Tea Time!

Kayleigh loves to play tea party especially if I let her fill her pot with sweet tea! Yesterday Zeb thought he needed to take part in the action as well. After the first pot of tea was gone I decided to just give them water. They really had a lot of fun and water was everywhere which is the reason for the towels under their cups.

Finger Painting

In an attempt to figure out what to do while the rain keeps pouring I decided to break out the finger paint. Lucky for me we have a balcony that we can do all our messy crafts on. Plus this finger paint happens to be washable. Kayleigh and Zeb had a great time painting. I am still not sure if they really knew what to do with the paint. I am pretty sure Zeb's favorite part was playing in the bucket of water to wash off his feet and hands.

Craft Day

Once a week we go over to my VERY creative friend Brooke's house and do a craft. She has a three year old little boy named Nathan and Kayleigh loves to play with him. A couple of weeks ago they did some finger painting with flour, water, and food coloring. I tried my best to keep Zeb occupied with Nathan's toys but he was dying to join his sister. So I decided to let him give it a try. He LOVED it and decided that he should sit right in the blob of paint. His white cloth diaper became a different color very quickly. I ended up having to give him a bath at their house before we could go home. Since then they have done some bubble painting and built a miniature log cabin with pretzels, a milk carton and icing. I am so thankful for my friend and her willingness to include me in the craft activities.

Kayleigh Did It!!!

Kayleigh is successfully potty trained. Well at least for the most part. We still have a few accidents every now and then. However, we are going on our third week of no diapers and it is going great. She seems so much older now that she doesn't use diapers any more. We are so proud of her. I have to give a lot of credit to my friend Danielle. If you read my previous post about trying to potty train her then you know that my problem was that she was holding using the bathroom until she was in pain. Danielle suggested that I stick her hand in warm water to make her go while she was on the potty. It worked! This helped her to realize how to go on her own and the rest is history. Thanks Danielle!

Morning Dishes

This morning Kayleigh got up and started playing with all her toys she hadn't played with in about three weeks. So, after 30 mins of that, she decided she wanted to wash the dishes (really just play in the water). Alisa got her little stool and put it up to the sink so she could wash like mommy and A-Yi.

Vegetable Bath

Alisa was getting ready for dinner tonight and Kayleigh decided she wanted to help her clean the lettuce. During the cleaning, Kayleigh thought she would then clean herself with the vegetable wash water. She got it all over herself, the counter, and Alisa's clothes. It was a mess but she absolutely had an awesome time! Our little baby is no longer a little baby!

Flood of 2008

This morning, my friend and I went to the north part of the city to buy some groceries and look into some other stuff. I should have known something was up when it took me about 30 mins to find a taxi. It was raining but not too bad so I thought it was a little long to wait for a cab. I finally snagged one and went to meet my friend at Metro (A German Supermarket). The traffic was unusually bad once we got to the north part of the city. After seeing the problem, a huge flood, I knew what was going on. So I met my friend a block away from Metro and started to cross the road. The road was about chin high full of water in some places as we crossed. I could smell the faint stench of sewage as we trudged through the mess. We finally got to Metro and did the shopping, then we left, and the real adventure began.

Upon leaving there were many empty taxis driving around empty. We tried to hail them down, but to no avail. They said they were not leaving the area right now because they couldn't. They physically could not drive their cars through the streets as they were submerged in water. We were trapped. Then we tried the bus. Bad idea. We waited on a bus, stopped for 15 mins, then we left.

We decided to walk a ways before we came upon the big reason why we could not go anywhere. Since there was no one coming down one side of the highway, we took that opportunity to walk down the middle of one of the busiest highways in the city. We walked over a hill and saw the reason why nothing was coming. Mass flooding. We could not even cross on foot! It was waist deep water in some places crossing the highway. We ended up walking to another part of the northern section of the city to see if we could bypass the flood waters. We walked for a good hour or so, all the while I am hauling around the groceries, until we found some police that directed us to a three wheeled bicycle that could get us through a deep section of water and onto a dry section of land where we could hail a taxi and go home.


This is the main highway through the city

This trip to the grocery store, which usually takes only an hour or so, took us about 3 and a half hours to complete. We will never forget this experience of the Flood of 2008, and we will always remember the adventure that we unknowingly undertook!


A truck full of cabbage waiting to pass


A side street that is only passable by bike


Local residence quarters flooded


Truck full of old bikes waiting to pass through the water


The city river swollen almost to capacity