What we've been doing...

First and far most importantly, we have been sleeping during the hours that Seattle residents usually sleep.  Yay!  I always wake up between two and three during which time I feel hopelessly awake but three nights in a row I cannot remember how these episodes end and wake up feeling very rested near six am.  Yay!  This is a huge relief.  Lulu has been waking Tommy and me and for punishment she has skipped her nap today in hopes that she will go back to being the last one up.  We will see.

The kids have almost completed exploring (ahem, wrecking) my parents' house and so we have started to go on outings.  Honestly, that we made it more than a week with so few was lucky, but it feels like work to have to pack up snacks and leave the house.  I would've written that we pack up snacks and raincoats, but my children do not have raincoats and the ones I ordered have not been delivered.  We need them, though, as the weather has been odd and amid sun there have been hard bursts of rain.  

Yesterday we went to the Seattle Aquarium.  As my high school job was on good ol' Pier 59, at the Omnidome which no longer exists, it is very strange for me to go there.  I tried to enter through the wrong door.  But, it's a better aquarium than it used to be and we had a nice time.  Fast though, as Tommy seemed to be worried that there was something better ahead that we should be viewing.  

We have huge octopuses in Puget Sound.  HUGE. 

Lulu loved this diver. She waved and couldn't stop looking at him.

Climbing on a statue outside the Aquarium.  Lulu couldn't make it up by herself which is unusual, but meant she needed a spotter.  Thanks, Grandma Nancy!

Okay.  So this is a herd of goats that Seattle uses to landscape hard-to-reach spots.  Like under the viaduct.  I rolled my eyes but I actually think it's neat.  But soooooooo Seattle.

Grandma got an easel before we arrived and Lulu spends a lot of time there.  This is called "Rainforest with a Cheetah."  And she has pants on but you can't tell.  Apparently the shirt was too confining.

Today we went to Lincoln Park.   Doesn't my kid look enormous? 

Seattle Aquarium naturalists were there and thank God because somebody has to answer the questions.
They were great. 

Not a great picture.  This was steep but Lulu kept up.

The kids have been very busy doing things like having dance parties and making banana bread and picking strawberries and doing all the things I don't really have enough energy to do.  OH!  And we went to a family swim on Monday morning and guess what Lulu did???  SHE SWAM BY HERSELF.  It was a huge breakthrough and though she's far from an independent swimmer she is going to be one at a much earlier age than her big brother.  I am so impressed (and she knows it, whenever I scold her she likes to remind me about how she swam by herself).

My sister is about to pop, behold:  sidandemmathews.blogspot.com
She thinks it's a boy, what do you think?

Two things I've been waiting for

Yesterday was a big day for two important reasons.  (These are not necessarily in order of importance.)  

First, look at how many strawberries mom picked.  It took her two hours, with 'help' from Tommy and Lulu.

 Second, look who I got to babysit all day long!!  Baby Millie!  Isn't she cute? She sure likes that paci, which is why I think it's appropriate that it is included in her photo.  She has a very sweet personality and even though she does occasionally get angry, she is easy to soothe.  She is nearly three months old and feels like a feather compared to the person I am normally carrying around everywhere.

We are still painfully jetlagged but at least the kids sleep until three reliably and Tommy slept until four this morning.  We are on the way out of this, I do believe.

And we're in Seattle!

It must be with some trepidation that you have decided to read this post.  "Hmmm," you may be thinking, "do I really want to know how a fourteen hour flight with two young children went?  Do I actually want to read about the reality of trying to adjust to an eleven hour time difference?" But you're here now so you may as well skim this post, right?

First, the flight.  It sucked.  But, apart from Tommy vomiting about 12 hours into the flight, it was totally best-case scenario.  (And even the vomiting was okay as we made it into the bathroom.  What are the chances?)  As we walked into the plane, I was overcome by a feeling of calm.  I think the realization that we were stuck and I was committed somehow helped me relax.  We had some confusing moments - Tommy refused his lunch from the flight attendant because "we are having lunch at Grandma's!"  "Yes, we are sweetie, but in ten hours.  You should probably eat it."  But by and large, they are good little travelers and they are game for whatever silly games I suggest and they most importantly like television.  Each of them slept for about an hour, but not the same hour.

 Here we are boarding the flight from Muscat to Dubai.  That's the new airport in the background.  (As we drove past one time, Eli said, "there's Daddy's airport!" or something like that and little Lulu exclaimed, "OH, DADDY!  How did you do it?")

Lulu liked the eye mask.

Second, the jet lag.  Which is much worse than the flight.  (Of course it's better in that we have a bit more space to deal with it.)  But on night one, Tommy woke up at midnight and Lulu woke up at 2:30.  Last night, I woke up at 1, Lulu woke up at 2, and Tommy woke up at 3:15.  If we can all make it until 3 tonight, I will be happy.  I will know we are on the road to making it to 5, and right now I feel like that is all I will ever hope for in this life.  (Let us hope that is not true and I rekindle some of my ambition when I am a bit more rested.)  I had a moment on Saturday night of wishing I had not already purchased our tickets home for Christmas, but OH WELL.

The kids are having so much fun here.  Tommy can barely handle going to bed or resting because he feels that it is wasted play time.  He has seen three caterpillars (all the same species, he is careful to explain), a bald eagle, crows, a blue jay, and he has also caught a dead bee in his bug box.  Lulu is enjoying having new adults to boss around, and is enamored of "Akota".  She has participated in feeding him every time he has eaten since our arrival.  I am mostly not doing anything because I am so tired, although I did do some yoga this morning at 4.  And I ran outdoors for the first time in five months yesterday and now I have shin splints.  I am slightly bitter that due to my offspring I cannot take a sleeping pill and just get this sorted.

I'm hoping to stay up until 7 tonight, but that is feeling ambitious right about now.  Seattle (and Portland!) friends, I will be in touch soon.  I just have to get over feeling so badly and then we can  get together and perhaps I won't fall asleep while we are chatting.

It is so nice to be outside so much.  I love it.

Wrapping up...

Guess what? Today was Tommy's last day of kindergarten!  When I picked him up (and his little friend, who is over for a play date), I said, "OH MY GOD YOU'RE FIRST GRADERS!" and they assured me that for the rest of the day they are actually still kindergarteners.  Thank goodness.

 Getting onto the bus, the last day.  (Note that the bus doesn't say "THE AMERICAN SCHOOL" anywhere on it.  That right there is a safety measure.)

 As it's the end of school, we have been inundated with the kids' work, report cards, journals, Tommy even got a yearbook, etc.  I have been laughing so hard I've cried at times while looking at this stuff. (For example, Tommy's weekend journal has some real gems including the weekend he "went on a submarine. It was awsum.")  The art below takes the cake, however for making me laugh.  See the brown/black gentleman in green? That's Eli.  I'm pretty sure you can guess who the others are.

 Here's our last play with Grace before summer (they left to Scotland today).  Good times!

Two things about living in Muscat

I think the fact that we are leaving on Saturday for 10 weeks has something to do with this flurry of posts about life here.  Whatever the reason for the timing, I hope you are finding them interesting.  When I got to Seville when I was 20 and I was so horribly homesick (and after my father had refused to allow me to come home early!), my friend Nora -- who was just completing her term abroad -- advised me to ignore all my homesick and just focus on noticing and recording all the differences.  It is advice I have come back to again and again.

We live in a complex called the Wave and it is at all times teeming with workers mostly focused on the plants and trees (although also doing things like washing and polishing the garage floors, and scrubbing out the recycling and trash bins).  We were outside waiting for Tommy's bus when this man slipped off his shoes and began to climb the palm tree right off our patio.  Lizzie has loved to climb the palm trees since we arrived and so she rushed off to help him.  I got her out of the way before the branches he was trimming began to fall.

One thing that is very fascinating and incredible to expats in Muscat is the parking situation.  It is pretty much a free-for-all.  You can park anywhere you like (I have noticed only ONE exception to this, and it's at the big Mutrah Souk where I have never driven myself).  Anyway, my favorite is when people park up on the footpaths in the mall parking garage.  It makes me laugh every time because just how special would you have to believe you and your car are to do that? SO special.  (Do you like the arabic writing on my side mirror? So do I.)

Too many fairy tales

My daughter looked at me a couple of days ago and said, "Mommy, you true love Daddy."

And I nodded and said, "yes, I do, and I am throwing away that fairy tales CD.*"

Luckily, she doesn't spend all her time thinking about princesses and true love.  Behold:

Although, who knows what she is thinking about??

*I had to think pretty hard to make sure I wanted to reference a CD not a DVD.  This confusion of mine really frustrates and irritates Eli, but not quite as much as when I refer to the DVD player as the VCR.

One (more) thing about living in Muscat

It is now so hot and humid that when you step outside while wearing your sunglasses, they fog up and it is impossible to see.

Perhaps those of you living in places other than, say, Seattle and London, have experienced this phenomenon, but I have not and pretty much hate it.

I stepped outside to take this photo and both my glasses and iPhone screen fogged up.  So here you go:  a nice look at my wrinkles and pores as well as my foggy glasses.  I couldn't see anything at all.

Also:  many of you probably already knew this but I recently learned that 'halal' means 'not sinful' (under Islamic law).  And here I thought its definition was something about the proper way to kill and butcher an animal.  

One thing about living in Muscat

So we were driving back into Muscat (this is probably two kilometers from the Wave, which is where we live), we noticed this truck that was dripping water from the tailgate, and when I peeked inside I saw that it was a truckload of sardines! (The driver is talking on his phone.)

So Eli slowed down so I could take a quick photo for ALL OF YOU and then we carried on.  But at the next light, we saw a guy talking to the driver (the truck was still on the road).  The guy handed the driver some cash, and then, because the light changed, walked as the truck slowly drove along while he got his sardines.

Turtles! (One of the very best things we have done in Oman.)

Yesterday afternoon, later than intended but what else is new, we packed up the car and embarked on a drive down the coast of Oman.  

A couple of months ago, I called Ras Al Jinz, a Green Turtle Reserve, to inquire when we would be most likely to see turtles if we came to stay and go on the guided turtle walks.  The woman told me that June and August are the best months for turtles and so I booked a room with two sets of bunkbeds (the cheapest option for four people, and this place is pricey).  

I can say with absolutely certainty that by yesterday Eli and I were both dreading the trip, for two main reasons.  First, our children are not awesome in the car.  (I blame this on the fact that they have spent very little time in cars in their lives.)  Our response to this is not necessarily something that helps our sanity:  we plug the iPad into the car speakers, wedge the iPad in between our seats, and try to talk to each other above the soundtrack to whichever movie is on (the way there was "Finding Nemo"; the way home was "Tangled").

The second reason we were dreading the trip was that we knew that the turtles lay their eggs (and hatch) at night, and that we would be going on 1km long walks to and from the beach at 8:30pm and again at 4:00am.  Our children are always in bed by 7:30pm, and while they are early risers, they are almost always asleep at 4:00am (I fear that we have a stretch coming where this will not be the case but that's what you get when you take your children on trips with 11 hour time differences).  So we knew we would most likely be carrying tired children rather significant distances in the middle of the night.

I suppose this is a good moment to acknowledge my husband's willingness to do the crazy things I decide we must do in order to live happy and full lives.  I mean, tell me, how does one go on living, not having seen Green Turtles laying their eggs?  In Oman, my husband gets one day off each week and many of them have been sold out with these types of sort-of-fun-sort-of-not-fun activities.  Eli is a good sport as well as a good person.

But you guys.  This experience actually was amazing.  The pictures below capture the morning walk well, but there were no cameras permitted on the nighttime walk.  The flashes are so disturbing to the turtles that they will turn around and go back into the water without laying their eggs.  (And, you really can't photograph anything without a flash because it's pitch black.)

We saw a few baby turtles (so so so adorable!) and five mamas burying their egg clutches.  Only two or three turtles mature per 1000 eggs laid, so the babies were likely eaten by fish once they got into the ocean. On land, the eggs are hunted and eaten by foxes as well as crabs.  Once the eggs hatch, if foxes find the little packs of turtle babies, they bite and kill as many as they can so they can have a proper meal before they all run away.  On our way back from the nighttime walk, Tommy found a dead little baby turtle, and the guide said that the foxes were the likely cause of its death.  (Tommy did not find the dead baby turtle overly disturbing, to be honest.)

Eli and I enjoyed this activity much more than our children did, and having the kids with us made it pretty rough.  I think that if I were going to do it again (and I just might, depending on who comes to visit us), I would put the kids to bed at the normal time and only do the morning walk.  It was hard to wake up, but there were fewer people on that tour and we saw just as many turtles and it wouldn't have messed the kids up quite so badly.  We didn't get back from the 8:30pm tour until 10:00pm.  (My kids are very funny about the dark because they aren't usually awake in the dark and they think it's very interesting and noteworthy.)  I would also have dinner somewhere other than the lodge, even if it was a PB&J because the lodge restaurant was way to expensive and not that great.  

My final comment (apart from the photo captions) is that I can't imagine going anywhere to see the turtles other than this reserve.  It is sketchy at this reserve -- you can't shake the feeling that a group of 30-50 people is disturbing the turtles, it seems pretty disorganized by the guides, and our fellow tourists were borderline rude (on the nighttime tour, people actually ran toward the guides when they indicated there were turtles, which seems dangerous in the dark as well as risky for the hatching turtles).  So, going somewhere that didn't focus on the wellbeing of the turtles would be fairly depressing I imagine.  

A mama burying her egg clutch.  They dig a hole, lay the eggs, and then cover the eggs.  They do this sort of deceptively, as there is a hole left at the end, but it is about a meter in front of where the eggs are actually buried, so that predators will look in the wrong place for the eggs.

These were our fellow turtle tourists.  What do you think those people had in their backpacks?  (Asks the lady who did not carry any water on the nighttime walk and had very thirsty children as a result.)

A baby flapping his way into the ocean.  If the babies see lights, they go toward the light instead of the ocean, so one of them accompanied us up the beach during the nighttime walk.  Thankfully he was discovered (before someone stepped on him!) and carried down the beach to help him make it into the water.  

The guide, Tommy, Lulu, and me watching the baby turtle.

Here's a turtle crawling back into the ocean after finishing the whole egg laying process.  That nice man grabbed Tommy so that he wasn't directly in front of the turtle -- I think it was hard for Tommy to override the instinct to come to where we were when he saw the turtle heading directly at him.

The tracks they leave in the sand are very distinctive.  The beach this morning had loads of the tracks on it.

Tommy took this photo -- not so bad except that Grandpa Ollie might not like it because our heads are cut off.  Grandpa Ollie hates that (understandably).

There were so many crabs on the beach!

Tommy found a very tall rock.  So he climbed it.

Lulu didn't want to walk.  But I could barely stand up straight any more from the carrying and her daddy was sort of over it too.  Poor Lulu!!!

Lulu settled into walking and found herself enjoying the morning (it's about 6:00 here).  The lodge is in the distance.  Also, she picked out that outfit herself.

Our room.  The kids slept on the tops, obviously.

We stopped at a random beach near a sink hole that we intended to visit but skipped.

Bringing the trip full circle:  on the random beach was a dead turtle.  Very sad.

Injured!

We have a three-day weekend in Oman (it's the Prophet's Ascension) and so last night Tommy climbed off the bus (very, very cute) and came inside to play with Lizzie and Grace.  Not long after, I heard a shriek and Tommy came running into the living room and said he'd hit his head.  I didn't look at it, just picked him up and cuddled him, and then Leigh told me quietly that it was bleeding.  

So we went into the kitchen and I got out a towel and tried to clean it up and figure out what scope of the injury.  There was blood all over Tommy's head and shirt, and my shirt (and even in my hair) and so we decided to go to the ER.  

This was my first experience seeking medical attention in Muscat, but there is a private hospital very near to our house and so I packed up the kids and the iPad in the car and we set off.  And you know what? We walked in there and a very nice nurse (a guy who I would bet is from the Philippines) asked me Tommy's name and took him back into a room and started cleaning the wound.  There was a pediatrician around who took a look at the wound and chatted with the attention-starved Lizzie while the nurse shaved Tommy's head and put the steri-strips on. 

Behold:

The biggest bummer? No swimming for five days.  I have no idea how we'll spend our afternoons.  Dance parties?  Feel free to give me suggestions for dealing with high energy levels and hundred degree heat.  (He still asks daily to go to the park.)

PS:  I put notes in the kids' lunchboxes and yesterday when I unpacked Tommy's he had flipped over the note and written:  "To Lura, I love you to deth xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox."  This is nice for my mental list of "it's totally worth it!" parenting moments to help me stay calm in the "what the hell am I doing?" parenting moments.

I'd like you to meet my daughter...

Ariel the Mermaid.

Last night I called her Lulu and was reprimanded:  "I'M NOT LULU, I'M ARIEL!"  (Also last night she told me that she hated me and was going to throw me in the rubbish bin, but that's for another post isn't it.  She's also planning to throw her bunk beds into the rubbish bin because she hates taking naps.)

Yesterday, her best friend Grace gave her this Mermaid dress, and Lulu has had it on ever since.  In the middle of the night last night she whispered that she wants a mermaid party and I have to get balloons and party plates.  When we picked out her clothes last night, it was easy peasy because she wanted to wear her mermaid dress to school and I knew that I would lose that fight if I chose to start it.  She woke up this morning, came into where Eli and I were exercising and demanded help putting on the dress.

You can't tell (they didn't want photos taken) but here they were walking their dogs.

Grace.  Her mom calls her Gracie Pops sometimes so my children also call her that, as in, "May we take this chocolate milk to Gracie Pops?" or "Can we go to Gracie Pops' pool?"

Tripping along...

Two things about living in Muscat

I think it's interesting to note the differences here and there are two things I've been meaning to mention for a while now.  (Yes, this is a very random post.)

First.  Our taps do not have any cold water.  You can get lukewarm water, but that's as cold as it gets. This of course makes sense, but it's strange to run lukewarm baths for the kids and plan to adjust the temperature up, as you can't adjust down.

Second.  On three occasions when I have handed the baggers at the supermarket my reusable bags, they have carefully packed them into a plastic bag for me.  These fellows have never seen seen reusable bags before, and you must keep your eye on them.  They are also hesitant to put more than two items into one plastic bag, so you can pretty much end up with as much plastic in your trunk as comprises the plastic island floating in the ocean if you're not careful.

Our Fancy Dubai Weekend

The kids and I fly to Seattle two weeks from today, and Eli and I decided that it would be nice for the four of us to spend some time together before we don't see Eli for six weeks.  So, we went to Dubai on Thursday afternoon and came back this afternoon.  It was a quick trip but it was really nice!  We stayed at a nice hotel and spent yesterday at a waterpark.  Here are a few photos.

This is the view from our hotel room.

Lulu warming up.

Guess who is a great little swimmer now? He's working on handstands.  As Eli (who hadn't seen him swim in a long time and was pleasantly surprised) said, "well, obviously.  He didn't need pricey private lessons at the health club, he needed free lessons from high schoolers."

His freestyle needs work.  If he's tired, he uses just his right arm.

Treading water.

The little-girl-bum-in-a-bathing suit.  JUST SO CUTE.

The two reasons we were so late to the airport that we nearly missed our flight.