Our LaLa.

Our house is bursting with joy.  LaLa is here for 2 weeks.  She came on Friday.  Her journey from Omaha to Delhi did not run as smoothly as expected.  We are STILL waiting on one bag with all her trekking clothes for our trip to Nepal tomorrow.  It is not scheduled to arrive before our flight out so who knows when it will come.  The utter excitement out weighs the glitches.  She holds such a unique and cherished place in our lives.  She has been spending time getting oriented to our Delhi life and reconnecting with the kids who have grown taller and cleverer after a year a part.  

Tomorrow we will all embark on a first time expedition...Annapurna family trek.  We have been dreaming of exploring this famous sanctuary with some of the highest peaks in the world for years now. We even tried to do this trek in 2005, but last minute the king overthrew the government and we couldn't get into the country.  Now as a family of six, with our LaLa we will attempt this week long adventure.

Where we are now.

Priya and I just gave Graham a long hug and kiss.  The boys are napping and Hudson at school.  Our AC is still running although not really necessary at this point.  Each day brings us closer to cooler temperatures.  After a 4 month blog break, I am ready to retell the story of our summer.  This will come.  We just sent Graham off for over a week to lead an eMi team to south India and help with the development and design for a very touching organization.  I now feel like I am about ready to run a hard race of single parenting, but it is not all about me and I am overwhelmed by the work of those in India caring for the hurting and defenseless.  Hopeful that the team can somehow help them do more with the design.

SCH VIDEO

a dip on the other side.

A few weeks ago we went on our mandatory visa run which happens every 180 days.  We are required by the Indian government to leave the country.  We decided to go to Thailand for a much needed break to rest and recuperate after 6 months of flux in Delhi.  So...we picked the easiest option.  Travel light, fly to Bangkok(3.5 hours), where a taxi van will greet us right outside of customs and take us 3 hours to a quiet and removed retreat center on the fishing coast of the the Gulf of Thailand.  The center is designed for families who are working in the region seeking a get away.  It provided clean and new accommodations, 3 meals a day, laundry, a pool, a kids play room, a beach, bicycles and a few tourist activities if desired.  The point is, we didn't have to think about anything or make any decisions or go through any struggle to meet our basic needs which believe it or not has been a struggle in Delhi.  We all got really sick with colds and  baboo was awake every  2 hours for a few nights, but even with this...it was delightful and much needed.

a Delhi Easter.

I feel that as the kids get older the more deeply we explain the Easter story with them and the significance of the death and resurrection of Christ beyond the eggs and candy.  It is a story that takes contemplation on our part.  

We spent Easter with our church at a packed service, had brunch with our eMi family and an egg hunt with our little neighbor friends.  We actually only had 6 plastic eggs, but hid them over and over again in our park.  

distance learning

We continue to do speech therapy and activitities with Priya's preschool classroom at the Boystown Lied Learning Center in Omaha.  They have an amazing program for children with cochlear implants and hearing impairment.  She was able to attend school for 2 months while we were back this summer,  and they agreed to do distance follow-up with her.  Now we are spending quite a few evenings in front of the computer.  I feel so grateful to have professionals tracking her progress, offering us advice and cheering her on as we live in India.  This week channel 6 news made an appearance...  

suburbs how I long for you.

On this particular afternoon Hudson was home from school and I had been in the house all day.  The kids were hanging on me like little puppies needing direction and entertainment.  I felt lifeless and like a zombie-mama.  The house was warm and our bodies sticky.  I knew what we had to do.  Get the bicycles out and ride them.  Trying to preserve a regular activity that would be a part of life in the suburbs.  It is just so different here.

I procrastinated and hoped that I could come up with an excuse.  I have to make dinner.  No.  Our kind helper had already prepared some rice, dal and vegetables for us sitting ready on the stove.  William needs a nap.  No.  I actually attempted to put him down for his late afternoon snooze and he just was not in the mood.  Maybe I can wait until Graham comes home?  No.  I glance at my watch and realize that we still have two hours.  Okay okay.  We will do this.  I can do this.  It feels impossible.  It is so much work.  But if possible, I desire to hold onto those vintage childhood leisure activities even in Delhi.  Can I handle motherhood with little ones at the birth of a hot Indian summer without a garage?  I long for our garage.  To be able to push the button and roll the bikes out strolling around our little protected cul-de-sac.  

So, I hike up to the outer balcony where we have been permitted to keep our "cycles".  Wait...first, I get everyones' shoes on and strap William onto my backpack and then head up and open the medal door to begin the haul of a heavy 2 wheeler, a 2 wheeler with training wheels and a tricycle with a baby on my back.  The bikes are dusty and the flights of stairs are steep.  I take each down one at a time while keeping the reins on the kids who are very anxious to get over to the park.  I get grumpy.  I yell at Hudson to take a photo because I don't want to forget the challenges of this.  We get across the street after waiting, watching for cars and dodging vegetable carts and speed racer motorcycles.

They spend time on their bicycles.  The crotchety 80+ year old man who arrives during peak hours to do his daily walk with a cane in hand is grumpy as always about bicycles on the walking path.  I talk sternly to the kids about stopping to let the senior go by when encountering him.  He is a broken hip waiting to happen.  They spend a minimal amount of time riding and then set the bikes in the grass and begin digging in the dirt filling empty plastic trash bottles and making "stew".   We stayed outside long enough for Graham to catch us at the park on his short walk home and he rescued me by carrying all the bikes back up to the designated upper balcony.

The cost benefit analysis of this activity is still inconclusive in my mind. 

HOLI colors.

A couple of weeks ago India celebrated Holi.  A yearly festival of colors and a celebration of spring.  People play with colors all day...powdered colors, squirt guns loaded with color, water balloons filled with color.  Wildly throwing, shooting, spreading, and spraying these colors at each other is completely acceptable and totally encouraged.  Pure bliss for children.  I am just glad we did not celebrate in our house.  We celebrated with our neighbors.  11 days later Hudson still has some green in his hair.

a mom blog...

William just conquered his first 6 months of life.  He has been in our family for half a year and I believe that this deserves a little celebration, reflection and note.  How did we live without him?  He was designed to fit perfectly into this family of ours.  I can't get enough of his roly-polyness, smiles, smells, and slobber.

What is baby William like?  

...first two bottom teeth have sprouted this past month.

...you roll over immediately when I put you on the floor and then tend to get stuck and frustrated on your belly.

...you are starting to push your self up on your hands and push yourself backwards on the marble floor getting stuck under couches and chairs and beds.

...i am in no hurry to feed you real food.  

...Priya calls me a "milk machine", but actually i think that you are the machine at nursing and growing.

...you have a light-up-the-room smile whenever our eyes meet, but also have a serious side.

...you adore your siblings and begin to wiggle out of my arms and kick your legs whenever they enter the room.

...in my arms you often feel like you are trying to go somewhere standing up strong and waving your arms.

...there is constantly someone in your space.

...you yell, growl and blow strawberries, squeal and say "ah-goo" and "ba ba, na na or ma ma."

...your sleep schedule is not a schedule. it is different every day and most nights end in our bed snuggled between us with your arms flailed out above your head.

...you officially grab at whatever is in reach and all goes into your mouth.

...i wear you so much that people often describe you as still being a part of me.

...Every Indian who sees you ohs and ahs as if they are seeing an angel

...you have barely any hair other then the dark blond mohawk patch on the top of your head.

...you have been held by countless people in your little life so that mommy can quick do "this or that", but I would drop any sort of chore, responsibility or house work to just hold you in my arms, hence the messy house.

just down the street.

eMi has officially moved.  Graham obtained the keys a couple of weeks ago and two moving trucks full of office equipment arrived and have been unloaded.  The view from the office windows now are not of the himalayas.  Actually, there is really no view because it is a basement space.  On the bright side, it will be much cooler in the summer and temperatures are already rising.  There is an apartment above the office that will be used for interns and volunteers.  The kicker is that the office is two buildings down from our place.  I am trying to convince Graham that this means that whenever I need help changing a diaper I can holler and he will be right over!  We are thrilled that we figured out how to dodge the Delhi traffic with such a short commute and so far all of eMi staff have been able to find residences close by.  The unpacking, rebuilding, painting, plumbing and wiring have begun.  With architects on our staff there is no doubt that the basement space will be tastefully designed and it will eventually feel like the new eMi home.  The kids and I visited today(see photos below).  Graham is off on a project to Ryalanka island in the south doing a flood/community development/errosion control project.

The brick building is the new eMi office and if you look down the street at the end of the photo is our white place above the small black gate.

wedding season and late nights.

Our landlord's son got married last weekend.  From what I could gather, it was a very proper arranged marriage.  The families found each other on a match-making site or advertisement.  The couple met a few times before the marriage in a very formal and chaperoned setting.  After the marriage, they will live either short-term or long-term with the groom's family.  India is changing and relationships and marriages don't all happen this way, but this one seems to be a bit more traditional.  

Indian weddings are a cultural experience.  A multiple day affair full of events, worship ceremonies, dancing, sweets, beautiful dress, bands, horses and parades.  We got invited to this wedding and attended.  The reception festivities did not start until nearly 9PM and so we made the decision to go even though it was well past our kids' bedtime.  Notably, we did not get home until after midnight, but the kids rose to the occasion and had a great time.  The next night our neighbors had a BBQ and that dinner did not start until nearly 9PM and lasted until well after midnight.  Two record setting late nights for our little ones, but we feel like we are getting to know our neighbors and sometimes it takes adjusting our family clock a little to engage and make new friends because clearly India is on a different time schedule.  

Here are a couple of videos from the event.    The first video is from our balcony as we watched the groom mount the horse.  This was a very small processional.  Usually they are very crowded with huge bands and a large group dancing behind him in the street. During the reception we looked over to see Everett alone breaking it down on the dance floor.  He single-handedly started the dance party.  A short while after, he peed  on the dance floor which was tracked around by unaware dancers.

Wedding parade. from Carrie Frank on Vimeo.


Punjabi style from Carrie Frank on Vimeo.

this is what it is like.

To whom it may concern, this is what it is like to pick-up Hudson from school.  Play-by-play.

Walk out our door and quickly out our gate.  I smell something unpleasant that reminds me of outhouses at cross country meets, and look down in time to dodge this hole.  I believe that it is an open sewer?!

Walk through this field.

Wait at this corner of the main road panning traffic until I spot the white bird on a bus approaching and get excited for a big hug.

And he is off the bus.  My ears are ready for the run-down of the whole day. I don't always get every minute detail that I am looking for but hey, I will take what I can get.

We walk home and if I am not busy taking pictures, I would have a hand in mine.

thoughts on transition...

In the past 6 months we packed and prepared to go back to the states for the second time in 2011 without Graham who was still working in India.  Graham arrived in Omaha and we all settled into mom and dad's basement.  We travelled an average of once a week during our 4 months in Omaha.  We had our fourth baby.  We packed and left to return to India and stay in an apartment in the middle of a suburb of Delhi for 3 weeks while Graham commuted into the city to find a flat.  We went up to Mussoorie to say good-byes and get our things.  We moved into an unfurnished flat in a neighborhood we know nothing about and in a city that is foreign to us.


I write this not to boast on how tough we are or how much we can handle.  As a matter of fact, during this 6 months we have had countless moments of frustration, despair, scepticism and pessimism.  We have been cranky with the kids and disconnected from our marriage.  I write these things to remind myself not to be discouraged.  To pause and give myself and Graham grace and respite from the feelings of disappointment when our life still doesn't seem put together and "settled".  As a result of this, we have had to stop and regroup and reevaluate many days and sometimes multiple times in a day.  We so often have unrealistic expectations for ourselves.


So...on Monday we took our "home-schooled" 6yo to school and will begin potty training our "potty trained" 2 year old.

...we decided last minute to send Hudson to school.  My home school books are getting dusty on the shelves and I am hoping to use them still, but for now we will send him to a good school for kindergarten and he has been waking up at the crack of dawn each morning anxious to get out of the door to the school bus.

...we will try to re-potty train our Everett.  Note to self, it it not realistic for us to try to train a 21 month old and then go back to the US for 4 months and travel around a lot and have a new baby and then move back to India and live out of suitcases and move into a new place.  He or she will probably regress and have accidents multiple times a day mostly because mommy and daddy are distracted and preoccupied which in turn leads perpetually washing out poopy pants.

So...goals of 2012 are simply to go from disorientation and disarray to a place of peace. To go from surviving and making sure that the kids are atleast fed and napped each day to  thriving inside the walls of our house and in our community.

too spicey.

She is thinking..."Really daddy and mommy? I have to finish all of my rice and dal and vegetables?  Really?"

tourist on a bicycle.

On a Saturday, I became a tourist here.  Our good friend set up a cycle tour of Delhi for a group of us.  At the last minute, I decided to go.  Graham stayed back with the kids.  It was the first time I had left a nursing William and of course he was a champ and I was able to see the city.  Actually, a small but significant portion of the city...Old Delhi.  Being on a bicycle offers a unique perspective to a place, covering more ground then on foot while still interacting with it in a raw and open nature.  The tour left at dawn and we all rode our shiny orange road bikes through the narrow alleys as the area slowly and gently erupted.  It was an explosion of the senses.  There seemed to be a disorderly order to the daily happenings.  


The smell of the meat market with skinned buffulo heads on a truck and freshly butchered goat and lamb being hung at the roadside stalls for that day's business.  It was hard to hold back the coughing as we got off of the bicycles and walked through Asia's largest spice market with red chillis covering the floor of the narrow passageways.  We were instructed to make room for the men carrying large burlap sacks of spices on their heads.  They don't move.  We saw burning trash and large pots of bubbling oil to fry the roadside food.  We saw old mosques, we rode by the expansive Red Fort which is a landmark and heard some history of Mughal and British rule.  We finished our tour at a famous 100+ year old restaurant and had yellow dal, slow-cooked mutton in gravy and tandoori roti.  Apparently, the BBC quotes it as the best place to go for breakfast in Delhi.  During the final stretch of the ride, while being confronted with the constant honking of various vehicles, I had a near collision on my bicycle between an auto rickshaw and horse drawn cart.  I came out unharmed and definitely recommend seeing a city this way.  Here are a few photos from my phone.
www.delhibycycle.com 

1aDay

One of our 2012 goals is to take a photo once a day and post it.  Capturing the moments.  Hoping that they will tell the story of our year.  1aDay