MIA

Why is it that babies always find the smallest things on the floor? Miriam is sitting with toys scattered all around her and what does she find? A teeny, tiny hair elastic. A hair elastic that I should have noticed and removed before I put her down. I believe it’s important to survey the scene a little before placing teething babies on the ground but at the same time, they are hard to keep up with.

We’ve been a little under the weather, so to speak, at our house. Acting as travel agency/hotel for 18 days kind of wore us out. Miriam is teething, Rachel and Andrew have been suffering from allergies due to the Khamsin storms that have been periodically raging through Cairo, Andrew caught some mummy tummy, as did Josie, and now I sound like I swallowed a frog, and…we just haven’t done very much this week. Luckily Bridget and Jeremy, as veteran Middle East dwellers, haven’t needed us to arrange much of anything for them, so even though we’ve had guests for 22 days and counting now we’ve spent most of our time chillaxin’ since last week.

Andrew successfully got Miriam’s visa, the girls and I had one last play date with Elijah and Noah, I’ve been tutoring, and Andrew’s been running around like crazy to get his thesis printed off, but other than that life has been pretty quiet. Especially since I broke out the Orajel. I don’t think I used Orajel with Rachel until she was having trouble with her molars. But maybe I did. I don’t remember. Miriam’s been having such a hard time—she’s been working on this single tooth for about a month now. I can see it, just below the surface, pushing against her gums. It just won’t pop through. And all she does is cry about everything.

I put a dab of Orajel on her gums a while ago and haven’t heard a peep from her since. Well, until big Miriam fell backwards and landed on her. Then she cried. But other than that she’s been great.

Rachel’s been loving having Miriam and Magdalena over to play for such a long time—she’s a little emotionally high strung, but we already knew that about her, though it has compounded with all the visitors running through our little hotel.

This past month, of course, has been a little crazy—for two nights last week we had six extra people in our home—but we counted up the overnight visitors that we’ve had while living out here and feel incredibly popular. Twenty-one guests. Who knew we even knew so many people that liked us so much? I guess technically we only knew twelve of them beforehand. The others we met as vagabonds and welcomed them into our home like the McCallisters did for us when we first arrived in Cairo.

I like the community that we have as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I feel comfortable opening my door to complete strangers—but it isn’t very scary to do when I trust that they share my same standards or they come with outstanding recommendations from a mutual friend.

So that’s my rambling. I do have a few solid stories to share, though, so while dinner is simmering on the stove (courtesy of Andrew and Josie, not me) and Miriam has settled down for a 6:00 nap (I know, I’m crazy) and Rachel is being entertained by big Miriam I suppose I should write a bit more.