Super Secret Cheeeeseee

Folks, it’s been a week let us tell you. Really, it’s been a weekend.

After Kiersten’s crazy, some might say awful Monday, she finally reached out and messaged a potential nanny. She came Tuesday morning for an interview and guess what?! She’s a member of the Church and speaks English! We think this is going to be a perfect fit and much less frustrating for Kiersten and Mackenzie when it comes to communication. She starts tomorrow (Monday) and we hope she’s a good fit for all of us.

Two days in a row this week Scott needed to take our main car into work so the girls were left at home without a vehicle. Those days also happened to have temperature highs over 100 F so that was fine by us. We stayed in the air conditioning (no weird glitches this week) and used the pool in the afternoons. Kiersten has also perfected the art of online grocery shopping so really, do we ever need to leave the house again? Answer: YES! By Friday we were all going a little stir crazy and after the girls’ naps we loaded the car for a dinner out. We went to La Quesería which, as the name suggests, serves cheese and meat platters and other foods which feature cheese. It was very tasty.

Should have ordered it to find out the secret but instead got...

...This! What a beautiful cheese and meat platter.

Saturday we did the normal chores of cleaning the pool, laundry and sweeping the drive. Scott recruited Mackenzie to help him wash both cars and the little girl had a grand time getting wet with her Daddy. Oh and helping to wash cars too. That evening Scott and Kiersten attended our favorite Embassy activity, Trivia Night! It was hosted at the Ambassador’s home and boy is it big! And beautiful. Eight teams and again Scott was on the Ambassador’s team. So was Kiersten... the British Ambassador that is! Yes, he was invited to our American Embassy Trivia Night. After 7 rounds, for the first time since we’ve been going, Kiersten’s team won! The other highlight of the night, question number 2 was, “What is the Hungarian word for ‘pepper’? For inquiring minds, both Scott and Kiersten got it right.

"I wash car, Mommy."

The winners high was cut short when Kiersten checked her phone and saw 15 missed text messages and a phone call from our babysitter. We’d brought Finley with us, much to everyone’s delight, and Mackenzie was home with Liza. After she’d been put to bed in the crib she decided to reach a little too far over the edge of the bars for some baby wipes (because Bop bop needed them) and fell out, scraping her nose on the wicker laundry basket. Liza said there was a loud thud and then screaming and she took the stairs 3 at a time and found Mackenzie with blood running down her face. She calmly cleaned her up and found it was just a superficial scratch on her nose. When Kiersten called at 9, Mackenzie was still awake and cheerfully answered the phone, “Hi Mommy! I fell down and my nose but I fine now!” Liza got a big tip that night and we assured her she did everything right and she’s still our number 1 babysitter. Of course, the one night we are out of the house our toddler decides to be a little too adventurous.

Today we got a new Bishop. Back in September’s Stake Conference, our Bishop was called into the Stake Presidency so we’ve been without a real Bishop since then. Our new bishop is a few years younger than us and you could see the weight of responsibility already upon him. But we are confident he’ll be a wonderful Bishop. The rest of the day was kind of a blur with food, naps, choir and Super Bowl prep.

"Dos mariposas!" (Two butterflies) Our little Yoga baby.

Quirks of Paraguay:

• Constant construction. There isn’t a lot of space in Asuncion. There are buildings everywhere. Rare is an empty lot in this city. But when they want to build a new building they tear down an old building and put up a new one. It seems like there are more going up in our area than last year.

Misadventures in Baking:

• We purchased an Instant Pot on Amazon Prime Day and then Kiersten was in America for months and unable to use it so she’s making up for lost time and finding any excuse to test it out. It paid off this week when the stove ran out of gas so she was forced to use alternate cooking methods. She made black beans and the most delicious chicken taco meat curtesy of the Instant Pot (not all at the same time sadly).

  

  Another Instant Pot meal: Wild Rice Soup.

The Mackenzie Update:

• She has got so many new expressions that she uses and the interesting thing is she switches it up. A few of our favorites are, “Uh course, Mommy/Daddy” and “Ok Mommy, if [you] say so.”

• She really is so helpful with Finley. If Kiersten is in another room or can’t get it Finley when she’s crying, Mackenzie will say, “Baby sister crying!”, run to her and start to sing ‘I’m a Child of God’. It is as sweet as it sounds. She also has helped give Finley a few baths and change diapers.

• Because she’s so helpful with Finley it’s hard to remember she’s only 2.5 years old. But we were reminded of her age this week when she took a crayon and very innocently drew on the living room wall. Kiersten came in and rightly scolded her but to her credit we’ve never explicitly said she couldn’t. She knows the rule now, ‘We only draw on paper.’ We bought some Magic Erasers and had her clean up her mess.

  

  It even looks like a person! She is becoming a decent little artist... just not on our walls please!

• The running theme in this section for the last while has been Mackenzie’s night time routine. She has struggled to stay in her room and sleep in the twin bed so every night she ends up sleeping in the crib because the rule was, “If you get off the big bed, you’ll have to sleep in the little bed.” Sleeping in the crib wasn’t a threat, she likes it so we finally decided to remove it and let Finley finally have a real bed (she’s been sleeping in a pack-n-play her whole life so far). First night in and there was some screaming but she eventually went to bed in the ‘big bed’.

  

  Yes we are barricading her in her room. Too much? No. Essential.

• She's officially in big girl underwear during the day! Diapers during naps and bed time only.

The Finley Report:

• She and Mackenzie had some good one on one play time this week. Finley was laying on the ground and Mackenzie was kneeling in front of her and then rocked forward toward her face and went ‘blah’. Finley loved it! (Mackenzie was mimicking Mommy playing that game.)

• Still working on giggling. And sleeping through the night. She’ll wake up around 5am pretty reliably to eat but makes some noises around 3 or 4 waking Kiersten up so Mom still isn’t getting a lot of sleep.

Another week in the books. We realized that we hit our halfway mark here a few weeks ago so it’s all down hill from here. But seriously, we really love living here.   We’ve made some great friends, done some fun things and taken some great trips. In fact our next trip is scheduled for President’s Day Weekend to Montevideo, Uruguay. See you next week hopefully with less gore in our stories.