January 22nd Note:For whatever reason, I cannot move forward until I recap December and even my start of 2011 feels off kilter until I just give myself a chance to sit down and write down some memories of that month, which I want to remember. Yes, I am compulsive sometimes. So be it. What follows is the blog I started on January 14.
The boys are down for naps and I am thinking about a nap for myself. The return to a regular schedule after a month of vacation definitely found us tired this week! Still, after a somewhat shy first day back, Micah has had a ball returning to school. He loves his teacher, learning new things, and seems to enjoy all his classmates. He has a best buddy, K, and it's all K's aunt and I can do to get our boys off the playground after lunch and head home because K and Micah want to just keep playing together. And this makes my heart happy!
I must confess to having major blues Micah's first day back because I love spending time with him and had gotten really used to having him around all the time during his winter break. He is funny and sweet and even when he is stubborn and debating me over something, he often entertains me with his logic and way of presenting himself. Still, he had loved school so much last term and as the week went on, I found myself feeling happy and upbeat about being back (as did Micah).
Tiras has adjusted fairly well to the new schedule. Although he seems very cranky after we leave Micah behind at school (though shows no sign of wanting to join him, just of wanting to keep Micah around), he and I are having some fun one-on-one time and also had a wonderful playdate earlier this week. A little girl who is two years older than Tiras came over and they got on really well together.
Tiras is talking up a storm these days and he's a lot of fun to be around as we can communicate more and more. He has a cute sense of humor and he can be such a little ham to make our neighbors laugh. He is not super tall for his age, but carries himself with all the confident swagger of an NFL lineman. He seems to be keen to begin the "terrible twos" with all their attending tantrums and attitude, so he keeps me on my toes.
So that has been our first week back to reality. Before I forge on ahead with the blog, I did want to take a little time to just reflect on December. It flew by so quickly, but was packed with a lot of wonderful.
And now, DECEMBER 2010
Happily, we rang in December with our Christmas tree up and decorated. It looked a little tiny in its new setting, which has much higher ceilings than we had before, but it was a festive and cute tree and the boys loved it. Sometimes the whole family would sit on the couch after dinner and just look at the lights and enjoy the tree and enjoy the chance to connect a little before dispersing for bedtime and the return to replying to work emails and the various "to do" items I always seem to have.
My parents and grandmother arrived in Nairobi on Friday morning, December 3. They came out to Kisumu the next day and it was just wonderful to have them here. They got to see Micah's school and ride the tuk tuk into town and shop at Nakumatt and all manner of slices of our life here, including the craft market and coffee shop!
A highlight of their first week was getting to see the Christmas show put on by Micah's school. Micah was a Jack in the Box and one of my favorite memories was of working with my parents to create the box portion of his costume. I found a really great sparkly gold paper and my dad worked like an engineer to create precise angles with a purple paper and that made for a Harlequin pattern on the box that looked really great! It reminded me of old times when my parents helped me with school projects and it was fun to have them join up with me now to help with a project for my child.
It was Micah's very first school musical. Don't have a photo of Micah in his wonderful Harlequin box. Happily we do have video coverage of the big moment, though less ideal coverage than we might have wished. Deron was as enthralled as I to watch Micah perform for the first time. So enthralled that he had eyes only for Micah during the "Jack in the Box" song. So it was quite a surprise to him to later review his video coverage and discover that in the frame was another schoolchild diligently and energetically picking his nose through the ENTIRE song. It's a bit of a distraction. But there you go.
School got out on the tenth and we then geared up for our trip to the Masai Mara. We had an early flight out to Nairobi and our connection to the Mara wasn't until the later afternoon, so we got to go to the Westgate mall. It was beautiful and so clean! I hadn't really consciously articulated that all the dust of Kisumu kinda gets to me after a while, but being in this pristine setting was a fun experience in and of itself. We had brunch at Art Cafe and I had a smoked salmon sandwich which had REAL cream cheese and an avacado and was one of the single most enjoyable meals of my life. We also got artisan chocolates that were as amazing as any chocolates I have eaten. Between the smoked salmon, cream cheese, and chocolate, I was really set and blissed out for a goodly number of months in the food category! (Still excited to eat New England clam chowder, scallops, and Mexican food when we visit the U.S. this summer!)
After several blissful hours at the mall, we drove to Wilson Airport to take our wee little plane to the Mara. It had 3 seats across and about 8 rows or so, so was not the most wee little of wee little planes. But it was wee little enough for Tiras to suddenly notice that one leaves the ground in an airplane and to feel all the turbulence and to wail and cry and protest in horror during the whole flight. Luckily wee little planes have very noisy propellers so our fellow passengers did not have to hear this outcry for the whole flight. It was quite poignant, actually, but he bounced back immediately once we landed.
We stayed at the Mara Serena again and it was glorious. There is no place on earth I would rather be if someone told me I had to live out my days in one and only one place for the rest of my life. The Mara Serena is set up high and looks down on the vast Mara which is beautiful and filled with glimpses of elegant giraffes grazing and baboons strolling along and so many other wonderful animals to behold. The Mara is too beautiful and vast and full of wonders of nature for me to do any kind of justice to them with my words. So I will leave this paragraph on that note.
It has been a lifelong dream of my grandmother's to visit Africa and suffice it to say that she was not disappointed. She and my parents fell just as head over heels with the Mara as we are. They saw all of the "Big 5" (so named both because of their size and the danger they posed to those who hunted them): lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, and rhino. They saw a zebra crossing. (And no matter how frazzled I may ever feel as I try to be a good mom to my boys, I never face crocodile infested waters and have to just hope my baby makes it across and helplessly cross along with it, unable to protect it from being snatched away. Nope. Nothing in my parenting duties is ever as poignant and horrific as that.) They saw baby animals. They saw the Tanzania border and looked out at the Serengeti on the Tanzania side. They savored it all and could have stayed on and on. It was a wonderful success!
Along with all the splendour of the Mara, we had another big event during this week. Micah rang in his fifth birthday. Half a decade with this fun, creative, playful, witty, wonderful, loving, funny, imaginative, sensitive, logical, changed our lives forever for the better kid. The wait staff surprised Micah with a birthday serenade and a cake with five candles. Micah had a wonderful day and has been planning both Tiras and my birthday trips to the Mara ever since.
We did have to depart from the Mara eventually and flew back to Nairobi. I believe what helped us ease the blow of leaving the Mara behind was getting to stay in the Tribe hotel. It is a beautifully designed hotel in a lovely part of Nairobi. There is all sorts of gorgeous African art and even though its main clientel are business travelers, the staff are warm and wonderful to our boys. In fact, Micah received a Dora holiday DVD as a birthday gift (I thought my parents' suite at the Mara had a DVD player but it was VHS) and they set up a DVD player in a conference room with a soft sofa in it and let Micah view his DVD there. (Turns out we had a DVD player in our room but the extra space of the conference room was nice for Micah and Tiras.) We were next to the Village Market and got to do some fun shopping, including taking in the Masai Market which comes through weekly with all sorts of crafts!!! Gorgeous crafts! Some the same as what we have in Kisumu, but because it is so large, many items that were new. It was fun to behold. I remain horrible at bargaining, but did pick up some tips when I saw Deron in action.
While at Tribe, we met a very nice woman with her baby. They had just moved to Nairobi from China and her little girl was younger than Tiras but very friendly and interested in Tiras. Tiras decided to play the shy card and just suck his index finger and stare solemnly at her or burrow his head into Dad's chest. I mention this interaction because of the "small world" moment that follows later.
We flew back to Kisumu with our treasures and many wonderful memories. Micah opened birthday presents and my dad did some cooking for us. Wish I had his talents because he can always take the food he finds and make something delicious out of it. I am reading Nigella Lawson's How to Eat and she talks about understanding food and food preparation rather than "slavishly following recipes" and I think I am definitely her target audience. I love to try recipes but have very little understanding of cooking. So hopefully an unexpected result of living here will be that I take the time to learn a bit more about good food prep and can become more like my dad in this regard.
We spent some low key but happy days with my parents and grandmother and they headed home on Wednesday the 22nd. Due to snow issues in London, there were some worries that their flight might be canceled. Even the day before their departure, the analagous flight to theirs was canceled. But apart from a mere two hour delay, all went smoothly and according to schedule. They made it home with many treasures and memories from their trip.
And what saved this next part of December from being a tale of how I plunged into sad despair at their departure and wallowed around for days in a funk of missing them is that we left that very same morning for Mombasa with neighbors from our compound. Going to the coast holds its excitement, but what REALLY distracts one from a tearful goodbye is travel with a toddler. Just cannot focus too much on your blues when you have an active kiddo who needs to be managed on a plane. So the transition was seamless and I am truly grateful because the day before my parents left I was already crying and blue and I think would have plunged still further into sadness if not for this trip not giving me a chance to mope.
We stayed at White Sands, a resort in Mombasa. We had heard good things and it really was gorgeous. Beautiful grounds and pools. Delicious food and warm and friendly wait staff plus super talented bands singing and playing music in the background of our meals. And the ongoing wonderful of being near the ocean and hearing the surf. The boys had a blast!
And here's the small world moment. On Christmas Eve there was a huge outdoor buffet and people had dressed up a bit. A very pretty mom and baby smiled at us and greeted us and we recognized them to be the mom and Baby CeCe from Tribe in Nairobi!
Deron and I felt a little homesick on Christmas day when we attended the service at the hotel. It was a nice service, but half of it was in Swahili (which makes sense, of course) and it made us miss being at a familiar church. And it does seem that holidays such as Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July can sometimes make the distance from home and friends and family there more acute.
We had a great last day on the 26th, which included riding out in a glass bottom boat and walking on a sandbar, and then headed back to Kisumu on the 27th. The rest of the week was quiet and low key. I did lots of laundry and unpacking and enjoyed cooking and cleaning and running the house with just our family. Rose is wonderful and nice, but sometimes the quiet of being just the four of us is a nice thing too.
Come December 31st, Deron and I talked long into the night and rang in New Year's long before most of our friends and family. We reflected on all that 2010 had held and imagine 2011 will be a quieter year. We look forward to seeing what unfolds.
