Merry Christmas!

New jammies, new books, new Star Wars toys, and plenty of candy in the stockings.  It was a Merry Christmas all around in the House of Horn!

Caleb's Class

A lot of new families arrived at Tenwek this fall, and with them came a lot of new missionary kids!  It's been wonderful because now there are more kids for our kids to play with, particularly for Caleb who didn't have any other MKs his age prior to the recent influx of families.  After these families settled in, a couple other moms decided to start a class for the 4- and 5-year olds.  They meet twice a week (on Monday and Wednesday afternoons) and learn about things like the primary colors or the stars and always do a craft project.

We knew this would be a good thing for Caleb since he struggles in group settings and it would force him to work on those social skills.  He's fantastic in one-on-one situations, but put him with more than a couple people or, worse still, make him the center of attention, and he completely flips a lid.  So we've been grateful for this opportunity for him.

He was very excited about "going to class" because he loves crafts and projects.  I decided to go with him the first week because I anticipated a nervous breakdown on his part as soon as we got there, and I was right.  Suffice it to say, at one point he was curled up in a ball and covering his ears and sobbing and wailing, and I was discouraged and frustrated and broken-hearted all at once, but by the end of class he was playing with the other kids like normal and was happy as a clam.  We prayed for our boy a lot and the second day of class I accompanied him again, and he had another meltdown again, but recovered much faster that time and gave me hope that he could go to class and be okay sooner than later.

The next week I didn't stay with him at class, and the report was that he did okay (although not awesome) but didn't have a meltdown and mostly participated.  Progress!  Most transitions require baby steps for this boy, but eventually he lets go of his innate fear of new things and new places and is able to enjoy the experience.  This has been no different.  Now, after a month of class, he's doing well and is used to the routine of going to class and looks forward to it.  He still won't participate in any of the songs, but he's raised his hand a couple times to answer a question, which I could hardly believe.  So he's getting there, one baby step at a time!  His favorite part is the craft, plus running in the yard with the other boys afterwards.  We're really thankful for this class because it's stretching him socially and forcing him to learn how to cope in group settings.

Sometimes it feels like a lot to ask of an inherently anxious 4-year old boy, but it's ultimately good for him.  We're so thankful to these other moms who coordinated this class!

Because A Boy in Overalls Is Too Cute

And because a boy sans overalls is just as cute!

What We're Thankful For

According to their turkey hands, these boys are thankful for:

"doing a project, my animal friends, my Star Wars guys, and playing with my gecko friend" (Caleb)

and

"my tiger friend, tractors, Star Wars, and cups" (Kai)


Every night at bedtime we ask the boys what they're thankful for.  Their answers range from their toys and books, to chameleons, to their friend Jack (an MK in Guam), to talking with Grandma and Grandpa, to sleeping in a fort (mosquito net), to nothing at all.  Sometimes we laugh, sometimes our hearts break, but always we are reminded of the very lesson we are trying to instill in them: it's important to be thankful.

 And we are thankful, for so many things.  We're thankful to be in Kenya, we're thankful for our house that's become home during this season of life, we're thankful for the new friendships we've made, and we're thankful for the ways God is teaching us and stretching us.  And living here has increased our gratitude for so many things we tend to take for granted in America, like hot water, clean water, running water, electricity, appliances, flushing toilets, tampons, and luxuries like cheese and strawberries and skim milk.  There is so so much to be thankful for, and so so much to stop complaining about, and we are in a constant state of remembering this simple truth.

So we thank God for so much, like good books and good chai and naps that go well and rain that waters the garden and packages from people back home, but we especially thank God for these precious boys of ours, and for each other, and for the privilege of serving Him here in Kenya.  Thanks be to God!

Asa Walks!

He took his first steps a few weeks ago, but has adamantly held onto our fingers to walk since.  Tonight, however, Asa simply decided it was time!  Our boy is officially walking!

Harvest Festival

Tonight we celebrated a Harvest Festival with the missionary community here at Tenwek.  The MKs wore costumes, there was a pumpkin carving contest, we went trick-or-treating around the compound, some kids bobbed for apples, and everyone ate hot dogs and s'mores afterwards.  It was a lot of fun!  Plus, the air cooled down after it rained so it even felt a bit like an autumn evening.

In anticipation of the Harvest Festival, we carved pumpkins over the weekend.  Most of the pumpkins here are green, but they carved well and still fit a candle inside!  Caleb wanted a mad face, and Kai opted for a happy face.  Eli is great at carving pumpkins so I left him to it while I took pictures.

The only costumes we have here are superheroes, which is great since the boys love wearing their capes!  So we had Batman and a couple of Supermans for the occasion.  There are a ton of kids at Tenwek right now so it was fun to have them all together and see them dressed up like they'd do at home.

And then there were the pumpkins.  So many creative carvings!  A chameleon, Darth Vader, the Tenwek motto, a rhino, the Tenwek Orthopedic symbol, Walker (the favorite pet dog among the missionaries)...  It was great fun!

Eating hot dogs and s'mores around a campfire was a fabulous way to end the evening.  It's such an American thing to do and it reminded us of home.  Doing things like this are an important way to connect with each other and remember that even though we live in Kenya, a part of us is still in America as we think of the holidays and seasons that aren't a part of the culture here.  We're so thankful for the Harvest Festival at Tenwek!

Three Years With Kai

Three years ago this moose baby made a delayed debut into our life.

After three days of induction, Hezekiah James finally decided to grace us with his presence.  He was calm and content in every way, easygoing and completely chill.  When he refused to sit up until about a year old, then refused to walk until 17 months old, we mistakingly assumed that he would continue exhibiting a cool and calm approach to life.  In many ways he has: Kai is content and easygoing still (minus the toddler tantrums that go hand in hand with every toddler).  He is flexible and patient and knows how to cope with pain.  He is not, however, calm and quiet.  This little boy, who is 3 years old today, is extremely active and adventurous.  He's daring and fearless and careless.  He's not afraid to wander or jump or run or climb.  He gets significantly more bumps and bruises than his older brother, but recovers extremely fast from them all.  He keeps us on our toes at the same time that he impresses us with his ability to try new things and dive in head first.  He's changed our lives forever for the good and we thank God for him every day!

We celebrated Kai's birthday yesterday while Eli was home.  (Eli's been gone a lot this month, traveling for research-related events for the Family Med residents.)  We invited some good friends over for lunch and ate grilled cheese sandwiches.  Kai had previously helped me make dirt cake for dessert.  He loves helping me in the kitchen and routinely announced, "I'm gonna have a taste - just for fun!"  Who can blame him when Oreo cookies are involved?

It was a fun and simple celebration for our dirt-loving boy.  Madison, his friend/babysitter, is one of his favorite people at Tenwek, so it was a treat to have her and her parents here for the afternoon.  We sang Happy Birthday and ate dirt cake and watched Kai open presents.  He was a happy boy!

It's such a joy to celebrate this boy!  He makes us laugh when he "dances" by spinning in a circle until he falls on the floor, over and over again.  He makes us smile when he blasts the bad guys with his repulsor beams like Ironman.  He impresses us with his ability to focus on a difficult puzzle and patiently figure it out all by himself.  He astonishes us with his intellect and ability to keep up with Caleb in our preschool lessons.  He's a kid who would eat nothing but meat if we let him, who plays in the bath tub long after the water's turned cold, and who folds his hands when we pray before a meal and then happily exclaims, "I prayed with you!"  Kai loves to play in the dirt more than anything else in the world and is all boy!  He loves to imitate his big brother's antics but also loves to be chased by his little brother.  He loves to read and wrestle and run.  Kai loves to jump into his dad's arms whenever he comes home, and loves to snuggle with his mom at the end of every day.  He's a joy and a delight and a lot of work and an essential part of our lives!  Our continual prayer is that Kai will live up to his name and live in the strength of the Lord.  We are beyond grateful for these past three years with our moose baby because we know we don't deserve him.

Happy Birthday Kai!

Hanging Out with My Boys

I've been taking Swahili lessons for two weeks now, and it's going great except that I don't get enough time with our boys anymore.  It's been a big adjustment.  We're hanging in there but all of us can feel a loss of quality time.  So this weekend, instead of doing chores or writing emails or studying Swahili, I gave a lot of time to our kids.  We had tickle time, we drew with sidewalk chalk, and we played on the balcony.  It was bliss!

And today these boys are getting time with Eli, which has also been much needed.  He's been gone for a few days, will leave again tomorrow for a few days, and then will be gone for five days next week.  (He's helping with a research requirement for the Family Med residents at the university in Nakuru.)  So we're relishing this time with our kiddos since there are too many days that don't allow for much time with them right now.

Asa's Birthday Party

I intended to post these photos a couple weeks ago, but alas, life is crazy busy with three kids and living cross-culturally, so I'm not as prompt as I used to be with putting photos on here.  At any rate, we had a small birthday party for Asa on a Sunday afternoon with the other MKs.  It was casual and lovely!

I baked a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and decorated it with safari animals.  It seemed an appropriate theme for a boy turning one year old in Kenya!  Caleb and Kai were determined to put more animals on the cake and I had to fend them off from putting the entire savannah on there.

Asa was clearly a bit confused as to why he was sitting in his highchair outside, and why a bunch of people were singing, and why everyone was staring at him.  But he was intrigued with the cake and was happy to play with the animals for a bit.  (I should note why the oddly-shaped balloons are there.  I saw a package of "elephant" balloons in Nairobi and thought it was a great idea.  Well, the dimensions of an elephant balloon are apparently less-than-accurate!  We tried to keep with the theme and ended up with weird balloons.  Oh well!)

His first bite had frosting on it, which he liked, but his second bite was just yellow cake, which was apparently less impressive to him and he wouldn't eat any more.

When we asked the other kids to gather around for a picture, Asa started to cry.  The confusion and confinement were apparently too much!

So I gave him a chocolate chip cookie.  The tears instantly stopped.  Because there's no better way to dry tears than to eat a chocolate chip cookie.  That's my boy!

We cleaned him and clothed him, then let him open a few presents and crawl around.  He was a happy boy once again!

He also enjoyed a few rides in this wagon that another family had lying around.  It was great way to spend an afternoon celebrating our boy!  He's growing so fast and we can scarcely believe how quickly this baby boy is turning into a little boy.  Happy Birthday Asa!

Potty-Training 102

We're at it again, this time with kid #2: potty-training!  There are so many highs and lows, so many victories and failures, so many pull-out-your hair moments that it's amazing I still have hair after this week.  A friend once told me that all of her worst parenting moments happened during potty-training, and I can resonate with her!  When our son gets off the potty and instantly starts peeing on the floor, when I'm cleaning out poopy underwear again, and when he's crying in the bathroom because I had to leave him alone for a few minutes while tending to another kid, I wish I could run away and hire someone else to do this job for me.  It's been a long week in the bathroom, but by golly this precious boy is going to learn how to use the potty!

We were hoping that this kid would be easier, not only because potty-training Caleb was so awful that anything in comparison would have to be easier, but also because Kai has shown interest in using the potty (whereas Caleb had no interest at all - I'd say he even had negative interest).  We debated potty-training Kai before we moved to Africa just to have it behind us, but we decided against it because there were so many other transitions happening that adding potty-training on top of it all probably would've been too much.  So we waited and weren't sure when it would happen.  Kai has continued to show interest in using the potty, but we didn't force the issue because, let's be honest, there's never a really good time to potty-train a kid!  But we finally decided it was time, not only because now is just as good as any other time, but also because I will be starting language study next week and we didn't want to ask our househelper to change Kai's diapers for the next three months while I'm gone everyday.  So here we are, in the thick of it!

All in all, this time has been a bit easier than the last time.  Kai is willing to sit on the potty whenever I ask him to and he loves being rewarded with a Skittle afterward.  He had some successes right away and I was thrilled.  He was thrilled too!  But every success was countered with accidents, and he usually wouldn't tell me that he'd peed his pants because he apparently doesn't mind walking around in wet underwear (unlike Caleb who wailed mightily and froze on the spot every time he wet himself).  So there have been a lot of messes to clean up this week, which is annoying enough except that it's compounded by the fact that we only have 7 pairs of underwear in total for this boy, so I can't afford to just throw away the disastrously poopy underwear messes, and getting them cleaned/dryed in time for the next day is hard since it's currently rainy season and there's limited time to dry underwear on the line before the rain comes each day.  I only brought one package of underwear for him because I didn't know when we'd need it or what size he'd need when the time came, and I didn't want to waste precious space in our luggage for an extra package of toddler underwear.  (I know it sounds crazy, but unless you've packed for your entire family for two years, you can't understand how difficult it is to make decisions like whether or not to bring extra underwear for your not-yet-potty-trained kid.)  The other major difficulty is that I've been alone in working on this potty-training project.  Eli hasn't been around to help much at all, whereas last time he took a long weekend off with the purpose of helping out with potty-training.  It was so much easier to have Eli's help!  Now it's harder to keep my frustrations in check and I don't get any chances to pass the baton when I need a break.  All that to say, kid #2 has been easier than kid #1, but the circumstances are a lot harder.

It's been a long week, but there's hope on the horizon.  After a full week, including a major regression on Day 6, I think he's getting there and I'll be okay to leave him during language study.  At least that's my prayer!  And when I'm insanely frustrated with this entire process, I'll try to remember this picture of our son in his new underwear and thank God for this precious and adorable child who sits on the potty and whispers, "I'm a big boy!"