A new baby

My dear, dear friend Rae,

Who first introduced me to blogging, (I didn't even know what a blog was until she sent me an invitation to start reading hers.)

has a brand new beautiful baby boy.

And I had dream that she was in labor a few nights ago. It makes me feel like we are still connected over all of the miles between here and India.

I'm so excited and happy for her. I just had to tell everyone. Go see him. He's perfect.

20 months

Having you around is like living with a two year old, only smaller. You want what you want when you want it and you have no qualms about yodeling at top volume when you don't get it. You have almost learned to whine. If I say no when you ask for something you start repeating, "Pease, pease, pease" in sad little pathetic tones that make me seem cruel and heartless for denying you. And then you descend into screams. It ain't pretty, but you will get over it soon enough. We hope.

You think hi is a magic word. Pair an exuberant "HIee" with a smile and a wave and people stop and smile and say it back. Neighbors give you cookies. Kids stop to play with you, all because you have mastered the nuances of this one magic word.

And bye-bye is a pretty cool word too. It's all encompassing in your efforts to get out the door. You point and ask, "BYE-BYE?" Or say it in pathetic tones of longing. It all points to one thing, you want to leave here now, and go somewhere else.

Here is a typical day for you. You sleep snuggled next to mommy until it's time to wake up. Then you sit up and grin at me before choosing whether or not to nurse a bit or just jump up and go play.

You run to the bed room door and yelling happily until your brother and sister come running in and take you off to play whatever game they are up to. The boy will cut you a pear, or a banana, or mix you some muesli while mommy showers. You almost always decide that I ought to let you shower with me. So the Girl will bring you into the bathroom and take off your jammies. You can almost do this all by yourself, but the shirt is a bit tricky still. Then you sit on my feet in the shower and demand that I wipe the water out of your eyes whenever you get any in them. This is because you now associate things in your eyes with pain, ever since the Girl tried to shampoo your hair herself and used too much and it got in your eyes very badly. They were very sad and red for a long time.

When we get out of the shower you point at the towel rack and demand a "Tow, tow."

Whenever one of your commands is properly fulfilled you give little self satisfied nod. It's my favorite thing that you do.


I wrap you up in a towel so that you can hold it around you and you run through the house proudly. Every time it falls off you bring it back crying "tow, tow" until I help you wrap it again.

Eventually, one of your siblings will decide that you need clothes and they will pick out something for you to wear. They fight over this privilege. Then, and they fight over this too, one of them will put a clean diaper on you while you almost always lay still, and then they will get you dressed. You will immediately find shoes and bring them to me. Once your shoes are on you go to the door and reach for the knob while begging, "Outide?"

Then I say, "no, not yet", and you cry. But you soon forget about that and start playing with toys.

You bring me the bag of wood puzzles and, a bit like a crack dealer, I dole them out one at a time. You bring me an assembled puzzle to trade for a new puzzle. You go on like this for hours. Until you are distracted from the puzzles by the big kids running around, or the doll stroller, or a "bebe". Then you bring me the doll, and a crumpled up dish towel that you pulled down from the dish rack and I wrap up the baby to sleep, over and over again, every time the blanket falls off.

Then you are hungry, and want your water bottle. As soon as I walk into the kitchen you start shoving the stool over next to me and climb on it to reach for stuff. You beg from the moment I start until the moment you get food. You sit at the table with the big kids. You eat the most enthusiastically. And then it's time for nap.

You wake up from nap and get in the way while the other kids pick up their toys. Sometimes you are a big help, sometimes you are a distraction and make a bigger mess behind them.

Finally, the toys are picked up, the snacks are consumed and the magical door opens.
You grab shoes and purse and "bebe" and fly out the door on your little red fire truck making for the open road. You are very fast. You push and coast and steer like a pro. If the next door neighbors are home you stop and yell "Hiee" and then "Pease, pease" and they give you always 2 animal crackers. You eat one, and give the other to me. Then you nod in a very satisfied fashion. Perhaps you are pleased that every thing is going according to schedule?
The next few hours are blissful as you run around outside and play with all the kids.

And then I bring you in to make dinner and you yell, and hang on me, and try to climb up and touch everything. And then you eat.

When Daddy comes home you stretch your whole body out towards him and yell "DA!DA!DA!" over and over again. Your day is now complete and you finish it off by distracting your siblings when they should be in the bathroom brushing their teeth, and instigating chase games and giggle sessions.

You push your way jealously onto my lap as I read, knocking off the story book in the process.

Once the big kids are in bed you mess around a bit with mommy and daddy before climbing into my lap and nursing until you fall asleep again and I carry you to bed.

It's hard work being the family baby, but someone has to do it. And you seem to be holding up under the pressure admirably.

Monday

Yes, this has become a fund raising contest blog. Sorry, I'm a bit obsessed. Only two more days before the contest closes. If you want to read something else today you can go over to Marriage Hacks where I am a new columnist on Mondays.

It would cost about $3300/month total to feed, clothe, house, school, and care for all of the physical needs of these kids in an ideal situation. They could all live on less than that, and they do right now. This is approximately how much it would take to set them up comfortably by Thai standards. In about 6 months we hope to be able to set up something more organized with him, and work out a budget etc. For now, know that this much a month would give these kids everything need in terms of material things.

So if everyone who has stopped by here in the past 4 days had donated just $2 each. We would have raised enough money to take care of everything the kids need for an entire month or two.

Please don't not give just because you can't give more than a couple of dollars. The couple of dollars of many people can change things.

Refugee Kids-Update

I just wanted to give you all an update.

I've been catching up on sleep, a bit. Okay, not much. The Baby was awake all last night. But you don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about how much money all of the lovely people such as yourself have given to help the kids so far right?

The total to date is about $500. This is amazing people. This is enough money for Chala to feed 40 kids well for 20 days. I'm really enjoying doing the math on this because Chala can feed clothe and house 40 kids for a month for less than it costs me to feed clothe and house my family of five for the same period of time.

I emailed him the other day to ask exactly what his current expenses are and what he sent me instead, we do have a bit of a language barrier, is what looks like his dream budget, how much it would cost him to take care of the kids completely, including paying their school tuitions, paying for a permanent residence, and paying a few other people to help look after them. He was very thorough and included medical expenses and the cost of transportation in it. I plan to post a copy of it early next week.

So lets keep spreading the word alright?

You have until Wednesday night at midnight to enter the contest for a bag. You can enter by making a donation here, or by writing about this and linking back to it from your blog or Myspace or Facebook. That's right. We are now on Facebook. So if you are on Facebook and want to invite all of your friends to join the cause you can. If you take the pledge to invite all your friends you can leave a note on the wall and I'll enter you in a separate Facebook draw also. To find us on Facebook go to causes and type in The Charis Project.


Anyone confused yet? Okay, I'll break it down

Two ways to win.

Make a donation.

Tell your friends by blog, Facebook, etc. The Charis Project

Contest closes Wednesday Aug 20, midnight PST.

Thank-you from the bottom of my heart. I'm am thrilled by how well this is going so far.

Wow-edit

****Me, I suck at the zeros. I always get them confused. 1600, not 16,000 and not as many hits as I get in a year. The fact that it took me 4 days or so to notice the mistake, also embarrassing.

My jaw is on the floor. Seriously.

In one day this little story has gotten more than 16 000 hits. That's about how many hits I got all of last year! :)

Thank-you, thank-you to everyone who is linking.

And thank-you everyone who has made a donation.

The current total is right around $360. That's an amazing amount of money for these kids.

My heart is full of gladness right now. Thank-you all.

Please Help the Refugee Kids-Edited

******Since I posted this last Thursday more than 2000 people have read this story. Some of them have made amazingly large donations, some have made modest sized donations, and some have made small donations. It every person had donated just $2 we would have raised more than $4000 so far for these kids. As it is we have raised quite a lot. So please don't make the mistake of not doing something, just because you can't do something really big. Every little bit helps.


Well, several sleepless nights later and there is a website up for The Charis Project, sort of. I have never done anything like this before. I don't know anything about HTML, anything at all. And yet for days on end I have been staring at strings of code and trying to figure out why all of my style sheets are suddenly MIA when I make changes (See, I know a jargon word now) and trying to get it to look pretty. My eyeballs feel like they are bleeding. I don't understand any of it, but after a while I start to see patterns. I'm treating it like magic. The HTML is happy if you don't disturb it too much. Just make sure all the lines match up and type type type copies of the one that looks the way you want it to, even though you don't know why, so that you can make the other ones looks that way too. It's very scientific. I am a blind man grasping the trunk of the elephant.

As you can imagine, it is far from complete. But I managed to hack the bare bones together and get a donate page running which is very important.

Because...

The GH leaves in just over a week. That means anyone who wants to send money to help Chala take care of the 40 refugee kids from Burma has one week to do so if they want him to get it this month. The GH will hand deliver whatever is donated to Chala when he meets him in Thailand in two weeks.

I'm not very good at fund raising. The last time I tried it, several years ago, it totally bombed. Really badly. That was before the advent of blogging though. Since I started this blog 2 years ago I have watched in awe as the power of this internet connection we have with people has worked to change things, in a good way. Of course, I don't have as many readers as a lot of people who have done some really great things for some really worthy causes. (Thank-you every one who does read, I love you. Mwah.) And this is a really worthy cause. So this is where I start begging. Will you please help me? Could you tell your readers about this and send them back here? Will you help me to spread the word. Chala and the kids live on so little right now, any thing that we can raise would be a huge blessing to them. I am constantly amazed by how wonderful and caring the people who read here are. You do some pretty amazing things in the course of your day some of you. I'm counting on you to come through on this.

Anyone who makes a donation will get a tax deductible receipt at the end of the year. And, in the interest of keeping things fun I have prizes.


For every 30 people who leave a donation I will draw their names for one handmade Karen bag of your choosing. I have several that are about to go up for sale at the Tribal Goods Store on the website that I will build sometime in the next few weeks. You could get one first. You can even choose the color. They are very pretty, strong and comfortable to cart your stuff around in. I use mine for diapers. There are several that are even manly enough for guys. (Of course the Karen men favor hot pink, but we have more neutral colors for you guys here.) My husband, brother and brothers in law all use them and love them.

Also I will also draw for another bag out of a list of people who link back to this on their own blog, or e-mail it to all their friends if you don't have a blog. So if you want a second chance at winning a bag, link to this story and leave a comment to let me know. Your name will go into another draw.


So just to recap, in case you missed it the first time, this is what I'm raising money for.

A few months back my brother in law met a man in northern Thailand who used to be a member of the Shan Resistance Army. (Think the guide in Rambo 4.) They basically tried to protect themselves from the Burmese army who periodically would surround a village with heavy artillery and give them two hours to hand over all of their food, all of their pigs, and all of their women or they would open fire on everyone. This man, Chala, is now on the Thai side of the border. He took my brother in law through the jungle and showed him all of the places where he used to hide. Now he uses his knowledge to find kids in the jungle.

You may be wondering why exactly would he be wandering through the jungle along the border and looking for kids? Because they are there to find. They are usually orphans, they have been running to get away from the Burmese army. They have escaped and often witnessed the deaths of entire villages before they could get away. They head for the Thai border where they know they will be safe. Chala finds them and takes them in. He feeds them and gives them a place to sleep. Right now he has more than 40 kids. He's had to move them several times because he keeps running out of money. He does all this out of his own pocket. I get to figure out how to help him help them.

Right now he's only able to worry about keeping them alive, but there will be more to consider in the coming years. Ultimately they will need school and counseling and job training. They will need someone to help them grow up. They need someone to love them right now. They are excruciatingly poor. They sleep on a floor and eat whatever is cheapest to buy. It would take so little by our standards to take care of them properly. When we get to Thailand next year we are going to start with helping these kids. We may take some of them into our home in Chiang Mai if it will help in the long run.

In a few weeks we'll have the site up and anyone who wants to donate toward helping Chala and those kids will be able to do so. My husband will be meeting him the last week of August and will hand deliver any thing you give to him when he gets there.

So won't you please help? Ten US dollars is about 337 baht. A cheap restaurant meal in Thailand is only 33 baht. Which is about one dollar. A little bit would go a long way to getting these kids better food and housing. To make donation click here.

***

If anyone is able to make a widget or link button for a side bar and wanted to help me make one so that people can post it if they want please let me know. I'm sure it must be simple but my sleep deprived brain is too fried right now to think about it. My husband is getting up for work right now and I have yet to go to bed. Love ya.

Rethinking Mess

It's been getting very cluttered and chaotic around here of late. In a drive my clutter hating self crazy type of way. I can ignore it to a certain extent but then I'll step on something trip over something, the doorbell will ring... and a white hot hatred of all things clutter will be ignited. But don't be fooled into thinking that because of this my house is always clean. Oh no. See, I also hate cleaning. I used to really like cleaning, back in the days when whatever I cleaned stayed that way for a while. I would get it all tidy and then sit down for a celebratory cup of tea and a good read, content in the knowledge that I wouldn't have to do that again for another week.

And then there entered into my life other people. A husband, to begin with, who shocked me after we were first married by dropping his clothes in a trail that led all the way from the front door to the bathroom floor, every day after work. I could not, and still can't figure out why he can't wait until he's in the bathroom to start stripping.

And then entered children, 3 of them, 3 creative exuberant children. Three little clutter whirlwinds. I can leave a spotless room, spend 15 minutes in my bathroom and come out to a floor that looks like the toy box just vomited. Living in a small space doesn't help.

Even though I do make them pick it all up once a day, just before dinner so that the GH and I can enjoy a relatively toy free evening after they are in bed, it's enough to drive me nuts some days tripping over things.

So the other day I was looking at everything on the floor, feeling overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of tiny pieces that were scattered everywhere. And then I decided to try rethinking some of my attitudes toward all of this mess I was tripping over. And I took pictures, to share with you.

This is not hundreds of little pointy pieces scattered all over the table and floor. This is a little girl learning about shapes and spatial relationships. Also practicing for her future career as a tile layer.

This is not every puzzle we have all pulled out and dumped out together. Why can't you remember to work on them one at a time and put them away? This is advanced puzzle making. This is challenging not only her memory and manual dexterity, she is learning to sort and categorize as well.

This is a child using his imagination and building stuff on the TV instead of watching it.

These are boats carrying the survivors of a volcano wracked island to a new mountain home atop the TV. And that is the tousled hair of a child who has been rolling around on the floor all day having fun. There is also an abandoned princess cape in the picture.

Some one started a weaving project. Maybe they'll finish this time. I can be optimistic.

This is me biting my tongue. This is me choosing, daily, not to nag my husband about the giant mess on his desk that he rarely touches. There are more important things in life.

This is what I do so I don't have to look at it. And to keep out of sight when company comes. This some days is the price of peace and I don't mind paying it.



Now, don't you feel better about what's going on in your house too?

I have the Best Friends Ever

You may think that you do too and that's okay. I'll allow that. But only because you haven't met mine.

The afternoon after I posted about our anniversary plans that fell through my friend Megan who lives all the way over in Michigan, (start a blog Megan) called me to say that if I still wanted it she had arranged for her sister to come and watch my kids and lend me her car. Is that a fabulous friend or what? Not to mention her sister.

Of course, When I called the GH he had already passed the tickets on to someone else, who was very happy to get them, and since we didn't pay anything for them to begin with it was no big deal.

So thanks for the suggestions. We did have a quiet dinner together, very late, after the kids were all asleep. And dessert. And the antique tawny port that has been our celebratory drink of choice since we shared a taste of it and chocolate after we brought the Boy home from the hospital the very first time. And we did dance to our wedding song in our candle lit living room, and I did look amazing, if I do say so myself, and thank-you Chantelle for the suggestion. I got all choked up doing that. But refrained from crying because that would have been a mood kill.

We're not that much better at slow dancing together than we were 8 years ago. But some other things are vastly improved with time. And best of all, we still like each other after all this time even though there have been seasons when we didn't.

So here for you to listen to and enjoy also is our wedding song. Lord of the Starfields by Bruce Cockburn

**I'm not totally fond of all the images in the video. I think some of them are distracting from the song. I would turn off your monitor and just listen. But don't have time today to fiddle with learning how to upload audio files today.