halloween cookies

Juma's grandma invited all her grandsons over to make and decorate Halloween cookies.





They weren't into the making and baking so much as the decorating and eating-of-the-frosting.




And those dang leftover cookies keep calling my name from the pantry. Back, cookies, back!

sarah's health update

Since May of this year, my joints have been painful and stiff, my fingers and feet swollen and painful. I could still function fine, and was able to enjoy my summer. In mid-August, I even made a daily habit out of long bike rides after Juma went to school.

Since the end of August, the pain intensified, took up residence in my wrists, shoulders, and knees too, and found a new companion in major fatigue. I didn't have insurance all summer (that would treat me anymore besides at Yale, that is), so I just toughed it out with my new unwanted friend, ibuprofen. By September, though, I, or rather, Justin, realized I just couldn't take it anymore and sent me to a clinic. I would have rather just gone to sleep. Ten, 12, 14 hours a night had become normal for me.

The fatigue, it seems, is likely anemia, so I've added iron pills to my diet. (Funny, eh, that I got more-than-mild anemia when I spent all last summer studying it and encouraging women to take iron?) The pain, though, is still a mystery, and I am just got the results for some more tests: everything negative or normal. So the mystery remains, but at least I know I don't have lupus. It seems that something auto-immune is going on.

For several weeks, I lived in a painful daze of sleeping until 10 or 11am, picking Juma up from school, sleep-talking his way through his homework, trying to find activities for him to do where I could just sit there, and going to bed by 9pm. Oh, and wondering when the heck this was going to end.

In the past couple weeks, it seems the iron has kicked in and the fatigue lifted somewhat (I got up at 8am twice in the last week!). In the past week, I've actually had a few nights where the pain in my joints didn't wake me up for my large, middle-of-the-night dose of ibuprofen. And I've finally been alive enough to feel like I could get some of my to-do list tackled. This week, I've made dental appointments for us, reviewed Swahili grammar, and started learning Arabic script.

I'm not looking for sympathy here, just a mutual celebration that finally, finally, things are looking up.

writing and reading

Juma's been working hard in school. He recently won a writing award for his kindergarten-level writing.



And at home, we do extra practice reading. Each sticker represents a time he read the book. He earns a sticker a day and when the chart is filled, he gets a reward.



At home, his grandma set up a little private writing center to inspire him to write.



The first thing he did was to take everyone's orders for drinks and dinner.



(Wotr = water
ise te = iced tea
joos = juice
dr pepr = Dr Pepper
the speshl = the special)

The next writing task he wrote and drew a rendition of a dream he'd had the night before.



(Me and Tristan found jewels. Rylee tooc [took] mine.)

tats

Juma decided that putting on all his temporary tattoos on at the same time would be just so cool. Here he is showing off his full sleeve.

family pictures

These are from June.

plural: patience; singular: patient

"Moooom! I can't wait any longer! I'm losing my patience--I'm losing my last patient!"

ninja Juma

Juma was feeling immensely sad about the prospect of missing Halloween because we'd be in Africa. Random people kept asking him, "And what are you going to be for Halloween?" and he's resentfully say, "I don't get Halloween. They don't have Halloween in Africa." He started to take his anger over this out on Zanzibar, saying he hated Zanzibar and he didn't want to go again.

I thought about it and didn't want our decisions as parents to live in Zanzibar sometimes make him resent it or us. It's our choice to live in Zanzibar, not his; he just has to come along because he's a kid. And adjusting to life in Zanzibar is, frankly, difficult. So I figured that it would be nice to help him adjust to the idea of going to Zanzibar again--by buying him a Halloween costume. Okay, so maybe it was a little bit of a bribe, but I never made it explicit to him that the costume has anything to do with Africa.

Anyway, he found a ninja costume and fell in love with it. He wore it every minute he wasn't at school or in bed for days.



And it turns out, we'll likely be here for Halloween after all.

the bounds of anything

A Sunday a few weeks ago, Juma woke up at 6:30am, far too early for us. Justin got up and told him that he, Juma, could get up, get dressed, do anything he wanted, read a book, turn on the light, whatever, just leave us alone until he sees 7:00 on the clock.

At seven, I got up and limped into Juma's room. I found him in his pajamas, listening to an audio book of Toy Story, and happily sucking away at a Tootsie Pop. When he saw me, he popped the sucker out of his mouth, and exclaimed, "Dad said I could do anything I wanted!"

"Oh?"

And with a excitement only children and my brother Rus can muster, he answered, "I'm listening to this book! Twice!"

family

I snapped some pictures when I was in Utah visiting family at the time of my uncle's funeral. It was nice to be near everyone again (I'm the only kid who lives outside of Utah), even if for such a short time.

These are my mom, Shelley, her sister April, their mom Sherie, and sisters Danelle and Robinne. These are some of the women who have the same mitochondrial DNA as me, cool, eh?



This is my niece Laurelin, telling a story about unicorns or faeries or princesses. Or all three. The morning I woke up in Utah, Laurelin sneaked into my room and climbed into bed to snuggle with me. Later, her brother Xander climbed into the bed too, and we had a debate about whether dragons or unicorns are the Realest.



And here's my mom, me, and my dad. It's wonderful to know that whenever I can scrounge up enough money for a plane ticket, I am always welcome in their home.