This past year has turned the whole world upside for absolutely everyone, the Raghunathan family included. I’ve been horrible at keeping up with this blog during the past six months, but I am trying to start to get back to regular posts and updates about our lives here as we continue our stay, and adventure, in Accra. It has been rough here, to say the least, though we have been luckier than most. The rates of infection of COVID-19 have been relatively low here, and protocols of mask-wearing and hand washing are followed well by the majority of the population. So, we haven’t had the risk of infection to worry about, as much as others have, I suppose. While there hasn’t been a lockdown or isolation, per se, for the past six months, the girls were still at home with me, for the most part. And keeping up with the home learning, for both of them at times, and the daily demands of the house, were just too much for me to consider writing or updating any entries in this blog. Plus, as for most of you, I’m sure, at a certain point, life at home under COVID started to get very monotonous, and not all that exciting to write about.
But, now my second anniversary for this blog has come to pass, and I’ve decided to get back on the “blogosphere” and post new blog entries for my readers out there, who may have been wondering what we’ve gotten up to here in Accra. I’ll spend the next few weeks catching up from where I left off in June of 2020 and then I will limit my entries to once a month, as life is still not all that exciting with minimal outings and contact with others. These posts will be structured like my last entry last year: categories covering the major events of the month and various day-to-day activities. I’ll include as many photos as I can to give a good picture of our lives, and how big each of the girls is getting!
Abigail Turns 2!
First and foremost, this month, as it did happen on the very first day of July, our little Abigail turned 2 years-old! It just blows my mind that the time has gone by so fast, and so much has changed in only one short year. A year ago, we were in India with all of Varun’s family celebrating Abigail turning one, now we are all confined to Accra to celebrate our baby girl officially becoming a toddler! We were able to have a small celebration at the water park that we’ve been enjoying this summer. And we invited our friends that we’ve included in our small social circle to join us. I wasn’t able to get any good pictures at the park, as we were all in the water and having too much fun! But we did continue the celebration at home with some small cupcakes for the birthday girl. Since Abigail is a fan of Cookie Monster, I did my best to make her and Sara Gail some Cookie Monster cupcakes. The frosting wasn’t a hit with the girls, but they did love the cupcakes, and the cookies I used for Cookie Monster!
Even though the Fourth of July was a few days after Abigail’s birthday, we didn’t do anything in particular to celebrate ourselves. We did have a nice barbeque at our friends’ house, but we just enjoyed their company and didn’t take any pictures either.
Trip to Ada
Toward the end of August, we took our first trip as a family outside of Accra! For me, it was really nice to see a little bit of life outside of the city. We decided to go for a few days with the other family of friends in our circle. Both families booked a “villa” at a resort a few hours outside of Accra in a place called Ada. It was not a big, fancy resort, but it was a nice place, and it was somewhere new for me and the girls. The villas were really nice, 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom, with a large family room/dining room area, and our friends had their villa right near ours. The first thing we did was get some lunch once we arrived. I decided to try a local seafood dish, and as I had discovered in Egypt years ago, and even in Charleston, here they like to fry the WHOLE fish. Ordering a meal like that certainly makes you burn calories before you eat it, because it’s a lot of work to just get the edible food ready before you even start eating! It was delicious and the restaurant had a beautiful view of the river and the resort’s swimming pool. Swimming was our next activity, followed by a nice relaxing dinner in our room. The next day, after breakfast, the guys treated us ladies to pedicures and massages at the resort spa, while they took the kids to have some horseback rides! Our girls loved it! Sara Gail even got on the horse by herself! The other kids weren’t as enthusiastic, but they still had a good time, and us moms were plenty relaxed by the time we got back to the villas. The rest of the time at the resort we just spent together, relaxing, eating good food, and enjoying each other’s company, especially since we are not socializing that much these days. It was a great trip for everyone, the girls were both tired out and slept during the drive home. It was a wonderful little getaway spent with close friends and family!
Home Learning
Over the summer the home learning continued for both girls. Since Abigail was signed up to start school in the fall, the school wanted her to get a chance to see her teachers before getting to campus, if the schools were allowed to open. So, in addition to all the videos and work I had to do with Sara Gail, I now had videos and work to do with Abigail as well. Sara Gail continued to excel in her reading skills and her other Montessori-focused activities, and Abigail was having fun starting to do her own schoolwork. It was still taxing to try and keep each one focused at times, but it at least gave us a slight routine to our days, and it gave the girls some fun activities to do in the meantime too. And there were even some activities that the girls could do together!
Swimming Lessons
Since the rate of infection had started to go down a bit, I decided to sign the girls up for some activities outside of the house. They weren’t getting the interaction or socialization from school, so I wanted to let them get out of the house at least for a little bit, and do some physical activities, burn off some of that excess energy from staying indoors most of the time. So, I signed both girls up for swimming lessons at a local recreation center. Not only did they get to practice swimming, but there is a big outdoor playground that they could play at while they waited for their lesson to start. Sara Gail was very nervous at first, she kept telling me she didn’t want to go under water. But within a week or so, that’s all she wanted to do! Abigail was a lot more reluctant herself, and I had to get in with her for her to even be willing to go in the water. But that didn’t last long for her either, they are both going to be little fishies in the water, just like their Mommy!
Sewing
While the girls have spent most of their time playing together, in between our home learning and extra-curricular demands, I’ve spent a lot of my time sewing. Ever since my mother taught me to sew, shortly after Abigail was born, I’ve found it to be very cathartic. I’ve always enjoyed making crafts, and sewing has been such a great way for me to continue that hobby. It has also been essential this past summer because a lot of the sewing projects I have done have been homemade masks for the girls and I. Varun still isn’t a huge fan, and he has found a supplier of medical masks through his work anyway. But I’ve used a lot of the leftover fabric from the girls’ quilts to make masks for the girls and I, and it’s been a lot of fun. That’s not to say that I haven’t done some projects just for fun too. I’m certainly taking after my mother when it comes to sewing and always finding sewing projects to do. For instance, I took it upon myself to make a few new outfits for my American Girl doll, Molly, who has now been passed on to my girls. I also took some time to get her a little cleaned up too. Sewing has been a great outlet for me, during these scary and frustrating times.
Exercise
Another catharsis that I’ve been trying to keep up with is exercise. It hasn’t always been easy, especially with both the girls at home, but I’ve tried my best to get some exercise in as often as I can. The girls also enjoy seeing me exercise and have come to expect it. It’s almost as though I have two little trainers of my own in my house. If I skip a day one or both will ask if I’m going to exercise, and if not, why not? I really like getting them excited about exercise and trying to lead by example. I know when they’re both old enough themselves, they’ll start making use of our rowing machine at least, they both try to get on when Mommy’s done using it and row a couple meters themselves!
Indoor Play
Most of the time, these days, is spent inside, but the girls have tried to find a way to make the best of it. At the very least they have had each other throughout and have found plenty of creative ways to pass the time. Having tea parties is certainly one of their favorite past times, taking trolly from Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood for a spin, creating a library, like Mommy used to, or just any other game that they can come up with. As long as they get to play together, they seem to be having a great time. We’ve also continued our play dates with our friends in our own little circle. It’s been great for both families to get some interaction for both the kids and the Mommies (the Daddies are usually at work for the play dates). Overall, we’ve all done our best to manage and navigate these uncertain times.
Outdoor Play
Even though we have spent most of our days inside, we do take some time to go outside for fun, if only just the four of us. We are lucky enough to a have a decent-sized backyard for the girls to play in. And, since we live in a compound with concrete, it has been ideal for Sara Gail to get some roller-skating practice in. Abigail has now gotten big enough to take over the little motorcycle we had gotten for Sara Gail when we arrived here, and she has certainly had fun with that. Varun has even bought them tennis rackets to try and teach Sara Gail, at least, some tennis techniques. He quickly realized how difficult it can be to teach her though! All-in-all, the girls have had a chance to play outside plenty as well, because fresh air is always needed every once in a while!
Fun with Hair
With either indoor play or outdoor play, both the girls have hair long enough that it needs to be put up and out of the way for them to be able to play well. Plus, it has been a lot of fun for me to try new things with their gorgeous, long, curly hair. I’m so happy, and the girls are so lucky, that they inherited my mother-in-law’s beautiful locks! It still has the fine, soft texture of my hair, but the length, curls, and volume of Varun’s mother. The color is all their own, though, a gorgeous auburn brown, with red highlights in the sunlight! I’ve loved getting a little extra time each day to sit them down and style their hair in all kinds of new ways! I did get a new hair project this month, too: I got to cut Varun’s hair! He hasn’t wanted to try and go to a salon to get it cut, and we finally got the step-down device we needed to be able to use our electronics here. So, he told me which combs to use on his trimmer, and I gave him his first quarantine hair cut! I think it came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I can say this for sure: I’m glad we have two girls, because cutting thick, gorgeous hair like this on a little boy, that would just break my heart!
Food
Pandemic or no, our family still has to eat! I’m doing my best to try and stay on a diet myself, which is not always easy in the best of times. But I’m trying as hard as I can to keep a healthy variety going for myself and the rest of our family. I’ve decided to start a new dinner routine for all of us, that just makes life so much easier for me. I now make three nights of American food and three nights of Indian food, one meal usually lasts three nights long for our family, and I continue to rotate. I rotate the veggies, the meats, and the grains/starches. I usually plan dinners out weeks in advance. The girls love it, both the Indian and American meals. And it’s great for Varun and I, because we both love both cuisines, and his stomach really needs rice every few nights a week. I’m also doing my best to find a good variety of veggies for the girls’ lunches, but I do have to mix frozen and fresh veggies a lot. I’ve even branched out and made things from scratch that you’d normally be able to find in grocery stores in the US, namely, sour cream. I was so happy to be able to make my mom’s delicious chocolate zucchini bread over here, thanks to my homemade sour cream! I also tried another purely American dish as a road trip snack on our drive to Ada: Chex Mix! Now, Chex cereal is not available here, or at least I have never seen it here myself. So, I did have to improvise with the cereals I used, but I think it still captured the classic Chex Mix flavor! As always, meals can be a challenge, but we’ve been able to get by and enjoy delicious meals!
Abigail
My little baby Abigail is a baby no longer! As a rambuncious two year-old, Abigail certainly keeps us on our toes. This month she officially entered toddlerdom and the “terribly twos” and it is certainly starting to show! She is very strong-minded and strong-willed, as well as outspoken, speaking in full sentences almost exactly like her four year-old sister! It’s been really fun to watch her personality grow, since she is almost a polar opposite to her sister in many ways. She is having fun trying to help us around the house, especially when we’re cooking. She has her favorite movies that she has to watch all the time, including Tinkerbell. She is just growing up too fast, right before our very eyes! I’ve gotten so used to her speaking, I barely notice it anymore. But when Varun comes home from a trip away, he is still shocked at the things she’ll say, and the way she’ll say them! And even though I didn’t know Varun’s father very well, or for very long, I still see a lot of him in Abigail. Especially when she stands with her hands behind her back, to me she looks like a mini VRR!
Sara Gail
This pandemic continues to hit Sara Gail the hardest of all four of us. Sara Gail likes, and almost needs, her routine. She had grown into quite the social butterfly in her little circle of friends and teachers, and she so desperately has wanted that back since the pandemic hit Ghana. Before COVID-19 even reached us here, she unknowingly had to say goodbye to her very best friend, since her and her family weren’t able to move back after Christmas break 2019. And this month she has lost another friend as her family relocated prior to the lockdown to have their new baby in the US. It’s been a very rough time for Sara Gail, but we’ve all done our best to help her get through it, especially Abigail. Sara Gail has also taken this time to embrace her artistic side. Just before the pandemic arrived, she had been having a hard time settling on a writing hand at school, switching back and forth between left and right. I attribute some of this to “peer pressure” almost, in that she saw all her classmates writing with their right hands, so she wanted to too. But since we’ve been stuck at home, and it’s just been her and I, she has fully embraced her left-handedness, and has been having lots of fun writing, drawing, and painting. She has inherited my mother’s artistic skills, along with her father’s left-handedness, and it has been a thrill to witness. I love that she is enjoying arts and crafts, and it’s certainly much better to do than watch TV.
Well, that about covers all the events under the Raghunathan roof in July and August of 2020. My daily routine is usually just taken up with the girls, or taking care of the house. Since the pandemic began, we have asked our maid to stay home rather than come here, just to avoid unnecessary exposure. But it has certainly left quite a household burden on my shoulders. And I know, that might sound a little odd, most of you reading this don’t have maids even under normal times, but for those of you readers in the US, you do get a lot of the little luxuries that I lack over here: such as a dishwasher and a dryer. It just goes to show that you never really know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone.
I have also been able to venture outside a little bit more to do our weekly grocery shopping, while wearing a mask and social distancing, of course. So that has provided some interesting, purely Ghanaian experiences as well. Such as this goat tied to the top of a van. No, that’s not a picture of a goat on the billboard in the background, that is a goat, tied to the top of a van. Why? I don’t know. But he did not seem to be enjoying it once traffic started moving.
But the best thing about being stuck at home most of the time has been watching Abigail and Sara Gail play and laugh together. Most of the time, they get along really well, and it makes me thankful that we have this age gap between them, because it seems almost perfect. They are able to communicate so well, and they have so much fun playing together. I can’t wait to see how their relationship continues to develop as we are all stuck under this one roof.
I hope you come back next week to read about our fall 2020 here in Accra!
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