - the whole experience was so over-the-top by this point that I was starting to see the humor in it (being 15 minutes from home and having a fixed tire helped, too).

I finally arrived home and thought I was in heaven. Not only was my husband home from work, but there were TREES in the yard!!!!! Real trees! With leaves! Five of them - two in the front yard, and three in the back! Two cottonwoods (my favorite), two Navajo Willows, and one peach tree (Husband's pick). Husband had planned a big surprise for me, and hired our pastor's son to drive to Winslow, pick them up, and plant them. They are truly beautiful. I felt so loved. It was a wonderful end to a trying trip. (And, despite all odds, our ice cream is still edible.)

I survived. I am a Strong Woman.

Afterword: The craziness didn't end with my homecoming. We drove to Winslow the next morning, met our friends who had been in Flagstaff, escorted them back to our house, hosted all 7 of them for the night, and went on a road trip with them the next day. The following morning I took the kids to church by myself (Husband was on back-up call) and taught 7 preschoolers with the Banana on my back. Husband worked all night Sunday night and Monday night. Today is Tuesday, and we're ready for a rest and some normality again! I think I'd like to be a Not-so-strong Woman for a little while!

Cursed ants!

2006-09-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

Usually I tolerate, and often enjoy watching, the harvester ants that populate our backyard. Until today. The Banana, having always been thwarted by me in the past, finally fulfilled her weeks-long desire to pick one up. The ant clamped its jaws down on the Banana's ring finger and stung her hand with all its might in multiple places (wherever its back end happened to jostle). It took quite a bit of force to pull the dratted ant from the Banana's hand, its jaws were clenched so tightly.

Despite the combined forces of Children's Benadryl and Infant Tylenol, the poor Banana screamed for about 3 hours, and her little fingers swelled up hugely. She seems to be better now, and is finally napping peacefully after a second dose of both medications.

I guess, if you're an ant, biting and stinging someone who picks you up may be a perfectly defensible response. But I still don't like ants very much anymore.

Battle of the Sexes

2006-08-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

Setting: Our house, this afternoon. The Papaya and I are trying to put together a construction site floor puzzle. The Banana is simultaneously doing her best to destroy it.

Papaya (proferring a puzzle piece to the Banana): Want a bulldozer, Banana?
Mommy: Banana is a bulldozer. She's a force of destruction.
Papaya (matter-of-factly): She's a girl.

Abstract Expressionism

2006-08-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Mommy: What are you drawing, Papaya?
Papaya: I'm drawing the sound of the night train.

Closet Sleeping

2006-08-25T13:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided that if I have anything to do with it, the Banana will be sleeping through the night by the time she is 1 year old. (If my husband had had more to do with it, it would have happened about six months ago.) This leaves me just a little less than a month to work with. I’m tired of being tired all the time. The Banana is finally learning how to drink from something other than my num nums, which means that I can leave a sippy cup of water in her crib and not worry about her getting dehydrated without her multiple night feedings. (Because I usually get dehydrated if I go through the night without drinking water. But maybe that’s because of the multiple night feedings!)

Anyway, the first step to peaceful nights was obviously to get the Banana’s crib out of sight of our bed. As long as she can stand up and see us, she is inconsolable - we’re talking 3 to 4 hour crying jags. You’d think in a 4 bedroom house with only two children, moving her to another room would be a simple decision. But because of the weird layout of this house, it wasn’t. The master bedroom is on one end of the house, then there’s a large “great room” (living room/dining room/kitchen combined), then there are three small bedrooms on the other end. If we moved the Banana to one of the three small bedrooms, her night crying would likely wake up the Papaya, and having them both awake at the same time in the middle of the night is something to be avoided at all costs. (We know this firsthand, from unhappy hotel room experiences. They can keep each other awake interminably.)

So we moved the Banana into our closet, and it’s been working beautifully (except when Husband decides to hang his clothes in there before he goes to sleep at night and wakes her up.) If this sounds too weird to any non-family members who miraculously happen to read this blog, know that my family has a long and proud tradition of closet sleeping. My mother spent a teenage year in Detroit living in a closet under the basement stairs of her aunt’s house. When my cousin spent a post-high school year or two living with my parents, he was housed in another closet under the stairs. (But treated much better than Harry Potter.) When my sister and brother-in-law lived in a small house in Texas a couple years ago, their daughter’s bedroom was the closet. Last Christmas, at my sister’s house, my brother slept on the floor of the laundry room (technically not a closet, but close). And almost every time we visit my parents, the Papaya ends up sleeping in their closet.

With this kind of history, it’s hard to believe it took us so long to think of putting the Banana in the closet (we briefly considered the pantry). Already, she’s back to only one night feeding (she had regressed over the summer.) Last night was supposed to be the big night that I made her stay in bed until at least 5:00 a.m. I was all psyched for it. However, when the Banana woke up crying at 1:00 a.m., Husband told me I should get out of bed and feed her. “You get out of your side of the bed, and I’ll get out of my side at the same time and do something important while you feed the Banana,” he said. So I jumped out of bed, grabbed the Banana, and sat in the nursing chair with her. Husband did not keep up his end of the bargain. As I pulled up my nightshirt and looked over to see him sleeping soundly, I realized his suggestion had been but the tail end of a dream, and that the Banana would get at least one more night feeding. Despite Husband’s obvious innocence, I still couldn’t help feeling just a little betrayed by him!

Fair Game

2006-08-21T09:42:00.000-07:00

There is something about an adult lying down on the ground that acts as an instant kid magnet, at least in our house. If you ever find yourself here and feel the urge to stretch out on our floor, beware! Protect your vulnerable body parts from imminent impact. You are suddenly the World's Best Toy - the perfect surface for jumping on, sitting on, swimming on, cuddling on, tickling... the possibilties are endless. Complete with sound effects! Let's not forget the treasure hunt possibilities. All those inviting little holes - nostrils, ears, eye sockets - they're suddenly accessible! And if the explorers are lucky, they might even find a belly button! Or a mole! Or - most exciting of all - one, or even two, num-nums*!

If you want to rest around our house, you've got to be prepared.

*Otherwise known as milk-producing wonders.

The Tale of the Too-Tired Travelers

2006-08-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

We just completed our 4th 10-day trip in 3 months. This traveling deal is starting to get old, let me tell you. The stays themselves have all been wonderful, and this past week at the lovely Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina was no exception. But the long and involved process of getting there and back, I could do without.

The return trip from North Carolina cemented my appreciation for the fact that we probably won't be making another major airline trip until December. Not only did it involve 2 days of driving and flying long distances, strange schedules, and a 3 hour time change, but it was also plagued with more than the usual amount of frustrations and mess-ups. Here is the tiring tale.

The Banana woke up at 5:00 a.m. the last morning of our beach vacation after a lousy night of sleep, but it was just as well, since we had to pack and thoroughly clean the house before we left. After a week of 11 people living in a fairly small space, there was significant work to be done. We worked our tails off and pulled out right at 10:00 a.m., which made me a little nervous, since we had a flight leaving around 3:00 p.m. and were still a 3 1/2 hour drive from the airport. Scratch that. We were more than 3 1/2 hours from the airport. I-40 was undergoing construction, and the large volume of other vacationers returning from the beach led to a complete standstill and much fingerbiting as I tried to work out what we would do if we missed our flight. Happily, some expert map-reading and re-routing from my dad and husband saved the day, and we made it to our gate with a half hour to spare.

The flights themselves (two of them, routed through Dallas) were uneventful, and the children were, on the whole, good travelers (although the Banana only napped about 30 minutes of the entire 6 hour flight time). We left a Nalgene on board the plane after we arrived in Phoenix, which wasn't a huge deal, but still made me feel pretty bad - I hate to lose things, and it was my favorite Nalgene bottle, one my sister gave me from Montana. By the time we claimed our luggage, caught the shuttle to the long-term parking lot, and arrived back at our car-side, it was about 11:00 p.m. East Coast time and we were exhausted and grumpy. My husband's inability to find his keys only added to our general bad temperedness. Happily, I had keys and we made it to our hotel and into bed within an hour's time. The Banana, incredibly overtired, slept even worse than is usual for her on trips.

The next day began bright and early, thanks to the time change and some wired kids. But that gave us plenty of time to start on the many activities ahead of us - breakfast, swimming, packing up the suitcases and car again, shopping in Phoenix, driving 140 miles to Flagstaff, visiting 3 or 4 stores there to stock up on enough to last us 2-3 weeks, driving 2 hours more to our house, and arriving in time to stick something in the microwave to bring to our neighbor's going away potluck party that night.

We did, by the way, make it home in time for the potluck, although I don't think we were the life of the party. Unfortunately, as the day wore on, it became obvious that my mild sore throat from the day before was transforming itself into a true head cold. This, combined with sleep deprivation and mild jet lag, put me in a kind of twilight-zone for most of the day. My husband didn't have a cold but still didn't fare much better. His great moment came at the Walmart in Flagstaff. While trying to remove our old windshield wipers so I could take them inside and buy new ones the same size, he let go of the little metal piece that holds the wiper on the driver's side. It snapped back, hit the windshield, and made a lovely star-shaped crack. One ray of the crack grew throughout the rest of the day and is now at least a foot long, pushing inexorably up and across our windshield.

But the coup de grace of our unhappy return trip came the next morning, when I opened up our large suitcase to find some clean underwear (we had been living out of our carry-on up to this point.) My underwear was nowhere to be found. I searched some more, and it dawned on me that none of my clothes were anywhere to be found. And none of my husband's clothes were there either. My mind shot back to two days ago, when I pointed to the dresser in our beach house bedroom and asked my husband to empty it into our suitcase. Apparently, he interpreted my request as, "Please just empty the top drawer of this dresser" (which contained all the kid's clothes). I'm afraid that discovering most of our summer wardrobe was still in North Carolina was not the high point of our communication as a married couple. Volleys of accusations from both sides, such as "You don't listen to me", "You should have checked all the drawers before you left", "Didn't it occur to you that you didn't pack any of our clothes in the suitcase?", and "I was just doing what you said - I didn't know I was supposed to pay attention to what I was packing!" ensued.

Things are much better now. In fact, just blogging about frustrations makes them seem much more funny. Husband and I forgave each other quickly. I found his keys. My cold is abating, although I suspect my kids may be coming down with it. The housekeeper of the beach house will mail us our clothes (hopefully to the right address, since she is almost 80 and hard of hearing, and just spelling out the name of our town over the phone so she could hear and understand took about 10 minutes of yelling.) I will drive the kids into Winslow tomorrow, 80 miles away, to get our windshield replaced - hoping that the crack won't spread to its outer edge in the meantime, causing the whole thing to break in two and fall in my lap (it probably wouldn't do that anyway, would it?). Sometime,we may even replace the Nalgene, even though I doubt we'll find another pretty turquoise one that says "Montana" on it. The Banana, happy to be home, is suddenly making huge strides (pun intended) in her walking - she's striking out on her own now, walking just for the fun of it, and reveling in her new skill. Life is almost back to normal in the Papaya Mommy household.

Hey, let's do another trip! This Friday, we're off again for the weekend - to Lake Powell, for a staff retreat. At least there's no air travel involved. I'm happy to be stuck here for a little while.

Finally, a catch-up post!

2006-07-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Poor Banana. We packaged up our camera about three weeks ago and sent it back to Fujifilm, hoping that they would remove some specks that got wedged underneath our lens. The day we packaged it up, the Banana started crawling and rolling over. A couple days ago, she took her first steps. Not only did we not get any of it on film, I didn't even blog about it! Banana, when you are a teenager and read these descriptions of your early life (you don't even have a baby book, so this and our digital pictures are it), please forgive me for missing the documentation of your big achievements!

I have a few excuses for my paltry blogging these past few weeks. Since June 8, we've been out of town a total of 22 days, and the time in-between our outings was largely spent (besides the usual all-consuming tasks of childcare and house upkeep) cleaning up from the previous trip and preparing for the next. Tomorrow we leave on yet another 10 day trip, this time to North Carolina for a lovely beach vacation with my side of the family. Then, thankfully, we'll be home for a couple months, with only weekend trips in our plans.

Since I'm about to have another extended non-blogging period, I'd better record what I can remember of the important events of the past six weeks - before they are forever lost in oblivion.

*We had a wonderful time with my parents, sister, neice, cousin & his family, aunt & uncle, and many others in Baltimore in early June. The Banana, her cousin (3 months younger), and her second cousin (2 months older) were unbelievably cute together (they're all little girls).

*Within three days of returning from Baltimore, the Banana began to roll over and crawl. Both she and her parents were super excited, but the Papaya was unimpressed. I think it felt like she was being born all over again - a re-invasion of his privacy. We're still trying to figure out how to deal with her wanting to play with the same things he's playing with and him vigorously protesting. We're trying to minimize the potential violence involved.

*The Papaya's Great Thomas Birthday Party finally happened, two days after our return from Baltimore. There were 30 people in our house (kids and adults) and a great time was had by all. The Papaya now thinks that everyone should have a Thomas Birthday Party.

*The Papaya's potty training is coming along. He's in Big-Boy Underwear most of the time now, and only has accidents about 4 or 5 times a week. I'm afraid his progress is hampered by all our trips, since we let him wear pull-up diapers and don't press him to always use the toilet. We are very glad for our tile (rather than carpeted) floor. The red engine "James" from Thomas & Friends is the next carrot we are dangling. Seven perfect days in a row, putting all of his poo-poo and pee-pee in the toilet & James will be won (so far, the record is three).

*We had a great early June vacation to Seattle with my husband's side of the family. We ate great Asian food, saw a bunch of great city sights, took in a lot of fun kid-friendly museums, and played in the snow of Paradise (Mt. Ranier) on a crystal-clear day.

*Within a few days of our return from Seattle, on the day before she turned 10 months old, the Banana started walking. She can now walk across a room, turn around, and (most importantly) fall without seriously hurting herself. What big acccomplishment will she come up with after our return from North Carolina? Talking in full sentences? Reading?

*The Banana learned (and uses) the signs we taught her for "light" and "fan" (two of her favorite things). We are trying to teach her to sign "more, please" rather than utilize The Scream. I'm convinced she's asked me for "num nums" on at least one occasion, and she now utters a crystal clear "Da-dee" when she sees my husband. (Although she won't usually let him or anyone else hold her for more than 5 seconds, due to an acute phase of separation anxiety.)

*The Papaya went to see his first film in a theatre: Cars. He loved it, and now has an obsession even greater than Thomas the Train.

*Since I began this incredibly long post three days ago, Husband and I broke down and ordered a digital camcorder. We couldn't stand missing another moment of the Banana's adorable toddling. It's out for delivery and should arrive any minute now.

Whew! I hope not to go this long without blogging again - even if I caught the big events in retrospect, I missed a lot of the day-to-day amusing things that happened. Bye-bye until after the beach vacation!

Extra Protein

2006-07-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

I was cutting broccoli for dinner a couple evenings ago while the Papaya watched from a stepstool pulled up to the counter. A flash of gray prompted me to look a little closer at the floret I just chopped. It was literally crawling with little gray bugs. I screeched, then flung the floret away as the bugs continued to move around. Gingerly, I inspected the rest of broccoli, threw out the offending pieces, and tried to calm my "icky/creepy" reflex. The Papaya, on the other hand, was highly entertained. It didn't even bother him that he had already eaten a raw floret. I tried not to think about it too much.

Note: My family (when I was in high school) found copious amounts of bugs in our broccoli once - and we had already eaten half of it. But that was in Kenya. We started soaking all our fruits & veggies in bleach water (no kidding) after that. I don't think I'll get that dramatic. American bugs, after all, must be clean bugs! (Actually, were they American bugs?)

120 degrees

2006-07-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

That was the temperature in Phoenix yesterday. The hottest day there yet in the 21st century, and we managed to be in town to appreciate it. Lucky us. My husband was in a meeting all day long & I got to entertain both kids in an environment I really don't think humans were meant to live in. Walking from the hotel into the heat, I felt like I was running into a brick wall. Since it's the "monsoon season" right now, it was just humid enough to make it feel really hot (according to the local weather report). "By the end of next week, however," the forecasters assured their listeners, "the temperature will drop down to a cool 105 degrees."

Why, oh why do so many people choose to live in Phoenix? It's the 5th largest city in the USA! All I've got to say is that there are a lot of truly insane people out there.

Toby is won!!!

2006-06-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the 7th consecutive day that the Papaya did not poop in his diaper! He put the 7th sticker in a row on his chart yesterday. This morning was the big morning that he got to open Toby the Tram Engine - the carrot we've been dangling for the last 2 months. Today is a huge day in the history of our family. Congratulations, Papaya!

In a few minutes, Toby and the rest of our family pile into the car and began the long trek from the Hopi Reservation to Baltimore, Maryland. We should arrive there sometime early tomorrow morning (Baltimore time). Wish us luck/prayers!

Triple Digits

2006-06-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

The remote thermometer attached to the other side of our front door (in the summer, usually a little cooler than the outside temperature since it's affected by the cooler temperature inside) just hit 100 degrees for the first time this year. The thermometer on our back porch (also in the shade, but attached to a piece of wood that absorbs heat) reads 115 degrees. The true temperature is probably closer to the front-door thermometer, but either way, it's hot out there!

Before I moved to Arizona last August, people told me that dry heat wasn't bad. That it was nothing like the energy-sucking humid heat in the east. There is some truth to this*, but on the whole, they were wrong. This desert sun (actually, this is semi-desert), at 5600 feet elevation and triple digit temperatures, is seriously hot and intense. It feels mean. It makes me long for some humidity to thicken the air between me and the sun. It makes me really glad I don't live in Phoenix, where it's about 10 to 15 degrees hotter right now.

We're heading to Baltimore on Thursday, and I must admit that I'm really looking forward to some humidity again! And the color green. I think I'll spend the first few days just feasting my eyes on the green of my parents' backyard, and letting my skin drink in the moisture. Then I'll probably start longing for dry heat again. Such is human nature.

*Dry heat mixed with intense sun is very, very hot. But dry heat in the shade isn't that bad, and dry heat as the sun goes down feels wonderful. Last night around 7:00, the sun was setting and it felt positively heavenly outside. When I glanced at the thermometer (the "cool" one), I was amazed to see that it was still 89 degrees! It felt much cooler to me than the early morning's 73 degrees with bright sun. And only in the desert can you have triple digit days and lovely, cool 50 degree nights. I still can't comprehend why so many people choose to live in Phoenix and Tucson, however.

The worst-looking $12 we ever saved

2006-06-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I butchered my husband's hair. His head looks like a black carpet, threadbare in sections. But it's not my fault!

Since we married almost six years ago, my husband has wanted me to cut his hair. He cherished a touching confidence in my hair cutting abilities (which I'm afraid got shattered), as well as a thrifty desire to save the time and money of getting a $12 Supercut every month or two (note: I finally figured out how to link to other websites from this blog!). Since moving here, haircuts are even more of a issue, since we have to carve out precious time from an already packed bi-monthly shopping day in Flagstaff for them. His mother has, on several occassions, promised to teach me how to cut hair.

Despite his pleas, I held firm. I did not want to take on the prime responsibility for his physical appearance. The whole idea of it just scared me. I really had no desire to learn. My husband took the rejection with good grace (for the most part) and satisfied his home-haircutting desires by addressing the Papaya's head every couple of months (he does a great job, by the way!)

But last week, he finally got his wish. His hair was getting long enough to bother him, and our shopping day in Flagstaff necessarily occurred on a Sunday (as we were driving home from the Phoenix Airport and our San Francisco trip). Supercuts was closed, and the next opportunity for a professional haircut was almost 3 weeks away. The pressure started up again. "It won't be that hard - you just pull hair away at the same distance all around the head and snip! Keep on doing the same thing over and over again, all over my head, & you'll do a great job! Come on, my hair's not even regulation length right now! I need it shorter for my job!" (Not that the strict military-like appearance and grooming requirements of the Commissioned Corps usually bother my husband that much, but it was a useful arguement). I finally gave in. After all, I thought, it might not be that hard.

I labored for about 45 minutes using a small pair of scissors with 1 1/2 inch blades, and finally ended up with a result that wasn't that terrible, although it was shorter on top than my husband preferred, had ridges on the back, and looked like some hair-hungry animal had taken a large bite out of the left side of his head. It wasn't bad enough to get comments from colleagues, but it was bad enough that my husband went online and started researching clippers. "If only we had a clipper," he thought, "my wife could give me professional, even haircuts." So the $12 we saved on a haircut got replaced by the $27 we spent on the Wahl haircutting set from Amazon.

Unfortunately, the story's not over yet. My husband was eager to try out our new clippers on the Papaya (who did need a haircut). To prevent the Papaya from being scared by the new device, he suggested I try it out on him first, while the Papaya watched. "It will help even out the sides and the back," he said. "Try a #3 attachment." I tried, and it was a little scary, but also somewhat satisfying, to see the large amounts of hair that hit the ground. The result was definitely scary - clear lines of very short hair, ending in different places up his head. He looked in the mirror, but stayed calm. "Okay," he said, "try a #8 over my entire head. Just do everything." A lot more hair hit the ground. My helpless laugh as I looked at his head did little to boost his waning confidence in me. The carpet hair-do was almost complete. A little more "blending" work with a #6, followed by a #5, completed the effect. After that, I convinced him that all sharp instruments should be taken from my hands and all further attempts to "make it better" should be nixed. At least his hair is regulation length now.

Most colleagues have been kind (and perhaps insincere - i.e. "It's cute!"). One fellow physician said he did something like that to his own head once - but only after a few beers. A refreshingly honest nurse screeched, "What happened to your hair? It got butchered!"

So if you're among the family that will see us when we go to Baltimore next week - please be prepared. I've heard that the difference between a bad hair cut and a good one is a week or two, but in this case, I'm afraid it might be a month or two. (The Papaya looks pretty good, however. My husband did him again.)

Maybe we should watch the instructional DVD that came with the Wahl kit.

Happy Birthday, Papaya!

2006-05-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

The Papaya turned 3 years old today (actually, yesterday - I didn't get this entry finished on the day I started writing it)! It's incredible - it seems like just a little while ago that he was a smaller baby than Banana is now. I also realized that for the last 3 years and 9 months, I have been constantly either pregnant or lactating. That's as long as I was an undergraduate! That's a long time! I've almost forgotten what it's like not to be sustaining another human being with my body.

This birthday marks the first one the Papaya hasn't been sick for. He had a virus his first birthday that made him listless and fragile. His second birthday, he had vomiting and diarrhea and we had to cancel his much-anticipated party. But today he is healthy and enjoying some birthday fun. We're not doing a lot , as we're planning a joint "Thomas the Train" birthday party with our neighbors and their son at the end of June (since today is Memorial Day, most of our neighbors have flown the coop - people just don't tend to stick around here on holidays). But we have tried to make the day special - with waffles and berries for breakfast, a decorated dining room, the opening of a "big present" (a Thomas the Train set), macaroni and cheese for lunch, and spaghetti and a cake tonight. I made and decorated a Thomas cake all by myself, and am pretty pleased with the finished product (see picture!). I can't wait for the Papaya to wake up from his nap and see it. If you told me 3 years ago that I'd be making cakes for my children with popular media characters on them, I would have refuted you. But here I am, decorating cakes with Thomas and even buying Thomas merchandise for the June neighborhood party. It's just too much fun to delight the Papaya.

The Papaya has officially passed (at least in my eyes) from toddlerhood to little-boyhood. He even looks like a little boy now - he's grown a couple inches in the last few months and seems tall, thin, and (sometimes) mature. He loves animals, as well as any form of transportation (he has a special affinity for airplanes, trains, helicopters, tugboats, and tow trucks). He has a wonderful imagination - it runs the gamut from pretending that he's an airplane taxiing down the runway, to feeding carrot cookies to the rabbit in our house. A little while ago, he prepared a special meal and invited his king and queen (play figures), jet plane, tow truck, and play vacuum cleaner. He lined them all up around the meal he prepared and served them. He has an inability to sit still and listen for more than 5 seconds straight (quite frustrating when I try to teach him along with the other preschoolers in Sunday School) and shows no interest in drawing or coloring - he'd much rather be running, jumping, or playing with trains. I still can't figure out whether he's going to end up being right or left handed. He has a great memory for everything he hears and is constantly repeating snippets from songs, his videos, or overheard conversations (we've really got to be careful what we talk about!) He's pretty strong willed and frustrating to parent at times, but of course we love him dearly and can't wait to continue watching him become.

The Banana, in an sneaky attempt to steal some of her brother's special attention, cut her first tooth on his birthday. I'm biding my time until she until she attempts to try it out during a nursing session. Ouch!

And the virus of the month is...

2006-05-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

...just the common cold, this time, a souvenir of our San Francisco trip. We all have it at the same time. We're plowing through the tissue boxes at breakneck speed, the Banana uttering The Scream every time I try to wipe her nose. The Papaya, of course, is the one who initiated and introduced us all to the newest McDaniel Family Virus. That boy is a virus magnet. But this one doesn't involve vomit, and so I don't mind - too much. I can't wait to see what June has in store for us (just kidding, I don't mind a break)!

"Oompt stomp-a-comet"

2006-05-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Having achieved a reasonable facility in English (although his pronouns still need a little work), the Papaya has begun to create a new language. When he's silly, he'll simply take whatever we say to him and repeat it, substituting a rhyming, nonsense word for one of ours. He appears to think that this is hilarious.

However, he also has stock phrases all his own that he repeats often throughout the day. "Oompt stomp-a-comet" is one of these. I have yet to figure out exactly what it means or in what context it should be used. When I repeat it back to the Papaya, he usually laughs and says, "That's not how it goes! Oompt stomp-a-comet!" The Banana, on the other hand, seems to have perfect understanding and constant appreciation for Papaya-ese.

No Place Like Home

2006-05-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a week long trip to San Francisco. It was fun, but it is so good to be home!

The Banana is not the world's best traveler. She does pretty well in the car, which is good, since we drive 4 hours round trip to go grocery shopping and 8 to 9 hours round trip to reach a major airport. But get her out of her home environment and sleeping/playing routines, and she can really be a challenge, especially at night. The last night of our trip, she made exactly 7 night awakenings between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. At home, of course, we would just let her cry, but in a hotel room we have to consider the sleep of our neighbors, just one thin wall away, not to mention the Papaya. The Banana could sense that she had me at her beck and call, and took full advantage of the unlimited night feedings opportunity. And since she's no longer in the co-sleeper, I had to get out bed every single time, walk across the room, and feed her in a chair until she fell back to sleep again. Any attempt by Daddy to comfort her would be met with full-out screams. I was exhausted, and she was exhausted. My mother-in-law joined us for the week, and her constant speculation as to the cause of the Banana's night awakenings (most often attributed to something we were doing wrong) and her well-intentioned advice added stress and wounded pride to my tiredness. Usually I hate to listen to my children cry. When the Papaya was a baby and we turned to crying methods to get him to sleep, I could hardly stand it. But as my exhaustion grew this past week, my aversion to night-crying diminished. I could not wait to let the Banana cry it out again!

Surprisingly, we didn't have to let her cry it out. We got home last night, and save for a small amount of whimpering, the Banana slept slept until 6:30 a.m., awakening only for only one feeding. There's something magic about home for her. (Although to be a happy member of our mobile family, I'm afraid she's going to have to learn a bit more flexibility!)

Imitation - the sincerest form of flattery?

2006-05-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

This morning during breakfast, the Papaya looked across the table at me and said seriously, "Look into my eyes, Mommy". I obliged and he looked directly at me and said, with authority, "Don't poopoo in your diaper, Mommy."

He was so pleased with his wit that he's repeated it to his Daddy and myself about 10 times so far.

A Star Night!

2006-05-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Last night, the Banana slept (or at least was quiet) from about 7:45 p.m. to 4:51 a.m.! A record!! I slept 7 hours straight!!! The longest since I got pregnant with her about 16 months ago!!!!

Now that she's finally getting onto a good schedule, it's time to travel and mess it up again. We leave for a conference in San Francisco day after tomorrow. Eight nights in a motel room, here we come!

Weaning

2006-05-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

No, the Banana's not being weaned from the breast (although with the advent of Solids, to which she has taken fairly voraciously, I guess that process is started). We're in the midst of three huge family projects right now, all of which involve weaning of some sort or the other. All of them also involve varying degrees of frustration, and even of sadness for what is being left behind and may never come again.

The first big weaning project involves getting the Papaya out of diapers. No sadness involved there - I won't be a bit sorry to see them left behind, nor nostalgic for the good-old-days when I got to change an especially ripe diaper while the Papaya said with relish, "Peanut butter and jam sandwich sauce". Since most of my recent entries have concerned this subject, I won't dwell on it now, except to say that a full week of diarrhea (and it still goes on) does not contribute to progress in this department.

The second big weaning project involves getting the Papaya out of his crib and into a "big boy bed" - the twin bed in his bedroom. I am a little sad about him leaving his safe haven of containment and being able to jump up at any hour of the night (or nap-time). We are having some success in getting him to sleep in there during his nap-time, but our night-time trial failed miserably (he actually asked to go back into his crib in the middle of the night). We're hoping to have made the full transition by this summer, so that we don't have to lug around an extra port-a-crib on our many travels.

The third big weaning project involves getting the Banana out of and away from our bed, and eventually moving her across the house and into the Papaya's crib. Up to last week, she slept in a co-sleeper attached to and level with our bed. When she woke up I would lift her into bed, nurse her until she went to sleep again, lift her back into the co-sleeper, and return to snuggling with my husband. This was happening three or four (sometimes five) times a night, and I was getting very tired. At first I tried just feeding her twice a night and ignoring her cries at the other times, but she was a pretty indomitable screamer and didn't seem to improve any from night to night. Then, I tried lowering the level of the co-sleeper so that she was still next to our bed but near the ground, but that didn't work any better. Hearing me breathe but not being paid attention to seemed to drive the Banana mad, and the 2-3 hours of screaming a night was really wearing on us. Finally, we did what we should probably have done right away, and moved the co-sleeper across the room. She immediately improved and now only cries about an hour and a half each night, starting at around 12:30 a.m. I give her just one feeding a night, now, anytime she wakes after 2:00 a.m., but don't take her into bed with me to feed her. We have high hopes that soon she will discover it's useless to cry, and will settle down into the heavenly pattern of just one quiet feeding a night.

Why, you may be wondering, don't we just move her out of our room & let her cry it out where she won't be bothered by our noises and we won't be as bothered by her cries? The main reason is that she might wake the Papaya, and we don't want her sleeping near him until she learns to sleep through the night. She's going to be sharing a room with us during most of our travels this summer, and we want her to learn to sleep well while in the room with us. But another reason is that I'm not quite ready to let her go yet. We're not sure if we're going to have another baby, and giving up the intimacy and sweetness of having Banana close enough to touch at any time, calm with my hand, and easily check on throughout the night is a very hard thing. I love nursing, and I have especially loved lying in bed with the Banana and nursing her to sleep (the Papaya would never nurse lying down). And I may very well be leaving that sweetness behind forever. I'm sure there will be other sweetnesses in life, but I'm still mourning the loss, even as I am relishing the improved sleep and quality of life it brings.

On a lighter note, the Banana (who refuses pacifiers and other forms of artificial comfort) has finally chosen a "lovey" to help her sleep - my dirty cotton breast pads! She's just crazy about that sour milk smell. If I lay her in bed, almost asleep, and she starts crying, I can usually calm her by laying a breast pad on her mouth. She will stuff it in with her fist, then immediately quiet down, start sucking, close her eyes, and go to sleep. Occasionally I will check on her and find her fast asleep with a breast pad rolled up and sticking out of her mouth. I try to remember to switch and launder them every few days so they don't get too gross! It's wonderfully convenient when we travel - I have a couple"loveys" handy in my bra at all times!

Health is wonderful

2006-05-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure which is worse - being all alone in the house with a sick toddler & baby, or being all alone in the house with children to look after when I am violently ill. Having experienced both in the last few days, I wouldn't recommend either option.

The Sunday night I was all alone actually wasn't bad at all - the Papaya slept all night long, and woke up happily (with a little help from the anti-emetic I stuck in his bottom before he went to sleep.) But then his bug downed me on Tuesday - diarrhea all day, vomiting in the evening, horrid tummy cramps, and extreme weakness. I could hardly stand up, and taking care of both the kids for 9 hours, as well as continuing to breastfeed the Banana (I'm not sure where my body found the means to make breastmilk, but it managed), took a Hurculean effort. But I did it. And the experience confirmed in my mind that I really don't want to be pregnant again anytime soon, not with two small children to take care of!

When I told the Papaya that I was sick he ran to his bedroom, found the metal bowl that I had placed next to his crib, brought it to me, and said hopefully, "Throw up in the bowl, Mommy!" He seemed a little disappointed that I didn't immediately oblige. Then he jumped on me when I lay down on the floor. He gets high points for helpfulness, but his empathy needs improvement (but what do you expect from a two year old?).

Yesterday I felt weak but better, and the Papaya's second phase of sickness, diarrhea, appeared (happily, it wasn't that bad, and he didn't seem too affected by it). Today we all feel better and I'm reappreciating just how wonderful health is. And hunger. I'm hopeful enough to put away the metal bowls positioned strategically around the house. And maybe I'll even hit the ice cream tonight, and start to make up for lost calories!

I hate vomit!

2006-04-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

My sweet husband worked all night last night, and is also working all night tonight. So of course, it's time for sickness in our family. At least we're not on the road this time.

I drove the kids to church this morning while hubby tried to get some sleep. Church was wonderful, but things went downhill fast on the ride home. It started when the Papaya began an ominous, whining cry. I actually pulled over and asked if he were sick. "No sick!" he whined. When asked what was wrong, all I could get out of him was, "I lost my pennies!" My worst fears were realized when, a few minutes after I started driving again, the unmistakable sounds and smells of vomiting, followed by frantic crying, emanated from behind me. I was still a 20 minute drive from home, so I rolled down the windows, kept driving, and tried to stay calm. Poor Papaya fell asleep in his vomit.

He's vomited several times since, but not for the last four hours. I have high hopes for a solid night tonight, although every other time the Papaya's got a vomiting illness, it's lasted for about a week. He has the strangest, most uncanny ability to seem like he's well again, only to create a noisome bodily-fluid explosion somewhere in the house (or car) after you've got your hopes up and your guard down. I'm giving this two full days before I relax.

Did I mention that I hate vomit? I really do - more than most other things. I think I must have a mini vomit-phobia, because just the thought of it happening to me or a family member makes my hands shake and my heart race. The mess, the smell, the unpredictability, the germs - I really hate it. Being in the house, alone, all night, with a baby and a vomiting toddler, is like a nightmare come true. We talked for a good bit of our church service today (our church is so small that most sermons become discussions) about what it meant to trust God. I didn't want Him to test me so soon - not in this way, anyway!

I do want to trust God. And so I'll try to stop jumping with alarm every time I hear a noise from the Papaya's bedroom (he's asleep in there now) and trust (at least hope) that the last four vomit-free hours will continue. And I'll tell myself, once again, that it's really not that bad and that God will give me strength and calmness to handle anything that might happen tonight. And maybe, instead of typing here, I should get to bed myself and catch up on some of my own sleep, while I can!

Inexplicable

2006-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, I have a pretty good sense of what's going on with my kids. But every now and then, I'm mystified.

Such as after this conversation (the Papaya was perfectly happy right until this point - he was playing while I was cutting potatoes in the kitchen as a part of supper preparation):

Papaya: (whiney voice) - Don't eat the strawberry, Mommy!
Mommy: What? I don't have any strawberries. (There haven't been any strawberries in our house in weeks, although we did eat some two weeks ago in Flagstaff.)
Papaya: Mommy, don't eat the strawberry. Spit out the strawberry, Mommy. Spit it out!
Mommy: (Opening her mouth wide & showing Papaya.) My mouth is empty, Papaya. There's no strawberry in there. There are no strawberries in this house.
(Papaya walks away & starts to cry.)
Mommy: Why are you crying, Papaya?
Papaya: I lost my strawberries!

Note: Whenever the Papaya is unhappy for no specific reason, or at least no reason that he can articulate (for example, waking up too soon from a nap), he kind of whines/cries, and when asked why, says "I lost my pennies!" It looks like there may be a variation on that now.

She did it!

2006-04-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Around 2 a.m. last night, I awoke to the sound of extreme unhappiness from the co-sleeper attached to my bed. The Banana was lying on her stomach! She must have turned over - for the first time ever, from her back to her stomach (although she couldn't manage to return to her back again). And we missed it. The trauma of the great event was so great for Banana that an extended nursing session was necessary before she could get back to sleep. But - another first - we got a great big smile from her while giving her tummy-time this afternoon, and she lasted a full five minutes before she started crying!

In other news, I heard the Papaya awake from his nap this afternoon, opened the door to his room, and was greeted by a strong, extremely unpleasant odor. "Poopy diaper, Mommy", he said. "Disgusting!" And he proferred out to me the offending diaper, having pulled it off of his bottom himself. He was right - it was very disgusting - and even more disgusting than the diaper was the poop that was smeared down his legs and had fallen onto his blankets and sheet. I thought he had learned, from the time that he pulled poop out of his diaper and threw it on the floor while he was supposed to be napping, that I didn't really like that kind of thing. Ugh!

I'm afraid full potty training success is still far in the Papaya's future.

"I never eat poop!"

2006-04-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

I wish I could convey the conviction with which the Papaya pronounces the aforementioned sentence, especially in conversation with a relative or friend. It's just one of the many joys of attempting to potty-train him.

Actually, as far as I know, he never has eaten poop (at least human poop; I did fish some dog poop out of his mouth at a playground in Flagstaff). But he does seem to find joy in playing with poopy water - namely, that readily accessible basin of it he finds underneath himself during his attempts at becoming a "big boy". We bought a cute little potty chair for him, but he prefers to sit on the big toilet with his feet dangling beneath him - most likely drawn to that tantalizing basin of water. So far, he's dunked his bottom in (numerous times), soaked his sock-clad feet in it, and who knows what else. He's also fingerpainted on his legs and the toilet seat with the poop he reached back and found. And despite all the fun he's having, we don't seem to be making any real progress in convincing him to deposit his poop in there on a regular basis.

Perhaps our vegetarian, whole grain diet is part of the problem - pooping 3 or 4 times a day is a normal average for Papaya - more often, in fact, than his breast-fed sister. I guess it's asking a lot of him to interrupt his play that many times a day to run to the bathroom - perhaps what that boy needs is a little more refined flour or something. We've tried to sweeten the deal by offering him candy every time he poops in the toilet. This is somewhat effective - he usually gets candy at least twice a day - but hasn't done much towards consistency. He does like to talk about it, though, bringing up the topic frequently regardless of who is listening or whether we are at the table or not: "Poop in the toilet, get candy! Poop in your diaper, get a dirty bottom!" And it is truly delightful to hear him yelling from the bathroom, "I did a weal poopie in the twoylett!"

We've now bought him (he picked it out) a train engine named Toby (from "Thomas the Tank Engine", which he loves). Toby sits on Papaya's bookcase and will be his to open & enjoy when he puts all his poop in the toilet, every single time, every single day for an entire week. So far, he's never gone more than two days in a row (and even that was pretty unusual). But we'll get there someday. Then we'll start work on getting him to pee in the toilet. Sigh. I foresee that much cleaning of bodily excretions (beyond mere diaper changes) is in our future.

All about the Banana

2006-03-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

When the Papaya was a baby, every week seemed like a month. Every milestone was researched, anticipated, encouraged, and duly noted - if not on paper, at least in our conversation and in our mental log of "The Papaya's Development". With our sweet Banana, however, time just slips away.

We realized with somewhat of a jolt this week that our sweet baby is all of 6 months old. 6 months - that's half a year! How did that happen? What should a 6 month old be doing? Is she doing it? Shouldn't she be starting solids now? She should definitely be rolling over by now! Daddy's medical references say not rolling over by 6 months raises "red flags". What's wrong with her? Have we been remiss? Should we have encouraged "tummy time" more?

Our "awakening" is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means that the Banana's now getting more personalized, developmentally appropriate attention from both her parents - no more just carrying her around in the Baby Bjorn for half the day and leaving her on her back under her butterfly to happily play with her hanging toys while we focus on other things. On the other hand, somehow the bulk of our non-essential interactions with her have suddenly become achievement oriented - we're feeling pressure to get her "up to snuff" with other average 6-month-olds. Those guilt-free moments of just gazing at her, babbling nonsense with her, and enjoying her beautiful smile and sweet disposition are much fewer. "Mommy guilt" is strong these days, sometimes because it feels like we didn't pay enough attention to helping her through appropriate developmental steps these past few months, and at other times, because it's too important to us now and we're not accepting her own pace. It's hard to know where to find the balance.

The truth is that it's only her gross motor skills (rolling over, pushing herself up when she's on her tummy) that are "delayed". She can almost sit up by herself, and loves to stand when you hold her at her hips. She's actually great with her hands and is pretty socially interactive. She's way ahead of the curve when it comes to stranger anxiety, which is sad because so many nice people come up to greet her with beautiful smiles and coos, only to get cried at. If she knows you, though, you are often rewarded by what seems to be the biggest smile in the whole wide world. The Banana loves music and singing and even has a few favorite songs. Luckily, she's not a discerning listener, because she seems to love my singing!

A couple days ago, I was playing with the Banana on the bed (trying to get her to turn over, of course) , when her father walked in. She looked right at him, smiled, and said "Da da da da"! When he walked over to pick her up, she did the same thing. Coincidence? We'll see!

The Banana is extremely picky about her breastfeeding. For one thing, my nipples are the only thing she will suck. She refuses all pacifiers, bottles, and substitute nipples. (My sister and I tried trading our babies for breastfeeding, and although my infant niece seemed to have no problem with my milk or delivery equipment, the Banana swiftly rejected my sister's offers.) The Banana is even picky about when she will deign to suck on my nipples. She prefers to do it in a completely private, quiet setting, preferably lying down, with my complete attention and no distractions. This does not happen often in a busy day, especially when we are traveling, so she will consent to be nursed sitting up. But if anybody around talks too loudly, or if there is any commotion at all, she will pull off with protests and refuse to nurse again for awhile. And woe to me if I make the mistake of making any noise at all while she is nursing - loud shrieks and a brief (5 minutes or so) nursing strike ensue. Nursing should be all about her, thank you very much! Needless to say, she is difficult, and often impossible, to nurse in public.

The Banana's shrieks, by the way, are notable in and of themselves. She hits notes with a range and power that might command respect from an operatic soprano. She will literally make your ears ring. I changed her in a public bathroom once while she was unhappy, and I fear she may have caused short term hearing loss for the other unlucky occupants (most of whom stopped on their hurried way out to point out to me - in between shrieks - what good lungs my baby had.)

And of course (since this entry is all about the Banana at 6 months), I should mention that she is beautiful! (Despite the bald and faintly flat spot on the back of her head from spending so much time on her back.) I love looking at her as she sleeps - so delicate, graceful, feminine her features are! Big blue eyes, slowly turning hazel. Very round cheeks and face. The enormous, generous smile that just seems to gather up all the happiness in the world and pass it on to the lucky recipient. The innocence and ingenuousness in her face (even when she's shrieking). May God help us to pay appropriate, focused attention to her at this stage in her development, while still celebrating all that she is right now.

The Week of the Purell Pump

2006-03-21T15:47:00.000-07:00

It feels a little like I'm tempting fate to assert that The Virus has finally left our house. However, after two whole days without any noxious bodily fluids befowling the floors, beds, furniture, linens, or clothes of this house or its occupants, I'm willing to risk a bold statement. The Virus has left our house! We are well people!!!

I had many fun plans laid out for this past week. Our family was just completing a trip to New Mexico, where my husband attended a training and my sister, brother-in-law, and their two children joined us for the adventure. We stayed a couple nights in Albuquerque at the end of the trip; my brother-in-law flew back to Pennsylvania and, in order to prolong the fun of family togetherness, my mother arrived from Baltimore. She, my sister, and the kids were going to return with us to our home, where we planned to have a wonderful time watching the four cousins interact and exploring the Hopi Reservation.

The first inkling that the week might not go entirely according to plan came when Papaya awakened last Saturday morning in the hotel room crib, covered in diarrhea up to his armpits. Despite this inauspicious beginning to the weekend, Papaya seemed to rally and had a good day - he ate well, napped for 3 hours straight, and seemed happy and healthy. We thought it was a just a reaction to tiredness, a fond hope that shattered the next morning when Papaya vomited banana all over his father and continued to vomit every 10 minutes or so for the next few hours (sometimes, for variety's sake, the vomiting would be punctuated with diarrhea). The fun plans I had for our 4-hour drive home that day began to evaporate.

Papaya is usually an extremely active toddler who seems to radiate energy. Within a few hours that Sunday morning, we saw him deteriorate into a limp child who could barely sit up. His retching was so violent that he tore his esophagus and began to vomit blood. As we started our trip home, my husband was so worried that he called in a prescription for an anti-emetic to the Walmart pharmacy in Gallup, a town we would pass through in 2 hours. As you can imagine, it was a delightful drive. In an effort to keep our 6-month old, Banana, uncontaminated, I became the "clean" person (driving and dealing with Banana) and my husband, stocked up with paper napkins and styrofoam cups from the motel, became the "dirty" person (dealing with Papaya and his by-products).

Unfortunately, Papaya's virus wasn't the only thing we had to deal with during that unforgettable trip home. We had chosen to travel during a weekend of unseasonal snowstorms blanketing the Southwest. The brilliant blue sky of Albuquerque quickly turned dark and threatening, and the snow falling from the sky combined with the snow blowing across the interstate (the winds were upwards of 35 MPH) to create some decidedly unfavorable driving conditions, even white-out in places. In fact, it was so bad that the police closed I-40 in one place, creating a complete stand-still. Our feelings of desperation ran so deep that I, mild-mannered, law-abiding driver that I usually am, piloted our overloaded Corolla across the snowy interstate median (at a pretty good pace, hoping not to get stuck), drove back to a previous exit, and navigated a side road until we saw the interstate traffic moving again. Even with this daring move, it was a tortuous four hour drive to Gallup.

At the Superwalmart, my husband toted Papaya off post-haste to the pharmacy, procured the anti-vomiting suppositories, and headed off the bathroom to do the fun work of clean-up and medicine administration. I breastfed Banana and desperately tried to think of what groceries I would need to buy to get us through the next two weeks until we made it to a grocery store again. My mom, sister, and two kids did their own shopping & settled down for a snack at McDonalds. After a two-hour stop (during which we all had something to eat and Papaya was able to keep some Pedialyte down, perking him up considerably), we were finally on our way again. By this time, it was 4:30, and we were beginning to realize that we would have to drive in the dark across the reservation, something we try to avoid if possible.

As it turns out, driving in the dark was the least of our worries during the tense hours that followed. After more stop-and-go on I-40, we finally left it for a reservation road whose condition deteriorated from fairly clear to completely covered with two or three inches of snow. Then, to make matters much worse, just as the sun went down, we drove into a blizzard-like snowstorm. "It feels like we're a milkshake inside a blender," my sister aptly observed. For the first time that day, I started to feel really worried. "How could this drive possibly get any worse?" I thought - but then realized that there were many ways it could get worse, and prayed again that we could get home safely. We were well into the Navajo reservation by this time, and pretty isolated.

Finally, after crawling along at about 20 miles an hour for a long time (I was afraid to go faster because we could hardly see, and afraid to go slower because I didn't want to get stuck), we came to the town of Ganado. There isn't much in Ganado besides a gas station, but it was nice to at least feel safe for awhile. We stopped at the gas station (which was actually closing its little store because the snow was so bad) for a bathroom/baby feeding/catching our breath break. In the half hour we were there, our cars got covered with two or three inches of the driving snow, our license plates unreadable. There were still about 60 miles between us and our house, and things were not looking good. If Ganado had any motels, we probably would have given in and stayed for the night. But there was absolutely no place to stay, so with prayers and hope we headed off into the snow and the isolation again. At least the Papaya had stopped vomiting by this time. (He started wailing for food, which we didn't want to give him much of at that point. His screams joined his sister's screams of protest at being strapped into the car seat again and made for some jolly noise.)

Finally, something went right - within 15 minutes, the snow stopped, and within a half hour, we could see stars and the beautiful almost-full moon. The road became clearer and clearer until suddenly, right about the point that we entered the Hopi reservation, we were driving on dry tarmac and could actually go the speed limit. With great thankfulness and a profound sense of relief, we pulled into our driveway a little after 9:00 - the normal 4-5 hour trip had taken more than ten hours.

We thought it was over. We were wrong.

The next morning, my sweet husband woke up with tummy cramps that quickly escalated into nausea and diarrhea. The crazy man went to work, where he took an anti-emetic that curbed the nausea but made him incredibly sleepy. I can't believe he interacted with patients all day! I felt progressively worse throughout the day and spent a miserable night dealing with nausea and vomiting. The next night, my four-year-old niece vomited all over her bed (and throughout the night), and the following evening, after yet another night-time bed-covering vomit by the Papaya, my mother succumed. After this, we hoped we had seen the last of it, but Papaya continued sick; the next night (Thursday), his crib was again the victim of a violent attack of gastro-enteritis. Between the vomit and the catastrophic diarrhea explosions, we did 6 or 7 loads of laundry a day. Thank goodness for washing machines, bleach, and Purell. Our little pump of hand sanitizer was a hot commodity and we were all lucky that our hands didn't dry up and fall off! Happily, my sister never came down with it, and both babies (Banana and my sister's 3 month old) were spared - either a testament to the magic of breastfeeding, a similar bug my sister had in January, the obsessive cleaning measures, or all three.

On Friday, the family was tired but - for the most part - continent. On Saturday, we were just tired. Finally, on Sunday, everybody was feeling a bit more themselves and we actually had a delightful day - "incandescently lovely" was my mother's description of it - and compared to the rest of the week, I would have to agree.

Yesterday (Monday) everybody left. I can't say the visit was all that I had hoped for, although it was surely more memorable than if we had done everything I envisioned! We did enjoy being together, and there was a certain esprit de corps in working together against The Virus. And there was at least as much love as vomit flying around!

Overheard at our vegetarian table...

2006-03-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Mommy: Papaya, if you finish eating your lentils & couscous, you can have tofu & broccoli!
(Unbelievably, this actually works. You know you're vegetarian when you can successfully bribe your 2-year old with tofu. We've started to order 16 pounds at a time from our co-op so we can cook up extra for Papaya - no kidding!)

Tofu works better than this offer today:
Mommy (Papaya has just finished his lunch): Okay, it's sleepytime now.
Papaya: No sleepytime! I still hungry!
Mommy (this is clearly a stalling tactic; Papaya struggled to finish his last helping): Okay, would you like to eat some raw kale?
Papaya: Yes! Eat kale! (After seeing it) No kale!
Mommy: Okay, sleepytime.
Papaya: Want kale! (I handed him one raw curly kale leaf. He tasted it, then pretended it was a chicken, dancing it around the table while making chicken noises. He's now napping.)

We have a weird family.

Papaya-ism's

2006-02-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

We already have a family blog, but it's mostly for the purpose of publishing pictures for extended family and friends, and always takes a long time to update because of uploading all the pics (and because I get to it so seldomly, I always feel the need to compose a long, comprehensive entry). I wanted my own blog, where I could jot down random thoughts and funny things that happen to me or my family - a "real" blog! A place, for example, to record all the funny "papaya-ism's" created by my talkative 2-year old.

Such as this interaction:

Daddy: So, Papaya, why did we give you a time-out? (it was for something mundane, such as failing to come when called)
Papaya: Chasing the funny chickens.
Daddy: (looking at Mommy and trying hard not to laugh) Well, Papaya, that is reprehensible, but it's not why you got a time out. Let's try again...

For the record, I have no idea where that response came from.

The Papaya has recently begun changing the lyrics to songs he knows, often with funny (or embarassing) results. For example, "Stand up, stand up for Jesus", taught him by his grandmother, frequently becomes "Clean up, clean up for Jesus". However, perhaps the song that inspired the most unorthodox lyric-switching was one that goes, "Clap, clap clap your hands, clap along with me." I will often change this to fit the circumstances, for example: "brush, brush, brush your teeth...". A few weeks ago, during a diaper change, Papaya started spontaneously singing, "Touch, touch, touch the penis, touch along with me." I hope he doesn't take that one public!

Now that I've safely recorded those for all eternity, I will go attend to the Papaya who just woke up from his nap, alert for new blog-worthy moments.