The Villaggio Mall

Phoebe spent the day as an only child, a position she took to quite well. 

She is rather emotional and tends to be rather strongly affected by nostalgia—which is odd because she's only four. How nostalgic can she really be, right?

Remember how just hearing the song 'There's Always Tomorrow' from Rudolph would set her off crying all the time? Like, we could just start singing it and she would start crying? 

It was hilarious, but very indicative of her personality. 

The song just made her so sad that she couldn't even handle it. 

Similarly, she had to laugh boisterously through the entire (loud) call to prayer because it was so loud that once she was startled she was going to either laugh or cry and she settled on laughing and...that was that. Like, those giggle weren't going anywhere until the emotions had fully run their course.

Well, last night we were getting ready to play Nerts together, which Phoebe had uninvited herself from because it's too fast-paced for her. Instead she sat down with a phone and asked it to play some memories for her. She loves the little video montages Apple puts together. So she was just sitting down and watching one of those movies when she started sobbing. 

"Oh, Phoebe! What's wrong?" we asked. 

"Do you...do you miss me?" she blubbered. "Being this little?"

"Oh, of course I miss that sweet little Phoebe! She was so cute and cuddly and funny! But we also love this Phoebe," I said, giving her a hug. 

"But I was sooooo cuuuuuuute!" she wailed. "And I was so little! Just look at me!"

"You were so cute and little! You were my favourite little Phoebe in the whole entire world! And it is so hard to watch you grow up because I always miss little Phoebe. But it is so fun to watch you grow up because you become more incredible every single day!"

We watched a few movies of her being little and cute and fun and we laughed and hugged and blew our noses (or at least her nose)...and...she's not quite over wishing she could reclaim her babyhood, so today (Saturday) was a good day for her to be an "only child" for the day.

Benjamin slept over at G's house last night. 

Miriam left for the library to hang out with her knitting group friends early this morning.

And then Andrew took Zoë and Alexander over to G's house to hang out with G's younger siblings. 

So it was just Phoebe and me and Daddy for most of the day, which was perfect for Phoebe.

We did some window shopping at the mall at some home goods stores, just to see what's available furniture-wise (since we have none), and she quite enjoyed walking around, trying out furniture, and imagining putting a room together. 

Oh, and convincing Andrew and me to carry her. 

I don't know what sweet nothings she was whispering in his ear when it was his turn to carry her, but I had an ongoing rendition of "Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy! She is so nice and sweet! And her cheek is soft and she's wearing black pants! Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy!" going the whole time I was carrying her. It involved lots of nuzzling into my neck and hair. She was very clingy. 

But here she is down for a moment in the rug section (she claimed this area as her fort):

As I was saying...

"I won't say that the call to prayer is ever disappointing to hear, but we've mostly heard it played quietly over the speakers in the mall or the library, almost like soft background music. We had high hopes that the muezzin at the suq would really belt it out...the way they did in Cairo when we lived there...but it ended up being much quieter than we expected (which was a little disappointing)..."

—me, like two days ago 

This evening was a bit of a circus with Andrew staying late on campus, me having meetings at 4:00 and 7:30, Miriam having a YW activity in one location (7:00), and Benjamin having a YM activity in another location (also at 7:00). 

After my meeting, Miriam and I heated up some boxed soup from France (so fancy) and we quickly ate dinner. And then I took all the kids on the metro down to the Corniche station and then walked Benjamin down to the soccer pitch while Miriam took an Uber to her activity (which isn't precisely on the metro line). 

There was some confusion about which pitch was which (the security guard was certain we* hadn't reserved the pitch we had so wouldn't open the gate), but since Benjamin was with his leaders and peers, we left him to walk across the street to the playground on the other side. It was quite the hike to get to the pedestrian bridge! It looked so close, but the access point was so far. 

* We is doing a lot of work in this sentence because here "we" means...the church? The YM leaders? I think actually the bishop reserved the pitch. We (as in me and the children) merely showed up. We contributed nothing to the logistics of the evening.

I was in a hurry to get to the park and send the kids off to play so I could hop onto my meeting. A lot of video call features on social media apps are blocked in Qatar (like FB is...even WhatsApp), but thankfully Zoom is not, so I was able to connect and have my meeting from the park, which was very convenient. But I wanted to make it to the park before my meeting, so was rushing the children along. 

And then I heard, off in the distance, the call to prayer. 

"Hush, hush," I said to the children. "Be still and listen and you'll hear the call to prayer."

"Oh, yeah! I hear it!" Zoë said. "Where...does it come from?"

"Well, you know the tall towers at the mosques? Those are called minarets and they have a special kind of balcony where a muezzin stands and sings the call to prayer, which is then usually broadcast over a loudspeaker..."

"Too bad," Zoë said looking around. "I don't see any minarets nearby."

"Me neither. Shhh...we'll just listen quietly for a minute."

Croissants, cows, and not loving walls

Milk is rather expensive here (or at least it feels rather expensive here). It is 100% Qatari produced (at Baladna Farm, which is probably worth a visit someday) from a herd of cows flown in from various countries throughout the world (including 6000 cows from Canada) during the 2017 blockade (with more added since then to bolster the herd)—but even though I grew up brainwashed to support the Canadian cattle industry (I ♥ Alberta Beef!) we have been encouraging the kids to expand their breakfast repertoire away from cold cereal + milk. 

They've been enjoying yogurt and eggs and leftover rice (we've been eating a lot of rice-based meals because we bought a rice cooker for our little hotel kitchen) and these prepackaged croissants from Saudi Arabia. They're pretty good, as far as taste goes.  

As far as typography goes—most excellent!

Story time at the library (and our house is under contract!?!)

I signed Phoebe up to attend Arabic story time at the library yesterday and we met up with friends beforehand so they could finish a game they'd been playing.

Phoebe was very excited to ride the metro again. She loves the idea of being on a train, but is perpetually annoyed that we haven't purchased her a "gold club" membership and instead make her ride standard fare. The "gold club" car is much fancier than the ordinary car and there are two seats right at the front of the train so you can see where you're headed (which is very exciting) rather than looking at the windows at the blackness of the passing tunnel.

When we got on the metro, we found the door between the gold club car and the family car had been left open (and the car was empty). The children enjoyed looking through the car out the front of the train...until Benjamin decided that the door was probably supposed to be closed and shut it. 

Pictures from the waterslide party

I realized I never posted any other pictures from our neighbourhood party on July 18. It was such a wonderful day! Our neighbour Lynne rented a blow up waterslide (and at the behest of her daughters made sure to get a double one so the kids could race).

The night before school starts

We enforce curfew for the first time all summer,

say no to kick-the-can, and drag the children

inside for baths at 8:30. They don't want to

say goodbye.

It's the night 

before the night

before we move halfway 

around the world. The children organize

a hugging ceremony. They huddle up, 

strategize ways not to

say goodbye. 

Five more minutes, we say—

then proceed to talk for ten

while mosquitos feast and the 

children's feet collect more magic 

cul-de-sac dust. 

Even I don't know how to

say goodbye

so I end up ugly crying with my mom

friends under the streetlight

while we imagine how to raise our children

without each other.

*****

Anyway, here's a picture of the hugging ceremony huddle:

A few good lasts: Church, swim friends, PTC bridge

Sunday was our last Sunday in our ward (and our last Sunday at church for a while since our ward in Doha will meet on Fridays). Nothing too far out of the normal happened, except our primary children were each gifted a rather large bag of leftover Easter candy (which they were thrilled about).

Killing time in an empty house: rain walks, nature wreaths, and craft dates

We have been blessed with a very wet summer, filled with plenty of thunderstorms. It's sometimes made our walks a little difficult to take, but it's been lovely to literally soak in all the rain while we can.

I took Alexander and Phoebe for a walk last week after a storm and they enjoyed exploring their wet world. Here's Alexander pointing to a little herd of deer wandering through our neighbourhood (they've eaten everything in my garden that we would have liked to eat—such a nuisance).

Miriam's last day (last week) and giving away the last of our food storage

Miriam had Andie and McKenna over on Thursday night (July 16) to play a few games and say goodbye. Tonight the kids are having a sleepover down there because that room is 100% empty (except for all the stuff the kids just dragged into it, I guess). After this picture was taken I made Andie and McKenna fill a box of food to take home to their families.

How are we old enough to have been friends with people for this many years?

 

Between the county swim meet and attending Sam Lewis's mission homecoming/report, we've missed the last two Sundays at our ward, so I'm sure we'll surprise some people by showing up again!

Double the Phoebes

Phoebe met another little girl at the pool today. 

"Hello!" she said. "Do you want to play with me?"

"Sure!" said the little girl.

"Okay!" said Phoebe. "What's your name?"

"Phoebe," said the little girl. 

"No, that's my name," Phoebe said, shaking her head. "What's yours?"

Phoebe's Slide Face

Our neighbours threw the most awesome block party today (in our honour) and the main attraction was an inflatable waterslide. Phoebe was thrilled about this, telling Grandpa on a video call yesterday that she was super glad about it because the last time we went to a waterpark the kids weren't even allowed to use the waterslide, which wasn't very fair (and also wasn't very true because only children under 4 ft tall weren't allowed to use it...all other children were). She loved the waterslide...

But her face had me harkening back to her early days when any change in elevation made her cringe:

Childhood games

We had some friends sleep over last night and they've been playing here all day. We started at the pool, where I ended up playing with Phoebe (the poor youngest child). She wanted to play "family," as she ordinarily does, and that's fine. I'm very familiar with the game "family."

We have one little baby doll (Baby Dora for the past 12 or 13 years, but suddenly Baby Anastasia, which is much fancier, don't you agree?) that we use in the pool. And then we set out the sinky rings to use as dishes and cook up a good meal, pulling ingredients magically from the water. Sinky sticks are for stirring. Reusable balloons are eggs. 

We just...bake a lot of stuff...take care of the baby...and take many trips out to sea...or have sunset picnics...

Phoebe will narrate the whole thing, which is usually fine. But today there was another family with young children at the pool playing close by and I began to feel self-conscious about how awkward Phoebe's speech patterns become when she plays this game.

"'Mother, will you hold my head while I attempt a back float?' I ask," she'll say. 

Or, "I say, 'This recipe needs three eggs, not four.'"

Or, "What time will the sun set?' I ask. 'We should set up the picnic,' I say." 

But she includes that little "I say" or "I ask" in every sentence she utters...because she's not really saying that or asking that. Her character is saying. She's just the narrator. 

I can tell it sounds strange to hear a small child speak like that because we definitely got a few weird looks. But that's okay because it's her go-to game at the pool and it keeps her entertained for literal hours. 

Waterpark with swim team friends

One of my swim team mom friends started a group chat with about a dozen swim team families, suggesting that we meet up at a water park this afternoon. So that's what we did! 

When we took this picture we had about 25 kids (though some more came later). You might think it would be difficult to gather 25 kids from several different families together for a picture, but this waterpark enforced "adult swim" for the last 15 minutes of each hour. 

Adult swim is not my favourite concept, but I do admit that it has a few perks. It forces the kids out of the water so they check in with their parents. You can reapply sunscreen, make sure kids go to the bathroom, take a group picture...and so on. 

We really took advantage of the first adult swim that was called. 

"Come on, moms!" one of my friends called. "We've got the pool all to ourselves. That's right—all of us. Miriam grab Phoebe. Who will take Baby Red?"

She marched us all over to the water slide and demanded we head up the stairs. It was really quite fun! We all went several times. 

And then the kids suggested a jumping contest off the high dive. 

It was also fun to just float around in the pool, taunting the children that we were swimming and they weren't!

Sparklers, take 2

When Phoebe saw the pictures of the kids playing with sparklers on the 4th, she was like, "Wait a minute—when did that happen?" 

So we had to tell her that it happened...after she had gone to bed. She immediately began to have some serious regrets about bedtime, so Andrew promised that we'd pick up some sparklers at the store on Monday and do them again for FHE. 

This sounded like a good plan to her.

Could she remember what they were called?

Absolutely not.

Sprinklers? Spracklers? Spritzes? Sprinkles?

Twinklers? Twizzlerss? Twirlies? Twinkles?

If she was talking about something yesterday, it was highly likely that she was talking about sparklers. 

Or trying to...

Unfortunately for her, there were no fireworks left in the grocery stores on Monday morning—zip, zero, zilch!

Every last firework display had been replaced with back-to-school displays. Yuck!

So I sent out a plea on the good ol' Buy Nothing Group to see if anyone had any sparklers left for my poor youngest child who had slept through the late-night fun the big kids had in the cul-de-sac. 

It took a couple of minutes but soon I had offers pouring in. 

"I have a few boxes!"

"I have so many left over! TAKE MINE!"

"You should have just asked me! The big kids didn't burn through my entire stash on the 4th!" (this last one was from our neighbour who had supplied the sparklers in the first place).

We ended up with plenty of sparklers—enough for Phoebe and all the cul-de-sac kids to enjoy another evening of pyromaniacal mayhem!

Here she is anxiously waiting for her first sparkler to...spark:

4th of July

Seven years ago, our first ward activity was the 4th of July breakfast, just the day after we closed on our house here! It's fitting, I suppose, that our last ward activity here was also the 4th of July breakfast.

This year was much smoother for us than some years have been. Last year we noped out of there because Alexander had a raging ear infection and it was so hot and humid and the pancakes weren't ready and no one had told us there would be swimming so we were just sitting there sick and sweltering. The year before that they started at 8 AM instead of 9 AM and we collectively decided that no one wanted to get out of bed at 7:00 on a Saturday (swim season already has us up early most mornings). We've skipped out on several other years as well... 

This holiday can be a tough one for me. 

Doha preview

It's hot today. For reference, wunderground.com tells me that it's 100°F here, with a "feels like" temperature of 115°F. So of course we had to go outside to feel what that feels like—just for reference.

Two times I cried yesterday

I'm sitting alone in what has been dubbed The Boat Room with 51.86666667% of our allotted shipment. I know this because we have been weighing each box and recording its weight in a spreadsheet because we don't know how else we're supposed to know what 5700 lbs of stuff looks like. I'm alone because Rachel is now in Utah, Miriam and Benjamin have left for FSY, Zoë is in Tennessee, and Andrew took Alexander and Phoebe to swim practice. 

I haven't been alone in the house in ages. 

I may have never been alone in this particular house. 

It's quiet and I could be getting stuff done, but instead I'm blogging (which one could argue is getting stuff done). We do need to decide what else needs to come into The Boat Room, but really our rooms are starting to look rather bare. 

Last night I was working in Miriam and Zoë's room, which was very nearly finished (but not quite) and I came across a handful of paper-and-ribbon Olympic medals the kids made for their Kids' Olympics a few summers ago and it made me feel so happy-sad.

Our cul-de-sac has been an oasis for my little kids—they have made such good friends with our neighbourhood kids! I'm so grateful for our wonderful neighbours, who have truly been a village. It's been such a privilege to raise my children alongside these families. Thinking about that made me tear up a bit (and I think that's why packing takes me so much longer than Andrew, who is much more pragmatic about things). 

And then last night I also got to "attend" my cousin's son's baptism (between packing boxes), which was a wonderful surprise! 

Visit with Cairo friends

Last night we finally had Kevan and Sara Lewis over for dinner (and by that I mean that Sara offered to bring dinner to us)! They moved to the Atlanta area at the end of last summer but our plans kept falling through so we only managed to connect yesterday. 

They are good, good friends from our time in Cairo. Somehow they trusted us to watch their five children while they were off traveling around the region for Kevan's work (it was during one such trip that "No Fair Day" was instituted). It is wild to me that those kids are mostly all in their 20s now! 

Kevan and Sara are about a decade older than us, so they've always seemed like this little mirror into the future. I remember once Sara telling me that things (parenthood) gets so much better with older kids because they can do magical things like chores and dressing themselves—and she was right! That part of parenting has gotten easier. 

When it's time to go to the pool, I just tell the kids that we're going. I don't have to wrangle them into swimsuits and then then wrestle them until they're covered in sunscreen because they mostly all know how to do that kind of thing for themselves so they just magically appear ready to go. It's pretty great!

Not that small kids aren't fun (they totally are)...they're just more hands-on work than big kids. 

Last night Sara raved about how great being a grandma is, about how wonderful being an empty-nester is. 

In ten years our first five kids will all be adults (we'll just be waiting on Phoebe), so it was good to see Kevan and Sara enjoying that phase of life, too! I'm sure that in ten years when all our kids are (mostly) grown, we'll also be fine. 

Also! Keven and Sara just moved here from Abu Dhabi, where Kevan was the stake executive secretary (I think), so they travelled around the area quite a bit. Sara raved about the ward in Qatar, Kevan told us we need to drive through Saudi Arabia. We talked about old times, got all caught up on what all the kids (and grandkids!) are doing, told very many, very lame jokes, and somehow took zero pictures.

Our next (and last) visit before we move should be Sam's homecoming next month!

(C)Rafty Kids

After many months of planning and research and milk jug collecting, Benjamin and his friends got together this afternoon to build a raft. And I'm so happy for them! 

They're making plans for its maiden voyage in the lake near J's house—they've got lifejackets and everything. And, like I said, I'm just so happy for them.