Miles turns 8

The theme this year was snakes. (Not my idea.) We took our time getting the right terrarium with the custom made (heavy) wooden lid, and we were just in time for M's birthday.

We went to Lake Chivero Lion and Cheetah Park...which is next to Snake World...but then we realized that even better than Snake World was Steve's personal collection. He's the guy who gave us the snakes, too. So we all went there...(well, I ended up sitting in the car after a while)...and then it was roasting marshmallows over the fire back at our house. A long, perfect day.

1st - drive-through lion park

View from our car window 

Vaughn and Mikhael 

2nd - walk-around zoo and birthday cake

while the children played...

the older ones socialized

3rd - drive-around / climb-around park (no human-eating predators). [Parents looking for a way to bring pure bliss into the heart of your youngster without having to spend a penny? Let them hang their head out the window while driving on (safe) back roads. Seriously. The joy, you cannot imagine.]

Picnic tables Zimbabwe style

We're kings of the world!

Eliza, Panache, Mikhael and Miles

Heading back to the city

4th - Steve has in his personal collection more snakes than you'll ever dream of seeing in one place (even in your worst nightmare): rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moccasins, puff adders, gaboon vipers, green mambas, black mambas, lots of cobras, a 20-foot Burmese python, etc. The children held a rainbow boa constrictor and a rat snake. The man also has monitor lizards, leopard tortoises, two 10-foot-long crocodiles, and a huge Boerboel mastiff named Bart who greets you as you get out of the car. 

[I managed my anxiety of seeing the kids around that dog whose head was twice as big and eye-to-eye with them, and I managed the low-ceilinged, cramped, dark, snake house with wall to wall terrariums. I started losing it when I saw my children wrapped in heavy, huge snakes (albeit gleefully wrapped). But when I went to get a chair in another part of the snake house and had cobras spitting at me on one side and puff adders hissing and puffing on the other... I took my couple of photos and reluctantly handed over my children to these crazed lunatic men who for whatever reason are into that sort of thing.] 

Miles brought home two female brown house snakes, each around two feet long. He named the bigger one Peach and the smaller one Clea. They mostly sleep in their box (inside the heavy-lidded terrarium); however, my husband has made a (bad) habit of getting them out and playing with them with the children on the living room couch.

in the snake house...rainbow python?

Brave, curious, nauseating

Rat snake?

5th - s'mores by the campfire at home, harmonica and guitar playing...good ending to a long, exciting day brought to Miles and friends, in large part, by his Super Daddy.

Click link for slideshow of more photos:  Highlights in April

Eliza at 5

Sweet, wild, energetic, tough little Eliza celebrated her 5th birthday way back in October.

She had an early celebration while Grammy and Grandpa Mike were visiting, then a party on her actual birthday with all the kids from both EC1 classes.

Shortly after her 5th birthday, while Eliza was eating biltong, a tiny tooth fairy, so small and so fast we never saw her, flew into Eliza's mouth and took her very first tooth.

A few more from Eliza's 4th

This is a slideshow of a few more photos from the birthday. I'm experimenting with using Picasa.

Eliza turns 4!

I figure this is the last birthday of the early childhood years for us. Five is a big turning point. But let's focus on the here and now.

Who is Eliza at four? Eliza greets guests with a flourish of excitement. She knows how to accept gifts and introduce an immediate activity: Come! Come see the new kitty! She cares about what outfit she is wearing, and it's often her last question to me before she goes to sleep at night: Can I wear the blue dress with the pink flamingo tomorrow? When playing a group game like duck-duck-goose, Eliza wants to be picked over and over, and she runs fast, head up with a serious, determined expression. 

Eliza is into painting but still prefers abstract design to anything recognizable. She wants to do things on her own terms and is not interested in writing anything other than her name (and forget about the letter z). She's into shopping and is always up for an outing with mom. One of her favorite birthday gifts is a pink heart-shaped purse with jeweled handle that is a musical jewelry box complete with the small ballerina that turns around in front of a mirror.

Eliza is fascinated with cutting hair, but doesn't care much about the finished product. She can't quite grasp that if you cut your hair very short, you can't wear pony tails or braids. Eliza knows she shouldn't grab the kitten around the middle and bounce him up and down, pretending he's a bunny, or dress him up in doll clothes, or hold him by his front paws to make him dance...but she can't help herself. She likes Tinkerbell and princesses, but she knows how to fight and play super heroes with the boys. One minute she's pretending to fly (Tinkerbell), the next dancing (ballerina), the next water-bending (Katara of Avatar: The Last Airbender - love it!).

Like her brother, Eliza is unafraid of strangers. Sometimes at a first meeting, she will refuse to be polite. She'll pretend she's shy and cling to her mother's skirt, but that has more to do with her refusal to do what's expected than unfriendliness. Within minutes, she will be climbing up the pants leg of that stranger demanding to be swung around or listened to. In school, she's doing well, but she tends to be talkative (don't know where she got that from!).

Eliza and Emma with their hair cuts.

I actually got tears in my eyes when I saw this cake. Bridget the Baker is an artist.

waiting to cut the cake 

I want the unicorn's head!

Reading the first clue on the treasure hunt.

A Happy Sixth

Miles’s birthday party day started with his professing so much pain in his legs that he couldn’t stand or walk. He also was a little sniffly and slightly warm. (grrrrrrrr) I wasn’t terribly sympathetic, I confess. If you don’t get up and start running around normally, I’m calling off this party! Oh, he did not want me to call it off, but he still hobbled around. I’m fine, Mom! (grabbing on to furniture, knees bent stutter-stepping, even crawling!) [Miles: I had an idea, and I pulled myself along the ground with my hands.] That went on for a couple of hours, and then I started getting worried. Maybe he had some godforsaken African virus that attacks the muscles or joints or something. So I decided we’d go to the doctor (open on a Saturday morning, thankfully). Time was ticking and I was thinking, we’ll have to go ahead on the cake, but I could still cancel the balloons… But after not toooo long a wait, the doctor on duty said he had a slight cold and “growing pains” – sometimes one bone will grow faster than another which can be very uncomfortable… So I dosed Miles with some ibuprofen and the party was on! [Miles: At the time of my party, I could walk, stand and run!]

[Since I wrote that, Eliza came down with the same “growing pains” symptoms from what I can only assume was some godforsaken virus. This time it was Easter Sunday, exactly a week after Miles had been sick, so there was no hope of the doctor’s office being open. We had plans to leave that morning and drive 4 hours to Antelope Park to stay with another family in a house there, (more on that later) so we decided to go on since Miles had recovered after a few hours. It was scary to see Eliza in so much pain she couldn’t straighten her legs or walk and her symptoms did last longer, but by early evening she was running around. Does not make me feel very confident in that doctor on duty, however. I’ll be talking to their regular doctor about it.]



Back to the party…Miles’s KG class is all girls except for 3 other boys, 2 of whom couldn’t come, and then we had a couple other friends. They wore costumes and got little nametags to write their alias when they arrived. There was Sleeping Beauty, Tinkerbell, Hannah Montana, Cinderella (Eliza), Princess, Skeleton Girl, Spooky, Batman, Monsta, Kirriyo (no idea…something Italian?), and Crush-doh-man (Miles).



Six-year-olds are certainly more mature than 5-year-olds. They knew the rules of the games and reminded each other. They were very orderly and nice. (Maybe it’s because they were mainly girls.) It was too bad David couldn’t be there, but I had our friend Clem and a few new mom friends to hang out with (Nevena-Serbian, Bettina-Austrian, and Michelle-Zimbabwean).



On Miles’s actual birthday the next weekend, we opened some gifts David had brought back from the States, and we went to an Easter party with a few other families at Clem’s house. It was a nice scene…we stayed all day and night. The kids swam, hunted Easter eggs, and watched attentively as David set up Miles’s water pressured rocket which provided sufficient entertainment when it blasted 100 feet in the air and then landed on the house. Setting it up a second time proved impossible although the dads did make a valiant effort.

Anticipation

Tomorrow is Miles's 6th birthday party. He has been looking forward to this for...months. In the beginning, I tried to explain to him that his actual birthday is April 3, but that we needed to have the party early since his birthday fell on the holiday weekend and so many friends would be travelling or have family plans. That explanation didn't go over too well. He's at an age where things need to be exact. He wanted to turn 6 on the day of his party...or else it's all a big lie, isn't it? The truth hurts sometimes. So now the word is that Miles is turning six when the candles are blown out on March 27. End of discussion. (...actually don't bring up the subject, but if he asks, you know what to say.)

As usual, I'm a wee bit stressed about it. I was going to say it's our first time entertaining at 4 Moon Close, but we did have cocktails one evening for donors to meet visiting MC people. No power. Generator hum would have been obnoxious. Had some candles lit all around. Brought in some more chairs and tables from D's office. Of course, people stood the whole time anyway.

Tomorrow about 12 kids from Miles's class are going to come dressed as their favorite hero/heroin/villian. I don't have anything terribly special planned: just two hours of kids running wild, maybe a game of freeze tag or musical chairs, a chocolate cake... It'll be the first time parents have been given the option to "drop off." That actually makes things easier for me. It's hard to entertain kids and parents simultaneously....especially with no David.

Yes, you may have heard the drama unfolding this week. D went back for Barbara's memorial last week. His flight out of Tallahassee on Tuesday was for some reason rerouted to Tampa, so he couldn't make his connection in DC back to Africa and had to stay two more days in Tally. Then on Thursday during his Atlanta connection, left his jacket on the plane with his passport, went back for it, they wouldn't let him on the plane, they looked and didn't find it, plane left for another city...D was stranded. So he went up to be with my parents in Chatt while all that got sorted. Luggage claim tickets were also on passport so baggage (with gifts and party things and other important stuff) were lost somewhere on the atlanta-dc-jo'burg-harare trip... It was all pretty wretched. I feel so much for my husband. It doesn't get much more stressful. No way he's making it back for M's birthday...so no surprise shooting off the rocket he got for M or meeting M friends or parents of M friends... Very sad.

But Miles wanted the show to go on...(birthday tomorrow without daddy or birthday in 3 weeks with daddy?...hmmm, let's think, 3 weeks is like an eternity...let's go with tomorrow!) And as I learned this morning, David's passport and luggage have been found (passport in Harrisburg, PA...what's the story on that??). So the gifts will arrive, and more importantly D's return won't be further delayed. Can't wait to have him back!

But back to Miles... He has entered the helpful, conscientious stage of childhood which is such a pleasure. He opens the stairs gate in the morning, fixes his bowl of cereal, and even helps make his sister's breakfast sometimes. He cleans up after himself and takes pride in knowing how to do things, protecting his sister on the playground, and setting a good example for Eliza. Yesterday afternoon when I was feeling that usual pre-afternoon-tea/coffee downward drag, I said I don't like being alone, the only adult with just children every day and night. And Miles hearing me from the other room said, Don't worry, Mom, we'll help you out! (Ah, the sincerity!)

And now for some party putting together! Lot's to celebrate...

Birthday Vids

Eliza's Third Birthday

These were taken at school. I brought cupcakes. Miss Line Leader is all excited it's her special day.

I wish this were in focus. Can you see how she's just eating up all the attention? They were singing to her.

The afternoon party paper-crown-making table.

One of her German friends, Kathi (Andrea's daughter).

Fe did her hair, obviously. (She always curses me when I get it cut.)

This is Caroline and Ben's Emily I blogged about when she was born. She's 7 months now!

Eliza's school friend Rosa (another German) who gave E this uber-girly Hello Kitty dress that she loves! It's very cute.

Opening presents at all her friends' insistence (Oliver, Cleo and Kathi). Normally people don't open birthday gifts at parties here, but the kids had their own way.

It didn't get as pink as I was imagining. I couldn't find any crepe paper streamers. All the little girls had on a touch of pink...boys were in red...so that was cute. And Paige's recommendation for decorating paper crowns was a big hit with boys and girls alike. I regret I didn't get more close-up shots of all of them. We put a table under the olive trees with glitter, stickers, and shiny paper cut into strips and shapes for them to glue on paper crowns. They did that first, so many sported their little masterpieces for the rest of the party.

We tried a pin-the-tail-on-the-pink-pig game...which I'd had my doubts about, and predictably the little ones were not into the blindfold but surprisingly into just sticking the tail on. Eliza got upset that someone was messing with the tail she put on...it was just one of a few melt-downs that day that she's prone to at this stage in her life. Suddenly she'll get an idea of how she wants things to be, and something will prevent it from being that way. Then she'll tuck in her chin, sit on the floor and start howling. It looks to me like textbook toddler behavior. I'm just wondering how long this stubborn waywardness is going to last!

But enough badmouthing the birthday girl! She dressed in her new pink tutu for the party and carried her new big girl doll dressed in a matching tutu. She was happy with the day which she has been looking forward to and imagining for months. (How many times have I stuck candles in her meals and sang happy birthday to her?) She enjoyed it all: the crowns, the friends, the opening of gifts, the giving of party favors, the birthday song and the candles which she blew out with gusto and an apparent feeling of accomplishment.