Santa is not that critical

Rodgers grew up without Santa Claus at all - he doesn't come to Kenya. I grew up with a fictional Santa, but we didn't believe in him - my parents' choice. Rodgers and I saw no reason to have our kids believe in Santa. We both feel Christmas is full without him. Not surprisingly, complete strangers have Very Important Opinions about this. And you know what? If you are on the other side, other complete strangers have Very Important Opinions about that. It's not unlike...well everything else that goes along with using social media as a parent. Sure some people will say these things to you in person, but with social media, you get read complete strangers' opinions about how you're ruining your children's lives from the comfort of your own sofa, at any hour of the day or night.

My sister posted this on Facebook yesterday, which I felt is one of the most well-thought-out pieces on why not to believe in Santa. The post itself is not judgmental, but there are always judgmental comments on posts like this. For what it's worth, I love that post and agree with all of her points, especially numbers 1 and 4 (and even more the first one since we live in a country where there is no Santa - I mean, can you imagine the American kids not only getting more Christmas gifts from their parents but also being the only kids in town visited by Santa?!).

(the whole bit in gifs here on imgur)

Later yesterday, Christianity Today posted this one, which is a bit more inflammatory (tactic to ensure more people will click on it). The title says that your kids should believe in Santa, whereas the previous one just said that their kids don't. While I agree with the conclusion on that post (that Jesus communicated truth using parables to appeal to the imagination through fiction, and other fiction can be used the same way), I don't agree that believing fiction is real is necessary.

There are a zillion other posts, from both sides. Some simply state the practice of the particular family, like the first post I linked to. Others tell you why you (and, more importantly, your kids) would be better off adopting their viewpoint. Regardless, the comments are predictable:

"HOW COULD YOU LIE TO YOUR KIDS?!"
"HOW COULD YOU DEPRIVE YOUR KIDS OF THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS?!"
"Your kid is going to ruin Christmas for all the other kids!"
"Your kids only behave because of that creepy elf? How sad."
"There's enough reality when you're an adult. Let the kids have some fun."
"Well, I grew up not believing in Santa, and I'm just fine."
"Well, I grew up believing in Santa, and I'm just fine."

Let's focus a little on the last two comments.

While there are people who feel deprived to not have experienced believing in Santa, and there are people who felt betrayed when they found out their parents had lied about Santa, for the most part, it just doesn't matter much. It's not that critical.

And if people comment to you in ALL CAPS that it is that critical, that what you're doing will Ruin Christmas or Deprive Your Kids, just imagine them like Little John because this is what they're fighting over.

Advent 2014

I love suspense movies and books. And TV shows. Suspense is fun. Alfred Hitchcock is quoted as saying, "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." In the same way, as a lover of Christmas, I enjoy the days leading up to Christmas so much. Not that Christmas is terrifying. There is fun in the anticipation. And Suspense's last name is Anticipation.

This anticipation, the expectant waiting, is what Advent is about. Thus, we have an Advent calendar. As we anticipate the arrival of Christmas Day, we do Advent readings as a family and focus on what Christmas is about, why it's all about Jesus, and who Jesus is anyway.

This year we are using the same short Scripture readings for each day, December 1 - 24, that we used last year. We start with some prophecies, move on to the gospels (particularly who John the Baptist said Jesus is and how Jesus describes himself), and conclude in Paul's letters. I print out the list, cut the days apart, and tuck each one into a pocket of our Advent calendar, with the tree ornament for that day. You can find my printable file below, if you want to follow along! Or if you prefer to follow digitally, follow Maisha Kamili on Twitter or Facebook. I will post each day's reading, as well as posts for the 4 Sundays of Advent on the Maisha Kamili blog.

The boys are very eager to get the new ornament out each day. They bring me the slip of paper and I read the designated Scripture as they place the ornament.

Click for the pdf.

In past years, I've done a daily blog post Advent guide. If you're looking for a different kind of Advent reading, flip through some of these:
Advent 2013 (Dec 1) || Advent 2012 (Dec 1) || Advent 2010 (Dec 1)

Mamas Tell All: The Happiest and Crappiest of Motherhood [a linkup]

The Crappiest

We're going to start with this one so we can end on a good note. I don't share this to complain or bring everyone down. I share this to stand in solidarity with other moms having bad days. We've all been there! Try to salvage the day if possible, otherwise, just survive, get the kids to bed, and breathe.

Juggling an infant and a 2-year old after moving to a new country was the toughest part of motherhood for me. There were good days and bad days, like always, but the bad days were exceptionally bad.

There were a few months when Rodgers had to be at church all day on Sundays. We all went to the English worship service, where Rodgers was spontaneously asked to preach (but we expected it because it happened every week). I was holding infant Ben, feeding him, then putting him to sleep for his morning nap, and simultaneously trying to keep 2-year old Nate under control. It was stressful and exhausting. I hated going to church those days. It's not like I was able to participate in any part of the service - I was busy with my kids the entire time. We went home while Rodgers stayed for meetings upon meetings at church. Being off our schedule, both kids were insane. I was already exhausted and short-tempered. Nate always threw one of his 45-minute screaming fits. Ben was hungry but not ready to eat, tired but not ready to sleep - a schedule baby off his schedule is such a mess! Rodgers eventually came home from the meetings, sometimes in time for supper, but sometimes after the boys were already in bed for the night. He was totally frustrated by the meetings and needed to unload some of that, but I had nothing left for him.

Those were the crappiest days of motherhood. Those were the days that I wasn't sure we would all survive, and surviving the day and getting the kids to bed was my one and only goal. That was when I often thought maybe I don't have what it takes to be a mom. But those days passed! We did survive! Thank God!

The Happiest

A picture is worth 1000 words, right? A quick flip through my Instagram pictures and previous FB profile pics resulted in almost 50 pictures of My Happiest Motherhood Moments. Here are my favorites:

playing on the floor with
baby Nate before work

bouncing baby Nate to sleep
at Cat's wedding in England

Nate, after falling asleep
on me in church

Just getting a hug from Nate

baby Ben snuggling while
drinking his bedtime milk

Ben giving me a biiiiiiiiiig kiss

Swinging with Ben

talking to baby Ben, nose to nose

hugging both of my boys

reading stories

Wearing one, holding the
other, as you do

cuddle time on the couch
with my cuddly guys

Visit the linkup for more:

Mamas Tell All: Choosing Your Family Size [a linkup]

Our family of 4 in 2012, with the Indian Ocean behind us.

The question for this week's linkup is: How did you choose the size of your family?

What a question!

We were actively trying to avoid pregnancy when I got pregnant with Nate. We had talked about adoption. We had talked about waiting for a couple of years, then trying to get pregnant. We had not yet totally decided to have kids, how many, or how they would join our family.

I was sick the entire pregnancy, had a physically traumatic and damaging delivery, and had many horrible months postpartum, trying to heal. I was not eager to repeat the experience, and Rodgers was dead set against it. We talked more about adopting the rest of our family, but we were starting to plan moving to Kenya, where we would start an orphan ministry (which we did - Maisha Kamili and Facebook link). How would we choose one or two to adopt and not the rest?

With the prospect of moving overseas, and with Nate already a biracial, bi-cultural, dual citizen kid (my husband is Kenyan, and I am American), I started really, really wanting him to have a biological sibling. We would be bouncing between the US and Kenya. Nate would be part of both cultures, and yet be an outsider in both cultures. Wouldn't it be best for him to have a sibling to experience all that with him? Rodgers was not on board. But he did get on board with not trying to avoid pregnancy, and if God gave us another kid, so be it! Ben was born 9 months later (scheduled c-section, much nicer delivery, and much, much easier recovery, but pregnancy is still my enemy).

Some of the MKKs

With a biological sibling for Nate, I was content, at peace. Rodgers was way past done. We won't have any more biological children (unless God surprises us again). Is our family complete? Not really.

There are 35 kids in Kenya, some single orphans (have lost their fathers), some double orphans (have lost both parents). Most of them live with their relatives, but 4 (ages 18 and older) live in a duplex right next to our house, and some other 18+ year olds live in rooms we rent for them near their schools. We help them with school fees, buying books and uniforms, medical care, and even groceries, where necessary. These are also our kids!

Some of them have exited Maisha Kamili's sponsorship for various reasons (finished school, got a job, found alternate means of support), but we still count them as MKKs (Maisha Kamili Kids).

People have asked us how many we plan to help. The duplex can fit 8, and we can handle 30 sponsored kids at a time, but as they grow up, finish school, and get jobs, we can take on more. Children's homes for those who have no relatives to live with are also in our future. That will increase our capacity over 30, also, as new staff will be hired as house parents. There is no limit but what God has planned!

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Follow @MaishaKamili

Find more family stories at the linkup:

Mamas Tell All: How to Keep Your Marriage Alive After Children [Blog linkup]

hanging out while our boys were playing with friends

There are so many lists of ways to have a strong marriage with kids. I must see one posted online every month in one parenting magazine or another. I think they take turns. "Let's see, Parenting.com, you publish the list January. Parents.com take February. Parenthood.com will be March..." [I'm joking.]

Clearly it's a topic that's important to a lot of families. I think in a lot of ways, marriage maintenance after having kids is a lot like marriage maintenance before having kids, in that you have to do it on purpose, you have to pay attention, you have to put forth effort. It's just that after having kids, we are totally distracted by our needy offspring. I say "I think" because our first child was born 10 months (and 1 day, if you want to be specific) after our wedding. We don't really know much about marriage without kids.

The magazine lists always include these in some way: keep dating, flirt, have sex, share kid-related tasks, and something about dads pitching in around the house. I'm going to focus on the first one because it is a particular challenge for us. Even when were "dating," it was a long-distance relationship (and for a year an extremely long-distance relationship), so we didn't go on dates much. Now we have to find a babysitter, and our kids hate babysitters, and Ben isn't used to being away from me and screams the whole time until he passes out on my pillow... We average about one real babysitter date per year right now. We find ways to date without a babysitter.

1. Post-bedtime dessert date. We wait until the boys are asleep, then sit on the couch and have dessert together in peace and quiet. Sometimes we talk about grown-up things; sometimes we are so exhausted we say nothing at all.

2. Restaurant with a playground. One of our favorite Saturday lunch spots has a playground. There are tables right next to the slide. The boys play with minimal supervision, Rodgers and I sip Malindi macchiatos, and none of us minds if it takes them too long to cook our lunch.

3. Use naptime. Our boys still nap most days. Once they're asleep, we have one-and-a-half to three hours to ourselves, to do whatever we want.

4. Lunch dates (when kids are in school). This is one I intend to implement when Ben starts school next year!

Mamas Tell All: The Perfect Mama [Blog linkup]

I was still in high school when I started learning about "The Perfect Mama," via Bible studies on Proverbs 31. During pregnancy and as a new mom, lots of people had advice for me. I've written before about how this advice - even so-called expert advice - doesn't always agree. It's impossible to be absolutely perfect because perfect according to Expert A is harmful according to Expert B. Even if they did agree, we all know that no one will ever achieve perfection. However, an idea of what perfection is will give us a goal to work towards.

At my baby shower for Nate, I was given a small scrapbook. Before they gave it to me, they passed around a few of the pages for the attendees to write parenting advice for me. There were a lot of sweet blessings and "cherish every moment" (which is impossible - some moments aren't cherish-able!). But there was also much more than that. What I see in this advice, and I what I've learned through experience, is that perfection as a mom is not so much in what we do, but in our faith in God, in our sanctification in Christ, in our eternal perspective. The things we do are important, but the good things will flow out from God at work within us when we are disciplined followers of Jesus.

Here is my favorite advice, some which helps me identify what I want to be like, and some which was just very helpful during the infant stage.

Patience is the one thing I learned right off the bat. Patience with labor, crying, husbands, countless diapers.

Never be afraid to hold and rock your baby as much as you want. Many times when a baby cries, he just needs warmth and comfort that only you can provide. You won't spoil him!

Always look to God for guidance. He has wonderful plans for you.

The most important thing I can think of is to love your children. Spoil them with love, and I know you will bring them up to love the Lord Jesus. 

Truly the greatest gift God has given me is the privilege to be a wife and a mother. I have learned so much about the character of God through the lives of my children. One of the things I have learned as a mother is that God loves my children even more than I do...He is trustworthy! He will give us wisdom concerning our children, as well.

Remember that the Scripture says, "Raise up your child in the way he should grow and when he's old he will not go away from it." Because I'm the oldest one at your shower, please let me encourage you to begin early to teach your child the Word and prayer. The Word will get him through life, prayer will help him have a personal relationship with Jesus. These will take him through his entire life no matter what comes.

toys.

I've been reading about moms who put away all of their kids' toys, out of reach, inaccessible, and let their kids choose 1 thing or 1 crate of toys to play with at a time. While I think it's a great idea, it was never something I wanted to do. I thought I would miss letting my boys exercise creativity in combining toys from different categories: puzzles become roads, Legos become action figure accessories (usually "fighting things" aka weapons), trains and cars and Lego towers come together in a huge city. They also don't have a lot of toys (from an American perspective - from a Kenyan perspective, it's Toy's 'R' Us in here).

Then Ben hit this phase that I describe as Destructive 2 Year Old. When Nate was in this phase, we lived in a 2-story house and had fewer toys. He had a small basket of living room toys for downstairs and only slightly more upstairs toys. He sure did dump out his living room toy basket every chance he got, but it was only 1 basket of toys. Very manageable, and I didn't mind having him clean up only at the end of each day. Ben, however, has access to their full toy collection. Most things are sorted by type and put away in small baskets, which sort of stack in the bottom of their closet/built-in wardrobe dealy. Here's how our days have been going:

I go into my bedroom to check on the washing machine. I come back into the living room to find Ben has dumped 2 baskets of toys out on the floor. And he's playing with no toys but a piece of cardboard that was destined for the trash. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. We talk about what he wants to do. He asks for crayons and a coloring book. I deliver. I take the laundry outside to hang it up to dry. I come back into the living room. Ben has dumped out 2 baskets of toys in the living room and 1 in the hall. The crayons are nowhere to be found. He's playing with nothing at all, but pretending to fall off the couch. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. We take the baskets back to the bedroom, only to find that their outside toys have been dumped and spread all over the bedroom. He is required to clean up. It's a fight. It's now 10 am.

I can't cope with tripping over, stepping on, and wading through toys all day long. And I have no energy for the same clean up fight every 45 minutes. What we need is a manageable amount of toys that can be cleaned up only once a day.

Where the toys used to be: now just a basket for stuffed animals (which are currently all over the house) and a shoe box of costumes. 

I took the plunge a week ago and put all of their toys up on the top shelf in their room. They can keep all of their stuffed animals because these neither trip me nor hurt when I step on them. With everything else, they have to choose 1 container at a time to play with. I allow them to change what they're playing with during the day, and it's not such a fight to clean up because it's a very small mess. Plus, cleaning up means they can play with something else.

Where the toys are now.

Nate can reach the toy shelf with a step stool. However, he knows the rules and is very responsible. He can't quite put the toys away, but he can get new things down. He put the costume box "away" in the first picture, so he could get out the action figure box. I fully intend to give them access to all of their toys at the same time again. But first, we have to get through Destructive 2 Year Old (which very well may cross over into Destructive 3 Year Old).

8 scriptures to pray over our marriage

Five years ago today, we got married in the rain.

I love praying Scripture. As an introvert, I don't always have words to say, even in prayer. I do pray my own words, but many times, especially with specific requests, I have found verses in the Bible that express what I am praying, and I use them as a starting point for my prayers. What better starting point than the Bible? It's not just for introverts, either!

February half-term

In order to make sure the kids get plenty of breaks from school, there is a 2 day "half-term" break each term. I suggested to Rodgers that we go somewhere for half-term. He made reservations at the same hotel where we stayed in August.

Rodgers had to be in Nairobi most of the week before break, so we were all ready for the family time by the time Friday came.

The boys had a wishlist for our little vacation:

1. go swimming
2. go to the beach
3. go shopping
4. eat pizza
5. eat ice cream

the forest

We live fairly close to Arabuko-Sokoke Forest. Our house is on a hill high enough that we can actually see the hills of the forest from our windows. We drive through the forest on our way to Malindi and have been to the coast side, at Mida Creek and Gede Ruins. However, we had never been to the Kenya Forest Service park, which covers most of the inland side of the forest.

There were several things that we wanted to do, but we had a limited time, so we only got to do the nature walk. We will have to go back for the rest!

We started off walking around the reception building and the neighborhood of people living there. We saw the famous, but rare, golden rumped elephant shrew. We saw yellow baboons and Sykes/blue monkeys, both of which we have seen before on our other trips to and through the forest.

taking pictures of the elephant shrew

monkeys - always exciting for Nate and Ben

The nature walk was about 2 km, but Nate and Ben did way better than I anticipated! They both took little breaks, riding on backs or shoulders when they got too tired, and Ben was super grumpy for the last bit. We stopped frequently to experience interesting things.

Our guide showed us useful trees and plants. Some have practical uses, like storing water, and some are just fun!

drumming on mushrooms that grow on a tree

swinging from a vine

Rodgers had to help me get my feet up...

I scraped my leg coming down from there. I hardly noticed it until flies started trying to eat me. I had a big bandaid in the backpack, which covered the scrape well enough, but the flies still kept trying to get to it. How ridiculous and disgusting!

Little B, hanging in there

There are "tree houses," which let you see over the tops of the trees. That is one thing I'd like to go back and do. They also have an elephant preserve and other large game, which we always love to see!

Sabaki River

My parents have been here. My dad could only stay for a week, but my mom stayed a little longer. She just got home yesterday.

To make sure they knew where they were, they got to experience Kilifi water problems (complete with hauling water), getting hassled by traffic police who want someone to buy them a cup of chai, and Mom even went through a 24-hour widespread (seems like it started in western Kenya and spread all the way to the coast) blackout with us. We fed them good food, took them sightseeing a bit, and hung out together a lot.

We took a little excursion the day after they arrived. Dad had read online about a cottage on the Sabaki River. It's supposed to be a good place to see birds, off the main tourist path.

We found the owner's phone number and reserved the cottage: 2 rooms with private bathrooms for $30 (USD). As we were settling in to our rooms, Rodgers sat and talked with the owner (also called Rodgers). As is custom, they asked about each others' names, thus found out who their respective family members are, and determined that the owner of this cottage is (my) Rodgers' uncle!

In the evening, once the sun wasn't so hot, we walked down to the river, near the ocean. We saw some birds and lots of cows.

mural at the entrance

the rooms are on the first floor, the family stays upstairs

on the road

mangrove shoots

flamingos at the ocean were a welcome surprise!

Nate collected tiny crab pincers

trying to watch birds with Grandpa

Then we went back to the cottage for chicken stew and ugali. They don't have electricity, so we went to bed early. 

Rodgers and my dad went back out the following morning, taking a different route, and got to wade through silt up to their knees. It was quite the experience! Since their shoes were no longer wearable, we headed home after breakfast.