The Dust of My Life

What's a girl to do on a quiet Sunday afternoon with the older kids fishing
with Daddy and the little one swinging with Grandma and Papa? Sweep, of
course. You can tell a lot about a person's life by what she sweeps up. Here
is what was in my dust pan today:

*6 dead crickets. Elsa and Ezra got a magnifying bug trapper from Grandma
Donna and have been loving stuffing it full of crickets lately.

*7 jumping spiders. Although I don't think it counts because they all jumped
away to take up residence somewhere else in my house. They always win.

*1 jumping spider carrying a small dead cricket. (I hit the jackpot today)

*1 tag sticker price that says '35 birr'. I swept it up in the bathroom and
I believe it came off of my new toilet bowl brush. A new one was needed
because before we left for the states Ezra decided to see if his blue car
would float in the toilet. It didn't. The toilet subsequently was jammed
with toilet paper, which I (ignorantly, impatiently) tried to de-jam with my
toilet bowl brush, which only served to get nasty toilet paper bits stuck
to my brush. Hence, new toilet bowl brush.

*1 baby scorpion. Thankfully I did not kick at it, like I first intended to,
but instead saw what it was and smashed it deader than dead. My policy with
undesirable creatures is to keep hitting until it's no longer clear what it
is I am hitting.

*Roughly 18 inches worth of unraveled blue thread and elastic. Ezra's new
Lightning McQueen underwear are unraveling at the waist. But, the fact that
he is WEARING Lighthing Mcqueen underwear is a small miracle. My nearly
completely potty-trained son decided to UN-potty train himself the first
week we were in the US. And then decided to RE-potty train himself the first
week we were back in Ethiopia. Good boy.

*1 JC Penney tag that says $6.99. Elsa has discovered all of her
'to-grow-into' clothing on a high shelf and commandeered two new dresses.
This is the tag off of a pink and white gingham that my mom brought when
they visited last summer.

*1 small silver screw. A more curious or careful person would have fished the screw out and set it aside for when its use may become known, but I can't really claim to be either in a significant way, so out it went.

*About one dust pan's worth full of redish-brown dust. We don't have the
really red, red dirt here found in other parts of Africa, just a fine,
powdery brown dust. Since I haven't swept since yesterday evening, this is a
good day.

Welcome to my life. It's exciting in here.

Learning to Ride

 While in the states Caleb bought training wheels for the little XR50 that he brought over for the kids to learn to ride. After giving a little tutorial on the throttle, brake, and how to steer, both kids got a chance to show off their stuff.

Elsa said 'wee!' and posed for a picture.

 Ezra promptly ran into a bush.

 Ezra, though, shows a lot of promise. He definitely gets the idea of steering and using the throttle smoothly to keep the bike moving. His main problem is that he likes to look behind him so that he can watch himself 'make dust'. Elsa, I think, will be a lot like me--riding because it's something to do with Daddy and she doesn't want to be left out.

 I am mentally kicking the pants off our thief who stole the video camera out of our bag for making me miss getting this all on film.

Settling In

 I warned about disappearing for weeks at a time and it didn't take long to
prove true. I beg extenuating circumstances...saying good-bye, packing,
 flying, staying a week in Addis to re-supply and get some things done,
>driving two days home and arriving to find the radio (our main mode of
communication) broken. Thankfully Papa Swart is fixer-extraordinaire and was
able to figure out the problem and fix it. Back online...well, as online as
 we get down here.

 Settling in has been interesting. It feels good to be in our own space,
 dirty as it may be...part of settling in is readjusting expectations of what
 being clean means. I received a major gift from Caleb's parents--they
 insisted that they make the trip from Addis down to Omo one day before us,
 so that they could clean out the houses and put the boat back in the river
 before we got here. I really can't quite imagine what it would have been
 like to arrive here with Daisy and try to get everything cleaned up. It's a
 heck of a job, and Caleb's parents did it all for us. It was such a relief
 to come home to a cleaned up house and a cold fridge and a cooked meal.

Daisy is a hit here. Everyone loves her. She's pretty much the first white
 baby the Daasanech have ever seen. Settling in with Daisy has been fun in
 that regard but kind of miserable otherwise. She's hot. And she won't sleep.
 And she misses her swaddler. But she's too hot to swaddle. So she's
 requiring a lot more attention than usual, at a time when I have a lot more
 things to do every day. Poor baby. We'll figure it out.

 Ezra is happy. This is pretty much boy heaven so he's having a ball. He's
 been helping Caleb and running around outside and learning to ride the 50.
 He's good.

 Elsa misses her cousins. She's slightly out of sorts. I think she is happy
 to be home, but it's been harder for her to adjust to the different pace of
 this life. She really thrived on having people to see and places to go
 everyday and we don't really offer that here. Again--so thankful for
 Grandma. She's giving Elsa lots of special love.

 It was really a strange feeling, driving home. It almost felt like we'd just
 been gone on a normal supply trip and only been away a week or two. I had to
 continually remind myself how much time has passed. Arriving home was
 beautiful. Our area had a lot of much rain while we were
 away--uncharacteristic amounts. So the tiny little flame and neem trees that
 we'd planted around our house had exploded with growth in our absence and
 now I have these beautiful trees outside my windows. Our workers did an
 amazing job keeping up our compound while we were away and everything looks
 beautiful.

So we've been home a week and I'm sure it'll still take time to settle in
completely--find our routines once again. It'll help once Daisy starts
 sleeping more than 35 minutes at a stretch. We went out to church this
 morning and she nearly caused a riot with everyone wanting to see her and
touch her. It was sweet to see all of the familiar faces of our friends and
 neighbors.

35 minutes are up. Gotta go get the babe.

Limbo Week

 So we're here in Addis for about a week before we head on home. It's strange--to be home, but not home. It's kind of compounded this sense of feeling very far from anywhere I want to be. The kids' jet lag has been atrocious, something I've never really experienced with them before, so I'm sure the sleep-deprivation is contributing to my feeling slightly adrift and more than a little weepy. My parents called me yesterday morning and I barely said hello before bursting into tears. Thankfully I got a lot more sleep last night and so tonight when I talked to them I was able to carry on a comprehendable conversation.

We'll finish re-supplying and some business and then head on home. Home sweet home.

The Trip

 I really can't be all that pleasant about the trip over. I'm still trying to recover from the sheer exhaustion and chaos of it. Looking back on the two days of air travel, nothing distinctively went horribly wrong--it just all had this overwhelming feeling of being too much.
Our first flight left Seattle around 1 pm and we landed in Amsterdam around 7:30 am. The kids did great the whole way, although I don't know what Delta is thinking in assuming that one kids movie is sufficient for a 10 hour flight. Ezra saw enough Toy Story for the mutant spiky-haired doll-spider to work its way into his dreams for two nights in a row. Elsa and Ezra slept for only about an hour and a half of that first flight, and so we all arrived in Amsterdam a little shell-shocked. Thankfully, we had bulkhead seating and a bassinet for Daisy, so I didn't have to hold her in my arms the whole way and she was able to sleep quite a bit.
Much to our relief and the kids' excitement, Grandma and Papa were in Amsterdam to meet us and be with us on the flight from Amsterdam to Addis. Hauling a sleeping Daisy, a diaper bag, two kids backpacks, two rolling carry-ons, and a regular backpack, trying to keep Ezra being run over by the motorized carts, we trudged from one end of the Amsterdam airport to the other and about melted into Caleb's parents' arms. We decided to go ahead and go through the gate-side security and be ready to board the plane a little early. If anyone has been to the Amsterdam airport, then you may remember that they have these holding-type rooms that you make your way through between the rest of the terminal and before you board the plane. So we went through and were waiting to board when we found out that the plane was to be delayed two hours because of mechanical trouble. No big deal, right? Usually. But they had herded an entire plane's worth of people into these tiny holding rooms and then none of us were allowed to leave while waiting out the delay. And I don't think I have EVER seen as many families with small children on a flight before. Also, Africans operate from this mentality of whoever-pushes-to-the-front-of-the-line-first-gets-helped-first. It was mayhem. Chaos. So because of the crowded plane, there was a little KLM dude marching around demanding that everyone with rolling carry-ons check their bags instead. We off-loaded our carry-ons to him and claimed a couple of chairs to sit and wait. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we didn't all have seats together. Caleb had a lone seat (an exit row, so that ruled out the possibility of the baby sitting there with me) and then me with the brood in the back of the plane. And due to the above mentioned mentality of pushing=being helped, I was unsuccessful in getting any changes made to our seating arrangements.
All is well that ends well. We all made it on the plane...Caleb's mom graciously (heroically, life-saving-ly, awe-inspiring-ly) offered to sit with Elsa and Ezra, Caleb's dad sat in the lone seat, and Caleb and I sat with Daisy in their two seats. Daisy and I slept a lot of the flight and I think it was only once that I almost dropped her in my sleep.

Arrived in Addis to only be stopped in customs (a new experience for us--we've never been stopped before) for three hours as the customs guys tried to figure out how much to charge Caleb for his used radiator shrouds and the new cordless drill. We woke up the next morning to find that our carry ons (yes, the ones forcibly removed from us in the Amsterdam chaos) had been rummaged through and both our satellite phone and video camera had been taken. I've never been stolen from before and it was a strange feeling--the kind of sputtering indignation of "But that was MY stuff!" As if that matters.

 And it doesn't. We're here. We're safe. We'll be headed home soon.

She's a Party Kind of Girl (I don't know how she came from me)

"Do you know what my most favorite thing is that God made?"

Yes?

"Balloons." (pause) "And cake."

You Know You're A Mom of Three (Updated)...

• You go shopping with your mom with only the baby and your Mom decides Starbucks is a good idea (which it is) and so you both jump out and go la-dee-da in Starbucks for 20 minutes ordering your drinks and then get back in the car and just happen to look in the back seat and realize your poor sweet youngest child has been sitting in the car one hundred percent forgotten for the last 20 minutes

Hypothetically speaking, of course.