Re-entry: Surprises

For the last few months, I haven't really allowed myself to think about life in Oregon.  I never started mentally preparing myself to be home, because "just around the corner" stretched on forever.  Then suddenly we had the visa appointment and I was packing like crazy, and still not thinking and feeling about the change.

There are so many surprises.  Some of them made me feel almost angry, like "why have I had to live so many months without this, when it is right in my own home!"  Some of the things that are normal in America suddenly seem strange or silly.  Some of them make me miss Uganda.  Some of them I just don't know where I fit.  Some of it seems so familiar, and yet so distant.  This is just a long list of things that suddenly jump out at me as I float through the days.


The toilet paper is so thick and soft, and works so well.  And the toilets are different, of course; they seem to be different everywhere!  When we went to the bathroom in the Seattle airport, Hibiscus went in her stall and popped right back out, complaining "Mama, my potty is already full!" I was disappointed that she would find yuck in her very first American toilet, when in general the toilets here are so much cleaner than in Kampala.  But there was no excrement, just water.  The bowl was full of water.  Ugandan toilets only have a little water at the very bottom.  Now that she pointed it out, it looks strange to me, too.  But the Ugandan toilets seem to have a giant, powerful flush, and the American ones are much more subtle.

My mattress is so nice and soft and supportive and comfortable.  Why have I spent so long sleeping on awful mattresses?  Most of them were foam, which was too hard new, and as it got used you could feel the boards underneath.  The last apartment had a luxurious spring mattress... which was so hard and pokey that I could only stand it if I slept on TOP of the bedspread.


"Where are all the people?" Hibiscus asked.  I don't know.  It seems like there is no one here, even in the middle of our city.  All the space is taken up by huge, smooth roads, and sprawling parking lots, and vacant lots that don't have any corn growing in the middle of them.  It feels lonely.

Everything is so big.  All the buildings are so big.  On our drive from Seattle back to Oregon, we had to stop to get something, and the first place we found was a WalMart in some tiny town.  Africa to Wal-Mart: I don't recommend it.  I practically had a panic attack.  Minus the top three largest cities, probably just about any Ugandan town or city could have fit inside that store, and with every single citizen and nearby farmer milling about, they still wouldn't have figured out what to do with all the STUFF.  That is an insane, crazy amount of stuff.

Our house is big.  The school is big.  The yards are big.  Why do we need all this space?  I'm not ready to jump into being a poor Ugandan, and fit my 12 family members into a house the size of my bedroom.  But 600 square feet per person is not a "need," it just isn't.  (Unless you're a family of one, in which case 600 square feet seems fairly reasonable.)  Although I do like my big, open yard, probably mostly because it has lots of garden in it.  I freely acknowledge that it probably takes about three times as much land to grow the same amount of food, just in the same season, so the gardens and farms are reasonably allowed to be bigger.  And I support playgrounds and public space.  But grassy yards that no one plays in?  That's a little confusing right now.

And the people are so big!  I had forgotten Americans are so big.  There are plenty of tall people in Uganda, so I hadn't felt the lack of tall-ness.  But maybe the proportion of tall people is higher here.  Or maybe the "tall" genes in Uganda go along with "lithe and somewhat boney."  (That is not a joke; they are much less ethnically blended than we are, so the ethnic group that is tall is also a group that tends to be very lithe; also blacker than the Muganda.)  I am a fairly petite person, and I suddenly feel like I am looking up all the time, and that feels different somehow.



Speaking of looks, it's an amazing experience not to stand out dramatically everywhere I go.  In fact, there are so many different types of people I don't think anyone stands out as dramatically as I did in Africa.

Although I still caught people trying not to stare at us when I was out with Buttercup.  People actually make an effort to not stare, which is different, but actually, when you are used to just being stared at, it seems kind of weird to work so hard to pretend you're not looking.  Why do we Americans make such a big deal about not looking at each other?  I remember this when I came back from Italy, too.  Just calmly looking at someone when you want to see what they look like seems to make more sense.

Anyway, they are looking at us.  I haven't figured out yet if it's because I am carrying a baby whose skin doesn't match mine, or because I have her tied to me with a giant piece of cloth.  I suppose I could do an experiment, and carry her some other way and see if we got fewer stares, but that doesn't seem worth the trouble.  In Africa, I knew exactly why people were staring at us.  It was because I was carrying a baby whose skin didn't match mine, and I had her tied to me with a giant piece of cloth in THE WRONG WAY.

It seems so odd to pay for everything with a credit card, and not be carrying around a wallet full of cash.  The first couple times, I forgot that I had the capability of buying something, since I didn't have cash in the appropriate currency yet.  And spending half my going-out energy thinking about how and when to procure that cash.  But if I do pay with cash, that seems pretty confusing as well, because it's all the same size and color.  America has a lot of green bills.

That, and the cash is so valuable.  Mark gave me a $50 bill to take into Wal-Mart, and part of my impending panic attack was thinking about how many shillings I had in that one little piece of paper.  I didn't dare take my hand off the bill in my pocket the entire time!  The largest value bill in Uganda is about $20, but those are kind of hard to use because most people don't have change, so most transactions are done with the $8-ish bills or smaller.

The computer that I used to use all the time seemed so overwhelming and I couldn't figure out how to do things.  And the screen is gigantic!  You make whatever you're doing so big, and you can still see a bunch of other things at the same time.  That screen just by itself seems to be lead directly to ADD.  Mark says they don't make computer screens that are any smaller any more.  Luckily, I can avoid getting ADD myself by going right back to doing everything on my iPad Mini, like I have for the last many months, but I think it's bad news for everyone else who is normalizing looking at that many pixels at once!


I hope I remember how to drive, because I'm driving.  I think I usually manage to turn into the correct lane, because I think about the driver being towards the middle of the road and try to ignore the left-right-ness, which gets confusing fast.  I think I might have forgotten a few of the policies about ceding the right of way.  In Uganda, whoever is moving has the right of way, and they "hoot" to remind people that they are coming through and to get out of the way, but they are often cede the right of way to turning cars.  I am quite sure that I have managed to not hoot at any bicyclists or pedestrians as I drive by!  But it's possible that I have not ceded at the right moment.  I do remember that I am actually supposed to pay attention to the red and green lights.

And I have forgotten how to drive around my city.  I just kind of head out on auto-pilot, and have a vague muscle-type memory of making certain turns or going in certain directions, but I can't think of the streets ahead of me and how they lead to where I'm going.


I don't remember where things are in my own kitchen.  How strange is that?  It's a very strange feeling.  I found a mini-dustpan in the garage (which I remembered is supposed to live in the bathroom) and used it for two days because I didn't remember that I keep the dustpan and whisk broom under the sink.  How convenient!  And I keep finding myself opening two or three cupboards to figure out where some ingredient lives.


I had forgotten about all the different American accents.  I'm used to hearing so many sounds of English around me, and being able to pick the American one out of a crowd.  If it's another ex-pat, we just kind of smile at each other and don't have to ask where we've come from, unless it's by state; if it's a traveler, they probably think American English is normal.  But now I suddenly remember that there are all sorts of different ways of speaking American.  And it is so mumbly.  Overhearing the general rumble of child-speech at my children's school sounds like what morse code or heart monitors look like.

I had not thought about American music.  Some of it I recognize and some of it I don't.  Just all the different kinds of sounds you hear in stores and on phones and out in the world.  Not to mention, hearing music in all the stores. I had forgotten that was part of the shopping experience.


I have not re-mastered the greeting ritual.  Some people cut right to the chase and say something like "this register's open," and I can handle that.  But some people say "how are you?" and my heart feels all friendly, and I reply "I am fine, thank you, and how are you today?" and they say "fine" and then there is an awkward pause.  I am not sure why the pause is awkward.  I think they are confused why saying "how ya doin'" is taking so long.  I was still feeling friendly.


And that's my random thought train list of things I'm still trying to figure out about America.

Re-Entry: Five Minutes in a Day

I got home from an afternoon dentists' appointment and errands.  One thing I had not exactly forgotten, but had not remembered how to work into my daily thinking, is how it gets dark in the afternoon, when it is actually winter and you aren't living next to the equator.  So it was that time of day when it is light enough outside, but you have to turn on the lights inside.  The kids were running around the living room, Buttercup had just woken up from her nap, and the dogs were jumping and going crazy.  Daddy was looking frazzled.

Mark and I had a quick conference.  We decided that the dogs needed a walk and the kids needed to get outside.  These seem to be compatible goals, but we thought that by the time everyone got their outdoor clothes on we wouldn't have any light left.  So I would take the dogs up to the trail near to our house, and Mark would take the kids out into the back field, where they could dig in the sand pit and get some crazy energy out.  He asked that I could take one of the kids with me, because kids going loudly in two directions is much easier than kids going loudly in three directions.  I was more than willing to take anyone along on my walk.  Energy-wise, it would have been best to bring one of the older children, so Buttercup could get some wiggles out after her nap, and the intensity would be divided up.  However, the benefit to Buttercup is that she can be dressed and moved by a parent.

We came back into the living room and I told all the kids to get their coats, rainpants, and boots on, because we were all going outside.  Daddy started gathering outdoor clothing and issuing reminders about what to do with them.  Hibiscus ran down the hall one way.  Emerson ran around the living room the other way.  I put the leashes on the dogs, who were wiggling and practically fainting with excitement, but calm and focused as soon as they knew that we had a goal in mind. Buttercup watched.  Hibiscus jumped up and down and yelled.  Emerson looked out the patio door and jumped up and down.  I reminded them that everyone needed to get ready to go outside.  I put Buttercup on a chair and popped on her fleece, shoes, and hat.  The dogs stood in place and stared at me with all the intensity of their small, furry beings.  Hibiscus ran in circles around the loop in the hallway.  Emerson was jumping on the bed, which oddly enough is on the opposite side of the house than everything outside.  I collected the dog treats, a wrap, and my keys.  The dogs followed me while never losing sight of the door.  Buttercup sat on the chair and adjusted her zipper.  Hibiscus was running up and down the hallway, singing.  Daddy had put rainpants in Emerson's hands, and he was enthusiastically flapping them up and down.  I put on my coat and boots, picked up the leashes in one hand and Buttercup in the other.  The dogs lovingly and quietly followed exactly behind me.  Buttercup held onto my neck.  Emerson came to see what was going on.

Hibiscus screamed "ARE YOU LEAVING??!!!  DON'T GO!!!  I WANT TO GO TOO!!!"

Daddy explained that I was taking the dogs out.  I said I would be right back.

Hibiscus screamed "I DON'T WANT MAMA TO GO AWAY!!! I WANT TO GO TOO!!!!"
Emerson agreed that he wanted to come.  Buttercup watched them.  By now we were out the door on the porch, with the other kids on the other side of the door.  Tears were running down Hibiscus's face and her mouth was contorted  into the shape of a giant, upsidedown kidney bean.  It is her special "I don't want someone to go" face.

I told them that they couldn't come with me because they weren't ready to go.  See, I had on my boots and coat, and Buttercup had on her boots and coat, but Hibiscus and Emerson had not gotten ready and they didn't have any outside clothes on.

Hibiscus screamed "WE WILL GET READY VERY VERY FAST!!!  LOOK AT ME I AM GETTING READY VERY FAST!!!" and she dived randomly towards the pile of outdoor clothes.  Emerson turned to stare at the outdoor clothes too, and he picked up something in his non-rainpants hand.

I explained that we were leaving right now this second, in fact we had already left the house, and they weren't ready right now, so they could go outside with Daddy and I would be back soon.

Hibiscus screamed "I GETTING READY VERY VERY FAST!!!"  Her wails followed our trip down the driveway as Daddy wrestled the house door shut and said comforting words, which were completely ignored.

The dogs jumped eagerly into the car and I bucked Buttercup into her carseat, which apparently wasn't a fast enough exit to convince Hibiscus that we were gone.

As I came around to my side of the car, the house door popped open again.

There was Hibiscus, wailing with deep misery and a great deal of noise.  "I READY TO GO WIV YOO-UUUU!!!" she screamed.  "LOOK, I IS ALL READY TO GO-OOOO!!!"

She was wearing one large shoe.  And Daddy's spring jacket.  Upsidedown.

We drove away.




But you know what?  We did come back.

Snow Snow Snow!!!

Snow days!!  Hibiscus couldn't wait to see snow, and has been praying about longing to go skiing for several months now.  ("Dear God, I want to get to America to see Daddy and Gramma and go skiing.")  We didn't expect that her wish would be granted so quickly!  Yesterday morning Emerson burst into our bedroom saying, "Daddy, I peeked out my window, and I saw the bush, and after the bush it was white!"  At first Daddy thought he was exaggerating, but a confirmation glance indeed found a dusting of snow.  The excitement reverberated off the walls.  Literally.  Mark keeps finding all the pictures askew!

There wasn't very much, so I thought it was a nice compromise: Hibiscus got to see her first snow, but school wouldn't be cancelled and I could have my regularly scheduled day.  Before I got up, Mark checked the school's status, and indeed, school was still scheduled.  Like any child, Hibiscus complained about this, but not much because she was too busy running outside and tasting the snow!

Emerson was right along with me hoping for school to be in session.  Hibiscus is in first grade all the mornings in the week (Waldorf first-graders don't have afternoon school), but Emerson is still enrolled in only three mornings of kindergarten.  We are planning on doing homeschool on the other two mornings, and this was the first Thursday and thus the first day of homeschool.  Emerson was super duper excited about starting homeschool, and was all ready to sit down at a desk and do some lessons.  Except we don't have a desk for him, so I was trying to convince him that he could do homeschool at the kitchen table, and he had finally agreed that he would get a desk for first grade.

While I was getting ready in the bathroom, Hibiscus was nearby, and in the distance we heard Daddy answer the phone.  I was asking why she wouldn't want to go to school, because then she got to see her friends, which did pique my little extravert's attention: but snow still won out.  Then Daddy came in to tell us that that was the phone tree, and school had actually been cancelled.

"Yay!" cried Hibiscus, jumping up and down with great delight.  "I'm glad there's no school, 'cause it's really important that I stay home all day so I can see the snow all day long, and see what it does."
"There's snow at school, too," I pointed out.  My little girl froze in shock, and then her little face fell.
"I wanna go to SCHOO-OOOL!" she wailed.  Snow AND friends was apparently an unbeatable combination!


It's been a snowy winter by Willamette Valley standards.  We usually get a dusting of snow a few times in a winter, but they had a big snow in December (which we missed while our Ugandan cold spell involved not kicking off the blanket at night), and then we have just had more snow.  Yesterday the dusting turned into flurries and accumulated some real snow, and it stayed all night and then kept snowing all day today.  By the end of the day we had about eight inches of powder, which definitely makes it into the top two or three snows I've seen in my ten years in Oregon!

This might be the time to point out that I grew up in Alaska.  I spent Halloweens with a snowsuit under my costume, and months with skis on my feet.  Oregonians love to complain about the cold weather, snow, and icy roads, but I just plain love it.  I love seasons, and I love anything that seems like genuine winter.  Whenever people mentioned that I was missing all the cold weather being over in Uganda, I think they thought that I had the lucky side, but as far as I was concerned, it was just rubbing salt in the wound!  The pictures of the December snowstorm made me at least as crazy with longing as they did for Hibiscus!


The first day of snow was just plain chaotic.  Hibiscus was so excited she didn't know what to do with herself, which has a way of making everyone else not know what to do with themselves, either.  We had a playdate scheduled, and my friend and her young children came over, which meant that eventually we had FIVE little awkward snowsuited bodies tumbling around and crying when they fell down.  That was kind of the way the whole day went.  The kids had a wonderful amount of fun as soon as they went out in the snow, and then everything turned horrible before we parents could even blink, and everyone was back inside again.

Part of the problem is that certain children have not yet figured out that warm clothes keep them warm.  This is not limited to snow, but it is exacerbated by it.  The day before, Emerson and Hibiscus had dived out the door into "outdoor play time," past my offers of rain pants and mittens.  "It's not very cold any more, Mama!" they yelled as they streaked by.  It was indeed warmer than it had been that morning, so I let them go.  Minutes later they were back inside and complaining that they were frozen, which had nothing to do with refusing to put their layers on!

Hibiscus apparently found that certain articles of clothing inhibited her pure enjoyment of the snow, so the morning play-time was taken up by trips to the back door to announce that she was shivering.
"Where is your hat?" I would ask.
"I don't know," she'd reply.  (Turns out it was frozen to a concrete block in the back yard.)
"Where are your mittens?" I would ask.
"Over dere, on da table."
"Why is your coat unzipped?"
Surprised look down at her coat, which was waving open in the breeze.
"Go get your mittens, shake them out and put them on, put on this hat, and --- here, your coat in zipped and --- here, your hood is up.  Now you won't be cold any more.  Go and play."

I think we had three outings into the backyard, none of which lasted more than twenty minutes at the most.  I happen to believe that children need to spend a decent portion of their lives outside, and nature (and a big backyard!) was one of the things I missed the most in Uganda.  It snows for months in Alaska, so we wear boots and snowsuits.  It rains for months in Oregon, so we wear slightly different boots and rain gear.  Five-minute playtimes because you don't dress properly do not fly very well with this mama!



I personally did not find that a very impressive way to spend one of the few days of snow in the entire year, but luckily we did better today.  Mark had finally finished getting chains on the van to try and drive through up the driveway and off to work, when he heard that there was so VERY much snow that everyone who had made it to work was heading home again.  In my mind, a snow day for the whole family is a whole different kettle of fish than one that just means that mama has extra children for more hours!

The children talked about skiing yesterday, and by the end of the day there was enough that little skis could probably have something to slide on in the field.  Big puffy flakes kept coming down all day, and by afternoon there was enough for a genuine ski outing.  I think this is the first time I have ever been able to go for a proper ski out my back door!


Mark pulled everyone's skis out of the garage.  Unfortunately, that meant "everyone who already had skis," since we had only arrived from an equatorial country eight days earlier and had not yet had a chance to go ski shopping.  Or even snowsuit shopping, for that matter, although rain pants had been at the top of the priority list, so everyone had some outdoor pants, and friends have sent plenty of warm jackets.  Emerson still fits into what he wore last year, since he has been growing at the rate of a crocodile.  (Did you know that crocodiles grow extremely slowly, since they have a very slow metabolism?  That's why they sit around sunning themselves all the time, too.  These are the things you learn while living in a non-skiing kind of climate.)  Buttercup can wear the things that Emerson used a couple years ago, and of course Mark and I have our own things.  This leave Hibiscus off by her lonely self with no exciting snow gear.  Of course she was very upset about that, but she kept very busy and happy in the snow anyways.

Getting everyone dressed took the first half of the afternoon.  I figured that if children kept taking off their outer warm bits of clothing, at least we could make them wear more things on the inside, which they couldn't access to remove and leave here and there across the field.  So we found non-cotton undershirts and long johns for everyone, and chased them up and down the house while they found other interesting things to do and declared that they weren't cold and didn't need them.  Well of course you don't; the heater is set to 68 degrees, because this is INSIDE the house.

By the time we got outside, I figured that we had better go somewhere, so that going right back in the door was not a viable option.  We headed out across our fields, through the neighbor's field, and onto the roads going to the nearby school, which has a playground, which I thought would make a good destination.  There was so much snow and so little traffic that the roads were like smooth-but-lightly-fluffy groomed ski trails.  I can't ever remember seeing the roads covered with snow in the afternoon!



I was so proud of my two little skiers!  We have made a point of taking Emerson skiing several times a winter since he was a toddler, believing that cross-country skiing is one of those skills best learned when you are too young to realize you are learning anything.  Every year he has been assimilating the feelings a little bit more, and even after the whole year passing, he soon found his cross-country legs again.  He got frustrated trying to get through the fields, with the puffy snow and the little slopes and tussocks of grass, but went much more quickly and happily on the road.  The way up was a gradual slope, and we went back down together.  I held his hand and kept him moving, and he kept his balance right along with me, even when the downhill got more distinct.  When we got back to the flatter part, he skied on his own again.  He had had so much fun going quickly that he tried to keep doing it, and managed to get some slide-and-glide into his steps.  If you have ever been an experienced skier along with little children, you know that they tend to just plod along on those potentially magical instruments, so a little bit of slide-and-glide was a wonderful development as far as I was concerned!


Buttercup was on skis for the first time, and in snow for the first time, and in a snow suit for the second time, and had only been in America for nine days altogether.  And she took it all in stride, and decided to learn to ski.  Buttercup has this amazing intent concentration that is just wonderful to watch.  (Especially after watching her older sister bounce from one thing to another for two days without cease!)  It took a very long time to get the first fifty yards or so, also involving problems with mittens and bindings, but then she started to figure out what was going on.  I kept reminding her to keep her toes going straight, or looking right at Daddy, or in the tracks, and she would intently try to find her ski-tips and put them somewhere.  Other than that, I tried to just let her figure out how her body worked in this new way.  For a while she was trying to pick up her feet and walk, but then she figured out how to push her feet along instead.  All plod and no glide, of course, but she was skiing!  She didn't want me to hold her hand or help her, but she wanted me to stay close, so I oozed along behind her through the fields.

She looked so tiny and so determined!  She seems so much smaller in the wide open, white expanse, than she had in Uganda.  Even in her puffy clothes.  That coat is only an 18-month size; she's just such a little bitty bit of a girl!  But so full of self-determination.  Emerson had certainly never skied for so long or so well when he was that age, a few toddlers would make it through the first rash of falls and snow down the coat, and decide to keep going.

At first, every time she would fall or something would happen, she would just wail and wail.  I would pick her up and brush her off and try to fix whatever might be bothering her, and try to convince her to use some words to tell me exactly what the problem was.  About the third time through, she told me "finger! finger cold!" and I immediately addressed the problem with her mitten.  And remarkably enough, she took the lesson completely to heart and switched to using words instead of crying.  As she got more tired, she would start to forget, but with a reminder she tried really hard to find the words, and barely needed to cry any more.  I was impressed, and I could see the amount of self-control it took to try and contain her sobs long enough to describe a problem in this new world she doesn't even understand yet.


As for Hibiscus, she didn't have any skis, but she seemed to have as many problems as either of the children who did!  She kept falling down and crying that she couldn't get up.  Now when you have skis stuck to your feet, they do tend to slip out from under you, and then they really get in the way when you try and get up again.  (Ski poles aren't for beginners, and they're not necessary if you know how to ski, so we don't use them.)  However, exactly how Hibiscus managed to keep falling off her feet and not being able to find them again, I am not sure.  But Mark and I stayed plenty busy skiing back and forth and pulling children up off the ground!  Hibiscus also alternated between wailing that she was cold, she was freezing, ah ah ah ah ah cold cold COLD, and then diving onto the ground and doing something like crawling through the snow while throwing large bundles of it up into the air.  So I don't think she was really too cold!  I think it was more that whenever she felt a dot of coldness, say if a mitten started to come off or a snowflake landed on her cheek, it was so surprising it was unbearable.  Actually, given her level of hysteria for those events, I think we kept her really pretty warm!


We didn't make it to the school yet before we decided that we needed to turn around.  We switched some mittens (I only have two pairs of good mittens, which is not sufficient), shook the snow off everyone, and put Buttercup in the wrap.  She didn't want to stop skiing, and she wanted to go "on da swing," but she was the only one who had the patience for skiing another few hundred yards!  In fact, she kept skiing on after we all had stopped, but then started to cry when I wasn't next to her, and turned around.  I had gotten myself a wonderful coming-home present of a coat that unzips and has a pouch for a little head to come out of, so I can wrap Buttercup and keep her under my coat.  That got her warm and toasty right away.  Hibiscus was another story, and she cried most of the way home... and then dived into the snow, and put Buttercup's skis on her hands, and crawled around in circles in the yard until we all got inside.


By the time we got in, the snow was suddenly turning kind of wet, and while we ate dinner it rained.  The moonlight is still glistening white, but I think that might have been the end of our Ugandan girls' first snow adventure!

Re-Entry: Logistics

We are home in Oregon.  We are a family of five.  Life is crazy.  I am going to try and write a real blog post about how we are doing, but meanwhile here are some logistical things in case people are curious.

America is overwhelming, and we're trying to make the culture shock easier on the girls... and re-entry easier on the rest of us. There's a lot we can't limit or control -- like the feel of cold air on their skin, and being surrounded by the blunt yet mumbly sound of American English -- so we're trying to do what we can with the environment.

Right now we're mostly staying around the house, although we can't resist the beautiful outdoors.  I think that new places are the most stressful, especially since houses and stores look nothing like what they do in Uganda.  So we're starting out by staying at home, so they can at least gain comfort and confidence and belonging in one place.

I think relationships are easier, because people are a lot like people.  We have had a number of people come over and visit, and all the children warm up and become enthusiastic pretty quickly.  I think they are happy to feel like they have friends.  If you want to meet us, I'd love to see you, but at this point I am asking everyone to go out of their way to come here; sorry!  I think it will also help the kids to feel like they have friends and connections already when we go out to busier places.  So if you're from our church or school or something like that, please stop by to help us take baby steps to feel like we belong to those places!

The older two are starting school on Monday.  They visited their classes on Friday, and we're jumping right in with the new week.  They are both going to the Eugene Waldorf School, which is where Emerson has been attending for the two years before we left.  Emerson will return to his same mixed-age kindergarten class, and Hibiscus will be in first grade.  Emerson will attend three mornings a week, and first grade is five mornings a week.  We've been in communication with the teachers during our absence, and we are feeling confident and relieved that this will be a good environment for both children.  They will be held with great love, but also with a firm and clear routine and structure.  We know that it's asking a lot of them in some ways to jump back into school only a few days after getting home, but we believe that they will be much happier and more confident once they get into their routine.  Also, that way each child will have his or her own space, and own friendship and own projects.

When the older children are at school, Buttercup and I will probably do a few things.  She is acclimating much more smoothly than anyone else in the family, so I need to be careful to not take advantage of her easy-going nature and give her more than she can handle.  We'll probably do the playgroup at church, and wait a few weeks to see if we want to add another playgroup or something else.

Probably the next thing that we will add to our routine is going to church.  I suspect it's going to be a couple of weeks, though.  I don't think we'll be able to go until the kids are willing to go to Sunday School, because we already have ample evidence that they can't make it through a church service!  But maybe we'll end up only staying for a few minutes the first week, and building up.... we'll see.

They are all very excited to add some classes and other events, which is something that I've been really missing in Uganda, but I think that will take a little while.  We might start with swim lessons at the Y, because that's fairly inexpensive (so not too big a deal if we miss some), and all three kids could go at the same time.  I also want to get back to gymnastics, since we know the people and the routine there, because I think that would suit all three kids' interests and needs.  It might be a little while, though.

Right now I am estimating that it will be about a month before we venture much beyond school and maybe church.  I think if we end up having a "welcome home" kind of party, it won't be until at least summer time, or it will just be too overwhelming.  The children have changed and grown so much in the last six months together in Uganda, I have faith that there will be a lot more growing and changing in the next six months!