Dear friends and family

We apologise for the terribly long drought in this space! We are alive and still in India and the first half of this year has been quite eventful.

I will try not to bore you with long stories in this entry, but I’ll attempt to give you a brief update on our experiences during the first few months of 2010.

February – love and laughter

Three days before Valentine’s Day my ever romantic husband started to send me gifts with a romantic handwritten message. Not handwritten by Theo, but by the online local company from which he ordered my gifts and flowers. And with every gift the same handwritten message arrived in a beautiful card.

What was supposed to bring a tear to my eyes, indeed had me crying, but with laughter. Every day, for the following three days. The gift company’s technology seemingly twisted the “ê” in “wêreld”, and the poor bloke who had to write Theo’s message every day, ended up having to recreate the following:

Our new au pair, Shaneen Steenkamp, also arrived in India. She’s a lively, Afrikaans girl from Brackenfell and managed to make Kara forget all about her separation anxiety. Kara loved Shaneen and they played and laughed for hours. Shaneen was also the only one who received spontaneous kisses from the little miss, leaving me slightly green.

Unfortunately Shaneen’s dad became very ill and, as she is her dad’s only support in Cape Town, she had to return home in March to help him through some very tough months. I’ve tried several local nannies by now, but after Shaneen, Kara has been refusing to accept anyone else into her play world, leaving me a little drained and sleep deprived at this stage. Kara is also understanding Afrikaans by now, so the broken English spoken by the local nannies probably also makes her uneasy.

March – colours, family and friends

On 1 March we celebrated Holi, the festival of colours, with the rest of India. Shaneen was very excited about her first Holi experience and the paint they used permanently coloured her blonde hair all the colours of the rainbow! She dyed her hair dark brown shortly after this to get a more normal look again.

Two days after Holi we left for South Africa where Kara and I stayed until after her birthday in April.

We stayed with my mom in Bellville and had a great time with our friends and family. The anxiety and clinginess Kara normally displays in India made way for a relaxed, social little being – as if she knew she was among her own. She did ask after her “pappa” a lot, though, as Theo couldn’t stay in South Africa for the whole two months and had to return to Hyderabad.

She also enjoyed a few play dates at our friends’ houses, with little ones of the same age, and attended the first birthday of her friend, Tiaan.

Kara is like a little otter when she sees water, and she thoroughly enjoyed the sea and the beach at Blouberg.

April – happy birthday, baby girl!

On 20 April our precious little girl turned one. I worked until deep in the night of the 19th to create her bunny cake and enjoyed it so much that I’m already looking forward to her next birthday!

We’ve been amazed at the big, glamorous parties parents give for their one-year olds these days – some of the photos we’ve seen really had us scared. Our viewpoint was that Kara will just become over-stimulated and tired, and will she really enjoy a huge party with people she doesn’t really know? So on the Sunday before her actual birthday we invited our family over for a relaxed cake and tea.

Kara and Gabrielle, one of my friends’ daughters, were born on the same day. So on the day of her birthday, the two both attended the Toptots class of that day with their other little friends (whenever we are in Cape Town Kara and I attend the Toptots classes with her peers and their moms) and we had a small party after the class.

Kara was very excited on her birthday and refused to take a single nap! We’re not quite sure if she knew what she was excited about, but she seemed to have had a great time.

Soon after the big day it was time to shift our bodies, minds and loads of luggage back to India. We usually have a heavy load when we return to India, as we try to “import” as much as possible of the things we don’t get in India (e.g. formula for Kara, baby food that contains lamb and beef, as our little girl is a “boeremeisie” who loves her meat, etc.). Therefore we usually request a bigger car to transport us to the airport. For our trip to the airport in April, the travel services decided not to take chances with the Scheffler load and sent the Sanlam Takalani Sesame minibus to pick us up!

May – back to reality

May was quite a difficult month. I didn’t have the luxury of Shaneen’s company and her helping with Kara anymore, and Kara struggled to get back into her sleep routine, while clinging onto me as if she immediately realised that (apart from her dad) I’m her only family and friend from now on again.

We did our best to still have a good time, though!

On Mother’s Day we went to the Taj Deccan Hotel for a fabulous lunch.

We also joined Theo’s Afrikaans colleague, Cassie Kromhout begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting and his lovely family for a day of sun, swimming and good company at ICRISAT.

Situated in Hyderabad, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit, non-political organisation that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It has various partners throughout the world and its aim is to help empower the poorest of the poor to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agriculture.

It is a lovely spread-out, green setting with very tight security, and it is clean and neat. One feels as if you’re in a different world when entering those gates.

Although it was a rather tough month, we stayed positive while visualising our return to Cape Town in June for the Soccer World Cup – a unique experience that deserves a blog on its own!