This week our little girl turned a year and a half! This picture says a lot to me. It was taken Sunday – fever day 11 for Maria – right after we got back from having her CBC checked. She’s on fever meds and was happy. I look very tired…the past 11+ nights left me lacking sleep. But here we are – smiling and having fun. Thankfully since Monday Maria has been fever free, and her cough mostly dried up. On Monday I also noticed Maria’s top two molars had broken through, which I’m sure added to her bad nights the past week.

After over a week and a half of a fever, it’s delightful to have our happy, little, talkative girl back. Now I just need to break her habit of waking up every few hours at night.

Usually January is a rather slow month for us – a month of recovery after the very full months of November and December. But somehow this January seems to be plugging along at full speed with no breaks. Perhaps this is because of our time in the States and being under the pressure to keep up with school, so we don’t have to go far into the summer. Or perhaps it’s the pressure of the SS curriculum we’re writing. Not sure. But we’ve been going full steam ahead!

We wrapped up our 12 Days of Christmas on January 6th with a reading of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Josh read while the kids ate cookies and drank homemade chai tea. We really enjoyed keeping Advent separate from Christmas and celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas. I think we’ll do it again next year.

Our puppy is growing and looks much better than she did when we got her. We’ve given Noel her first shot (or I should say Josh did), and she also appears to be worm-free. She’s now sleeping through the night, though this week she had 3 nights of waking up at 2am-ish.

We’re back into school – which was really tricky at first with Maria and a puppy to watch after. Maria loves to participate in school. She really thinks she’s one of the big kids. We’ve also been hit with some sort of virus. Clara started with it two days after Christmas. Almost all the kids have had it now and it includes a terrible cough and some have had fevers. The worst of it seems to last at least a week, with a lingering cough. Maria got sick this time and has had a fever for over a week (which the doctor said is typical of a few viruses). I’ve never given out so much fever-meds before. There’s been a few nights we’ve been up a lot with her. Everyday I hope that her fever will be gone….maybe tomorrow. Thankfully, when she’s on meds, she’s pretty cheerful. And I’ll be really cheerful when we’re through this!

This past week Isaiah and his friend Re set up a multi-level rope swing in our tamarind tree. It’s been great fun for all the kids. Isaiah takes it down at the end of each day, to avoid injuries or his rope disappearing.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with a bonfire. I wasn’t planning on anyone else coming, but once the neighbor kids found out it became a bigger event than planned. We had about 10 kids show up. Thankfully I had enough marshmallows and hotdogs for everyone to roast. (I cut our very large hotdogs into thirds.) After the food we shot of explosive and fireworks, and then we sang around the fire.

We’ve been continuing with our 12 Days of Christmas. Lots of beautiful cookies being made. We also had Biah and Esther over to decorate cookies and play games.