A Few Pointless Random Thoughs

I must have a case of the pregnancy crazy forgetfulness, because today I washed a load of KB's nasty, smelly workout clothes and forgot to put detergent in the machine. They were hanging on our balcony for 4 hours drying, and every time I walked out to put in a new load of clothes they seemed to smell worse and worse. I thought the smell was from the dirty clothes waiting to be washed, but when I finally sniffed the hanging clothes I did not even get a whiff of the lovely laundry detergent that makes me feel so nauseous sometimes. I washed them again, this time with laundry detergent, and now they are drying and not smelling like sweat.

Dr. Pepper is wonderful. A friend carried a 6 pack for us on a bus for 11 hours last week. KB and I have been painfully sharing each can. I plan on getting one of those 48 packs of caffeine free Dr. Pepper the day after we step on US soil in two and a half months.

I cried three times while watching Princess Diaries 2 yesterday. KB saw and I was embarrassed.

AB has been a little helper recently. She knows liquid should be wiped up when it is on the floor, so she has begun to spit on the floor and grabs the kitchen towel to wipe it up. It is so helpful.

Although I thought the air conditioner units in this country and in the US were very different, they are more similar than I was lead to believe. It turns out the filters need cleaned or the air conditioners do not work properly. Imagine my embarrassment when the repairman show me my nasty filter last week. I could have avoided sleeping our sauna-like bedroom for the past two years. I also cannot believe how low a setting our air conditioner can be on and yet keep our room cool...I keep thinking about how much energy we wasted!

Tylenol does not work, and even if you did not get lovely pregnancy acne with the first baby, that does not mean you will not get it with the second baby.

We bought AB a little potty last week. It was the only training toilet that had a removable bowl for her to pee into. It is pink and has a splash guard for little boys (get it?). When you lift the lid there is a mommy bear and a baby bear dressed in pink. The mommy bear is wearing a hat with the highly political symbol on it. They start them young here.

Our bathroom smelled like sweet meat this morning.

I felt the baby kick for the first time yesterday. I think he/she has been moving for a while but it was the first time I was still long enough to feel it. They were not kidding about feeling the baby kick earlier the second time around. I start my second trimester tomorrow.

We are traveling next week, and we found an affordable hotel that has a swimming pool (hopefully clean swimming pool). I am beyond excited about this. We will also get our Mac fixed again (surprised?) and get to see a doctor that will give me an awesome sonogram. Kevin will even get to see the baby too.

Busy Girl

This post is all about AB's day. Do not feel bad if you go ahead and skip this one. It might not be interesting.

AB is a very busy girl. Most days she wakes up at 6:45 am by yelling "Da!" at the baby monitor. Da! is short for daddy. She only says mommy about once a week, and it is usually when she is in distress. I cannot even coax it out of her with bribes, she just won't say mommy.

AB's room has the best air conditioner in our apartment, so she sleeps in a fleece sleeper, while KB and I sleep in our hot bedroom. Since the unit in our living room is off during the night, it can be quite stuffy when we wake up, so I strip AB down to her diaper for breakfast. Most mornings AB eats oatmeal made with milk, cinnamon and a little bit of sugar (otherwise she won't eat). I try to get her to eat as much oatmeal as possible, because it is possibly the only whole grain she will eat the entire day. If it was up to her, her diet would only consist of cheese, milk, ice tea and chocolate. I still spoon feed her breakfast, but I suspect she is able to do it herself. My primary reason in feeding her breakfast is that she makes a huge mess when she does it on her own, and I do not want to start the day off with a bath.


At 8am Karen and Kitty come to our apartment. Kitty is our language tutor, and Karen watches AB so we can study. AB immediately runs to the front door as soon as Karen arrives because she knows she will get to go play outside. Maybe she does not feel the heat or something, because I am not sure how anyone could be excited about going outside right now. The weather is just like Houston in the summertime. To my horror, Karen tells me while outside AB runs around trying to steal other kid's strollers and toys. All the grandparents ask her questions about how we raise AB and talk about how white she is.


At 9:30 AB usually comes up from playing to take a nap, but unfortunately and against my best efforts, she is dropping this nap. All the books say the parents should facilitate dropping this nap, but she is doing this on her own. The morning nap is great. I am very sad to see it go.


AB usually eats lunch at 11am. Until recently she enjoyed eating eggs with spinach (the only vegetables she eats all day), but she has begun to reject them. I am going to go crazy if I cannot find a way to get her to eat something good for her. I try to withhold her milk to get her to eat other food, but she would seriously rather wait till her next snack/meal to get something better than to eat what I give her. I at least put nifty vitamin drops in her milk, at least right?

AB seriously loves tea. She loved it in the winter when I drank hot tea and now she cannot get enough of my ice tea. I have begun to sneak into the kitchen and drink it from a cup I keep in the refrigerator because she drinks like half of my glass of tea! She is 18 months old now, she can definitely pitch a fit when she does not get her way.

AB has a very tender spot in her heart for her toys, specifically her stuffed animals and dolls. She carries them around, pushes them in her mini stroller, and she is thrilled that I showed her how to make a little baby bed out of a basket, pillow, and a blanket for her baby. One of the few words she says is "baby," so obviously, her baby is pretty stinking important to her.

Because I am preggers and not much inclined to move if at all prevented, I often lay in her floor while she plays around me. I prop my head up on a small pillow and use one of her blankets to cover me, because once again her air conditioner is awesome. Last week she found a little pillow and blanket for herself then laid down beside me and covered herself up with the blanket. We laid side by side for about 10 minutes looking at books and "talking." It was genuinely one of my favorite moments with her.

AB adores Toby and Toby adores the way AB smells. He especially likes it when she has a dirty diaper - gross. He has trained her to throw his ball, and I think they are best friends.

AB's favorite toy of all is her daddy. He loves to toss her, chase her, and throw her onto the couch. When daddy gets that "look" in his eye, she knows it is time to play and she giggles and squeals the entire time. The only bad thing is when daddy gets tired, and she pitches a fit.

The computer is a significant point of fascination to AB. Not only does she get to see and talk to her grandparents on it, she can watch Baby Einstein while mommy and daddy eat. However, she really does not like it when one of us is on the computer doing normal things, like email. She would prefer our attention be on her. This can make things difficult at times to get work done. Recently she learned how to climb onto the computer chair, and we have caught her more than once "using" (abusing) the computer.

The trashcan has always been a huge temptation for her. It is big, it opens and closes, mommy and daddy use it all the time, and it smells interesting...however she has begun to understand that the only appropriate way to use the trashcan is to put stuff in it, not including her hands. Now she finds every excuse she can to throw something away, and so far we are think all she has "thrown away" is actual trash. I am waiting for the day I see my shoes or a shirt mixed in day old food scraps.

Bath time is fun time, and if my own personal appearance after her bath time is any indication of how much fun she had, AB had a lot of fun! I have to wear an apron when I bathe her because she splashes so much. Fortunately in most of Asia, there is a drain smack in the middle of the bathroom floor and most of the water that does not land on me goes down this drain...this is also the drain that lets in the weird uncooked canned chili smell that so often makes me want to vomit when I make my midnight bathroom runs.

I am not going to mention how healthy AB is because the moment I say that she has never gotten more sick than a cold or 1 ear infection she will come down with something huge.

AB is still a great sleeper. She goes to bed a little after 7pm each night, leaving the rest of the evening to undo the tornado effect she caused in the rest of the apartment. Our only issue is when she is not sleeping but is still in bed. My little girl is apparently part termite, beaver, or woodchuck....the inside of her crib looks like a mental patient attacked it. In the mornings I find little sticks of wood she has shredded from the inside of her crib. I will provide pictures at some point. I was hoping to sell this baby bed after I was finished having kids, but I do not see how I could ask anyone for money to take it off my hands. She needs a teething rail that covers the whole bed. I even tried using Toby's bitter apple spray on the areas she really likes to chew. Either she liked it or it had no effect on her at all. Apparently this weird wood eating things comes from my side; my niece is notorious for eating everything, including a baby bed that belongs to another baby and part of a play scape.

We love our little girl. She is super fun and we are thankful everyday for the chance to be her parents.

Evil?

I know we have never put our full names on our blog. It is for safety reasons only. I would much prefer to use AB's name. It took me 9 months to decide on it, and rather like using it. Anyways, this post has to do with a mistake a local made with trying to send us a text message containing AB's name. Hopefully you know her name or this may not be very funny to you.

Because we are technically still university students, we try to do our best to give back to the university who has helped us get a student visa for the past 3 years. On Friday afternoons the English department hosts an English Corner. English Corners are an opportunity for English students to speak in a conversational type setting with native English speakers, like us.

Usually just one of us goes to the English Corners. The university is a 45 minute taxi ride from our home, so taking AB with us is a bit stressful. However the primary reason we do not take her is because her presence shuts down the English Corner. Instead of various small groups of 10 people sitting around practicing their English, you see 50 girls following AB around with their cameras and trying to pick her up. She is totally a distraction.

You want to know something funny? I do not know if this is just AB or if she learned this "hands off" thing from us, but when people try to give her food (which scares us) or tries to pick her up, she swats their hands away. You have to understand, AB is the first white baby most of the 10 million people in our city have ever seen in person. They ALL want to hold her, love on her, give her food, etc. It is sweet they are so kind, but it overwhelms me and it overwhelms her. From the beginning I obviously let friends touch her, but I drew the line at complete strangers. Now with AB's apparent aversion to people messing with her, she does the work for me. I try not to show that this pleases me, but I am almost always laughing inside.

Back to my English Corner story. Although the girls at the English Corner asked about her every week, after AB's first trip to the English Corner, we decided it was best to leave her at home. Last week a girl sent us a text message asking if AB was going to come. However, she did not quite get AB's name right. She asked, "Is Evil also coming with you to the English Corner today?" We thought it was funny, but her classmates mercilessly teased her for her mistake. I told her that Evil is close to AB's name, and it was an honest mistake. KB and I thought was really funny.

AB's Adventure

I originally wrote this on Thursday last week, but I forgot to post it.

KB has been traveling since Monday morning, so it is been just AB and I for the past few days. As any parent knows, two parents are always better than one. When KB got home today all I could thinks was, "I am going to get a nap!" However, in truth KB was a bit more in need of one than me. After lunch AB and I played in her room for an hour while KB slept on the couch. I woke him up, told him he had slept for an hour, and he was surprised it had been that long. I told him "tagg, you're it" and went to our bedroom to for my sweet hour of sleep. On my way into the room I asked KB if it was okay for me to let the dog out to play with AB, and he said sure.

I overslept half an hour, but I thought KB was just being thoughtful and let me sleep. It was also 30 minutes into AB's nap time, so I expected not to see her when I walked out of the room. The first thing I saw was KB was sleeping on the couch, no surprise there since he had to still be tired from an exhausting week. I assumed he went back to napping after AB began her nap. Then I noticed the dog was no where to be found, strange. Then I heard it. AB's little hands banging on the bathroom door. I calmly (frantically) woke KB and asked him where AB was, hoping I was just hearing things, and he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about...NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT! He had absolutely not recollection of our conversation, meaning he never actually woke up, also meaning he had been out for the entire time I was taking a nap. Immediately all my worst fears began to play through my mind.

We opened the bathroom door to find AB and Toby covered in water...what water you might ask? Toilet water, yep. In the picture below you can see the water in the toilet is very low and it is brown, because she dipped my makeup brushes in the toilet, many many times. We still do not know know how she managed to empty the toilet.

One of the first things I checked for was the cabinet lock, and fortunately it was securely in place. That was one less thing to worry about. Unfortunately, and obviously, the toilet lock was not in place, but I am pretty sure it will be after today.

In the picture below you can see the little wet silver box on the ground, that is one of my Clinique things that I have been rationing for the last three years, and Oh! that little white box, it is also wet and it has my mouth piece in it. You can also see my eyelash curler on the floor, but you cannot see that there is standing water on the floor. I do not even want to think about what she has done with the toilet scrub brush, but I can tell you that upon finding her, she was holding the plunger, then she looked at me and put her face in it. The wet toilet paper speaks for itself.

In this picture you can see that she favored my drawer. Those are my makeup brushes and other things on the wet floor, and that bag is full of KB's dirty clothes from his trip. I still have not found all of my makeup, but after I saw the pink blush smear on the toilet seat, I am honestly a little afraid to look for it.

This picture is a little blurry because AB was dripping in toilet water and I was trying to keep her from spreading it all over the apartment. As you can see though, she decorated herself my makeup and since it is on her lips, I think it safe to say she sucked on the brush.

We quickly stripped her, bathed her, gave her some milk, put her down for her nap and prayed that she does not get sick. We emailed her doctor and he said the greatest danger is parasites in the water, something we would all have to deal with if we drink the local water, not just toilet water. He said to be on diarrhea watch for the next week.

In the end, we figured out that KB was in fact a sleep for our entire conversation...not the first time to happen. There have been times we have had heated arguments just before going to sleep only to find out in the morning that he was already a sleep and had no recollection of the argument ever occurring. So, even though I thought I woke him up, he never actually woke up.

We are still a bit unnerved by all the things that could have happened, but we are trying to work our way to finding it funny...most people we tell think it is funny.