Nursery School?

We have heard rumors from the other famlies at the language school, that there is a nursery that will take foreign kids. Normally this is all tied to your passport/visa, but being a backwater town, I guess this place is getting away with it for now.
I haven't really considered putting Lj in nursery school until coming here and realizing that she needs more interaction than I can really give her, and with another baby on the way in a few weeks, maybe it would be good too look at some options.
I realize that in the US this can be a major deal for people - the expense, the choices, the location etc etc. One of the things I love about life here is the simplicity. There is only one place! It costs about $3.5 per hour or about $100 for 5 full days a week. I'm not kidding. I felt like telling her "honey - you could charge five times that amount and us foreigners would still pay you!!" Of course that would come out a little differently in Arabic....
It is located in a two story villa - meaning house. villa is just the word we use here. It is for kids 0-5 years of age and she currently has 20 kids with three staff. Two learning rooms, a TV room, two play rooms and a place for babies. No shortage of loving on kids and I'm sure a ton of sugary snacks (= I was initially against having Lj in there every day thinking she didn't really need that much, but we might do two hours a day. It would give her something of her own after the baby is born and the added bonus of the arabic learning would be FABULOUS. Of course, we don't know how long all this will last given the border and the state of flux our life is in, but we're just settling on this for now.

Catching Up

It is Monday evening now. We left the house Sunday morning EARLY to cross the border for my dr appointment. I had to get to the Ultrasound waiting room 30 min before the dr got there to start my wait in line. I was supposed to have a full bladder so I was downing coffee, juice and water until I thought I'd burst.

There were already 5 women seated in the room when I got there, and I ended up getting there an HOUR before the dr because we just happend to get in the fast line at the border (= Yeah, Tom.

All the waiting rooms/areas are segregated here, but they usually have two categories - Family and Women. The family one is for men and their families. Apparently that didn't work on this day because I was asked to leave to sit in the women's one while Tom and Layla stayed in the other one. So Lj was quite happy to run back and forth and chatter endlessly to everyone in between (=

They waited a little while longer and then Tom was meeting with a "realtor" to look at some housing on that side of town. We are thinking of moving and someone heard of a British fellow who is acting as a realtor which is SOOOO helpful. When trying to find housing, working with a local or an Indian fellow who responds "Inshallah" to everything is pretty difficult.

So he and Tom meet at this house and he gets out of his car wearing sweat pants, flip flops, a bad case of bedhead and a T-shirt that says "I'd quit drinking but I'm not a quitter" in very large letters. Hmmmm. And he's showing houses that go for $2500 a month. Not a great experience overall but we learned that prices of houses vary DRASTICALLY and you never know what you are going to be looking at until you actually get there....and that there are trade-offs if you don't want to hear a lot of Inshallahs.

Meanwhile, I am back at the hospital being told that we CAN try for a normal labor, so that is very good news. If we were going to have to do the C-section, he wanted to do it next monday, in 8 days! I was TOTALLY unprepared for that.

As Tom tried to make his way back from the last house with the "realtor" they got lost (go figure how that happens in a town of 60K) and Lj fell asleep. This never happens in the car. Turns out she had a fever of 103 and she's been fighting it ever since. Not a great day for a really sick kid.

We ended up having lunch with some folks who have an idea for Tom and I and we wanted to explore it a little more - nothing overly concrete. But it was wonderful to meet at their house, eat lunch and then take a family nap. I love that all of us like to nap (= She conked out for 2 hours and woke up on fire with the fever again.

Long story short, we actually spent the night with our friends because she was so sick we didn't want to do a border crossing with her feeling so poorly. Tom did an awful lot of caring for her when she woke up last night -she is a TOTAL daddy's girl at this point. I was pretty happy to try and sleep (=

Anyway, she woke up sick, threw up all over Tom just after he'd gotten dressed and we decided to stay for the laundry for to be done and for another nap (=

Thankfully we didn't have any trouble at the border other than the typical honking and dodging of vehicles as too many cars try to fit into too few lanes. sigh.

So we've worked out several versions of when to get visas, cross the border blah blah blah to be ready for the baby.

Tom will probably go spend the weekend across town just so he can hang out with his buddies for awhile. Should be fun for him and some good connecting time. Layla has totally charmed them, by the way (= They are quite playful with her and she plays all sorts of running around the mejulis games with them and kisses them to get them to let her get by and so on. She left her little lamby there on the last visit and they were wanting to buy her a new toy instead of giving her back the old one and Tom was delicately trying to explain the sensitivies of a 2.5 year old to old toys vs new toys (= They don't get that at all!

Well, anyway. We are home, it is evening, Layla is down in bed for the most part and Tom and I trying to figure out what to do. Rather pooped. Hope she sleeps through the night.

What a hubby....

One of the things about living the life we live is that Tom has to learn all sorts of skills he probably wouldn't have to learn in the US. As things break around the house, he figures out how to fix them. We've had HORRIBLE water pressure in one of our bathrooms and with the second baby coming and my wonderful mom coming for several weeks, we figured it was time to finally address the issue. Turns out it was a simple fix of just replacing all the external plumbing pieces. He did the same in our bathroom and we have a LOVELY shower experience now. One of those small things that just makes life better (=

He's wearing one of his "house candoras" like the local guys wear. They are very cool and comfortable. They are wonderful for pregnant ladies too, I can attest! Mine are just tight enough around the middle that they aren't that comfortable and I certainly can't go out in them. We can visit our neighbors dressed like this, but not really go into town.....

Where we stand - please pray

I would send this out in an email, but my Outlook never really synched properly when I shifted to the "new-to-me" laptop. Yet another change in my life that happend the week we left (= New Laptop and going from XP to Vista. sigh.

So if you all could pray for us the next several days, we'd really appreciate it. We are looking into where to have the baby and if we need to move across town. Both could happen rather quickly.

On Sunday we'll find out (hopefully!) if we are doing a traditional delivery or a C-section. If we can go for a traditional delivery, we need to decide if we are going to do it across town, or in Dubai or elsewhere. We do have a place to stay there if need be. If it is a C-section we can easily plan our visas around that so we can stay in our home and deliver in the same hospital where we had Layla.

On Sunday Tom is also going to look at some places across town where we may potentially move. The border is getting more and more strict - now they are not letting ladies drive alone across the border. This is very odd.

The best chance for staying in our house is to get a residence visa from the UAE. You are apparently not hassled if you have this visa. You still have to deal with the traffic to cross the border however.

Getting the residence visa would be at least about 6-8 months. We have good leads and expected this to come eventually. But nothing like that moves quickly here and the border is becoming too arduous to wait it out.

So we are trying to pray and decide if we need to move NOW across town where we can live without any issues on our current visitor visas so we are not dealing with the hassles of the border. If Tom's main group of friends lived on OUR side of town, this would not be an issue. But because they are across the border, he has to negotiate the border each time he visits them.

I hope this makes sense (=
So please pray for clear guidance about whether we should move across town (i.e. in the next two weeks)
And for guidance about where to have the baby.

Thanks so much - again, Sunday is the day we'll get a little more information. Whether it is enough to make any decisions remains to be seen.

Our Toilet

Lest I forget my initial reaction to our toilet, I wanted to make sure I took a picture and
posted a quick note. When we came home this time we were both shocked and delighted at
this hideous toilet seat.

Toilet seats are one of those things that cannot seem to be found here. We had this flimsy plastic one that never really stayed attached in the back, it had duct tape on it (fake, mind you) and slid around everywhere if you didn't aim just right when you sat down.

This one feels SO sturdy and secure. I'm loving it. Even IF the color and design belongs elsewhere (=

By the way, the hose sprayer you see on the wall is what one uses instead of toilet paper. I had to hunt around for toilet paper when we first got here because I forgot that it is essentially a western thing.

So I probably have a more elaborately decorated toilet than anyone else out there (do share if you think otherwise, I'd love to see the competition....)

Anyway - just wanted to share (=

Layla's bed

One of our issues setting up our house this time, was what to do with a bed for Lj. I'm not a big fan of toddler beds as they are useful for such a short time. We'd like to have a bed for guests, so we were sort of hoping to have a guest bed in her room and that she'd sleep on that.

Haven't found a bed rail-type thing yet that will work, so that option is out. Border issues are making shopping for the rail a wee bit more complicated.

THANKFULLY, she has not had any trouble getting used to the mattress on the floor thing. This is FAR more likely to be what she'll sleep on whenever we travel around in this part of the world and I'm glad it hasn't been an issue. She still does fall/slide off (=

I took these pictures because she is VERY into being a mama these days and this is her baby going down for a reading nap. Lj still does two naps a day - the morning one being a reading nap where she lies in bed with books. This baby is apparently drowning in books (=

Part 2

Sadly, I can't remember what else I thought was blog-worthy about our visa hopping trip. It seemed like a very big, draining, cultural experience worth trying to share, but now it has faded in my memory. I'll just give you the rest of the story as I remember it:

We drove from J and V's house which is about an hour away and made it to the border. We sat in a waiting room full of people staring at two empty desks. Lovely, shiny, fake wood desks with all sorts of stamps and ledgers on them. No people to use all that stuff, however. I was grateful the air conditioners were on.....

Finally someone did come and the tension just escalated as everyone had somewhere to be. I told Tom I wasn't going to stress until we had 20 mins until our dr appt. Thankfully, at 15 mins until the appointment we had our visas, hopped in the car and then had to drive the 300 yards to the little booth. However, they were now checking cars. This means you are all really slowed down while guys in reflective sunglasses give you long stares and absolutely no indication of whether they want you to stop until the last possible minute. Tom and I always drive up saying "Does he want us to stop? I don't know! Just keep driving..." Needless to say we (read: I) was more stressed than normal about this ambiguous part. Then we get to the little booth and the guy wants to try and find the actual stamp. Someday I'll post a photo of my passport pages. It is page after page after page of the same looking stamps. It takes AGES to get the right stamp. Tom kept saying that we had JUST done the stamps. Finally the little dude realized the futility of looking and just gave up. Attaboy. We sped off and made it to the hospital JUST in time.

Anyway - I think all on that for now. We are really praying and hoping to see what the Lord will provide for visas for us or for housing. The most straight forward thing to do would be to join the mass exodus of people leaving this side of town, but the rental costs would go up about 5 times. We just can't afford that at the moment. Plus, we lose all our friendships here.

The ideal situation are residence visas from the other side of town. Go figure, they'll let you cross the border without any hassle if you have a residence visa from their country, but not a visit visa ....even though you techinically are a visitor - even if it is a daily visitor. Residency is not a quick thing, it involves a lot of paperwork, official things from the US, blood work, TB tests, HIV tests etc etc. They let anyone waltz into the country on a visit visa, but getting residency is a chore and a labor.

So, who knows. We knew this was an issue coming back but being 9 months pregnant with all these hassles has us considering two other places to have the baby (a 3rd if you count just doing it at home with our friend the midwife!). I am surprisingly calm and undisturbed about this. I chalk it up to being in the zone of giving birth. i know that i 2-4 weeks (again, c section still an option.....sigh) we are having another baby and my days are pretty defined regardless of where I have it or where we are living. It is poor Tom who shoulders most of the burden of all of this.

Speaking of which, he is out for the evening in AA to see his friends. It has been almost a week since he's seen them and if he has trouble, he'll just spend the night at their house. Hopefully he'll make it home okay. Though if he doesn't, it'll still be a good time with his buddies so no real loss there.

It may not look like much to you....

You may look at this and think "what a lot of ground beef".

I look at it and think "wow, that took a lot of planning, several days and the risk of a cancelled visa, a possible 2 hour detour to avoid the cancelled visa, a cooler full of ice and big bag of snack food to keep Layla happy in the event of any of the above coming to pass.

We've mentioned that the border was going to be an issue before we landed. We were aware of that. Tom had two weeks of crossing with no issues, I've had two dr appointments with only the hassles of waiting in an over-crowded facility....but no visa issues until Friday when we were forced to check out.

So on Saturday we decided to drive to the border on OUR side of town (25 mins away... our town is essentially in no man's land because you can live here without a visa, sort of....) and then on to the next town to see our dear friends J and V.
Getting everything together and in the car was one thing. Crossing the border was a whole other issue. We got there about 7pm and found out that there is now a $35 penalty per person per day for not getting a new stamp in your passport after the stamp from the previous country is cancelled. They are effectively trying to stop people from staying in town with no visa from either country. This'll do it in my book.

So $100 and one hour later, we are on our way. We're still not sure what took an hour. There were only about 3 other people in the entire building. It is a lovely building, by the way. I convinced Lj to run around it in circles (it is actually a circular shape on the inside). I loaned my pen to two sets of people filling out paperwork. They'll give you all the paperwork in the world but not a single pen.

Once we were in the car again about to pull out, Lj says she has to pee. Sigh. I have tried to keep her in panties since she really is potty trained, but with all the transitions and crazy schedules and automatic flushing toilets (terrible invention for the toilet-training set), she is better off in diapers.

Anyway - once in the car, we decided to stay TWO night with J and V so we could avoid the possible penalty on the other end of not zooming right through town all in one day.

We decided to zoom through town today for my doctors appointment. We were really praying that after the appointment we could get back into town without our visa being cancelled, then having to drive through town (again in one day!) to the other border so we could have at least one valid visit visa.

Sigh. Just writing this makes me tired. I'm going to finish later (=

Lj is about to wake up so I'll have to make this quick. We've been up in D for two days and just got home yesterday afternoon. We were forced to check out of the border and that was pretty discouraging... Tom tried all his tricks but to no avail (=

Then we got home and ants have now invaded Lj's bedroom and bathroom. sigh. None in the kitchen though! That was some progress at least.

We were in D for 2 days to see friends who were flying through on their way to adopt their daughter! they brought TWO more suitcases for us! We can't believe all the stuff we've been able to have brought with us. It sure helps with setting up/settling in to not have to buy all those little things.

On the flip side, we (meaning Tom) has been to the grocery store FOUR times and we've spent a chunk each time and we STILL don't see any food in the kitchen. I mean, I see frozen chicken and vegetables, but it just looks like we have nothing. I wasn't prepared for having to start a kitchen from scratch again. (I haven't really been to the grocery store because he goes while I'm waiting at the drs office...)

Folks left us some stuff but it is SO random. Here is a sampling;
Birds custard powder
large container of sea salt
powdered Dairy topping
lime jello
whole wheat coucous (I swear I left this bag 18 months ago!)
two boxes of Canneloni noodles (no idea how to prepare this)
all my spices in their jars which are hard as rocks. Project for the maid for sure. Where is my maid? Don't know, tried to call, dont' have the energy to track her down beyond what I've already tried so stuff like that isn't getting done.

We have a stairwell that has had no love since we've been home. Tom has dared to poke around and get his tools for fixing this and that (my office chair no longer has handles falling off and doesn't squeek horribly anymore!) but we haven't delved there yet.

So yesterday we were both rather depressed. We knew coming back this time that visa issues were sort of up there in priority, but we'd rather not make it #1 priority. partly because you can't push the process, even if you have a rock solid lead. We have some good leads, but nothing rock solid.

On top of that, the car we are borrowing may only be available for another couple of weeks. Buying a car is a consuming ordeal that takes several weeks. Another thing that can push its way into the #1 slot that we don't really want there at that moment. We'll see about that. Just like our return date was fuzzy, so is the return date for the folks who own the car. Buying a car is connected to the visa issue....have to get someone to register our car for us. Another project. so you have to get the loaner registration person, the car and the seller all in the same place at the same time. Not easy.

Lj is also being less than cooperative. I think some of it is just turning the corner to being three, but I know it is all the transition. She really wasn't one to have tantrums or fits or scream in defiance or anything, but we're seeing all that now. Not sure how to respond...we are just sticking her in time outs all the time at the moment. Neither of us has the patience to deal with screaming defiance....so unpleasant and so unexpected from her.

Then she'll be as sweet as ever for awhile.... Like driving back into our carport after the border saga yesterday, Tom hopped out to open the gate and Lj said "Daddy is such a good daddy!" How funny is that. then she walked in the house and said "I love our O*** home!" Just what we needed.

Well she must have dropped back off to sleep. nope. must run.

btw - while in D we got to go up and see the tallest building in the world! The observation deck was pretty cool. Not too expensive either! Click to see the link - it really is cool.

Lj's current favs

Last night at dinner, Lj told me "I love my new home. Our home in Colorado didn't have riding toys". Ahhh. so simple! Some kind soul who stayed here while we were gone left us THREE riding toys! We leave one outside so she can ride around out there while I water or whatever.

In the evening, about 6/7pm she and Tom go for a walk. This means they walk down the street a little ways, turn left towards the little neighborhood mosque and go into the shop attached to the mosque. Every neighborhood mosque as a little shop - think local 7-11. All the same types of food and candy (= Tom buys her a tiny bag (think Japanese candy size, here) of gummi bears and a little thing of strawberry milk. Needless to say, this is about the highlight of her day.

Running around without clothes on. Yes, many of you know she did this at home, but here she REALLY can because it is so warm!

Dates - anytime and anywhere. She can take the seeds out by herself now, even though she actually swallowed one the other day and pooped it out the Day of the Great Poop when J and V were here. More on that later.

Lynn - the maid across the street. M and V sent her over to help clean the other day and she has a real knack with kids. Lj is now calling her "our Lynn".

Barney and Blues Clues - J and V brought these over when they came for the weekend. We haven't exactly avoided the enormous market of videos created for young kids, I'm just not the shopper that cruises around looking for that stuff. Plus, no one in my family is. Hence, it's all new and fascinating for her (=

Getting a drink out of the water cooler herself. The ultimate in independence. I have her cups, plates and bowls in a low cabinet and we bought her a plastic "coffee mug" and she can get a drink of water out of the cooler for herself now. It took ENORMOUS urging for her to learn she could only take what she could drink. The desire to fill the cup up was so strong at first (= She eventually figured out that she could push the drink thing multiple times and take tons of little sips and then we are all happy.

Looking at ants. Sadly, she can find ants anywhere in this house. She likes to watch where they are going. This started when Tom and I were staring at the floor trying to figure out where the $#@% they were coming from so we could kill them. She didn't figure out this last part (= Tom finally realized that our REAL ant problem (could it be worse?) is a huge number of ENORMOUS ant hills out in the yard. Not sure how to solve this other than laying down lots of ant poisen powder. He did that last night before their walk outside.

Breastfeeding her dolly. Yes, she has figured this out. When J and V were here this weekend, she got lots of chances to see this in action as Ellie is only 5 months old. Lj is very curious and wants to see how it all works and V was very accomodating. Now Lj sits on the floor with the dolly standing up between her legs, lifts up her shirt and feeds her (=

Daddy putting her to bed - no change here. Always been her favorite thing (-; Mama's quite happy about it too! Her bed is just a mattress on the floor these days and getting up and down from there is nigh on impossible at the moment.

I'm not sure what else she would say....I know she is enjoying her room. She feels totally safe and secure which we can tell by the fact that she's slept through the nights without crying and orders us to leave when she's had enough cuddling before naps/bed (= We're grateful for that.

You all could pray for the pooping issues again. She didn't go for NINE days and that was with using Miralax, three separate doses of laxatives and then we finally went for the suppositories. It all blew the day J and V were here so that was poor timing! She's back to holding it again and I'm a little worried about it. They say that kids can get in the habit of holding and you don't want that but I'm not quite sure how to manage it all. I'm not too stressed, because it worked itself out last time, but I've also heard horror stories about this topic that I'd like to avoid (= Anyway, I would say that is our biggest headache at the moment.