The downside of character underwear for kids...

...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!

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

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

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

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)

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...

...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...

...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

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”)

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

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...

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!

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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!

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.