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...

Cinderella Series

Family Photos

Laying Down the Law

Leopard Rock

Last weekend, we drove a few hours east to the city of Mutare which is right on the Mozambique border in the Eastern Highlands. The first night we stayed at the Leopard Rock hotel with some of David’s colleagues. (Mercy Corps has a field office in Mutare.) The hotel is famous for two things: having the most beautiful golf course in Africa and housing the Queen of England when she visited in the 50s and it was still Rhodesia. Talk about a musty old bit of colonialism! I got David golf lessons for his birthday, and now he’s hooked. While he played with Chuck, I took the kids on a short horseback riding trip through their small game park. Miles insisted on being on the biggest horse all by himself (a guide held a lead).
We saw zebra, various antelope, wildebeest, and giraffe. In the highlands, the view of the mountains was gorgeous and the sky stretches up so high. The vegetation is a mix of evergreens and tropical bush, and the golf greens were perfect. The cliff rock face jutting out high behind the hotel is where the leopards used to perch to watch for game before they were killed off. It makes a nice backdrop to the golf course now.

We hired a baby sitter for the night and went to dinner (nothing to write about) and the casino. David’s finance manager, Olga, loves to gamble, and she coaxed us on to the roulette table. She would spread her chips out to increase her odds of winning, and she did have a lot of high and low exciting moments. I weakly put a few out on the obvious birthdays and lost every time. I’m not any good at gambling. It always feels like throwing money away. I just can’t enjoy it. But put a nanny, a boutique grocery store or little dress shop in front of me and watch that money flow!

The next day we did a bit more horseback riding ($10 only!) and golfing ($10 for 9 holes!) and then went to Tony’s coffee shop which is one of those little gems that is literally is known across the country and only has 3 tables. In fact, the three tables were in a room just off his bedroom in a tiny stone and thatch roof cottage built on the side of a hillside next to a lovely B&B called the Genaina Lodge. Tony brings all things exquisite and delicate and beautiful to the African bush. When he describes his homemade cakes to you it’s like a drama unfolding. And the drinks: the hot chocolates with fresh cream and a hint of ginger served in 100-year-old china. It was all so decadent.

That night we stayed in La Rochelle, an estate of the Rayon Barons (as in they invented rayon), that was donated to the Zimbabwean people and is now another ghostly, if slightly less musty, remnant of colonial days. That said, the family only left in 1972. The house is like a glorified 50s rancher with an ambitious garden. Crisscrossing paved paths take you to dark still fountains, wildly overgrown trellises, a frightening hedge maze deteriorated by parasitic moss, and an engraved monument to a dead pet. The representation looks like a cross between a squirrel, a fox and a monkey, and it says: “Companion in our travels over many lands and seas,” and “Much loved member of our family for 15 years.”



The manager of the hotel had some of Zim's old bills. When the exchange rate reached the billions to the US$, they knocked off 7 zeros and after a year or so it had gone back up to one hundred trillion or so. (Don't quote me on the exact numbers, but it was all pretty crazy before we got here. Now they use US$.)

Lunch break on the road...

The rain clouds on our drive back to Harare.The rainbow that looked like it was coming down on our neighborhood as we drove into Harare.

January on Moon Close

That's our street: Moon Close. Pronounced as in, the moon is close to the Earth. That's what dead end street are called: sth close. This is our temporary home. And now that we have a few more pieces of furniture, it really feels like somewhere we could live, but alas. We must move by June. I'm glad to have the chance to look around some and make a more educated choice about where we will actually live here. Although the market is not good. It will be all a luck of timing. But so are most things!

What Moon Close has going for it mainly is the garden, as you can see. For the kids, it's been heaven after living in a flat for the last 5 years in Khartoum and Amman. We feel very lucky to have this place while we do! Eliza loves the trampoline most. Being in-ground (something you see everywhere here but I've never seen before), the trampoline is easy to on and off of, and you don't worry too much about their falling an additional 4 feet or so if they fall off. Miles loves the swing most. It is tied to a very high branch and so has a huge arc. Instead of sitting a waiting to be pushed, Miles grabs the swing, runs, lifts his legs and just goes spinning. He goes straight for it every morning and afternoon after school. The way he hangs on, it's got to be a great work out.

This is Shepherd with the kids. He's the son of Tari, the housekeeper, who lives in the cottage next to the house. He just turned 5. They all play together in the afternoons and on weekends.

All the rooms, except our bedrrom and the kids' shared bedroom have looked like this until this past weekend when we got a couch in the living room. The kids don't seem to mind that there's no furniture, but they do seem to mind the size of the house. "Mommy, where are you?!?!"

Imagine a wall full of 12 "Cat-in-the-Hat” faces all pretty much the same and then there's this one really colorful one. Yep, that’s my son.

To follow up on the parental drama of my child settling into a new school... I'm happy with the support at the school. Miles is making a lot of progress, and everyone is pleased. I used to wonder how the behavior of my infants and toddlers would manifest in their personailities as children, and now I'm starting to find out. Miles's intensity as a baby (he used to cry horribly instead of fall asleep when we put him in the carseat) is coming out in the strong desire to do what he wants to do. The good side of this is his strong character, uniqueness, creativity, vivid imagination and energy. The bad side is that it's a real struggle for him to do what he's told which means, for one, that he can't enjoy or get from school all that he could. So we are trying some different approaches with Miles than the usual parenting techniques to get him "focus his energy." More on that later, if you want. I am just so grateful that he has a super sweet side of him, a great sense of humor, a curiosity to learn, and an intellect that allows us to really communicate.