Friday List!

Sarah's List:

Mama Congo Success! Remember when we started an all-out campaign to get Anthony Bourdain to come to Congo (Tony, COME TO MAMA)? Well it worked! Okay, who are we kidding? It was a total coincidence that he came, but still...

Here he talks about the: "Most terrifying, stressful, physically difficult shoot of his life."

Speaking of terrifying things in Congo, could the Lord's Resistance Army get any worse? I guess so, it turns out they're funded by elephant poaching. That's real classy, Kony.

Is specialization the secret to a happy marriage, home and children? Maybe so. Read all about: The Retro Housewife: Feminists who say they're having it all--by choosing to stay at home. And The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss.

“In the morning, I’ve got kid duty; Amy doesn’t even see the kids,” says Isabelle Dikland. “She does pickup and makes dinner every night.” (Gail Albert Halaban). Image from TheAtlantic here.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance we're somewhere over the Atlantic struggling with two little children. Remember Whac-a-Mole with Wings? One strategy we'll be using is car seats. Moms have tipped us off to taking your kid's car seat on the plane and it's kind of amazing. Your kids can't move and they're safe. The Car Seat Lady agrees.

You'll wish you were flying with an infant once you start flying with toddlers.

It only took 5 years, but we finally saw President Kabila. In our backyard. (Okay, he was here for an event, but it was basically our yard.) Jill and I really wished we had our Mama Congo business cards so we could slip him one. Whatever Joseph, we know you're already a fan.

And you go girls. TheGirlEffect.org.

Jill's List:

Spending today Googling "best pro-biotics for babies and their fathers" after Johan and Loulou both were told by our Belgian doc to get some to "restore stomach health."  (It's so funny how it's totally normal to get a script for Arnica, pro-biotics, or St. John's Wort from this doctor - he's not exactly crunchy.  Turns out it just more the Euro-norm.  Unfortunately, he hasn't quite realized that the pharmacies in Congo don't carry many of these lovely things.)  At least they've been thoroughly checked out by a guy who knows his way around a parasite or amoeba infestation.  I had nightmares that after returning to the States next week and saying, "Yeah, my kid's been vomiting off and on for a week...and we live in the Congo," the CDC Special Investigation Team would be called in for a simple virus.

Image from BioGaia website.  Anyone every tried these?  The packaging sure is cute!

Okay.  I also somehow managed to find this incredible bag during my exhaustive search in the name of my family's health:

Beautiful Besace bag "for the well-traveled woman" from Clair Vivier.

Four or so years ago, we hosted a dinner party at our home in Harrisonburg to spread the word and garner support for an idea.  That idea has been up and going strong for two years now.  Congrats, Friendly City Food Co-op!

Image from here.

This has been making the rounds like crazy - but it is so interesting.  (I say "Crawdad" - why?!  It doesn't match!)





Extremely excited for Istanbul this weekend.  What a week to visit!  The most interesting thing for us?  Everyone we've chatted with in Istanbul says that this is an "unprecedented" time in Turkish history and our family is super lucky to get a glimpse.  Absolutely no one has acted worried or concerned that we would be planning a little family va-cay in the middle of a monumental demonstration.  We are hoping to meet up with a friend of a friend (for coffee, of course) on Tuesday so that she can fill us in on everything.

Image from BBC.

Craving Paneer Saag by John and Rama.  Hopefully, I will have eaten at least 5 servings before the next Friday List.

Image from our friends at I Love My Burg.

Babies in boxes = public health is awesome. (Imagine the possibilities...)

Image from BBC.com

And.  A sweet blog I've been looking through this week.

Finally, we know some weirdos who do this here in Kinshasa...

The oddball club got its start 75 years ago in prewar Malaysia and now has nearly 2,000 chapters spanning all seven continents. It began with a group of British colonial officers and expats looking for ways to ease their weekend hangovers. The name came from their billet, often referred to as the Hash House, where they'd eat their monotonous corned-beef dinners, and the pastime they came up with was a wilder version of a British paper chase.

Kinshasa Hash House Harriers picture from here.

***many apologies for the lack of a pink arrow this week...we're between computers***

Tweet

Flying with Toddlers: Whac-a-Mole with Wings

For some reason there's been a lot in the news lately about babies on planes. Remember these flying parents of newborn twins who famously handed out goodie bags to fellow passengers?

Please. Everyone (well everyone with children older than infancy) knows that little babies are a piece of cake on a plane. You feed them and they sleep. And if not, well their lungs are too small to make much noise. The roar of a jet engine easily drowns out any screaming newborn. Oh, and they can't yet walk.

Dear Goodie Bag Parents: It's easy now. In a few years you're going to need to pass out cash. Also, you had time to make goodie bags and type cute little notes? And I'm really jealous that your assigned seat number ahead of the flight matched the one you were actually given when you boarded. (In reality, flying with children is more like this: Wrestling 23 pounds of human and maintaining the alertness of a ninja for 12 hours).

Adam and I have entered the world of flying with a toddler and a 2-year-old. This can best be described as playing (read: suffering through) a 24-hour game of whac-a-mole. Except we're operating in a 1x1 foot space and the moles are a lot bigger. When we board the plane we have an entire arsenal of tricks. The first step is to threat assess the fellow passenger in our aisle. With one lap baby, our family of 4 only gets 3 seats. There's always one poor soul sitting in that 4th seat next to us. Do they seem like the kind of person who can be easily charmed by chubby baby cheeks? Are their clothes too nice for stray, sticky baby hands? Etc.

I congratulate this mom of a 6-month-old and 2-year-old for getting her $3.99 back from the TSA for her confiscated peanut butter. Like she said, you need your peanut butter in a baby-plane crisis. The exact thing has happened to us. I can still hear the thud of our peanut butter hitting the bottom of the TSA trash can. P.S. Since when is peanut butter a liquid?

Often after the plane lands, a grandmotherly type will fulfill her role as the veteran parent and tell us what a great job our kids did. We graciously accept the compliment on their behalf, but we're really thinking, "Are you serious? That was some expert parenting you just witnessed. Did you see those moves about 7 hours in when these kids were seconds away from simultaneous meltdowns and we balanced 4 meal trays, 2 babies and 5 petit sachets of French cheese on our laps?"

x4 plus 2 kids.

  by  Jota_BRAZIL 

Now, I am in full support of child free zones on airplanes. It's called flying First Class. Good luck keeping kids out of Economy. When I fly without kids, I quite like hearing crying babies. It reminds me that they're not mine and I can relax.

On our last flight, just as we all got settled in our seats, the flight attendant came to tell us she found our family another spot. She walked us up the steps to the second level of the cabin. I gave Adam a panicked look and said, "We can't sit upstairs, it's too quiet, we're too far away from the engines. People will kill us." We found our seats anyway then sized-up the woman in the 4th seat. We apologetically said hello and she said nothing. Adam whispered to me, "Great, she's a real barrel of laughs." It took a few minutes to realize they had geniusly seated us next to a deaf woman. That's right, the one person we could not possibly disturb with our noise. We breathed a sigh of relief and thanked Air France for their expertise, once again, in handling families with babies.

Tweet