Waiting

In case you are wondering, I am still pregnant.  I am 38 weeks and 5 days along.  As much as we (me) would love to deliver our little boy right now, we hope he waits until my mom gets here in 4 days!  I thought yesterday might be the day since KB and I made the bad decision for the whole family to walk about a kilometer to the pool in the heat of the day.  My goodness!  My somewhat painful 4-6 minute apart Braxton Hicks contractions did not calm down until after I went to sleep last night and even then they still woke me up.  With both of my previous deliveries, my Braxton Hicks just transitioned into labor - there was no clear beginning.  My labor is sneaky.  I once hoped my water would break so I would know for sure when I was in labor, but seeing that I delivered DB less than an hour after the doctor broke my water, I am now leaning towards medically starting my labor to avoid any potential emergencies.  

My doctor keeps telling me to just call an ambulance when I go into labor, but to me it seems a bit dramatic to call an ambulance if you are in non-emergency stage of labor.  She told me she did not want me to have my baby on the street while waiting for a taxi.  That does not exactly help me when I try not to think about that scenario as well.  However I understand her concern for us to get a taxi, and just getting a taxi does not guarantee a speedy trip.  Bangkok traffic can be a beast and sometimes going only a mile (the distance to the hospital) can take 30 minutes.  Also getting a taxi in the first place is no small accomplishment since first we have to walk about 200-300 yards in Bangkok heat...I understand this does not sound like a long distance, but when you are in labor (or 38 weeks pregnant), it really really is.  Then we have to find a taxi that will actually take us to the hospital.  Since the hospital is so close taxis do not make much money of us by taking us there and often reject us.  However is a bit of a hazardous walk and it comforts me that even the locals do not seem to attempt it.  I have thought about this - I am very quiet while in labor.  In fact, most people would never guess I am in labor, but this time I might have to go outside of my comfort zone and make a woman in labor scene so we can scare a taxi driver or any driver for that matter into driving me to the hospital.  I mean, who refuses giving a ride to a woman in labor?  Anyways, I sure hope we can find someone other than an ambulance driver to get me to the hospital.

Also, if I deliver in the next 4 days, what on earth do we do with our 2 older kids?  We are staying in a guesthouse where the other guests are constantly coming and going.  Everyone we meet is super nice, but they are all very new acquaintances and it is quite the thing to say, "hey we could go into labor at any time and we need someone to watch our kids, maybe even in the middle of the night.  Would you be willing to do it?" Plus most people are here for a purpose that occupies them for the majority of the day.  Also, our DB is not potty trained, nor have we even attempted it.  So whoever is willing to watch our kids, must also be willing to change an almost 2 1/2 year old boy's poopie diapers.  Kind of gross.  We have a couple of friends who live across town that we can count on, but it still makes us nervous.  

Whatever, I just hope my mom gets here soon.  The hospital has a kids room in the L&D area, so if it is during the day my mom and the kids can hang out there.  If not we will see them all in the morning.  

On a different note, last week a friend stopped by our little apartment at the guesthouse for turkey sandwiches (yes friends living overseas I said turkey sandwiches and they are just like I dreamed they would be).  Small world.  

My Birthday

KB decided that this year I should be able to celebrate my birthday all week long.  So five days before my birthday he bought me my favorite flowers, and...

made me a cake so I could eat it all week long.  It was later frosted with FunFetti frosting.  It was super yummy and I did eat it all week long.

A few days later he went to Baskin Robins to get some ice cream (because as he learned the week before, although they have pictures of ice cream cakes, they do not actually sell them.  Strange).

He looked up online how to make an ice cream cake.  Step one was to freeze the ice cream the pan you will later bake the cake in.  

He is so proud.

Many steps later, you have a yummy chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  Turns out making an ice cream cake is a 2-3 day process, but it comes with super tasty results.  Thank you KB.  I felt special, and as you can see in the background DB was happy with the cake too.

Thailand

You know how I said back in April that we were going to go to Thailand and that I would post a flurry of pictures from family fun time in the sunny land?  Confession - I ummm...I did not take all that many pictures.  I have a real and legitimate excuse (broken camera), but yeah, basically I do not have much to show for our April trip to Thailand.  Below are the few pictures we did take on our phone.  I also have one awesome video I want to share if I can ever get it to upload.

Mangos.  Yummmmmmmm.  There is just not much you can say about being in Thailand during mango season.  The mango sticky rice is legendary, but my favorite mango treat is the mango smoothie.    We introduced our kids to the mango smoothie as well and they were instant fans.  

Here the kids are about to get themselves into trouble as we take a little breather at a super swank hotel.

At a kids play area in a mall.  DB loved sitting in this until KB put money in and it started to move.  

Have you ever taken a red-eye with a 2 year-old?  Sometimes is works out and sometime it does not.  This is us waiting for our 12am flight.  This peaceful view of my 2 year-old did not last because a couple hours into our 5 or 6 hour flight he woke up and let everyone know.  The sweet, but obviously childless, flight attendant asked me, "why is he crying?"  I said, "he is 2 years old, it is 2am, he is awake and unable to go back to sleep."  My answer did nothing to ease the confused look on her face, but at least she stopped trying to cheer him up which was just serving to tick him off.  He has done well on red-eye flights in the past, who knew he (we) would fail on this one so badly?  I think it is safe to say we will have to take a less direct daytime flight home after delivering the baby.  

3-wheeler

I am not sure what KB's purpose was in posting this picture other than maybe to share with friends who have not been to Asia how most goods are transported around here.  Looks like this guy was a recycler.  These types of "vehicles" are everywhere.  They are really normal.  I also think he might have wanted you to see how they tore apart a motercycle to create this 3-wheeled vehicle (The word for vehicle encompasses all things that move with wheels - cars, bikes, strollers, carts, etc.  It is also easy to get confused as to which vehicle is being talked about in conversations, so I have learned)

Hitting the Skies Again

Here.  Now you (you know who you are) can stop pestering my mom.  That is a big pregnant belly right there, and it is just getting bigger.  I read I should gain 4-5 pounds in the next 4 weeks.  Good grief.  I am already having trouble breathing!  I have been told I am carrying him high - whatever that means.  There will be an explanation for the super yummy Baskin Robins ice cream in a different post.

On a related note.  On Tuesday we will board a couple planes to make our final trip to Thailand.  We are asking the Father to help me get bumped to first class...looks so comfortable.  About 3 weeks later my mom will arrive in Bangkok, and hopefully within the week baby boy will be born!  I am so excited to meet the tiny thing who rolls around inside of me for a couple of hours each and every night, starting at 10pm.  He is by far the most energetic baby I have ever carried.  Hopefully KB and I will have a name settled upon by then.  

Hanging Out at Starbucks

Here are the reasons why I love we having Starbucks in our city.  First - the menu is in English.  I have thankfully been here long enough I think I could order entirely in my second language, but sometimes it just feels good to say it in English.  Second - I can get decaf drinks!  This is huge for me and my pregnant body.  Third - I can also get drinks in non-fat.  I say this like it is a big deal because it is.  Both non-fat and decaf are usually not an option in the standard tea/coffee shops here.  Fourth - the bathrooms are in general cleaner than most places around town...not so much at the end of the day, especially since they are unisex, but still, they are better.  Fifth - it is a non-smoking environment.  Wow, I cannot say enough about how wonderful that is.  You never realize how great non-smoking laws are until you and your two small children are in a room full of smoking men.  It is enough to make you have a list of "do not eat at" restaurants just because of they allow smoking.  

As we were getting ready to go meet friends for our weekly "get-together" (hint hint), we got the phone call that one of the kids in the host home threw up his breakfast.  Although it was pretty certain he threw up from overeating, our kids had both recovered that week from Adenovirus, and we were not taking chances with picking up something else.  Since we were already dressed, we all hoped in a taxi and made our way over to the closest Starbucks.  There the kids split a non-fat hot chocolate, I had my usual green tea late (it is wonderful and I do not think it tastes anything like grass as some people say), and KB had his coffee.  We played Candyland, Shoots and Ladders, and a Veggie Tales game.  

Overall it was a good morning.  

The House

We shop a lot at Ikea. 

When we first came overseas, we arrived with 7 trunks of stuff to an empty apartment (it is a longer story than that, but eventually that happened).  To furnish our apartment we initially found a local furniture factory to make furniture for us.  It seemed simple.  Unfortunately we were new to working with different business customs and did not know to specify that solid wood means a solid piece of wood - not wood glued together to form a "solid" piece of wood.  We did not even know we should tell them to use dry wood.  It was a wooden furniture factory; we figured these were pretty standard.  Within a year of receiving all of our furniture, most of the pieces were cracked, drawers were falling off of the tracks and the stinking knobs refused to stay on.  Of the furniture we bought from said factory, we still have half of it (cracked and missing knobs for sure).  The other half was at some point left by the curb or given away. 

With all that said, when we initially bought our furniture we did not know Ikea was in this country and we especially did not know they will ship ANYTHING (other than dishes) directly to your home.  Goodness, we would have bought everything there!  In the US I bought a grand total of 3 things from Ikea.  Here, I would grocery shop if they had everything we needed.  So, when we go to the capital for one of our medical visits, we usually make a trip to Ikea since it is near the hospital.  I also usually have a running Ikea list on my computer.  These visits are usually bi-annual, so it helps with remembering everything we need.

I like Ikea for 3 reasons.  First is that they have some sense of quality control and checks and balances for their products. I have accidentally bought toys painted with lead paint online here before, but I feel like Ikea is very protective of their reputation and will not let that happen.  Second the furniture is inexpensive enough that it is pretty non-committal.  We never know when the Father might call us elsewhere, and it will hurt to give everything we own away but it will not hurt as bad as if I spent a bundle on high quality furnitre.  Thirdly, it is one-stop-shopping.  Aside from the obvious things, I can get almost everything I need there in mostly normal colors.  Local items tend to be overpriced and come in various bold hues, decorated with cartoon characters and flowers - seriously I am not exaggerating.  Ikea at least is usually simple.

Ikea is a funny thing here.  For the locals it is like the cool place to hang out, meet friends for lunch, take naps on the bed displays, take modeling quality pictures of yourself in the room displays, and in general a great place to soak up some free climate controlled air.  I, on the other hand, sprint my family through the whole 3 floor store (one of the largest in the world) while dealing with the grumblings of my husband as I seem to have an infinite list of things to buy in the never ending store that always seems to trap us inside.  I am so familiar with our Ikea that I notice when they change one of their hundreds of random room displays.  Sad?  Maybe.

After a HUGE (typical) Ikea trip, we make our way over to the shipping counter to hand over a small fortune to have all this newly purchased stuff sent to our home several hours away.  This is a fee we gladly pay.  In our earlier years we did not know Ikea shipped.  On 3 separate occasions, KB and a pregnant LB carried our stuff (once including a baby mattress) back to our city on a train.  My 26 year old KB almost threw out his back on one of these trips.  To say I love their shipping counter is pretty accurate. 

Usually 5 days later our Ikea massive shopping trip arrives to our apartment.  It is always a fun day as we unload our huge box full of drinking straws, napkins, new kid plates, fabric, organizing containers and other really unexciting items.  Usually I am excited about a new furniture purchase - like my new rocking chair for Baby Brown (name yet to be decided) or the toy organizers that have really helped clear up space in the kid's rooms. 

When it is all said and done, we are usually left with a pile of over sized boxes.  Typically we chunk them, but this last time KB got creative and made the kids a house with a yard and a fence.  This is something that I always considered doing, but ended up deciding it was too much work and forgot about it.  Thankfully KB is not as lazy as me and did it.  I made the mistake of saying out loud that we should paint the house and was then daily berated by my #1 until it happened.  

I cannot believe it, but it has been more than 2 months and it is still standing and they are still playing with it. 

Cheerleader and Scooby Doo

Once again, if anyone is offended by the Texas University : ) uniform, I leave it to you to send AB a uniform from a different university.  I myself am partial to UMHB if anyone is interested.  My kids love to play dress-up.  What kid doesn't?

The following captions are by KB -
Dance time!!!

Hug time!!!

Smile time!!!

My Two Guys

KB has informed me that he has started posting random pictures on the blog again.  Typically this prompts me to quickly add titles and/or explanations since he tends to post pictures that need a bit of explanation (especially when he posts several variations of the same picture in one post).  

I have no idea how many posts he has created but I will try to keep up : )

I Added A Few

Did you ever read my post about missing the train?  In case you did not, scroll down a few for this to make more sense - it contains a grainy picture of me in blue coat holding a fussy DB in a crowded train station.  Anyways, this is one of the problems with having phones with cameras, a point and shoot camera and a different camera that you really prefer to take all your pictures with but is too big to just throw in your purse.  You (I) forget to upload pictures from all my different devices.  Apparently I have not uploaded the pictures from my point and shoot to my computer since January.  This primarily because the flash is broken on the camera, and I did not realize I had even used it.  Apparently I did.

 

In my post where I said we did not know it snowed until we walked out of the door.  This is exactly what we saw because I am literally standing at the door to our building.  This is about when KB and I both said, "uh oh."

 

 

After absorbing the realization our day was about to get a lot more complicated, KB ran back up to our floor to grab the rain fly for the stroller...and I should have told him to grab AB's boots.  At least I put her in REI wool socks right?  Mommy fail.

 

Poor AB.  Little do you know you are about to spend a lot of time in a cold train station with wet feet thanks to mommy not realizing your little sparkly Mary Jane shoes will not hold up to the snow.  What are we thinking having another kid?  How are we going to survive?

When I say we stand by the side of the road and wait for taxis, you can mentally use the picture below because that is exactly what we are doing here in our usual "waiting for a taxi" spot - in this case for a taxi that never came.  Granted (and thankfully) usually there is a lot less snow and a lot more cars on the road.

crowded streets

I do not know what to say about this one except the obvious.  We live in a really crowded country, and unless you can translate that sign hanging up in the bottom picture, I am just going to tell you it is like this most weekends on this street.  If you can translate that sign, you probably already know enough you do not need my explanation for why it is so crowded.

 

This should also serve as an explination as to why we like to stay in B-town when we come to US.  We get people overload sometimes, and in B-town that is not a problem : )

 

 



Change in Sleep Patterns

I guess an unflattering picture of me while pregnant can work under the title "Change in Sleep Patterns."  Technically my sleep patterns changed back in the Fall when I first became pregnant and started getting up 3-5 times a night for bathroom runs yet slept like the dead everywhere in between.  Maybe the "Change in Sleep Patterns" is a prediction (guarantee) of what will happen in 2ish months.  Maybe I just stuck this picture here because I did not want to dedicate an entire post to just me and my belly yet wanted to satisfy those who were wanting to know what I looked like.  

 

Anyways, we head to beautiful warm Thailand tomorrow for a 1.5 week trip and I am sure we will be able to manage some family pictures of me in all my pregnant glory to at various beautiful locations to further satisfy those who want to see just how big I am.  Right now I am halfway to what I weighed when I delivered DB.  However, I am almost certain our two upcoming trips to Thailand will help me accomplish a similar weight gain.  I love Thailand.

 

 

I am writing the explanation to these pictures in the form of questions because I posted them in the wrong order. 

 

 

Why you might ask did I put my daughter to bed with a dirty face?

 

Also, you might ask why she is sleeping with a dirty face while in my bed?

 

The two-part question requires a two-part answer:

 

First -  In the picture below you are looking at my bedside table.  In case you cannot figure it out, that is a baby monitor screen, a pack of tissues, various lotions, some lanolin (which I use as chap stick) and my chocolate.  Why you might ask is chocolate on my bedside table?  Well, that day during my nap time I wanted chocolate and I ate some just before going to sleep.  I might even well deserve future cavities to show for it one day, but on that day, I was happy about eating my imported dark chocolate before my nap time and falling blissfully a sleep while still tasting its wonderful flavor.

 

So, back to the pictures of AB with a dirty face.  Basically she ate my imported dark chocolate...sniffle sniffle.  When I asked her about it the next day she said, "mommy I did not eat it, I tasted it."  Ahhh, she is learning early to blur the lines that fool us all into believing things like "size 12 is really the new size 8."



 

Second: Why was AB in my bed?  In preparation of baby #3, we have decided to attempt AB and DB sleeping together in the same bed - AB's bed pulls out to create a king size bed.  Below is a picture from our inaugural evening.  It is our hope that DB and AB can sleep in the same room so we do not have to convert the office to another bedroom.  The office functions as an office, language study room, exercise room, sometimes guest bedroom and future home school room.  Life would be easier if it could stay that way.

 

Because AB does not immediately go to sleep in the evenings and enjoys passing her time reading books, we have let her hang out in our bed with her books while DB goes to sleep.  Eventually we quietly move AB to the bed beside DB...very quietly because if he wakes up, everyone will be awake till at least 11:30 - so we have learned.  

 

 

Don't they look so ready to fall into peaceful slumber?  Believe it or not, the evening of this photo it was a bit of a disaster : )

 

This was hours after we DB fell asleep and we put AB in bed with him.

I am happy to say after about 3 weeks of the kids sleeping together, it has gradually gotten better and better.  They no longer wake each other up at 5:30am and even made it to 7:45 one Saturday morning before tackling each other (second favorite way to wake each other up - the first is to hit the other with a hard toy).

Birthdays

AB and DB both had birthdays in January.  AB's birthday was a bit odd since we left the US the evening before her birthday and landed here at 11:30pm on her birthday.  I am glad dates are not all that important to her yet, because she pretty much missed her birthday.  However the flight attendants were really nice on our flight and brought her a sundae made with first class ice cream to celebrate her birthday.  Ironically this is the second time we left the US the day before her birthday and landed late on the evening of her birthday, but thankfully this time she did not get deported to Hong Kong because of a visa issue 2 hours after we landed. 

 

Because we essentially flew past (get it...we literally flew past/through it) her birthday and DB's birthday is just 2 weeks later, we decided to wait and have them open their presents at the same time.  At this point they really do not know the difference, and I think it was fun for them. 

 

Feel free to make fun of the bag I used for DB, but if you saw the selection of gift bags available here, you too would have picked out the bear bag with the bow glued on it for your 2 year old little boy.  

 

Because of the time of the year of AB and DB's birthdays, and because all of our kid's friends live on the four corners of this city, and because to see each other we all have to haul our families to the side of the road and wait an undetermined amount of time in the freezing cold to hopefully hail a taxi to ride 30 minutes to an hour across the city, I decided to combine their birthday celebrations and further combine them to a time when everyone was going to be at our apartment anyways.  We celebrated a full month after AB's birthday.

Here is AB's cake.  As expected the very yellow butter did make my purple a little grey/brownish.  I also gave up on trying to make her a princess cake.  I have learned that dots are pretty fool-proof, and I imagine future cakes will be covered in them. 

 

DB had a cookie cake.  I made it pretty late in the evening  and was extremely grateful for the friend who gave me these little race car sugar decals.  I apparently ran out of energy and those little things saved me from putting dots all over his cake too.

 

 

Not to confuse them or anything, but I made cupcakes for them while we were in the US and celebrated their birthday's with both sides of the family.  They really made out well on the birthday celebrations this year.