Long day in Kathmandu

Yesterday was a LONG day. The babies are waking up earlier these days...5:30 am to be exact! I tried to put them to bed a little later last night to see if that would make a difference and I gave them a little more food before they went to bed but to no avail...5:30 am was our wake up time once again today. I am definitely not complaining. As it is, they sleep for 10 1/2 to 11 hours straight...I just would like for it to be that they go to bed a bit later and then wake up a bit later. But for now, I will just try to go to bed a little earlier and wait for my 5:30 wake up call. So, our LONG day yesterday began at 5:30!

After my refreshing day on Sunday I felt really ready to start our busy week on Monday. But it was still a LONG day and at the end of it I was very, very tired, frustrated and ready to get home. Running errands in Kathmandu means something totally different than it does in America. The roads are bad, the air is extremely dusty and dirty, the stores and places are spread all over town and are hard to get to and the traffic is horrible. I am not saying that we don't deal with these things in America...I definitely remember sitting in traffic for hours on the parkway or 95 but in many, many ways it is just different.

We left the house at 10 am yesterday and did not return home until 7:00 pm. In many ways that doesn't seem like that long but the babies were with us and we did so little during that time (most of it was spent sitting in traffic) that it just was too much. In 9 hours we drove to a new families flat to help get it set up, went to a paint store (twice) to bring the painter to the new flat to get it painted, went to eat lunch and go to the ATM, and drove to the grocery store and then came home...If all of that went very smoothly with no traffic (which doesn't EVER happen in Nepal) it should have only taken us 5 hours at the most. (I know all of you have had days like this!)

All that to say that I did not plan to be out for so many hours. The babies did so well through it all (thankfully) but I did not have enough food for them for one of their feedings (and we were far away from the grocery store) and here in Nepal we unfortunately do not have mini marts or grocery stores where I can just go and grab some baby food conveniently. So, I did what any mother would do in a situation like that (hungry babies, no baby food) and I bought some bananas on the side of the road while we were in traffic and I chewed it up in my mouth and fed it to the babies. I know, I know...GROSS. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do! I have seen my Nepali friends do this (this is actually the way that they usually feed their babies solid food)...and I said..."NEVER". But you know what they say, "Never say never". Keane and Gracie did not seem to mind at all. Oh, life in Nepal. Ryan and I were both so tired after the day that he fell asleep at 8:45 pm and I followed shortly thereafter.

**The pictures above are just to give you a good picture of the traffic and pollution here and the one picture of all the guys pushing the truck was taken by my parents on their trip in 2006 but I thought it was worthy for this post because crazy things like that happen EVERY day in Nepal...I mean you would think that the guys on top would at least get off and help push...