Looking back I think it’s pretty clear that we compensated for not being able to celebrate back home with family by bringing tastes of back home to the party. It was quite the American spread: cakes, cupcakes, Rice Krispy treats, Twizzlers, Jelly Bellys, M&Ms, Tootsie rolls, animal crackers, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream sundaes, mini pizzas, meatballs, chips and gaucamole and salsa, Goldfish crackers, Chex Mix, and so on.

Thank goodness we made tons of food because we ended up with one less cake than planned. Why? Flynn and Abbey teamed up to pull it off the dining room table the morning of the party. We found them like this.

That mishap aside, it was a lovely day. After the party we Skyped with grandparents and baked a new cake which Flynn got to smash in his face all over again, this time with no help from Abbey.

It’s still hard to believe it’s been a whole year since this.

But it has. Our once helpless little ball of baby can now walk, run, twirl in circles, somersault, eat real food, kind of talk, hug, clap, wave, build block towers, open doors, climb stairs and ladders, and get into all kinds of trouble.

Happy birthday Flynn!

In the U.S., when we make homemade pizza, it goes a little something like this:

1. Go to Trader Joe’s to buy ready to bake pizza dough, shredded cheese, canned pizza sauce, veggies, and meat toppings.
2. At home, chop veggies and assemble pizza.
3. Bake your pizza.
4. Enjoy your pizza.
5. Throw all dishes in the dishwasher.

In Benin, however:

1. There’s no ready to bake dough here, so make pizza dough by hand.
2. Exit house en route to grocery store. This is a step in and of itself because exiting your house involves many layers of locks and navigating a massive gate to which there is of course no automatic opener.
3. On the way to the grocery store, stay alert and drive defensively. Expect to nearly be hit multiple times by vehicles whose drivers don’t seem to be following any logic — at least not logic that you can understand.
4. When you get to the grocery store, be creative about parking. Any sidewalk or median will do.
5. At the grocery store, buy a block of mozzarella cheese (for which you might pay as much as $20/pound). Search in vain for bacon.
6. Go to another grocery store to look for bacon.
7. And another.
8. And another.
9. And another.
10. Finally find and buy bacon.
11. Go to the fruit and vegetable market to find veggies. Somehow decide which of the dozen women tugging on your arm, begging you to come to her stand, gets to earn you business that day. Negotiate price and quantity in French.
12. Come home and shred mozzarella cheese.
13. Soak vegetables in water and bleach for 15 minutes to disinfect. Rinse with distilled water.
14. Chop your veggies, fry your bacon, and assemble pizza. (Fortunately we have some canned pizza sauce for the U.S. so that saves a step.)
15. Bake your pizza in the oven.
16. When the power fritzes and your oven turns off, cross your fingers that the generator kicks on quickly. When it does, reset the oven and hope for the best.
17. Enjoy your homemade pizza.
18. Wash and dry all dishes by hand.

Preparing this one meal took half a day. An exhausting half-day. And yet we’re actually very lucky to be in a place where we can find vegetables and are allowed to move freely in public.

Still, next time we want pizza we’ll probably just go out.

Andy was raised Catholic and has said all along that he wanted to have Flynn baptized. That was just fine with me. Religiously I’m Unitarian if anything, which in case you don’t know is of the all-religions-have-some-truth-and-should-be-embraced persuasion. So Catholicism? Sure. He can be Catholic. He will also learn about other religions and be free to make his own decisions when the time comes, which is perhaps not exactly what the Catholic church has in mind, but so it goes.

Anyway, though we agreed to baptize Flynn, we’ve been a little overwhelmed since he was born so we put the whole baptism thing on the back burner until now. Looking back I’m not sure why we didn’t pull the trigger sooner. It really was no work at all. Luckily for us Flynn’s nanny Marie is very very Catholic and was very very excited about the idea of helping facilitate Flynn’s baptism. All we had to do was give her the okay and she ran with it — finding a church near our house, arranging a meeting with the priest, shuttling us to said meeting, helping us decipher exactly what paperwork was needed, delivering said paperwork back to the church, wrangling us to a practice session and then finally escorting us to the baptism itself, where she served as Flynn’s stand-in godparent in the absence of the godparents we chose for him who live back in the States.

We had a choice between a private or a group baptism but decided the group one would be more interesting. It definitely was. At the practice session the night before we learned at least one interesting thing: American babies are whiny. Flynn is actually a generally good, quiet baby, but he’s a baby and when forced to sit still for an extended period of time, babies fuss. Or so I thought. Apparently it’s just American babies that fuss. Every last one of those Beninese babies was quiet and angelic. It was bizarre. Marie says it’s because Flynn’s American and not used to the heat, but he’s lived in Benin just about as long as these other babies so I’m not sure he can really get away with that excuse. It remains a mystery.

Probably 30 to 40 babies and their parents and godparents all gathered out in front of the church for some administrative rigmarole. The priest went around one by one to confirm each baby’s name, and because of both language and religious barriers I thought at first he was asking for the Catholic name. “Oh my God we didn’t pick one! I can’t think up something like this on the spot!” I panicked to Andy. He, being an actual Catholic, was able to reassure me that the naming thing happens at confirmation, not baptism, and that the priest was just asking for Flynn’s actual name. Phew.

Another phew: just about as soon as we moved into the church Flynn fell into a deep, deep sleep. This was very good news because the options at this time of day were either sleep or an overtired mess of awfulness, which would have seemed even more awful compared to those quiet, angelic Beninese babies. But luckily he slept through the songs, through the readings. He slept through being blessed. He even slept through having a whole cup of water poured on his head.

He did wake up right at the end of the ceremony just in time for some photos.

And by the time we left the church and arrived at the ice cream parlor to celebrate, he was of course wide awake. Definitely awake enough to demand to sample some out of everyone’s bowl.

“We’re awful parents,” I complained to Andy as I spooned ice cream into Flynn’s wide open mouth. “He’s eaten nothing but junk today. First pancakes, then graham crackers and now this.”

Andy’s reply: “Eh, we got his soul saved today, so I think in the end we come out ahead.”

Today is Labor Day in Benin, so with our day off, we decided to take Flynn somewhere we had been meaning to go for a long time – Magic Land. It’s a small amusement park barely a half mile from our house.

We had been putting off going because it has been so hot lately, but finally decided that today was going to be the day. We resisted until around 9:45 in the morning (we had been awake since 5 a.m., thanks buddy), not really knowing whether it would even be open. Lucky for us, it was. And even luckier, in the hour we were there, we saw no other guests, so we had the whole place to ourselves.

Flynn wasn’t big enough for many of the rides, but there were plenty of slides for him to go down. There were also lots of small cars for him to sit in that would rock back and forth. They were just like the ones you find outside a grocery store in the U.S. You know, the ones where you put in a quarter and the car tips this way and that. Of course here there was one key difference. Instead of putting a coin in a slot, you tell the man working there you’d like to ride it and he rubs two exposed wires together like he is jump starting a car. The ride starts right up. Magic Land indeed!

Even though it was still relatively early in the morning, it was very hot and humid. Fortunately, much of Magic Land is covered, so the shade gave us some relief.

Flynn’s reaction to most of the rides at Magic Land could best be described as “indifferent.” However, if he were just a little bit older, we think there would be a few more things there he could be interested in, including a giant blow up castle (not blown up during this visit) and a little train that ran around a track about 100 feet long, and even had a small hill.

We were also surprised by how inexpensive Magic Land is. There was a small fee to get in, and then additional fees for each ride (playground excluded). Flynn didn’t go on many of the rides that cost extra money, so we got out of there for about $5 total.

All in all, we enjoyed Magic Land. It was a good way to see something new in Cotonou. We plan on going back when Flynn is a little older so maybe he can enjoy a few more of the attractions. In the meantime, he’ll have to be content with the new jungle gym they just set up at the embassy.

We’re used to seeing chickens wandering the roads. Horses and pigs are no longer a surprise either. But this was a first.

Just as I was instructing Andy to get out of the car so I could take a picture of him next to the creature to appropriately demonstrate how giant it was, the buck jumped up and started ramming those big horns against the tree. Whoa there buddy. Message received. Moving along.

Later that same day we encountered these fellows for sale on the side of the road.

Too bad for the vendor that he didn’t have beagles, because I probably would have paid a ridiculous amount and bought up every last one. Even these non-beagles were pretty tempting. I resisted, but there will be plenty more opportunities. Oftentimes when you’re sitting at a stoplight someone will come up to your window waving a tiny puppy in each hand. I have no problem shooing off the guys trying to sell bug zappers or alarm clocks, but puppies? They’re going to get me one of these days.

Conjested traffic and long commutes? No problem. We’re city people. We can handle that.

Smog? Pollution? No big deal.

Crime? We can manage that too.

What can’t we handle, you ask? Well here’s one thing: bad Internet. We’ve spent the last five days without Internet and let me tell you, it was pretty close to torture. We almost made our way through Downton Abbey and I have to tell you, I don’t entirely understand the craze surrounding that show. It’s fine, it’s watchable, but would I have been glued to it if I could have been obsessively checking Facebook and parenting message boards like I usually do? Definitely not. Andy has also finished the entire series of Hunger Games books, something I’d like to think he would not have been so absorbed in with lots of other entertainment options.

We missed the Internet big time while it was gone, but even when we “have” internet here it’s decent quality at best, despite paying about five times what we would be back in the U.S. Sometimes we can Skype with our parents. Sometimes the pictures on websites load. Sometimes Target.com is slightly faster than molasses. Not often.

Is high bandwidth a valid bidding criterea? Here’s hoping.

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to take a picture of since arriving:

Every third or fourth motorcycle you see has a baby on board. It gives a little perspective to my stressing about which of the several hundred dollar car seats is an iota safer than the other.

Makeshift beauty salons are set up all over town. You also often see makeshift manicure stands on the side of the road.

Also on the side of the road…

And, a little ways outside of town…

As you surely know, it’s common practice to carry things around on your head throughout Africa. Probably the most impressive I’ve seen was a guy carrying a full-size couch on his head while riding a motorcycle. I didn’t have my camera on me that day, sadly.

Cotonou doesn’t have some of the more exotic animals you might associate with Africa, but it’s not uncommon to see goats, chickens, pigs and horses hanging out on the street. Sadly for Abbey, only lizards and the occasional frog make their way into our yard.

You know how some run-down U.S. neighborhoods have abandoned junk like rusted out cars all around? Well, my neighborhood can top that — we have a grounded airplane that’s slowly crumbling. The story we’ve heard is that there was some sort of entry or exit tax dispute that resulted in the plane being abandoned. Who knows.

One of the loveliest parts of Benin is the beach. Having grown up in the middle of the country, far from water, it still baffles me that everyone flocks to the beach on holidays. Christmas? Head to the beach! Easter? Head to the beach! This isn’t how my childhood holidays were spent…

Speaking of the beach, this is the road that takes you there. Not bad, eh?

Flynn had a fun first Easter. He attended an Easter Egg Hunt with lots of big kids that he found a little bit exhausting. But it was worth the effort because a week later he still carts around his empty eggs with him everywhere he goes.

He’s walking all over the place these days. Dancing even.

He’s trying to run too but doesn’t quite have the hang of that yet — luckily for Abbey.

We continue to keep ourselves busy catching up with old friends, revisiting favorite Cotonou haunts and settling back into work. More details soon, I promise!

Andy got the all clear from his doctor on Friday and we were able to get him on a flight Saturday. (Thanks to the Embassy’s fabulous Management section for their last minute help!) He arrived in Cotonou on Sunday to a very confused but ultimately excited little son (and a not at all confused and just simply excited beagle). All told Flynn and I only spent 10 days back here without him.

It’s been both good and strange being back in Benin. We’ve been happy to return to a house that much to our surprise really does feel like home. It’s been so nice to see people we’ve only been able to keep up with through email and Facebook.

But after two full months in D.C., we don’t just feel like we’re picking back up where we left off. The time away gave us some unexpected perspective about our first six months in Benin, and we feel in a way like we’re now starting anew. Changes are afoot. Stay tuned.