life in a nutshell

Despite moving to DC in July, we’ve written very little about our time thus far in the nation’s capital. It’s not for lack of things to write about either. On the contrary, we’ve been so busy that sometimes sitting down with a book in the evening feels like a guilty pleasure because of how much there is to research and take care of. From purchasing a car to arranging childcare, finding new doctors, and adjusting our finances, it’s taken a lot of adulting to get us settled in our new home.

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school’s out for summer

The mileposts keep flashing by. Thursday was Munchkin’s last day of school in Rwanda, and yesterday the school held a graduation ceremony, which featured a hilarious, if somewhat bizarre, theatrical production in which the kids wore “bedazzled” underwear and pretended to be aliens.

not so little anymore

The biggest downside to D’s most recent South Africa trip was that he was away for Munchkin’s fourth birthday. D made it back for the party, but could not accompany the little man to school to mark his special day with his classmates. The little man, meanwhile, has quietly grown up quite a bit – especially over the last several months.

on smoking and other critical childhood concerns

Shortly after our surreal parent-teacher conference — while we were making our way around South Africa’s Garden Route — we received an end-of-semester progress report from Munchkin’s school. Unlike the over-the-top adulation in the previous midyear evaluation, this report struck a more balanced approach, praising Munchkin’s kindness, creativity, and academic progress while highlighting a number of behavioral attributes where “strengthening is needed.”

turning corners

And just like that, 2017 is behind us – and so is the first half-year of Junebug’s life. Six months old and her personality coming into full focus, Junebug is a joyful handful – all smiles unless she isn’t getting what she wants and feels the need to assert herself.

whose child is this anyway?

Sitting in tiny tot chairs across a small wooden table from Munchkin’s teachers last week was a surreal experience, and not because of the diminutive furniture.

parental pleasures

How and when did he get so big? It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves with increasing frequency of late, and one we are likely to keep asking for the foreseeable future now that we’ve started.

far from the madding crowd

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. And if the source of your failure is your utter inability to sway your three-year-old towards a particular course of action, then best of luck to you; we empathize completely!

survival mode

With Junebug steadfastly refusing to nap in the evenings and Munchkin continuing his Tasmanian devil act by tearing up the house on a daily basis, we are still very much living day to day.

moment of grace

Towards the end of our Nairobi tour – after hosting our fifteenth group of visitors in just under two years – we joked that at some point in the future we should make concert-style t-shirts featuring our various Foreign Service tours to gift to people who visit us at all of our overseas postings. More than halfway through our third tour, the only person who would currently qualify for such a memento would be S’s mom.