Typhoons, popsicle sticks, and nail polish

All day yesterday it rained.  It felt so good to have a reprieve from the heat.  Apparently, we were (and still are) in the midst of a typhoon that brought the storms.  And although the word typhoon sounds scary, the storms really weren't too bad - although I know there have been severe ones here before, these were mild.  After the kids were in bed last night, our power went out for about an hour and a half due to the storms.  Jaya woke up, as did Raja, and it took a while to get them back to sleep, and there were other things to be done - so basically, Marei and I were up very late.  This morning, Marei took the kids downstairs and let me sleep in for a couple of hours.  I never appreciated sleeping in so much until I became a working mom of two!  It felt so good.  I woke up and got to spend some one-on-one time with Jaya while Marei and Raja slept for a couple of hours.  Jaya and I made a butterfly out of popsicle sticks and her handprints cut out of a old magazine.  The girl loves to make things, especially if it involves glue and her "baby scissors."  We walked over to the Academy so she could show it off, and so we could enjoy the after-storm air outside.  The men, who are both sporting freshly bald noggins again, woke up, and we went out to lunch.  We ate the best fried squid we'd ever had, and some delicious grilled fish.  It is wonderful to live in a place where we can get fresh seafood any time we want.  Jaya was loving the squid!  "More-uh, more-uh," she says.  Raja enjoyed the attention he seems to get everywhere we go here - I think he thinks his name is "Baby Boy!"  After lunch, Jaya napped, and my friend Melody who cooks for the staff and students at the Academy came over to learn how to bake a cake.  I taught her how to bake an apple cake, while Raja watched us and played.  It was so much fun, and felt so good to be baking again.  She is going to teach me how to cook some Filipino dishes.  While I visited with Melody, Marei took the kids to the park.  When I got to the park, Marei decided to play his first game in sandals, and says it wasn't too bad, and he could get used to it.  I hope we'll be posting some footage of that soon.  We learned some more Cebuano from the kids at the park.  We went home and played with J-bugs and Raj.  Since my post chronicling Raja's first 6 months, I've realized we call him lots of other crazy nicknames, like sonny bun-bun-buns and sugarplum bum-bum and shinky bubba and little Raj-machine.  Jaya spent most of this time getting her brother to laugh.  It felt so good to just lay around with the kids being silly and carefree.  After our (cold) shower, Jaya and I had a blast painting our nails.   Although she is definitely in the midst of the "I will do it MY-self" phase of toddlerhood, she was actually content to let me paint her nails.  Other things today that she absolutely HAD to do by herself today with no parental assistance:  get her jeans on (backwards), get her shirt on (until an arm got stuck), put glue on her butterfly, get on and off the escalator (so much so that Marei took her up and down more than once), eat her own rice with her own spoon,  and wash her own hair with big-girl shampoo (but mommy still has to rinse).  She reminds us several times a day, "I a big girl."  She also loves to exclaim in the midst of whatever thing we are doing that she is enjoying, "We having so much fuN!"  (emphasis on the N)  After a day of much fuN, we did the kids' bedtime routine, Marei turned the lights out, and went downstairs to bring Dora and Boots upstairs so they could sleep too.  As Jaya laid in bed waiting for Daddy, she said to me(in her I am two-years-old-going-on-five voice), "Mommy, thank you for having fun with me today."  She melts my heart.  Jaya, thank you for the privilege of being your mom who gets to have fun with you.

Here's some videos (and a semi-tour of the house) of the two munchkins: