Progress, the Next Day

Very Early Morning: There was a huge thunderclap in the night, and when the girls woke up it was still so dim out I told them to go back to sleep. Then I looked at the clock and it was well after 7 and time to get up. This morning, it is just plain raining -- usually it drizzles or it pours cats and dogs and then stops, but it has been raining for hours. At least I brought most of my laundry inside last night!  And at some point the kitten must have decided he missed his mother and gone back through the fence.  This will slow down our morning plans. Even if I am ambitious and get out in the rain, the people I need to find probably won't be.

Unfortunately, the only person who was NOT late this morning was the bus driver.  He is late whenever anything happens, such as a leaf dropping off a tree as he passes by, and has never yet been on time when it has been raining.  (Which provides a significant body of evidence.)  So for what I think is the very first time, me and my kids were not actually ready for the bus.  Hibiscus didn't get her juice, and for various reasons was crying.  She is frequently crying about something, so the exact reasoning escapes my mind by now.  Emerson was crying because he left his shoes out in the rain, and didn't want to wear wet shoes.  In this household, when you leave your shoes out in the rain, you wear them and hopefully remember to put them in the next time.  Besides, in this household, each person only has one pair of shoes that can possibly fit each purpose.  Emerson said I ought to buy him a second pair.  So Hibiscus stopped crying, because Emerson was throwing an even bigger fit and I was threatening to carry him down to the bus if he didn't put his shoes on (which I would, so he did).  And it always feels good to be the virtuous one who is doing what Mama asks. Personally, I would be willing to have two virtuous children at the same time...



Household chores, mid-morning: I have a very large pile of laundry that has made it in off the line and needs to be folded, and another very large pile of laundry that has made it through the washer but needs to go on the line, if and when it stops raining.

And I realized why laundry suddenly seems so much more difficult: at the previous apartment, we rigged a clothesline on the covered porch for rainy days. At this place, the porch is much nicer, but not at all clothesline shaped.



Lunchtime: Today I needed to start finding a new apartment and getting ID cards, which I have been diligently doing by sitting around responding to American correspondence and writing blog posts all morning. The apartment manager just dropped by, as I requested by text, thought about it, and realized he knew of a place around the corner we could move to.  He's meeting his cousin later, will speak to the other apartment manager, and drive us over this afternoon or tomorrow, and if that doesn't work out he'll speak to someone else.  Also, he will send the LC official to drop by, who would love to make us all ID cards, and he was obviously very pleased with me for wanting to register properly in the district.

The secret to getting things done in Uganda isn't industriousness, it's knowing the right people and waiting patiently.



Mid-afternoon:  I called the lawyer.  She reports that she had just contacted someone in the judge's office, and the judge was proofreading our guardianship order.  As in, it has already been written.  Hopefully the lawyer will be able to pick it up tomorrow, and with that in hand we can start the next thing!  However, the lawyer doesn't think that the LC officials will make ID cards for children.

Also, I put Buttercup up for a wrap-nap.  She managed to stay lively for a while, but then she faded on my back.  It has been cool all day, even though the rain has faded.  We wore our snuggly kapok wrap and put it in a snuggly carry, and it felt like a lovely snuggle in a lovely blanket with a lovely person.  While making phone calls and folding laundry.  Just one of those moments that is both quotidian, and then you realize how special the quotidian is.


Later in the mid-afternoon: The kids got home, and immediately opened negotiations with the children through the fence, which sounded something like "give us our cat back!"  They did.

The kids are chasing the kitten around, wanting it to climb in boxes, eat something, play with a ball, play with a clothespin, play with a string, come over to them, run behind, and on and on and one. Whenever the kitten does something (or doesn't do something) they jump and squeal and yell. I feel like all this energy would be much better suited to a canine companion.

We happen to have some canine companions with way too much energy, in fact, but they are not available to absorb the kid energy.  Which is really too bad, because they are getting into all kinds of trouble at home.  As in, the home back in Oregon.  Someone at the meeting yesterday asked, half-jokingly, if I was about ready to claim Uganda when people ask where I live.  I think it's about getting to that point, and I'm starting to think of it as "Oregon home" and not just plain old "home."


Dinner time: I am cooking tuna noodle casserole for six; another adopting father and his brother-in-law are coming to join us for dinner.  The children are practically upsidedown with excitement, except for Hibiscus, who actually is upsidedown.

Then our landlord comes back with the LC1 Chairman, who is very pleased to meet me and know that I want to register in the village.  I fill out paperwork for our family, and he shows me the ID cards that he will official-ize for us.  For all of us?  Yes, indeed, for everyone.  I write and occupations on the cards, and the older children hover around and then sign theirs.  I debated what to put for the girls' names, since I know everything has to match and have their Ugandan names.  But neither of them want to be called by their Ugandan names, and Hibiscus hates hers with a passion that would threaten to combust the ID card with the force of her gaze.  I put their American names in front of the Ugandan ones, and that is what Hibiscus signs.  She has completely forgotten how to write her Ugandan name, which I feel like is not a coincidence or a sign of not being able to hold things in her mind.  Now we just have to have ID photos taken, and bring some to the council official tomorrow, along with a fee for the paperwork filing.  I have a feeling that he loves putting the seal on and laminating the cards so they will not get spoiled by the rain, as he carefully describes every step, and how quickly he will get them to me.  That's okay; I'm pretty excited about ID cards too.  Especially with a nice official seal on them.

And the landlord will drive me over to the other place in the morning.



We eat dinner.  It is yummy.  I manage to keep Hibiscus from talking the entire time, and confidentially advise her that when adults are around, the children don't get to talk as much as usual.  Because "usual" means just one of me, and I am not nearly as garrulous as my children.  Either that, or I am more tired.  Anyway, tonight we have an actual conversation.

Also, my husband has worried whether I am sharing too much about the girls' life in these blogs, and that one day they would not want this information bandied about.  I am very cautious about what I write, but apparently I'm the only one.  Hibiscus says something about her birth family, notices that people are listening to her, and barrels like a freight train into all the most dramatic stories she can think of.  Luckily, the conversation moved on before she got too far, but I sense that if her future self wants any information withheld, it had better commune with her present self pretty much immediately.


After dinner Emerson and Hibiscus demonstrated for us the song, poem, and dances that they are practicing at school for their performance on Sunday.  As a performing arts teacher, I thoroughly condone having lots of mini-performances, so I allowed their little dramatic hearts to take center stage.  I am really impressed by how much they know, and that they are clearly being coached very carefully and specifically.  However, I think I will encourage Hibiscus to practice her poem every night from now on!

Then there was some general chaos, and I could speak quietly with the other dad for a few minutes.  Dinner with the rabble had not made him faint of heart, and he still is willing to stay with the girls while Emerson and I leave the country to get new visas.  So we solidified that into something a little bit closer to a plan, although we are both still waiting on all this nebulous paperwork, so the plan will stay vague until we know more.  The only clear plan I have at this point is the kids' school performance on Sunday.  It seems to me that they have been working a lot harder on that, than anything else has been working at all!


And I think the kitten went back home again.