dinner with the Ken-Tex family

We have dinner kind of early. The boys eat best if they aren't super tired and ready for bed. When 5:15 rolls around, I start setting the table. It goes something like this:

I fix the boys' plates so that their food can cool. They are already in their chairs, ready. Nate says, "I don't like carrots! I like crunchy chicken." (Which is not on the menu.) Ben says, "Meat! Meat! I want meeeeeeat!"

I fix their drinks and turn off the TV, and Rodgers fixes our drinks. Nate and Ben have already burned their mouths on their food because they just couldn't wait any longer. Ben blows on his and says, "Go away hot!"

We sit down, and Nate blesses the food, "Thank you Gooooooooood, for the fooooooooood. Aaaaaaamen!" Then it's Ben's turn, "Thank you Gooooooood, for 'cchini. And carrots. Aaaaamen!"

I've taken 1 bite, and Ben is already asking for more zucchini. I give him a lot. Repeat x 4. Then he starts eating Rodgers' food. "More meat?!"

Ben has decided he wants to potty train, so he spends most of the day in only a T-shirt. Generally he should put something on his bottom to sit at the dinner table, but today I've forgotten about that. His skin makes a scooting sound on the plastic seat cover of his chair. Nate exclaims, "Did Ben TOOT?!" Then I realize that, not only is Ben wearing nothing but a T-shirt, Nate is wearing nothing but underwear. Oh well. We'll work on proper dinner dress next time.

Meanwhile, Nate has eaten only a few bites because he is making noises. I tell him to stop making noise and eat. "But I'm saying 'zee-zee-wha-wha-wha!'" Rodgers tells him, "Eat 10 bites, then you can say 1 word."

As I eat in the relative peace, it dawns on me that Nate is counting to 10 way too fast. "Nate! 1 bite, chew and swallow, then another." He's got half a link of sausage in his mouth and can no longer close his lips. He manages to get through it without choking himself, so that's a relief.

Rodgers and I attempt conversation. We are trying to teach the boys not to interrupt, so I think it's important that we give them chances to practice. They do a pretty good job, but it's still a little chaotic.

Ben announces he's done, jumps down, and goes into the living room to play. Nate is also done. It's time for him to do his homework, but Rodgers and I have only just started eating. I tell him I'll get his homework out for him once I've finished. I remind him to take his plate and fork to the kitchen, which he does. Then he goes to play in the living room with Ben.

Rodgers keeps an eye on them. This is the time of day when they run off all that extra energy they have so that they can go to bed. They are all over the place, but at least they aren't fighting.

Once I finish eating, I call Nate back to the table to do his homework. Rodgers is still finishing up. Ben gets back in his chair to eat more from Rodgers' plate and some from his own because he still had food left when he was "done."

Finally, the food is all eaten, homework is done, and we have a few minutes of play time left before the bedtime routine starts.

And Nate says, "I'm ready for a snack."

school update

The Happiest Toddler on the Block (full disclosure: I've never read it) describes 3 main personality types of toddlers: easy, shy, and spirited. Ben is mostly shy, though he has some traits of the easy toddler as well. Nate, who is not so much a toddler anymore, is fully spirited. Neither is as good with new situations as the easy toddler, but Nate has gotten a lot better recently, maybe as part of coming out of toddlerhood? It did take him 4 weeks to warm up to his new school, though. (P.S. He is still 100% a spirited child.)

showing me how Jamali plays cars, in his Monday/Wednesday uniform (with the sweater because it was raining and a bit chilly)

Nate fussed when I dropped him at school a few times. He cried real tears once, when his teacher wanted to talk to me. I had to go into his classroom instead of just sending him in with one of the teachers. They have a diary in which they record what the kids do and eat each day. There is a spot for the teacher to make a note to me, so I don't really know why she needed to see me in person that day. It really disturbed Nate, but I think he calmed down as soon as I left.

Last week, he was telling us about his friend Jamali (Jamal, actually). He has since added to his list of friends Kevin, Munda, Makunene, and Felista. He has playtime and extracurricular activities that he didn't get at his old school. We didn't sign him up for every activity offered, but he has football (soccer) on Tuesday afternoons and Taekwondo on Thursday afternoons. The whole class has computer class on Tuesdays, too. Nate loves showing us what he's learning in football and Taekwondo.

showing off his new backpack in his Tuesday/Thursday (PE) uniform

We've just completed the fifth week of school. And this week, he started being excited to go to school. Previously he would ask hopefully every morning, "I'm not going to school today?" Now he finishes breakfast and announces, while still in his PJs, "OK! I'm ready to go play with Jamali!" There's no more fussing during drop off, and he even says "good morning" to the security guard.

On Fridays, they usually let out a few minutes early. The kids go out to the playground to wait for their parents. Rodgers had arrived early to pick Nate up and was walking up to the gate just as Nate was taking his backpack off to go play with his friends. Nate was not excited to come home - for the first time ever.

At his old school, Nate took his lunch and snack every day, but the principal here wanted to see if we could get him to eat their food. We're paying for it anyway, it's worth a try! They repeat the menu every week, so every Monday is rice and beans; every Tuesday is sukuma wiki and ugali, and so on. They have porridge for morning snack, except Wednesdays when they have milk. In the afternoons, they have fruit, usually bananas.  The first week, he drank porridge most days, but at nothing. Eventually, he decided to like bananas (which, I might add, he only ever ate in the puree phase), and gradually started eating the lunches. Besides Tuesday lunch and milk on Wednesday, Nate ate everything served to him this week! He even ate pojo! I think his teacher is still a little concerned that he won't eat Tuesday lunch or Wednesday morning snack, but I am totally happy with this.

ready to go to school, in his Friday "home clothes"

water

We have had no shortage of water problems since moving to this new house.

1) The water lines in the house were all put in just before we moved in, with the exception of the wall taps in the 2 bathrooms. The plumber did a horrible job, and most of the connections between pipes leak. Into the walls. Onto the ceiling. All over the house. Those have been re-done.

2) The toilet broke after about 10 flushes. We replaced the flusher and a few things in there, but had to have a plumber come out and look at it because it wouldn't stop running. Not running from the tank to the bowl. Running from the tank to the floor. And guess what - there was no shut-off valve. So if there was water in our attic water barrel, it was running to the toilet and out onto the floor. The plumber said there were so many pieces missing (which would control water flow and stuff) that the best solution would be a shut-off valve so that we could turn it on for the tank to fill, then turn it off. Ok, done. Not ideal, but it works.

The 100 liter barrel. 

3) There is no water rationing here like we had in Bamburi, but there will be days (on end) when the whole of Kilifi has no running water. In Bamburi, we had 10,000 liters of water storage. Here, we have 600: 100 in the attic and 500 outside. If we run out of water in the house, we have to haul buckets from outside; there is no pump. Normally, the water flows at night. By using the 500 liter barrel for washing clothes and cleaning, we have enough in the 100 liter barrel to last the day, even if we all take showers/baths. So when city water is flowing, it is enough. But if the water isn't flowing?

Our outdoor water barrel. It was raining, so I didn't go take a good pic...

This week has been a true test of how much water we actually need to have stored. The last day we had running water was Tuesday. Today is Sunday. Our attic water barrel emptied Wednesday night. Thursday evening, our outside water barrel was so low that I suggested to Rodgers we give Penny the day off Friday because we needed that water for flushing the toilet, washing ourselves, and cooking more than we needed our clothes washed and floors mopped.

We keep water in the kitchen in this 50 liter barrel. Rodgers borrowed the yellow jug when he went to get us water this morning. He brought several jugs in addition to filling our kitchen water.

We had spent Wednesday assuming the water would be flowing again that night. We are never wasteful with water, but we didn't really cut back on usage much. Starting Thursday, we conserved water as much as possible, with an "if it's yellow, let it mellow..." policy for toilet flushing and taking what Rodgers terms "desert baths" (just washing the important bits). It has not been fun. This morning Rodgers went out to find water for us because our big barrel is nearly dry. Sometimes people who have a well or tens of thousands of liters stored will let their friends have water during a water shortage. We did when we lived in Bamburi. Now we are on the receiving end.

For now, we catch rain off the roof in our wash tubs.

Our landlord is planning to put gutters around the house which will feed into an additional water barrel.  We are looking into how big a barrel we could bring into the house to replace the tiny one above the bathroom. It has to be small enough to fit through the bathroom door so that we can get it up there (the bathroom doesn't have a ceiling yet). But more than 100 liters would be awesome. We would also like to trade the 500 liter barrel for at least 1000 liters. More water is always better (except when it's all overflowing from the toilet to the bathroom floor...).

There was an episode of Fraggle Rock where the water goes away and the Pipe Bangers couldn't get the water to come back. They sing a song, "Run, water, run! Run, water, run!" I've been singing that this weekend.

brownies - a recipe

When we want a baked treat, we almost always choose brownies. We. Love. Brownies.

I am almost sure I got my original brownie recipe from Betty Crocker. However, the recipe calls for unsweetened baking chocolate, which I almost never have on hand and never remember to buy. I do always have cocoa. I use the 5 Tbsp of cocoa + 1 Tbsp oil per oz of baking chocolate conversion. This comes to 1 Tbsp short of 1 cup of cocoa. I round up to a full cup. Also, when adding that oil to the called for 2/3 cup of butter, it comes to 1 tsp short of a cup. Again, I round up. I also reduce the sugar because we are fans of less sweet chocolate, not for healthy reasons because it's still a lot of sugar and a full cup of butter! These are more fudgey brownies, not cakey at all. So here is my altered recipe. It is fab:

1 cup butter
1 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup optional extras (i.e. chocolate chips, chopped nuts, candy pieces...)

Preheat oven to 350° F

Grease bottom and sides of pan - I use an 8"x12" jelly roll pan, but the original recipe calls for a 9" square.

Melt butter with cocoa over low heat, cool for 5 minutes. (Originally I thought this wasn't necessary, since I'm not using baking chocolate that needs to be melted, but it does make it mix much more smoothly, so I melt the butter with the cocoa now.)

Beat sugar, vanilla, eggs in medium bowl; beat in chocolate mixture; beat in flour until just blended. Add optional extras. Spread in pan.

Bake 30-40 minutes or just until pulling away from sides of pan.

For Rodgers' birthday, Nate wanted to do a bicycle cake, so I used chopped Snickers to make a bicycle and stick figure Rodgers on top of his brownies.

Looks silly, but Rodgers dubbed it The Best Brownies Ever Made.

I'm afraid of Kenyan driving

I'm 30 years old. I've been driving since I was 16. And driving here scares me.

Bamburi traffic, though it doesn't really look scary when the cars aren't moving.

In Bamburi (Mombasa), I would occasionally drive myself and the boys to church when Rodgers went early. Then we started going to a new church that was farther away and would require too much traffic driving (for me), and I left it up to Rodgers.

Sometimes I would pick Nate up from school. We had chosen his school specifically because it was close enough that we could walk if we had to. This meant that I could also drive there without encountering the scary traffic.

Twice I drove all the way to the main highway to pick Rodgers up when he had taken a matatu to do business in Kilifi. But I am still afraid of driving on that highway down there, much less driving "in town," on the actual island of Mombasa. I'm a chicken. What can I say?

While I had walked to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread or some onions and shopped on my own that way, I had lived here more than a year without being able to drive myself to the grocery store. The great thing about moving to Kilifi is that the traffic here isn't so scary. There aren't so many matatus - or cars for that matter. Most Kilifi traffic is in the form of tuk tuks and boda bodas. I had been planning to drive more once we moved here. I did today. And it was fine!

Rodgers had business in Mombasa this afternoon (funny that when we lived there, he seemed to always have business here, and now it's the other way around). He left us the car, and when Ben woke up from nap, we went to Tuskys before picking Nate up from school. By ourselves! We celebrated with ice cream (what else?).

Now my challenge is getting used to driving on 4WD roads. Maybe I'll tackle Mombasa traffic next year.