Sunday, May 15, 2011

If you want to read the blog in French which is the original language of the blog, 

please click on the French flag:

Dear Family and Friends,

Those last few months I did not update our family blog, and I apologize. But I wrote a weekly email on Sundays to our close family telling them about the busy lives of our three children and flooding them with pictures. Those emails helped me update this blog.

For those who do not have time to read everything, this very paragraph summarizes it all: we still live in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. We moved three times and are pleased to have found a home where we feel at ease, even if the winter was really cold in there. Paul works in the same position with the OSCE and I am a full-time mother for our three wonderful children: Eva aged 9, Jérôme 7, and Lynn who will turn 2 next month. I teach school at home every morning for our oldest children and our afternoons are quickly filled by sport (Eva and Jérôme take Taekwondo classes three times a week) or our trips outside when the weather allows. If the weather is not good the fertile imaginations of our children enable them to have fun inside our house.

For those interested, I have summarized the last few months (with all my favorite stories), beginning with the last time you heard from us, in April 2010!

In April 2010:

Lynn started crawling and in the morning she loved to go into the bedroom of her siblings and destroyed all their carefully displayed toys.

Every morning around 6 a.m. she woke up, so I took her in our bed and breastfed her, and we fell back asleep side by side until 7:30 or 8 a.m. Then, when she awoke, she liked to pinch my eyelids (I assumed it was her way of telling me "wake up"), then as soon as my eyes were open, she turned to her father and pinch his eyelids!

A picture of Lynn in April:

Jérôme continued to be a real mischief. For example when I asked him if I could give him a kiss, he replied to me in a gentle voice: "Mom, it's been long since I had chocolate”. As I continued to approach his cheek, he told me half jokingly: "If you give me chocolate, you can give me a kiss."


Another time, I was teaching him and he was working on a French grammar drill in his workbook. In the same book, he spotted a math exercise that picked his curiosity, so he decided to do it just after the French one. To avoid losing his math page, he put his left thumb in the book; as a consequence, the book was not flat at all on the table. I kept telling him to remove his thumb, I knew where his math exercise was and I would find it easily. Finally, exacerbated I told him: "Stop it, you cannot write properly like that!" With that, he replied all serious: "I’ m warming up my thumb!"

That month, while walking on a slippery trail, he fell, and a friend, Veronica, told him: "Poor Jérôme, you fell." He replied: "No, I did not fall. My buttocks fell."

In this picture, he is sitting on Veronica’s lap, a member of the Church who, with her husband became very good friends of our family.

It is also that month that he discovered the joy of reading on his own. In this picture he sat in a small shady corner and read aloud his book on sharks.

Eva was actively preparing for her baptism. Every night, she read on her own her scriptures. She did that hidden under her blanket, using her flashlight, sometimes for almost an hour. She thought that we did not see her, until one evening I told her that it was too late to read her scriptures for a longtime and that she could not read for more than 10 minutes. She opened her eyes all round, and said: "You know I read my scriptures?" She thought that she was well hidden under her blanket, and she opened as quietly as possible the zipper surrounding her scriptures.


Another time she made me laugh when her Russian teacher asked her to describe a drawing in which a fish sat on a lounge chair in the sun. Her teacher wanted Eva to tell her that the fish was tanning, but instead Eva told her that the fish was dying. The teacher was upset and said "plora" (bad), but Eva was convinced that a fish would die if it stayed under the sun, that's all.

A small picture of her and Lynn at the time:

Eva and her brother get along very well, and very often at night I hear them laughing in their bedroom. However, sometimes they get on each other nerves, and on an evening of that month, Jérôme came out of their bedroom and told me: "I have to sleep in another room because Eva does not like the noise I make when I breathe!”


In this picture they had fun on a picnic with their stuffed animals:

A family picture taken in April 2010, we are in the mountains surrounding the capital, not far from a Tajik village.

In May 2010:

At 11 months Lynn had her first baby tooth piercing her gum. She began to eat something other than my milk, and for a month she sucked on cucumbers and apples.
From this month on, she has been moving by herself and enjoyed the freedom to catch everything she wanted.
She could say three words: "Yes, Dad, Mom" and made her first biting kisses.

Small picture of our three loves in May:

That month, Jérôme scored his first Taekwondo exam and obtained a yellow belt. He was very happy. He continued to ask lots of questions about the world and here are some of his questions: "If the Earth is spherical, why when we walk on it, it's all flat? If the Earth rotates, why aren’t we rotating? How our eyes see colors? "

To answer all his questions we would dive (and we still do) in the books. He is a passionate student. It is gratifying to teach a child so curious.

As he has been growing lately, he explained to one of our friends: "Before, I was a real baby snail, and then I was a Komodo dragon and then a shark. Now I'm just nothing, just Jérôme!"
Our "just” Jérôme had prepared himself for our Church meetings (we still have them at home in our living room):

Jérôme and Eva started to build a castle under our outside staircase. They made moats and fortifications, with the rain, their moats were filled with water and they were thrilled! As soon as the weather permitted, they were outside in their castle living lots of adventures. Jérôme fought against Attila and all his Hun warriors and Eva was a lion and fought against the gladiators! (A priori they listen well to our history lessons.)

Pictures of the castle under construction:

Eva was really excited to win the green belt in Taekwondo.
Picture of our oldest with their new belts:

In May, the goal of our big girl was to brush her teeth after each meal (she was doing it after lunch and dinner, but not always after breakfast) and this was her reason: "My problem is I want to be all white for my baptism, even my teeth!”

When we asked her what she would like to be when she will be a grown-up be later, she replied: "When I grow up I want to be a lion!” She was completely obsessed with the Narnia stories and dreamed of being Aslan the lion. But even as a lion, she took long bubble baths with her brother:

Like her brother, Eva asked me lots of questions. One of hers was "Why is it that when ocean water freezes fishes do not die?” To answer her question, Paul had made a little experiment with a glass of water placed in the freezer, and every 10 minutes, he and the two children were watching "ice" form on the top of the water. She especially loved all the lessons on animals, and usually knows a lot of things about them. During a lesson that focused on animal diets, she wrote the following: pigs eat "junk food" and a tadpole drank "rotted water.”

Whenever the opportunity arises, we try to show the children what is going on in real life (we looked at landslides in the mountains, erosion, animals, etc.). In this picture, on a May evening, Paul and the children were watching lightning through the window:

In May, it was Mother's Day, and as a gift I asked the children to be very nice and cheerful all day! They tried their best to be nice, I was really happy.

Eva also offered me drawings, one of her children's books, a box of candy, and a love note.
Jérôme offered me nothing. He had made me paintings, but he loved them too much, so he decided to keep them for himself. But I got a hug and he had made many efforts during the day to be nice.

In June 2010:

Lynn got red knees from crawling on our wooden floor. However, she managed to stand up by herself, and each time applauded herself as soon as she was up, which made her lose her balance. It was very cute.
On June 11, she turned one year old and to celebrate her birthday, we spent the day at the botanical garden. (Since school is at home, all our birthdays are holidays!)
This famous June 11, our three children on a park bench:

Lynn has been very attached to me (and still is) and this is a blessing because we live here. I explain myself: the Tajiks love babies, they want to hold them in their arms, kiss them (often on the mouth), even if they do not know the mother, they come and snatch the baby out of your arms. But Lynn would not let strangers take her. When there was an attempt, she would scream and defend herself vigorously. We never know here and are quite careful with hygiene.

Lynn only accepted to be in my arms, those of her father and those of her brother and sister.
Picture of her and her father:

Jérôme and Eva were playing all afternoons in their castle.
They also liked to go for a walk with me and Lynn.
Small picture of our two oldest, with Eva dressed in real Tajik clothes (minus the sunglasses):

Jérôme is a good observer: one evening I looked at his feet and those of Lynn who were right next to his. I told him that they had exactly the same feet. He looked closely at their feet and said: "No! Mine are much bigger!"

He is a curious boy. On a Saturday of that month of June, he began to look at an anthill. Here is the conversation we had:
Jérôme: "Mom, how many ants live here on Earth?"
Me: "There are more ants than humans on Earth. There are nearly 7 billion people, so there are lots of ants living on earth."
Jérôme: "Yes, but how many?"
Me: "I don’t know."
Jérôme: "How many ants live in Tajikistan?"
Me: "I don’t know."
Jérôme: "How many ants live in the anthill?"
Me: "I don’t know."
Jérôme (turning to me, a little sad): "Mama, you know nothing!" He sighed and kept going with his questions: "In a small bottle how many ants can we put?"
Me: "It depends on how big is your little bottle" (He showed me with his hands the size of the bottle.) I asked him: "How many do you think you can put in it?"
Jérôme: "One thousand!"
Me: "I guess you're right!"
Our little Jérôme was glad, he finally had a "number" for his ants. There was a good logic in his reasoning; he had gone from the world, to a country, on the anthill under his feet and finally a small bottle.

Eva and Jérôme loved to enjoy the sun, and every day they would go out and do acrobatics, like in the following picture:

In July and August 2010:

Early July, Lynn made her first steps, and got two additional teeth.
A picture of our Lynn one morning of this summer:

Jérôme and Eva were very busy during their vacation, they "were working on their castle” and played with the neighbors. They read, wrote stories, played with their toys and were still taking Taekwondo classes.
Below, you can see the children inside their castle. Notice the evolution of their mud wall:

We feasted on watermelons and other good fruits of the season, a real pleasure after a long winter with very few fruits available.
Picture of our little family in the bazaar next door to us:

But the highlight of our vacation was our three weeks in France, where we have been able to see our family and friends.
Picture taken with one of their cousins in a fountain of southern France:

Finally Eva was able to be baptized (we could not do it here in Tajikistan) and is now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Picture taken just before her baptism:

Just before our return to Tajikistan, we spent a great day at Disneyland Paris. The children enjoyed all the attractions and even Lynn had fun. It was full of beautiful colors and beautiful music. This will remain a good memory for our family.

Some pictures of that day with the children in front the pirate ship, then next to the haunted house and a last one of Paul and Jérôme in a small car where Jérôme was happily driving.

The trip back to Dushanbe was long, but we were happy to be home, because over time, Tajikistan had become the place we call home.

In September 2010:

Lynn began to really walk, and took pleasure in walking outside.

She loves the toys of her older sister and she put them everywhere. We found them in our shoes, in drawers, in closets, inside the fridge, in my crisper, in our shopping bags, in the diaper bag, in the pencil cases, under the couches, on the chairs, in our beds, in the washing machine ...

But what she really liked (and it has not changed) was her father. She insisted every night at dinner to be next to him, and at very regular intervals, she leaned her head toward him so he could kiss her on the head.

Jérôme dreamed of Legos and "Poucas". That month, he created the story of "Poucas". These Poucas, who came straight from out of his imagination, are small stones that have arms but no legs, and they are quite adventurous. Every day, he drew a series of adventures of "Poucas". He put lots of details in each of his drawings. For example in his story in every page the moon changes shape, it shows well the different phases of the moon. When the story takes place during the day, the sun also changes its position in the sky as the pages go on.

He likes telling us all the adventures of the Poucas. Today, he drawn and written 323 pages. Poucas are going into interplanetary travels and they travel by train, rocket ship, airship, balloon, submarine ... incredible things happen to them. He is very enthusiastic when he tells his stories. It's really cute to see and hear ... the first time.

The "problem" is that every time he draws a new page of Poucas’ adventures, he wants to read the story from the first page. Poucas’ story has a soporific effect on Paul. I elbow Paul so he will stay awake until the last page. One evening, Jérôme asked us: "Do you prefer Poucas’ book or Narnia’s books?" Paul replied without hesitation: "Poucas!" I was laughing too hard to answer!

A picture of Jérôme with its pages of Poucas spread all over the floor so he can put them back in order:

In September, Jérôme decided that if he could not be an astronaut or an architect, he would become an archaeologist! He loves digging and looking for treasure, so finding dinosaur bones would be great and he loves history.

With Paul, we decided to have one-on-one date with our children, father/son, father/daughter, mother/son, mother/daughter. Once a month, Paul and I go out with one child (well just Eva and Jérôme, Lynn is still too small). So each child has a date 6 times a year with each parent. Of the 6 dates, 3 are chosen by the parents and 3 by the children.

For our first mother/son date, we went for a walk in the botanical garden. Usually, when we go there, I have a stroller that keeps me from going to some places, but this time with Jérôme, we went "off-track" and explored new places. He was very happy. We threw leaves into the stream and we watched our two leafs following the current to see which one would come first; then, he started collecting feathers, and showed me how he was very good at making huge jumps. I told him I was very happy to be with him, to that he replied: "You know, I'd rather be with my dad, but hey, I love you too." I was laughing so hard, how mischievous! It is true that he spends all his time with his mother, so the time spent with his father is very precious.

I put some pictures of him and his sister taken that month in the park.

In September, we felt the season change as power cuts became more frequents (in summer there were very few). One evening, the electricity went out at around 9 p.m., Jérôme and Eva were in their bedroom and Jérôme wanted to scare his sister. He took his coat, put a stick underneath and started to wave his coat making the sound of a ghost when suddenly the power cut occurred. Jérôme was so scared; he thought it was because of his ghost /coat. All the rest of the night he was afraid of his own coat!


That month, Eva began wearing glasses. Just before we left for France she had complained of her eyes. So we took advantage of being in France to check her eyesight. She is like me, longsighted and astigmatic. The ophthalmologist told me that with age her eyesight could change and that therefore it could not be necessarily for her to keep glasses. But for now, she needs them to read, write, watch TV, and draw.

One afternoon in September, we went for a walk in the botanical garden and on the way back to the house we saw a puppy. Eva really wanted to adopt it, once again I had to explain to her that we could not have pets because we moved too often and we did not know how long we would stay in Dushanbe. She asked me if one day we’ll live 10 years in the same place, if we could have a dog. I told her that a dog lived longer, so we should stay longer in one place to have a dog. Then she asked me: "If we stay live for 30 years in one place without moving, you’ll buy me a dog?" I promised her yes.


The next evening, she had suddenly recalled that conversation and happily told her father: "Daddy you know what? Mom told me that if we stayed 30 years living in the same place, she would buy me a dog! You're okay with that?” Paul told her that he agreed but that her mother was a real Jack (our word for us to say joker). I was laughing so hard and so was Paul, so Eva began to think, and said: “Oh, but in 30 years, I will be 38 years old!” Poor thing, still she laughed with us.

Below are two pictures taken at the botanical garden by our friend Veronica Bastian:

Eva is as much fun as her brother and sister, like one morning when she told me: “Mom, do you know that on Jérôme’s new pajamas, the word Spiderman is glorified?” She meant that it was phosphorescent.


That month, for our Mommy/daughter date, I had chosen to offer both of us an appointment to the hairdresser. My last haircut was well over two years ago and Eva had never gone to the hairdresser. When I finally unveiled our date to Eva, she was worried that I wanted her to cut all her hair (here the girls are completely shaved 3 times in their life, when they are 3 months old, then again at 3 years old and the last time at 6 years old, it’s supposed to give beautiful strong hair). I reassured her that the hairdresser will only cut the tip of her damaged hair. With her father, we explain that it would be great, she would first have a shampoo in which the hairdresser will massage her scalp, it would be very nice and then the hairdresser will cut her hair.
Eva concerned then asked: "But I'm going to be naked for the shampoo?”
Fortunately, Eva has kept all her clothes and the haircut experience was very successful, she really enjoyed it.

In October 2010 :

Lynn continued to fill our entire living space with her laughter and her little baby words.

This month, she discovered her navel and was completely fascinated by it. Whenever she had the opportunity, she fiddled with her little belly button. She also plunged her finger into my navel, into those of Eva and Jérôme, but Paul’s hairy one did not please her. Whenever she raised her father's clothes and saw his navel, she always made a face, it was too funny.

Her favorite moments of that month were spent in nature. Our family walks enchanted her.
Below our jeep lost amidst the mountains that encircle Dushanbe where we like to go on Sundays afternoon.

No matter what Lynn was doing or where she was, when we asked "Is Lynn all right?" she responded consistently loud and clear "yes".


She also learnt how to say "no" and when she said it, she raised her forefinger towards the sky and waved it from left to right. For example, when she was pretending to bite something, she looked at me and told me "no, no, no" while shaking her finger.

She learned to say the name of her sister and said "bye"(her only English word) to say goodbye. When she was going out of a room she always said "bye" to those who remained, and when she was throwing a leaf into a stream she would say "bye" too.

Like all kids her age, she would put many things into her mouth and when we saw she had something in it, we were saying "give" and put our hands in front her mouth and she always spat what she was chewing into our hands. Sometimes, we mistakenly thought she had something in her mouth, and we said "give" and put our hands in front of her mouth, then Lynn did her best to empty her mouth of her saliva into our palms. Charming!

That month, she was done crawling because she understood that she was way faster on her feet. This did not prevent her from enjoying walks in her stroller.

In October, for their father/son date, Jérôme and Paul went to see a Second World War memorial. Jérôme was delighted to see a real tank, and Paul told him about all the different parts of the tank, barrel, caterpillar parts, spare fuel drums etc. Jérôme’s eyes were shining with joy when they returned from their date.

That month, Paul and Eva were also having their father/daughter date. It was Eva’s turn to choose their activity and she wanted to go to the top of a hill. Paul had offered to buy some candies and to eat them at the top. On their way there, they stopped at a monument celebrating the end of the Second World War (Paul loves these monuments). When they returned from their date, Eva was quick to tell her brother that she had "eaten candy with Dad at the top of a hill.” Jérôme said: "It's so unfair ... (big sigh) life."

I told him: "Next month it's your turn to go out with Dad and you can choose to do the same thing, eating candy on top of a hill."
Jérôme had begun to cry and told us: "No, I want to build stuff with my Legos with Dad, so I can remember how to build hard stuff."
Paul told him: "But we can build things with your Legos while eating candies!" Jérôme started to smile again.

Earlier this month, Eva and Jérôme "adopted" a tree in the botanical garden; they said it was theirs, because it was really great to climb in it. The branches are low, strong and close to each other. I authorize them to climb into the lower branches and go around the trunk from branch to branch. They can spend hours there.
The children also like to pick up acorns and leaves, and they throw them into the canal.
We always stay at least 2 and a half hours at the park, sometimes more if dinner is not too long to make, or is already prepared.
Jérôme told me one evening in October that I was a super mom because I was trying to improve myself, so I asked him of what efforts he was referring to, he answered: "Well, you often take us to the park and we stay there longer.”

The famous tree:

That month, I decided to add a spiritual thought every morning at the beginning of our school, and I started to put Church songs as background music when we were getting ready before school (we make the beds, get dressed, I change Lynn’s diaper).

The first morning of the week, when I introduced those innovations into our routine, Jérôme dressed himself in Sunday clothe because he believed it was Sabbath day since I put some Church songs!

Now that it's been several months since we have these spiritual thoughts as an integral part of our learning, I saw our children change for the better. Children are very receptive to the Spirit in the morning; we have long and varied discussions on spiritual matters or just on life in general.
Our children understand better the Gospel and make efforts to live it day by day.
From this October, I could see the fruits of our spiritual teachings. Jérôme explained to our friend Ryan who had just told us he was afraid of not being able to always be patient with his yet to be born child: "It's easy to not get mad. You can sing hymns, you can pray, or thinking of Jesus helps a lot too. "

We still had our usual French, math, history, geography, English, arts and sciences lessons. That month, Jérôme learned basic calculus. He soon realized the need to count the units first, then tens, then hundreds. It was literally no problem for him. His eyes were shining with delight when he realized all the possibilities that calculus brought him. He also liked the science lesson we had on blood, veins, arteries and heart. He loved to take his pulse at rest and after exercising.
But what he preferred was our lesson on quicksand. Since then, Jérôme regularly talks to me about "the moving sand".

With Paul we love to show them the children nature and real examples of what they study at school. In October, we took them to visit a salt factory, and there they could see with their own eyes where the salt came from, how it was taken, and so on.

In this picture you can see the salt mounds behind our oldest children:

Just that month, we went into a dry riverbed, where Paul found for them pebbles who crumbled into their hands when they touched them. They also found animal bones and a porcupine thorn!

We crossed rickety bridges, had a picnic in the middle of nowhere, saw the carcasses of cars and trucks, stairs made of dirt, insects, donkeys, horses, sheep running free and magnificent mountains. But often the simplest things are the best. One evening Eva wrote in her diary that she had left open on her desk: "Today we went to the mountain and it was great. There were stones and bones! Incredible! "With Paul when we read that we were laughing. Not a word on the salt factory, the rickety bridge or the picnic in the countryside, but the bones and rocks ... those were amazing!

Jérôme likes desserts, and one October evening, delighted he explained to Paul: "In mom’s cakes there are bubbles of air!" (Air bubbles, bulldozer, are French words with similar sounds, which is funny in French, but not so much in English).


He also loves playing with his big sister on the two pictures below, he and Eva had made Indian’s costumes, and Jérôme had created a bow and some arrows.

A Monday of October during a Family Home Evening, we taught our children that they should take good care of their bodies, wash, brush their teeth, do not do things that could damage their bodies etc. A very sad Jérôme showed us his wound on his knee that was fresh from the afternoon, and said with tears in his eyes: "I’m really trying to take care of my body, but this was an accident, I slipped from the branches of the tree, I tried to catch myself so I would not fall, but I could not and I wounded my knee, I'm really sorry!” It was too cute.

We finished the lesson by talking about tattoos and body piercing, and I put my finger on the nose to show them an example of a body piercing. Jérôme got scared and said: "Oh no, so I'm doing body piercing ... I do not take care of my body!" In fact, he believed that when he was picking his nose, he was doing a "body piercing".

Eva also continued to grow both physically and spiritually. Thus, at a dinner in October, she exposed to us all her life plan: "When I grow up, I'll stufy farm sciences. Then, I'll marry a farmer member of the Church, it is not important if he is be ugly or beautiful, but he must be a farmer; then, after I’ll get a child may be lots of children. Then, I will save money for about two years to buy a farm. My husband will go to work, and as my mom, I will prepare him a meal every morning for his work, and I and the children will stay on the farm. We will go get eggs from under the chickens and the children will count the eggs, so they will do math, and then we’ll go milk the cow. We will study all animals so they will do science, and on Saturdays afternoon, we will walk in the mountains and look at landslides, so we will study the science of the earth. Once a week for 30 minutes, we will do dictations so my children will know how to write and then we will do some handwriting as Jérôme is doing, so my children will write well. That’s a great plan!”

One Friday in the month of October, Eva lost another tooth. She was happy, but at the same time she remembered that the Tooth Fairy did not exist. That led her to reflect on the existence of Santa Claus, and one evening, with tears in her eyes she came to me while I was cooking.
She said to me: "Mommy I believe that Santa Claus does not exist, it's like the Tooth Fairy, everything is not true!" I then told her the truth. It was sad, but she understood that at the same time it was not that bad. All the gifts she had received came from her family (parents or wider) and she said: "Well, everybody in this family really loves me!"

She immediately spilled the beans to Jérôme, who replied: “I knew that there was no Santa Claus. I was just pretending to believe in him to please the family. In truth, I think Santa Claus is Mom or Dad or someone else. Don’t be sad, Christmas is still great! We will get presents, and in addition it shows that we are loved.”
Then, Eva told me that it was better for Lynn to tell her the truth immediately, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus did not exist and that they were our parents or aunties or grandmothers or grandfathers who pretended to be them. "That way it will not hurt her feelings when she’ll realize that those persons aren’t real and that it is too sad!"

Poor Eva, she had a heavy heart. All this was just heartbreaking, I did not want her to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, I wanted early on to tell her why we celebrated Christmas and that the gifts were from the family. Paul persuaded me.
Paul was sad that Eva and Jérôme no longer believe in Santa Claus, but he knew that they were only growing, and it was normal that they understood better the world they live in.

Another thing that saddened Eva that month was that Kouzia, our landlord's dog was sick. He vomited, ate almost nothing, and started to bite. I was extremely careful with the children when the dog was around.
I told the kids that I did not want them approaching Kouzia because he may had contracted rabies (in French we say “rage” for rabies). The same evening Eva told her father: "You know dad, Kouzia will surely die because he has the storm!" (In French we say “orage” for storm.)
Kouzia since recovered fully, but a month after month he became ill again, and seemed to the point of death, but fully recovered few days later. Right now he's bleeding from the neck. Yet, he always manages to survive; with Paul we have renamed the dog: Kouzia the Phoenix.

In late October, it was "Halloween holiday”. The children had prepared lots of decorations, drawings of monsters, witches, black cats, bats, skeletons, mummies, ghosts, and other horrors to decorate our living room for Halloween. We also bought some Tajik toilet paper to use them as mummy’s bandages and the children hung over those bright red leaves to pretend that they were drops of blood. They also helped me to cook "horrible stuff".
Everyone was responsible to find and make his costume.

Jérôme wanted to be an all gray cat with white paws. He put his pajamas inside out to have a gray uniform, and had crafted cat ears in some paper. I had drawn on his face a cat's head with washable markers.

Eva wanted to be a vampire. She had white teeth made ​​of paper that she jammed up with her ​​lips. She had put on black tights, a t-shirt inside out to hide the drawing so she could have a solid black, then she had a black hat and Lynn’s blanket was her cape. I had done her makeup with washable markers.

Paul was a gangster, all black. When he entered the living room we had turned off all lights. We were unable to see him, but he made lots of noise! Lynn panicked a little so we quickly turned back on the lights. When she realized it was her father who was behind all this noise, she was very relieved and immediately wanted Paul to remove his mask.

As for me, I was a green turtle with a pillow as a carapace.

Lynn was not wearing a costume. I wanted to dress her all in white and make her paper wings so she could be an angel, but she fell on the floor earlier that evening and was bleeding from the nose when it was time to dress. So I did not dress her in white and just comforted her in my arms. But do not worry, she fully recovered.

Despite the fact that there was only Ryan (our friend member of the Church), we had a super great time celebrating Halloween.
We played many games, but the one that our children preferred was the mummy one. Paul mummified Eva and Ryan covered Jérôme with toilet paper. The first team to complete a mummy won. Ryan and Jérôme won by a few seconds, but their mummy was less regular than Paul and Eva’s. Then the children had to free themselves from the bandages as quick as possible. They both finished up at the same time. After, everyone had fun throwing pieces of toilet paper everywhere, it was really cool, Lynn had also participated.

When I was putting the kids to bed that night, Jérôme said with a huge smile: “The Halloween party was great!" Eva had a little sad face, so I asked her if she too had enjoyed the party, and she said: "Oh, yes, but I'm sad because it's over." The next morning, the children were still talking about the party, and realized how long were all the preparations and how fast the time had passed there. But without an ounce of hesitation, they want to make a new party for the next Halloween.

In November 2010 :

That month Lynn had learned a new word "no" and she said all the time and for everything. Even when she wanted something she would say "no." For example I asked her "Lynn do you want a kiss?" She replied "no."

"Lynn you want an apple?” always the same answer: "no "(but she grabbed the apple I held out to it and began to eat it).
"Lynn, do you want to go outside?" and again I heard "no "(but she would get her shoes by herself and showed me her coat on the coat rack).
"Lynn is time to go to bed", "no" (and she ran away so I could not put her on her pajamas).

Her favorite game was and still is "Hide and Seek.” She loved to hide everywhere and laughed when we started to say: "Where is Lynn? We lost her!" Like all children of her age, she thought that since she could not see us anymore, we could not see her either. Jérôme found that his sister had "hiding places that were not good at all, because we could see her whole body,” but still he played with her to make her happy.
Below Lynn in two of her hiding places:

At 17 months, she was old enough to do things more severe and sometimes dangerous than before: she broke a glass, she tore her brother's drawings, she pierced one of my pants with her small sharp teeth, she emptied several new handkerchiefs’ boxes, she threw toilet paper in the toilet (here it is forbidden because the toilet paper clogs the pipes, they are thrown in the "poop trash" as our children named it), she drew twice on the wallpaper of our living room (we were able to remove most of it), she played with drugs medicine, she turned off my oven (why my cake after over an hour was still not cooked?), she changed a cycle of our washer when it was on (I still do not understand how she managed to do that, because normally when the cycle began the buttons of our washer are blocked), she deleted one of my documents on the computer, etc. In short she became faster and I cannot be distracted.

Jérôme had discovered that month that if he put a hood on his head right after his bath, his hair will dried in every direction. He told his father and me: "I love my hair fried because it makes me more handsome!" For him it means having his hair in spikes, because they are straight as French fries.


One evening he was sitting on the couch when he said: "When I see things, I ask myself lots of questions." I asked him which kind of things and which questions he spoke of. He then explained to us: "When I see the light I wonder where the electricity comes from, how is it made and the bulb who has manufactured it, how it is done? And when I play with my Legos I wonder how they were made and who had the idea to create them, how he got the idea to do it." The following week, Paul was not working so he answered all his questions on electricity. As for the answers on the Legos, we have found them on the web!

Earlier this month, he began his first lessons in geometry. He was really interested and learned what were perpendicular lines and "paralyzed lines" (that's how he called the parallel lines).

One evening we had a good laugh while reading the scriptures. As usual Jérôme was reading his two verses, Paul and I started talking about the pronunciation of a word, Lynn was making animal noises with Eva and Jérôme upset cried: “Stop! Because now I read a lot faster than before!" Jérôme believed that his reading speed was so slow that we were bored and so we were filling time until he was done.

In November, Jérôme's passion for knights was revived and he spent his time keeping away all the invisible intruders but real (at least in his mind) of our house.
Some pictures of our valiant knight:

Jérôme is a nice boy. One evening in November, his sister was suffering from stomach ache and was unable to fall asleep (she had eaten Plov that neighbors had given us, it’s rice with meat and carrots, all cooked in cottonseed oil, a true digestive horror, and after she had made lots of cartwheels in our living room). Jérôme told her lots of funny stories until she fell asleep.


Yes, he is nice even if sometimes he is not always obedient. Like, when mid-November he made some mud and used it to draw on the pale yellow wall of our landlord. I was not happy at all, and Eva who had seen it all and laughed, had not tried to stop her brother. I've surprised them when they were both trying to repair their mistake by rubbing the wall (with dirty water) with bare hands. Eva had damaged all her nails. Jérôme was okay because he was bringing the cleaning water.
I asked Jérôme explained to me why he had done something so stupid, this is what he told me: "I do not know why I did that, I'm crazy. I saw the dirt, the water so I made the mud and after I did crazy stuff. But it’s not me, because I'm crazy, but sometimes not all the time.”

Our little crazy boy took advantage of the fall season to put all the leaves into a big pile and have fun in it with Eva.

That month our children began to play "big nostrils" is something between them that makes them greatly laugh. Every day they look at each other and say "big nostrils", then they are both spreading as big as they can their nostrils and they are laughing out loud. This game started when one fine evening when they were alone in their bedroom and Eva was scolding Jérôme for a reason that I can’t remembered, and Jérôme looked at her and suddenly said "big nostril" and he spread his nostrils. His sister thought that was hilarious. Since that night, it's their little game.

It really takes little to be happy, just good cartilage and be able to spread them!
A little demonstration:

Jérôme likes to make his bed in his own way:

In November, Eva discovered the books written by the French author Comtesse de Ségur and fell in love with them. We had two of those books at home; she read them in a matter of hours. We found the others books from the same author free and legally on the web and we printed them.

It's a shame that there is no library in Dushanbe (one is under construction) fortunately all the classics books whose copyrights have expired are fully available to everyone on the web.

In this picture, Eva is in her bed ready to fall asleep, but also ready for the next day with her book under her pillow so that when the first rays of the sun will come out she will be able to finish her reading.

Eva kept on growing and lost another tooth.

Our growing Eva began to behave more like a "girl". She asked me many questions about motherhood, children, love and cooking. She told me that she absolutely needed to learn to cook properly for her children so they could be in a good health. A few months ago she wanted to be a lion, then realizing that it was not possible, she wanted to be a farmer with lots of animals but no husband or children because she would be too busy taking care of her livestock.


That month, she wanted to know if I loved being a mom, if I was happy to have had three children, and if I did not want to be something else.
Then she asked me if I thought she would be a good wife and a good mother. I told her that she was already an excellent big sister, who knew very well how to take care of her little sister.

She became aware of the gaze of others and especially boys on her. Mid-November she was playing outside with her friend Djahonguir and her ponytail was getting loose, so she let her hair down for thirty seconds to better tie her hair. Her friend took the opportunity to tell her that she looked really good with her hair down, so to please him she had let her hair free the entire afternoon, something she never did.
I saw that she was playing with the wind in her hair, so when she came inside to drink a glass of water, I asked her why she had untied her hair and she told me that she did it "because it was hot." Then, she realized that her reasoning did not add up and I told her that she did to please Djahonguir, and she started to blush and said, "no the real reason is because it is hot outside." She left out all red and laughing.
Later she asked me why the boys liked girls' hair.

What Eva loved to do was run as fast as possible around the pole in our yard and with the speed she was able to fly.

Eva dreamed of her future life and one afternoon she told us this: "When I grow up I’ll live in a hygienic country like the United States or France, and I’ll have a dog and ..." I laughed of her “hygienic country”. Poor Eva, she lives in hard conditions, or rather her friends and neighbors are the ones living in hard conditions.

Here, people live in poverty or in wealth, there is no middle ground.
But despite everything, the Tajik people are happy and resourceful.
Pictured below, a fence made out old car doors, as you can see even here there is recycling.

Eva is always ready to serve, and in November, her help was invaluable. I had a duodenal ulcer and after each meal no matter how light it was, I suffered so much that I could not do anything. She then took care of her sister during the hour required for my stomach to calm down.


Eva is a well-organized girl, her desk is always neat, her books and toys too, and she knows how to plan well in advance. A week before my birthday (it's in November 25th), she told me: "I made your birthday gifts back in May, so I'm not worried."

On my birthday, she offered beautiful drawing pictures and a puzzle (one of her drawings pasted on cardboard and cut into small pieces), Jérôme also made me a puzzle (he gave the idea to his sister to make me one because he knew I liked puzzles).

So I celebrated my 30 years of life. I feel like I have filled well the years of my twenties, with 11 years of marriage and 3 children. I am a thirty years old woman who is really happy and truly blessed.

We have a family tradition, on my birthday we decorate our house for Christmas. This year in addition to all our homemade decorations, we hung 30 stockings on a rope hanging over our stairs, each sock representing a day before Christmas. Every morning at breakfast, the children took out the sock of the day. In the sock, there was a paper with a mystery word written on it. The word was from the scriptures, and it was a virtue that we had to work on our best all day (patience, charity, service, faith, compassion ...). In the evening, we put the little mystery word paper under the tree as our gift to Jesus. Every day, we tried to be more like him. At the end of the 30 days, we had put 30 small papers under the tree, and in those daily efforts to be better made, our home filled with the Spirit of Christmas.

On a side note, our cleaning lady Mourayo (she comes three mornings a week and does all the heavy work such as floors, bathtub, windows, etc.) is always completely bewildered by my quirky ideas. For Halloween, she saw our living room decorate with toilet paper (you should have seen her eyes), the week after that she discovered a castle made out of sheets that I had built in our living room with and for our children. She wanted to remove it and put everything away. She did not understand that this did not bother me, but instead I was happy to see the kids play in it.

Then another day she found out our Christmas decoration made of socks suspended for days and days on our stairs! She was too shocked when she saw them, it was too funny.
Then, she looked at all our paper and cardboard decorations and asked me why I did not buy them. I told her I liked the ones my children made; once again, I read complete incomprehension in her eyes.

To end this month of November, I've put pictures taken one morning during Primary (Gospel classes for children under twelve years) when our children and Paul acted out the story of the Good Samaritan. Eva was the Good Samaritan, Jérôme, as he explained to us was the man "half-alive and half dead" on the roadside, and Paul was of the Good Samaritan horse. Lynn played the roles of the robbers who attacked Jérôme (she tore his coat and sat on him) and then filled the role of the innkeeper. I was the storyteller.

In december 2010 :

Over the months, Lynn has become increasingly bold. That month she climbed everywhere and used her imagination to reach out the most inaccessible places. For example if she wanted to climb on my desk, she would bring one Eva or Jérôme’s chairs near my desk, then she would climb on the small chair, then she would climb on my chair, and finally on my desk. Once on my desk, she would stand up and shout for joy with her arms outstretched! I admit it was scary and I am still scared by her adventurous spirit. I must constantly keep an eye on her.


She was still very cuddly, but the one who received most of her kisses (and it’s till the case) was her father.

She loved to play in front of the mirror and spent several minutes every day to make faces and pull her hair. 

In December, we listened to beautiful Christmas music, and Lynn loved them all. She sang them again and again, and she since she sings in a perfect pitch, we always recognized the melody. She loved this music and on Sunday she danced on Christmas carols.

She wanted to do everything her brother and sister did. A picture of them during school:

Below it’s a picture of the siblings taken just before they went to sleep.

One of Lynn happy to walk on dead leaves which crackled under her feet.

Jérôme regularly changes hobbies and he always pursue them at the fullest. He had his "Poucas" period, he always has ideas of Legos construction, and early December he wanted to catch a bird. He wanted to capture it, but release it right after. So he made what he thought was a super bird trap (a jump rope and a piece of bread placed at the end, you can the pictures I took secretly because I was not allow to approach Jérôme so I would not frighten any potential birds).


He remained motionless for two hours, sitting on the steps of our stairs. He was very disappointed that the trap did not work, but it was getting cold and he was hungry, so he came home with a heavy heart.

The following week he built things out off paper and cardboard.

He had made a scale model of a castle and insisted that I take a picture for Jordan (our student architect friend who had kindly showed his incredible models last summer to our son who was completely blown away).

He continued to build airplanes, boats and helicopters in Legos.

He always amused me with his cute mistakes, as when during a Primary lesson he called Samson "Samsung".


At one morning school, he asked me: "What's the grandmother?" I told him it was a synonym for the word "granny". Jérôme told me very puzzled: "I will study Granny at school? You told me that I will do grandmother."
I finally understood what it meant and told him: "Not the grandmother, but the grammar!" (In French, the phonetics of those two words are very similar.)

In December, Jérôme had his much expected date with his father. They played with Legos while eating candy.
Here you can see Jérôme smile during their father /son activity:

They built a cargo plane.

Eva continued to ask a lot of spiritual questions, and so she asked me to explain the difference between trust and faith.


She loved to do cartwheels and moved around our house doing cartwheels. We scolded her very often, because she kept putting her feet in our faces.
What she also liked to do was rolling on our bed to create static electricity.



In early December, we finally had to put on our winter coats. With the cold, power outages were more frequent. Most of the time they only lasted one or two hours, which was not really annoying, but sometimes it was off all day. In winter here it gets dark early, at 4pm it was already dark and at 5pm it was completely dark.


The children do not like when there is no light in the house, it's stressful. Lynn tried on all switches buttons to light the bulbs and pointed to the lights. She did not understand why we remain in the dark, fortunately we had flashlights.
So to keep busy my little ones, with our flashlights we played (the children and me) “Pictionary” on our big whiteboard. We had a good laugh at this game, some drawings were really funny. We succeeded to guess what most of the drawings were. Eva proudly told her father: “I was the best at the Pictionary game because nobody could guess what I drew!"

For Christmas, Paul was on holidays, and took the opportunity to help me teach our children before their holidays. He had fun testing their geographic knowledge, and several times they made us laugh. For example, for Eva Bosnia-Herzegovina’s capital was "SarajEva" instead of Sarajevo, and for Jérôme Poland’s capital of was "Varicose" instead of Warsaw.

Our three loves in a picture sent to our families for Christmas:

We had a very good Christmas. The kids were really delighted with their gifts, especially with their costumes.

But what they particularly liked was the surprise they had on the morning of December 26th. That morning, Paul and I woke up the children and we told them that a big surprise and a little surprise were waiting for them in the downstairs living room. They quickly went down, and found the sofa turned into bed. They raised the quilt and saw with great joy their Aunty Beauty and Boton (younger sister and her husband Paul who came straight from China to spend a week with us)!


This Sunday, December 26 we had important guests and what a joy it was to have them with us. For a few weeks on Sundays, we were alone at Church meetings, as Veronica and Ryan left to go back to the United States, then an American student joined us for a few weeks but had returned to his hometown.

We have the Primary first, then we have our sacrament meeting and either Paul or I give a little speech. When it's a Testimony meeting, Paul bear his testimony, then I give mine, then it is the turn of Jérôme and Eva, and it's over. I admit that sometimes it's a bit hard to be separated from the Church.

The same afternoon we went on excursions in the nearby mountains. It always lifts up our spirits to be surrounded by the beautiful nature.

On December 18 Paul and I celebrated our 11 years of marriage, 12 of love! So for our 11 years we put the kids to bed at 8pm, and had told them that we wanted to be left alone, so if they needed to drink or to empty their bladders, they should go down, and use toilets on the ground floor and the water fountain in the kitchen (upstairs where all the bedrooms are, there is a bathroom, but to access it you have to cross our bedroom). The children understood and left us alone, and they even hanged out the last laundry of the evening so I did not have to go downstairs to do it.

Because I have a very nice husband, he had let me choose the activity, and we played a game. We also talked and laughed and we remembered the past.
I know I am blessed to get along so well with him and him with me. What a joy it is to be his wife!

The next morning Eva wanted a full report of my evening with her father, what we had done, said and why did we laugh so much. I answered her questions, and then she said "me too one day I'll be happy as you are now!” Jérôme was playing with his Legos, but was listening to our conversation said:" I think it will be hard to find a wife like Mom. But I will pray to find one just like her! "
They are cute ... I really wish them to be as happy as we are in their relationship.

For the last picture, I put one that Aunty Beauty took from us in late December 2010.

Not so long ago, I told Paul that I loved our life here. It’s simple and we are happy. Of course, the children sometimes argue, and rightly so, but in our home, there is joy, love and the Spirit.


Next, you will be able to read about Jérôme’s birthday, Eva’s birthday and the fear we got from Lynn and many others adventures.

Big kisses to you all from the five of us,

Elodie.