Asher has pink-eye.
Judah has strep throat.
Jocelyn is feeling sick like maybe i'm getting strep throat.
Josh is fine. (as usual)

Enjoying:
the sound of Asher cooing in the chair beside me.
that Judah is off playing somewhere and not whinging beside me. (although i'm sorry if Judah is inside Rhonda's house bugging her... i hope she'll send him out if that's the case).
the new red carpet from the Cleggs.

Excited about:
(Josh) using the new fireplace insert/slow burning fireplace we bought off the Adolf's.
(Jocelyn) Christmas with my parents in Madagascar. woot, woot!!
Josh going to South Africa and coming back with brown sugar, among other goodies.
walking up to Aero Pizza to order a litre of icecream. yum.
the possibility of Josh finding an icecream maker in SA.
the intermittently working internet.
what i'm thinking of getting Josh for his birthday next month.

Not excited about:
Judah being on school holidays for the next 2 weeks, during one of which Josh will be in South Africa...
the character reformation i feel i'm currently experiencing.
Asher's new night-time frequent feeding schedule.
being sick. Again!
constantly being fatigued due to night feeds and illness.
the fact that the Cleggs are gone.
the imminent garage sale chez moi this saturday. i dont know if you know how terrible i am at simple addition, and how much addition selling stuff requires.
the intermittently working internet.

Watching:
Chuck, Season 1
Alias, Season 1 (this is my nursing tv, since i know Josh doesnt want to watch it)

Reading:
the Psalms of Ascent and corresponding homework by Beth Moore
Dora the Explorer's bedtime story collection
The complete collection of Curious George
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
Fire Sea, or whatever that 3rd book in the Death Gate Cycle series is called.

Wishing for:
Gordon Neufeld's "Hold onto your Kids"
More male playmates for Judah, who will STAY in Madagascar for longer term.
an exersaucer (sp) for Asher
a good night's sleep...
good nights sleep for the rest of my life. LOL.
wisdom in all sorts of troubling dilemmas.
Madagascar to sort out her problems and, subsequently, people to get jobs again and, subsequently, little girls not having to "work" to live.
a full time cook who knows how to cook nice things to eat
a coffee shop with american style coffees and nice things to eat on our side of town
to be able to attend my little brothers wedding without having to travel 35 hours to do so.
more good friends who will stay here at least as long as we will.
the freedom of simplicity.

the weekend before Easter Josh, Judah and a bunch of other fathers and sons went go-carting. Judah loved it, as you might imagine, although Josh said Judah was so interested in looking at the scenery that his driving was a bit erratic.

Josh finished putting up the kitchen shelf the on Maundy Thursday. Once we get some hand-me-down MAF shelves in there we'll have a pretty well functioning kitchen, i reckon. (refer to the horrid photos i posted of the kitchen a few posts ago for "before" pics).

QUICK! the internet is on, upload all the photos that have been queuing up since the last photo post!

Asher chortling in his baby swing i put up for a short while on the arbor, until i realized it wasnt stable enough for a swing and then we moved it under the litchi tree.

Always an unbelievable amount of drool coming out of that mouth.

The boys sharing the love. Perhaps you could print this one off, mom, for Gpa P.

Here they both are on/in the litchi tree.

At our big Easter Party last weekend we tried to play one of the 'egg games' i vaguely remember playing when in Lithuania over Easter time at a huge Easter festival somewhere out in the countryside. We also hunted for eggs, but those photos arent any good.

I made a few dozen buns of paska/easter bread, which i also gave out as gifts to my girlfriends after the Easter party... they havent told me if they were any good though so perhaps my "Mennonite cultural education" didnt go over as well as it could have. But Josh tells me almost every time he brings out the bag of frozen paska that he thinks they were awesome, so that's good enough for me. I also dont mind indulging quite frequently in paska and a cuppa in the morning when Asher is sleeping and Judah is at school.

The Easter Party Ladies.

i tried staging another "judah shot" (that is, a photo of Asher in the same clothes with the same background as a photo i've taken of Judah at the same-ish age). I did this and then looked for the look-alike shot of 4 years back only to discover i'd gotten the background mixed up with another outfit. so, i'll have to do it again another day.

I picked up 3 dozen roses on Good Friday for the Easter weekend and because we were hosting a big Easter party with friends. I paid the equivalent of 6$ for them. Nice eh?

I've got more photos uploading just now, but i'm quite knackered (since it's past 10pm) and i know i'll regret not being in bed by 9 when i wake up tomorrow morning after a hectic night of getting up to feed Asher... (this too shall pass). So, hopefully the internet will still be up tomorrow and i can finish uploading all these new visual goodies. Until then, keep fit and have fun.

back at the hangar again. I was going to hook up my computer to see if i couldnt also upload some photos, but it is HECTIC here and i dont have anyone to ask to help me, so i wont bother. The internet guy came yesterday to our house and apparently it's not the internet provider's fault that our internet is not working. So, the phone line guy will come at some point and if he has to come to the house the internet guy will also come to ensure that the phone guy cant point back a finger at the internet guy and vice versa for our continuing problems...

Josh has mentioned a few times this week that he's quite content in his new position as Operations Manager (taking phone calls for bookings, arranging fees, etc, etc) He's good at working closely with the partners (i think) and he's said that he feels less bad not flying if he's the Ops Mgr rather than the Safety Officer. But, recently it's been quite busy flying as well, which is great for everyone except the pilot's wives

On the home front, i've just come out of a TERRIBLE illness due, i'm almost certain, to mastitis or some kind of derrivative. I still have a sore lump, but it's getting better and i dont feel ill anymore, which is a great bonus. Yuck. I havent felt that terrible in a long time!!

Judah has one more week of school left before his "easter" break. Wednesday will be his Easter event held at a hotel near our house, so we'll walk  there, which will be a nice change from the school-bus-run we're part of every morning. (although my dear friends helped out with that a lot this last week while i was sick and our truck was in the garage). We're hoping for a great dance presentation like the Christmas event two years ago perhaps if you're lucky we can post a video for your viewing enjoyment.

Asher is growing big. He's out of his scream-for-2-hours-before-bed stage, Praise God. No teeth yet. Almost sitting on his own... he's talking a lot more and drooling like a faucet.

Next weekend Rhonda and i are having a garage sale. Immediately after ours is over we're heading out to the American School Garage sale across town to buy other things. LOL I'm hoping to find an activity center? round table/chair thing for Asher and/or a metal trike for a few years from now.

Got more to say, but not the time to say it. We'll hope for a better blogging week next week.
ttfn

A quick note to say to our readers that the internet at our house has been off for 2 weeks now. I'm only just getting over withdrawal symptoms This is the reason you havent heard from us at all on the blog, facebook, email or skype. I was hoping it would be fixed by Easter weekend so we could call home, but it doesnt look promising.

We have planned a gathering of families with small kids to celebrate Easter together on Saturday. We were too late to book the bouncy castle for the event, but we'll still have an egg hunt and a BBQ supper eaten out under the lychee tree (that's my plan at least).

Anyway, i'm off back home now to meet Judah from school. Just came into the hangar to catch up on internet communication.

Happy Easter.

This is the flash coffee bar on the MAF hangar floor, located in the 'waiting room' area where the customers/partners wait for their flight to leave. I think it gets used more often by the pilots, engineers, IT guys, etc who have coffee break there every day. Here we're having an afternoon cake, coffee and an unprecedented amount of savory snacks courtesy of Charity for to celebrate Adam and Naomi prior to their departure.

Asher's 4 month jabs were today. I managed to find the diptheria/tenanus, pertussis, and polio (DaPTP) and Hib vaccine in the Ambohibao pharmacy yesterday for 78,000Ar (ca. 35$) but will have to cross town to find the pneumococcal conjugate (PCV7) so we'll do that one another day. I was a bit nervous about the ordeal, but Asher didnt even notice the jab going in, which was a great gift for me.

Anyway, here are some Asher at 4 months photos for the grandparents, sucking his lower lip like usual and, below, crying, just so you dont think he's a perfect child.

 

Instead of playgroup, since most of our children from that original playgroup group are now in school, the ladies now gather every 'fortnight' (that's for you Naomi ) for a cuppa at the Cookie Shop. It's a bit of a trek, especially considering the traffic and the fact that the day we go, Thursdays, is a day Judah is only in school for the morning but we seem to make it there and back in good time, with a fair bit of the morning spent over a leisurely coffee. Yum. We continue to encourage the owner to open another location nearer to our end of town, but apparently, what with the new embassy opening there as well, the rent prices are very high.

Josh buying veggies on the lane near our house.

Since we've been back i've noticed a lot of new hotels and, remarkably, new flashy house/decor shops popping up around our area. Out of curiosity i've visited a few of them to see what they have for sale. It is truly remarkable to me how these shops have such very nice things at exorbitant prices (that is, so high in price that i would never consider buying anything from those shops!). In a country where the poor seem to get poorer and there continues to be instability and loss of jobs due to factories pulling out i wonder who can afford to buy these things... It is indeed a mystery because when i ask the shop keepers if they get any customers who actually purchase their outrageously priced items they assure me that they do. Who these people are, i cannot imagine, unless they are non-missionary Europeans or Asians making big-bucks off the Malagasy or else very wealthy Malagasy buying ridiculously overpriced stuff to garner prestige. Regardless of who it is, i definitely dont know those people. Perhaps the reason it's such a mystery to me is because i continue to feel as though of all the Malagasy and other people i know who live here, most of them are poor or "normal" middle class expats. I suppose i would have an entirely differnet impression of Madagascar if i knew a different socio-economic group.

This last Sunday we went to Au Bois Vert, one of our favourite restaurants, for a farewell to the Cleggs.

Naomi, Adam and Noah Clegg - our dear friends who are leaving the country and the programme tomorrow.

And here's our multiple attempts at a MAF Mad family photo.

Our group seems somewhat more lively than it has been in a while.

Asher weighs in at 7.17kg; 66.5cm. I forgot to mention that in the last post. We went to our friend Tanja the midwife to use her baby scale in her fancy midwife-mobile. I also cross referenced this weight with Judah's at the same age and it appears that although Asher seemed to get a head start at birth, he's now at the same weight as Judah was at 4 months (15.8lbs).

Josh is back from his MMR. It was a not-too-bad week for us on the homefront, thank the Lord. You might want to ask Josh about the cultural differences of overnight stays in Madagascar...

Here are some photos that go with the last post:

Asher's sleep sack i sewed.

The hedge that is gone. Now i can see into our neighbour's unkempt garden... I may just ask my gardener to mow their lawn so i dont have to look at it all overgrown anymore.

I mentioned yesterday on facebook that i had botched up Asher's first haircut because it was difficult to hold a wiggly, standing baby with one hand while trying to cut hair with a scissor with the other hand. Some people asked for photos of this event, but i only got a not-even-half-decent photo of the "before". I did try to take "after" shots, but a wiggly baby at the end of the day is not conducive to good clear photos. I'll try again tomorrow and repost the after shot at the end of this post.

Now, tell me that isnt terrible baby-mullet-hair!

This, although you cant see it well and it's a bit botched (see the areas of shaved-to-the-skin?) i think is much better than baby-mullet.

It's Tuesday again. My Facebook status, if the internet would stay on long enough for me to update it, would say something like:

Jocelyn R Plett...
- is exhausted.

- is discouraged by the swarms of ants in the kitchen and the mounds of laundry in the garage, but is trying hard not to moan about it or let it get me down.

- is proud of myself for finishing my latest sewing project: a sleep sack for Asher. Woot, woot! I didnt take video tutorials of the process nor did i take photos of every step along the way so that you too could sew such a handy-dandy thing but i will take a "completed product" photo at some point and post it here. I sewed a zipper in for the first time in my life for this project. I'm pretty impressed that i'm still learning new things

- just discovered the side hedge fell over during the night.

- is suffering from dodgy guts.

- is wondering how i'll manage to get through 3 days without Josh around to help with the boys in the evenings.

- will suss out how to make paska buns today.

- would love to hire a bouncy castle for a friends Easter party in the Canadian compound.

- often thinks in Facebook status sentences.

- ARGH! this ferdangled internet is driving me crazy!!

- thanks the LORD every day for Mme Fanja and her love for carrying Asher.

- is amazed at how nursing a baby can create a regimen of discipline for reading EVERY daily Lenten reading after 6 successive years of reading sporadically through the same book.

- is looking forward to winter in the tropics.

- has 4 Rubbermaid bins of stuff to sell at the first garage sale i can ready it for.

- has found a site that may allow me to "slurp" my blog into a real book. (the internet, however, has prevented me from discovering whether indeed my host site is compatible with this program and whether it will be feasible for me to do).

- would have loved to go to Eureka today while Judah is in school to get more project fabric, etc. but has realized that dodgy guts and long trips with an infant is a bad combination. That and i just remembered i have MAF work to do.