There is a new post up at Fly Fishes Fly.  Don’t judge me because I have hired help.

Also, Chinua has some lovely new photos up.  Lovely is really the wrong word, but I’m too tired and too pregnant to be smart right now.

And now is the point when I need you to reassure me about my parenting skillz.  Please tell me that there are periods in a kid’s life when they have less to do, are around home more.  Tell me there are seasons.

Also, tell me that I should save the worrying for the point when they complain.  Tell me that because they are happy and laughing and waking up excited for the day that I can STOP PROJECTING MY FEARS ONTO THEM.  Tell me that friends come with time, that family is beautiful, and that our time together is precious, and that I need to STOP FRETTING LIKE A NEUROTIC CHICKEN LIVER ALREADY.

Please.

Also, tell me that one day soon my hips won’t feel like they are going to explode with every step.

Thank you.

I walk through the market with all the tiny stores lining the street.  The vegetable sellers have their stands on either side, with some directly in the middle.  Piles of mangos, okra, potatoes, tomatoes… they are everywhere.

I’m looking for something specific, and I’m guessing I’ll find it in a shop that sells plastic goods, like buckets and stools and pitchers.  I peer into the shops I pass, smiling briefly at people who look concerned when they see me, as if they’ve never in their life seen something so odd.  I know that this is just the famed Indian stare, though, so it doesn’t bother me. Also, Indian women don’t go out when they are pregnant, so I am rather strange.

I find a little shop and walk inside.  It is dark and there are three people sitting in the midst of piles of the things I think will lead me to what I’m looking for.  I don’t think they’ll know the word, so I try using gestures and other words.

“Do you have a small (I gesture the size with my hands) sort of toilet?  For a baby?”

They shake their heads.  “For a small child?  To sit on?  To use the bathroom?”

No they don’t.  They shake their heads again.  I gesture again to show the size and shape of what I’m looking for.  “For a child?  A toilet?”  Nope, they sure don’t.

“Oh,” I say, disappointed.  “You don’t have a potty.”

The one young woman jumps up.  “Potty?  Yes, we have.”  And she proceeds to show me the perfect, small, simple potty that I’ve been hoping for.

You know, I find that sometimes it works better to just start with the word, rather than becoming some sort of crazed foreign pregnant mime.  You know.

But he still seems like a baby to me.

This morning I went to the market to get some food, but the scooter wouldn’t start, so I needed to get a taxi.  This was alright, because it enabled me to get enough rice to last us several months at a wholesale place.  Then after marketing, I wanted to do internet stuff, so (the scooter was fixed by this time) I drove out to a little beach village, but right when I got started, a planned power outage took away the village’s power.  So I had to drive to another village.   And pay some bills.  And now… hmmmm.

Well, lists are fun.

Let’s see.

Vegetables and fruits we bought in the market today:

1. Brinzel (eggplant)

2. Tomatoes

3. A dozen mangos

4. Tiny bananas that I adore

5. Lemons (to make lemonade)

6. Chilies

7. Potatoes

8. Ghobi (cauliflower)

9. Palak (spinach)

10. Coriander (cilantro)

11. Onions

Things we bought in the supermarket which is not much like what you would imagine when you think supermarket:

1. Dahl (lentils)

2. Curd (yogurt)

3. Mosquito coils

4. Chini (sugar)

5. Atta (flour)

6. Kismis (raisins)

And much more…

Bodies of Water that Kid A has been swimming in in his short lifetime:

1. The Eel River

2. The Boiling River in Yellowstone Park

3.  The Gulf of Mexico

4. The Pacific Ocean

5. Lake Superior

6. The Mediterranean Sea

7. The Sea of Galilee

8.  The Dead Sea

9. The Arabian Sea

10. What the heck is that lake called right by Chilliwack?  Oh yeah, Cultus.

11.  Some little lake in a state park in New Mexico

And I don’t know if I’m forgetting any.

Types of vehicles my unborn baby has traveled in:

1.  Rickshaw

2. Tractor

3. Scooter (moped)

4. Bus

5. Light rail train

6. Taxi

7. Van

8. Car (is that cheating?)

9. Airplane

10. Boat

Number of bumps we have endured on these vehicles: about eighty million

Number of mayflies that landed on my bed the other morning, causing me to shriek and jump out of bed and not sleep any more: About eighty million

Stinkiest things in India:

1. Trash heaps

2. Dogs

3. The meat side of the market

4. The fish side of the market

5. That bowl of shrimp in the sun that a woman tried to sell me today

Number of monkeys the kids have seen in our back yard:  3 or 4

Stoked much?  Yes.

Number of birthday parties we have been invited to and attended so far: 1

Number of games of war we have played while waiting for our things to arrive: about eighty million

Estimated number of days until we have internet: One or two or thirty or never

Estimated number of days until our boxes arrive from the ship: One or two or thirty or never

How much I love my birth center:  As much as I love ice cream

Amount of ice cream eaten since arriving in India three and a half weeks ago: one scoop

I wrote you all a lovely post the other day and was going to post post it.  Get it?  But the usb drive on this computer in this incredibly strange internet cafe doesn’t seem to be working, so I can’t use my jump drive, and so yeah. Huh.

We have moved in to our little home in the jungle. I love it. I’ve started building a little nest, which isn’t the easiest because we are housesitting, so there’s a whole lot of other people’s stuff here. But I think we’ll manage fine.

At night sometimes I look up into the dark and see fireflies talking to each other.

Have you ever played war, the card game, with a five year old, a four year old, and a two year old? Where when finally the two year old stops crying every time we take his cards away from him, he ends the game by taking off running down the house with the cards he doesn’t want to relenquish in his hands, little bottom in little undies and all?

We are working on our internet solution, at which time so much posting will go on, your heads will be spinning… you will love the photos of the kids in their new Indian clothes. Ahhhhh…

Since I’m guessing that you don’t want to hear about the power outs last night when we were try in the crazy humidity, when Chinua and I lay on our backs staring at the ceiling fans, listening to the barking dogs outside… well, you’ve heard it all before, so maybe I’ll tell you about this conversation instead.

The kids come clambering onto our bed, obviously distraught.

Kid A- “Mooom, YaYa’s making everything wrecked!’

Me- “What’s she wrecking, honey?”

Kid A- “Well, it’s both of our birthdays today, and SHE’S trying to take the first bite out of ALL the cakes, and that’s not fair, because I want the first bite.

I stare at him for a minute.

Me- “But don’t you think it makes sense for each of you to have your own cake, and then each of you can have the first bite of your cake?  Since you’re both having your birthday?”

Kid A- “I want to do that, but everytime I try, she just CHOP CHOP CHOPS (quick slashing motion with his hands) it UP, and then she takes the first BITE, of ALL the cakes!”

Me- “Soooo, why don’t you make sure that both of you have your own cake, and then YaYa can chop hers up?  And both of you can have the first bite?”

YaYa- “I just want a taste of his.  It’s coconut blackberry.”

Kid A- “NO NO NO, you shouldn’t take MINE!”

YaYa- “C’mon, Kid A!  Let’s go get another coconut blackberry one…”

They run off, leaving me shaking my head over the fact that I have perfectly regular conversations sorting out arguments about invisible cakes made of AIR.

And then there was the moment, today, when YaYa, touching the back of her knee, said, inexplicably and jubiantly, “Oh!  Your knee pits help you walk!” like she had solved what had long been a mystery to her.

Oh these kids.  Treasure.

The other day my Superstar Husband came home with this:

When I opened it up, I found this:

A garland of jasmine, which smelled like pure heaven, because there is nothing on earth that smells like jasmine other than, well, jasmine.  And don’t you hate how they never really get it right, when they try to put it into soaps and stuff?

Details and cooking adventures (last night I mistakenly tried to make chicken soup from something that turned out to be a lot like chicken spam) and homesickness aside, it’s perfect to be able to buy a garland of jasmine wrapped in a banana leaf from a man walking down the street.

I have these moments when I’m lying on my bed in the small flat we’re renting, staring at the ceiling fan which is not moving because of a power out, willing it to move, and I’m thinking, is this really me, eight months pregnant with my fourth child? Because I swear it’s someone else.

We have a game, actually, where we point at the fans and yell, Power ON! and the last person to say it before the power goes back on wins.

Maybe you can tell that this little flat is getting a bit old? Although we thank God everyday for a roof over our heads. And the ceiling fans, which usually work. And the food that we make in our little kitchen, even though yesterday I had a bad experience with some peppers that I thought were harmless capsicums- green peppers, you know- but turned out to be of the blow the roof of of your mouth variety. The kids had plain rice for dinner, and I squashed those guilty feelings like a bug under my shoe with the thought that even in America kids eat plain rice for dinner sometimes.

India is incense, bathing by candlelight, tooting horns on the street, color everywhere, tropical heat like a sauna.

And here we are, being us, winding up the last of this time in the little flat over the bar on the busy street. Soon we move to our temporary home in a house in the jungle- we’ll be living here for about five months, long enough to have the baby and get our feet under us a little more and look for a more permanent location. The stuff we shipped will arrive soon, and we will no longer have to stick to sudoku (YaYa’s getting really good) and origami (Kid A is pretty amazing) and the three shows I have downloaded on I-Tunes. Soon we will have internet access and phones and homeschool will start up again (we had an early summer break this year) and everything will stabilize a bit.

I look at my kids and my husband and my heart almost breaks with love for them. I feel my Muffin kicking me and I am so happy to be here, waiting for our sweet little monsoon baby.

I have more and more normal moments each day; moments where I am just doing what I am doing without that burning feeling in my chest, or the slightly nauseous wrenching that means I am fully aware that I am displaced.  I would describe these feelings as a little bit like what a baby goes through when she is playing happily in someone’s lap, only to look up and discover, that’s not my mother!

But they come less and less.  More and more I look up and decide that although this lap belongs to a stranger, she seems safe.  Maybe even likeable.  Maybe even someone who will be my friend.

Loneliness is something that is fairly strange to me.  There have been a few times in my life that I have felt lonely; raw, gut -wistingly lonely.  The funny thing is that it was usually when I was surrounded by people, but new people.  There is a lesson here, I think.  There are many lessons.

One time that I can remember is when I was first married.  I think I had expectations about finding my other half; about the completion, the wholeness of two people.  And then I found myself sitting beside Chinua on our little couch in our little room, realizing it’s still just me in here.  As much as Chinua is my other half more than anyone else in the universe, I stand alone before God.  We all do.  It was crushing to me at the time, though.  I think I had expected more magic, less conversations with the words- “Can you tell me one more time exactly what you mean because I just don’t understand?” in them.

I’ve had a series of epiphanies like this; the discovery when I became a mother that I didn’t feel any different. I was still just Rae, but 24 hours-on-call Rae who might not possess all of her faculties, and was alternately giddy and weeping.  And spouting milk.

My grandmother told me once that she used to look in the mirror in her late seventies and feel exactly the same inside as she did at thirty.  Her body was like a stranger.

But mostly, loneliness has not been a big part of life for me.  As an introvert who is married with three children and has lived in community for the last ten years,  I just don’t have time to be lonely.  I’m more often looking for solitude.

But there are new lessons for all of us, and coming here has been lonely.  At least for now.  I’m so thankful for my sweet, sweet husband.  But we both look at each other at times and wonder where everyone is.

Lessons come for understanding, I think.  Right now I want to reach into the solitude of anyone I can and place my hand right between their shoulder blades, and say, in the words of many taxi or rickshaw drivers in India, “I am here.”  It is good for me to experience the slightest touch of the lonely traveler.  It’s from this place that I will invite the lonely traveler into my home, offer him some chai, welcome him to my table.

I witnessed something that struck me as such a tender moment in time, as I stood on our balcony hanging clothes on the line yesterday.

We are temporarily in a little flat above a busy chowk (intersection) and yesterday at about 1:30 all the kids got out of school.  They all wear uniforms, checkered shirts with navy shorts or skirts, and as they flocked out into the chowk, dozens of mopeds came by; fathers and mothers picking up their kids.  I watched as two or three kids jumped on a moped with their dads, ready to go home after a day of school.  I waved at the girls with long braided hair.

In a few minutes most people were gone, and then the rains came, heavy and fast and in sheets.

I am glad for these moments.

I’ve uploaded a whole lot of photos to my Flickr account, mostly from Turkey and Israel.  Also, our first post is up at Fly Fishes Fly! It’s our new blog about life in India with our traveling family.  The bonus to this new blog will be more practicalities of life overseas, plus the beauty of Chinua’s writing in the mix.  And photography.  We’ll get it all together a little bit more as we get internet at home.  For now I’m really happy because I found a place to do internet that has faster speeds than dialup.  Hooray!

Chinua took some amazing photos of this Indian monsoon that we are in.  You can check them out here.

Thanks for all your encouragement.  Some of you asked about the kids.  Let me just say that kids are the most adjustable creatures in the universe.  They are loving life right now, even in our sorta yucky little apartment, even in the rain.  They like the rickshaws and the scooter rides and the mangos.  They are just happy.

And I am getting better, little by little.  I realize that I have stored up a lot in the last few months that I am just beginning to process now.  So it could be a while for me.  But God sustains.

These are those magical moments, too, when you don’t yet know how things will turn out, and later you look back and say, “do you remember when we first arrived, and we didn’t even know this place yet?”  and it is incredible to you.

Sometimes I feel like I hate it here, sometimes I have to breathe deep because I am panicking, and sometimes though, there I am, making oatmeal in the morning and it’s okay.  It will be.