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.