How are the kids feeling about this...?

That's another typical question I get asked in some form or another, when I tell people about our upcoming move. So, let's do an update/introduction of my favorite children!

Dante: Dante has finally gotten over his bad cough that he had through December and January (probably got it from me, sorry son), even made it past the crabby phase and I only wanted to strangle him a few times! That was pretty rough for a couple of week, but now he's up and ready every day and frequently introduces himself as fictional creatures. The dragon "Toothless," a cat, a lion, a spider, the turtle "Tiny Tim," and other imaginative animals are all around me lately (incidentally, his sister has picked up on this game and now also snarls like a dragon by way of good morning almost every day. It's really cute.)  He's gotten better at sitting still in Primary (still tells me he wants to be in nursery though, even though his primary teacher is awesome), and it's really fun for me to teach sharing time when he's sitting in the front row with his arms folded. He's become more proficient with sounding out words but it still takes some encouraging from me since his first response to any question I ask is "I don't know." (Oh that reminds me of Bill Cosby). He's excited to be moving to Ghana because we told him that after we move to Ghana we'll go to the Zoo. He likes that idea a lot. I've tried to kind of teach him what moving means, the cutest response I had was when I told him all the people will be black like Daddy and he said "Daddy isn't black, he's chocolate!" Oh what a sweet boy.


Iris: Iris is a busy busy girl and lots of fun to have around. She has a big smile, determined yell, and makes a duck face when she gets made at me. Her favorite words are lately "Me too!" "Yup!" (so glad we can finally compliment her stubborn "No" with a cheerful yes), "walk" and "More" (especially if you sing her a song or play music). She's getting really good at communicating, the other day her shoe fell off and when I tried to take it out of her hands to put it on her foot she yelled "My shoe!" I loved it! I think, that's her first two word combination, other than "Me too," which is used whenever I say we are doing ANYTHING. I have to reassure her we won't leave her out (kind of funny, I remember having a book called "Me Too" when I was a little girl...) She's started bringing me books to read and usually insists we sit down and read right now! (I'm using a lot of strong verbs, can you tell she's a bit of a fireball?) She's still a champion nurser, as well as a good table eater and is probably going to pass Dante up in size soon. We got Dante a bigger car seat so we could move Iris out of the infant seat and she still doesn't really fit comfortably in the bigger one! Oh well. I'm so glad she's still nursing so well since she's too young for the typhoid vaccine we tried to give her last week. When the public health nurse told me she couldn't have it she said "Breastmilk Breastmilk Breastmilk!" I wanted to record that moment so I can play it back for all the people who think I'm a little crazy for continuing to nurse her. Iris has no idea what moving to Ghana means, but as long as she's with the family, she's ok with pretty much anything...so far.

Us at the Zoo in Idaho Falls, we took Dante for his 3rd birthday and he talked about it for months afterwards. 

I'm excited to be taking them overseas at the age they are at right now. Iris I think will go with the flow (as long as I'm holding her a lot), whereas Dante will notice some of the differences between America and Ghana. This will definitely be a good time to develop our observation skills so we can use our words to describe the differences he see. I'm also working on phasing certain words out of our vocabulary that are different there like napkin, pants, silly...they use British English there, so napkin means diaper, pants means underpants, and silly is a terrible insult.

One silly thing (oops, there I go again) I'm a little worried about is that they won't eat anything! Dante's already pretty set in his ways about what he likes, and if it's fufu and light soup...he might lose a little weight there, especially with no grilled cheese sandwiches to make up for it!  Hopefully we also won't insult anyone with his non-interest in trying octopus, cat, and different kinds of fish. At least there will be plenty of rice!