Our Family Chronicles: Summer Time, Fourth of July, and Vacation

This summer has been really nice and cool so far. This morning, it's about 75 degrees outside with cool breezes running through the house. The temperatures climb into the mid-80s and it's still humid, as evident by the hair around my face curling into waves (not pretty ones). Our building heats up by the end of the day and if the breezes aren't blowing in the right direction, our apartment will get too still and warm. I would feel sorry for the girls when they play and their hair get plastered to their skulls with sweat. They spend their days in underwear and diaper, respectively. By 6:00, it's hot enough that we'll turn on the klima so the girls (and us adults) can cool down and get comfortable for bed. Some days, the building will heat up in the relentless sun and it's too warm to cook. Nevertheless, this summer has not been as hot as last summer. It was downright miserable then and I was in my last weeks of pregnancy on top of that.

With the breezes comes the dust. Our house is covered with a layer of dust. The soles of my feet are always dirty from walking around barefoot. Poor baby D, her knees and top of her feet are black from crawling around. It necessitates a new step to departing the house - wipe down her knees and feet so she'd be presentable to the outside world.

Another thing about summer is the summer produce. It's always so lovely to eat all summer long - the fresh, juicy fruit and light vegetables. We eat fruit here that we normally wouldn't in the States - a type of melon that, when cut up, goes nicely with chopped peaches; apricots; sweet cherries; green plums. We also eat the ordinary fruit like watermelon, grapes, kiwis, peaches, and nectarines. There is a store that sells a particular type of cherry tomatoes (here, they're called "seker domates" - sugar tomatoes) that I am obsessed with and I pop them into my mouth or eat them with feta cheese. DB seems to like every fruit I've offered to her, although she will only eat kiwi to a point.

We spent the Fourth of July at the beach on the Black Sea, just like last year. It was a bigger crowd this year and it was pretty fun. We didn't stay for s'mores and the sunset this time with an early bedtime for the littlest.

Two days after celebrating the Fourth, we left for a weeklong vacation in Cyprus with friends, Michelle and Shannon and their two girls about the same age as ours. They transferred their timeshare to a resort in Cyprus and invited us along. We stayed in a condo facing the sea and we watched gorgeous sunsets from the couch through the wide balcony doors thrown open to the breezes. The restaurant at the resort was staffed by Pakistanis and they made delicious Pakistani food. I couldn't eat enough of it. I was overjoyed to eat ethnic food, besides Turkish food and my own cooking. We rented a car and in Cyprus, they drive on the opposite side like Great Britain.

We mainly spent the vacation swimming in the pool where A was finally brave enough to put her face in the water and to jump into the pool without us catching her. She's turning into a fish and the sun is turning her into a brown nut (did I just mix my metaphors?). DB got her eighth tooth during vacation and loved the pool. On afternoons when she was crabby from teething and bad naps, she was easily lifted out of her crankiness by the spending time in the pool. The beach was nice, the waves were wonderful, and the Mediterranean Sea is warmer than the Black Sea.

We really needed a vacation. We were staying pretty busy and I had (and still do!) so much on my plate that my brain function was slowing. I was sinking into a fog, forgetting things, finding things in unusual places (for instance, a bag of curry powder in the freezer - ?!), and I could not think clearly. Case in point, I brought the camera for vacation but forgot the memory card. I also forgot floats, toys, books for the girls. You could call it the mommy brain but it's not; it has happened before I was ever married and having kids. It usually happens when I am stressed and have too much going on. It took about 6 days of vacation for the brain fog to finally clear and I felt more alert. The only decisions we had to make were whether we'd go to the pool or beach and what we were going to eat. I didn't have ten thousand things running through my head, anxiety over decisions to be made, a long to-do list, and the frustration of not being able to do it all (a job and raising a family). Ah, the simple life.

The monthlong fasting has started here so things seem to be pretty quiet. I am thankful for that. I know it sounds terrible but I confess that I look forward to the monthlong fasting, despite the reasons for their ritual. The city is just quieter and there is less traffic as people disappear to their summer homes out in the country or on the beach. The work of building relationships slows down for a bit and I can catch a bit of rest.

There is an express supermarket that is opening up one block over from our apartment and I'm pretty excited about it. The full-sized supermarket by the same name is in a mall that I drive to about once a month for pantry staples and paper items. Hopefully the express supermarket will carry everything I need and I don't have to make those monthly trips to the full-sized one anymore and daily trips to multiples stores. I mention this to provide a snapshot of our daily life - we go to multiple stores around our block everyday for fresh produce and for dinner ingredients. This express supermarket will cut down the time spent going to different stores and should have everything we need at a decent prices, even gluten-free items. Yay!

Here's a cultural tidbit: the folks here feed their babies differently than we do. For example, they don't have a problem feeding candy and ice cream to their babies and I don't do that with my babies. I'm always surprised when people give DB suckers, chocolate, and ice cream. The good thing is, they don't expect her to eat it right then so I'm always able to put their gifts away and eat it myself. Kind of a nice perk :-)

That's all I can think of to share. Even though I forgot the memory card to our camera, I took a few pictures with my phone. Here they are: