First Impressions

This is my stream of consciousness-tyle first impressions back home.
These people are so beautiful! 
In America we kind of hide our poverty.  You cannot avoid it here.  It clamors at you.
The food is awesome and I missed it.
Maya wins the popularity contest without trying.  Even when she's grouchy and fussy people eat her up here.
It is noisy here (and I love it).
Maya does not love the noise yet.  Especially at bedtime and the early call to prayer.
These folks LOVE fireworks and will use any excuse to celebrate LOUDLY!
Maya does like fireworks.  Nary a tear was shed even though New Year's Eve was nearly as loud as the 4th of July in the U.S.
Constant hot water, smart phones with internet access, moisture barriers in homes, central heat and air--such luxury we take for granted in the States.
My home does not seem as homey as I remember it.
This place drives me to need Jesus more and I love that.
My brain has been rotting for 6  months and Arabic is slow to come to mind.
It took me about the first 4 months in the U.S. to stop doubting myself every time I flushed t.p.--and now I keep forgetting that you CANNOT flush it here!
It is hard to explain to a one year old that she is suffering from jet lag and that she is simply very tired and that it will go away soon.
I am glad to be back in the land where we actually use those appendages attached to our butts for getting around town. (i.e. walking, if that wasn't obvious)

More to come on our wonderful celebrations of Christmas and special final time with family before coming back.  We have so much to be grateful for.  Our flight back was not without drama, but in spite of bad weather, a forced four hour wait on the tarmac, missed flights, and desperate airport running (while carrying a car seat, two carry-on's a purse a diaper bag and pushing a stroller) we ended up making our long flight to London and then were re-routed there through an extra country and then on to our final destination.  Something like 32 hours, I think, but Maya was wonderful and we had plenty of room on the long flight and understanding people around us.  This was crazy--we ran into folks that we know in the airport!! I can't remember which one, but we were in Europe, for sure. Are you kidding?  What an encouragement--these are the kinds of folks who can challenge and encourage you in a five minute airport conversation--thank you Lord for that gift!  At one particularly challenging moment of Maya-wrestling I was about to reach the end of my rope.  I may have started crying.  She was probably fighting sleep and wailing.  I glanced out the plane window and was instantly amazed at the number of stars I could see.  It was truly infinite.  Unbelievable.  Gorgeous.  Then we witnessed a few moments later the most amazing lightning storm (the one that kept us on the tarmac for four hours earlier).  It was like a light show/lazer show/fireworks show all rolled into one.  And it had the majesty and handiwork of God written all over it.  Kind of like a few days earlier when it snowed on Christmas morning.  In Mississippi.  I feel very blessed for the way the Creator of the Universe has taken time to speak encouragement straight to my soul in all of these ways recently.  He is speaking, if only I have the ears to hear and the eyes to see. . . He is so kind.  I do not deserve and could never earn the favor He shows me.  I am so grateful.

New Camera

Well, I have an amazing new camera thanks to the deep generosity of family, and it's sooo fun! Having a baby has made me really long for a good camera to capture this sweet girl that is just constantly changing and growing. Earlier this week I was packing up Maya's clothes and found a sweet hand-me-down dress that I couldn't resist putting her into. So we had a little Christmas photo shoot.

Happy Birthday Maya!

What a fun way to spend a birthday--being smothered with love by two big cousins!

the cake crew hard at work decorating cupcakes

Lisa baked the cupcake-shaped cake and Liv and I frosted it.

Liv and I made the cupcake flags a few weeks back.

Annalie preparing to eat her work of art

Nana made all the super-sweet cupcake decorations (we recycled a cupcake gift bag from the Target dollar spot!).
First taste of sugar!
the post cake sugar daze. . .

the special gifts

We got you your first Bible for your first birthday, and when we wouldn't let you hold it, you threw a fit. Guess somebody needs to start reading that Bible right away. . .

Thank you to precious friends and family who sent gifts and blessings and communicated your love for the little cupcake! Also a big thanks to my fantastic brother and sister in law, Jason and Lisa, who hosted the whole shin dig in their beautiful home! What a sweet gift to be able to celebrate Maya's first year with so many of our family members!

Happy Birthday!

11 Months Old

Can you believe it? This little squash is just one month from her first birthday! These pictures were taken around her 11 month birthday. We are gearing up for a super fun cupcake-themed birthday party for her on December 4th. I truly can't believe it was only a year ago when we were wondering when she would be born, what she would look like, etc. It seems like she has been a part of our family forever. What in the world did we do with all of the free time we had before we had a baby? And what did we do to entertain ourselves? She keeps us busy and keeps us laughing.

Maya has a few new tricks:

She says, "Mmmmhh" when you give her a bite of food.

She has learned how to clap!

When you ask her what a puppy says, she makes a little barking sound.

Last, but not least, If you click your tongue at her, she clicks back.

There's No Place Like Home

We had a fun time dressing up on Sunday and going to my parents' church activity, "Trunk or Treat". Folks hand out candy from their trunks and truck beds, the church rents some inflatables, they grill hot dogs and try to get kids from the neighborhood to come out. I love the idea. And I love to dress up. At some point during my childhood, mom decided that we weren't going to celebrate Halloween anymore. I understand, and as a parent, at some point I'll probably decide the same thing. But this year, something came over me. I was overwhelmed by glee and excitement about making a costume. I have never dressed up as any of the Wizard of Oz characters, even though I grew up in Kansas, so this year, I dressed up as Dorothy and I dressed matt up as the Scarecrow. I even toyed around with the idea of dressing Maya up as Toto, but regained my sanity and let her be the flower that I had the hand-me-down costume for. To make my (awesome) shoes, I got a cheap pair at the thrift store, sanded them, painted them with acrylic paint (several coats), then put glue on them and doused them in glitter. We didn't manage to get very many pictures, and the ones we have seem to be the result of some strange photography experimentation on the part of my mom (appearing here as Raggedy Anne), but you get the idea. I should sell my outfit on ebay--it turned out sweet!

For Her Daddy

Maya's Daddy is in Mississippi and we are in Kansas. She is missing him. He is missing her. Today in the car she was riding in the back seat by herself. Out of nowhere I hear this little clicking noise I've never heard her say before. She went along for quite a while, and throughout the evening, each time we clicked at her, she would click back at us. I thought her daddy might enjoy seeing and hearing her newest trick. (and a little bit of her chatter, too)

Pumpkin Patch: Mississippi Style

I must confess, life in Mississippi has been hard for me. The hubs seems to know everyone in town, always running into people he went to high school with, or church with, while I am constantly meeting new people (my favorite thing). While we were there, I was really starting to feel the longing for a friend. Someone that I knew, not because they already had a relationship with Matt, just because they wanted to be friends with me. I was so grateful when I met Elizabeth and she invited Maya and I to visit a pumpkin patch. Of course I was too busy photographing my adorable child to get any pics of Elizabeth, but Elizabeth, if you're out there, thank you.

Can you tell we're in Mississippi? No one else has cotton at their pumpkin patch!Beep Beep!

Poor baby: can you tell she was totally teething this day?

New skill: pointing

Do you see that left hand? She is about to put corn in her mouth. That's what she spent most of the time trying to do. She's tricky. Gotta watch this one . . . And again, with the corn eating . . .

She really liked the box of corn. Who knew a kid in a box of corn could be so cute?

Adoption

Adoption has been on my mind a lot over the last few years. I'm praying that we will be able to adopt in the future. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel like I was supposed to adopt a child. With our living overseas, it will not be easy, or cheap, but I believe God is going to work out the details. I just read a great post here written by a friend. She put into writing so many of the statistics on the global orphan crisis as well as the reason why believers should care. Check it out--it is sooo important that the church begin to take up this responsibility and practice true religion, as scripture defines it.

Challenge Turned Inspiration

I confess: I've been watching too much HGTV. We can't get it where we live, so while we're here in the states, I've been sorting of binging. I also confess: I've struggled with a woe is me attitude. First I must say: Our apartment in our country is SO nice. We've got three bedrooms, and everyone who has come to visit us has been really surprised by how nice it is (I think a little part of each of our friends and family believes we live in a hut somewhere in Africa, you know?). I am so grateful for our home. But as many of you know, it's easy to begin to believe the lie that someone else has it better. That what I have is not good enough or pretty enough or new enough or nice enough. Especially if you spend too much time watching HGTV. So the other day I was mentally bemoaning the decorating challenges of our apartment. The bedrooms are small. We don't have closets, therefore we have to have huge armoires (how do you spell that?) in order to have any storage. We have weird concrete/plaster walls and it's hard to hang stuff up. There's no moisture barrier, so any outside walls have issues (i.e. mold grows on our walls sometimes). We have A/C units on the walls because there is no central heat or air where we live. I could go on. But I won't. Because God gave me a gentle prompting the other day that I needed to get over my whiney self and see all of these problems as possibilities. So yeah, it's a bit harder than decorating in the U.S. And yeah, I can't just go to Home Depot or Target, or even WalMart. And yeah, it's really challenging to try to even find a store that sells fabric or drapery hardware. But how boring would that be if I could just walk into one store and buy everything I need?! Then my house would look like everyone else's! It is so much more exciting to decorate when there are some hurdles and challenges to overcome, right? I am honing my skill as a decorator by working in demanding conditions! I am very creative! I can come up with something! I can make the most of any situation! God tells me to rejoice and be glad and to give thanks in every circumstance! And my joy is not directly linked to the convenience or ease of my life! PSHAW!

So then, all of a sudden, I was excited about figuring out better ways to work with what we have and to make it beautiful! So here's what I am going to tackle first. The living room. We painted before we moved in and I'm happy with the color, so we're sticking with that. It's a nice light khaki. Not too yellow, not too grey. Just right. We got our great furniture used, from friends, when we arrived (and they gave it to us at a steal of a price! We have been so grateful for them--furniture is expensive where we live!). Because of the cost of new stuff, and the wear on the stuff we have, we may try to save money and get new stuffing guts put into what we have to make it feel more new. We got a hand-me-down coffee table that is very practical (has lots of storage) so we'll hang onto it. The paper-lantern lighting will have to stay too (the odds that we'll have to move again make investing in getting new fixtures wired kind of a bad idea). We got the rug to match the furniture, so it's staying. What we need to do now is accessorize with some sort of nesting tables (we serve a lot of tea and other hot drinks here, so having a bunch of small tables is really important) and some end tables for some (hopefully) lamps, some curtains, a new console for our TV (because the one we have is way dangerous and top heavy now that we'll be going back with a toddler). Here, why don't you have a look at the room first: Looking into the room, this is what you see. The windows have a rolling shade thing that is actually on the outside of the window, so we use that when we need privacy or shade.

This is the view to the right--this is actually a patio door, and just out of view on the right is the dining room. The patio door also has the rolling shade outside of the door. The white box above the door is because of the rolling shade. Just out of view in this picture is an A/C unit above the door.

Our current sofa pillows and a shot of the rug.

Detail shot of the rug.

Under the rug we have pretty marble floors (I think that's what they are?)


So, here are some of the "challenges":

1. At any time, the landlord could raise the rent and we would have to move, so we need to be smart about anything that is too custom to this space (i.e. we need freestanding furniture and need to do anything like installing curtains on the cheap, and we'll have to take it all down when we move). Anything we do here needs to work other places too because moving often is a reality here.
2. We often have large groups of people over and end up using all of our living room furniture, plus all of our (classy!) plastic chairs that are currently our dining room chairs, and we end up using every bit of space that we have in our living room. We also use our living room as a gym and do lots of workout videos in there and have to scoot all of our furniture out of the way (therefore: no big furniture that eats into the space in the room).
3. As I mentioned above, there's an A/C unit on the wall above the patio door that changes where the curtains could be hung.
4. You may have noticed that there's a weird wall jut (is that how you spell jut?) to the left of the patio door. Originally I wanted to do matching curtains on the window and the patio and take them all the way to the corner where the two meet, but that's not gonna work b/c of the weird wall jut--if we do curtains on the patio door, we'll have to hang them really narrow, inside where the wall comes out.
5. When you first look into the room, you see the living room and the dining room all at once and there is another patio door out to the same patio that comes off of the dining room. Does that mean i need to put matching curtains on the dining room patio door, if i put curtains on the living room patio door?

That's all i can think of for now. . . I was thinking of buying fabric for the curtains while we're here in the states, and I have the measurements of the window and the door, can someone tell me what the formula is for how much fabric I need? Is it the width of the opening, plus half again?

Tell me what you think . . . Also fabric color suggestions are very welcome as well! We are going through Atlanta next week and I'm hoping to buy the fabric there, so I've got to figure all of this out fast. Also, I would love to find some amazingly on sale cheap fabric to upholster some imaginary dining room chair bottoms--anyone know how much fabric I should get for each chair I would want to buy and cover? Just in case I find some amazingly on sale?