First Rain

We finally had our first rain today.

The day was hot, suffocatingly hot, and sagged over us like a drunk friend. Around four Bryan left with the computer to go and try to send some emails from a neighboring compound. I piddled around the house with the girls who both seemed too hot to either sleep or play. I ignored the first few rumbles in the distance, we’ve been hearing thunder from afar for days, but as it grew louder we went outside to investigate. As I pushed Annabelle in her swing and listened to MKat suck her fingers snuggled up against my chest I scanned the sky, trying to figure out which way the storm was coming from. Storms in this place never fail to confuse me. They roll in from unexpected places and swirl in different directions all at once; the darkest clouds evaporate with hardly a sprinkle and unassuming white clouds let loose a fury of rain.

Today the sky in the Northwest was the color of a violent bruise and was skirted with gauzy white clouds that looked like they were in a hurry to get out of the way. A hawk fought for control as he circled in the wind, repeatedly skimming over the fleshy white blossoms at the top of our huge baobab that stood out sharply against the black sky. The whole image looked like one of the cliché paintings by amateur artists that I have seen in so many overpriced bookstores in Nairobi – melodramatic, unrealistic, beautiful. As the wind picked up and the thunder started breaking like the surf on distant rocks I could hear the voices of so many refugee children screaming happily from the direction of the camp, and I wondered how many people like us were standing outside waiting for the sky to break open.

I asked Annabelle several times if she was ready to go inside, and each time I was relieved when she resolutely said, “No!” Whether by biology or influence, she is my daughter. Eventually though the wind kicked up enough sand around us that it was hard to see, so we ushered ourselves back inside. By now the thunder sounded like an avalanche of rocks overhead and the first few fat drops were beginning to fall. The earth heaved a huge sigh of relief and closed it’s eyes in pleasure.

The mud hut that at times has seemed so uncomfortable was immediately more homey than it has ever been before. The girls lay on our big bed, reading books and kicking in the air respectively, in the warm light of recycled sunshine. I put a kettle on our gas range just as Bryan stumbled in the door, soaked to the bone but laughing because he was as excited as we were. As he dried off, I fixed us all mugs of hot red karakade which we drank to the roar of the storm outside.

After supper it was still raining so we bathed the girls in basins full of hot water on a table in the kitchen. We dressed them both in footie pajamas for the first time in weeks and tucked them in under the nets. Bryan lay with Annabelle in her bed and I snuggled with MaryKat in ours. The thunder was now far away, but the rain still tapped resolutely at the grass overhead. Happy frogs and bugs and bats all croaked and whirled and chirped up a raucous symphony in the sea beyond our little island. The girls fell asleep quickly. Bryan is snoring quietly as I type this in the dark.

There is a long list somewhere of all the things one should do in the fullness of this life, many of which I will never get to. But I am nearly positive that one of them is weathering a storm in a mud-hut with your family.         

I am glad to have done it tonight.

Hyena Eyes

On Facebook I have seen lots of people refer to “#firstworld problems”; these issues usually are about various technological devices or modern conveniences. I also have some friends who have made jokes of “#thirdworld problems” which usually involve latrines or various animals in unexpected places. But this week I have decided we need a third category, something along the lines of “First-world-people-in-the-third-world problems.” Those problems that only those few first-world people have, but we only have them when we are in the third-world. I have had several lately. They include:

When you read at night, big moths keep turning the pages of your kindle touch.

Or, you can’t fit all the stuff you brought on the chartered airplane in your mud hut.

Or, you don’t have any clean clothes because the ladies who hand wash your clothes all ran off on “Tribal Warfare Day.” (A long story for another time…)

Or, you can only send emails on your laptop because the internet access in the aforementioned mud hut is really crappy.

Because of that last particular problem I have been blogging by sending my mom emails (when we can get them to go out) that she then posts on blogger for me. So if you have sent me a Facebook message or had some dramatic happening in your life that I haven’t acknowledged, it’s just because I haven’t been online in a while.

It’s been a good week! It still isn’t raining yet but several blustery storms have rumbled through bringing with them the sweet tang of rain that smells dark and leafy green, like the salad I have been craving. Whether our bodies are just adjusting to the heat or it has actually cooled off some, I’m not sure but I have been enjoying those moments that I am not sweating profusely.

With the hovering imminence of moisture though, all the critters in the vicinity seem to quivering with excitement too. We’ve had a couple scorpions inside and a rat in the kitchen (all of which Bryan heroically disposed of). One night we also had a hunting spider in our room, an eight-legged horror the size of a lobster with the speed of Usain Bolt. I think they are completely harmless (though I’m not really sure why) but this particular one ran over my foot three separate times as I got ready to crawl in bed, vulnerably undressed and with only a headlamp for protection, all of which made me act like the room was full of cobras. Bryan kept telling me to step on it, which to my credit I did, but it just feels weird stepping on a bug that is going to squish like a mouse, which it also did. Anyway, as welcome as the cooler weather is, I think our near future holds many more late-night escapades with vermin.      

A guy came by a couple days ago to change money with Bryan and lingered around afterwards to chat. He is both a butcher and a local pastor and as he prepared to go he asked Bryan, almost as an afterthought, “Oh by the way, do you want some hyena eyes?” Bryan though he had either misunderstood or was hearing an unfamiliar euphemism, but upon clarification he realized that the man was in fact asking if he wanted to buy the eyeballs of a hyena. When Bryan asked what in the world he would use it for the guy said they are great for being able to see better or for coming up with great ideas. He denied that it was any kind of witchcraft, apparently just that odd thing between science and luck and common knowledge (I mean everyone knows hyena eyeballs are good for your eyesight, right?). Bryan said we would pass this time but the guy said he would at least bring a pair by sometime to show us. Oh my. Just when this place starts feeling normal something like that happens and I realize just how far from Kansas we really are.

We went to visit our friends in the camp on Friday. We sat in a grass house and drank strong sweet coffee out of little porcelain cups while we talked. Annabelle drank about three cups herself and yet miraculously slept the whole walk home Every time I walk into that place something catches in my throat. Wind was kicking up phantoms of dust all around us as throngs of children trotted around us singing and laughing (not many white babies come by their houses). The kids, despite being snot-nosed and fairly naked, seemed healthy and incredibly happy. Older kids were walking to school or hauling clean water. Younger ones were playing or toting around siblings. And yet I was so aware of the weighty presence of a thousand stories – how those kids got here, what they saw along the way, who they lost, what they remember -  hovering all around us. Every time I go to the camp I feel like I’m walking through an unexpectedly pleasing room that is haunted. There is nothing overtly unpleasant in sight but you can sense a presence in the room that only occasionally slips by in your peripheral vision. Maybe I do need a pair of Hyena eyes after all.

Tukul

The mud walls of my tukul are perfectly smooth, like a flat brown beach at low tide after the distant waves have worn it even. In one place a large handprint is textured next to the doorframe, a quasi-permanent reminder of someone who used earth and trees to make my home. Small creatures I have never seen or heard live in the walls, and every day with appreciative guilt I delicately crumble the tiny tunnels of their front-doors that have emerged like coral in the night. The seaside imagery is ironic of course; it is unfathomably hot. The tukul (also mocking irony of a name too if you ask me) tries it’s best to cool off at night and cling to the few degrees it has on the world outside but by early afternoon there is a suffocating feeling of claustrophobia in the complete absence of anywhere cool to go that is hard, yet very important, to keep in check. But blessed evening does eventually come, and the sun that has by now bleached even the sky dead and white, slips below the horizon. We eat outside, we bathe the babies outside, and then we sit outside, me with my skirt hiked up in the modest cover of darkness, and talk under an orange moon. After we have bathed (also outside, but behind matted walls) we join the babies indoors, crawl under our mosquito net and kick the beautiful Kashmiri bedspread that I insisted we bring with us to make our tukul more homey (and it was money well spent) to the floor. If you lie just still enough you can almost will yourself to stop sweating. The tarps under the grass roof breath in and out softly with the night air making it feel almost like sleeping inside a warm, earthy animal. And amazingly or obviously, I’m not always sure which, I rest.

The first few days were really hard. The girls were adjusting to the heat (weren’t we all) and it has taken us a while to get unpacked and settled into our two room hut. There was lizard skin in my wok. You get sun-burned in awkward places if you stay in our roofless latrine for too long at the wrong time of day. My two-year old was running around saying “landmine” (a Danish company is clearing mines in the area; we’ve heard three since we’ve been here). My baby refused to be held by anyone except me for all twelve hours of the day she wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t fun. Exciting, fulfilling, hilarious…yes; but not fun.      

But around day six that changed. My little gas stove and plastic shelves full of pots and pans are set up and I have made some beautiful bread in the charcoal oven that sits outside under the neem tree. Annabelle, my filthy beautiful Annabelle, is loving being outside 90% of the time and experimenting with words in new languages. We had her second birthday party last week, incidentally the same day we bought a donkey and cart to haul water from the borehole or cargo from the airstrip (as I’ve said before, we’re that ghetto organization that parks their donkey next to the fleet of Land Cruisers…) and I’m pretty sure she is expecting a camel for her third birthday. Mary Katherine, though still a mama’s girl, is now happy to sit in her sweaty sweet fat rolls in her swing for a while. Trips to the market in the slinky folds of my cumbersome tobe are so much fun. People ask where I learned Arabic as I pick through their piles of onions. It’s good to talk. Friends from our years in K who now live in the camp stop by to visit and we catch up as we drink warm juice in the shade. Our guards, Harun and Jafar, two older Rotana men with sinewy arms and deep-set eyes are kind to our children who rummage through the rope they braid out of fan-plants; they teach us words in their language.

A few days ago I gashed my upper arm on the zinc of our front door as I dodged a lizard that I was sure was going to fall on my head as it slipped on the tarps of our ceiling. The cut hurt and will leave a raised scar. But even that is fun to me. To watch my husband patch me up and watch my body heal…that is exciting or interesting or fulfilling or something. To live somewhere where you get dirty every single day. Where you always know how full the moon is or which way the wind is coming from. Where you always have a pitcher or something set aside for the visitor that you don’t know about, who you can be sure will be here before too long. Where you stay up talking about what Arabic word your daughter learned today and what we should name the donkey. Somehow, even as I sweat my eyeballs out, breath curses on the freak-of-nature plant growing up through my cement floor and contort my brain for vocabulary and conjugations I haven’t used in a long time, I am having fun. Which makes me think I must be in the right place.

Back

Some people are such great writers that that make the hum-drum of ordinary life profound and interesting to read about. I feel those are the real writers, the people who can take the everyday and make it fascinating and meaningful.

I am not that kind of writer.

After several month in Kenya, a beautiful and interesting place to be sure, but one where my life takes on the easy flow of nice grocery stores, hot showers and computer office work, my blog has just about flat-lined. (Granted, Annabelle and Mary Katherine are as much to blame as indoor plumbing.)

The good news though is that I am now back in North Africa and after only four hours in my senses have been absolutely assaulted. If my daughters will allow it, I am looking forward to more time writing in the months ahead. It certainly won’t always be profound, but I think I undoubtedly live in one of the most fascinating places on the planet and if I don’t write about it I think I will explode.

To say that you live in such a marvelously interesting place though is not to say that you love everything about it. Far from it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am experiencing a fair amount of culture stress right about now. When we boarded our flight in Entebbe, I had just collapsed into my seat with a sleeping MaryKat attached to me and a ridiculously overstuffed diaper bag and purse shoved to the floorboards when an irritated and heavily accented voice in the aisle a few rows bag grumbled loudly, “Ah, who is causing this jam?” The voice belonged to a slick looking politician type in a suit and pointy shoes, probably the kind of guy that could easily affect whether or not I get to stay in this country, and who clearly meant nothing more than to vent a little. And yet, I spent the first twenty minutes of the flight going over my Arabic verb conjugations for phrases that involved words like “jerkwad” (or their near equivalent anyway).

We landed in the capital city and stepped into what truly must be one of the most hellishly entertaining airports in the world. We hit at rush-hour, something I wasn’t aware that airports even have. Along with about three hundred other people (literally) we were pushed through a single door and into a crush of people that vaguely resembled clumpy lines all melted together. Long air-conditioners looked down at us from the walls like a practical joke. UN officials, aspiring politicians, soldiers and one other family with little kids (turned out to some South Africans working for the local brewery) all shuffled forward patiently, cheerfully even, in the passport waving chaos. Mark Katherine strained her sweaty head out of the ergo baby to gaze up at tall faces towering over her. Annabelle nestled comfortably in the undergrowth of humanity, eating her fruit snacks and following her Papa’s shoes.

When we made into out into the open-air of the airport parking lot, and old Eritrean woman who had been on the plane with us came up and patted MaryKat’s pudgy led pitifully. She then shook her head and said, “The heat…?” followed by “And the mosquitoes…?” I smiled and shrugged, to which she raised her hands upwards and said, “Allah.”

My thoughts exactly.

Before we got to the guesthouse where we are overnighting before heading up to the camp where we live tomorrow on the bush plane, we stopped to change some US dollars into local currency. Our skinny taxi driver with scarred arms eased the van onto the side of the road near the market and we were immediately besieged by a dozen guys with shiny watches or ivory bracelets and bockets bulging with bank notes. The taxi driver casually told us to lock all the doors then started passing wads of cash between the driver’s window and backseat while Annabelle made faces at the crowd pressing their faces up to the glass to see her. After the adrenaline rush of the black market, we only stopped once more, this time for the driver to sample and try out some vibrating, blinking car freshener the dashboard from a street vendor (he bought two of them).

After offloading our stuff we walked down the road to a local restaurant to grab a quick bite to eat. We crossed a busy street full of as many women as men, some dressed in leggings and denim and loping down the road in flocks like dark supermodels, others were swathed in the sheer folds of their tobes, like memories of another era. Dinner was nostalgic for me, bringing back memories of eating on the street in a northern town when we lived across the border. We ate bread and grilled chicken. A platter of sliced fruit was blended into juice as thick and sweet as pudding. And for dessert we picked at the cloyingly sweet folds of basta peppered with nuts that we selected from a glass case full of delicacies. Smoke clouded the room and pleasantly burned our eyes; Rihanna and an Arab voice nextdoor competed for prominence in our eardrums. The girls soaked it all up like this was as normal a dinner as any other for them. Which in some ways maybe it was.

I am writing from the mosquitoey porch of the guesthouse now and should close before the generator goes off. We fly “home” tomorrow and I am full of mixed emotions. I am more exhausted than I hoped to be going into life in a mud hut at the peak of dry season and that intimidates me a little bit. This is going to be hard. But I’ve realized that in life, you really just get to pick your stresses, not whether or not you are going to have them. And at this point, I will take the stress of a mud hut over the stress of floating through life in other people’s houses hands down. It feels like time to be back. The honeymoon high I feel at being back tonight (and I do feel it if I didn’t make that very clear..) is sure to burst in a week or two, no doubt. But when it does it will be replaced by the intimate frustrations of living in a place that drives you out of your mind but that, on most days, you wouldn’t leave for the world.   

It’s good to be back.  

Elections

I keep wanting to say “It’s so good to be home!” but considering this is one of over half-a-dozen places we have “lived” in the past six months that doesn’t quite feel right. But it is so good to be together again. Last week was one of the hardest of my life, (which is probably a good indication of just how easy my life has been up to now). There is nothing like watching your babies struggle though. Just like I was all jittery about our physical safety only after we were a thousand miles out of harm’s way when we evacuated North Africa over a year ago, I was similarly sick with worry about Mary Katherine only after I felt pretty confident she was going to be ok and could let down a little bit. Now I think about that drive to the hospital and look on the nurse’s face when we got there and just feel shaky inside. But we are all together again now, and all healthy and moderately rested. To those of you who have been praying for our family, thank you so very, very much.

We have spent the last two weeks in a house that is new to us here in Nairobi. It belongs to some good friends of ours who also work in North Africa, but travel back to Kenya as a family several times a year. They were looking for someone to help cover rent and we were happy to spend some time as a family in a place a little more private than where we were before. It’s in a housing estate across town from where we usually stay and backs up to the Nairobi National Gamepark. There is a treadmill upstairs which I have been making good use of as I try to get rid of those last lovely pounds Mary Katherine left me with. As I run I can see over the game park fence; a couple of weeks ago I counted over 200 zebra strolling by only a few hundred feet away, oblivious to the sprawling suburbia all around them. A sweet Rhodesian Ridgeback named Uchie is part of the package and she has been quite hospitable. There is satellite TV and Annabelle has been soaking up enough “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” and “Charlie and Lola” to last her through a childhood in the boonies. (Bryan has also gotten hooked on American Idol after years of mocking me for liking it, but I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.)

However, as nice as playing house is right now, I still haven’t completely relaxed into it. It’s on a side of town much less familiar to me and harder to access by public transport. I haven’t gotten to know any of the neighbors yet. And like in any house any where, there are sounds at night that make me curious and uneasy for no good reason.

Perhaps part of the reason for my unease may have something to do with the elections going on in this country right now. You may have seen something about it on the news. Five years ago the presidential elections left over 1,000 people dead so people are understandably concerned this time around. And now that results have been delayed for a second day, people are getting anxious.

We are traveling to Tanzania for branch meetings on Sunday, a little bit later than we had planned on since the doctor didn’t want us to travel with MaryKat for at least a week after she was discharged from the hospital (and even that took a little bit of convincing). So we are just lying low this week, catching up on piles of office work at home and keeping the TV on the local news channel. But the week in the hospital put some of our contingency planning on the back-burner so we had to make a quick trip out yesterday to stock up on things like groceries, phone credit, gas and a few extra US dollars just in case. Town was noticeably quiet. The grocery store was picked over - there was no UHT milk or frozen food of any kind. A handful of us rummaged through the left-over produce with polite urgency. Police with AK’s strolled quietly down the aisles and a couple of soldiers nonchalantly bought cigarettes from the cashier. Everyone seemed normal. But uneasy normal. 

Every time my phone blinks out or the electricity cuts off I give Bryan a dramatically ominous look, something I attribute to a childhood spent planning for coups and crises that never actually took place. But as an adult, an adult with a little more experience in political instability, and, probably most importantly, an adult with babies, these things aren’t just exciting now. Yes, my college roommates can rest assured I am still the crazy girl who daydreams of dramatic escapes and harrowing get-aways that make great stories years later over a cup of tea. That side of me exists I think to make me well-suited for the life I feel like I have been called to lead. 

But tonight, that side of me sleeps lightly next to the side of me that checks the locks on the doors an extra time and prays for peace.     

Tattoons and other random thoughts tonight

The thing about hospital stays is how magnified everything feels. The smallest bit of good news warrants a parade down Main Street. The smallest bit of disappointing news has you sitting in sackcloth and ashes. At least it’s been that way for me. 

Mary Katherine’s fever disappears and I’m on cloud nine. Her oxygen levels drop a few percentage points and I am tearful all evening. The facts of our general situation stay relatively unchanged, but my heart is swinging back and forth like it’s dragging behind MaryKat’s little purple swing.

Just to give you an update, we are generally in a good place. Her temperature, heat rate, respiration rate, blood work and overall demeanor are all great. She is eating and sleeping well and has even smiled a time or two at the nurses. But her oxygen still isn’t what it should be. They want her over 90 (I’ve heard someone say 94…?) and she is jumping back and forth from 82 to 87. So right now we are really just waiting for those blinking digital numbers on the screen to stop dropping once we turn her oxygen off.

I am so grateful for the good medical care here and am in no rush to take a still-unwell baby home. I am no longer sick with worry now that she seems more like her old (still-quite-new) self. And as something of an introvert I haven’t minded the walls of this tiny room 24/7 and four days of no sunshine nearly as much as you might think. Now that I am a bit caught up on sleep I read a lot and piddle around on the internet. Thank goodness for Kindles.

Even so, last night I went to bed with a knot in my stomach I felt like I could feel with my hand if I wanted to. (My emotions and body often get their wires crossed like that. Homesickness feels like thirst to me, a weird thing my sister claims to experience too.) The blah-ness may have something to do with hearing the little kid crying in discomfort next door or reading an eerie book about genetic research and civil rights abuses that made me feel yucky (a Kindle special. Go figure). But more than anything I think I am just missing Bryan and Annabelle, my firstborn who is still just a baby too. The nursing staff don’t really want her to get exposed to more germs up here visiting, especially as she is just getting over something too, and she isn’t really happy stuck in a little room with sick baby sister and no toys anyway. She adores her Papa and is having a blast with him. But generally, our little family doesn’t do well apart for too long.

That being said I had the great joy of having a lunch date with Annabelle today. Bryan hung out with MaryKat while Annabelle and I crossed the street to a Java House where we finished off lunch with ice-cream cones and milk-shakes. I still can’t believe sometimes that I can sit in a restaurant booth and have hilarious conversations with my not-quite two year old. My favorite thing she does these days is ask a question, (“That is?”), receive the answer (“That’s an external hard-drive for the computer,”), after which she thinks for a second then throws her head back in affected laughter and says “Oh yeah…” as though she had just momentarily forgotten something she had known all along.

 

Before she left the hospital Annabelle and I each put on one of her stick-on tattoos (“tattoons” she calls them, which seems appropriate to me). She picked out a koala bear for her tummy. I got a butterfly for my hand. I told her it would help me not miss her so much while we are apart. And even though her Papa says she is a little clingy and emotional while I am away, she says goodbye very matter-of-factly and doesn’t make a big scene. This helps my heart.

So I crawl into bed tonight so thinking of all the families that have to do this for weeks or months even and say thank you that only five days apart feels so sad. I kiss the baby beside me in her little hospital gown that makes her look like an old-fashioned baby doll; I talk for a long time to Bryan on the phone and then tell him I love him; and I kiss my tattoon. 

It will be good to have all this behind us.

Back to the Hospital

It seems unfair to the last month to be writing in the pale glow of a hospital room again, with the soft ripple of bubbles in an oxygen filter nearby and my baby’s raspy breathing in the cot next to me. I have had so many blogs churning in my mind that never made it out – blogs about long walks on the beach of my childhood with my baby, leaving footprints in the damp fanfare of sand strewn from crab holes; blogs about three weeks with my mama, drinking chai after we finally got the girls to sleep and talking and crying about mothers and daughters and the fierce connection between them; blogs about the steady ache to be back in North Africa instead of the comfortable drift of roaming from one nice house to another here in Nairobi while we wait for a place to call home.

But I never wrote the words down, mostly because of the chaotic beauty of being a fulltime mother these days. Blogs, like sleep, have been hard to come by. But, one of the odd upsides to being in the hospital is a little more time to myself to do things like write. Time that I would happily give back.

Bryan was the first to come down with upper respiratory crud but Annabelle and Mary Katherine quickly followed suit. The mysterious super-shield that keeps mamas’ immune systems up in order to take care of the family has held up for me so far (though I am preparing for the inevitable crash when this is all said and done.) We took everyone to the doctor on Saturday morning and by Sunday Annabelle and Bryan were improving. But MK was not. She had fits of violent coughing that made my heart stop and then she started vomiting. All day Sunday I could hardly rouse her to eat much less do anything else. By evening we started deliberating whether or not we could wait until morning to see our pediatrician or if we should go ahead and take her to the ER. But when she started looking pale and frighteningly lethargic, our decision was easy.

It was around nine when I threw the diaper bag in the car and strapped a listless MaryKat into her seat. Bryan stayed behind with Annabelle who was already in bed, though I could tell it was killing him not to come with us. But with a toddler and a nursing baby there was little choice. I haven’t driven in Nairobi at night before and I was a little nervous. As I made my way through poorly lit round-abouts, harrowing high-speed two lane roads and a couple of wrecks I was just imagining scratching out the eyes of the corrupt cop that pulled me over to ask for a bribe. Normally I am an intimidated mess around police (at least on the inside) but God help the unsuspecting person that chose to mess with me that night. Thankfully, no one did and I made it to the hospital in good time. Mary Katherine was coughing the whole way and as I turned into the parking lot she started vomiting and choking. I screeched into a parking spot and scrambled to get her inside.

By the time I got her into the hospital she was white as a sheet and limp on my shoulder. Her breathing, which I was obsessively checking, was shallow and irregular. After what felt like months of paperwork I was directed to the pediatric waiting area where I sat down with a dozen coughing kids and their sleepy parents listening to a journalist wax on about the looming Kenyan elections on the TV above. Eventually a triage nurse called me back to look at MaryKat. Moments after checking her out she was ushering us down a hall to a room full of curtained off beds and fitting an oxygen mask over my baby’s face. At the time the number “65” didn’t mean anything to me. But now knowing that it should have been over 94, I feel sick to my stomach.  

The 48 hours after that have been a blur. I feel like I remember everything that has happened – the breathing treatments, the x-rays, the visits from Bryan and Annabelle - but I have no sense of chronology or time. I sleep when MaryKat sleeps, which is often only 20 minutes at a time with no respect to night or day. I can’t remember what was an hour ago or a day ago. She and I are both exhausted.

But, thank God, her heart rate and respiration rate have settled and on oxygen she is alert and hungry. The chest x-rays showed this was not pneumonia but just a really bad virus so now we just wait until she can pull enough oxygen into those little lungs on her own. Tonight when they took her off O2 her numbers were at 78 – still not good enough to go home. But her congestion is clearing, just slowly.

My precious cousin Terron who is working here for a year spent the day with Annabelle (having tea-parties and comforting baby dolls no doubt. She has a huge crush on her cousin-uncle) so that Bryan could be with Mary Katherine and me. Just a few hours with him and I think we both feel like we can go on with a little more grace. Four am last night was not our finest hour with all her tubes only allowing about a three foot circle to pace in when she (we) was crying. At one point a poor nursing student tiptoed in to take MK’s vitals and when he saw me I could see him mentally scanning his textbooks for the chapter on “What to do when you walk in on a bawling sleep-deprived anxiety-ridden white woman at 3am.” But tonight I think she and I are both encouraged and optimistic about a few hours sleep. She’s squeaking away in her little swing that her Papa brought up and I will curl up under the circus sheets on the hospital bed. We’ll see how the night goes.

As always, thank you for your prayers. 

Post Script: I ran out of internet credit for my computer last night so I didn’t get to post this until now, twelve hours later with about six hours of sleep under my belt and almost double that for MK. Plus her O2 levels are now at 90%. I am so happy!