Physical and Personal Preparation

Some days I feel like my To Do List is never ending. On top of the daily duties of being a stay at home Mom of three young children I constantly have in the back of my mind 'What do we need to do before we leave for Sierra Leone?'

First, health wise we need to make sure that all of our immunizations are up to date. So in addition to the routine childhood vaccinations they also need typhoid, meningitis, Hepatitis A & B, and yellow fever vaccinations. This on top of thinking of what we are going to do about malaria prophylaxis for ourselves and our children.

All of us need to have dental exams and Jeneson and I need to have eye exams. Since I wear contacts I have to carefully plan on how often I am going to change them and how many bottles of cleaner to take.

One big change that we made a couple of months back with Sofia (our 15 month old) is switching to cloth diapers. I am keeping it really simple by going 'old school' and using flats and prefolds with simple covers. For those of you out there who hear cloth diapers and think mess, laundry, diaper pins, and hassle, just do a quick 'cloth diaper' Google search. You will be astounded at the extent of cloth diapers available! It has gone quite well other than not having a nighttime solution that she doesn't soak through. I almost wish that I would have done cloth with our older two.

The other list that I am constantly going over and updating in my head is the 'what will we bring list'. More on that the next post.