You Mean More to Me Than Chris Rock

Hi.  I am tired.  O, I am so very tired.  So tired, in fact, that I am at this very moment sitting here writing to you instead of going into the den to watch the already-seen-but-still-highly-anticipated rerun of the latest Chris Rock special on tv, simply because moving seems like too much effort.  This is yet another moment when a girl could REALLY USE A FREAKING TIVO.

So, what's new.  Let's see.  Well, most importantly is that the kids have gone back to school.  Wait, I want to make sure you heard me: THE KIDS HAVE GONE BACK TO SCHOOL.  This statement cannot be overstated, overdramatized, or overused.  I'll say it again because it gives me a little endorphin rush every time I see it in print.  The kids have gone back to school.  Yay yay yay.

Also: we have added yet ANOTHER member to the "staff" here at Casa del Familia (I don't speak Spanish and have no idea whether I wrote that correctly, but I trust that you got the gist).  You will surely think I've lost my mind, but a couple of weeks ago I asked Daddy if he would consider hiring a babysitter to help me with the weekday afternoon shift.  Here's why: Raquel is a genius when it comes to the baby, but the baby is kind of in her own little world where Sushi and Screamer like to visit but not stay terribly long.  This means that often, Raquel will take the baby for a walk at around 4pm, and I will be left here in the house with Sushi and Screamer, and no car, and no after-school activities, and no regular playdates.  It also means that by the time Daddy comes home from work in the evening, I am frequently quite literally climbing the walls to get away from the rugrats.  So I made this greedy request, reminding him sweetly that childcare is much cheaper here than in the States, and voila! (ooh, now I'm speaking French, try to keep up), enter LALAINE.  Now don't worry if you have trouble remembering that name; I do, too-- I have a weird inclination to call her "Adele" whenever I look at her so I have to quick! think of Jack LaLanne and I'm back on track.  Lalaine is also Filipino, she works in the mornings at a nursery school, and she has a 3-year-old son back in the Philippines.  She has only been here 4 afternoons so far but we are making steady progress as far as getting her integrated into the family: today Screamer finally stopped running in the opposite direction every time Lalaine came her way.  Celebrations all around.

And there's more to say on the getting-settled-in-front: We have finally made contact with our next-door neighbors, who have, get this!, 3 little girls, too.  Three OVERSIZED little girls, ages 5, 3, and 10 months.  The family is German, and the parents are each about 7 feet tall (ok, maybe not 7 feet tall, but suffice it to say that I can't keep a straight face when the mom and I are standing next to each other), and they have created these similarly enormous daughters.  In the photo above, you can get an idea of how horribly incompatible the girls are, on a strictly dimensional basis: I have written their respective ages on their dress-up costumes (the mark of a very successful first playdate!) and I just can't get past the fact that the second girl (THEIRS) is *3* and the third girl (OURS) is *2*.  It looks like the second girl is the third girl's BABYSITTER.  Or that the third girl is standing in a hole (a comment to which I myself am no stranger when observed in a group photo).  And their 5-year-old, don't get me started, I mean, her head doesn't even fit into the picture.  (Don't you love my high-tech, predator-thwarting, identity-protecting mechanism?  Wait til the kids find out that I was rifling around in their sticker books after they went to sleep!)  Fortunately, the girls got along fine once they were seated and could address each other eye-to-eye: they share a love of cat-chasing, waterpainting books, and, obviously, princess costumes.  (Memorable awkward moment: The German mom wanted to show off how proficient her daughters are becoming in Arabic, which is taught daily at their school.  So, at her prompting, the neighbor girls burst out in the Arabic version of "Happy Birthday to You."  Sushi, a little confused but not to be outdone, declared, "I know this one!" and joined right in, contributing her version of the song... IN HEBREW.  I drowned her out with the good ol' English rendition.)

Hmmm.  What else.  Oh, well, the baby has finally agreed to eat something other than Gerber bananas: CHEETOS.  I have nothing to say about this other than I promise to share the bags with her (you know, because a whole bag left to a 7-month-old would be crazy and irresponsible!).

There's also that elephant in the room, which is the Gaza situation.... I don't want to drag down the mood of this post too much, so I will just leave it at this: The newspaper coverage here is terrifying, mostly because of the graphic photos of carnage and the heartwrenching pictures of children crying, but fortunately, the newspaper has been the extent of our exposure to the crisis.  We haven't heard people talking about it, and I certainly have not been exposed to any anti-Newish sentiment anywhere (or even, anti-Israel), and I am entirely surprised but vastly relieved that there have not been any protests here as there have been in so much else of the world.  It is the 11th day of the Israeli operation and, for better or for worse, I guess we have become a little desensitized to the whole thing.  I am not scared for our own safety as I was on that first day, and I haven't even found myself worrying all the time about what Zia is thinking about us (some days I'm sure he's figured out that we are Newish, and fortunately, I have not detected any change in his demeanor).  Mostly we just desperately want for peace to be reinstated, but no more and no less than if we were reading about the situation from the comfort of our own living room back in the States.  It's a sad reality that even the most unsettling developments can so quickly become just a part of life...  

Ok, I feel sleep creeping up on me, so I should go catch the last bit of the Chris Rock special (even though his best material was at the beginning; THAT is how devoted I am to you, my dear friends).   Hope you are well... More soon.