Growing Up: First Bite, First Bed

I think we've mentioned the dinner game I played with Princess, of offering her some of my food and how she will reach out to grab it. Thursday she was more successful than usual. She grabbed Mommy's banana and chomped on it. Lacking teeth, this wasn't a bite. She just sucked the banana a bit.

Friday, Joy was deliberate about it. She offered Princess the banana. Princess took it, gnawed it for a bit, and succeeded in pulling off a piece and swallowing at least some of it. I happened to present -- it being Joy's birthday, I took the day off. So here is Princess eating her first bite of real food. Baby Derrill also literally cut his teeth on bananas.

This other picture is a staged one. While waiting for the Prince to come to bed, I laid Princess in his bed. She was confused and disturbed at first. Eventually she decided this was kind of fun. I caption it:

Someone has been sleeping in my bed, and she's still there!

Nigerian English 1

Prince is learning to speak Nigerian. For instance, he counts "five, six, sevwon, eight" and the days of the week include "Monday, Tuesday, Wen-es-day, Tursday...." And thus the immigrant battle to maintain cultural/linguistic purity begins! (Y'see, son, there's school English and there's home English; at home, you speak home English...) At least I have the advantage of coming from Southern California where I've debated the importance of both blending in and maintaining cultural ties before.

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Yes and No don't mean quite the same things. If I ask the guards if the bus has already come and left, they invariably say yes. So I call the bus driver, who informs me he is still on his way. The guards either mean that "Yes, the bus is still coming," or "Yes, the bus came an hour ago," but that's not the question I ask. Several other expats have confirmed that Nigerians have a different sense of reporting on the past and future than other (US/India) cultures.

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We buy our milk in cardboard cartons. It's been irradiated so it can keep on the shelf for 6 months without refrigeration. Joy went to the store and asked for two boxes. They pulled out two cases filled with boxes. Finally she learned the correct terminology: Give me two pieces of milk.

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Joy's driver advised her to stop asking around for Oatmeal. "What is this ~oat-milk~ of which you speak?" They just call them oats. To me, oats are for horses, oatmeal for humans.

Prince's Prize: student of the month

 Hi there! Prince here!

I was Student of the Month this month. That meant I got a free chocolate at the AUN Club.

I chose a Twix. I didn't quite understand that the chocolate was frozen hard ... or that Twix are naturally hard anyway ... or that nothing else was less hard. So Mommy and Daddy got to eat my treat. I was very proud anyway.

Hmmm, how much is that in Naira?

Princess' Big Month

For Halloween, Princesss dressed as her brother. You can see her dancing to Selena singing Aretha Franklin songs in the video to the right. Daddy's dance moves always make her happy, and that night they made Prince fall off his chair laughing. At the end, you can tell that Derrill has not repented of his boisterous fathering ways, but Princess complains about it a lot more than the Prince did, so I am getting much more circumspect.

Princess doesn't like to be alone, so even though we don't have a car, she spends a good deal of time in her car seat watching us do chores. Now, recognize that this is from my perspective - she is nearly always in Joy's arms in reality, but by the time I get home, the arms are getting pretty tired and the car seat gets loved.

Princess also doesn't like to sit upright (until this very morning), so she very quickly skootches down to this position.

Another shot of Princess in her Halloween costume. At 4 months, she is growing out of her 3-6 months clothes and heading for her 6-9 month.

If I remember correctly - and I may not - Prince didn't grow into this until his 5th month.

Nov 5 - Princess grabbed Mommy to give her her first kisses. She grabbed Joy's lip and pulled herself in. She gave several more kisses to her cheeks and chin.

How thankful I was to be home that day to get pictures.

Nov 8 - Our little darling gets cuter all the time. This was during the Eid-el-Kabir celebrations last week. I asked my students what it was, and I was told "Muslim Christmas." Checking more knowledge sources, I learned it is called "Festival of Sacrifice," celebrating when Abraham was willing to offer his son and God spared them both. Many families have or have access to a goat, and they will slaughter at home, enjoying the meat as a family that day, I learned from the chairman of the board of education for AUN who also runs a ranh.

Some day in the last couple weeks Princess rolled over by herself for the first time. I was unpacking some boxes and watched her roll over onto her tummy, then roll back the other way.

Princess also figured out in the last two weeks how to pass a toy from one hand to the other. This is months and months ahead of her brother.

Princess standing with Kelli ...
and sucking on her fingers.

This week she got her toes in her mouth for the first time. She is very excited about this. Last night we had dinner with our upstairs neighbors and she started to moan about something while sitting in their lap. I thought she was trying to get her foot in her mouth, but couldn't reach while sitting up. So I directed them to lay her down on the couch cushion. Sure enough, first chance she got, Princess grabbed her leg and brought it up to her face. I took off her sock and helped her tap her nose with her foot, which she loved. (For those keeping score, Prince still isn't interested in putting his feet in his mouth.)

This morning Joy propped Princess up with a pillow at her back and two pillows to her sides. Princess sat up for a moment, then reached out her hands to brace herself tripod fashion. She managed to hold that position for a couple minutes and was quite pleased with herself before succumbing to inevitable gravity. After that, she had a lot more fun trying to control her fall than preventing it.

Princess' cries are also being more communicative. 1 - Mommy is recognizing a different cry when she wants to be fed vs. other cries. I can hear it too, though not as well. It has more ooo and moan, while the other is more waaa and cry. 2 - Normally she is very happy to see and be with Daddy. But one day she was not. She wanted Mommy, and somehow communicated it to me. We handed her over, and she stopped crying right away. "I didn't have to do anything but hold her and she stopped."

Prince discovers Inductive Reasoning

We have three bathrooms. One is by our room, one is by Prince's room, and one is by the living/dining room - the guest bathroom. Prince for some reason decided a few weeks ago that he really prefers the guest bathroom. Joy tells me it's because the sink and toilet are lower, so the room is more preschooler friendly. He is not allowed in our room, let alone our bathroom. I don't think he knows a bathroom exists there.

[If stories about preschoolers and bathrooms are not your idea of good time, don't click on the Read More link.]

An evil blog post

Making fellow ex-Ithacans nostalgic and homesick since 3:34pm, Nigerian Standard Time:

Why Wegmans is the best company in the world.

I'm still not a convert - shopping at Wegmans always made me more than a little uncomfortable on several levels - but a few months out here will make even me perk up at its name and smile.

Epic Vacation

Symptoms of an Epic Vacation: years later, you remember and honor every anniversary of the Epic Vacation. In September, I was saying to Joy, "Do you realize, it's been two years since we were in Italy?" No way. It can't have been that long. I wanted to post some more pictures from that trip back then, but life being always too hectic, our intentions sometimes get put off by 2 months.

Another symptom: When you tell your wife you're talking about Epic Vacations, she guesses which one.

It was such a great trip! "It was fun."

"I'll always remember going to Holland," Joy says. Our honeymoon in Germany was also Epic of course, but there's a lot to celebrate when it comes time to commemorate that one again, and there were memorable (if not quite as Epic trips on subsequent anniversaries).

For some reason that year [reasons that we now understand only too well], the Spirit nudged Joy to suggest something that would never have entered into our heads otherwise: let's take our tax break and splurge - spend it all (nearly) on a trip to see her brother in Italy. Somehow we did it. Totally out of character for us. Then again, 5 years ago I'd never have guessed I would be living here either.

Below the fold are some new, random pictures from our trip that never got posted at our old blog. Because they are random, they are totally out of order.

Kimball on LDS in Nigeria

When we first moved here I shared some of the early efforts of faithful people in Nigeria to get the Church to come here and bring them the fullness of the Gospel. In a Sept 1978 training meeting, Pres. Spencer W. Kimball - the prophet at that time - shared his thoughts about the importance of bringing the gospel to "The uttermost parts of the earth." One of his most famous statements* from that talk was this:

I believe the Lord can do anything he sets his mind to do.
But I can see no good reason why the Lord would open doors that we are not prepared to enter. Why should he break down the Iron Curtain or the Bamboo Curtain or any other curtain if we are still unprepared to enter?

And so he urged first those whom we would now call the Seventy and then the rest of the church membership to get ready. That recommendation included learning Mandarin Chinese -- he praised the Chinese quite highly for their many attainments to keep their societies morally and physically clean. He prophesied that "Our brothers and sisters in Russia must hear the gospel; and if we are attentive and prayerful, the Lord will open the way" and now our best friends are there. He also shared this about bringing the gospel to Africa:

Joy's First Market Day

Joy wrote this post in August, but for some reason it never posted, so I'm attaching it now:


A week ago Saturday Derrill was feeling really sick, with a fever and so we elected me to go to market. The shuttle takes people to the market on Saturdays. Our concern was feeding Princess since she is nursing. I fed her before going down for the shuttle, but it never came (I learned later that it already left or wasn’t planned for that day). We called a couple times. I fed her an hour later, then pumped. I got with my shuttle between 11 and 11:30 to arrive home after 3pm. Poor Derrill and Princess - she had cried half the time I was gone. We plan on sending her with me next time.
I was so grateful that I had been persistent. There was no one else on my shuttle and my driver went everywhere with me. He took good care of me and helped me get better prices :). I found all that I was looking for except for a crock pot and it was a pretty good list. I even found two small step-down transformers that will be life savers for us and were inexpensive.
I was amazed to be in the shuttle when it turned around at the market when there didn’t look like there was any space between shuttle, people, cars and motorcycles. Buying meat at the market was an eye opening experience. It didn’t seem very sanitary, but it is very fresh. I chose my own chicken as it walked around (I could have named it) and they cut it up for me. I did not see the cow my beef came from, but that was fine. I was excited to find green beans, carrots and onions.
I bought things for a baby carrier and got a phone for myself. It was a productive day even though it was much longer than I had expected. I even found a husband more understanding of my 2 child family plight when I arrived home. Success!
 -- Joy

LDS Aid

Two professors, one a Cornell-trained BYU professor of nutrition, have been working to improve the Atmit porridge that is often given out in care packages. The hope is that it will be even better for small children with a better mix of micronutrients (particularly more iron) but without compromising on shelf-life. Another article describes its dissemination in poor areas of Peru.

A single serving provides 34 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein, 43 percent of calcium, 99 percent of iron, and high percentages for a dozen vitamins and minerals for children under 5 years old. ... 
In 2010, 645,000 pounds of Atmit were shipped by LDS Charities to four countries. Depending upon the age and size of the children, that's enough to feed 100,000 to 130,000 children for one month. The cost? Less than $6 (USD) per child.

LDS efforts to help those suffering from the famine in the Horn of Africa:

In Ethiopia, projects to aid more than 100,000 refugees are under way, including water tanks, trucking services, sanitation supplies and hygiene training for 15 villages; supplementary food for 8,700 malnourished children; nutrition centers and sanitation facilities for Somali refugees in Dollo Ado; and 5,000 hygiene kits.
The Church also plans to provide water catchment and storage structures, as well as soap and washbasins to serve tens of thousands of other residents in the communities surrounding the Dollo Ado camps.

Other projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia are also underway and briefly described at the link.



At the most recent General Conference, Church President Thomas S. Monson reminded members about the General Temple Patron Fund. Donations from members around the world are used to help members who live far from a temple travel there. A recent article highlighted some of the saints in southeastern Africa who have been blessed by the Fund: