What day is it?!?

We have been back in Kenya for just over a month now and are finally back in the land of the living! Jetlag this time around knocked us all out! In the past, we would be functioning after a week, however, this time around, it took us a month. 

A few days after we returned home, Emma got a cold which made it difficult for her to sleep. This meant that Mark was up with her every couple hours. William continued his normal of waking up 2-3 times at night to eat which kept me up.  The lack of sleep resulted in two parents feeling like zombies and praying their kids would sleep and feel better. 

After a week, Emma was back to her old self feeling great and running around the house.  William had kind of put himself on a schedule of waking up once in the middle of the night and then once for an early morning feeding. We had about one good night of sleep before Mark caught Emma’s cold which eventually turned into a sinus infection and stuck around for 3.5 weeks! Because he felt like he got smacked in the head with a two by four, I continued to get up with the kids at night so that Mark could get rest and hopefully feel better. This of course meant, zombie mommy.

During the day, I decided the kids no longer liked me because they would never sleep at the same time.  For example, Will would take his morning nap, then would wake up right before Emma went down for her nap.  He would stay awake the WHOLE time she slept.  When he finally went back to sleep, you guessed it, Emma would wake up.  This continued for a couple weeks which meant mommy got zero naps. Thanks kids, love you too.

One day, in the few hours we were awake, we learned we needed to buy a new vehicle. So, with little to no sleep, one sick parent, and both kids in tow, we drove to Nairobi and Nakuru to search for a car. It would take a whole other post to write out all the details of searching for a car in Kenya so I’ll just try and sum it up. We are cheap Americans and had a small budget that would not get us anything we were originally looking for. After a couple weeks of looking for a car we settled on what is best described as the smallest car in Kenya.  It was not good for off-roading to the village and it would only seat our little family but I will say, it was a cute little car. Thankfully, our co-workers are awesome and said that was a horrible decision (I blame it on lack of sleep) even if it was cute and found us an 8 seater, 4x4 van that was in our price range! Thank you, Jesus and thank you, co-workers!

To top it all off, we are back in the land where I have to make EVERYTHING from scratch! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All homemade. This requires energy and brain power (both of which I did not have) to think up meals, especially if you have to plan for more than one day. So, we ate all the American snacks we brought back in the first two weeks.  We had planned for them to last at least 3 months. At that time I was too tired to care, however now, I’m sad we don’t have anymore.  So, if anyone feels like sending some KIND bars this way, we would greatly appreciate them.  Oh, and Emma requested some cheerios J

Thankfully now, Mark is back to his old self working hard and driving our new van out to the village to do some surveying for our first water project. I am finding my new normal with work and with two kids who have very different schedules and needs. I applaud all of you mommies who have multiple kids and find time to shower. Please tell me how you do it! Despite our exhaustion and it taking hours to cook anything, we are happy to be back in our house, in our Swahili classes, and getting to share William with all of our Kenyan friends!

Oh and bonus…. our house keeps getting invaded by safari aunts…so there’s that.