Vermin

Logan never uses his blanket to keep him warm at night. When I check on him, his blanket is either covering him from his neck up because he fell asleep chewing on it, or he's hugging it like in this photo. He's a little Linus.



The kids like to play on the steps in front of the apartment. They bring out toys and each kid gets a step to be their "room". They often play with Mia and Isa, our neighbors from Argentina.



I caught Landon playing with the kids' pony the other night. He says he's practicing putting transmitters on toucans for his trapping permit. Likely story.



Logan spends a lot of time in his bouncer. The kids keep him well supplied with toys to suck on and even play peek-a-boo and dance for him. He's a captive audience.



Costa Rica is home to many critters that give me the creepy-crawlies, but only two types of bugs leave me hysterical. The cockroaches have been giving me palpitations since our arrival. The lice, however, gave me a 3 month grace period before rearing their blood-sucking heads. (Susan, please don't cancel your plane ticket. Just bring some Nix.) Besides spending hours nit-picking, I gave Joss the old Mayonnaise treatment as an alternative to the traditional pesticide shampoos that don't work. As I rubbed the mayonnaise into her scalp, she began blubbering, "Mom, Mayonnaise is food. It's FOOD!"



Joss was too embarrassed to go outside with the gray bag on her head, so I topped it with a pink one and painted her face and dubbed her "Princess Mushroom". I had a couple of kids ask if I'd tie bags on their heads, too.



Joss graduated from kindergarten. Again. I received an email from the school asking me to be there at 4:30. As the new Young Men's President, Landon had to be at mutual, so I went alone with the 4 kids. Like an idiot, I got there at 4:30. When I arrived and saw a vacant auditorium, I asked Jocelynne's teacher, "Am I early?" She smiled and replied, "Yes. It's because you're not from here. We say arrive at 4:30 because we know they won't get here until 4:45." Well, turns out 4:45 was optimistic. The graduation started at 5:30, and I had a fabulous time trying to keep my kids quiet and in their seats for a full hour. I KNEW I should be late, but I just got anxious the closer it got to 4:30 and I couldn't do it. I couldn't be late. It's going to be harder than I thought to reprogram my behavior. I had to snicker a little when, during the graduation ceremony, the President of the CATIE school listed "punctuality" as one of the qualities that his school teaches and honors.

Karla and Natalia (from Columbia) are the other kids in this photo. They both live in our apartment complex.



Jocelynne, Karla, and Maria Jose (from Guatemala) all graduating from "Prepatoria", which is between kindergarten and first grade. The school year runs from February to November, so all the kids are out of school during the peak of the rainy season. Good thing we get Netflix (which just expanded to Central America this year).



Isabella, one of the cutest little girls on the planet. She was born here, but her family is from Argentina.



The local street market keeps me stocked with my favorite produce: pineapple, bananas, plantains, onion, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, ayote sazon, mangos, and papayas. (The bagged eggs I bought at the carniceria. Right now they're $2.80 a kilogram, which is about 15 eggs. The yolks here are strong and orange and make the watery yellow ones back home look pretty wimpy.) Logan just began solid food, which surprises me because his siblings weren't interested until much later. His first foods are papaya, banana, and black beans.