Kyle Starts Kindergarten (And Thoughts From a Former Homeschooler)

This poor, long forgotten blog.  I haven't totally forgotten about it.  Thus, I am going to attempt to revive it now that we are back home in Mokhotlong.

This week we started school with Kyle.  He is so excited about it!  He says he didn't think he was going to like school but now he does!  I'm taking it easy for kindergarten.  I still firmly believe that children learn most from playing, living and exploring their little worlds.  Kyle has been trying to read for months now.  I've been putting him off because I wanted to wait until we got home from America before we started anything structured.  He also loves math like his mama.  He walks around trying to make up math problems for himself.  Weirdo.  I used to do the exact same thing.  He is following me around during the day asking if he can do more school. 

For K-5, we are doing Reading Made Easy, some handwriting and simple math, Uncle Arthur's Story time for character building, Bible memory, read aloud books and lots of games!  He's soaking it up.  I feel like I'm working with a blank slate or a pile of soft clay.  His little heart and mind are so malleable and it touches my soul.  I feel so grateful to be the one who gets to invest in his life everyday!

Reading the Uncle Arthur stories bring me to tears.  I grew up listening to them.  They are great life lessons for children and such sweet and moving depictions of biblical principles.  Kyle listens with his eyes open wide, waiting to learn how the story ends.

I hope Kyle (and his sisters) will grow up loving to learn, loving to be home with us, loving having the people who love him the most as his teachers.  It took me quite a few years to discover how blessed I was that I had the opportunity to experience all those things.  

I grew up homeschooled.  For many years I both loved and hated it. I loved being with my mom and I enjoyed learning what she taught me.  But I desperately wanted to be normal, to fit in and to be accepted by my peers.  I had been teased for much of my life about the fact that I didn't go to real school and thus somehow wasn't a valid learner.  When I finally did attempt school in a classroom setting during high school, it took very little time for me to discover that "real school" wasn't all it was cracked up to be. While I learned a lot through my various teachers, I also learned more than I ever wished to know about the social structure in school.  If you weren't exactly like the mold your peers wanted you to fit into, you would still be teased and ridiculed.  I couldn't shake my desire to not follow, to talk to whomever I wished, and to interact with people of all ages.  Thus I didn't fit into the "normal" mold and was picked on because of it.  

That year I realized how unimportant those things were, popularity and normalcy.  Why did I care so much about fitting in?  I finally realized how much I was gaining from being home, watching my mom, interacting with my siblings, helping around the house and the flexibility that homeschool allowed.  I discovered that my real friends were the ones who liked me because I was me, and popularity wasn't all that important after all.  In the end, I only had a couple close friends.  I still do.  But they were the right friends and for that I am so thankful.  

Oftentimes socialization is the first thing people mention when you say you are homeschooled.  I realize homeschooling isn't for everyone.  But just because you are homeschooled does not mean you are unable to interact with others.  By being homeschooled, I realized that I loved to converse with adults; I could trust them to be more level headed and genuinely kind than my own peers.  I learned to appreciate and not look down on children who were younger than I was.  It didn't matter to me if someone was a year or two (or five) younger or older, if I liked them, I wanted to be their friend.  That didn't fit well into the social structure I saw at school and it caused me plenty of problems.  But now in my adult life, I can appreciate that I enjoy the company of folks much older than I am, because I almost always find myself as the youngest in the group even now!  

Being homeschooled molded my future.  It taught me to be different, to not hold back if I wanted to achieve something - even if it was unusual and not necessarily the "normal" thing to do.  It taught me to respect people of all ages and to go out of my way to include those who were ostracized for one reason or another.  It taught me to be sensitive to other people's feelings because I know how it feels to be teased for being different.  And it taught me that I wanted to homeschool my kids, because I want to invest in their lives and try to show them what being homeschooled taught me.  Plus, I want the satisfaction of knowing I taught them all to read!

Homeschooling has been my plan for my entire adult life and I am thankful I have the opportunity to do it now with my boy.  Here's to hoping it will be as smooth sailing as this first week has been!

~Abby

Sadie Kate's Birth Story

Early last week we learned of some paperwork hassles we weren’t expecting to encounter.  It’s the story of life when living abroad.  After many attempts to call and get information from the US Consulate in Durban, I finally got through to someone and she explained the process we would need to complete to obtain Sadie Kate’s passport and Report of Birth Abroad.  She also informed us that we would be unable to cross back in to Lesotho without these things.  That was major news to us, because we had crossed back in with Ellee without those documents, just her South African birth certificate.  But South Africa changed the laws this January, requiring parents to show their children’s passports as well as their unabridged birth certificates when crossing the border.  We were intending to drive from Durban to Maseru after the birth and apply in Maseru at that Consulate this time, too.  Having to stay in Durban to apply and wait for the paperwork meant still being on our South African visas which run out on November 14th.  Thus, we were looking at a serious time crunch on business days to complete things, get her passport back and get out of South Africa with our baby before we had overstayed our visas.

At my doctor appointment last Friday, the day before my due date, we set an induction date for Tuesday, Oct 27.  I did not want to be induced - I have never wanted to be induced - but we really had no choice except to try to get Sadie to come so she could have a birth date and a passport picture taken.  Then we could submit her application.  The doctor did an internal check that morning and said he didn’t really think I was prime for labor at that point, so we agreed that Tuesday was the longest we could give my body to prepare naturally while still allowing enough business days to wait for her documents to come back.  I really appreciated that the doctor also wasn’t keen to induce because medically everything was fine, but, of course, recognized our predicament.  He explained how the process would go and said because she was my third, it would probably be relatively simple and my body would take the hint.  

The rest of Friday and Saturday came and went without any signs of labor.  On the recommendation of a few friends, I decided to try drinking some castor oil on Sunday afternoon.  I was really afraid to do it, not knowing how it would affect my system, but was desperate to not have to do an induction.  I read hundreds of testimonials online of women who had tried castor oil for induction.  Some were quite comical, for some it had done the trick and for others it had been an absolute nightmare.  I was so nervous to try it I couldn’t eat any lunch, so instead I ate a bowl of ice-cream with a ton of sprinkles.  I said a prayer and took the glug.  The afternoon progressed without any difficulty, just a couple trips to the bathroom and no pain or discomfort whatsoever.  Around suppertime I took another glug and still nothing by 10:45 when I climbed into bed.

I hadn’t fallen asleep before the first contraction came.  It was mild, just barely notable.  I hung out in the bed for nearly an hour and probably had five or six more contractions.  Because the kids were in the room and Kyle was beside me in the bed, I decided to get up and move to the couch as they were getting slightly more intense and it wasn’t as easy to stay quiet and still through them.  Around midnight, I plunked down on the couch and told Jonathan I’d had a few contractions and that it was going to be a long night.  I had read so many castor oil testimonies that said they had experienced some contractions but it never led to anything.  I was still thinking it could be a fluke and thought I’d probably just end up missing a few hours of sleep over nothing.  Nevertheless I alerted my sister in law that I was having some contractions and asked her to call and let my mom know.  On a scale of 1-10 I ranked them at about a 4 and about 20 minutes and a few contractions later, decided I’d start to time them.  Within the next 20 or so minutes, I had six more contractions and they grew significantly in intensity.  

By then I thought I ought to try to write out instructions for the guest house owner, Wendy, who had agreed to come and sleep on the couch if I went in labor during the night.  Why I didn’t write those dumb instructions out before the day after my due date, I don’t know.  I guess I just really believed labor would be slow and boring at first and I’d do it then.   I struggled to write out details for breakfast and lunch and Ellee’s nap time and hoped that would be enough.  I had no idea how long we would be gone.  Jonathan got dressed and started getting things together while I struggled through more rapid contractions.  He called Wendy and let her know we were leaving soon for the hospital.  I waited until a contraction had just finished to rush into the bedroom where the kids were and try to get dressed before another hit.  Wendy came up and I didn’t really want her to see me having contractions, so I ran to the bathroom for the next one.  Then I hurried out to try to talk through the few notes I’d written out and rushed back to the bathroom for another contraction.  By the time I came back out, Jonathan had everything together and we got out the door.  I had to stop for another contraction before we could even get to the car.  It was just after 1AM.

The drive from the guest house to the hospital is about 20 minutes.  I was dreading all the speed bumps we’d have to cross and Jonathan was thoroughly enjoying running all the reds lights.  He said he’d always wanted to be able to do it and that it was apparently genuine cause for breaking the law if you had a laboring woman in the car with you.  The contractions were coming hard and fast, but I was still wondering if they would just stop out of no where.  I had about four or five minutes between them at one point and thought to myself, “great, what if they’ve stopped.”  Wrong.  They kept coming.  I had read in the testimonies that castor oil could make relatively quick labors.  It had not even crossed my mind that I could possibly be very far dilated, though, because my other two labors were relatively long and slow.  And things had just started.  The contractions I experienced with both Kyle and Ellee at 2-3cm were nearly as intense as what I was experiencing in the car.  We parked at the hospital and I realized I didn’t know where I had put the phone.  We looked in the car and in my bags and were struggling to find it.  The phone had the SIM card which we would use for internet to contact our families.  I thought about sending Jonathan back to the guest house to get it.  We kept looking for it while I kept having contractions and finally found it in a side pocket of my hospital bag.  It was about 1:30.

We walked into the hospital and I had to stop to have a contraction before I could speak to the nurse.  They offered me a wheelchair, which I readily accepted, and hurried me down the hall to Labor and Delivery.  They initially started taking me to a labor room when the midwife came and took over.  She wheeled me straight to the delivery room, asking when the contractions had started.  By this time I was pretty much just having one big contraction and was struggling to talk much.  We waited for a slight lull so she could stand me up and without any warning at all, she stripped my clothes right off me.  I was trying to tell her I needed to pee so badly but she told me it didn’t matter, she had to check to see how far dilated I was and I could pee on her if I wanted.  She was a feisty little English woman probably in her fifties.  She checked and checked again and boy, did that hurt, and then said, “yeah I figured.  About 7-8.  What’s your name?”  Jonathan answered for me.  I was shocked.  And I was terrified.  I knew that meant no drugs, and the reality of delivery without any drugs was just absolutely terrifying in that moment.  Both my other deliveries, with epidurals, had been awfully painful.  Sheer panic set in at the reality of having to do it without any meds.  I cried, hard, and must’ve said ten times over that I couldn’t do it.  I probably said it a hundred more times over the next half hour.

The midwife immediately called my Doctor, who naturally was sleeping at 1:45 on a Monday morning, and he said he would be over immediately.  She started throwing the room together for delivery while I kept having miserable contractions and struggling to even catch my breath.  Until we got into the hospital, I was able to at least breathe between the contractions and was trying to breathe well through them.  By this point, I could hardly see straight and I just couldn’t catch my breath.  And my mouth was so dry.  I asked for some water which Jonathan got for me and I sucked a bunch of it down.  I asked if there was anything at all she could give me for the pain and she said, “gas.”  I didn’t like the sound of that.  I asked if it would make me loopy and she said a little but as soon as you stop breathing it, it wears off.  I didn’t want to be loopy for the delivery, but I thought I’d give it a go at least to try to catch my breath at that point.  I sucked and sucked on that stupid gas and it didn’t do a darn thing.  She kept saying you have to breath through the mouth and I was trying but it wasn’t helping.  Nevertheless, Jonathan shoved it in my mouth a few more times with the contractions and it gave me something to focus on other than the incredible pain.

My body started involuntarily pushing and I was (not so quietly) telling the midwife that I needed to deliver the baby.  She was adamant that I needed to wait for the doctor to arrive and I was just as adamant that I couldn’t help it.  She kept checking and said the head wasn’t quite there yet, but my body didn’t care and kept pushing her down anyway.  So involuntary.  So incredibly intense.  So painful.  I was thankful I knew I was the only person in the delivery area (which was entirely separate from the labor and recovery rooms) because I was so loud.  I absolutely could not help it, even though I was trying my hardest to be nice.  Everything I said and did came out so loud!  It was chaotic but I wasn’t trying to be.  I was still just shocked I was so close to fully dilated and I couldn’t wrap my head around what was going on.  And I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

The midwife had gloves on at this point so she could be messing with me, and she kept asking Jonathan to do things so she could keep her gloves clean.  He was opening things and getting her hair out of her eyes for her.  She was sweating profusely.  The bell rang for the door and she told Jonathan to run open it for the doctor.  He later said his wife was parked behind him in the driveway so he decided to take her car, but his access keys were left in his car.  He ran in and also started making requests of Jonathan.  Neither of us understand why another nurse didn’t come in to help that poor midwife, but we figure it might be that it was an otherwise quiet Sunday night and they had sent people home.  We don’t know.  But, I guess it was good that Jonathan had something to do to help, because goodness knows there wasn’t a thing he could do to help me.  He was trying and I was trying to be nice but I couldn’t handle anything touching me.  Although I know I kept grabbing his arm and the midwife’s arm when they were close and I didn’t know why I was doing it but I couldn’t not.  Jonathan swung the spot light around and got it situated while the doctor pulled on his gloves and tried to get ready.  The doctor was so calm and collected and I was so out of control.  I really was.  My body was doing it and I couldn’t help what all it was doing.

With the next contraction, from somewhere deep within, in a place I didn’t know I had, I managed an enormous push.  One single push and she crowned.  And it hurt.  Then I had to wait what felt like an eternity but was probably only about 45 seconds for the next contraction so I could push her shoulders out.  Another enormous push!  Goodnight this girl has broad shoulders, that was the first time I’d ever had to try to push the shoulders out!  And she was born.  It was 2:07.  With Kyle and Ellee, I felt an intense sense of relief when I knew I was done.  This time I didn’t feel that immediately.  I was shocked.  It couldn’t sink in.  She was here.  A couple hours ago I had been climbing into my bed with no signs of labor and there I was with my baby on the chest.

She was here.  Sadie Kate.  The girl who had put me on such a rough and wild ride straight from the start of pregnancy to the delivery.  I checked to make sure she was a girl.  They just left her there, warm and slippery, on my chest.  I was still wearing my regular clothes on top.  Her skin was clean, like Kyle’s had been, and she cried immediately.  Because Ellee was so early, she was covered in vernix and she didn’t breathe well right at first.  I was relieved that Sadie was breathing and crying.  She was big, strong and healthy and I was so thankful to be touching her.  The rest of the stuff the doctor was doing hurt, too, and I wasn’t happy about it.  Incredibly I didn’t need any stitches.  Within a few minutes he left me alone and soon he was headed home to go back to bed.

The midwife asked Jonathan to go check me in to the hospital so she could proceed with identifying me and the baby and handle paperwork.  We hadn’t even signed in on our way through the emergency reception.  While he was gone, I got in touch with my mom to tell her Sadie was born and when he got back he called his parents.  After the paperwork was completed, the midwife suggested I take a shower in the enormous and weirdly beautiful shower in the delivery room bathroom.  I wasn’t sure I could stand up yet but she put a chair in the shower and I managed.  Jonathan held Sadie Kate and sang to her while I sat under the warm water trying to grasp what had just happened.  When I got out and was ready to be wheeled to a recovery room, I was finally able to hold her and just cry.  She was here.  I couldn’t believe it but I was so, so relieved.  

She is a sweet baby.  She likes to snuggle and she loves milk.  Kyle and Ellee are smitten with her and she seems to enjoy them, too.  At least as much as a four day old baby enjoys anything.  She closes her eyes when we kiss her.    She looks a lot like Ellee did as a baby but I also see plenty of Kyle faces, too.  I certainly don’t think she looks a world different from either of them.  Sort of a mix of both.  I’m in love all over again.  

It was hard.  All of it was hard.  But she was worth it.  Every bit of it.

~Abby

City Life

The first Saturday we were here, we just happened to go to a nearby mall and find Minnie and Mickey dressed up and walking around to greet the children.  My kids are huge Minnie and Mickey fans and they were absolutely giddy to find the characters!  They’d never seen anything like that.  I found a sign in the mall and read that they were going to have a “special guest” around the mall each Saturday morning this month.  So I noted them and we’ve visited all of them.  The next week we found a Minion and last week we found Spiderman.

When I told them that it was going to be Spiderman, Kyle was absolutely beside himself.  Because all plans are sort of up in the air based on what Sadie girl may or may not do, I haven’t told them who it would be until Friday night.  Kyle was dressed and ready to meet Spiderman by before 7 on Saturday morning.  I then had to try to explain that Spiderman wasn’t coming to the mall until 11am.  So I told them Spiderman was lazy and sleeping in, then he was going to have to wake up and take his shower and eat his breakfast before coming to the mall.  They were okay with that, although we fielded questions all morning about how much longer until Spiderman was going to finish his breakfast.  

The entire time Kyle was in Spiderman’s presence, he was bouncing up and down uncontrollably.  Sheer delight.  The kids wanted to hug him and give him lots of high fives.  It was a banner day in the life of a four year old boy.

On Sunday we tried to go to church but were unable to get there.  Durban had a big bike marathon going on and they had closed down one of the main thoroughfares required for us to get to church.  We tried to figure out how to navigate without using that main highway but we didn’t get anywhere.  Durban reminds me a lot of Atlanta as it has so many suburbs but it’s all basically considered one place.  So imagine shutting down 285 and watching non-locals navigate without it.  Thus, after driving in circles for a while, we decided to change plans.  The kids were disappointed they weren’t going to get to attend Children’s church, as it’s been a novelty for them during our stay here.  Children’s church isn’t a thing in Mokhotlong.  

A friend had mentioned a local coffee shop called Piggly Wiggly and said we needed to check it out.  So we plugged that into the GPS and managed to find it without using the closed road.  I was glad it was open on a Sunday morning.  It was such a beautiful setting, we ate outside while the kids played on the big play gym under the trees.  Jonathan ordered a beef, egg and cheese toast meal and the kids and I split two scones with butter and strawberry jam.  I got an iced decaf coffee which was out of this world and I ordered the kids a freshly squeezed orange juice.  It was lovely, a real treat.  Then the kids saw that there was a small putt putt course nearby and upon inspection, we learned it was only $2 to play 9 holes.  So after we finished our late breakfast, we wandered over to the putt putt place and Kyle and Jonathan enjoyed a quick round.  Kyle had never done any such thing and he was pretty excited to be playing golf like his Pops.  Plus he was wearing a collared shirt for church and we told him it made him look just like a golfer.  He giggled.

My watching buddy

Waiting isn’t one of my strong points, and it sort of feels like we’ve been waiting forever and there is no end in sight.  It’s weird that Ellee came so early, leaving us no choice but to come out of Mokhotlong early just in case.  And now we’ve been waiting for three weeks with no signs of change.  These kids, they keep us guessing from the start!  At least it’s a nice place to wait and we can find special things to do to pass the time.  But I’m more than ready to have this baby and move on the the next phase of waiting….. paperwork.

If only I could sleep as soundly as this one, with the Christmas decoration she borrowed from the landlord's house.... (???) 

~Abby

Waiting.......

I found this place to stay for our baby-waiting-month on a website I use often to find accommodation all around South Africa.  I booked it in May for a few nights when my parents flew in for their visit and, after seeing it, approached the owner about renting it for the entire month of October.  Having one late baby and one early baby, I figured we needed to just plan to settle in for multiple weeks surrounding my due date.  We also knew we needed to find something that had a kitchen so we could cook for ourselves.  Where we stayed in Bloem when Ellee was born was not equipped with a kitchen, and while we made it work, doing dishes in the bathtub wasn’t ideal.  Of course, we knew renting any place for a month wouldn’t be cheap, but we didn’t really have a choice.  So I was pleased when the owner got back to me.  We agreed on a reduced nightly rate (about 60% of her normal rate) for us and secured our booking.

We are staying in a suburb of Durban, about a 35 minute drive to the coast, 15 minute drive to the hospital and 5 minute drive to the grocery.  The 5 minute drive to the grocery has me tickled pink (or should I say green?).  I am in fresh food heaven.  The guest house is on the owner’s property, situated above their garage and office.  It has one bedroom, a beautiful and spacious bathroom with a separate shower and tub (which I am so, so enjoying!!!!), a kitchen and bar for eating, and a living area.  We have Kyle sleeping on the couch and Ellee in her pack & play in the bedroom with us.  The porch is also very spacious and has a fancy gas grill and a big table, boasting lovely views of the hills.  The yard is impeccably kept with tropical flowers and a water fountain and they have a pool, trampoline and play gym for the kids to use.  Thankfully, as neither of my kids can swim, the pool has a very secure cover which is kept on at all times when it is not in use.  The apartment has two air conditioning units, which are so divinely wonderful for cooling the warm and moist Durban air at night.  I’m afraid we are spoiled by Mokhotlong’s cool and dry evenings year round!  

Porch view 

Little Swimmers

Chilly water on a blazing hot day

"Look, Mom, no hands!"

Jonathan is thoroughly enjoying having the sports channels on the TV, I am loving the hot water which runs freely out of the tap, and the kids think having a trampoline in the backyard is the best thing they’ve ever encountered.  We decided because we’ve never had the luxury of a gas grill, we would take advantage of grilling a lot!  Although we do have a small coal grill, we typically try to avoid grilling much in Mokhotlong because we know to our neighbors, meat is considered to be something that is very special and saved for rare occasions (because of it’s cost).  So, we’re grilling right and left down here and enjoying the rapid speed of lighting a gas grill and throwing the meat on!  And I don’t mind dishes a bit with free flowing hot water!

Kyle's special big boy movie date

Since the beach is a decent drive from here, I figure we’ll only try to go once a week until we leave.  Monday morning last week we got up and headed that way bright and early.  It was windy but pleasant and the kids had a great time building sand castles.  I didn’t pull the camera out at the beach but I did manage to capture their post-beach snooze on the drive home.  Sun and sand are always sure to wear a couple of kiddos out!

Building sand castles is exhausting

We found a nearby park on a creek the other day and enjoyed playing there for a while.  I think we’ll venture back over there tomorrow.  Naturally, I’m feeling somewhat stir crazy and anxious about the upcoming labor and delivery.  I am constantly trying to do things to keep myself occupied.  So I think a morning at the park and then ice cream are in the cards for us tomorrow…..

I see the Doctor again on Friday.  Hopefully Sadie Kate will decide to exit before then and I won't make my appointment.  :)  11 days till Due Date and counting....

~Abby

Where There is No Hospital

This girl.  I deeply love her already and I have yet to even hold her.  She has put me on the wildest, toughest, most stressful pregnancy journey imaginable.  At least it feels that way.  I can’t wait to meet her and weep with joy that this miserable pregnancy is over!

I had hoped that the super-sicks would let up on me and give me a solid break before the super-aches kicked in.  It hasn’t happened that way at all.  As the nausea let up in the late teen and early twenty weeks, the serious acid reflux and various aches and pains took its place.  I'm still battling nausea at times, but I think it’s been about twelve weeks since I actually lost anything out of my belly.  For that I am thankful!  A number of foods still sound pretty disgusting, but at least my sweet tooth is back.  Because my body is in extreme famine recovery mode, I am having to watch everything I put in my mouth or the scale will win this battle.  Thankfully I really, really like salad.  

We can recap my weight fluctuations over the past months — I lost 8 pounds being sick between 6 and 18 weeks (a miracle really that I didn’t lose more).  Then I have put those 8 back on plus 11 more over the course of the past 18 weeks (yes, that’s more than a pound a week…. yikes).  I have a goal to not gain more than 4 more pounds over my remaining 4 weeks, which I think is doable with lots of discipline and determination.  The most amazing part is that the Doctor says that SK is right on track or even a little big for her gestation.  It’s a miracle she even survived the first half of this pregnancy, incredible that she seems to have grown just fine in spite of it all!

Five weeks ago I started having some minor contractions in the middle of the day.  I have never had a bit of contraction pain with my other two pregnancies until the day or two before delivery, so I knew it wasn’t a good sign.  I hung out in the bed for the whole afternoon, trying to determine if they would subside.  They weren’t very rhythmic, actually more constant and directly connected to the insane number of Braxton Hicks contractions I was experiencing.  By late afternoon it was obvious they weren’t letting up and we were trying to determine what to do.  I was 30 weeks along and there was no real possibility of a good outcome had labor really started and I delivered here in Mokhotlong.  As one might imagine, there is no NICU at the Mokhotlong clinic, and I do not believe they have any oxygen or warming equipment.  I called my OB in South Africa to discuss what I was feeling.  Of course his recommendation was to get checked by someone who could determine if I was actually trying to go into labor.  He said that the window of time to stop labor is quite short and if I got past that window, it would be nearly impossible to do anything.  The closest border closes at 6pm, which we were too late to catch, so we decided to head out a different border about 3.5 hours from here, plus another hour to the hospital.  To say it was a stressful afternoon would be a huge understatement.  There truly is no easy way out of here, especially late in the day.  It was like a nightmare trying to rapidly throw things together to make it to the other border before it closed at 10pm, all while trying to not stress myself out and cause my body more difficulty.  We got out of here by quarter to 6 and made it to the hospital by a little after 10.  I made peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches in the car before the sun set completely, as there is positively no where to get any food between here and the hospital.  And I did so thinking, “is this real life?"

A urine culture showed a bladder infection which they determined to be the cause of the contractions.  An hour or so after the first dose of antibiotics the contractions subsided.  They admitted me to monitor things overnight and so I could see an OB in the morning and make sure everything was okay on the inside.  There isn’t any sleep quite like that of a night in the hospital…. as in, there isn’t any sleep on a night in the hospital.  I think I’ll never understand why they need a person’s blood pressure at 5am.  But anyway, everything checked out okay.  I have had a few more minor episodes of contractions since then, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I was prescribed a uterine relaxer which I have taken twice since being back in Mok and it has stopped things.  Before this episode, I was trying to walk regularly to rebuild some of the strength I lost during my sick months.  Now I will just have to wait to try to rebuild strength after SK is out.  We live at about 9,000ft elevation and even walking around here is hard on our bodies.  So I’m stuck being super lazy for a few more weeks.

We spent the past week in Maseru (5.5 hours from Mokhotlong) awaiting extended visas for South Africa.  It wasn’t exactly a simple process, but it worked out fine and we now have a visa which will allow us enough days to await the birth.  We typically only receive a 7-day visa stamp when we cross the border, and now we have 45 days.

I am scheduled to see my OB again on Sept 30.  So in one week, we’ll be headed out to await the birth!  I’m so relieved after talking to the owner of the guest house we have booked, as she offered to be on-call to watch our other kids when labor hits.  I will be indescribably happy to get down and know we are close to the hospital and won’t be coming back here until we have a baby in our care.  We are tentatively booked from Sept 30-Nov 6th, understanding that if SK comes way early, we will leave early.  It is a relief to know that we have a place to just stay and wait and not have to worry about being far from the hospital.  That gives her 3 weeks to come early and 2 weeks to come late!  Please don’t let it be the latter!  

We are all so excited and eager to meet this girl.  It's obvious already that she's feisty and has a mind of her own, I can't help but wonder who she'll be.  I'm busy cleaning and nesting and packing for our month away from home.  I keep asking myself, "when did I get three kids I have to pack for?"  It doesn't really seem possible.  But Jonathan and I are ready to be outnumbered!  Bring it on!

6 months

8 months (35.5 weeks)

~Abby

A Collision of Two Cultures

In recent days my kids have been enjoying pulling all of Sadie Kate’s things out of her drawer and carrying them around the house in anticipation of her arrival.  They are quite fond of her newborn sleepers, her little lamb from my grandmother, and the nursing cover.  Ellee thinks it’s her cape.

One day recently my house-helper and friend, MaMopeli, was here cleaning.  As I was picking up things in the living room, I held up the nursing cover and said, “Mme, this is how makhoa (white people) feed their babies.  Under one of these.”  She looked at me with a most quizzical and puzzled look, as if I had grown a second head.  She asked, “Are you serious?”  Then she laughed, because that’s what she does most of the time anyway, and shook her head.  I explained that generally white people (I use the term loosely, not because I am racist, but because that is how foreigners are distinguished from Basotho here) are uncomfortable with breast feeding in public and this is their way of making it acceptable — to cover the baby and the breast with a tent and attempt to feed anyway….  Certainly she was confused.  She went on to say what I already know to be true, a Masotho isn’t worried a bit about covering herself or the baby in order to nourish her child.  If the baby is hungry, the baby gets fed, regardless of where Mama is or who is around.

Generally Basotho are quite modest people.  The women here cover their waists and rear-ends with blankets and scarves, they would not be caught dead in a bathing suit or shorts, and they typically keep their top halves fully covered.  Men do not wear shorts.  There are, of course, some traditional clothes, or lack-there-of, which in western culture would be considered immodest, but they are not a common thing.  However, Basotho aren’t the slightest bit reserved when it comes to feeding their babies.  When discussing this topic with our close friend, it was likened to an elbow or ankle showing when a woman is feeding her child.  

White people, on the other hand, at least Americans, tend to be relatively immodest people in comparison.  Our women wear pants, shorts, bikinis… You get the picture.  Our men have no problem wearing shorts either, or skipping a shirt to take a jog.  These things are all commonly accepted in our culture and not the least bit looked down upon.  However, it is commonly unacceptable for a woman to feed her baby in a public place without a nursing cover, and often even seen as unacceptable for her to do so with a cover!  No one, and I mean no one, could dispute the fact that way more skin is showing in a bikini than when a woman is feeding her baby on a park bench or (gasp) in a church pew!

I spend a decent amount of time thinking about this topic, because I have found myself in a collision of two cultures.  I didn’t own a nursing cover when I was nursing Kyle.  I can count on one hand the number of times I fed that boy in a public place, and only ever did so highly self-consciously and fully covered with a blanket.  My life revolved around trying to time his feeds when I was going to be in a private place or making sure I had pumped a bottle so that I wasn’t stuck somewhere with a hungry baby and no viable options for feeding him.  It was highly stressful and and constricting.  Then I moved to Africa and Ellee was born.  I resolved very early on with Ellee that I just wasn’t going to bother trying to time her feedings or drape us both with a tent in order to feed her.  If the child needed to eat, the child was going to be fed.  I couldn’t count or name all the public places Ellee ate her meals.  She breastfed exclusively for eight months.  

The opinions and articles on this matter are not few.  I see it constantly on Facebook and blog posts.  Makhoa, white people, Americans, westerners are so determined that "breast feeding is best, but it has it’s place.”  I see comment after comment after comment about the indecency and immodesty of feeding a baby in public.  I can hardly stomach the hypocrisy!  A stroll down the beach or through a mall will certainly expose one to more indecency than sitting nearby a woman simply trying to feed her child!

I’ve become immune to the sight of a woman sitting on the side of the road, fully exposed, feeding her infant.  It is common for women here to feed their babies in church, on the stoop in front of a shop, or on a bus.  I’ve read and heard it said that we, westerners, are more advanced than the majority of world cultures, thus our women have more decency…. Wait, what?  I beg to differ!  We have it all wrong!  We don’t have any more decency than these cultures who accept that it is completely natural for a woman to feed her child!  Rather we have twisted and perverted the beautiful design of breastfeeding into something sexual and thus something that should be done in private or under cover because it is shameful.  I cannot for a second understand how we got to where we are, and neither can our Basotho friends.  They just laugh at us, rightfully so, and say it’s really no big deal.  It shouldn’t be a big deal.  And while I realize that Rome wasn’t built in a day, so neither will it be torn down in one.  Something has got to change.  Maybe, just maybe, if we could shift our thinking to believing that nursing babies is actually a completely acceptable and respectable thing to do with breasts, we could take a step towards shifting our extremely over-sexualized culture for the better!

So when Sadie Kate comes along in a few weeks, Ellee will get to keep her cape.  If the baby is hungry, she’s gonna be fed, whether we are in Africa or America.  And if someone has any objection, I’ll do my best to keep a pillow case in the diaper bag so they can drape their head while I continue feeding my child.

~Abby

Home Assignment

This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for months but just haven’t had the mental energy to put together.  Now that I am feeling mostly better, I am having to seriously begin thinking about our home assignment plans for 2016.  A number of people have asked about our home assignment and what it will entail exactly.  Since this will be our first ever home assignment, we can’t be sure of precisely how it will all unfold, but our general understanding is as follows:

We left for Africa in January of 2013 and embarked on our first three-year assignment with Africa Inland Mission.  With AIM, missionaries receive home assignment time which is based on the length of their overseas assignment.  So for us, three years in Africa means eight months on home assignment.  Home assignment, also known as furlough, will begin for us in January of 2016.  We will spend our 8 months visiting supporters, supporting churches, family and friends, attending conferences and occasionally being AIM representatives if there have been requests for AIM personnel in nearby churches.  During the spring of 2016, Jonathan plans to finish his Masters’ degree with Liberty Online and we will attend his graduation in Lynchburg, VA sometime in May.  We also plan to visit our dear friends in Mexico during our home assignment.  We have about 50 supporters and five supporting churches which spread across the whole country.  It is our goal to visit as many of our supporters as we possibly can, as we truly believe they are our partners in ministry.  With the addition of our new daughter, we will have some additional support to try to raise during our time home.  And lastly, for the first time since our honeymoon, Jono and I hope to take an anniversary trip alone sometime next summer.

For traveling around the US, visiting churches, supporters, etc, we have a home assignment fund that is being funneled into each month.  It pays for our tickets home, our travel, our tickets back to Africa.  We will still live on support for our normal life expenses during all our traveling.  Our plan is to base ourselves in Aiken, which is where we have the most family nearby and where the majority of our supporters live.  Also, three of our supporting churches are in the Southeast.  Because our sending church is in Illinois, we will travel and spend significant time there, probably around the time of their missions conference.  Another of our supporting churches is in Missouri where Jonathan’s parents are living, so we will spend time there as well.  Our goal is to maintain some level of normal life for our family, so we hope to use Aiken as a home base and do the majority of our travels leaving from and returning there.  Any of our supporters who would enjoy coming to us, we will gladly try to host in Aiken.

Currently our two major needs are a place to stay while in Aiken, as well as a vehicle.  In order to keep our house in Africa, AIM will continue to pay rent for us throughout our time in the States.  Thus, our available funds for trying to actually rent a home or apartment in Aiken are insufficient, besides the fact that we have no furniture.  We are certainly willing to pay what we can and we are praying something will present itself to us.  If you know of someone who has a place where we could stay or rent, please send me an email or a Facebook message.  Understanding that eight months is a long time and that five people are quite a lot, we are willing to move around some if we have a few options.  My parents have a van we can use which will hold all our carseats.  But that will leave my mom carless.  So, if you have or someone you know has a car my parents could borrow, then we will primarily use my parents' van.  We appreciate prayers in both of these areas.

The future plan, although not written in stone yet, is to come back to Africa in Aug of ’16 for a follow-up 2-year assignment.  We have approval from our local leadership, it only needs to be confirmed by our US AIM office. We’d like to come right back to Mokhotlong, spend two years trying to establish TEE in various outlying villages and establishing leadership for those groups.  Eager interest by pastors and church people in two nearby villages has recently necessitated Jonathan starting a new group. The interest and desire for TEE in this area is widespread. We will need to turn all groups over to local leadership before we can depart for good, or TEE won’t continue without us.  The main issue with the local leadership is transportation.  While many local pastors who will graduate from the first TEE class (should graduate before we leave in Dec) would be willing to lead a group in an outlying village, they don’t have cars.  So getting to and from is a serious issue.  That will be our main objective when returning- trying to establish a system so that those groups can perpetuate themselves.

It is sort of hard to believe that we’re halfway through our third year already.  It has been great and long and hard and fun.  I’m so excited, though, to be home for a while.  I believe we all need it.  I think Kyle will be able to actually remember America after those months, and I think he needs that for establishing his little identity.  I also think it will help him to bond with his grandparents and cousins and feel like a part of a bigger family.  The other day I asked him if he was an American boy.  Almost in defense, he replied, “No, I’m an African boy.”  And I’m glad that he feels confident here.  But he also needs to know that he is American and has those roots as well.

I’m looking forward to being nearby friends, my sisters and sisters in law- to feel like I’ve got girlfriends again.  I’m looking forward to being able to drive!!!  I’m looking forward to dressing Ellee up pretty and taking her out just the two of us.  I’m looking forward to celebrating the kids' birthdays with family!  I’m looking forward to church in my own language and nursery, getting to sing and listen and enjoy a service without my kids at my feet.  I’m looking forward to eating chicken salad from about ten different places.  I’m looking forward to making some crafty things!  I’m looking forward to hugging my brother, Ryan.  It will have been three years, which feels like a very long time.  I’m looking forward to visiting all my grandparents, whom I miss terribly.  I’m looking forward to seeing so many familiar faces and places which are so dear to my heart.  I’m looking forward to our whole family getting to meet Sadie while she is still a baby!

My kids are not going to believe we'll be 10 minutes rather than 4 hours from McDonalds!

~Abby