Nora turned one year old today! We flew back into Haiti yesterday after a few weeks of visiting with family and attending Ryan's sister Lauren's wedding. We were glad for an uneventful trip home this time. Our last trip home included an earthquake 20 minutes after we reached our house. So this time, when we came home to the smell of rotten meat because our fridge/freezer had run out of propane, we couldn't grumble too much. We'll take a messy clean-up over an earthquake anyday. Today, Nora enjoyed a lazy day around the house and then a trip into Port au Prince for some groceries. She likes trips into Port because of the air-conditioned car ride on bumpy roads that rock her to sleep. We also got her a teddy bear cake and a candle. She liked the candle, and took a few bites of the cake before deciding it was time for bed.While we were in the states, we had a few doctor's appointments to keep. Nora needed her vaccinations, and I needed to see the OB doctor. Both visits went more wonderfully than we thought they would. At the OB doctor, we were given the opportunity to look at the baby on ultrasound. As I sat in the air-conditioned room with a big screen in front of me, displaying the ultrasound pictures, and a huge fancy ultrasound machine humming beside me, I got a little sad. I was feeling sorry for Jim, the doctor that I work with in Haiti. He has a small portable ultrasound machine which is currently on its last leg, and he spends half of his day bending over it in the heat of our tin-roofed clinic-that-is-really-a-school building. I wish he had the pleasure of working with a machine that gives incredible images and is serviced by representatives of the manufacturer whenever anything goes wrong. Oh, well. When you don't have big and fancy, then small and glitchy gets the job done, and saves lives in the process. At any rate, while I was in the sonography suite, feeling sorry for Jim, my sad mood didn't last long, because the technician told me that we are having a baby boy. He is due the first week of November. Yes, for those of you that are keeping track, Ryan and I are expecting our second baby one month after our second anniversary. What can we say? Life moves quickly here in Haiti, and God is good.
