Ex Patria

Basic science is helpful

Me:  David, go brush your teeth.

Five minutes later, David drifts back into the kitchen.  Jacob is drinking orange juice, David wants some too.  I pour him a glass.  He drinks it down, obviously enjoying it. (Juice is not an everyday occurrence in our house.)

Me:  David, you didn't brush your teeth.  Go and do it now!
David: How did you know that?
Me:  I'm your mommy. I know everything.

He sighs deeply and goes to brush his teeth.  I wonder when he will find me out on that one.

Projects

I had planned a couple of projects for the time while Doug was in Armenia.  He's coming back in four days, and my overall progress isn't so great.  I won't even go into the details (cleaning up the basement has been on my to-do list for the last four months).  However, one project was to get Leah on a semblance of a schedule.

And I've succeeded!

Of course, I only really noticed this after a day of unhappiness with excessive amounts of fussing and no real nap anywhere in there. It turned out that not only did I have her on a schedule but she also got used to falling asleep by herself in her bassinet - and now nothing else will do.  Well, maybe the car seat, in a crunch.  But not the couch where she napped so often, in the middle of little boy chaos, not in her swing, not in Mommy's bed (yay, says Mommy). 

I'm absurdly pleased with this.

(You have to know that I'm a co-sleeper by nature for the first months - it's just so easy to roll over in the middle of the night and plop a breast into the baby's mouth, instead of having to get up first.  But after a few months, when they sleep longer - and Leah sleeps reliably 6-8 hours in a stretch now - I want them out of my bed, pronto.  Only, the kids usually have their own ideas by then.  Anyhow.)

The next project, of course, is to get those Christmas cards on the way, finally. Blech.

How do they come up with this stuff?

So tonight, David comes downstairs and requests bedtime kisses for himself and Alan.  I sit on the couch, working on a secret project, and nod, telling him I'll be upstairs momentarily.

He tiptoes out of the room, turns around in the door and says, "Oh! I almost forgot!"

He kisses his hand multiple times, makes a wrapping-up gesture, comes back and pretends to put something down on the table.

"I love you very much, Mommy.  And here's a package of kisses for you, so you always have one when you need one but I'm not around."

He begins to leave the room again and turns around one more time, his face all smiles and dimples. "And remember, only use one at a time!"

Sometimes, they just knock you off your feet.

No Ararat outside my window

But my dear husband does -- he's back in Yerevan for 10 days on a short-term assignment.  And here's the strange thing: I envy him.

We didn't have an easy time in Yerevan.  Lots of things went wrong and at times, it seemed as if the forces of the universe had conspired against us.  Not dramatically so, more in a slow, grinding kind of way.

You know.  Miscarriage.  Exploding radiators.  Flat tires by the dozen.  Broken water pipe. Broken car. Toddler with chronic diarrhea and no adequate health care.  Packages stuck in customs hell for weeks. Less than stellar schools.  Things like that.  It just seemed as if every little daily errand required that much more effort than elsewhere.

But we also had really nice times, and it's a good thing that in hindsight, those times prevail in our memory.  Doug wrote me this morning how he can see Ararat from his hotel room window, and I wistfully recalled the many different vistas I had stored in my mind.  The view of Ararat from our bedroom window, half cut off by the Mafia type's house in front of us.  The view from the Cascades, the mountain towering over the city.  The view from the QSI school, from my friend B.'s window, coming back from dropping Alan off at the bus stop, from Khor Virap...  if you need only one reason to go and visit Armenia, this would be the one.  I really, really miss Ararat. 

We're having a nice, comfortable time here.  Things are very easy.  We speak the language, we have connections that make things go smoothly when the heating stops working or when we have a tire problem. When I look out the window now, I see either the local school (and my son's classroom), or I see the hills of the Rhön around me.   It's a nice view but nothing compared to the stunning Mount Ararat.

And I realize that I will long to see Ararat outside my window for the rest of my life.

Geez, my life is full

I really don't want to let this blog die but somehow, posting is just another thing on my to-do list, and it's rating rather low these days.  I'm just so darn busy and I keep promising and the next thing I know, another month has gone by.

So, in between laundry, dinner, boo-boo's real and imagined, phone calls, screeching baby (teeth + cough and cold = intense unhappiness), some pictures of the past months -- from August 10 to December 6, to be precise.

I will try to be better about the writing but I ain't promising nothing.