The kids

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Tyson and Jori are both doing great. They seem genuinely happy to be here, although I am pretty sure they still don’t realize that this is now home and we aren’t planning to return to Michigan any time soon. Yesterday Jori asked how many days we had been here and when Darin said “ten” she was shocked. Seriously, her face was so funny. She said “Ten! I thought it was only two!”

They are doing a great job sharing a room, so much better than I ever hoped. They get to talk for a few minutes once the lights are out, then Darin goes back and says their time is up, and almost every night that is the end of it! I think it helps that it is cold and dark and neither of them want to get out of their beds for fear of spiders and other creepy crawlies! They are also just so tired from being outside for most of the day.

The other part of the day they are usually playing the iPod. They are becoming quite proficient at “Angry Birds” thanks to Darin’s coaching. He says it teaches them things like trajectory, so I guess it’s all good. They also love listening to music on the “little” iPod, and the songs they hear are sticking with them. This morning Tyson was asking Amos, “Do you know ‘Everlasting God’?” and then Tyson starts singing “You are the everlasting God, the everlasting God. You do not faint you won’t grow weary”. Then he asks if Amos knows “Our God” and proceeds to sing that song as well.

We started reading a chapter book that I picked up on a garage sale called “Journey to Jo’burg” about 2 kids that leave their village to find their mom who works in Johannesburg. It is set during the time of apartheid. It was interesting to see the kids take in different things and then listen to their responses. When we read that they had no money for a doctor to see their baby sister, Jori said “But why wouldn’t the doctor just come and help them anyway because they don’t have enough money and need help” and then when we read that they had to walk 300 km because they had no money for the train she said “The train people should just let them jump on because they need help”.

Both kids love going over to TYB. Jori LOVES all the babies over there and is especially attached to a little girl named Orabile. She loves to give her kisses-too many kisses. We are trying to tell her she needs to play with the babies and not just kiss them : ) Tyson likes to play with some of the older toddlers and last night they said we should adopt a boy and a girl from there so they could each have a new kid to share their room with. One thing that Darin and I found very funny was that Tyson kept calling one of the kids “Shob-i-lee-lee” and we have no idea why because we are pretty sure none of the kids even have a name close to that : ) He kept saying “Bye Shob-i-lee-lee” when we were leaving. So funny.

This morning there were loads up ants coming from under the couch. Tyson did some investigating and discovered a piece of potato chip seemed to have brought the ants to the house. I must confess that I was eating chips on the sofa last night, so I am to blame. Good thing my kids like disposing of ants! In other animal news, Jori keeps talking about “horns-bok”, as in “I think those were hornsbok we just saw”, but there is no such thing as a “hornsbok”, just lots of bok with horns!

So glad we have our children to keep us entertained out here in the bush.

Comments

liz said…
I am so glad they are having so much fun! I miss you guys! South Africa is a bit far to come over and baby-sit :)
June 24, 2011 at 10:35 AM
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