For Lent, I am giving up negativity.

I like my job. I like my apartment. I like my colleagues and their families. I love my own family. I’m happy with my progress both improving my health and remembering to just breathe. So why do I complain all the time? Why do I qualify my positive statements with caveats and warnings? Why don’t I always talk about the best in people?

It’s too easy to just bitch these days, instead of focusing on all of the awesome in my life. And I’m a little tired of it.

For the next forty days, just call me Pollyanna.

Actually, don’t.

Our first week of language training has been hard. Really hard. I get up bright and early to shower and dress. Then I wake up Bertrand. While he’s enjoying his morning ablutions, I make my lunch, get all of the kids’ stuff out, and study for half an hour. Once we’re both up and running, I wake up the kids, and we begin the hour long process of feeding them and getting them ready for school.

Then we spend all day at FSI, studying, going to class, going to lab, studying while we eat, going to class, and studying some more. And I run to the daycare to nurse at lunch, and pump during breaks. After class, we study for a short while, then pick up the kids to head home.

At home, Bertrand and I switch off on the kids while I make dinner, he picks up the house, and we both get the kids ready for bed. Once I get Jasmine to sleep, I’m usually ready to crash myself.  The good news is that Grace is sleeping through the night. The bad news is that Jasmine usually doesn’t.

Needless to say, we are both at the end of our rope, and we’re not even done the first week yet. My fervent hope is that once we’re done with the three week introductory class, we’ll be onto the regular block language schedule, and will be able to fit quite a bit more study time into our days. Or at least, some alone time. Language class isn’t going to get any easier, but I HOPE that we’ll be able to figure out a better routine as time goes on.

So it goes.

It’s great to be settled in an apartment where we’ll be for the next nine months. It’s great to have Costco next door. It’s great to have friends in the building. And it’s SO GREAT to be able to order groceries online.

We’ll figure out the rest as we go alone.

Because we have and we are.

DC is wonderpants!

It’s good to be home. Even better to be on the road again. We Sondjos are spending the week in Seattle saying hi to friends long lost, and beginning our quest to get to know the rest of America. Home Leave is a cash sink, and we figure that as long as we’re burning money, we might as well do it in interesting places we wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to visit.

After an adventure with rescheduled flights, we finally made it here, and we’ve been living it up, PNW-style (that means in fleeces and boots, apparently). Yesterday, we met up with a dear friend from my days in Benin, and explored Fremont.

Here’s Jasmine with the Fremont Troll, as she realizes that it’s a face, not just a rock formation.

This morning, we got up bright and early to head to Pike Place Market! Bertrand bought a pound of dates (best paleo snack EVER). They were rich and creamy and sweet and delicious.

After browsing the artisanal goods at the market, we headed down to the waterfront to eat. We were exhausted, and didn’t really feel like sitting down to fine dining with the kids, so we headed to Ivar’s Fish Bar. It was a great choice. Informal. Delicious. And lots of opportunities for Jasmine to feed birds.

Jasmine had a great time watching fish, touching fish, running around like a maniac, and generally having a very good time at the Seattle Aquarium.

Our last stop of the day was Starbucks to visit one of my postmates from Peace Corps. It’s amazing how much some things change, and others stay the same. After she woke up from her nap, Jasmine begged us for milk, and here she is, finally satisfied. That was the end of grown-up conversation, and pretty much the end of our first whole day out in Seattle.

You might be asking yourself why there aren’t any photos of Grace. Since we don’t (yet) have a double stroller, I spent the day baby wearing. Since I also wield the camera, Grace wasn’t in a lot of shots. I’ll fix that for tomorrow. ;)

The conundrum of digital humanitarianism: when the crowd does harm

To some of you this may look like heartbreaking (and it is in fact) and you may think that it is very nice for people to share this story so that maybe someone will help this family. The problem that I have with this is that whoever re-posted this did not knew that he was basically saying to whoever has bad intention: “Hey, here there is a young woman with two little kids, and two wounded people with her. Here is her location, and she is scared and alone, with no means to get for help”. This is more or less like to tweet that you have a million dollars in your house and that you are gonna go out for a drink and leave the door open.

Miss Universe 2013 National Costumes

Costumes run he gait from hilarious to ironic to absolutely gorgeous. Check out the costume for Miss USA, and decide for yourself (I fall on the side of awesome + ironic, but I also think that the Kardishans are brilliant performance artists, so YMMV).

The Night of the Doctor

I’m enjoying the hell out of my maternity leave, but my toddler means that I’m not able to get nearly as much done while the baby is sleeping as I could the first time around.

So much for my great blogging, scrapbooking, novel writing, cooking, and relaxing intentions.

For example, I just yelled at Jasmine to get her goddamned TOE out of the baby’s goddamned MOUTH. I mean, Bertrand and I are pretty casual about germs, but bare feet? That’s pretty gross. Not as gross as the fact that Jasmine was chewing on the feet of her tights yesterday at my brother’s wedding (like how I casually dropped that bomb in here?), but still, pretty gross.

To all of my childless friends who KEEP ASKING whether having kids was worth it. Yes. YES. A MILLION TIMES YES. I just have to keep reminding myself that the moments of frustration will make absolutely riotous stories at family gatherings when my girls are adults.

Speaking of great stories, yesterday, I got to hang out with family that I hadn’t seen in over a decade. And it was amazing. And not seeing everyone grow up and have kids and being able to meet their spouses is one of the saddest things about spending my life abroad. And now that I also have kids, I am sad that they won’t be able to grow up playing with their cousins (and cousins once and twice removed). I can’t wait to spend ten months reacclimating to the States when we come back for Arabic training, and I’m even more excited about the opportunity to reconnect with my family.

tl;dr: too tired to be coherent, kids are awesome, family is awesome, and my brother is MARRIED (!!!!!).

I am grateful that, although my toddler still puts EVERYTHING in her mouth, I can yell, “WAIT! Don’t eat that! It’s trash!” and she happily stops and throws it away. WHEW. Things she has tried to eat this morning: a silica gel packet, a dried black bean, an empty Larabar wrapper, rose petals, a black crayon.

Back for the moment. I’ve been busy globetrotting, struggling through a difficult (but SO AWESOME) bridge assignment, and having a baby.

Me and said baby. Welcome, Grace Sika!

It’s official. I’m pregnant.

No, “we” are not pregnant. Bless my husband’s heart, he’s wonderful and supportive and putting up with my oddball cravings (thank goodness for a MEDEVAC to London where I was able to eat all of the strawberries and cheese and peppermint tea I wanted).

But he’s not 13 weeks in and already showing (and already up a cup size! ARGH!). He doesn’t have pregnancy acne (yeah, all of you women whose skin clears up? I HATE YOU RIGHT NOW). And he certainly isn’t getting up to pee eight gazillion times a night (it’s hormones, not the baby pressing on my bladder … yet).

And Jasmine’s going to be a big sister, which is going to be awesome and funny and horrifying all at the same time. I hope she treats the baby with more respect than the cat, although watching Baby J Toddler J chase a crawling baby around the house is going to be be riotous.

Anyway.

We are terribly excited. As wonderful as it was to raise Jasmine in Freetown, I think it’ll be that much easier to raise the new rugrat in DC. We’ll move back to the States for training when Jasmine’s just over 2. The newborn will be 3-4 months old, depending on the exact time of my departure from Freetown.

Changes are a-foot. And it is awesome.