Gaining weight and snow flakes

I just wanted to continue to give you updates about our little Lovemore, who by the way, is doing great!

We had to take him to the local government health center today to pick up more of his high-calorie food packets and they always like to weigh the children. First, they weighed him with his clothes on, and he weighed 7.1 kg...wow! Then, they said to make sure we get the most accurate weight, they would weigh him with his clothes off. He was an astounding 6.9 kg!!!!! I'm so impressed - he has gained so much weight back already.

Also, we realized that the original weight that we had for him of 5.5 kgs was not accurate, since he was wearing his clothes and shoes - he was probably about 5.2 or 5.3 kgs, so he has come a long long way already. Everyone at the clinic was impressed with his gain and he goes for a check up at the hospital where he stayed for 2 weeks tomorrow, and I'm sure they'll be equally impressed.

He is starting to really come around too. He's laughing, interacting with the other kids and he even asks to sit at the table with the other toddlers for lunch! He's talking more, smiling more and eating more - all great signs of a healthy child, or a child who is becoming healthier anyway.

We are still working on getting a picture of him smiling, but trust me, he is doing well!

I guess that is pretty much all. The weather has been much cooler recently - today was a high of 23 degrees and I was cold most of the day! Not sure how I am going to survive a Canadian Christmas, but I'm still looking forward to it. We fly home in 3.5 weeks and we are both very excited!

We are also looking forward to our trip to Livingstone which will include seeing Victoria Falls and going on a safari - so there's lots to look forward to still, even in this short time left in Zambia.

We have been trying to teach the kids about Christmas, although they aren't completely understanding. I was telling them about baby Jesus and they kept forgetting and calling him "baby Moses" because we have a little boy here named Moses and we all call him baby Moses. I did teach them a few Christmas songs and a new 'Christmas Dance' which they are all very good at. I thought I needed to teach them a dance because they love to dance and they were all kind of grumpy, so I thought that would help cheer them up. Now every time we sing "We wish you a merry Christmas" they all start dancing by swaying their hips and clapping their hands - very cute!

Today I helped the kids add more decorations to our Christmas tree as well as make and hang paper snow flakes from the ceiling, which they are all very proud of - even though they have no idea what a snow flake is! I'm not sure they could handle the snow though. They were all so cold today...each wearing big wool sweaters the whole day, except for our quick 5 minute swim before the thunder storm came, after which they quickly put their wool sweaters back on!