Romance on the Rez...

See if you can picture this scene from early in the year 2000...

It had been slightly less than a month since Papaya Daddy and I expressed our mutual attraction and decided to pursue a relationship. That relationship was developing startlingly quickly, thanks in large part to a bizarre snowstorm that dumped two feet in one night and shut down Chapel Hill, NC completely for over a week. Papaya Daddy and I lived within walking distance of one another, and we spent a good part of that week pooling our food, cooking together, playing in the snow, taking long walks, and talking, talking, talking... In fact, the end of that week marked our memorable First Kiss, in the snowy arboretum on the university campus.

Soon after the First Kiss, we found ourselves watching The Power of One with some mutual friends on Chinese New Year. Papaya Daddy was sitting next to me on the couch, and as the video progressed, he snuggled closer and closer until his head was resting in my lap. It was probably incredibly annoying to the others in the room, but we were blissfully unaware of anything but each other. I held my breath, savoring the excitement and the wonder of having him so near, so intimate. I was completely caught up in the romance of the moment. He looked up into my face, caught my eye, and opened his handsome mouth to say... "You have really active bowels!" My face must have shown some consternation at this sweet nothing, because he swiftly assured me, "That's a really good thing!"

I should have known, right then and there, that a life together with this man would not constitute the fulfillment of the western ideal of romance. And it's not that my husband isn't romantic - it's just that his idea of romance is very different from what you're taught to expect from the popular songs, movies, and books you grow up with in this culture. Which is one of the things I love about him.

Anyway, romance (as popularly defined) has been in very short supply during our sojourn in this desert. There's definitely some romance to pursuing the adventure of living out here together, but that's pretty much where it ends. Since we moved here three and a half years ago, our dates (times together without children in our care) constitute: dinner alone at a restaurant during a Christmas trip to PA in 2006; an hour together on a cruise ship in 2007; an anniversary walk together & ice cream in Germany in 2007; three Valentines couples' dinners at our church (see photo above); and a couple quick (15 minute) walks together last May after the Portabella was born. Even if we could get a babysitter out here on the Rez, where would we go? There's nowhere to go that's remotely "date-like" within an 80 mile radius, unless you like to hike in the desert (which is romantic but not worth the trouble of finding a babysitter). The fact that I've been either pregnant or breastfeeding for the past 6 1/2 years straight doesn't help much, either.

And life has been very strenuous here. Any parent could tell you that having three children under the age of six puts a bit of a damper on romance. Add to that the fact that every other weekend for us requires a full day's trip just to buy groceries, and that any attempt to go on a vacation usually requires at least a full day or two of exhausting travel on either end (to drive 5 hours to the Phoenix airport and then fly to where we need to be). Furthermore, due to a severe staff shortage, Papaya Daddy has been seriously overworked for the past year and a half.

And yet, somehow, like the desert flower which miraculously flourishes in the poor clay soil of our yard, our love has grown stronger and more beautiful in this arid landscape. We are more in love now that we were before we moved here. Often when we tumble into bed at night, we're too tired for anything more than a tight embrace before we drift off to sleep. Yet the magic, the rightness, the depth of love felt in that embrace, is the highlight of my day.

In our first month of living here, I cried one evening because I discovered that all the other health center families with small children were moving away in the next few months. I was about to give birth to the Banana, the Papaya was 2, and I wondered how I would be able to survive living here without the community I had counted on. Papaya Daddy held me and said something like, "Even if all our friends here move away and are not replaced, living here will still be exciting and full - because I have you." (See, the man's romantic where it counts!) And it's true. Through God's grace, we have held tightly to our love for each other over the past 3 1/2 years. And in loving each other well, not only have we made tough circumstances here bearable for each other, but our love itself has been nurtured, despite the dearth of romance out here.

I'm in no way trying the denigrate the importance of a community, or of having romance in a marriage. A large reason we're moving to Washington is because we feel the need for more of a community in our lives. I'm certainly not going to turn down any opportunities to start dating my husband again - in fact, I long for them! However, I can't help but stand back in awe and thankfulness when I behold the flowering of our love God has brought in the midst of our desert life.

I'll take a desert wildflower over a store bought rose anyday.

Yes, we do still do school!

I realized that I haven't talked about any school-related doings since January. Since this blog claims to be about our homeschooling adventure, maybe I should report something. We have been doing more than just sledding, celebrating, and hiking in Camp Verde.

We've been watching our crocuses emerge! That's science, right?

No, we really have been doing school fairly faithfully, despite February blues and occasional attitude problems (from all of us!). Here's a quick run down:

Language Arts: We had a celebration tonight with spaghetti and brownies because the Papaya finished reading his first "I Can Read It" book. It was 90 pages long, and he was pretty proud. I was both proud and relieved, since I found it incredibly tedious to listen to. It looks like the next "I Can Read It" book will be a little more interesting and varied.

It is exciting to the see the Papaya learn to read more and more each week. Unlike the story my mom tells about me - that I started attending school in first grade, and almost instantly began to read with fluency - the Papaya's journey towards literacy has been fairly slow and steady. Perhaps that makes it all the more fun to finally see him start to read some on his own initiative - to pick up a picture book and start to read from it. The Banana has even asked him to read to her a few times, and they are inexpressably sweet together (see the picture at the end of this blog entry). Teaching my son to read is an incredibly rewarding (and wonder-filled) accomplishment for me.

When we have time, we throw in some spelling. The Papaya has started to enjoy filling the pages of a notebook with his practice words (rather than writing on the whiteboard). Here is his first totally filled page. As you can see, we were learning a rule concerning whether to end a word with "k" or "ck" when it ends with a hard "k" sound.

Math: We breezed through a Singapore unit on simple multiplication this week, and I plan to do the following unit on division (a fairly basic introduction) next week. We also did some work with graphs and tables. The Papaya polled our family and guests at a potluck about what their favorite dessert was. He recorded the results on a tally chart and then converted the data to a bar graph. In case you can't read the column labels, ice cream is a clear favorite. Of course!

In his Rightstart work with his Daddy, the Papaya is making some good headway on mentally adding two digit numbers, with renaming. He figured out the answers to the following worksheet entirely in his head. In fact, the Papaya's doing well enough that Papaya Daddy's beginning to think that maybe they should spend their extra time together working on catching and throwing a ball rather than advanced mathematics. Hopefully a more normal working schedule coupled with longer days will allow for this soon.

Science

We've been doing a lot more reading about how everyday things work - like plumbing, soap, washing machines, the television, etc. I'm actually learning a lot! I'm trying to save most of the nature reading and activities from this year's curriculum for after our move, since there will be a lot more nature around to observe and interact with. I did, however, decide to do the wind activity before we moved. Because one thing this location has in abundance is wind, especially in the Spring. We made a windvane together and the Papaya kept a chart of wind direction and strength for a week. There were two afternoons that the wind was so strong it actually blew the windvane across the yard!

The most exciting science experiment of the past month involved bread making. Papaya Daddy organized this one, and he and the kids made two batches of bread dough, identical except that one included yeast and the other didn't. They kneaded them, formed rolls, let them sit, and baked them. They also stirred yeast and sugar into a little warm water:

They got to see an incredibly satisfying reaction!

Can you guess which roll had yeast and which one didn't?

Read-Alouds - We've been reading The Apple and the Arrow, the legend of William Tell, during the day. It's an exciting story, but a very challenging read due to the complex vocabulary used. I have to stop every few words to explain what something means. In nighttime read-alouds, Papaya Daddy finished reading the third and final book in the My Father's Dragon series, and just began A Grain of Rice, a delightful fable set in China. It has a mathematical premise, so the Papaya should like it!

Music & Art - The kids learned to locate the notes D & C on the keyboard, and worked on some more rhythm patterns. They're starting to learn songs using "Do, re, mi..." tones. We didn't do much art-wise, besides look at and discuss some paintings. I'm really not a great artsy person. Hey, sister - wish you could do this for me! I'd teach math to Merry in exchange!

Banana school - The Banana continues to love her school. She just finished a unit focused on the letter "E" and the Biblical character of Joseph. Next week we begin "F" and Moses. I'd say she's 95% potty-trained now. She's in underwear all the time now (except for sleeping), has 2-3 wetting accidents a week (they're getting fewer and fewer), and often stays dry overnight. Hurrah!

I have a lot more to share, but I'll share it in a new post since it's not particularly school related. But here's a spoiler: it involves crawling, new teeth, and learning to ride a bike with and without training wheels! Stay tuned!

To close, here's the heartmeltingly sweet picture I promised you, of the Papaya reading to his sister. Good night!

Introducing Papaya Daddy

The tribe Papaya Daddy will be working for in Washington asked him to send a photo, so that they can start publicizing his arrival. He'll be the first dedicated doctor the tribe has ever had. (By "dedicated", I mean that he'll work full time for the tribe, rather than dropping by once a week or so, which has been the case for their doctors up to this point).

So a couple days ago, Papaya Daddy & I held a lengthy photoshoot outside, which was probably about as painful for him as pulling teeth (seriously). The above photo is my favorite, even though it makes me think of a CD cover. Isn't he handsome!

Then, there were the outtakes...

Yeah, this looks like a guy you'd entrust your health to!

How to Fix an Octopus

The Papaya's creative writing assignment this week was something along the lines of: "Pretend you are a veterinarian taking care of an unusual animal". The following is his story, exactly as dictated to me. The side story of the mouse is kind of random. However, I just finished reading Anna Karenina, and concluded that Tolstoy is the king of random side stories. So the Papaya is following in some illustrious footsteps.

Without further ado, I present to you:

How to Fix an Octopus

by The Papaya

I am a veterinarian, and I am going to tell you how I got a rescue team, and rescued the octopus under the sea.

The octopus got poked by a nail. He was happy and he was not looking where he was going, and he was swimming low over the seabed with his 8 legs down, and he didn’t notice a nail was sticking up from the seabed. Suddenly, the octopus put his legs down on the nail, and the nail stuck in one of his legs!

I went to find a rescue team. First I got to a house that said, “Under the Sea Rescue Team”. I went into the house, and I saw 100 rescue team men. Then I went to the sea and I saw a little bridge leading to the octopus. I could easily see the octopus. He was sh-sh-sh-sh-shivering. Then, we picked the octopus out of the water, then I saw he was 1,000,000 inches long! It took 101 of us to carry the octopus to my house!

Then I saw that a little mouse ended up in my house. He was looking for some place to dig a mouse hole. Then, a light bulb came on in his head. He could dig his mouse hole underground! So he dug a mouse hole underground while we fixed the octopus.

This is how to fix an octopus:
1. Take the nail out.
2. Give him a shot to keep him from getting sick.
3. Put a band-aid on him.
4. Make it so it won’t hurt.
5. Take the octopus back to the sea.
6. Then bring it back to its mother.

After we finished fixing the octopus, the mouse was already finished digging its mouse hole. Then, it crawled out to its friends, and their friends heard him and they ran to him and they said in squeaky voices, “Great mouse hole!”

The End

Sledding on the Rez

We woke up Tuesday morning to find our backyard looking like this: There were a good ten inches of snow on the ground, and it was still falling.

What fun! Unfortunately, Papaya Daddy had to go to work that day, and our lack of any snow play equipment, combined with the fact that the Papaya's boots didn't fit him any more, confined our immediate enjoyment of the snow to a short period of stomping around, until the kids' feet got so cold they headed back in.

Yesterday, however, was another story. The snow was still around, the weather was beautiful, Papaya Daddy had the day off of work, and we headed to the church to get together with the homeschooling family that lives there. They have a lovely sledding hill right behind the church, and even lent some boots to the Papaya.

We all climbed the hill...

...and headed down!

Again....

...and again...

...and again!

Even the Portabella got some good rides, and enjoyed them very much, judging from her interested babbling at the end of each one...

...although her Daddy seemed a lot more excited about them than she did!

Afterwards, we got together in the church's Fellowship Hall for Sloppy Joes, pizza, fruit, and a fun time talking together. It was a lovely day!

We're off to Camp Verde today to spend the long weekend hiking with Uncle T. and Miss S. I'll try to post an update of actual school-type news when we return. Goodbye!

Sigh...

Papaya Daddy brought home the March work schedule yesterday, and it turns out that he still has one more night scheduled to work, as well as one weekend. So it seems that our sense of exultation (see the post below) was a little premature. But the truth still remains that his work nights are numbered.

Twilight Weekend

Papaya Daddy and I squeezed our wedding and honeymoon into the two weeks available between him taking Step 1 of the Medical Boards (at the end of his 2nd year of med. school) and beginning clinical rotations for his 3rd year of med. school. We returned from California to Chapel Hill, opened our wedding presents, and he left the house at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to drive to a hospital over an hour away. This began a bruising one-month rotation that required him to work overnight every 4th night. Even on the days he didn't stay overnight, he usually returned fairly late - emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted - to a wife who had been impatiently watching the window for his arrival for the past two hours. It was impossible for him to say with accuracy when he would be able to be home.

It was a tough way to begin a marriage, but fairly indicative of what subsequent years would be like. Save for a 1 month break between the end of med school and the beginning of residency, and a 2 month hiatus between the end of residency and the beginning of his job here, Papaya Daddy has worked a LOT of nights, weekends, and holidays. Some seasons have been easier for us to take, and some have been excrutiatingly hard (for example, when I came home from the hospital with our first baby and he left at 4:30 the next morning for a 36 hour shift, then continued to work q3 for the entire month). There were many days in the first two years of the Papaya's life where his daddy would leave for work before he awoke and return after he was already in bed.

Papaya Daddy's schedule here on the rez has been a LOT lighter than either med school or residency, but still included its share of nights and weekends. And I haven't grown to like them any better, especially with a growing family. Weekends of work aren't too bad, but I hate, hate, HATE the nights he's away all night. (My respect for single moms, or moms with deployed husbands, is extremely high!)

This past weekend he worked all night Saturday and Sunday night. He was the only doc at the health center, and in charge of both the ER and the inpatient beds. Often, he's able to catch an hour or two of sleep in the call room when things get quiet. But not this past weekend - he was up all of both nights, and handled some fairly intense trauma as well as serious medical emergencies.

[In case you're interested, the trauma included four drunk teenagers who "borrowed" Grandma's truck, careened off a cliff, and plunged 50 vertical and 70 horizontal feet, rolling the truck multiple times. The EMS guys had to repel down to them and pull them up on gurneys attached to ropes. Miraculously, only one boy had a hurt leg, and the rest were fine. They did, however, remain rip-roaring drunk and belligerent, completely oblivious to how blessed they were. Medical emergencies included an elderly patient who suddenly crashed, stopped breathing, and lost a heart rhythm, just as the secretary reported that bad weather had grounded all med-evac flights for that night. Papaya Daddy performed a speedy crash intubation worthy of the ER television show, then shocked her. He and his team were able to stabilize her and eventually a plane did get through & evacuated her down to Tucson.]

Anyway, the times Papaya Daddy was home - Sunday during the day and Monday during the day, he was mostly sleeping (while I tried to keep us all out of the bedroom and relatively quiet) or staring wearily into space. The weekend had a strange, twilight-zone feel to it.

But...there was also a sense of exultation underlying the exhaustion and disruption. Because, if all goes as planned, Papaya Daddy has worked his last nights ever in this job. He only has one weekend left to work. And in his new job, there will be no nights, no weekends, and no holidays. For the first time ever in our marriage. It seems too good to be true.

I hope we still like each other after we start spending consistent nights and weekends together!

The following picture has nothing whatever to do with the blog post I just wrote, but it's very cute so I'm posting it. Enjoy!