Sefara 2010

Sefara 2010

Forgive the formatting.  Just got back from two nights of camping with all the cool Ethiopia Adoptive Families (separate post regarding our surprise visit from the Papaya's coming later). 

This was our 2nd annual camping extravaganza and we played hard!  The weather played hardball too. We had two very stormy night with heavy rain (creating indoor water park in the tent the first night) and lightening. Some odd tent twisting wind got me very tense on night two and we ended up packing up camp in a storm lull at about 2 in the morning on Sunday.

We arrived at our campsite and Lucy knew what to do right away. After she helped me pitch the tent she got to work dragging our beds into our weekend abode.

Diane kidnapped her to do some canoeing.  When I finally found her she was soaking wet and having a blast on the little beach at our state park.

Morgan and Blueberry soon joined in the fun.

She was warming up on the hot sand making sand angels.

Lucy has discovered the joy of sand and water creations. 

Managed to squeeze the bike in, so fun to see her ride her bike around the campground.

the raspberries were growing all around our campsite and they were ripe and readily available

for snacking!

We were up very bright and early on Saturday morning. It was nice to have

visitors like Jon and the twins to wake us up a little.

Lucy's favorite friend this year. Peanut the dog.

Had a lumberjack breakfast at Paul Bunyan's cook shanty.

Possibly the best doughnuts I've had ever.

The adoration of Lucy and Wendim continues ...

Lucy was trying to distract Wendim from his food, not an easy task.

Here are the twins right before the NOON s'more cookoff.  E was trying to convince

everyone that only brothers could drink his special beverage because it had chemicals in it

that were not good for sisters or nonbrothers.

drove to Devil's Lake State Park to use their beautiful beach. Had to wait for the freight train to pass in order to get to the path to the beach.

walking along an active train track. Nice parenting huh?  We surveyed the situation and it seemed like

part of the Devil's Lake culture to walk on the tracks so hey, when we're camping we don't follow many rules.

Lucy and her kids on the ride back to the campground.

Interestingly enough. They held a separate smore cook-off when we

were not there. NONE of the winners were present at the noon cook-off, and oddly

the folks at the noon cook - off were not told about this here 7pm cook off.  Now that I think about it I believe our written rules stated the cookoff was at 8:12pm or something ...

Interestingly enough, the winners of the cook off were

not only the organizers of the cook off but the family of the

cook-off tally counter and announcer. hmmmm

the little kids having a sour candy eating contest.

taking shelter from the lightening strikes.

Dr LU.Little

These days Lucy has been calmer and more mature and the animals are

responding favorably. Lucy LOVES being responsible for the animals and really loves when they trust her and snuggle with her.  It's so cute, she sits really still and calmly calls for me to come watch.

Lucy and Zeppelin were snuggling and she was thrilled when Bailey's jumped right up to join in.

after dinner when momma and Lucy were doing homework at the table together

up jumps Azazel.  Azazel LOVES to get all over homework/books.  Lucy couldn't have

been happier!

Fishing with Grandpa

To celebrate Father's Day we decided to put grandpa to work.  Load up the boat, haul the boat, land the boat, drive the boat, bait the hooks, unbait the hooks ...   we had such a great time!!!  Thanks grandpa/dad!

Past couple days

The past few days we've seen a lot of Jacob. He's our baby turned big boy.

Now that's he's old enough to say "no" to Lucy she has a run for her money. He's still our sweetie and so very flexible and accomodating to her directives and demands. 

Lucy and Jacob had a little country music festival at my house on Wednesday night.

Jacob and his mom joined us at Stonebridge festival of the arts this afternoon.

The kids did a lot of dancing before and after the band started.

                               Lucy admired some beautiful art.

and the kids were rewarded with giant ice cream cones.  Soon after the ice cream cone eating, Lucy decided to flee sanity and took a nose dive into uber stinkerdom, not even a nap saved us from the brief [hopefully] regression to the nightmare that was her entire 3rd year.  Please Lucy wake up and be your wonderful 5 year old self.

Weekend get-away

We were supposed to go camping this weekend but with forecasts of lots of rain/dampness and thunder for all parts of the weekend we decided to wimp out and head north to a hotel/waterpark for some fun and adventures.

Lucy took a moment before our evening swim to model her snowboard pants that I picked up for a real deal at a 2nd hand store (Oilily's for cheap cheap cheap, and O aren't they cute!)

aren't they just so cute and peaceful when they sleep?

next morning we were up and ready to hit the water park again.

Here the kids are in between attempts to get them to go to sleep. 

The mamma's needed a "safety break" the kids were being so so awful

and we needed to restart bedtime with a pep talk to both ourselves and the children.

It went something like this "remember, we really both wanted these kids ... we really love these kids, remember how hard we worked to get these kids in our lives???  remember the agonizing wait and how we couldn't wait to get them in our arms????   Yeah ... ahhh ... let's start this bedtime over, OK?  AND next time, we each get our own rooms how about that???"

the results were hard won and so worth it. i was too tired to walk

across the room and capture the sleeping mo mo.

  The next morning Mo teaches Lucy how to play leapster.

I think we checked out of the hotel around 8am. 

Tyler's graduation

Our cousin graduated from high school last night

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Hair we are again

My girl Lucy and I (sort of) have this hair thing down (that is until she gets to be old enough to not want cute puffs, or box braids, or beautiful free hair, save that thought). I believe we went though some transition phase between infant hair and preschool hair that was a little challenging. Our normal routine stopped working, and her hair was getting "gummy". I needed to ask advice, get 2nd opinions and try new things. Now we are set with the new routing and our hair days are pretty drama free. Of course it's summer and Lucy swims a lot which adds to some dryness, she also has this fabulous new nervous tick of pulling on the hairs along her hairline (forehead), so she now almost always sports a frizz halo ... I hope she grows out of that soon!

I do realize that the fact that I am blogging about this does indicate that this is not a task that has been handed down to me from my mom and my mom's mom ... Lucy's hair has been a learning process for me.  I don't want anyone (especially Lucy) to ever feel that it has been problematic because it' hasn't.  It's not easy but it's a lot easier then some challenging behaviors a certain little someone has exhibited!   I also don't want people to think (i know i am not supposed to care what people think) that hair is all we think about here at casa Lucita because it isn't!  It's just important for both of us that her hair stays healthy, strong and beautiful.

I just wanted to share our curly hair care routine for anyone who is interested.  Maybe someone out there is stuck with hair that is transitioning and just needs a new idea.  

1. Most of the time I keep Lucy's hair in a protective style, like box braids, puffs, or other styles that are separated, and kept up with binders.  I do this because it helps prevent breakage, it requires less daily care and it keeps our focus on fun and playing hard. 

2. I only really wash her hair with shampoo when it gets really funky.  I find that having her lay in a bathtub of warm water and running my fingers through her hair, from roots to end works out the grime and build up just fine without stripping her hair and drying it out too much.  When I do shampoo it I just use whatever shampoo I have in the tub.

3. Hair days sort of have a pattern.  At the beginning of a month (and this is very loosely defined, a month can be a week, a month, 6 weeks ...depending on the circumstances and the hair) I will take her hair down and wash it in the tub.  Usually the first day after this washing, I just condition it heavily and leave it loose.

The second day after hair day I will usually divide her hair into two parts, and let her rock some Afro-Puffs for a couple days.  Really cute.  When her hair is in puffs I will spray the ends with a leave-in conditioner and comb out the loose parts in the mornings. 

The third or 4th day I divide the puffs so her hair is in 4 parts.  I usually put binders at the top, braid the hair and put binders at the bottom.  This style can last for 3 days or so.  I don't usually do much with her hair when it's in this style, other then condition the hairline because she picks at it so badly. 

When the 4 parts start looking rough I remove them one by one and put in box braids.  I spray the hair with water/conditioner during this time making sure to comb out any dirt etc (if her hair is in bad shape, I'll wash each section separately at this point).   The box braids can last for about a week, but they do look pretty fuzzy at the end of the week.  I usually spray her head with leave-in conditioner every day at this stage.  She's also getting it "rinsed" a lot because she's in the pool. 

Once this box braid stage is over it's time to start from the very beginning. 

Here are the products I use most often:

1. for detangling/conditioning I use Tresemme Curl Moisturizing conditioner.  For detangling I put about 3 tablespoons in a bottle (about 20 oz or so) of hot water, sometimes adding a splash of olive oil (that really helped today).  The wetter the better for Lucy's hair.  I also use this spray to condition between hair do's. 

2. When I am doing a new style, there are three heavier leave in conditioners I like to use (not all at the same time).  a. coconut oil (i melt it in my hands)  b. carol's daughter honey mimosa  c. if you are in mpls you can go to Rituals in the Global Market (by the dance floor), they make and sell good hair products there.  I like the Antonana's Twist Hair Oil ... nice!  The pomade is good too. 
3. I use a boar's bristle brush to smooth down the hair for the Afro-puff style.  I use a detangling comb (bought at Walgreen's) for combing out.  This comb has worked well, it looks like a wide tooth comb but if you look between the wide teeth there are like baby teeth ... hard to explain, but it has worked very well for us.  Picks and regular wide tooth combs also work fine. 

Well that was long and probably boring but that is our current hair care system in a nutshell. 

I'm leaving with a question ...  So once she gets older (which could happen tomorrow) and feels like all those cute styles are too young for her what happens???  Someone tell me.  My tired soul can only focus these days on the here and now and maybe that's better.  I just hope she loves those puffs until she's at least 25 ...  cuz they are dang cute!

Friends

My friend Sara and I have been friends for an eternity.  I met her when I started working at Minneapolis Crisis Nursery probably 18 years ago.  She hated me at first, later I found out that most people that Sara really likes she started off by hating (she's quirky).   We worked an intense intense job together.  Whew.  Sara's probably the person that got me into camping.  We definately ROCK the car-camping system. 

Sara was a newly wed when she agreed to travel with me to Ethiopia to get Lucy.  Actually both of my travel companions (Sara and Mel (of mel and morgan)) made significant financial sacrifices to travel with me.  Neither worked jobs that earned good money but neither hesitated AT ALL when asked if they could come to support me. 

Sara also brought FOOD COLORING to the campground so that we could have pancakes in any color we wanted. Sara will also get up in the middle of the night to make sure the racoons don't attack people (me) that need to "use it" in the middle of the night.  I mean, can you get any cooler then that?

Sara is one of Lucy's great loves (even if she won't let Lucy have the pretty rocks she collects)

Sara has a great attention span, she put this puzzle together almost all by herself.

We've honestly travelled all around this great big world together.  Venezuela, Ireland, Thailand (she was in the peace corps) and of course Ethiopia.  We really need to hit Australia as another continent. 

It's really awesome to have a garden full of amazing friends in my life.

Last day of long wonderful weekend ....

Memorial Monday came in bright and early. Lucy woke up with the energy of a million buzzed up bumblebees.  Talk talk talk talk talk, move move move move move.  I had none of that energy.  I started feeling overwhelmed with the talking, all the talking.  I was actually still very glad to be with Lucy and not be working but I was feeling sort of PTSD every time I heard "momma" ... for I knew that an hour long conversation about some overworked subject was about to follow. 

I decided to place my pain out there on facebook for the world to see.  Within a few minutes my pain was acknowledged by my 2nd cousin/facebook friend who was experiencing her own agony, her husband having taken leave for some time, leaving her with her own chatterbox 4 year old and how own big baby belly to impede the physical comfort.  A pool party was about to happen at their house and we were invited to crash said party...

I felt a little bad at first.  Her son was happily swimming in the pool, NOT chatting at her and suddenly here's Lucy asking her a billion questions.  Ahhh but at least I was temporarily off duty as once we're in the company of others I am usually the equivalent of chopped liver.  All I needed to do was keep her alive.

Lucy proved that she could still swim like a fish despite not having lessons for over a year.  A nice warm pool, the company of others and an exhausted kid was the perfect way to end a wonderful holiday weekend.