Eid

The boys have been off for the past 6 days, but life hasn't slowed down any. We have friends visiting from Oman (it's nice to be loved!), the boys still have baseball practices, pool parties and playdates with friends that require tons of driving around, and they each had school projects that had to be completed over the holiday. And of course they needed my help. Seriously?! I already went to school. The last thing I want to do on my vacation is research Jimmy Carter, document how I would spend a million dollars, try and keep an egg from breaking when it is dropped from a two story building, or measure the affect of diet on urine acidity. I'm having to do more work than when I was homeschooling. Boo.

Some days the only time she's been able to catch a nap is while we're in the car. (Not because I didn't try to put her down for a rest at home, but because all the extra people around made napping alone much less appealing than playing with her brothers). 

We are hosting Bible Study at our house tomorrow night, then several days of Halloween themed activities at school will round out the weekend. I'm hoping I'll finally be able to slow down a little, sit down for longer than a few minutes at a stretch, and blog more regularly next week. 

Edited to Add: I may be tired, but our Sleeping Beauty is actually non-Sleeping Beauty. We came upstairs at 11pm to find her lying in a patch of light in the doorway of her room, coloring and cutting paper into little bits -- crafting away. Of course all 3 boys are snoozing. Calvin's going to be thrilled that she got into his backpack while he was sleeping. I have no idea what to do with her. Put her in a padded room and let her play all night?

hangover

This scene from this morning about sums up our weekend . . .

Everyone has been moving slowly this morning after late nights and the crash after a sugar high. 

When I went to take a shower, she was asleep. I came out to find that she had woken up, crawled over, snuggled up next to the dog, and then went back to sleep. Moments like this make all the extra work of having a dog almost worth it. 

Before the Halloween party/Trunk or Treat on base 

I never ever thought he looked like Harry Potter until he put on the cloak and glasses and he transformed. His teacher saw him on base and didn't recognize him until he said, "Hey! It's me, Caleb!"

The costume thing is totally freaking her out (especially our friend dressed as a lion with fangs -- see the photo above). 

So many people decorated their cars, dressed up, and handed out candy. Too much candy . . . multiplied by four kids . . . ooh, I think I might still have some Reese's in the freezer.

Calvin wanted to be a member of the Donner Party and walk around gnawing on a big turkey leg. I thought that was gross and he didn't like any of my ideas so he went costume-free. 

She was having a great time until she realized we were at another party where everyone had on scary masks. Only one more event next week and then the scary stuff should be over. At least until Santa makes an appearance!

birds of a feather

Camille and I went to our preschool playgroup at a park near our house the other day. Since we were there first thing in the morning, there were hundreds of these tracks in the playground sand. 

Was this place home to millions of giant pigeons? 

Nope, just these two ostriches emus (I can't tell the difference, but someone else there said ostriches are wider and have more tail feathers). This was not a zoo, just a normal park with a playground and slide and, oh yeah, a couple of exotic birds in a cage. 

The way they walked around with their beaky heads bobbing reminded me of the velociraptors from Jurrasic Park.  

Like everything else in life, she wasn't too sure about them, but she did tell me, "I want to go see the chickens." 

A maintenance worker showed them how to pick the green plants growing around the perimeter of the park and feed them to the birds through the holes in the fence.

She tried it once and then let me do all the feeding after that. Their jerky head movements and pecks were a little intimidating. 

After birdwatching and playtime were over we let the kids play in the park's fountains.

She wasn't so sure about the water shooting out of the ground at unpredictable intervals.

 (Yes, I do realize she's just like me.)

Getting braver . . .

but ready to run at any moment . . .

In the end she did get wet -- see the drenched hair and face?

(we just take a little while to warm up . . .)

play

Cameelie and I go to a toddler/preschool playgroup every other week. It's one of those things that didn't occur to me to do with her until someone invited us to join in and then I thought, "Oh yeah! Playdates. I used to do those with Calvin way back when he was my only child." It's embarrassing all the things I've forgotten to do this time around. It's no wonder that my youngest sisters never learned to ride a bike (until they were adults). You do all the normal, good parent things with the first few and then your brain cells all die off and your memory goes and you swear you taught them all to ride a bike . . . except you didn't. I get it, Dad. Been there, doing that.

We were at this playgroup 2 weeks ago and one of the moms pulled out bubbles and I realized the girl has never seen bubbles before. She loved them, of course. All kids do. How did I forget about bubbles?  Because if we were living in America I would be wandering the aisles of Target or Walmart and when the summer displays of toys came out I would see the wall of bubbles and think, "Ooh, Camille would like those!" And I would buy them for her, just like I did for each of the kids. There's not a lot of impulse shopping here and the toy sections of the department stores are ridiculously priced, extremely poor quality plastic junk. Worse than dollar store quality, but Toys R Us in price. I don't even bother looking at them anymore. Which is why my girlie doesn't have any toys. Well, she didn't, but I remedied that problem quickly thanks to my friend Amazon. I didn't even notice the lack of toys until we went to playgroup and saw all the toys. Like Christmas. My girlie has been playing with her brother's legos when there are loads of toys out there that I didn't even know existed. Again, the problem with not having a store to browse and never having had a girl before. Who knew they still make My Little Ponies?

I went home and emailed my sister for suggestions since my niece is only a little older than Camille. And then I shopped. And then the packages started to arrive: wooden food, wooden dollhouse and furniture, a Dora microphone, toddler legos. We're going to have a good time playing with my dollhouse her dollhouse. I'm sure there are still gaps in her childhood fun checklist, but at least I can check off playdates, bubbles, and dolls. I promise I won't forget to teach her how to ride a bike.

Fabulous Friday!

My sister (Kristy) says that my life sounds like something you'd see on reality TV and sometimes I have to agree with her. Sitting in Friday School at church with Camille I noticed this huge rat's nest in her hair. I'm obviously a boy mom (and have been enjoying the low maintenance life of a mom with a bald baby) since it never occurred to me that I needed to brush her hair before we headed out. I guess it's finally getting long enough to need some work.

Isn't that awful? And this is after I subtly tried to claw through it with my fingers to flatten it. 

It didn't work. 

As we were sitting in class (and I was contemplating my horrible hairstyling skills), I was really proud of the way Camille was coming out of her shell, playing with the toys without clinging to my leg, and seeming to enjoy herself. I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel -- the day I would finally be able to enjoy singing and hearing a sermon with the other adults, when she suddenly started to act shy. She stopped playing and hid behind me. I thought it was because I was talking about her to the other mom there and she was self-conscious. I tried to encourage her to go back with the other girls, but she didn't want any part of it. I looked around at the other kids her age and honestly wondered what was wrong with mine. They were playing and chatting while my freaky child was burying her face in my back. 

Look at this little girl with the perfectly combed hair and barrettes. Her mom obviously knows what she's doing.

Then as suddenly as it began, she crawled out from behind me and started smiling and chatting. What the heck? So now my baby has a split personality? As she cruised past, I caught a whiff of funk and it all became clear: my baby wanted to poop in peace. 

Relieved that my child wasn't emotionally stunted, I excused us to go to the bathroom, thankful that I brought my purse for a change (I usually only carry a wallet and keys). In the bathroom I dug around in my huge bag for the diaper I knew was there -- except it wasn't. Oh, good grief. I have to walk all the way to the car to get a diaper? I was pretty sure there was one there -- if not, I was going to be in big trouble because her mess was already starting to leak out the sides onto her shorts and, oh great! Onto my shirt. Yuck! 

Since time was of the essence, I carried her, hammock style, by her shoulders and feet all the way out and down the street to the car, getting progressively stickier with each step (we may be in the same region, but it is MUCH MORE HUMID here than Oman). When we finally made it to the car I dug around in all my usual emergency diaper hiding spots . . . nothing. But by now the diaper contents was out of control so I cleaned her up the best I could, scrubbed poop out of the car upholstery (it went up her back, people!), off of the tailgate of the car, off of my wallet that she rolled on when I let go of her for a fraction of a second to grab another wipe, off of her clothes, and off of my shirt. 

Now I was left with a "clean" baby, but no diaper. Providentially, there is a British grocery store located across the street from church so I headed over to buy some overpriced "nappies." But first I had to trudge another half a block with grubby baby on my hip and the disgusting 2 pound diaper in my hand to the dumpster to offload the toxic waste, collecting a million more beads of sweat along the way. 

Diapers purchased, we headed back to the car to finish the changing process so we could get back to church. But now my clicker wasn't working. I stood there pushing the unlock button over and over and thought, "You've got to be kidding me!" And then I noticed the tribal bumper sticker and realized that I was trying to get into the wrong car. Oops. 

Back at my own car, the clicker worked, I used a million more wipes to get all the fuzz, sand and grit off of her diaper area (from lying in the back of the car during the previous change), and then we went back to church. I wasn't feeling particularly spiritual or clean at the moment, but at least there was air conditioning. 

I would like to say that the rest of the morning was uneventful, but right as services were ending she went again -- Mohammed's Revenge, perhaps? On the bright side I had 27 more diapers in the back of the car, but her shorts were beyond salvaging with baby wipes and required buying a new pair of pants.  Though I think she'd call her new pair of pink jeggings a "win." 

Take me out to the ballgame . . .

As baseball season is winding down in the US, it's just beginning here. Usually baseball means new cleats, broken in leather gloves, and the smell of freshly mown grass in the air.

Welcome to the baseball "field."

It was dusty, hot and humid, and the sweat turned the dust to mud on our skin.

 

All three boys had tryouts over the weekend -- not because anyone was going to be cut, but to make the teams as even as possible. Caleb played well enough that they moved him from the younger age bracket to the league with both of his brothers.

And this is where they'll be playing

 

 

Warming up 

 

The luscious green grass in the background is the new artificial turf soccer field. Too bad we can't use it for baseball while we wait for spring (soccer season).

At the end of tryouts we found out that all 3 boys would be on the same team -- crazy age span (8 year olds playing with 13 year olds?). I'm actually pretty happy about it because yay for less driving and yay for being able to cheer for all 3 boys at the same time. I'm sure it will never happen again so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. There aren't enough kids here to have more than two teams so they kept things simple and put all siblings on the same team (God bless them!). 

I'm hot and dirty and I've had enough! Time to go!

Halloweenie

There was a Halloween party on base for the kids tonight. I thought it would be fun to go as a family. Nope. She hated it. They were doing face painting and all the kids running around with painted on cat whiskers and skull faces scared her. She started shaking and crying, "I want to go home!" so I took her over to the base department store (right down the hall) and we looked at shoes while the boys ate pizza and candy, watched a movie, and played with friends.  

While we were shopping, these punks decided to get their faces painted and then came over and scared their sister. 

It was super fun to have her start screaming in the middle of the store every time she saw them: "Scary, Daddy!"

Clicking

This week has been better. Camille is watching less tv, which is always my barometer for how successful I'm being at life, and she's been napping during the day. Our routine has been falling into place -- do something in the morning, lunch, nap, kids home from school and homework, pick up Calvin, dinner, bed. Not the most exciting life, but it will do.

The biggest change has been in my driving. Not that it's any better out there, but I have determined that I am going to show love to the other drivers on the road. Sure, pull in front of me! Let me wave you in so you don't block the other traffic. I don't need to make this light, I'll catch the next one. (I know that you suspect I'm being sarcastic, but this is for real.) The result has been that I'm arriving at my destinations no later than before and much less stressed. Win. Win. Win. Who knows how long my Zen will last, but it's working for now. I was tired of feeling angry all the time -- this is much better.

My seeds are sprouting! The rocket (arugula) is up, and beans and sunflowers have joined the beets and chard. Things sprout ridiculously fast when it's 95 and sunny. My lettuce isn't showing itself so I may have planted it too deep -- it needs light to germinate. I reseeded today to be sure.

Today is our busy afternoon out that ends with home group this evening. I wrote this on base while waiting for Calvin to finish basketball practice and Josh to finish work. Then we'll have dinner here before going over to our friends' house.

PS: I'm so relaxed, I let them get ice cream before dinner. New and improved Mom for sure.

cast iron stomach

Did you know that grapes are toxic to dogs? I did because my brain holds on to useless pieces of information while discarding gems like Josh's work phone number or my street address. I am not your go-to girl if you need to get directions to my house, but dog toxicity issues? I've got that covered.

So grapes (and raisins) can be deadly to dogs. They can cause kidney failure and no one knows if there is a "safe" amount to eat because some dogs are fine after ingesting grapes, others keel over. There is no known pattern to the dogs that are affected: size, breed, grape color, it's a crapshoot.

By now you can guess that Micah got into some grapes, huh? I was upstairs putting Camille down for a nap and I came back to find a bunch of grapes on the living room floor that had been picked naked. Normal people would have cursed the loss of expensive grapes (it was $7.70 for a medium size bag, ouch!), but my brain immediately pulled up the "dogs+grapes = EMERGENCY" file and my peaceful afternoon was over.

Josh and I were supposed to have a few hours to ourselves since the boys were out and the girl was asleep, but instead we had to tag team googling poison control home remedies (since of course it was the weekend) and dog watch vomit duty.

I knew from my previous hydrogen peroxide experience that all I had to do was give the dog a few teaspoons of the stuff and those grapes should come right back up. Problem solved. Except that he didn't throw up. Dr. Google said it could take between 5 and 15 minutes, so we sat outside waiting for our prize. Other suggestions were to feed him bread along with the peroxide so it would bulk up in his stomach and give him something to regurgitate. Another site suggested jiggling his stomach so it would be mixed with his stomach acid and make him feel really nauseous. Oh, and still another said to take a syringe and give him extra water. Did it all. No joy.

The procedure calls for administering a second dose, but by now the dog was on to me so I first had to catch him. Giving a dog peroxide the first time is easy, the second time? Impossible. I was pretty sure I had gotten enough down the hatch when I read on another website (by googling "dog peroxide no vomit?") that said the peroxide had to be fresh or it wouldn't be foamy/bubbly enough to make him sick.

I tested our peroxide by swishing some in my mouth -- hmm, not that powerful. Still nasty tasting though. Then we had to decide whether to give up or go get new peroxide. To make this horrible, painfully long story short, I'll cut to the end: Brand new peroxide, double strength (oops!), much waiting, jiggling, bread feeding, water boarding, no throw-up, gave up, dog fine, wasted afternoon.

The end.

putting down roots

Since we'll probably be here for two years (inshalla/God willing), the best thing I can do is make it feel like home. What makes me feel at home somewhere? Putting my hands in dirt and growing edible plants. Ever since we've lived in Oklahoma I have had a passion for vegetable gardening. I had a huge backyard there and devoured books on square foot gardening, raised beds, mulching and composting, trellising vining crops like cucumbers and melons, and four season gardening (extending the growing season with hot water bottles and bedsheets or cold frames).

The result of all that study was the garden of my dreams -- 3 four foot wide beds that were twelve feet long. I grew long rows of baby lettuces that I would snip with scissors to have fresh salad every day, a green wire trellis covered with sugar snap peas, half a bed of purple, yellow, and green bush beans, rows of carrots, beets, swiss chard, and spinach, bushes of yellow and green squash, cucumbers and melons sprawling on an A-frame trellis (the key is to support the growing melons inside pantyhose slings), and half a bed full of corn. The other half held pumpkin plants that quickly overgrew their beds and crawled across the grass -- we just mowed around them until pumpkin harvest was over. 

In addition to the beds I had 8 huge tomato plants along the back fence -- cherries, yellow pear, early reds, a variety called sungold that held orangey bite sized tomatoes, and sweet 100s that grew in bunches like grapes. Add in some pots of cilantro, parsley and rosemary and that covers most of it. And that was only a "temporary garden." A few years later we pulled up our stakes (literally and figuratively) and headed down the road. I've never had the same sort of space to work with, but I've grown vegetables ever since. Whether it was a small bed that I dug alongside our house in VA (I couldn't bring myself to actually eat anything from this garden since we'd been warned about lead, asbestos, and unknown chemicals in that housing area and I was pretty sure the ground was contaminated as well), or growing hot peppers at the edges of our lawn in 29 Palms, edible growing has been part of my life everywhere we've lived. 

I put a few things in pots the other day (and posted a picture of it), but it wasn't enough. I needed more dirt. Since I have a husband who is very supportive of my gardening efforts (and is the one who did all the heavy digging in the Oklahoma clay to create the original huge beds), we headed to the nursery together. Unfortunately we got sidetracked for a few minutes by a burning smell coming from the car as we pulled up. 

It's quite the man that can handle car repairs and babywearing at the same time.

(It turns out that the burning smell most likely was coming from a combination of the manure/fertilizer and burning tires in the area -- but we do have an electrical issue in the car that is being worked on today). 

Caleb holding my new "beds." We bought a bunch of dirt (6 huge bags of it), a few more seeds and some flowering/vining plants and decorative ceramic pots to put them in. We barely fit it all in the car and we only had 2 kids with us.

We have this rooftop space that we want to turn into a garden/outdoor room. 

 

Jasmine, Morning Glories, and this plant of unknown origin. The guy at the nursery didn't speak much English so we would ask, "Flower?" And he would nod and either point at the color on something else or say the name if he knew it. This plant is supposed to have two-color flowers, but I don't remember what colors. I'll just have to wait and be surprised. 

Carter planted sunflowers -- I do veggies, he always plants sunflowers. 

She kept trying to poke bean seeds into my carrot rows.

 

 

We have 2 plastic chairs right now, but eventually want to get some sort of outdoor couch

Tiny tomatoes

My beets and swiss chard have sprouted!

They are in the same family, so I won't be able to tell which is which until they get bigger. And honestly, I'm not so sure I trust the labels on the locally produced seed bags anyway. What they called "psinish" was certainly not spinach seed -- it looked more like wood shavings. 

I'm betting that these are beets because of the red in the seed leaves . . . I'll find out soon.

Micah's not impressed with my gardening, but at least he's not scared to go out on the roof anymore (I had to carry him up the stairs and out onto the roof yesterday, big heavy baby).

I think I might need a few more big pots . . . really. I was looking online for some more seeds and I found my favorite purple beans, a variety of faux-spinach that is supposed to do really well in the heat (real spinach likes cool, spring weather), a miniature red pepper that is supposed to be perfect for containers and a few new lettuce mixes that I haven't tried before. So yeah, I'm out of dirt space, but I have 7 more seed packets on their way. 

We're hoping the vining plants grow up and distract from some of the pipes, A/C units and satellite dishes on the roof.

Waiting for it all to grow!