Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jane Heinze's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
10:07 am	Media hype and missing links It amazes me how much hype exists over an interesting but by no means earth-shattering scientific discovery. I'm referring, of course, to the "missing link", Darwinius masillae, that seems to have hypnotized the news media (and Google). I read much of the actual scientific paper, posted here. Now, I'm no expert on paleontology or Eocene primates, and much of the terminology left my head swimming. I admit to some serious skimming of the detailed section on the creature's dentition. However, my basic understanding of the significance of the find is as follows. This is the most complete fossil primate ever found, and thus it yields insights not only into its own characteristics, but those of other, incomplete fossils of similar primates. There are two major groups of primates, Strepsirrhini (which have wet noses and split lips, including lemurs and lorises), and Haplorhini (which have dry noses and continuous upper lips, including anthropoids). The classification of tarsiers has changed from Strepsirrhini to Haplorhini, for reasons I don't fully understand, but I'll take the experts' word for it. So, the key paradigm-shift that Darwinius masillae causes is the reclassification of Eocene adapoid fossils (see here for what an adapoid is) from Strepsirrhini to Haplorhini. That is, Darwinius masillae is in the same category as tarsiers and anthropoids, whereas its contemporaries had previously been thought to be in the same category as lemurs and lorises. The closest the paper itself gets to the wild claims of missing links is as follows: "Note that Darwinius masillae, and adapoids contemporary with early tarsioids, could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here, nor do we consider either Darwinius or adapoids to be anthropoids... We do not interpret Darwinius as anthropoid, but the adapoid primates it represents deserve more careful comparison with higher primates than they have received in the past. The concluding sentence of the paper sums up its major significance: "Darwinius masillae is important in being exceptionally well preserved and providing a much more complete understanding of the paleobiology of an Eocene primate than was available in the past." Lest I blame all media everywhere for overreacting, I'd like to note that the BBC has what appears to be a balanced article on the find. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
8:28 pm	Squirrel I found a squirrel hiding in our kitchen, behind the cookie jars, while I was preparing dinner. Squirrels run fast, we discovered. Eventually, despite my lack of skills with round moving objects, Ari and I pulled off a great soccer-like move and chased it out the front door. Dinner was only slightly overcooked. After the children got over their initial terror, there was much conversation about the fate of any theoretical future squirrel. Eleazar and Ari thought they would like to barbeque such a critter, and Petra and I disagreed vociferously. There's only one squirrel I've ever met that I would like to barbeque, and it probably died of obesity several years ago. It lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and, having lost its fear of humans, chewed its way through my backpack to eat the freshly baked bread that was our lunch. Fortunately, tonight's squirrel doesn't seem to have damaged anything, and it was certainly afraid of us. Current Mood: surprised (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 17th, 2008
9:27 pm	An adoption update, or not We're still waiting to be matched with a child. We were on the short list of 3 families being considered for a 6-year-old boy, but he was matched with one of the other 2 families. We've got our homestudy submitted to social workers for 5 kids: a sibling group ages 6 and 3 (girl and boy), and individual boys (we would only adopt one) ages 2, 4, and 5. At some point, for any given child or sibling group, they (whoever "they" are - I know this includes the child's social worker) have a meeting at which they discuss the child's future and decide on an adoptive family, if any of the homestudies families have submitted look good. We don't know when such a meeting might happen for any of the children we're interested in. Apparently, sometimes the social workers don't do a very good job of keeping in touch. Larry, our social worker at the adoption agency (who talks to other social workers on our behalf) told me that there was one worker who hadn't returned his calls for a month, but reassured me that she wasn't the social worker of any of the kids we're interested in. Any time I get any information about a kid we could adopt, I feel like saying, "Give him to me right now and let me mother him! He clearly needs a mom and dad sooner rather than later!" I'm tired of waiting. But I know God has just the right kid(s) for us, and it'll happen at the right time. I just wish the right time had happened already. Current Mood: impatient (Comment on this)
9:25 pm	Old The kids like hearing stories of when I was a girl. A few days ago, Eleazar asked, "Mommy, can you tell me a story from when you were a little girl when all the dinosaurs died?" (Comment on this)
Monday, September 8th, 2008
9:29 pm	I haven't posted in forever. Again. We are approved to adopt! This means that our homestudy is complete and, when we see kids on the adoptpakids.org website (or others) that we like the looks of, we can ask our social worker to submit our homestudy to the kids' social workers and they can add us to their list of prospective parents for those kids, and maybe or maybe not choose us. Several caveats exist. Firstly, they give you about a paragraph of info on each child, which isn't enough to make an informed decision. So you submit your homestudy, and then they tell you, "It would be a Really Bad Idea to place these particular kids in a home with other kids younger than them." (translation: they are likely to hurt anyone smaller than themselves, like Eleazar). Secondly, the website is updated fairly infrequently. So you submit your homestudy, and then they tell you, "Sorry, those two adorable kids have been adopted already." Also, the website is flakey, as in "Sorry, the child whose ID number you gave me has vanished from the website so I can't submit a homestudy on him." Thirdly, it seems like most matches, particularly with younger kids (what we're looking for) are made long before the social worker is desperate enough to list them on the website (at least, that's how I understand it). So you really need to connect with kids' social workers directly. Fortunately, there is a means for doing this, and it's called a "match party". We are invited to such an event on Wednesday the 17th. I believe the setup is that many prospective adoptive parents and many social workers with adoptable children in their caseload show up in the same place, mingle, and hopefully connect kids and parents seamlessly. Never having been to one of these, I'm not exactly sure what to expect. I know it's a completely different setup from some match parties where the actual kids show up and are desperate for the various parents to pick them (that sounds worse than the "here's a dollar, will you be my friend?" trick). We won't meet actual kids, just social workers. We're praying that, whoever and wherever our future kids may be, their social worker will be at this event and we'll meet and connect with him/her. A strategy our social worker suggested to us is to make up a flyer "advertising" our family - describing what makes us special and what makes us likely to be good parents for the kids we'd be adopting, and what kind of kids we're looking for. I imagine we'll hand out scores of these at the match party. I'm busy assembling pictures and trying to put it together somewhat coherently, talking about our faith, our enjoyment of reading, our love of hiking and camping, my enthusiasm for homeschooling, etc. I want us to look very attractive while keeping the flyer completely honest, which hopefully shouldn't be too difficult... :-) Well... better get back to working on it, huh? Current Mood: hopeful (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 9th, 2008
7:54 pm	alumni weekend BTW, I'm ditching Ari and the kids and flying to California next weekend for Ass Tea. I'll arrive on Saturday and leave Monday evening. Who that reads this is going to be at Tech that weekend? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
7:36 pm	quotes This has been a particularly rich week or two for quotes. Today: Petra draws a picture of Eleazar (she's at the "head with legs growing out of it" stage of her artistic development). Petra informs her brother, "This is you, Eleazar." His reply: "No! I'm NOT Eleazar in the picture! I'm Eleazar RIGHT NOW!" Yesterday: Petra mulls over her recent scrapes and band aids. She assumes an expression of deep contemplation. "It seems to me that it's mainly my skin that gets hurt. I think it might be because I'm a female." I pointed out the scrape on his chin, reminded her of other times he's been hurt when she hasn't, and assured her that her gender didn't make her more accident-prone. Tuesday: We're all in the car, discussing an event late Sunday night when both children were in the car but asleep. Petra, coming to terms with what happened, says, "Our car didn't all the way break, but the deer all the way breaked." By God's grace, this is true: it took out part of one headlight and crumpled the front side panel, making the driver's side door hard to open. Ari braked and swerved almost enough to miss the creature, which was suicidally standing in the middle of the left lane on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. We assume the deer fared less well than our car. The deer, because it had all the way braked in an inopportune location, also all the way breaked, I guess. Last week and the week before: Eleazar, at random, states, "I jump out the window holding baby Penelope" (baby of a neighbourhood friend) or "I jump out the window holding baby Christian" (baby of a church friend). After a few of these statements confused me greatly, I realized what was going on. In Richard Scarry's What do people do all day?, firemen are pictured rescuing a cat-child from the top floor of a burning building by jumping with him into a trampoline. Eleazar was heroically rescuing our friends' babies from burning buildings, and we didn't even know it! What a brave 2-year-old... Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
3:10 pm	adoption plans I sure did drop a bombshell for some of you, didn't I? :-) Ari and I started consciously planning together to adopt at least one, maybe more, children the Christmas Petra was a baby (2004). We'd each thought about it independently before then. My cousin Che', then 15, was visiting my parents in the USA for Christmas, and was full of stories about the abandoned babies she worked with in South Africa. We looked into adopting a baby from the "baby house" where Che' and her family were involved, but didn't hear back from the director, and Eleazar came along before we pursued it farther. At that point it would have been financially impossible as well. After Eleazar was born, we thought, "Well, we've had 2 of our own, time to really think seriously about adoption." At that point we were thinking of adopting an infant, because I was (and still am) nursing Eleazar and though I could nurse an adopted infant at least partially. We attended an informational meeting at Bethany Christian Services in December last year. The timing made sense - right now, we're in a lovely house, Ari has a great income, we'll be here till summer 2009, we look good! But there is a time limit - summer 2009. Otherwise, we'll be moving who knows where with a pending adoption. So we looked at international adoptions, which move faster than domestic infant (plus, it didn't feel fair to compete with couples who don't have children for domestic infants). They're pricey, and can unexpectedly get stuck and take way longert than expected. However, the "older/special need" (OSN) domestic program can be a lot quicker. "Older" simply means "not infant", and "special need" can range from quadriplegic or murderous to mild emotional problems (which is only normal for a child who has been removed from his/her parents by the state). The more we thought and prayed about it, the better we felt about the OSN program. We asked about how long it might take to adopt a sibling group of 2 children, Petra's age or younger. The answer we received was optimistic, so we started the paperwork. We're now mostly done with the paperwork phase. The social worker will come and look at our house (to make sure that we don't have exposed electrical wires and that all our smoke detectors work, etc.) on Saturday, May 24. We've got a few bits of training (out of 24 hours required) left - this consists of reading and answering questions about how we might handle various situations. The training has been very comprehensive and I think it'll be helpful to go into this with our eyes open - we won't expect our adopted kids to instantly snuggle on our laps while we read stories and happily obey with a "Yes, Mommy," but we've got ideas on strategies to help them adjust. Of course, we won't know until we're in the thick of it just how helpful the training was! After the May 24 meeting, the social worker will write up our "home study", a report about us and our family that gets sent to children's social workers. Bethany will work with families in the foster care system to match us with our new children. When we're "matched" with a sibling group, we'll have the opportunity to review info about them and decide whether they seem right for our family. Assuming this to work out, we'll begin a slow process of gradually moving them from their foster home into our home. First, we'll have their worker give them a photo album of our family, house, and neighbourhood (I'm working on compiling that now). We'll meet them in their foster home, then maybe spend a day with them, then have them come to our house for gradually longer periods until they finally move in. This is to help them "transfer attachment" from their foster parents to us, rather than suddenly saying, "Oh, yeah, we're your new parents, and you won't see your foster parents any more." The more abrupt the transition, the more likely the kids are to feel, "Well, grown-ups appear and disappear without warning, so why bother falling in love with these grown-ups?" Hopefully, though, we'll have 2 more kids living in our house by the end of the year. We've asked for a sibling group of 2, neither born before 2004, preferably with the older one a boy (so that we have an "oldest girl" - Petra - and an "oldest boy" - the older adopted sibling). They say it's wise to mess as little as possible with birth order. Eleazar's currently the youngest, and if he doesn't stay the youngest he'll end up a middle child, which would have happened if we'd had another baby instead anyway. Same situation with the younger adopted child. We've been busily transforming the study into a bedroom - dealing with paper clutter, moving bookshelves upstairs to our room (we're using bookshelves to wall off an upstairs study). We've been talking to the kids about "when we get you new brothers or sisters", and Petra is always concerned about practical things: "Will we get them chairs? Will they have car seats?" It seems like she's looking forward to it. I'm not sure how much Eleazar understands, but I'll try to explain it to him more clearly when we've actually been matched. Right now, the timing is so uncertain that neither child can really wrap their minds around just when all this is to happen, but as they see the changes in the study/bedroom-to-be I repeatedly explain that it's "for the new kids who'll be joining our family". I've also been reading many books on the subject, both from the library and from our friend Amazon. Some are plain depressing, but it's helpful to think through what resources the parents in the sad stories didn't have or didn't choose to use that might be available to us, and how to adjust our expectations for when the children first move in. It seems like flexibility and unconditional acceptance (of the child, if not the behaviour) are important characteristics, and I think we're pretty good in that regard. We're excited! Some people have described this phase of adoption as being like a pregnancy without a due date, but it's fun to be taking all these concrete steps. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
7:37 pm	some days... ... inspire blogging. Mainly, I think, because the number and severity of things the kids did today that made me feel like running away and hiring a professional house-cleaner was unprecedented. Am I a bad mom? Or just unlucky? Or do days like this happen to everyone? In the morning, Petra took out her water balloons. I recently decluttered the study and discovered a birthday card containing $3 for Petra's 3rd birthday (last year, in July). Feeling guilty, I gave her the money before the next time we went grocery shopping, convinced her that she didn't want to buy ground flax seeds (her first impulse), and helped her instead choose a tube of 200 green water balloons and a device for filling them. The kids had a great time on Thursday night with Ari throwing water balloons up and watching them splat when they hit the ground, and Petra had figured out how to get a few drops of water into the water balloons herself. Most of Friday was spent tying off balloons containing less than 2 mL of water and letting Petra play with them. By today, though, that thrill had worn off, so the obvious thing to do was to fill the sink with water and wash the balloons. Water ended up all over the bathroom floor, so I made the kids wipe it up with a diaper. A little while later, the kids were having fun in the living room and their squeals of happiness suggested that nothing evil was transpiring, so I did something useful (I don't remember exactly what, just that it wasn't in the living room). It turns out that if you're one of my children, the most fun thing to do in the living room is to fill one of the stacking-bowl kitchen toys with water and slosh it under the child-size table so that prying adults don't notice it during their brief glances in your direction. Unless, of course, the puddle expands beyond the bounds of the table, in which case you're in trouble. Again. So, I handed Petra another diaper. She's decent at cleaning up, at least. Should be, with how much practice she gets. I decided to make tortillas for lunch. They're yummy, and it's fun to knead the dough. Particularly when, halfway through kneading, I heard Petra say, "Mommy, Eleazar is splashing in the sink!" I went in, ascertained that he was indeed standing in the bathroom sink, took note of the water which had gotten between the pages of both Eleazar's "potty-time" board books, and handed kids diapers. Again. They and I cleaned up, and I informed them both that for the rest of the day, there would be no turning on taps in this house without a parent within touching distance of the tap. Nap time. I was responsible and washed the back porch (which I'd been meaning to do for months), played guitar for a bit, and started reading. Eleazar woke up, but I hadn't had my full hour of "me time" yet, and he sounded happy. I finally decided to have a look at what he was up to, and my single swear word of the day escaped my lips. "CRAP!" If I use expletives, they're generally in context, and I've never seen as fitting a use of the word. His arms, from fingertips to above his elbows; his legs, from waist to toe; his chin, and a little bit around his mouth gross gross gross; his sheet, blanket, and bed frame; the floor of the room he and Petra share; Petra's sheets and blanket (but not Petra, who was sleeping peacefully); and the elephant toy I started knitting when I was 7 and my mom finished when Petra was born; All. were. covered. COVERED. in. poop. Into the bathtub with they boy. Scrub him down (to his chagrin, not using the bug-shaped washcloth I usually use for washing him), send him downstairs where the poop isn't, clean up the poop, waking Petra in the process. Send Petra downstairs where the poop isn't. Scrub the poopy bathtub. Realize just how soap-scummy the bathtub is. Try several different methods for removing yellowish soap scum. Fail, repeatedly. After finally giving up, head downstairs. Snack time, apparently. A backpack we'd used for hiking a month ago, which was still full of bottled water and a package of graham crackers, had been left in the living room to be dealt with. Petra and Eleazar dealt with it in the way any 2- or 3-year-old would deal with a box of graham crackers without adult supervision. There was a pile of crumbs where they first opened the package, a trail of crumbs and half-eaten crackers between the backpack and their chairs, and a pair of happy children with plates full of crackers, giggling together and thoroughly enjoying themselves. I removed those crackers which were still whole and saliva-free and placed them back in the box, angering Petra (whose good opinion, by then, I valued like a cook values mouse droppings). I think the pile of crumbs in the middle of the floor is still there. I had to get out of the house. I took the kids shopping, and accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, including buying new plastic mattress protectors (the old ones were shredded, I think intentionally, and while I was changing all the sheets after the Poop Spectacular, I resolved never to see them again). Petra did try to crawl into one of the display beds in the sheets section, but really, it could have been worse. I retained a firm grip on little hands almost the whole time. Once home, I looked at the kitchen, which was and is still full of dirty dishes, and didn't feel like dealing with it. Instead, I went upstairs to put the new mattress covers on the kids' beds and make their beds. I asked Petra, "Where's Eleazar?" She replied, "He's downstairs with blue hands." Finger paint is currently very popular. It makes a nice addition to the study bookshelves and all the papers on them, as well as to certain portions of the floor. Fortunately, Eleazar is also getting a lot of practice wiping up messes, so after I washed his hands (not securing his good opinion, but then, I didn't value his any more than Petra's), he wiped the floor for me. I sent the kids outside, thought about making supper, and decided: We are eating out tonight! That decision made, I started feeling better. Now that Ari's home, we're fed but I didn't have to clean up, and the kids are upstairs and in bed, I'm really starting to regain my equilibrium. Probably by tomorrow, I'll be right back to normal. However, I do think it might be a good idea to use duct tape to attach each of them to one of my legs until they can write an essay on how they have increased in responsibility and can be trusted with freedom. Just think! We might have 2 more preschoolers in our house in a couple of months! And the craziest thing is, I'm not phoning the adoption agency to call the whole thing off. We must really be called to do this! (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 10th, 2007
11:10 pm	kids are messy Is it just that there's more space for them to make the mess IN? Shortly after my last post, the kids found their six bottles of (thank God for washable) Crayola brand paint. I was checking email, and then I made a phone call, to invite the missions pastor for dinner. The kids were upstairs. They sounded happy. Upstairs is far away, unlike every room in our old place. This is taking a while to get used to. As I was winding up the conversation (which took longer than I had really anticipated, but, hey, the kids sounded happy), Petra came downstairs. Mostly red, but with green and yellow streaks. Leaving purple footprints all across the hardwood floor. The banisters were red and orange, and there were red and purple streaks about 2 feet up the wall for most of the staircase and a fair quantity of the upstairs hall. The floor of their room was a mosaic of red, orange, yellow, green, and purple which had naturally mixed into various shades of brown as well. Somehow they hadn't managed to open the blue, but they'd emptied the rest. Eleazar's hair was plastered down with red and orange. I knew I should spank them, but I was laughing too hard. Sometimes, you do that, because it's that bad. I rinsed them off, and handed them both cloths and a bucket of water. They cleaned about 30% of the mess while I took care of the remaining 70%. Then, I found the excuse I needed to spank them (I don't want to spank them unless they've been consciously disobedient). There was paint in our room (they are forbidden to enter our room), particularly on my brand-new cell phone which I had received that morning as a belated birthday gift from my inlaws and which I was busy charging for the first time ever. I quit laughing, and they got their spankings. I didn't buy new paint for a couple of weeks, and I still haven't allowed them to use the paint I did buy. A few days after that, Eleazar got into my room by himself. I thought his happy sounds were coming from the kids' room. Evidently my echolocation skills could use some work. He found the permanent marker that was in my purse (the pens had all vanished and I was using it for my shopping list). Now there are black lines at Eleazar-eye-level plus or minus 20 cm on: the closet door, the closet door handle, the bed frame, the door to the linen closet, the wall beside the linen closet, and the door to the room. I haven't tried to clean it yet, but I'm happy to receive suggestions on how to make permanent marker not. Tonight was fun. Ari had an evening lab class to teach, so I got to put the kids to bed all by myself. We moved Eleazar into a big-boy bed when he started climbing out of the pack 'n play but was unable to climb back in, and we found him asleep on the floor. This has caused logistical difficulties given how much the kids like to play with each other. We didn't think we could enforce a "stay in bed" rule, since it had been a battle (10 spankings in 10 minutes, which neither Eleazar nor I wish to relive) to get him to stay in the pack 'n play, and the bed is much easier to get out of. Our initial rules were: stay in the room, don't turn on the light, and stay out of the closet. They managed to pull all their toys (well, 50% of their toys) off the toy shelf and strew them across the room in the dark last Friday, so we added the "no playing with toys, either" rule. As I put the kids to bed, I reminded both of them of the rules, and told Petra that if she needed to go potty, she needed to come right back. I may have neglected to add "and close the door." I heard the nightly happy kid playing noises, and again, my echolocation skills are lacking. When I was done clearing the table from dinner, I stepped upstairs because it sounded like the door to their room was open. It was. Eleazar was chewing on a feminine care item. The bathroom cupboard doors were open and the contents strewn about the room. The roll of toilet paper had been shredded into the toilet, and all the cleaning rags also thrown into the toilet. Shredded wet toilet paper had then been distributed across the bathroom floor. The thermometer and its case were soaking in the papier-mache' on the floor. Two bars of soap had had their paper covers removed and bore multiple pockmarks; the paper covers were also soaking on the floor. I'll probably find more tomorrow when I turn on the lights in their room. Clearly the rule about staying in their room had been broken, and Petra hadn't come right back after going potty soon enough. After Eleazar's spanking, Petra said, "Now me" in a tone of inevitability, as though she recognized the justice of it. After both kids were put in bed and told to stay there, I got to clean up the bathroom. Overwhelming as the mess appeared, it only took me about 15 minutes. About 2 minutes into the cleanup, Petra started crying out that she needed to go potty. I yelled at her to wait, because we didn't need more than 1 kid covered in wet toilet paper in a night, so she whined and moaned throughout the rest of my clean-up operation. Petra seems to have a bladder-on-demand skill that lets her pee every 10 minutes if it keeps her from going to sleep, but she then remains dry all night most nights. The kids are asleep now. I wanted to vent. I had forgotten my LJ password, so I had to have a new one emailed to me. I'm disorganized and haven't switched my LJ email address to my new gmail one yet (9 months after getting it), so I ended up checking my ugcs account for the first time in a month. I found an email from Vikki, containing this link. It helped a lot! At least I'm not alone. Current Mood: grumpy (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 27th, 2007
3:16 pm	We are in Swarthmore! We've arrived! Also, we have DSL. Whee! So, perhaps I'll post more. The trip went really well. Ari's parents arrived a week and a half before our move, and helped us pack up and move. Ari defended his dissertation on Aug 2nd, and they say the diploma is in the mail. Our actual departure date was Aug 4, and the 4 adults (Ari and I, plus his parents) took turns driving the truck with all our stuff and the car with the kids. Having 2 adults in each vehicle made it really good for conversation, reading to each other, and remaining sane in general. The kids did really well, though we did go through more snack food than we do in our everyday lives (a key strategy for keeping kids from screaming is to put teddy grahams in their mouths). We stopped for dinner in El Paso with my high school friend Katie the first night, and then went on to Carlsbad. The 2nd day we explored the cave in the morning, and drove to Ozona, middleofnowhereTX. The following day we arrived in Houston, where Ari worked on some edits for his dissertation and we visited his brother Dar who just moved to Galveston with his wife Michelle. We played at the beach with them, which was really fun. Petra clung to us in terror if we took her out knee-deep for us while holding her. Eleazar fought with us for the privilege of swimming without being held at all (we won that one!). This is a consistent pattern of our kids near water. We spent a night with Ari's grandparents in Bryan, TX before leaving early the next morning to drive all the way to St. Louis. We spent about 3 days with Ari's grandparents there. The kids enjoyed their swimming pool and got to play with their four 3rd-cousins (Ari's cousins' kids). Then we took 2 days to drive from there to Swarthmore. We arrived the night before our move-in date and didn't have keys to our new house, so we just looked at it from the outside. 2 stories, hardwood floors, a patio enclosed in insect screens where we can eat during the summer, a covered carport, and a tree bigger than any I ever saw in Arizona in our front yard. We stayed in a hotel that night, and moved in the next day. More features of the house: a study/guest room downstairs (yes, you're welcome to come visit us - just let us know in advance so we'll be home!), a fireplace, a basement with washer/dryer and space for all Ari's tools, a large master bedroom with an attic, a good-sized kids' room, and a final small room that I'll use for a sewing room. One of Ari's new colleagues arrived to welcome us, and had his 17-year old son bring a bunch of his friends to help us, among other things, move the piano up the 2 steps into the house. Our bed, which Ari built and which could easily double as a bomb shelter, didn't make it up the stairs on the first try, so significant disassembly was required and we didn't get to bed until midnight. However, we're now essentially moved in. We've even hosted overnight guests - our friends Ryan and Janine, who moved from Tucson to Boston about 2 months ago, visited us from late Friday night till Sunday afternoon. We started our church search before leaving Tucson, by looking online at churches and emailing likely candidates. We've visited the most likely-looking one twice now, and really like it. Proclamation Presbyterian is about a 20-minute drive away, has a fine Sunday School program and beautiful music in the service, very solid teaching in both Sunday School and sermon (though the senior pastor has been away both weeks - I think he'll be back next week; he's president of Westmister Theological Seminary as well). The chief aspect that caught my eye was the fact that they have an active ministry to Iranians and a Farsi-language service, as well as the fact that their missions pastor was an MK in Iran. They are clearly serious about missions, both weeks there has been a missions/ministry report as part of the main worship service and the bulletin has contained an update on a different mission endeavor both weeks. It seems the sort of church where we can really be mentored in evangelism and reaching out to Muslims, as well as in family life. Our church in Tucson is too small to be a sending church for us when we go overseas (though we'll count on them for prayer support), but this one is big enough and has enough resources. We plan to corner the missions pastor at least, over dinner probably, to grill him (poor guy) on all the potential problems we can come up with, but so far there aren't a whole lot. This is a wonderful place to live. It's an easy Petra-walk to the town center which contains the library and a Saturday farmers' market, the Swarthmore College campus is an arboretum with all the trees labelled, we're 3 minutes' walk from Ari's office (though Eleazar takes 20 minutes because he has to investigate every acorn on the way). Behind campus is a 300-acre forest with a real river running through it (here they call it a creek, but it's a good deal wider than any river in Tucson except within 24 hours of a rain storm). We went walking in the forest yesterday, and Ari caught a sunfish and a young bass, so he's really happy. We're not too far from a major road and just across the major road is a shopping mall. I've found the Trader Joe's, just 2-3 miles away, so I'm all set! Current Mood: content (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
3:50 pm	moving! We are moving in less than two weeks' time! Ari has finished his dissertation, and he defends on August 2nd. Then, we drive the moving truck away two days later, arriving in Swarthmore, PA on Aug 16th. We're going to make a vacation of it. Ari's parents arrive tomorrow, and they'll help us pack and take care of the kids while we pack. We'll have two adults in the moving van and two in our car the whole drive, and we plan to stop by in El Paso to see my friend Katie, in Carlsbad, NM to see the caves there, in Houston and Bryan, TX and St. Louis, MO to visit both Ari's sets of grandparents as well as Dar and Michelle, who now live in Galveston. We'll head from St. Louis to Pennsylvania. Ari's other brother Ky and his wife Hannah live in DC, which is just a couple hours' drive from where we'll be, so we expect to see a lot of them. I'm really excited about the move. We'll be closer to family (my folks are just about 8 hours away in North Carolina). Ari will be teaching a few beginning astronomy courses at Swarthmore College, and we'll be living almost on campus (we've heard Ari will be able look out the window of the astronomy building and see our kids playing in the yard). We'll be in university-owned housing, whose rent is subsidized by the university, and the place we'll move into is a 4-bedroom house! I can hardly imagine what we'll do with all that space! At this point, I feel like there's a lot of work ahead of me before we move, but I know that with grandparents to take care of the kids, things will proceed much more smoothly. Current Mood: excited (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007
12:31 pm	Conversations I've been keeping a Word file to record some of the amusing things Petra says. She expresses herself so well - and has no inhibitions! Petra:"Mommy, I'm pregnant! I can feel the baby kicking!" Me:(after I regain a straight face)"Who's the baby's daddy?" Petra:"He's right over there, by the futon." (this conversation is so much better now than it would be, say, 12 years from now...) P:"When is Opa's birthday?" M:"I think it's in April." P:"It is in April. The nineteen third." (Petra demonstrates this sort of certainty whenever she expresses an opinion, and there's no arguing her out of it. Fortunately, her paternal grandfather is quite happy to move his birthday to the nineteen third of April.) M:(spills some molasses on the counter) P:"I'm sorry you are not so good at pouring." Daddy:(swats at flies) P:"Die! Die for your sins!" M:"Stop complaining about the good things you are given, Petra." P:"I not complaining. I just... I just... I just annoying you." P:"Soon my grandkids' grandkids will grow up and have grandkids." P:"I like to go up and down on an escalator and an elevator." M:"Are you talking about at the mall?" P:"At the mall there’s the part that’s up above the part that’s down below. But Target doesn’t have escalators and elevators." M:"No, not at the Target we go to here. But when we were at Caltech, the Target there had escalators and elevators." P:"When I grow up I want to go to Caltech." I can think of better reasons for wanting to go to Caltech. Current Mood: amused (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 19th, 2007
4:21 pm	Eleazar has transformed from a baby into a little boy all of a sudden. In the past 2 weeks, he's moved from "takes 2 or 3 halting steps at a time" to "walks more than he crawls, carrying things". He's also a climber. Petra laughs uproariously each time I tell this story: I was washing dishes when I heard splashing coming from behind me. I turned around, and there was Eleazar on the kitchen table, his arm elbow-deep in the water pitcher. "Boys don't belong on the table" became an oft-repeated slogan, until we started moving all the chairs into the (carpeted) living room whenever not occupied. At the playground, Eleazar crawls up the steps, slides down the slide face-first, catches himself on the ground with his hands, stands up, walks to the bottom of the steps and restarts the process. Today, at Reid Park, I caught his heel just in time to prevent him from sliding face-first down the 5-metre-high big-kids' tunnel slide, because I didn't know how fast he was likely to fly out at the bottom! This would be the same slide I went down with Petra twice and she still didn't have the guts to try it herself (and it's not like she's timid). Eleazar has 1 proper word: GUH! It started out meaning "cup", or "give me something to drink" (including nursing), and has expanded to mean "I want something in my mouth", though context usually clarifies if this should be food or drink. He also says "ess", which sometimes means "yes", and sometimes means "I need to pee". Petra's first word (and only word for several months) was "no", so I'm amused that "yes" is one of Eleazar's first two. He's always seemed to have a very positive temperament! Current Mood: happy (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
2:40 pm	Small World! Unbelievable! When I was in high school in Jordan a decade and more ago, I was good friends with Marie and Melinda T, the daughters of our pastor. They left Jordan in 1996 or so, and I lost contact with them. I was aware that Marie had married Chris L, whom I also knew from Jordan, but trying to google any combination of their names just resulted in random genealogy sites featuring people who died 100 years ago. Guess who lives in Tucson, less than 5 miles away from me, and has 2 kids the exact same age as my 2 kids? Marie decided to try to track down her old friends, and she found my blog (she posted a comment on the previous entry) and called me up. We got together at the park last week and really enjoyed catching up. Petra and Lance, both 2 1/2 years old, chased each other around happily, and Eleazar and Caleb, both about 1 year old, were inobtrusively curious about each other. Marie also invited me to her church (not far from where I live) for women's Bible study on Tuesday mornings. As my church contains no other couples whose kids are younger than I am (unless you count the pregnant woman who is the only other woman in our generation to attend the church), I was thrilled to get a chance to interact with other moms. Rachel, whom I met at the Birth Center when I was pregnant with Eleazar, also attends this study, and her 2 kids are also the same ages. The 3 2-year-olds ran circles around each other while us 3 moms chatted after Bible study, and I'm so glad Petra's getting this social interaction as well as me! My dad had recently prayed that, somehow, we'd be able to get back in contact with the T's. He was thrilled when I told my parents that Marie and I were living in the same city! What an answer to prayer! So, Pam or Katie or any other Jordan people who read this, if you were wondering where Marie ended up, now you know! Current Mood: jubilant (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, February 12th, 2007
2:10 pm	Over 11 months later, I HAVE MY PASSPORT! It only took almost a year... It even has my correctly spelled, married name, and my own picture of me that I sent them. I'm so proud of them. Current Mood: surprised (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
10:12 pm	Yes, I'm still around... Ah, my poor, neglected blog! Sorry it's been so long! Of course I could post a long list of excuses, two of which are named Petra and Eleazar, but I'll refrain. The children fill my heart with joy. (I'm writing this while they're both asleep, so maybe that colours my view somewhat...). Eleazar is now 10 1/2 months old. He stands for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything, cruises, speed-crawls, and fights diaper changes. I put him into training pants when we're at home and we have enough clean ones, because he's so much happier standing. I've been a bit more on-task with EC lately, and we're getting several catches a day. A couple days ago he actually signed potty! I was so excited. He occasionally signs "milk", but mostly he responds by getting excited when I sign something he wants. He calls me "mama" if he's really upset, but other than that he just babbles. Petra always wants to be told stories. I usually give her the choice between a true story or a pretend story. I'm reaching back in my memory for stories of my childhood on an almost-hourly basis. Ari is making up an epic tale of a talking rabbit from an underwater tunnel system in another world which is quickly becoming overcrowded due to its inhabitants' tendency to breed like, well, rabbits. He's telling it to her as he makes it up, in daily installments, and Petra becomes quite upset at my inability (unwillingness, really) to tell the rabbit story when Ari isn't around (it's his story, after all). She tries telling stories herself, but she hasn't got a sense of telling things in the order they happened, or providing context, so it's sometimes hard to figure out what she's getting at. Petra has also started asking "why" all the time. Last week on Wednesday night we read in Petra's Bible storybook about Jesus' death and resurrection, and she asked me, "Why did Jesus died?" I explained that it wasn't just because of the bad people who killed him, but because all of us do bad things. Sometimes Petra disobeys Mommy when Mommy tells her to do something, sometimes Mommy loses her temper and yells at Petra. These things make God sad, because they aren't the things God wants us to do. God wants us to obey him and to come and live in Heaven with him when we die, but Heaven is perfect and people who do bad things can't live there. When Jesus died, he took all the punishment (like a spanking) that we deserved from doing bad things. That way, if you trust Jesus and ask him to come into your heart, He will help you to be good and to want to be good, and you can live in Heaven when you die. After Jesus was dead for 3 days, he came back to life, and Jesus can give us life forever in Heaven if we trust him. Petra repeated her question several times over the course of the next morning, and was clearly thinking deeply about it. I didn't want to put any pressure on her to ask Jesus into her heart, so I said, "Maybe one day you'll ask Jesus into your heart," and changed the subject. After we'd chatted about something mundane and lunch-related for several minutes, Petra asked me, "Can I ask Jesus into my heart?" I questioned her a bit to make sure she really meant it, and she persisted, so I helped her pray and ask Jesus to be her saviour. I gave her phrases to pray, and she rephrased them with heartfelt sincerity in her own toddler grammar. She has continued to ask questions about Jesus, to bring up the subject, and to talk about it since then. The most amusing example was Friday a week ago, when we were at a meeting and she went to bed in her Pack 'n Play in the nursery. Ari had told her to stay in her Pack 'n Play, but she disobeyed and climbed out. Ari found her, and she told him, "I do bad thing like bad people in the Bible". She seemed to be connecting her disobedience to the bad people who killed Jesus, knowing that she was in the same boat. Thinking about how to explain the Gospel to a 2-year-old makes me so amazed. I could meditate on the Gospel continually and not come to terms with the depths of my offense against God, and his love for me despite it. Even so, it's simple enough for a tiny child to understand and accept. My explanation, reproduced above, is in words that Petra can grasp, and yet - what does it mean for God to die? What does it mean to offend the Creator of the Universe? Why should the infinite and powerful God submit to pain, shame, and death to save me, when I can do nothing for him? Of myself, I have no value, but given the price God paid for me, my value is more than I can wrap my mind around. What should I not do in service of such a God? The Gospel never ceases to overwhelm me. I've been taking intermediate Arabic (4th semester) at the University of Arizona, and it's a lot of work. I'm trying not to let it eat all our evenings, and Ari can't babysit the kids while I'm in class if he wants to graduate on time (on time = August). I've got a lovely woman from our church watching them on Mondays and Fridays, and a friend whose son is 6 months older than Eleazar often helps me on Wednesdays, in exchange for me trying to watch her son while she tries to finish her master's thesis. I say "trying" - little Abraham doesn't like Eleazar very much (he does aim for the eyes and wants to put everything, Abraham included, in his mouth) and usually ends up melting down before his mom is able to get very much done. I'm feeling like I'm starting to be able to genuinely communicate in Arabic. I wrote a 200-plus word essay, all in Arabic, in an evening, without resorting to the dictionary except to check the spelling of words I already knew. We're required to spend at least 15 minutes conversing with a native speaker each week, and it's fun to see how much I'm able to convey and to understand when I do so. Well, gee, I could spend a lot more time giving a lot more update, but I think this'll have to do for now. Sleep is still my friend... Current Mood: enthralled (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 19th, 2006
4:26 am	She's lucky I'm honest We made it to the Middle East! Right now I'm in our hotel room in Dubai, and we've successfully visited Bahrain and Oman. It's been an awesome trip so far, and the kids have been really good - even considering the fact that Eleazar teethed one of his top front teeth somewhere over the Atlantic. Our first day in Dubai, we needed to get some Emirati currency (dirhams). We had a few Bahraini dinar, and some Omani riyals. I set off with both kids to search for a currency exchange place and some lunch. After walking about half the limit of what I thought Petra could manage, I finally saw a building labelled "Dubai Islamic Bank". I thought it was worth a try, so I headed over there. Ascending the imposing staircase, I noticed that inside was an official looking reception area guarding the way to what looked like office space, but not what I would picture as a bank. The receptionist informed me that although they didn't do currency exchange, a certain building about 3 times further from the hotel than I had already made Petra walk was likely to have what I was looking for. I wasn't about to put her through that, so I thanked him and thought I'd try to use the ATM outside. It didn't like the looks of me, so I gave up and took the kids back to the hotel. Hotel reception did currency exchange, and had rates listed for Bahraini dinars and Omani riyals. I patiently waited for the German tour group who had arrived 5 seconds after me and moved more quickly than me to finish their check-in procedures, and then asked the receptionist to exchange my currency. We had about $30-$50 worth in each currency, so I handed it over. She said something like, "This will certainly be more than enough, do you want to exchange all of it?" Given that we're eating out and buying souvenirs and the like, I thought we'd easily burn $100 in a few days, so I was a bit surprised, but I assured her that I wanted to exchange it all. She then said she'd just exchange "these" - four 100-baisa notes. A baisa is 1/1000th of an Omani riyal, which in turn is about $3, so 400 baisa is worth about $1.20, which in turn is about 3.6 dirhams. While I was doing this mental calculation, she was using a calculator to come up with the much loftier figure of 3600 dirhams (about $1200). I saw that she was off by 3 orders of magnitude (!), so I told her that she must be confused, and that she was about to give me way too much money. She looked, explained her calculation (based on the assumption that they were 100-riyal notes, not 100-baisa), and insisted that it really was that much. I explained to her that they were baisa, and that each of those notes was only a tenth of a riyal. She continued to disbelieve me for several more minutes - I finally convinced her when I explained that baisa are like fils (1/1000th of a dirham); just telling her that a baisa was 1/1000th of a riyal hadn't clarified it for her. She was so entirely confused that she said, "Okay. I'll give you back all the Omani currency, and I'll just exchange the Bahraini currency." Since that was all in units of whole dinars, I thought it more likely to work, and it did. Armed with real currency, I was finally able to go out and buy us some lunch. What if I hadn't been honest? What if I'd been as confused as the receptionist, or inattentive and unaware? It was a cash transaction, so although they had our room number, how would they have traced the specific deficit in their dirham stash to that particular transaction? I could have gotten a free $1198.80 if I hadn't spent several minutes arguing with her! Whatever else may be the case, I am sure that this particular receptionist knows that I am honest! Other snippets of interest from our travels: -Yesterday (18th): We explored the Dubai gold souk, home to probably 50 different gold stores featuring necklaces of solid gold lavish enough to cover one's entire torso. You could also buy a solid gold swastika, or (right next to it) a gold baby Jesus in a manger. Disturbing. I resisted the temptation and instead got silver earrings for 25 dirhams. I'm sure I got ripped off, but it was definitely less than you'd pay in a mall in the USA for the same thing. It took us 2 hours to find parking, inching along much more slowly than Petra can walk because everyone in front of us was doing the same thing, and we had to dodge bicycles, pedestrians, men with large carts heavily laden with bulky boxes, and Emiratis who own the universe creating their own personal lanes of traffic. -Friday (17th): We drove for 5 hours to reach Liwa Oasis, right on the edge of the Empty Quarter. We parked the rental car off a dirt track and climbed up into sand dunes. Petra really got into it - while I was helping Eleazar crawl in sand but not eat too much of it, Petra ran like crazy down the dunes until she was a little pink dot in the distance. Ari went to her, and she announced to him, "I run with a happy heart!" Looking to the west-southwest, there was nothing but sand dunes, and we knew that if we set off in that direction, we wouldn't see another human being for 1000 miles. -Thursday (16th): Our first full day in Dubai (we arrived at the hotel at 3am). We slept in, and then the above adventure occurred. After lunch and the kids' naps, we explored the dhow wharfage, where tiny boats are loaded by strong, hardworking men with much more cargo than boats that size have any right to carry across the open ocean. We then headed to "Heritage Village" where Petra and Ari rode a camel, we ate dinner next to the Dubai Creek, and we saw various booths representing traditional aspects of Bedouin life. -Wednesday (15th): Our last day in Oman. I got to practice my Arabic during an hour spent over tea with an Omani family (just the women, of course) and am renewed in my determination to improve my Arabic skills. When we arrived at passport control at the airport, we discovered that the people who stamped us into the country had neglected to give me a visa in my passport, and we hadn't noticed, so we had to pay the 6 riyal ($18) visa fee all over again for them to let us out in only just enough time to catch our plane. Upon our arrival in Dubai, Swiss Air employees were very unhappy at the fact that, travelling with children, it takes 5-10 minutes to pick up everything, uninstall Petra's carseat, and leave the plane. There wasn't enough space for them to actually help us, so they just stood and whined at us while we did our best. Bear this in mind if you're choosing an airline on which to take your small children. -Tuesday (14th): In the afternoon, we drove up Jebel Akhdar, one of the higher mountains near Muscat. If you are in Oman and your eyes are open, you are a geologist. I was in awe. Ari said, "Are mountains really allowed to look like that?" I could spend years in Oman and not get bored. Layers, folding, fossils, sheer beauty. No wonder our geologist friend Joel gets that light in his eyes when he talks about Oman. -Monday (13th): We went to the Muscat souq. It reminded me very much of the Damascus souq. Labyrinthine, with many non-perpendicular branchings. I went wild and bought a fancy dress for Petra, a Pashmina cashmere scarf/shawl for myself (useful for covering my head if we visit somewhere more conservative), a very Middle Eastern-looking dress, some long embroidered shirts, and some baby wipes (we'd run out). We also got some frankincense, of course, so if you're getting Christmas presents from us, that's probably what you'll get. We got royally ripped off, but the joy of it is that being ripped off in Muscat is cheaper than not being ripped off is in the States. And bargaining is fun, even when you're miserable at it. -Sat (11th): Our last day in Bahrain. We went looking for a tree pegged as the "Tree of Life", because it's a real tree in the middle of the desert where it should have no right to grow. We may have driven past it, Ari thinks he saw it, but when we turned around the road didn't go back the same way. Anyway, what we were most interested in wasn't the tree itself, but the desert landscape. The drive was well worth it. -Thurs (9th): We got to see my Saudi friend Maisa and her family. They live in Dammam, and drove over the causeway to Bahrain. We had lunch together in a very fancy mall. The kids' play area was something else! It would be closed down daily in the USA due to lawsuits, and thus Petra (and Ari) had a blast. They went on various rides that Ari was too big for and Petra was too small for, with no-one batting an eyelid. Apparently bumper cars were a lot of fun. I spent the time chatting with Maisa, which was also very worthwhile. -Our travel (Mon-Tues 6-7th): Everything went smoothly, except as regards Eleazar's carseat. After being stranded in Vegas this past summer with Eleazar's carseat in the checked luggage, we had resolved to gate-check it in future. We clearly said to the official in Phoenix, "We would like to G A T E C H E C K this carseat, please." He filled out a form for checking it all the way to Frankfurt (the flight was to Washington) as checked baggage (our other bags were checked to Bahrain), signed our name for us on the line saying we accepted liability, and handed it to us. In the rush of getting on the plane with 2 small children, we didn't look at the claim until we wanted to pick up the carseat in Washington. We discussed it, and planned on having Ari go through immigration and customs in Germany so he could re-check the carseat to Bahrain, which seemed a huge pain. We had a 4-hour layover in Germany, but this got shortened to 2 1/2 hours, for the following reason. We'd been assigned seating in different parts of the plane - me and the kids in bulkhead, and Ari somewhere in the back. We asked to trade so we could sit together, and ended up 3 rows from the back of the plane. As we moved back, I caught a whiff of "I really have changed the baby, right?" which grew stronger as we moved further back. Someone had evidently not been able to wait for the lavatory on a previous flight, and cleaning the smell out delayed us by almost 2 hours. It was delicately described to those not within smelling range as a "hygiene issue", which may not have been comforting. Upon our arrival in Frankfurt, we talked to an airline official about Eleazar's carseat. She was a wonderful, efficient German woman who made a phone call and assured us the carseat would be on the flight to Bahrain. When we arrived in Bahrain, we found that the carseat had not been on the flight to Bahrain, but was still in Frankfurt. Fortunately, God provided wonderfully, and the friend who picked us up from the airport had a carseat in his car for his 2-year-old. Neither of our children ever had to ride in a vehicle without a carseat. Very culturally weird in a society where kids usually ride unrestrained in their parents' laps (and usually are killed in even non-serious crashes). Well, we return the day after Thanksgiving. I'm sure there'll be more to blog about then. Current Mood: amazed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 8th, 2006
4:38 am	I've been meaning to blog about this for ages now, and I'm finally taking the time. We've been planning a brief (2-3 week) trip to the Arab Gulf for a while. First it was going to be in August, but we wanted to talk to people at universities there to see what Ari's job prospects might be, and they tend to close the universites during the summer. Then we were talking September, but Ari had a telescope run scheduled then and we didn't want to run into Ramadan, which started on 24 September. We shifted the plans so that we'd travel after Ramadan, in late October or early November. However, we had one real concern. Because my (South African) passport expired at the end of April, I applied for a new one at the beginning of March (before Eleazar was born). I had to send it to the South African Consulate General in Los Angeles (SACGLA), who then forwarded the application to the passport processing people in South Africa. Well, I waited and waited. After 5 months (they said it'd take 2-4 months), I emailed SACGLA, who informed me that it actually took 4-6 months. So over 6 months after I submitted the passport application (SIX MONTHS!!) I gave them a phone call, to ask what on earth was taking so long. It turns out that the South African passport processing people issued my passport in my maiden name. SACGLA caught the mistake before the passport was sent to me, so they returned it to South Africa to start the 4-6 month process all over again, around the time I emailed them the first time. So, it could be months yet before I get my South African passport. Maybe even not until next year. Fortunately, they do issue a "temporary passport". A temp passport is not valid in Britain - not even for transit - so we had to choose an itinerary that avoided Britain. In addition, they only issue them when you have a specific reason for one (read: have spent $6000 buying tickets for next month). It's quite a step of faith to purchase tickets when your passport is non-existently on the opposite side of the planet. We are due to travel Nov 6-24, and I finally got all the paperwork for the temp passport sent off yesterday. Hopefully it will not be more than a couple weeks before I receive my temporary passport, as we need to apply for visas as well. On the final form I needed to sign (stating that I understood I couldn't touch British soil if I held a temporary passport), the South African Dept. of Home Affairs (who is responsible for this mess) described itself as "Compassionate, Caring, and Responsive." Ha! We'll be visiting Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE. I'm really excited, but somewhat nervous about the fact that only 2 of the 4 of us have passports yet. Eleazar's was delayed in processing because the photo of him (taken at the passport agency) was unacceptably overexposed. I had to let the professionals at Walgreens try again, which took a few attempts. No portion of anyone's body but that of the passport holder may appear in the passport picture, which resulted in some serious gymnastics as I tried to hold Eleazar up to the white screen without allowing my hands to be visible. Having finally obtained an acceptable image of the boy, we sent off that application on Monday, with the expediting fee so they can get it to us in 2 weeks' time. Eleazar had the good sense to be born in the USA and thus can obtain visas on arrival at all the countries we'll be visiting, so that won't cause us any stress. I'm going to have to really rush around to get my visas once my temporary passport finally does arrive. If you're the praying sort, please pray! Firstly, my temp passport and Eleazar's passport need to arrive before we travel. Secondly, I need to get at least a Bahrain visa (our first destination), hopefully also a UAE visa, before we travel, so that I can prove I'll be allowed into the country and they'll let me fly. Finally, I've been noting some serious temper/anger issues as I deal with all the paperwork, bureaucracy, etc. Incompetence makes my temperature rise, particularly when it's incompetence that inconveniences ME! I need to not take this out on the helpful lady at SACGLA who is processing my temporary passport, or Ari, or the kids. As a side note, the word "irritating" is solidly in Petra's vocabulary. Current Mood: anxious (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, September 9th, 2006
8:19 pm	Making Connections Petra never ceases to amaze me, and today has been no exception. This afternoon, I gave her play-dough to keep her occupied while I rolled out bread for our dinner. I’d read that, when drawing, children generally don’t start trying to represent actual objects until about three years of age – until then, they just scribble. So I assumed a similar rule held for sculpting, but I was totally wrong. Petra was trying to roll a sausage of play-dough as she’d seen me do, and she rolled it more on one side than the other, so that it turned out cone-shaped. She then held it out to me, proudly declaring, “Ice cream!” It looked about as much like an ice cream cone as I’d expect from a child twice her age. So, maybe I don’t have another 10 months to wait before she tries to draw pictures of Mommy. Then, during her bedtime routine, her Bible story was about the exodus, when the people of Israel left Egypt. I recently hung a map of the world on her wall at her eye level and have been telling her about various places. “Here’s Arizona, where we live. That’s Africa; Mommy was born in South Africa. That’s Norway, where Mormor is from. There’s the Middle East. Mommy used to live there. That’s Egypt; Gid-du (Magdy at the Arabian Oasis) is from Egypt.” She’s really starting to catch on, I’ll hear her muttering things like “Oma Opa live HoustaTexas”. Anyway, as I was singing her to sleep, she started saying, “Gid-du from Egypt! Gid-du from Egypt!” Since this morning was the last time we had a “geography lesson”, I wondered at the non sequitur until I remembered that we’d just read about Egypt in her Bible story. Unlike some adults, my 2-year-old can connect a place in a story to a place on a map and a person she knows from there. I’m so excited about how fast she’s learning! I predict that, like me at age 2, it won’t be long before she can accurately look at a map and say, “Map of Italy! Map of Greece!” MY child won’t be a geographically illiterate American… :-) Petra is also learning to count. This cracks me up, because she hasn’t quite caught onto all the concepts. “Two” is used for “greater than one”; I joke that she counts like a physicist: One, two, n, infinity. I caught her counting flags in the back of her children’s atlas: “One two three one two three one two…” I have her say the numbers from one to ten in order after me, but she gets impatient: when I get to four, she goes “four nine ten!” So, will we homeschool? Well, we already are. Why would we stop? Current Mood: impressed (Comment on this)