Rain!

Last night at about seven o'clock, as we were getting settled around the
dinner table, the wind started howling. The temperature dropped and we
knew we were in for a good rain. It rained. And rained. And rained. And
rained. Most of the night. It stopped for awhile I think and then it
started up again. Today when I woke up it was cloudy. It stayed cloudy
all day and rained off and on all day. It's one of the very very few
days that I ever spent in Africa in which I couldn't see the sun. It
makes me realize how much I really do love sunshine. And here, when it
rains, well there's nothing really to do. All the kids are inside their
rooms, most of them sleeping. And sometimes the electricity goes out
(thankfully not today and we were able to watch a movie!). And
sometimes, well every time it rains it is so loud inside that you can't
have a normal conversation with yourself much less anyone else thanks to
our tin roof. But even if I don't like rainy days I'm so thankful that
it IS raining. Millet is starting to sprout everywhere. The trees are
turning green. There is green stuff that you might mistake for grass
growing along the roadside, until you get up close and realize it’s just
a bunch of weeds. (Sometimes when I draw pictures with the kids, I'll
draw grass on the ground and they always ask me what it is. And they say
"Is that what the ground looks like in America?" and then I have to try
and explain that well. No. We have dirt, but we also have grass. What a
bizarre thing to try and explain.

Due to the rain and not being able to play outside today, I played inside
with Adeline. She started making clothes for a doll out of paper. And I
made a paper doll for her. We sat on the floor in my room and colored
and cut and taped and imagined. She's been asking for a long pretty
skirt because she doesn't have one. And I'm going to have a skirt made
for a wedding coming up in a couple weeks. So we decided that we would get
matching skirts. That’s a big deal here. Everyone wants to match. And
when your shirt and your skirt match it’s just beautiful...so they say.
But really, the African women do look beautiful in them...we Americans
don't look quite so fabulous, but they like it when we try. Anyway,
Adeline got excited about the idea of matching a white person. She told
me about how the people on the street would notice. She liked that idea.
She said we should wear our skirts on Sundays. I said "Sure!"

Jeanette, my baby girl, is doing ok. She is so feisty. She scratches my
face and then laughs. She tries to hit people and then laughs. She gets
fussy easily. But I'm thinking "hey this is better than her being
lethargic" I think it’s because of her attitude that she's still alive.
Sometimes I look at her and cannot believe that this child is almost two
years old. We weigh her every couple of days. She weighed 12 lbs 6 oz.
the first time. The second time it was 12 lbs. The third time it was
back to 12 lbs. 6 oz again...and the today, two days after the third
weigh-in she was more than 13 1/2 lbs! Which doesn't really make sense.
First of all...how do you gain that much in two days when you're eating
the same thing as before. And second I would have noticed that much
weight gain on her. She’s tiny! So we had been weighing her with her
diaper on, and I think from now on we are going to take it off, because
well...we use cloth diapers and they aren't all the same size, so one
might have more material and affect how much she weighs. We don't really
know...but that's what Nichole and I think anyway. So if you think of
her, say a prayer that she'll start gaining weight quickly so she
doesn’t loose any more developmental time (she’s not even crawling...its
amazing that she can even hold her head up) and thank Jesus that she is
still alive.