Back in Beautiful Madang

The sky is azure.

Or, as they say in Italy, "celeste".

My daughter's namesake.

Before it gently wafts the rich green of coconut palm fronds, dancing in the light and shadows.

On the horizon, rests the sea.

Or, as they say in Spain, "mar"

My daughter's other namesake.

Before it swings my Marissa Celeste, hanging in a bilum. She naps so sweetly in a bilum, with all the comfort of a swaddle and all the breeze of a hammock.

 I'm sitting now at the kitchen peninsula on the new stools the Branch put in our flat to nestle under it perfectly. It's a lovely sea breeze that blows across the veranda, rocking Marissa as if she were her own, sweeping into the house through our wall of windows designed to coax her in, refreshing us all.

A cup of coffee is still warm beside me and it's not the first time, by far, that I've thought about how much I love my life this week.

At least that's how things were when I started typing this. Marissa woke up from her nap. James started screaming. Hungry? Tired? I don't know and neither does he. He tries to be affectionate with Marissa with too much gusto. Now she's screaming and he's mad again for being reprimanded to be gentle. The ants found my coffee cup by route of the counter right in front of my computer. So when my wrists touch the counter, I have to pause to pick ants off of me. Some guy is weed whacking? But he might have literal blades of grass for all the racket it's making. And someone is burning their trash (because the garbage men didn't come again yesterday) so billowing black smoke with odeur de plastic is filling our house. The windows coax smoke in with as little discretion as it does the wind. 

But the thing about love is, it's a choice.

And whether I have the sweet scent of the sea filling my house or stale smoke in a stifling house as I shut the windows against it. Whether I have a weed whacker trying to take out sword grass* to serenade me or tropical birds hosted in the palms, the fronds sounding like a gentle rain when the wind brushes them. Whether I have screaming babies or the symphony of my son's laughter and daughter's giggles.

I choose to love my life.

It just comes a little less naturally at some times…

But it's the racket that makes the silent still moments so sweet.

We're so glad to be home.

Unpacking everything you own is a lot easier when you already know where everything goes. It's certainly a benefit of the Branch's efforts to keep people in the same apartments each time they come into town.

We have just a couple missing boxes but are otherwise unpacked with only a few nooks and crannies that still need a bit of organizing.

We have a lovely evening routine and half a morning routine (when you don't have to be at the office or school at a certain time, things start devolving after a warm cup of coffee meets your grasp.) And we're working on figuring out a mid-day routine, integrating the work of two full-time employees with the daily life of two stay at home parents.

Saturday, we'll start dog-sitting for a month and at some point in the next couple of weeks, our guard puppy will be flown in. So the routine can't get too concrete quite yet…

But life is starting to settle.

For a moment at least.

And we're so glad that it's here and with these amazing people we get to call family.