Family Day

At this Very Moment

I am sitting with my girl at the table smelling the brownies that just came out of the oven. Daddy is at a meeting, DB is a sleep so it is just her and me. Sounds like a precious moment right? Let me put it in context. She and I have been sitting at the table for an hour and a half now and she will continue to sit here for another 30 minutes till her bath time unless she decides to finally eat her dinner! Oh, also she peed on herself about 30 minutes ago as a tactic to get out of her chair. Yep, she is still sitting in it. Guess her tactic backfired. Maybe she will think of that when she tries it again tomorrow.

I have had it with her super skinniness. If her body is going to be below the 5th percentile in weight that is fine, but it is not going to be because she does eat anymore. I know the books say that a baby/kid will not starve themselves, but her stage of not eating has gone on long enough. I will win. She will eat, eventually.

I cannot believe I have come to this point with her. As a little girl I remember sitting at the kitchen table at my parent's house for hours for refusing to eat things like squash, zucchini, broccoli, and peas - who wouldn't refuse to eat those veggies? Even to this day I still dislike all of those nasty veggies, except for for broccoli, I like it now. Until I had kids I was convinced that I would not force my kids to eat their food. I did not feel it helped me in learning to like those veggies, and kids have more sensitive taste buds that adults do. However, something must be done. This is no longer about her just eating a small select group of food, it is about the girl's health. I have tried every thing I can think of. This is my last resort, and must MUST work! Also, I am in it for the long haul. I am willing to commit to letting her sit in her chair everyday if need be.

I am very confused, because with AB we are not talking about nasty peas or horrible pimento cheese, she is not eating Mexican cornbread casserole, lasagna, and (the horror) grilled cheese sandwiches. Seriously something must be wrong with her. If it was up to AB she would sustain on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, scrambled eggs, pizza, bananas, oatmeal, tortillas, milk and anything sweet. Notice there is nothing green or animal in that list.

Anyways, other than her blue eyes, strawberry blond hair, and her feet, she is quite similar to me...demeanor and all. It is payback right? Are my parents laughing somewhere?

Here are some pics from happier times, yesterday. She is dressed up for our Friday night fellowship. I kept saving this dress for something special, but I realized that Friday nights are as special as they get here and if I keep waiting, this dress will be too small before I know it.

This has become her favorite face to make for the camera recently. I don't get it but at least it is an expression rather than the bank face she used to make.

Strangely, she closed her eyes on purpose for this one.

What are the they doing?

What keeps two kids (the bigger one at least...the little one thankfully still cannot move around) still for 30 minutes?

VEGGIE TALES!!!

Outside

These pictures were taken in the courtyard outside of our apartment buildings. We try to let AB get out once a day so she can run around.

See this? This is how most interactions between AB and the local kids go. Sometimes they will come up and touch her or put their faces a couple inches from AB's face. It freaks her out.

Our apartment building is one of 26 identical golden apartment buildings in a massive apartment complex. It is still under construction. It is going to be huge. Our building is the one just behind KB in this picture.

Bath time

AB loves bath time and now that she seems to either have an accident or falls in the dirt at least once a day, bath time is no longer every other day. It is mandatory everyday, but it does not bother her one bit.

4th & 2nd Month Photos

These pics are on DB's 4th month birthday.

I just noticed I did not post his 2nd month pics. He is defiantly getting bigger.

Playing Around

DB loves to play with rattles. AB did not care for them at all, so I was surprised to find that DB enjoys them. Ironically now that DB likes them AB has decided that they are now something she can enjoy. I have to watch her when he is playing with them because she frequently snatches them from him. When she snatches them from DB, he is too young to realize what happened and just goes back to chewing on his hands. I have to protect the little guy.

Grocery store rules

Six Years of Togetherness

On May 28th my hubby and I celebrated 6 years of marriage and just 7 short days later we celebrated knowing each other for one year...and on the 24th of this month it will be the anniversary of our first date!

For our first anniversary KB pulled out all the stops! He surprised me with a trip to Chicago so we could eat our mutually favorite food, pizza, and go see Wicked. We were in Chicago for just over 24 hours and it was a blast.

On our second anniversay we spent the day moving out of our tiny town house in Fort Worth. I remember it rained the whole day. We ate Sonic for dinner as we headed out of town and grabbed a ice cream Snickers bar along the way to Houston. It was not a great day since I am maybe the world's worst mover, but we did spent it together.

On our third anniversay we were expecting AB. We had just found out a couple weeks before and I was feeling a bit crummy. We skipped one of our language classes and went to our favorite tea house that served a chicken noodle soup that became my favorite thing in the whole city to eat for my enitre 1st trimester. After lunch we went to the local department store and bought ourselves some nice new pillows.

I hate to admit this, but I do not recall our 4th anniversary. Bummer.

For our 5th anniversary two of our foreign friends watched AB while KB and I spent the night in the local "Five Star" hotel...a five star in that city is more like a 2 or 3 star in the US. It was our first night away from AB, and I was pregnant with DB. It was very early in my pregnancy and I was having cramps. I remember feeling sick from worry the whole night because I was afraid I was miscarrying him. I was still quite raw from losing the baby in March, but DB made it!

This year some of our friends kept AB while KB, DB and I went to the capital to get DB's 4th month injections and to make an Ikea run. Unfortunately I was a poor picture taker and below are the only two photos we have to commerate the trip. I did not realize how much I feel like a parent when AB is around, but at DB's age he was like having a little puppy with us. He was quiet, loved to be held, and could sleep in his little bed (the bouncer) in the corner. We almost felt free again - uh that sounds bad, please know I do love my children.

This is how DB spent his time at one of our favorite restaurants in this whole country. We ate there twice in a 36 hour period.

Family Day

Although it might sound like we are home and together a lot, which we are, a very few moments in our day could ever be considered quality time together. Therefore, we have instituted what we call "family day." It is a day, usually Sunday, that we spent time doing fun things together that involves us leaving our apartment. It also usually includes a trip over to PJ's (a.k.a. Papa John's). It is a good day.

Today we went to the city park. Until this week we did not know it existed. LB saw it when riding in a taxi this week and asked around for the name of it. Although we looked forward to spending time together we dreaded going. It has been our experience that public places which do not have an admission fee are crawling with people so much that it ruins the enjoyment and it is exponentially even worse on Sundays - everyone else's family day. However we were very pleasantly surprised. This park was not crowded. It was clean and well groomed, even for this Texas girl's standards, and most amazingly we picked a day to go that was not blazing hot and the pollution was low, so low I could even see the mountains in the distance and the blue sky. We only spent about 45 minutes there since DB's lunchtime feeding was quickly approaching and AB was wearing big girl panties (this park was clean but we were not about to venture into the restrooms) but we hope to make a return trip soon.

Although you can find them in some locations, parks here tend to be a bit sparse when it comes to children's play areas. Most of the equipment is more tailored to adults...which is kind of strange to us but not to the locals. Fortunately AB is pretty happy to swing on a bar for a few minutes. Maybe one day we will find a slide or a swing somewhere.

The ladies of this country, and most of Asia for that matter, want lily white skin. They often ask me what I do to keep my skin so white. They are shocked to find out I did not like my milky white skin as a youth and did bad things to it in order to make it tan - well as tan as this very white girl can get. I would still really like to have more of a tan, ya know - cause it helps hide cellulite and spider veins, but I am not willing to damage it in the sun and I have NEVER seen self tanning sprays or lotions in this country. If I did I am sure they would be too expensive or untrustworthy. So, pale it is! Anyways, the ladies often carry umbrellas lined with a solar coating to prevent the sun from penetrating the umbrella and darkening their skin. I carry one but today AB preferred to use it. She smacked a lot of people with it, but they all thought she was such a cute foreign kid they almost seemed happy to have her do it.


KB is carrying the stroller and baby bag. Good daddy, but we have got to get you some new sunglasses. The bridge of these are taped with red duct tape.

DB slept most of the time but woke as we were about to leave. He was hungry.

They found a caterpillar.

OK. I know what this looks like. Yes a woman is straddling a man, and no this is not the first time I have seen this sort of inappropriate display in public here. However what you may not be able to see is that she is not trying to be close to her guy because she likes him, she is cleaning out his ears and needed to get a closer look at what she was doing. Kind of romantic, huh?

Strawberry flavor popcorn

Trash Push Here