Normal Life

The holidays are behind us and we’re trying to focus now on … well, just normal life, I guess. Putting grass into our yard (that’s been quite a project for the poor workers who have continued shoveling gravel in the midst of major downpours the last two days!) so that Jaden will have somewhere to play. Most kids in our neighborhood play in the street, which is not exactly wide with lots of speed bumps or “children playing” signs! There are some ways in which we want to contextualize our lives here, but other things are simply not an option, and sending our kid to play in the street (something we joke about in the U.S.!) is one of the non-options. Instead, once the grass is in, we’ll probably have the entire neighborhood in our yard. We’ll see if we don’t regret putting grass in by the end …

Other non-options – giving our child sweets any time he fusses, never taking anything out of his hand that he wants, chasing him around with spoonfuls of food. I don’t know how often we have horrified locals when we let him express his displeasure during his nap and didn’t go pull him out immediately. It’s akin to child abuse here, I think, but Jaden would never nap otherwise. We did have to simply abandon his nap the other day when some locals were over for a meeting and he was particularly set against sleeping. Michael said he could see the pain on the faces of our friends!

Overall, Jaden is doing well and so are we. The extrovert in him serves him very well here, and everyone wants a piece of him. To be shy and white here would not be a good combination, so we’re grateful for his outgoing nature.