Ahh….at last a quiet moment. Well, at least quiet in the sense that my children are napping. The Quranic chanting in the background, the pots banging, the radios blasting, the children playing, engines revving and the sound of women pounding grain all seem insignificant. As long as my kids are sleeping, the world is as good as silent to me!
I thought I would write a quick window into each of our children’s worlds right now since most of you reading this are people who care about them.
Lilias
My golden-haired girl is sleeping cross-legged in her bed surrounded by books. She must have fallen asleep while doing her favorite thing: reading. She loves to look through the pictures in her books and if she knows the story, to tell it, and if not, she will make her own up. She often turns the world into a fantasy, making up songs, stories and dramas throughout her day.
As an almost 3 year old, she is concerned about things being done “the right way”. Be it coloring in pictures, planting a garden, or color-coordinating Yan’s clothes, she is a perfectionist in many ways.
Since we moved back to Africa, Lilias and I have been doing “school” together each morning while Yan sleeps. It’s time together that we both enjoy! Lili is learning to draw and identify shapes and a few other basic things. She can count to 40 now, knows 4 letters (M, A,T and S) and her brain is exploding with new things all the time.
Lili still loves music and listening to stories on our ipod (thanks to Josh and Molly!). Her latest favorite stories are the Christmas story (which she can tell dramatically quite well!), Rapunzel and Cinderella (surprised?!).
Lili adores Yan and one of my favorite times of the day is just before bed when the two of them snuggle together while we sing and pray. They get each other giggling so hard that we often have to calm them down! They are such a gift to each other!
Lili is surrounded by children. All but three of them are Pulaar. She loves playing with her African friends and is desperate to communicate with them, which is driving her to learn Pulaar again! Her three non-Pulaar friends are Swiss/English and hardly a day goes by when we don’t see them. She particularly loves to play with the oldest of those three – a 6 year old boy named, “Sammy”. Even though he’s twice her age, they get along very well and I think she thinks of him like a “big brother”.
Lili enjoys gardening with Ben and has just started her first experiment growing tomatoes and peppers!
Sira (“see-rah”as Pulaars call her) thinks about people back in England and America and often asks when we will see them (you!) next. We tell her it will be a while, but when we do see you it will be great! She misses ice cream and playgrounds, but it’s amazing how quickly kids adjust to a new place!
Yan
Yan zoomed past his 6 month birthday as if he was going for a gold medal in the Olympics! He wants to grow up so much, that his most frustrated moments are when he can’t eat steak (or something else requiring teeth!), can’t play with hammers and nails, and can’t chew the computer. He loves peek-a-boo, tickles, balls, silly faces and his big sister. He loves people (red, brown, yellow, black and white!) and gets bored if we haven’t had a visitor in a few hours. He has a temper that will be exciting when he’s two, but most of the time he is as jolly as St. Nick.
He adores Ben and gets a “what’s the next adventure?” look in his eyes when Ben gives him attention.
He’s delighted that he gets two other-than-milk meals a day now and so far has gobbled everything we’ve given to him. No screwed up faces or spitting it out – he’s scarfed it all down! He’s jumped from the 22nd percentile to the 50th in one month and I expect with his appetite he will only go up from now on!
He’s an easy-going, happy chappy and if all children were like him, people would have them in the dozens!
