[Virtual] Fist Bump

Check me out, I just “built” a new home for The Blog [sorta] all by myself! I will now be blogging at my permanent new home of It’s a Wanderlust Life, come visit!  I don’t know how long this nomadic life of ours will last but it was time to find a permanent home for The Blog so as to have one less suitcase to cart around with us.  The Blog will grow and travel as we do.  And just like our physical house, The Blog will undergo some significant “interior decorating” so expect to see changes each time you come back.  The URL here for It’s Kili Time will remain active but no further posting will occur here, so I’m afraid you’ll have to go re-subscribe over there.  Come check it out, It’s Phnomenal!

March (Travel) Madness: Lake Chala

No sooner had we returned from Kenya that we were packing up the car again for a weekend of camping.  And not just any old camping, first-time camping with a toddler.  So many families in Arusha seemed to do it with such ease and frequency, how hard could it really be we figured.  Maybe Millie would surprise us with an intrinsic outdoorsy ease, you know, like her Colorado birth certificate would imply.  All we had to do was secure a tent and have a foam pad custom made so sleeping would be exponentially comfy.

Rather than go big as we typically do (have baby, promptly move to Africa), we eased our toes in slowly by opting for one night and going with some highly seasoned family campers to the gorgeous Lake Chala right on the border of Tanzania and Kenya. 

It was a beautiful setting.  The campsite was about a 30 min hike up the steep crater wall from the lake shore and we managed with six children eight years and under, eight adults, fishing poles and bottomless tubes of Pringles (yes, you can get Pringles here!).  Our co-campers were camping savants and managed to serve chicken tikka massala for dinner that night, get kids excited about washing dishes and wax lyrical about this thing called 'the environment' (they all work for The Nature Conservancy).  All we did was bring lousy bagels and goldfish from Nairobi (the eldest kid, upon seeing the bagels, said 'awesome, donuts!' his mom was none too happy that one year out of America made him forget what a bagel was!).

Camping savant, Lisa, who carried her 3 yr old up and down these rocky walls 8x over the weekend!  A week after this photo was taken, she'd be putting all that hard work to good use by climbing Mt. Meru with me and two others

Then it was nightfall and rather than adhere to a strict bedtime schedule for Millie we decided to just let her stay up until she could take it no more.  That was about 8 o'clock.  And rather than collapse in the tent within minutes into a deep slumber that would allow us parents to sneak back out and enjoy some adult beverages at the campsite bar (that's right, a bar!), she tossed and turned her various appendages into our faces for about an hour.  I think Roger and I fell asleep before she did.  The night pretty much continued like that every couple of hours.  Restless night notwithstanding, it was a very fun trip.  We even managed to get an all-smiling family picture out of the deal!

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Someone is growing!

August 2009

March 2011

March (Travel) Madness: Kenya

For Millie's 2nd birthday we were actually in Nairobi.  Earlier in the week, Roger joined a few of my Peace Corps buddies and one of his Peace Corps buddies to go climb Mt. Kenya - the highest peak in Kenya and the second highest in Africa at 16,000 ft.  You can see his pictures here.

Rather than be on our own in Arusha for her birthday, she and I drove up to Nairobi on Saturday to meet up with Roger and our friends when they descended on Sunday (Millie's actual birthday).  We arrived Saturday afternoon and passed the time visiting Nairobi's various commercial paradises - shopping malls!  One in particular, Westgate, has an AWESOME kids playing area with slides, bouncy castle and a ball pool so Millie really enjoyed herself in there.  We spent an hour there which bought me about 2 hours worth of pushing her around the mall (specifically, in a store called Nakumatt, our closest Target-alternative) in a shopping cart before the protests began.

After lunch and a nap, we headed to the American Embassy compound where we bought $50 worth of U.S. treats like Cheetos, Goldfish, Life Cereal and black beans (yes, they count as a treat because you can't find them anywhere in Arusha or Nairobi).  Many of these things, Millie was trying for the first time, like Honey Nut Cheerios (which she refers to as 'bumble bee' b/c the little bee on front) and Fig Newtons (which she calls 'yummy yummy sana' - 'sana' means 'very' in Swahili).  After blowing all our cash in the commissary, we went swimming in a heated pool which was really fun (yes, even though we're in Africa AND on the equator, Nairobi is about a mile high so even in the dead of summer ['member reversed seasons], the pools are usually too cold to swim in).

By the time we were done swimming, Roger was en route to the house we were staying at, so we rushed back to welcome him and the other smelly boys down from the mountain.  And of course no birthday is complete without cake which our hostess was so generous to provide.  Now, when you ask Millie how old she is, she says three.  But this is technically correct because in her world, the sequence of numbers is 'one, three, two!'

Does KFC Deliver to Tanzania?

A very Happy Thanksgiving our turkey brethren!  Anyone in a food coma yet?  As of the writing of this post, we haven't had any coma's 'round here, but that could all change come 5 o'clock today (9am EST) when we go to a friend of a friends house for some delicious grub.  Luckily for our host, the dinner is being catered otherwise she might very well loose her mind with all the freaking power cuts we're having these days!

We are planning our own little Tanzgiving on Sunday once my dad and his friend Lynn arrive in Arusha.  Two days ago Roger and I watched Julie & Julia and I got inspired to clog my arteries make Julia Child's roast chicken for Tanzgiving, so I planned a menu accordingly.  It involved Moroccan Carrots, mashed potatoes, broccoli with bacon, FRESH cranberry sauce, rolls and apple crisp.  Unfortunately, Arusha had another menu in mind.

It all began Weds actually when I went the butcher shop, Meat King, that advertised fresh cranberry sauce imported from who knows where (kind of cancels out the "fresh" part, I realize) and they confessed that someone forgot to put the cranberry sauce on the boat.  That was followed up by two nights in a row of 12 hr power cuts.  Then once power was restored, as well as my thankful and sane heart, the Tanzanian National Electric Company decided to toy with my emotions by sporadically turning the power on and off for five hours.  It is a sheer miracle of the heavens that I managed to get a Spiced Applesauce Cake made for our party tonight.

The outcome of all this (including a delicious looking apple cake that was aided by turning off all power sockets in the house except for the oven so the generator could git 'er done) was shoving our 2 kilo bird into the freezer and putting Khan's Chicken on my speed dial because, my friends, we are getting take out!

I realize I have a slight flair for the dramatic [mother and Roger stifle a laugh], but that's why you visit It's Kili Time, right?  I just hope you also know that all dramatizations recounted here are all made possible by the many wonderful things in my life for which I am DEEPLY appreciative, in particular my health, family, well being, red patent leather flats and the opportunity to connect with you via this platform.

When expressing your thanks today, do so while running all high voltage appliances, just because you can.  A very Happy Electrifying Thanksgiving to all!

For the Grandparents - It's Millie Time

Well, it's been quite a while since I've opened the fountains of maternal effusiveness to update you on little Miss Millie.  Ironic, you might think, since this blog at one point was ONLY about her.  So let us begin.

Millie is developing at a rate of speed so fast it's hard to keep up.  We are at that stage where we have to definitely watch what we say because within a minute it will becoming out of her mouth as well.  Case in point - last night, after having a girls night out (Roger away for work), we returned home in the dark and the full moon had just risen so it was illuminating the otherwise pitch black streets (curious point - Arusha has street lights, they're just never on).  Millie was mesmerized by the moon and kept craning her neck to keep it in her sights.  When we got home, she kept staring at it, even while I was chatting with the guard and asking him how to say 'moon' in Kiswahili.  Interestingly, the word for 'moon' is the same word for 'month' which I remarked on to the guard.  Millie was still staring at the moon, but she managed to hear me say 'month' and then she kept repeating it throughout her bath!

In addition to mimicking words, she loves to mimic actions.  The nerdy experts call this symbolic play.  She does it quite frequently with lotion and soap, trying to rub it in to her arms and legs.  She just started doing it with deodorant as well (cleanliness is a virtue!).  But then yesterday, as she was eating oatmeal (on her own, mind you!) a little bit spilled on the chair.  She requested a napkin (by name) and proceeded to clean it up!  While this may be emblematic of her developmental acumen, it's probably speaks more to her mom's type-A tendencies when it comes to meal time, sadly.  But I think you get the point.

Millie's favorite activity is probably stickers, followed closely by singing and looking at books.  Oh my, the singing.  She has a rotating play list of favorites and at the moment its 'Wheels on the Bus', 'Pop a Little Pancake' and 'Zoom, zoom....'

The weather here has been funny lately.  The cold stuck around much longer than last year, then we had about 10 days of blisteringly hot weather and now we're back to moderate and comfortable temps.  During the hot week, we went to the pool about four days in a row and it's been really fun seeing her enjoy it at this age.  When we go, she says 'pool, yeah!' and is really confident in the water.  She particularly enjoys drinking it while trying to blow bubbles.  One thing about Millie is that she is a brave and confident little girl.  She will choke at least 10 times in the water (or while drinking water from a non-sippy cup) and isn't really deterred.  She even finds it humorous.  Seems kind of disturbing to laugh about it, but she is quite hearty. 

Mille has learned about five animal sounds - lion, cat, dog, horse and sheep.  Next weekend is Halloween and feels like we should take advantage of her talents (roaring) and attributes (massive mane of hair) by making her a lion.  I have the brillant idea of teasing her hair to make it into a lion mane, but methinks that could be more painful for us afterwards.  Thankfully, Roger is in charge of bath time, so its sounding like a better idea even as I write this.  What do you all think?

Artist in the Making

Don't know if I have ever mentioned the play groups we go to in town, but our favorite is at the International School Moshi Arusha Campus.  It's about as far away from our house as you can get without being in a lion's den, but it's one of the most fun and well worth the drive.

[Tangent: To be sure, it's doesn't really fall into the we-took-our-newborn-to-Africa-look-how-bad-ass-we-are category.  It's an international school after all and so it's modeled after schools back in America and Western Europe (take a wild guess what kind of people attend!).  It's an amazing resource to have in town to be able to expose Millie to the developmental toys and activities associated with this type of educational system.  Naturally, she could learn her numbers by counting monkeys, but as an expat you can't help but crave familiarity and this fills that itch.]

One of the great things they have are quality paints and easels that unleash the creativity of little kids and leave their messes at school!  Behold, Millie's first artistic creation:

Her next creation!

Here are some pictures of ISM playgroup from my friends blog.  She is an awesome photographer, friend, mom, doctor of philosophy, cook and all-around partner-in-crime and she's going home.  Boo!

Another Year Wiser...

... and more forgetful!  In the blogging blitz that was late September, I failed to mention that some of us (two thirds of us) had birthday's come and go.  For Roger's birthday we drove out West to the escarpment that overlooks Lake Manyara and the Great Rift Valley.  We stayed at a tented camp called Kirurumu.  We didn't do any game drives but rather opting for swimming at a nearby lodge with an infinity pool that over looks the Rift Valley and an ethno-botanical walk on the property of the lodge with a Massai guide.  It was ethno-botanical only in the sense that the Massai guide pointed to one leaf-less shrub after another and told us about the medicinal uses of each among the Massai.  The only tree I remember is the one he pointed out that they use (the roots) and boil it in milk and drink to treat gonorrhea and syphilis.  Roger tried his [adolescent] humor out on the guide with that one but it went straight over his head!


We went to another lodge nearby that has this amazing infinity pool over the Great Rift Valley

The day was cloudy, we were at about 4,000 ft and the water was ice cold.  Millie is made of steel!

The dinning room was right on the escarpment



And you thought you needed to spend hundreds of $$$ on hiking gear at REI.  Behold, the Massai shuka - various woold blankets in complimentary colors and patterns drapped across your body as necessary all for about $7.



For my birthday we had a little celebration at home in which Roger gave me a cake the size of a bicycle wheel.  And how fitting since my prezzie is a a bike (which is due to make landfall any day now)! 

Milestone - a ponytail!

What an exciting morning, we pulled Millie's hair into a messy pony tail!  Time for Roger to start taking Braiding 101!

Ay yay yay!  Looks like a little girl, not a baby!

Millie is talking up a storm.  It's a combination of English and Swahili words.  Swahili is very easy on the tongue, so instead of trying to pronounce "child" it's much easier to just say "toto" (it's technically, mtoto, but hey, she's only 18 months!).  This picture is Millie saying 'toto, toto, toto...' over and over again having just witnessed herself on the back of the big black thing that's always jammed in her face (the camera, people!).

Yes, only 8am and her shirt is already stained

Alright, now this one just because I am THAT mom

And p.s. did you notice how I wrote captions and uploaded more than one picture in this post??  Impressive, don't you think?  Turns out I was using an old version of the blog editor.... learned that from my class!

I'm Number One!

Or more like "I'm Number One (and one week)!!" Yeah, so a little late on the posting. We have had a flurry out power/internet outages in the past week. It's weird, the electricity is generated through hydroelectric power so when there is little rain, they ration the power. However, when there is too much rain, it destabilizes the system and the power and internet go out anyway. Geez, what is this place, Africa or something?

But who cares about power outages when there is a TODDLER running around! Yes, we have arrived at that magic moment when we can add twelve months of parenting to our CV and show the battle scars to prove it. Millie has been enjoying the freedom that comes with getting around on two feet. And Mama and Daddy have been enjoying their freedom to use the word 'No.' The big 'No's' are for pulling on the lever that dispenses water and for pulling the hair of other children. We are trying to find some bald babies for her to play with.

Millie has started drinking small amounts of cow's milk before her morning nap and despite the Luria history of milk sensitivity, it seems to be going quite well. We'll continue to progress slowly with it. She seems well on her way to developing her father's adoration for peanut butter (using the SIX teeth she now has) and Mama enjoys sneaking bites from Millie's mac n' cheese (since Mama would NEVER make something like that for herself ;)). We have been visiting the pool a lot and playing in the paddle pool at home which Millie absolutely LOVES! It has really improved her temperament during bath time and when we pour water to rinse her hair, she doesn't put up quite the fight as before.

Millie has developed quite the cadre of friends in town ranging in age from 9 months to 3 years old! She has EVEN reached quite the status for a 1 year and is getting invited to play groups for 3 year olds! Unfortunately, Millie has to send her proxy (Mama) to those play groups since she is otherwise occupied with napping. But Millie's self-righteousness doesn't end with just being invited to hang out with the seniors, it also extends well into the realm of global warming because she has started wearing cloth diapers 50% of the time. While she CLAIMS it's because she wants to leave the world a cleaner place then she found it, we think it's because she wants a Land Cruiser for her Sweet 16.

Coming up for Millie this month and beyond is her first time away from Mama. Want to take bets on who it will be harder on - Millie, Mama or Daddy?? I'll give you a hint, it probably won't be Millie. Mama is going to Nairobi for a few days to reminisce about what was like for time to be one's own. Then a couple weeks after, the whole family is finally going to Zanzibar for Easter!! Yeah, white sands! Crystal blue water! Snorkeling! Sand castles! And Dirty David Bathtubs (sorry, long standing Luria family tradition - not even Roger knows about them!).

On the right, check out some new pictures of the last twelve months and her big birthday bash!

For the Grandparents - It's Millie Time

Today Millie is 9 months (and a day) old! She is growing upwards and outwards everyday. Twelve month old pajamas that were too long just one month ago fit her just right now. And she is staying well nourished in order to fuel her extremely active lifestyle. We have mentioned before that we thought she would walk before she could crawl and we're nearly there! Just four days ago Millie took her very first solo steps while chasing after a balloon!! It was so unexpected that I nearly hyperventilated in disbelief. Unfortunately Daddy wasn't their to view it but I do have two other credible witness to corroborate my claim, especially since she hasn't had a repeat performance since. But she is working on it for sure. Another equally exciting milestone is that Millie is getting two teeth in thus facilitating her enjoyment of things like cheerios, turkey and bread.

In the past month Millie has upgraded the way she rolls. She now sports a new stroller (known as a push chair in these parts) and she sits quite regally in a new car seat - very exciting changes! Plus in only a few days, we'll all be rolling in a brand new (but actually, used) car (just waiting for it to arrive on the ship!). Coming up this month Millie (and her parents) will make a visit to Nairobi to get a (likely overwhelming) dose of the big city and restock our supplies. Also Santa will surely make the trek south of the equator to visit us (did you know we actually have a chimney/fireplace at our house?), as long as Millie is a good girl and doesn't pull down the Christmas tree before he gets here.