Thursday, February 12, 2015

Dry Season

In the United States, we have four basic seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. 

In Uganda, there are two basic seasons: rainy season and dry season. In Mbale, rainy season takes up about 9 months of the year. I would pretty much call the Ugandan rainy season my perfect weather. It rains faithfully every day, cooling everything down to the perfect temperature. The days are warm, and the mornings and nights are cool. The only downside to the rain is the mud, and trust me it is everywhere.

And then there's the short but dreadful dry season. It starts around Christmas and lasts until the middle of March. The rain stops completely. The mud turns into dust and the dust covers everything. Every tree and plant turns brown with dust and you can see and taste the dust in the air. Since we don't have air conditioning, we leave all our windows open year round for air circulation. So it's necessary to dust the furniture almost every day. By about 10:00 every day it's too hot to play outside and we hole up in the house with the curtains closed trying to stay cool.

This dry season has been particularly bad, and we still have about another month to go. I'm not a big fan of the weather here right now. The heat makes you feel lazy and dull. So, in an effort to look on the bright side, here are some of the ways we are trying to beat the heat:

Swimming! We live near 3 nice pools where you can pay to swim for the day. The water is always ice cold and I'm not exaggerating. It is an amazing feeling to actually feel cold! In the last week Graham has learned to swim on his own without a floaty. He is so proud. And Molly is so brave! She kicks around the pool, even in deep water with her floaty on, and jumps in over and over.





Art projects. Yes they are messy and require some work for mom, but the kids love it.



Watching movies. Knowing that it's temporary, I'm allowing some extra TV time for those days when we're stuck inside and there's not much going on.


Not pictured: LOTS of legos, LOTS of play doh, homeschool (at least an hour a day, most days), books, puzzles, games (go fish is Graham's current favorite), etc.





21 Weeks

How far along? 21 weeks and 4 days
How big is the baby? 3/4 of a pound and 10 1/2 inches long
Are you in maternity clothes? Oh yes and I also enjoy wearing some of Chad's clothes...just around the house of course.
How do you feel physically? HOT! I start sweating at about 8 am and sweat all day. Besides that I feel great.
Sleep? I'm still sleeping pretty well at night even though I'm hot. And now that Molly has mastered "rest time," I've been able to squeeze in a nap a few days a week.
Miss anything? Air conditioning.
Feeling movement of the baby? It's very comforting to feel consistent strong kicks.
Food cravings? Fruit and fruit smoothies. 
Gender of the baby? It's a boy! We are all thrilled.
Mood? I'm very thankful that at our anatomy scan we found out our baby boy is perfectly normal and healthy. We've bought our plane tickets and we're starting to look forward to our furlough and delivery.

Here are some pictures of our baby boy at 20 weeks. Half way there!



Oh, and I'll just go ahead and announce: Baby's name is Finn Christopher, named after his daddy.