Monday, July 31, 2017

Life at the baby home

Life here at the baby home has been busy! (But I'm sure you've surmised as much from the absence of blog posts, right?) We currently are full with five babies!

Baby L is 9 months old. He is scooting all over and loves bananas. He loves to make happy sounds and interact with us!


Baby J-1 is about five months old. He also is very interactive. He smiles and laughs so much! 


Baby M is four months old. He wants you to talk to him and play with him, and his hair is finally growing in nicely (he looked like a grandpa for a while...) 


Baby J-2 is three months old. His favorite thing to do is sleep! I joke that we sleep train the other babies but we have to wake-train him! He also likes to eat and I think his ankles have ankles.


Baby C is about six weeks old and is our only girl. If she had her way, she'd be held 24/7. (She does get her way often, because she is a loud one!) And this princess isn't happy with you holding her while you do other things - no, she wants your FULL attention!


And of course, the baby home photo gallery wouldn't be complete without these two who belong to our house mom, the two T's:

Big boy T


Naughty Tadi


Lots of babies means lots of chores! This is only part of my shopping haul for one month. (Psst - MBH needs lots of support to pay for all those nappies and cans of formula! If you'd be interested in directly supporting the ministry, click on the link on the sidebar, but choose Muphamuzi Baby Home instead of my name.)


Lots of baby food needs to be made!


Clothing ALWAYS needs to be sorted. I can't keep up with how fast the babies grow!


I organized the garage, which took forever. It's actually stayed neat for a few weeks now, which feels like it should be a record. Thanks Melanie for your help!


Sunday mornings feel like they come around more than once a week.


With the addition of baby C, there are now five carseats and five nappy bags in this lineup.


We love our new bottle bands! Everything is organized and labeled with a color system - the bottle bands match the carseat labels which match the nappy bag labels, and so on and so forth. It's beautiful.


This is our church. (Actually, this is our Good Friday meal, which shows how long it's been since I have written a proper blog post.) We are enjoying our new (rental) building! We are able to meet there more than once a week, which is really helpful for our rapidly growing congegation.


My room is finally clean. Well, it was when I took this picture...this was when I finally finished unpacking. I'm pretty sure it took at LEAST a month.


I've been enjoying time spent with our MBH interns. Erika and Melanie have returned to the US, and we miss them!


Rachel is also returning to the States after two months of serving with us. Like a good intern, she cheerfully puts up with all my crazy organizing chore ideas.


Baby home ladies all enjoyed a nice surprise "staff meeting" that was actually a trip to the bowling alley...


...and Cinnabon.


We had a power outage one evening and ate pb&j's (or variations on that theme) by candlelight. Thankfully we don't have regular "load shedding" - I've heard it's because we live close to the hospital. Load shedding is when they have scheduled power outages in various parts of the city...I think it's to keep from overtaxing the power system.


We also dealt with a rat infestation in the ceiling. That was delightful...NOT. Thankfully they never came into the house, but I could hear them up scratching around in the attic over the bathroom. They chewed through the wires to the hot water pump, resulting in no hot water to the back of the house and bucket baths for a few days! The chewed wires set off the hot water pump alarm...which could not be silenced...except with five cotton balls, a dozen or so pieces of duct tape, and three blankets to smother the obnoxious thing. I'm very glad that it's all fixed now...and we're starting to see dead, poisoned rats in the yard, which is pretty gross, but at least they aren't in the ceiling!


I've also enjoyed a few hikes lately. The Faerie Glen nature reserve is in the heart of Pretoria East, but it's a nice getaway nonetheless.


Wonderboom is a great hiking spot. It's also in the city, but on top of the hill is a crumbling, abandoned fort. It's peaceful, far above the busyness and you can see both the main part of Pretoria as well as Pretoria North.



Hennops is also a nice place to hike, although you have to drive out of the city a ways. 


There are lots of fun things to see...rock formations, lookouts, a tire ladder to climb down, a cable car across a river, and a suspension bridge.



This was a day or two after I started exercising and I was soooo sore! I could barely move. But it was fun!


So anyways, that's what I have been up to the last few months! Life is good.