love

Juma: Mom, I love you. So much. I don't know why, I just do.
Sarah: Well, it is hard-wired in your DNA to love your mother. You have to.
Juma: I know, but that's not it. I really just love you.

frumpy

This morning I was feeling stressed from school and just felt like just wearing something comfortable, so I put on a hoodie. I walked into Juma's room to say good morning to him. I popped my head in, but he asked me to come in all the way.

Juma: Why are you wearing that?
Sarah: Because I felt like it.
Juma: It looks too big.
Sarah: That's because it is. Does it look bad?
Juma: Yeah, kinda.

And because I'm visiting Juma's class today to talk about our pioneer ancestors, I changed into something he wouldn't be embarrassed by.

We've hit a new stage: Embarrassed by Parents.

Ugh.

trip to Unguja island

Juma and I recently got back from Unguja island (aka Zanzibar island). I had to go for work, but Justin also had to work, so he stayed here in Pemba. I took Juma with me, and he went to the international school for 2 days. He borrowed a uniform from his friend Franklin (his parents are also from Yale), and he was so cute! I forgot to get a picture, though. Bummer. Next time. He didn't want to go to the school, but he did great and liked it fine. He was placed in class 2 by his age, but he'll have to be in class 3, I think. Class 2 is just too easy for him. He did have a good time playing with Franklin and his siblings Maggie and Solomon. They get along very well, and live in a great house with a back yard, play room, zip line, and they live within minutes of a beach that also has a swimming pool.

Unguja is way different these days compared to Pemba and compared to what it was back in 1999. Both nights we were there we ate real Italian pizza and gelato! Mmm, mmm, mmm! There are so many tourists and tourist shops and restaurants and fancy hotels, it's crazy. It's nice to take a break from Pemba, though. But then we were certainly ready to come back to the quiet of Pemba where if we see two other white people in a day, we think the place is being overrun with tourists! It's nice that everyone here in Chake Chake knows us and isn't trying to sell us tourist packages to go to this or that beach.

Also, Pemba currently has a steady supply of electricity, but Unguja has none at all. Only people with generators (aka rich people and tourist hotels) can have electricity. Because there's no electricity, getting water has been a huge problem, too. Only people who happen to have wells can get access to any fresh water; they share liberally with others. Some sell water. Others have dug shallow wells of their own, and are only getting dirty water. It's pretty bad in the villages these days. The government promises the electricity will be back this month, but no one believes them. We'll see.

The plus side of Unguja, though, is that it has some commodities that we can't get in Pemba. So I managed to find a counter-top water purifier which I bought and hauled back to Pemba. It was only about 30 dollars, which is about how much we spend on bottled water in 2-3 weeks. So it'll pay for itself very quickly. Luckily we have a fridge, so we can just fill up containers and have cold water any time (the electricity is on).

Our work continues well. Justin is getting lots done in the Archives, and I'm making some great contacts that'll help me with my projects. I've hired a research assistant who is great and has tons of experience doing health research, so I am pleased.

Juma is doing great with homeschooling. Yesterday, we started to make a tambourine from bottle caps, learned about the founding of Rome, learned what a peninsula is, and wrote about our trip to Unguja. (I'll ask his permission to type it up here.)

juma-ism

Juma: from the couch Mom, come here.

Sarah: What's up, babe?

Juma: I'm not sure you want me to tell you this, but...

Sarah: trying to balance the role of parent with confidante What? You can tell me, it's ok.

Juma: I think...I think I'm addicted to resting. I've been resting on this couch for an hour.

dragon and lyra

I'm pretty sure we're the worst pet owners ever. Ok, maybe we've just had bad luck.

Yes, we've had yet another pet funeral.

Actually, a double pet funeral.

Juma's two green anole lizards, Dragon and Lyra, died within a couple weeks of each other. Juma figures it was a communicable lizard disease. I doubt that, but whatever it was, we'll miss watching them chase crickets.

We always have a little funeral to help Juma cope and grasp, in his six-year-old way, a little bit about death. This time, we buried them in our backyard under a homemade gravestone.

(Juma thought the digging was a blast.)




Goodbye Dragon and Lyra!

grandma's summer reading club

Justin's Grandma Beal was a great reader, and encouraged her 13 grandchildren to read by starting a summer reading club. A certain number of pages or books earned them prizes, and at the end of the summer she'd treat all her (reading) grandkids to ice cream, toys, videos, and even grand prize money. (Justin and I, already big readers ourselves, and a bit old for the club, got the satisfaction of being able to exchange books and opinions about them with Grandma.)

We lost Grandma Beal to cancer just four days before Juma was born, this week seven years ago. Justin's mom, Vicki, re-instituted the reading club for her six grandchildren.

Juma's was a little reluctant to start, but since I allowed him to read in bed before he falls asleep, he's been reading three or four books a night. That kid, like many, will do anything to put off sleep. He's already earned the first two levels of prizes:

a slurpee




and a dollar store purchase of his choice



I've also continued to read to him, especially books that he believes are a bit hard for him. Lately, we've read The Indian in the Cupboard, the entire Great Brain series, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, and How to Eat Fried Worms, all books I read when I was a kid. We've also read most of the Harry Potter books, but have taken breaks as things get a little scary for him. We are currently paused in the middle of the Order of the Phoenix.

As for me, (Grandma Beal would like to know) I'm currently reading When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists, In Fact: The Best of Creative Non-fiction, and Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster, and Speak Peace in a World of Conflict.

buzz cut

Okay, it was an accident that I buzzed it. But now he looks like uncle Cameron B. did when he was a kid. Just not blond.

for all you parents of 6-year-olds

Do check out this link. It's a hilarious little blog post about being a parent of a six-year-old. Oh, so, so familiar.

silly

growing

This morning, Juma called out to me from his bedroom, "Mom! I've grown!"

"Oh yeah?" I said, a little skeptical.

"Yeah. Do you know how I can tell?"

"How?"

"I can turn on the light in my room without having to use the stool!" The light in there is rather high up, and the switch has to be turned rather than pushed.

So we measured him on the chart we've been using for the past 18 months, and he's grown a good inch in the past month! People kept telling me he seemed to have just spurted up, but I didn't believe them. Silly me.

Juma's class

I went to Juma's 1st grade class yesterday afternoon to talk about Zanzibar, e.g. "Where Juma's daddy is." The whole class has been involved in Juma dealing with Justin leaving, so I thought it would be good to introduce the class to that far-away place.

After showing them a map--at least they all knew where Africa is--I had them try on some local clothing.

The girls were just delighted to try on kanga:



The boy I chose to try on a kanzu was a good sport in trying on what the class thought looked like a dress. I explained it was NOT a dress, and that all the men and boys wear these to go to the mosque, Quran school, and on special occasions like weddings:




Juma's teacher, on the other hand, was rather embarrassed, and took the kanzu off as soon as he could. (But since he had dressed up as the Cat in the Hat on Dr. Suess's birthday, I figured he could handle a kanzu.)




After the presentation, the class wrote letters to students in Zanzibar. I'll send them to Justin, and he'll bring them to a school. Hopefully we can start a penpal thing.

the move and the job

Okay. In between packing boxes, analyzing HIV statistics, playing Stars Wars Monopoly, cooking dinner, spontaneous slow dances in the living room, making snow forts, basketball practice, and addictive video games, I've found a minute to sit down and write about what's up with the Beckhams.

Well, Justin got a new job. But not just any new job. This one allows him to still be a student, an involved daddy, and be home most of the time. And the big bonus: it comes with an apartment. Much bigger than the one we have now. Pretty odd job, eh?

His job title is--get this--sexton. Since most people don't know what the he-- a sexton is, I usually tell people he's a "facilities manager" or "caretaker." A sexton, though, is traditionally someone who takes care of a church or synagogue building, and once upon a time, they dug graves, too. But luckily, Justin doesn't have to do that.

He does take care of a building, though, that belongs to a church. And our new apartment is on the third floor of that building, called a parish house. The Parish House is where they have their church offices, Sunday school classes, soup kitchen, reception hall, board meetings, etc. The Meeting House is the actual chapel where they have Sunday services. The church also regularly rents out both buildings for other uses--rallies, weddings, receptions, small congregations' church services, dance troupes, World AIDS Day services, etc, etc.

So Justin's job is to coordinate and contract all those extra functions in the Parish House. Which is pretty sweet considering we will live in the building, so he just has to run downstairs to let people in, and can come back up and do his normal stuff--read 10 books a day, teach a couple classes, have light-saber fights with Juma, give me massages, all that good stuff. There's more to the job than that, of course, but I won't bog you down in the details. (And we all know what blogging about your job can get you.)

Another bonus is that the church itself is rich in history. It's the oldest church in New Haven; it was founded the same time New Haven was, in 1638, back when New Haven colony had a theocracy. The Meeting house is in the center of town, on the town "Green," and was built over an existing graveyard, so there's a preserved crypt under the building.



We haven't moved in yet, though, since they are fixing things up after the last family (good friends of ours) moved out. Plus, Justin takes his oral qualifying exams this next Thursday. This is a huge deal and Justin's been working very hard toward this, reading like mad, for the past few months. He has two full bookshelves of books he has to not just read, but know, and be able to debate about.

Once he's done with the exam, he'll be what PhD students call ABD, "All but dissertation." After that, he'll TA a class this semester, and then he gets to research and write a book. Gee, that's all. Actually, that'll take at least a couple more years.

In the meantime, I start the last semester of my master's degree on Monday. Hooray!

Oh, and Juma's working on addition and subtraction, reading "chapter books," busting out with Latin names of prehistoric animals, dribbling a basketball, and making a career out of hammering ice in the courtyard. There are four other first-graders in our apartment complex, so he's never short on playmates. Which will change when we move downtown and live right by the library, the courthouse, and a preschool. We're looking forward to being so close to the library and other downtown amenities--restaurants, campus, bank, etc. But the lack of neighbors will be strange. We might actually have to--gasp!--try to be social and invite people over.

Update: Oh, and another huge bonus at the apartment. Dishwasher. Wash and dryer.

Let me repeat.

Dish. Wash. Er.

Washer. And. Dryer.

breakfast

Juma must be having a growth spurt. This morning, he gobbled up four (small) pancakes, then asked for an English muffin. He ate that whole thing. Then he wandered back into the kitchen, and looked in the freezer.

"You want more?!?!" I asked, incredulous.

He looked at me and smiled.

"You ate all those pancakes?"

"Yes," he said.

"And the whole English muffin?" I continued.

"Yep."

"And you're still hungry?"

Big smile.

"Want a toaster strudel?"

Bigger smile.

I know that amount of food is normal from some boys his age, but this is Juma The Slowest Eater in the World. It's like pulling teeth to get him to finish anything.


As he was eating, I heard him call me from the other room. I turned the corner, wondering what he could possibly want now, and asked, "Yes, hon'?"

"I see that you haven't eaten any breakfast. You should get yourself an English muffin or something."

And that's when my heart melted like butter.

report card

Juma brought home his first report card of first grade, and he did awesome (of course he did!). He got perfect marks on math, and while his reading level is expected to be at a 6 right now, it's at a 14. His behavioral marks were also perfect, and we are very proud of him. Way to go Juma!

We decided this deserved a reward, so we let him watch Walking with Dinosaurs, a movie we'd been holding on to as a reward for general good behavior at home (measured by filling up his "sticker chart"). When we told him he could watch the movie, he got the biggest grin on his face and exclaimed, "Thank you! Thank you! Oh, I love you! I love you so much! I'm so excited!"

stage 2: Grand Canyon

We said good-bye to our families in Utah and headed south down 89 to the Arizona and the Grand Canyon. None of us had seen the Canyon, so we were excited. On the way, we stopped at Fremont Indian State Park



and saw some amazing petroglyphs (carvings in the rock) and pictographs (paint on the rocks). None of which you can see in this picture unless you click on it to see the bigger version:




In the evening we made it to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It was amazing and gorgeous, and a little scary. Parents of a budding scientist that we are, we took the chance to talk geology, the power of water on rocks, geologic time, and in which layers exactly could trilobites and sharks be found. (Juma's on a trilobite and shark kick lately.)

in utah

We've been in Utah for a few days now, enjoying our stay with Justin's sister and visiting with my family.

Juma is the only Wilson cousin (out of 13 of them) who doesn't live in Utah Valley, so it's a real treat for everyone (except the four youngest who are too young to have any idea who he is) when he comes to town. He was greatly concerned about being bombarded by excited cousins saying, "Juma, come play with me!" "Come play with me!" "No, come play with me!" As he said, "I just can't take all that pressure! It's just so much! I don't know if I can take it, Mom!" So we tried to take it easy and see just a few cousins at a time to ease him in. Still, the first stop was Rus and Kelly's, where there are four kids (plus a neighborhood kid who also, apparently, loves Juma), but Juma handled being surrounded by five very excited kids quite well.

The next day, we saw some of the smaller cousins in the morning, and then in the afternoon we were off to The Big Event of the trip: my sister Jody's wedding party. Yes, Jody eloped recently, with a man named Kaerlek (that's a Swedish name), and they had a party in the canyon to let everyone meet each other. We had only met Kaerlek the night before; it's pretty strange to have a new brother-in-law, but he's cool, and Jody is quite happy.

Later, we took Juma rock climbing with his cousin, Ammon, and uncle, Patrick. Five minutes in, Juma had a complete and total melt down--screaming, hitting, kicking, stubborn tantrum, and we realized we pretty much hadn't really fed him food all day...So we got free passes to come back to the climbing gym and took Juma to dinner where he happily ate naan, mango lassi, lamb kurma, and not so happily ate saag paneer (spinach and cheese).

Sunday, we hit the special exhibit, Monet to Picasso, at the U of U art museum, where Juma's favorite piece was Rodin's The Thinker. His cousin, Mariah, was with us, and she contented her two-and-a-half year old self by following Juma around and ushering him to the next painting by putting her tiny hand on his back and gently pushing. Later we took the kids to the Discovery Gateway Museum, where they had a grand time playing house, builder, grocer, farmer, life flight operator...Afterwards, we tried to find a replacement pair of sandals for Juma since he lost one of his flip-flops in the river at Jody's party. In typical kid fashion, he cried mournfully about not being able to find his right size in a style of shoes he didn't know existed 10 minutes before.

Monday, we took Juma back to the climbing gym, where he actually climbed a wall (to about 10 feet up) and joyfully played Tarzan while Justin and I climbed a few walls. Today, we have his bff cousin, Ammon, all day, so they can have one last hoorah before we take off tomorrow (on to the Grand Canyon!).

packing

When we were packing to come to Utah, I told Juma he could pick a couple of toys to put in his suitcase. He rummaged around in the toy room under the stairs and came out with a Star Wars rebel blaster, three light sabers, and a talking C-3PO head.

Last he came out with an object I couldn't see and he said apologetically, "Mom. This might be a little disturbing...but I'm bringing this." He held up a dollar store recorder, the kind that makes piercing screeches when 5-year olds blow into them. Joy.

I snuck it back out of his suitcase before we left. But he hasn't noticed because the three light sabers have kept him quite busy.

traveling

About a week ago, Juma announced to us that he had "president's week off school." I asked him if he meant President's Day. "No, the week!" So I checked the schedule and realized he did have the whole week off, after all. How's that for involved parenting?

Thinking about that week of no school, I thought of my family in Utah...and convinced Justin he loved me enough to make the drive out from California with us. So we're in Utah for this week, and visiting my family--parents, 6 siblings plus their spouses and children--as well as some of Justin's relatives. Juma is having a blast so far with his cousins, with more playing to come.

My plan had been to surprise everyone at Sunday dinner by just walking in to my parents' house, but I found out everyone is sick over at my parents' place, so most people weren't going to be there (besides the 8 people who live there now). Too bad that didn't work out. Still, it's fun to be here.

Charlie bit me!

This video was just too funny to pass up. Kids are hilarious.

mondays

Last night when I was putting Juma to bed, we had our usual discussion about whatever is on his mind.

Juma: Mom, I hate Mondays.

Sarah: Lots of people hate Mondays, honey.

Juma: But, Mom, I really hate Mondays.

Sarah: Why?

Juma: Because on Monday, that means that there's another day I have to go to school, and then another, and then another, and then ANOTHER!

Sarah: Yep, that's true. Good night, bud.

Juma: But wait, Mom.

Sarah: What?

Juma: Just kidding, I mean I love Mondays.

Sarah: How come?

Juma: Because that means I get to go learn stuff the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day so I can grow up to be a scientist!