Saturday, April 6, 2013

Cement!

Greetings,

Benjamin loves vehicles these days, and work trucks most of all.  But he positively freaks out when he sees a cement truck.  Happily there is a ton of construction happening here in Amman, so we see one almost every day.  Thursday we drove home after eating dinner at the embassy and there were at least three cement trucks parked in the vacant lots near our apartment.  He flipped, and was so excited.  Thomas held him and we watched them for a while, then one of the drivers came over and talked to us.  He was very friendly and nice, and actually let Thomas take Benjamin into the cab of one of the cement trucks! 

Happiest kid ever!




Hussein (our new friend) put his sunglasses and hard hat on Benjamin, and gave him his construction vest.  (He also invited us to his house for dinner next Friday, but I'm not sure we're available.  It's amazing how hospitable Jordanians are.)  Benjamin was over the moon and had the worst breakdown I've ever seen when we went inside.  I don't know if you can remember things long-term when you're two, but I hope he remembers that.

Otherwise, life has been pretty normal for us.  This weekend we hosted church on Friday morning, and it was so nice to see everyone again.  I'm back to having almost-normal energy, but it's taken a lot longer than I thought.  I'm now about 18 weeks, and I would have expected to be feeling good around week 14, but it's come much slower this time around.  Thankfully I'm getting there and was able to get a minimum of food on the table.  It's so nice to have people bring food, that way I don't feel too stressed about providing everything.  We decided not to have Emy come and help clean up, which in hindsight was a mistake.  Lesson learned, even if it's a smaller group, she is very much needed.

Today's been very low-key, I got to sleep in and we just hung out at home.  For dinner we went out to Fatty Dab's, a burger and shake place that is delicious.  I've been really into shakes recently, and I justify it by claiming I need lots of calcium.  The major accomplishment this week has been transitioning Benjamin from using a straw cup for milk to drinking out of an open-top cup.  We have a bunch of kids cups from Ikea, and he gets to pick a color each time, which is fun.  The first night was rough, he didn't want to do it, but I knew that I was late getting him to drink from a "normal" cup, so we just plowed ahead.  And now he doesn't complain, but he hasn't totally gotten the concept of tilting his head back to fully drain the cup.  Thomas or I will push his head back, but I'm sure he'll catch on sometime.  I think it will make life much easier when we're traveling around SC for vacation, not having to wash and dry the straw cups constantly.

Speaking of home leave, I can't believe it's April already!  And in just a couple months we'll be heading home.  I am so incredibly excited.  I'm also a little nervous, I really don't want to have any pregnancy complications on the plane or while we're home.  I just need to trust that God is good, and I don't have any control over it.  But I think I'll still order some compression stockings for the plane.

There is a dilemma I'm facing, about baby supplies.  We don't have an infant car seat or stroller anymore, I'd bought them used off of Craigslist for Benjamin and then sold them to friends before we left.  I guess I can buy new, but I have a hard time paying a lot of money for stuff that only gets used a short period of time.  I also need new bottles.  Some things, like the bouncy seat and exersaucer, we might be able to get out of storage, if we can bribe some friends in DC to deal with that hassle.  And I might see if we can borrow a lot from people here.  But the main thing, all of Benjamin's clothes, up to 18 months, are in storage too.  I really don't see the point of buying new stuff when we have boxes and boxes just sitting around.  We aren't going to DC over vacation, otherwise I'd love to paw through all of our stuff.  Argh.  Hopefully we can convince our friends who are moving back this summer to do it for us.

Anyway, I'm too much of a planner and I should just relax and chill out.  My other obsessive outlet is deciding which crazy range I want to put in our kitchen when we move back into our teeny duplex.  Right now I'm debating between a Viking and a Bluestar, since they both make a 24 inch gas range.  If anyone has thoughts about either, I'd love to hear them!

-Rachel

4 comments:

  1. What a sweet little boy! I love these photos of father and son having fun in the cement trucks :). It's great that people are so hospitable! Miss you guys and love you so much!
    love,
    Priscilla

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    1. Thanks, Priscilla! It was such a fun little adventure. :-)
      We miss y'all, and hope you can come visit soon!
      Love,
      Rachel

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  2. I absolutely love the cement truck story. What a sweet man to recognize that it meant to much to Benjamin and give him the VIP treatment, complete with the vest and hard hat. And I would've paid money to see the epic meltdown when he had to go inside - hilarious!

    Regarding the access to stuff in storage, I know there are certain allowances for that type of thing. There's a new HR guy who's very nice and could help you through figuring out the regs.

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    1. Hey Caroline,
      Yeah, it got ugly really fast as soon as we started moving away from the trucks. :-/

      Thomas is in charge of all the storage-retrieval stuff, which is hard for me since that's "my area" (house stuff). I'm trusting that it will all work out, and of course it's all secondary to a healthy baby. I lose sight of that sometimes! It's good to know that the contact person is nice, fingers crossed we can get it all sorted.

      Have a good one!
      Rachel

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