15 months 26 days

This is the seventh day of the babies having diarrhea. Today we bought what the missionary doctor recommended and will start giving it to them tomorrow. We also gave them yoghurt and apple today, which she also recommended, and started using bottled water instead of filtered water. Thank you for your continued prayers!

This morning Patrice was the only one coming over, and he played with the little ones for over an hour. They now eat breakfast at 9 am, then Sammy lies down for his nap. When Sammy gets up, the other two lie down, Emmy in the bed, and Tammy on me. This morning it worked out perfectly, and in the afternoon, Tammy just would not fall asleep again. That made her really tired by bed time, and Emmy once again woke her up several times because he's just running around bed having fun instead of sleeping. For the second day in a row Randy rocked him to sleep, and then put him in bed. While last night was tough, with him constantly waking up, tonight is the opposite. He hasn't woken up or made a peep until now, and it's already 2 am, and he hasn't even had milk!

Emmy is a picky eater, and sometimes it's hard to get him to eat his food. For dinner, I got the yoghurt out, and I was surprised how much they liked it, eating regular store-bought yoghurt for the first time ever.

In the afternoon all our Malian kids came over to decorate the cookies they made yesterday. Sammy had already had his nap, and Tammy and Emmy were starting theirs, so I wasn't there when they started, but came once it became clear Tammy wasn't gonna sleep. When Emmy woke up, I got him, and he also joined the kids. And he even ate a little cookie, though nobody was supposed to eat one.

Our Malian kids had lots of fun decorating, which is a tradition in our family here. Barbara helped 3-year-old Esther who was doing it for the very first time. She proudly showed me the cookies she had decorated. Our kids have discovered the new Alexa device I installed, and had fun with it. However, it speaks English, not French, and they got Alexa pretty confused, asking me whether she was understanding me at all.

After the kids had left, the table and floor were a disaster zone, with sprinkles and stuff everywhere. Thankfully Fanta was cleaning the floors tonight anyway.

After the kids were asleep, and I had eaten, I had a burst of energy at one point and started doing some physical work, including wrapping more Christmas gifts. We celebrate on the 24th, so that's pretty soon! I then did some office work, before writing this, rather than the other way around, but now it's 2 am and I'm ready to get some sleep. The temperatures are now going down more and more every day, and it's approaching 20 C, going under 70 F, so everyone's freezing. Today I put a special blanket on our water bed so we don't freeze, as the water gets pretty cold - which is great during the 10 months of the year when it's hot.