Birthday Trip

As it has consistently worked out so far this year, we needed to make a trip to the capital on one of our family member's birthdays.  It just so happens that KB's birthday and DB's half birthday fall on the same day.  Traveling to the capital has become both easier and more difficult in the past year and a half.  Easier since we now live in a city that has daily high speed trains headed straight to the capital ever half hour to hour - so much easier than flying or taking the 10 hour slow train.  It is more difficult since we have two young kids for whom staying in a hotel, no matter how nice, gets old fast. 

Traveling was easier without kids.  Well, duh, but I still felt like saying it.  Our trips now revolve entirely around seeing pediatricians and dentists, eating at restaurants within walking distance, going to Ikea, and staying at hotels four times the cost of the filthy hotels we stayed in before kids. 

 

I am not trying to complain though.  The upgrade in hotels has been nice.  The nice hotels have softer beds, better pillows, baby beds, better towels, great service, cable TV with foreign channels, and this one even has a top sheet rather than just a duvet cover - it blew my mind!.  However, my absolute favorite nice hotel amenity is the swimming pool, which was the deciding factor in choosing our hotel on this trip.  We thought if our poor kids have to be drug around all day, miss naps, and eat unfamiliar food, at least they can go swimming and it can be the highlight of the trip for them.  Even a month later the swimming pool is the only part of the trip that AB remembers.  Totally worth it. 

 

 Taxis are sometimes great and sometimes stressful, especially when it is raining and/or during rush hour.  To avoid this, we stayed within walking distance of everywhere we needed to go.  We ended up walking a lot, but considering the amount of food we ate, it was probably a good thing.  



Did you know that by law we are supposed to wear swim caps at all pools in the country we live in?  I am sure you did not know since I myself just found that out.  As an American I feel really weird since wearing a swim cap because 1) I am not a serious swimmer...yep that is basically it, I always feel like a poser wearing one.  AB is pretty proud of her hat. She even likes to wear it around the apartment sometimes. 

Later that evening DB crawled into bed, pulled out a Sports Illustrated magazine (thanks Grumpy!) and took a few minutes to unwind.  Seriously he did this all on his own.  He is quite the observant little boy.

After we returned home AB and I made daddy a "looks bad but tastes good" German chocolate birthday cake, daddy's current favorite.  Happy 31st birthday daddy!

First Haircut

DB needed a haircut.  We loved his shaggy look, but the back was beginning to really really look like a mullet.  Honestly we were in denial, but after looking at some baby pictures of AB, it seems denial of the mullet is something we do - in reality AB's mullet was worse than DB's.  Whatever, it was time to cut DB's hair.

A lot of the local parents here shave off their young child's hair (like 3 month - 3 year olds, sometimes including girls) during the summer.  I was told this was for two reasons, 1) It is cooler.  2) It will make their hair grow thicker, like it will change the make-up of a child's hair.  I can understand the first reason, but when people told me I should shave my 2 year old daughter's hair to make it grow in thicker, I skipped their advice. 

Anyways, since I have a bumpy history with local hairstylists, and they seem to be clipper happy with children, I thought I might as well try to cut DB's hair myself.  I figured if it came out bad, which was a very real possibility, I only had myself to blame, not a stylist who refused to listen to me and did what they thought was best.  Since I was scared of cutting too much, I felt the spectrum of bad would be less with me, than with them.



I stripped DB down, sat in him his high chair, wet his hair, and started planning my snips.  By the way, that look he is giving me in this picture is not a look of confidence.  Gosh, if he only knew my history of hair cutting was strictly with cutting our dog's hair, and wow did our dog look terrible afterwards, DB would probably look absolutely terrified and should be trying to get away from me. 

I started with the bangs since that seemed safe.  Later KB told me I should never cut boy's bangs straight across.  As a girl who spent the first 14 years of her life with bangs, I knew those things would grow in fast if I messed them up, so I was not particularly concerned.



Next I worked on the sides since the hair hanging over his ears was particularly annoying me. I literally have no technique.  However with that said, I have had short hair enough times to know I should lift a vertical section of hair between my fingers and snip, but since that technique turned out terrible on our dog, I was not certain it would look good on DB.  

Ever the good sport, AB faithfully stood by her little brother in his 10 minutes of need

I eventually moved around to the back.  Essentially I trimmed his bangs, trimmed the hair around his ears, and cut off the length in the back.  It looked pretty good until it dried.  KB said was too flat on the top and too wide around the sides and back.  He said it looked like the hair of a man who is bald on top but keeps the sides and back too long (something he sould know since bald is the direction his hair is going, love you Kev).  Whatever, I brought out my scissors again and really went to town this time.  I did not hold back. 

Here was the final product (this was the next day).  Other than around the ears, which I still have no idea how to do, it looks okay - there are no visible lines or chunks of hair missing.  Now two weeks later it looks better.  Time has worked in our favor and has smoothed out my amateur snips.  He was a good sport.  

Tent

One morning while Gigi and Grumpy were in town we built a tent out of old curtains.  This was a first for our kids - not sure what has taken us so long to do it, but the kids loved it.  

 We all got a kick out of how our hair reacted to the static in the tent.

Not one to be left out, Gigi's hair also got in on the static action.

Morning at the Park

While my parents visited last month the weather was still nice and the heat had not yet hit, so one morning we stuffed all our bodies into a taxi and headed over to our favorite park.  It really is a beautiful park - kind of like a botanical garden, and since it is nestled into a residential area, it is usually just visited by people living nearby. 

This was our attempt at a family picture.

My dad did his best.

This is the smile AB likes to give me when I tell her to smile - it totally looks fake.

Have I ever mentioned that for several reasons the school schedule here is a little different than in the West?  They start later, end later and have quite a bit of time off for the New Year - that is not really different from the West, but what will leave an American scratching their head is the fact that no one knows the exact date schools start or finish until a few days or day before it actually happens. There is a general "understood" calendar but nothing you can rely on with absolute accuracy. The day we went to the park school was supposedly still in session. However apparently a rogue local elementary let out a day or two early. Because as we approached the play area I grew a bit apprehensive as I heard a loud roar of kids happily (and some not so happily) playing.  So much for our quite morning at the park.

I feel like this picture can in no way capture the chaos that was this play area.  There were kids everywhere.  Since we came all that way to visit the park and really our kids probably have can only remember crowded parks, we just dove right in.  I was super proud of my dad.  If all those people phased him, he did not show it.  My dad is the tall one in khaki shorts, dark hat and grey shirt. 

The lady in white shirt and jeans with light brown hair that is taking pictures is my mom, well at least the back side of her. 

You can see KB helping AB cross the bridge.