Author: Robin Chartier

photo shoot

For Mother’s Day/Father’s Day/all those other special occasions that we’ve missed, we did a family photo shoot at a nearby fort and put together a photo album for the grandparents. Now that they’ve received them I can share a few of my favorite pictures here. 

this waterway is an old falaj — a traditional Omani way of moving water from one place to another through a series of canals. 

 

 
 
 

I really liked this series of arches inside the fort.

Can you believe this is only 10 minutes from our house? And it’s completely open. To get here we drove through a neighborhood because it’s in a residential area. Anyone can pull up in front and explore it. It was amazing to see that the crumbing “bricks” were really made with mud and straw. 
  

this one might be my favorite
 

this and that

A friend gave Camille these princess slippers. She loves them so much she chooses to wear them out and about. Here she is picking her brothers up from school.

The other night we had an end-of-season rugby banquet at the Hyatt. Caleb won the “Player’s Player” award. It’s like getting MVP, but it’s voted on by all the players on the team instead of the coaches. 

My Omani people project all framed and hanging on the wall. My framer created this 3 foot wide custom shadowbox for around $50.

My newest project that I finished today. Three goats and my three little bedouin goat herders at the wadi at sunset. I’m planning to hang this one in the boys’ room and then hopefully do one of a camel and a little girl for Camille. 
Today we have to meet with the visiting embassy doctor to (hopefully) get our medical clearance so we can be approved to move to Bahrain. From there we will rush over to the American/British school to watch Calvin’s basketball game. 

Camille has been talking more and more lately — of course she usually stops talking when I pull out the camera, but I got a little bit today when she was trying to pick a show on TV (Netflix streaming). The part I didn’t catch was when Josh pulled up the webpage and she ran over, shrieking in excitement at seeing her shows pop up on the screen.
(as always, these clips will be BO-RING if you’re not related to me).


She wasn’t excited about Annie at first, but her disappointment didn’t last long.

***We’re back from another fun camping trip. It was over 100 at the base of the mountain and 79 at the top. Lovely. And unlike our last trip, where we froze our butts off, were comfortable in our tent all night. Except for the tribal drumming by some neighboring campers that went on from midnight to 3 am (it was still better than a crying baby), we all slept really well.

Performing for one night only . . .

Camille!

That’s what Josh said when I came back to bed at 3-something with the sounds of baby screaming following me down the hall. At least she went to bed relatively painlessly and she only was up from 3 to 4 something. I was still flying high from my full night of sleep the day before so it didn’t bother me that much.

We’re off on our last camping trip of the season. We’re heading up the mountain to hopefully escape some of the heat. Summer finally arrived this week with temps well over 100. I know it’s hot when I burn my hands on the steering wheel. See you when we get back!

Update

Some of you must be really
powerful pray-ers. Scary powerful. Last night after doing
nothing different (except for that half cup of chamomile tea before
bed) I put baby girl to bed (normal read/pray/sing/relax) and she
fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. That hasn’t happened in over a
month. No screaming, no crying.
I don’t believe that the chamomile
flower has sedating properties equal to Valium or Ambien so it must
be that people were praying she would shut the heck up and go to
sleep. Thank you. Seriously. I was losing my mind (as you could
probably tell).
It was only 8:10 when I carefully
peeled myself from her bed and I was so far ahead of “schedule”
that I not only had time to read to Carter (we’re almost to the
Quarter Quell – I can’t wait to see what he thinks about that
twist), but I told Caleb a Dream Fairy Dear story (a character
created by my grandma that gives children loads of candy), and
edited Calvin’s online newspaper for Language Arts class. By the time
the kids were all in bed it was 9:30 and since Josh was out at guitar
practice (for the church worship team) I decided to Judge Judy myself
to sleep nice and early to get in as much rest as I could before
Camille started yelling.
My eyes popped open at 6:30. Wait,
what? There’s no baby body in my bed. Oh my gosh, I hope she didn’t
die. After all that complaining I did about her not sleeping,
published for the world to see . . . but a tiptoed investigation
showed that she was still asleep. After 680 days, it finally
happened. She slept all night. I went back to bed and sprawled out over my ½ of the bed that I had all to myself and smiled about
the fact that I was too awake to go back to sleep.
At 7 I got up to wake the boys for
school and as I passed her doorway she sat up and smiled. Who is this
human? Is this what 11 hours of rest looks like on her?
I was sure that she was my baby
and not some changeling that Dream Fairy Dear left in her place when
she showed her screamy, tired self by 8:30. As Josh said, “you
would have thought we’d get longer than an hour and a ½ out of a
full night’s sleep . . .”
Baby steps.