Tuesday Together: A day in the life (Melissa)

For me, today's "home visit" means running all the way around the world. We're off to visit with Melissa....

So we live in Nicaragua where my husband does "business as a mission" work, growing his website programming business, training and employing Nicaraguans and also working full time himself from home.  While he's doing that, I mother a 5-year-old boy, 3-year-old girl (4 tomorrow actually!), 2-year-old girl and 5-month-old boy.  Today felt a bit like a race, but that's fairly average so here we go.

I woke up to find my gem of a husband reading the Bible in the hammock surrounded by 3 sweet little distractions, i.e. our bigger kiddos.  So I grabbed Bibles for each of them and me and settled everyone in a bit more separate locations to read for a few minutes.  I hopped on my elliptical to get some exercise too before the day started to get hot.  Fifteen delightful minutes later, the public service alarm went off letting us all know it was 7AM.  Time to start the day!  

I went to get up our baby and nurse him while the kiddos began to jump into playing some sort of imaginary something which kept them quite occupied while I got ready for the day, threw in some laundry, bought milk from the milkman at the door and got breakfast ready for us all.  OK, so they weren't so occupied by the cooking part and I had some pretty enthusiastic helpers who worried me about spills but we made it through with no major mishaps.  Oatmeal today.  We ate about three bites and Karen our friendly cleaning lady came.  We stopped for a picture in honor of me recording our day :)  They love her!  Really, we all do.

Three bites later a loud knock at the door informed us that the fumigators were coming down the street so we stashed our oatmeal in the microwave and headed outside to avoid the fumes.  This happens every month or so to keep mosquito populations down as they can carry diseases we definitely want to avoid.  So we chatted with the neighbors on the front stoop for a half hour waiting for the fumes to dissipate.  My husband ran around the block with our 2-year-old to pick up bananas from our banana man because he just isn't a sit-still-doing-nothing kind of guy.  And one more thing off my list and one less baby to keep from jumping in front of a bus, woo hoo!  We live on the bus route, and there's just a sidewalk between our house-front and the street.

Back in the house we finally finish breakfast, and Baby goes down for his morning nap.  We head out back to hang up laundry to dry while the kiddos build forts in the leftover construction materials from when we renovated our house.  Definitely a highlight of the 5-year-old boy's day.  Makes me nervous though!

Then time for the 5-year-old's reading lesson while the younger girls play dress up in the other room.  I marvel at how he's actually learning to read sentences!  Despite being confused by vowels making completely conflicting sounds in English from Spanish.  He's a genius!  I always think that when he learns something new... then my second learns the same thing and it seems normal.  But I digress...

Quick errand trip with the girls while our boy decompresses from learning with legos.  Off to put minutes on my phone and buy cheese for lunch.  They're fun buddies, and make lots of people smile along the way with their blonde hair and baby-talk-Spanish.

Home again and time to get Baby up from his nap.  Nurse him, sweet smiles!  Gotta love a happy baby!  On to lunch making.  Not sure why I worked so hard on fancy guacamole though when my husband announces that our internet is too slow for his phone meeting right now (grrr, fritzy internet!) and heads out to have his meeting at an internet cafe.  Oh well, I still have good company.  Karen finishes and heads out.  We eat.  I have masterfully put the guac inside their quesadillas so they don't even notice they're eating veggies and gobble it all up.  I am feeling like a good Mommy.  

Ah, and then it's naptime.  Baby and toddler down to sleep.  Three and 5 year old rest with me for a nice, peaceful half hour.  Then quiet play for the bigger kiddos while the babies finish their naps and I catch up on some emails.  

Then everybody's up and the big boy heads off to Tae Kwan Do with Daddy who has his Spanish lesson in the same building at the same time and the girls and I get laundry down, folded, and put away.  A little leftover warming up for dinner.  Baby chows down on 3 servings of baby food, he is such a hungry little guy!

Then a quick bath for the kiddos to wash the sweat off and cool off before bed.  Nice family Bible-reading-Hymn-singing time that I just love.  My turn to put the boys to bed tonight.  Snuggles with my baby.  Under-the-stars chat with my big boy.  Lights out.  Aaahhh!  Decompress with my hubby about how long the process for licensing our car is taking and how our toddler's finally potty trained.  Hallelujah!

And that was today.  Cool breezes floating in again and I'm tired enough to sleep well before doing it again tomorrow!  I really do like it here.

~~~~~

Thank you so much, Melissa! Do anyone have questions or anything to add? Please comment below.

And for next week, I'm looking for a simple Tuesday Topic; who has a question you want to ask? Email it to me at fylliska@gmail.com.