Home Sweet Home

I never thought I would call this place home. I always figured I could call it our temporary home, but right now this is home and that is exactly what it felt like when we walked into our smelly apartment today - home.

As it turns out AB is at a difficult age to travel with. She cannot walk yet, but she always wants to be on the floor crawling and playing. Unfortunately I cannot let her do that on the streets where people spit and defecate, and I cannot put her on the ground in the hotels because I have NEVER seen a vacuum cleaner on the maid's cart. I have just seen them sweep the carpet. Therefore she is confined to playing on the bed, being in my arms, lap or the occasional play area we find in kid friendly restaurants. She was like a wound up spring the whole time.

Second she is at a weird stage in the food she consumes. She is not ready or willing to eat most adult foods. She likes grated cheese, scrambled egg, cereal, tortillas, bread, and some chunky veggies. Everything else she still likes to eat pretty mushy, however she does not like to eat the baby food from a jar anymore. We had to try to find our way to restaurants that would give us some shredded cheese, bread or tortilla and maybe an egg - this is no simple feat in East Asia. Also, she makes a mess! KB and I always cleaned it up and tried to make sure that we left the floor as clean as it was when we came in the restaurant. I kept thinking, "We can't be 'those' people."

Side note: While in graduate school I worked at a tasty Mexican food restaurant. I quickly learned that families with kids made a huge mess. It was not too big a deal, but a little bit of effort to clean it up meant a lot to us servers, or even apologizing for the obvious mess went a long way too. Unfortunately a lot of young families were very ungracious, and they were poor tippers as well. There are certain types of people who have the attitude of "that is what they get for choosing a tip based job;" this lack gratitude really does permeates their entire character - not just in tipping. As a restaurant patron, you do not know if your server is having a bad day, if someone has yelled at them, or if they are not feeling well, but just a few extra dollars can make the difference between having a good shift and a bad shift. Really, would it hurt people to be more generous? Also I think people who play the sick game of basing a server's gratuity on the level of their drink have some serious power issues. Look at the service as a whole, not just one aspect. KB and I both worked in the service industry as graduate students. I think it really builds character and it helps people learn to be more considerate of people who are serving us. Always tip 20%. If you cannot afford to tip, then you should go to a cheaper restaurant.

Back to our trip. The third and most difficult thing of all in traveling with AB right now is the sleeping arrangements. She is accustomed to sleeping in her own bed. At home she goes to bed, cries for about 5 minutes and then sleeps. Not wanting to drag our Pack and Play on a plane, train, and various taxis we decided to try letting her sleep with us. Going into this trip I already knew we would regret not bringing her Pack and Play. We regret not bringing her Pack and Play. We did not get enough sleep and neither did she. This led to several extra naps during the day that were not sufficient and resulted in a cranky baby. Also, the people of this country are loud by nature. The poor kid was struggling to sleep anyways, but the nationals just kept being loud and waking up my light sleeper. I had thoughts of throwing something at a man who was snoring so loud on the train that he woke himself. It was so frustrating. Next time we are taking the Pack and Play.

In the end though it was a good trip. AB got her second flu shot and a check-up. I got to see the doctor and KB got to see the dentist. We ate lots of yummy Western food, went to Ikea, and we were able to see our friends as well. Most importantly AB got to play with some kids her age. That made the whole trip worth it.

Here we are flying to the big city. This was AB's 13th time to fly. She is a pro and the cabin pressure has never bothered her. The poor little hoodie she is wearing got more and more dirty as the days went by. Towards the end of our 5 day trip it also began to smell like spit. I think she was sucking on it.

After a long day out and about AB fell a sleep in the taxi, and she did not even wake when I laid her down on the bed. Eventually I had to wake her so she could have her dinner.

To feed AB while in the hotel I strapped her to a chair using my Moby wrap. KB was out buying water, and this was all I could come up with. It worked.

The next evening we were on a speed train heading to see our friends.

We had not yet left the train station and AB is looking at the workers on the platform. You cannot see it, but they are looking back at her.

Red Hat

After making the not so good purple hat I decided to attempt a different one. I think I crocheted it too tight, but it still looks cute. Around home AB just wears comfortable clothes, but when we go to the fancy places like McDonald's she gets dressed up. We love a good reason to get dolled up around here. Her world is going to come crashing down when we take her to a dumpy McDonald's in the US; we get table cloths here!

Yesterday she took her first unassisted step. We both saw it and were so excited!

Also, we will be traveling a for the next 5 days. We will be going by air, rail and road. We are not taking AB's Pack and Play since it is a bit too much traveling to lug that thing around. I think Pack and Plays were intend for people with cars, so we are going to let AB sleep in bed with us. This has only happened once before, and in general it means bad sleep for everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

My Project

Growing-up my mom made the majority of my clothes. She did a fantastic job, and we were always well dressed. Over the years she attempted to teach me to sew. I am not the best seamstress, but as long as you do not look at the underside of the garment or the stitching around the zipper, what I make usually looks passable. When I was overseas one summer during my college years, I made friends with a professional seamstress. Her speciality was copying anything from photos. She was amazing, and I watched her as much as I could. Although my copying skills are not the greatest, what I made in the past was still functional, and I really enjoyed the challenge.

Ok to my point, did you know that those cute little girl dresses are expensive? Wow they are; who knew? They are so little; it just does not seem they would cost so much. I guess they do not charge by the amount of fabric, but maybe by the number of seams? Anyways, what hurts even more is that I look at them and see how I could make a very nice looking copy in hours, but alas, I do not have a sewing machine here. I know this may seem petty, but I have felt inadequate as a mother because I cannot not make my child's clothes. So, I decided I wanted to learn how to knit or crochet - whichever I could figure out first.

It turns out that my language tutor is excellent at knitting, but I have learned that I am not. I get too frantic or something, and I end up pulling out one of those darn knitting needles to far. In the end the yarn looks messy from all the times I had needed to pull apart the stitches and inevitably whatever I am making will have some holes. Thank goodness for the less complicated crocheting - at least my level of crocheting is less complicated. Apparently it was the multiple knitting needles that got me, but the one crochet hook is just what I need. Below is my first "creation." It is totally imperfect. I have since pulled this hat apart in hopes of making a better one. I learned how to crochet from videos on YouTube. I hope to graduate to more complex things one day, but for now I am pretty proud of this little imperfect hat.

I am glad that I have a little girl. I have no idea what I would make for a boy since most men do not wear crochet. I guess I will have to work on figuring out knitting if I ever have one. AB feels the same way about this hat that she feels about anything that is put on her head - she wants of off!

In this first picture I am holding her hands not to help her stand, but to keep her from pulling off her hat.

Here I have let go of her hand, and it went straight to the flower which acts like a handle...perfect for pulling off a hat.

There goes the hat.

Either she is more appreciative of the hat when she is outside, or she cannot move her arms because of how thick and heavy her down coat is. I would like to believe it is the first, but in reality I believe it is the latter.

Happy baby in her flower hat.

Flower Hat

Recently AB was given a new flower hat. I wonder how long that flower is going to last...

AB's Friend

Last week we had AB's friend, Evan, and his parents over for dinner. His mom is like the one Asian woman I know who is taller than me. They are really great people; we enjoy spending time with them.

Since she has never had to share before, AB struggled to share her toys with Evan. A couple times they took things from each other. I thought it was really funny, but the parent in me had to hold in my laughter (sort of), and say, "we need to share." I am such a mom now. So long to the days of being a cool, or at least as cool as I was capable of being, 20-something. Hello mommy years. If I start to wear mom jeans and get more of a mom haircut than I have now, will someone please tell me?

Steam Heat!

It is back! Oh we love our steam heat. I realized it was on yesterday as I found myself slowly getting hot while wearing my silk long john's, lined exercise pants, long sleeve t-shirt and thick sweat shirt...all while our heater was running. It was a wonderful feeling to shed those extra layers and comfortably walk around in just jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.

Our apartment has been so cold. AB's room was nice and toasty, but we could see our breath in the living room. I put our flannel sheets on our bed, hot water bags at the foot of our bed, dressed in all flannel PJ's and a sweatshirt, and the heater was on. My nose was so cold I could not sleep. The floor was like ice. I felt terrible for our dog. It was ridiculous. To think things had to get ugly again before people paid up for their steam heat. Who would be willing to put up with this? My neighbors apparently.

I also want to give a special "shout out" to all things fleece. You are awesome, and you kept us warm when our cement and cinder block apartment was just 50 degrees with the heater on.

Sleeping Baby

Oh I just never seem to get tired of the sleeping baby pictures!

This was the first time I saw her sleeping like this. I could not pass up the chance to take the picture.

Drawer

When we had our bed made a year and half ago, we had them make some "drawers" to go under it. They were supposed to be more like finished wooden boxes without tops on wheels. We got the picture off of the Pottery Barn website, so it would have looked really nice. However, not satisfied with what we wanted, the carpenter did his own thing. It resulted in 3 return trips to the factory in us trying to get him to fix his creation. We ultimately gave up and have tried to stash these huge things in other places in fear that people would think that we actually liked them. Truthfully, no one cares but me. Anyways, one is under AB's bed. She cannot pull it out on her own, yet, and it holds junk we do not what her getting into. A few days ago I needed something out if it and she crawled into it before I pushed it back under her bed. It was fun for her.

Scooter/Walker

About a week ago I posted a video of AB on her new scooter/walker. I am just now getting around to posting the photos from it.

The wall behind her is really nasty huh? It has water damage. We told our landlord about it, and rather than fix it he just put new plaster over it. Surprise surprise, the wall is messed up again. I guess it does not occur to him that he should fix the source of the problem rather than just covering it up, but then again maybe it is cheaper to just cover it up. Either way we keep AB away from that wall since we do not want her picking the paint off the wall and eating it. Yum.

Showing Love

A few days ago I got up early to show KB how much I loved him by making him cinnamon rolls for breakfast. It was my first attempt. They did not look perfect, but they sure tasted perfect!

Here they are with icing....yummmm.

Then KB showed me how much he loved me and appreciated the cinnamon rolls.

AB's Instrument

Recently I washed and gave AB her some empty treat containers to play with. She quickly figured out that they make her voice different if she "talks" into them.

Fun With Daddy

AB loves playing with her daddy. He is behind me trying to get her to smile. She smiled, but just not at the camera.

Ten Month Pictures

Apparently I angered the internet fairies by mentioning last week that our internet has been running a bit faster, thus enabling me to upload some of our videos to our blog. I have tried more than 10 times in the last few days to upload a video to our blog. I give up.

Here are her 10 month pictures. I cannot believe she is already 10 months! She gained another pound, and for the first time her entire body is in proportion, in the 10-25th percentile.

We love AB. She likes to spend her days playing in her room with her toys and with us. We are by far her favorite toys. Her second favorite things to play with are the little travel packages that baby wipes come in. She will carry them around all day if we let her. Also, recently she has begun to favor her little walker, and has discovered that she can rip the flaps out of her "lift the flap books."

AB's favorite snack is scrambled egg with grated cheese and bread. She dislikes green peas, garbanzo beans, and anything else unfamiliar. She wants to taste whatever is on her mommy's plate, and loves it when mommy gives her a taste of her hot tea. She has recently begun to sign "finished" whenever she is through eating, but it is often easily mistaken with her trying to swipe the spoon away from her mouth.

AB looooves Toby. He is so patient with her, and she lets him lick her. She is a very fast crawler, and can make it across the room in no time. She can stand for quite a while, but she has made no attempt to take her first step without assistance. Her daddy makes her laugh more than anything, but her mommy's hair is much more fun to pull that his. When her daddy gets through kissing her, AB's face is all red from where his facial hair rubbed on her skin. She is pale like her mommy, but she also got her mommy's crazy long eyelashes.

She is a happy baby. She smiles so much, and we know she is awake when she starts squealing with delight. She greets us standing up and bouncing in her baby bed (holding onto the railing) when we walk into the room. Her face lights up whenever one of us returns home from errands or school. She is an absolute delight.

We love our AB.

Playing in the Bathroom

AB is a happy baby, and she is the absolute happiest when she is hanging out with us. The other day she followed her daddy into the bathroom while he was brushing his teeth. She had a good time.

Little Cowgirl

Our little girl is wearing a cow outfit and little girl boots, so cute!

Although AB has been standing on her own about 5 seconds at a time, these little boots seemed to prop her up so that she stood for much longer. I only let her do it once because I read it was not good to prop up babies who are not ready to stand in stiff high ankle shoes. It does make a cute picture though. I guess these boots will just have to wait until she is ready to do it on her own.