I hate bedtime

Some parents love bedtime so much that they put their kids to bed at five, six, or seven in the evening. If I tried that there'd be a Heissling revolt, guaranteed. Instead I try to have my kids in bed by eight.

Oh, and I loathe bedtime.

The past few months have been a living nightmare.

Living. Nightmare. Got that?

My children don't fall asleep no matter the number of bedtime stories I read or lullabies I sing. They just don't fall asleep.

"More! More! More!" they chant.

When I tell them that I am done, done, done, done for the day then they start in on the excuses. Miriam mostly whines and thuds her legs rhythmically against the mattress, but she does use the few excuses she knows.

"Momma, Momma!" is one such excuse. Another is potty. And yet another is nursing.

Rachel, on the other hand, has a whole repertoire.

Everything ██is█████ ████ ████fine ███ █ ████ love. ████ █████ the ███ Egypt ███ ████ government

A friend on Twitter recently...uhhh...tweeted*...that she spoke with an expat friend who had been in Cairo but recently returned to the United States due to the revolution. She said that it "sounds much worse than they all let on."

I think that's definitely true—now that my friends are returning to the States I'm hearing a lot more about what was going on in their lives I'm seeing the same trend. When they were in Egypt still they were so...silent. Part of that can be blamed on the internet blackout, I'm sure. But after it was back on I expected more facebook updates, more blog posts, more tweets, more...anything.

I received a couple of emails from friends but most of my friends waited until they were standing with two feet firmly on the ground before they gave the world an update of how they were feeling. Many of them were still distressed at having to leave a loved-one (in most cases the husband and father of the family) in Cairo, but the relief they expressed was almost palpable.

Pretty as a princess

The day before the riots started in Egypt—that's my time gauge right now; everything seems to have happened either before or after...naturally. But it's kind of like defining life before children verses after children. Anyway, the day before the riots started in Egypt my girls spent the afternoon playing dress-up.

Newsflash: I am not magnetic

Rachel was experimenting with magnets this afternoon—determining whether or not any given object was magnetic by placing one of her princess magnets on the item. This worked well enough in proving the door wasn't magnetic but the pole of the floor lamp was. Since those objects are vertical it was easy to see magnetic power at work—if the magnet stayed then the item was magnetic; if it fell then the item was not magnetic.

When she moved onto horizontal surfaces, however, things got a little more confusing.

"My bench is magnetic!" she declared.

"No, it's not," I told her.

"Yes, it is!" she insisted. "Watch this!"

She dropped her magnet onto the bench. The magnet appeared to stick to the bench; at least, it didn't fall off the bench...because the bench is a horizontal surface.

In Tahrir Square

I still feel guilty for writing about anything else when people are being shot at, run down, and beaten up. The world is still spinning but somehow I'm stuck on #Jan25 and even though the future looks grim and unbearable I can't look away. Here, life seems surreally calm.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the...wait! The birds are singing!?

The birds are singing and Miriam is rather excited about it.

Food Storage

I just heard from an Egyptian man who belongs to our church. He bore testimony of the principle of provident living:

I am so gratful to Gordon B Hinckley. I stored food and medicine for a month. I hope the branch to stay in Egypt.


Shortly before we left Egypt we had a fireside about provident living—living within your means, setting money and supplies (food, medicine, clothing, etc) for a "rainy day," learning first aid, and so forth. We talked about how important it is for those living abroad to have a three month supply of food and water and things. In North America we're encouraged to have a year's supply but when you're living in a tiny apartment it's pretty difficult to store enough food to last your family for very long.

A letter from Egypt

For some reason the internet is back on in Egypt. No one quite knows why—things are getting rather violent today! Still, at least it is something. I was able to hear from several friends still inside Egypt, whether by their own choice or because they have no means of leaving. Here's an [edited] letter from a friend who is married to an Egyptian:

Hello Nancy!!!

YOU got out in a good time. LUCKY YOU!!!

It is so great to have Internet back again. Thanks for your concern about us here in Cairo. We are just staying home as much as possible and staying off the street. Most of the families in our already small branch have been evacuated and so we are down to 4 ladies and the husbands of many of the families that left. ( me, ———, ——— and ——— ). It is quite sad really. I think that if things calm down then in a month maybe some of those families will come back to Cairo. I hope and pray that happens.

As for school we have not been evacuated and it didn’t seem like the administrators were planning to do so. Even if they did, I was not hired from abroad so I would not be included in those that could get evacuated. I will just hang tight with my family here and keep a low profile and out of harms way as much as possible! We do have small protests happening in my neighborhood and they have caught several thieves or men that were trying to break into places. We have a neighborhood watch out every single night, which consists of the men in the neighborhood armed with long sticks, baseball bats, kitchen knives and poles. They have the streets blocked off with anything that they can find to make a roadblock. Mostly fallen trees, old pieces of wood and piles of bricks. Between the men guarding the streets and the blocked streets, we feel pretty protected.

While you were [supposed to be] sleeping

Between Miriam's teething, Rachel's nightmares, a bout of croup, and the stress of the Egyptian revolution I think it's pretty safe to say that I haven't had a decent night's sleep in months. For a while the girls were both sleeping relatively nicely but now I am once more so sleep deprived I feel like I could fall asleep anywhere. It's like having a newborn or something.

It's not only the night-wakings that are killing me. It's that the girls won't go to sleep when they are put to bed and insist on waking up at seven o'clock in the morning, anyway. Rachel stays up until 10:30 or 11:00. Miriam stays up until 9:30 or 10:00. Then they both have me yo-yo-ing out of bed all. night. long. 

A couple of nights ago, this is what Rachel did when she should have been sleeping:

She got blocks and horses and ponies and books and curlers out and built a fortress. She did it so quietly, too. I didn't think the child had it in her, being quiet, I mean—who knew she could behave so silently? 

This morning when I went into their room to do something (I don't know what it was but it wasn't to wake Rachel up since she got in bed with us at around 2 AM and then pitched a fit when I tried to return her to her own bed at 4 AM so ended up staying in our bed on the risk of waking up the baby) I noticed the castle had been completely rebuilt. This time it houses finger puppets instead of horses.

Luckily (or not) the server for my job is down. And Miriam is down (for a nap). And Rachel has a play date immediately after school so I don't have to pick her up or anything. 

Looks like I'm going down for a nap as well.

Resolutions

Why, hello, Last Day of January. Where'd you come from? Not that I mind that you're here or anything—I really am looking forward to zipping through the rest of the winter months, too—but I haven't made my resolutions for this year yet!

So far I have thought of one.

#1 Make New Year's resolutions in January (check.)

The rest of them are going to be a little trickier because I haven't thought much about it yet but I think I'll give it a go.

#2 Train and run a marathon (in progress—in fact, I ran 15 miles on Saturday.)

#3 Donate hair to Locks of Love (in progress—in fact, Andrew just measured my ponytail and it is 10 inches long but I'm going to grow it out a little bit more just so that I have more to work with because short hair scares me.)

#4 Read more (in progress—in fact, I read three books in January, I think.)

#5 Read the Book of Mormon and the New Testament (in progress—we are teaching from the New Testament this year and so far it has been awesome because we get to relive our travels a little bit every time we teach. It's great fun.)

#6 Embrace my womanhood and learn how to put on makeup or do my hair or something (suggestions welcome as long as they are kind).

#7 Be more tolerant of others (this one is kind of vague but I'd like to be happier, less judgmental, and more patient in general; it will take time to think about how to accomplish that).

Evacuations

There have been some questions floating around about the LDS community in Egypt. Not all my friends left in Egypt are LDS but naturally many of them are. With the recent evacuations, I think most of them will be leaving Egypt this week, but perhaps I'll share a few anonymous-like stories.

The LDS humanitarian (not proselytizing) missionary couple are leaving Egypt this week. The mission office has decided that this will mark the end of their mission, instead of sending them back when things stabilize over there.