Monkey business

Bringing baby home to Kathmandu is quite different than bringing (our first) baby home to suburban Virginia.

Once the little one is tucked up in bed, the exchange goes like this:

Me (exhausted): Is that the baby or is that a monkey?

Him (distracted): Just monkey.

Massive Change of Pace

Don’t get me wrong. I love being in the States – life is so convenient there.

But it’s nice to be back in Nepal, despite the pretty low post-earthquake morale here. After an extremely hectic home-leave, which was difficult in ways we are not ready to talk about in the packing and preparation of our house for the next tenants, we are back with our stuff, in the alternative life we live where I don’t have to do laundry or clean toilets, have minimal gainful occupation, and can stay home playing with the girls and the dog and watch the monsoon rain pool outside (and inside, but that’s another story).  

Now, if only I had some Trader Joe's in the freezer I could get started on making dinner...

On Shaky Ground

So, if you are going to get devastating news – for example, that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the rickety city where your husband is – a good way to get it is to be awakened by a phonecall where the first thing you hear is your husband saying, “I’m OK.”
He is definitely shaken. Major aftershocks continue, people are panicked and living outside, the airport is swamped, and the infrastructure that couldn’t keep up on a good day is damaged, destroyed, or completely overwhelmed.
But he’s OK.

Oh, Mama!

New Baby Year came at last! 

Pregnant mom and firstborn moved back to the US, we changed schools, and had a new baby overlayed with the foreign-service issue of technically living (and hubby physically residing) in a

How can my heart not burst?

place that is different than where we had the baby. In our case, we are extending this period by several months.

Here are some highlights:

• Reveled in living in a place that belongs to us – Home is where the House Is! - despite the lack of furniture and household goods, check (Nov 12)
• No. 1 daughter strong-armed into attending excellent local public school despite her fears, check (Nov 23)
• Thanksgiving with dear US-based friends but without hubby, check
• 40th birthday celebrated while being really, really pregnant, without hubby, check (Dec 5)
• Amazing baby girl born after 2 weeks of “pro-dromal” labor and one hour at the hospital, with hubby, check (Dec 30)
• Comings and goings of parents and hubby, most notably husband’s paternity being up and heading back to Nepal, ouch (Feb 22)
• A bunch of stuff I barely remember, such as getting up 3 to 5 times a night for one child or the other or both; feeding baby while watching it snow; cold bus stop waits with a screaming newborn; cold shopping trips with a precariously sleeping newborn; piano lessons with an amazingly good newborn; library visits while shushing the newborn; skyping to Nepal; cooking dinner with the baby in the sling and the girl sprawled on the kitchen floor doing homework; before school breakfasts with my girl at my own kitchen counter; laundry at 1am; and snuggles in sunbeams with both my girls. . .check
• A visit from a dear friend who folded the 3-load-tall mound of clothes in the borrowed papasan, alleluia and check (March 22)
• Mom arrives, and the house is picked up, eldest dear-one has company during feedings and baby bedtimes, dinner dishes are magically done, bathtubs are usably clean, la! Thanks Mom, glad you’ll be here a while. 

Back on the Airplane Again

After arriving back in Nepal, beginning our very sincere first two weeks at homeschooling, working nights, and getting over jet lag, I hopped on a plane to Singapore for the 5-month pregnancy scan. I was able to do the 3-month scan in Albuquerque since we were in the US anyway, but a foreign service pregnancy in many locales such as ours means a lot of extra scheduling, paperwork, and trips. Lucky for me, I like Singapore. Unlucky for me, Uncle Sam doesn’t pay for the family members to come.

Despite the doc creeping me out a bit, the news was all good! We have a healthy, normal baby girl on the way!

Never say "Never"

Two significant and vaguely inter-related events have taken life by the ankle shaken it all about. Both were pre-ordained by “I’ll never” statements I foolishly have made.

One: I’ll never homeschool my daughter. 
I actually really, really, like the idea of homeschooling. Molding the young mind, enticing her with topics and activities that she would love and wouldn’t be possible in a traditional school setting. But she and I working closely together on a daily basis? Ha! From our first homework assignment in Kindergarten (one of only two that year), where it took 30 minutes and many tears to count the number of Thursdays in February, I have had the strongest conviction that me teaching her is a Very Bad Idea. However, we have had a number of extremely frustrating educational experiences at the American school here, with the lack of actual education being so terrible and the parental scuttlebutt of next year’s teacher being so dour that we have actually discussed home schooling, for 3rd grade at least.

Two: I never want to be one of those moms with a tweenager and a baby.
Yep, I’m pregnant. After 6 years of trying to conceive and all the attendant misery, I get pregnant when I have a soon-to-be 8-year old and am staring my 40th birthday in the face. Despite the “never” statement, of course, we are absolutely thrilled. The future big sister was tearfully happy as well, and now that she has endured a number of pregnancy-related (mis)adventures (mostly, er, food-related) and had to put up with an exhausted mama, she is a little more wary. Still a good sport, however.

Currently we are on leave in the US. All the critical family members have now been told of the big news, and we are also getting a lot of practice explaining the coming school year thusly (God willing):

• Since we are, ahem, not too thrilled with the school anyway, we will start out the 3rd grade year homeschooling (aaah!). 
• Mid-November, daughter and I travel to the US, kicking our tenant out of OUR VERY OWN house. I will transfer to a midwife Ob-Gyn practice in Fairfax, have the baby there, and we will stay in the US until summer time. 
• Hopefully, the 3rd grader will attend our neighborhood school (if I can talk her into it, in a time of such major transition). We’ll stay till the end of the school year for her, and so that we can avoid a couple of trips back-and-forth to the US with the newborn (and the attendant springtime pollution that settles over Kathmandu). 
• Hubby will come to get us settled in November, come again for Christmas and baby’s birth (due first week of January), and come out a third time for US-based home leave in late May. 
• We all return to Nepal, baby in tow, in late June. 

A Hike in the Hills

What some of us may call “mountains” are mere “hills” in Nepal. A mountain is something that towers above the clouds. Recently we joined friends for a hair-raising drive to a lovely hilly getaway at Namobuddha, just on the rim outside the city. Supposedly, there is a view of actual mountains from the hilltop resort, but we did not see any evidence of this. In late April in Kathmandu, after a long dusty winter where fires abound for warmth and heat, and before the monsoons have started to knock down factory and vehicle exhaust, everything is hazy.

Partiers wave an enthusiastic goodbye,
the kids can't get out quick enough.

Regardless, we enjoyed a lovely locally grown lunch while the kids pecked at their food and played on the hillside, and then took a hike over to one of the ubiquitous hilltop monasteries. Remarkable notes on the walk included, 1) actual trees in what could rightly be termed a forest, 2) a number of Nepali picnic-parties along the way, rife with loud music, local beer, and revelry (with one of such a giddy mood that all of us – especially the reluctant kids – were pulled in to participate in dancing / clapping / cheering), and 3) a high vantage point over a hazy valley that made one really, really wish the air would clear because the view must surely be spectacular.

Here are the we hikers as we set out.

Here they are again, at our destination.