This month the house felt a bit empty after Patti’s visit, but I soon filled it with sewing projects, and the girls were excited about our upcoming trip to the US!
Sewing
As I have been doing since the girls have both been in school full time, I’ve filled my mornings with various sewing projects to keep me busy – and happy! I mentioned last week that I wanted to create some games and crafts to keep the girls entertained during our trip to the US next month. Thanks to Pinterest I had a lot of ideas, as well as ideas of my own. Firstly, I finished the art books for each of the girls and filled them with new goodies so they could draw, create, and play to their hearts’ content!
Next, I finished Abigail’s pajamas to match Sara Gail’s set that I completed while Saraswathi was here. It was a little long, so some minor adjustments needed to be made. But both girls’ love them and wear them to bed every chance they get!
After those comfy pjs were done, I moved on to the next game I wanted to make for the girls. This was a makeshift craft out of two different ideas I had seen on Pinterest. It is a double-sided pouch with a game on each side. The first side is a mini checkers board, and the second side is a snakes and ladders board. The snakes and ladders still need to be added, but otherwise Sara Gail’s was completed this month! There’s also a little pocket to keep the buttons for checkers and the game pieces and dice for snakes and ladders. And I put a ribbon on it so it can be wrapped up and taken on the go!
Finally, I quickly threw together a couple tic-tac-toe pouches that can easily be taken on the go with buttons as game pieces, one for each of the girls.
All these little crafts I tried to make easy to carry around because I thought they’d serve well as distractions during our long trip back to NH, plus I thought they’d even come in handy when we go out with the girls, since they don’t have any tablets or digital games yet. They were all labor intensive, to say the least, but it is a labor of love – both because I love my girls, and I love sewing!
Crafts & Drawing
The girls themselves are also very art-orientated and love a good craft. Whenever we have down time at home, I try to fill it up with simple crafts. For example, one of our staple crafts has become salt dough. It’s really easy to make (just flour, salt, and water) and it provides two days of fun: the first day is just playing with the dough and making it into shapes, which I then bake, and the second day is painting it. We didn’t get a chance to paint these creations this month, but it’s something that we do often in our house.
And, thanks to Patti, we had a new toy to play with, which is only allowed outside on our balcony: kinetic sand! They were each given a box that comes with its own shovel and toys, and they love it!
And when we have downtime, like when Sara Gail is in her piano practice upstairs, or Mommy and Daddy want to go out for dinner, a great go-to activity for both girls is drawing! Sara Gail has really started to develop a passion for art, drawing everything she sees and creating her own unique images. I think it has to do with her left-handedness. And even Abigail is really starting to enjoy coloring as she continues to develop a strong pincer grip. It’s hard to tell at this point if this is an individual passion, or if she really gained her interest from watching her big sister. Either way, I love to watch them draw and create!
Food
As with every week and month here, I continue to toil away in the kitchen to cook delicious, healthy, and varied meals, both American and Indian, for our family. I also search the city over, between vegetable stalls and supermarkets, for a variety of fruits and vegetables, trying as best I can to buy local when I can. It’s true, the variety is limited, but then it probably is everywhere else too. At least the girls don’t complain, or at least they don’t complain much! And they always get a treat of homemade popcorn on the weekend! This month, I was spoiled with breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. The girls helped Varun themselves to get the tray together. And while Varun tried to let me sleep in, the girls were just too excited and couldn’t wait any longer to give me my treat! They even went outside and gathered some flowers for me. It was wonderful to get a little spoiled myself!
Gymnastics
Sara Gail continues to thrive and excel in her gymnastics class every week. She is getting stronger and more adept with every class. Even though a lot of the classmates change and rotate fairly quickly, I make sure to bring Sara Gail every single week, and she absolutely loves it! The only thing I regret is that they don’t have any bars, even a balance beam, available anywhere in Accra. So, while we live here in Ghana, Sara Gail will only be able to learn floor routines. But I suppose it’s better than nothing, and she doesn’t seem to mind herself!
While at gymnastics one week I did happen to see a nice little market going on for local vendors to sell their wares, usually handmade. I resisted the urge to buy anything this time, although I know it’ll get harder to resist because I really love the craftsmanship here!
Hair
As the girls continue to grow, so does their gorgeous hair! Every morning I have my daily ritual of braiding and putting up the girls’ hair as they eat their breakfast. Some styles can be more challenging than others, because while their hair is long and voluminous, it is still very soft and fine. So, some of the braids can be harder to keep in than others. Thankfully, they are usually good sports while I fiddle away, and I try my best to finish before they finish their food!
This month, Varun needed another haircut again. Since our schedules are so jam-packed, we put off this haircut until the very last minute. Varun had to travel yet again for three weeks right before our trip back to the states. So, before his trip, he wanted me to give him a trim. Now, to preface this story, we didn’t start the haircut until late in the evening, and I am in no way a professional with this! In fact, I tried as hard as I could to never go near cutting his hair, but the pandemic changed this. Unlike my daughters, and my mother for that matter, I have no artistic ability and can’t even cut a straight line to save my life! But this wasn’t going to be the first time that I trimmed his hair, so I wasn’t too concerned. Most of the haircut went well, I used the appropriate combs on his clippers and cut it the length that he had asked for almost everywhere. At the tail end of the cut, there was just one small section that needed to be a little shorter. Now, I thought we were done, so I had taken the last comb off the clippers and was getting ready to put them away. Without even thinking, I went to trim this last little bit – without the comb on the clippers! His gorgeous hair came right off and left him with a sizeable bald spot. I was mortified! I love his thick, beautiful hair as much as I love the girls’ hair and I could not believe I had made such a horrible mistake! And on the night before he was leaving us for three weeks! I did my best to cut the surrounding hair as short as I possibly could, but I point-blank refused to shave it. I just could not bring myself to do it, I just feel that strongly about how wonderful his hair is. Thankfully, we were able to find him a cap to wear during his trip, and he was going straight into a ten-day quarantine. Still, I couldn’t shake my dread and sadness over subjecting him to that, and to this day, I’ve avoided giving him another haircut. However, that next trim is fast approaching…
Other than this catastrophic bad hair day for Varun, the rest of the month was uneventful. The four of us just continue to go through our day-to-day routine here in Accra, whether it be fun at school for the girls, unwanted travel for Varun, or the way too frequent water issues at the house, we all find our own ways to manage our daily lives here in Accra.
Come back next week to read about the last few weeks of school for the girls and the start of our trip back to the US!
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