Ahead of the Christmas Rush!

Well, Thanksgiving is just a few days away! We're going to have some delicious meals with friends Thursday and Saturday. Wanna know the best part? I don't have to cook. Woohoo!!!!

I'm already planning for Christmas, too, much to Adam's chagrin. Since we have to send everything overseas anyway, might as well get it done now, right? We're even doing Christmas cards! Talk about on the ball! (Well, we're doing better than last year...)

Family Snowfall Cocoa Christmas

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Alphabets, presents, and hot glue.

K is learning to read! It's hard to believe that he's old enough to do it, but he's definitely ready. He and A were going over the letters and sounds of the alphabet the other night as I was cleaning up the kitchen. What I heard confirmed my suspicions that K is definitely his father's son: "Q, /qwo/, queen. R, /rrr/, rat. S, /sss/, pass gas. Bwahaha! Daddy, let's do 'G' now!" (he apparently wanted to say "pass gas" again...) I can't wait to see what Risa learns. Adam may be fired as the phonics teacher soon. K's actually read the first two "Hooked on Phonics" books. We're pretty proud of him.

R's 3rd birthday was this last Friday...



In anticipation of the upcoming celebration I wrapped her presents a week prior to that. She noticed them sitting in my bedroom, but obviously wasn't allowed to open them until her party. Every day when she got off the preschool bus, she asked if she could open them. She then asked again twice on the way to our building, just inside our building door, at the top of the stairs, and at our apartment door. Each time I said it wasn't Friday yet, so she had to wait. By Wednesday, she asked no more. I think she was tired of hearing "no". I think that next year I won't wrap them until the day before so the poor girl can drum up some excitement for them! She had a great time, though, and she loves getting bigger so that she can do everything that K is doing.

I, Reb, have apparently become well known among the foreign community here. Now, I would have hoped that it would be due to some such thing as my exceptional prowess as a homemaker or my phenomenal cake-decorating abilities . Alas, it's not to be. Little did I know that my idea of hot-gluing mosquito netting onto our poorly-made screens would be such a hit! Not only do I keep out detestable insects such as mosquitoes and flies, but I've made it easier for others to do it as well! Woohoo! Hot glue is my new favorite adhesive.

Sand Piles and Rollerblades

As the weather gets nicer, we get to go outside and play more. On one of our walks we discovered this huge mound of sand behind a building. Since we don’t have a sandbox in our apartment complex (scratch that…we don’t have anything resembling a playground) we decided to let them play in the sand. Over the course of two days the kids single-handedly pushed the whole pile down. They had a lot of fun playing with their sand toys from Thailand; we’re just hoping that a bunch of them aren’t still buried in the sand pile. K’s monster trucks also met an early demise at the mound. At any one time they were missing in the sand or flying through the air over the sand pile. (Mommy and Daddy didn’t think that was so funny after awhile.) We’re now on the hunt for another tall pile to mow down. K and R also started using their rollerblades in the apartment. Since two of R’s wheels lock, she can zip around the apartment. K, however, doesn’t have locking wheels so he’s a little more timid. He actually reminds me of a giraffe on rollerblades. You know… the stiff, gangly legs rolling everywhere but forward in an orderly fashion. (If any of you are thinking of A doing the same thing, you would be correct!) I think that A is living vicariously through K’s learning process. It will be a great day when K (and A) learn to use rollerblades like a big boy. We’re working on it!

Potty Training & Barbie-Q’s (i.e. Barbies)

We hit a small snag in R’s potty training regimen a couple weeks ago. We ran out of pull-ups for nighttime accidents. Since we can’t find any here we felt we should resort to diapers, so we (meaning Reb) wouldn’t be washing her sheets every day. Luckily for us, however, we found an even better alternative to diapers! Diaper pads. These things are literally absorbent diaper material without any of the closures. We just put them on R at night and it does the trick. Yay! It has also worked to potty train mommy and daddy. There isn’t a night that goes by that we don’t wake her up around midnight to go. If she goes so many nights without wetting her pants, she gets a Barbie-Q. (That’s what she calls Barbies.) One night she got a mermaid one with long straight blond hair. After one night of sleep, this is what the Barbie-Q’s hair looked like.



What a doggone waste of good hair…

Colds, Purple Busses, and Girls

R got a cold the other day and she really exhibited an amazing ability to learn! The poor girl was so full of mucus that she couldn’t talk without coughing. All of a sudden, while trying to drink, she gagged and a bunch of it came up. You know when you’re trying to separate egg whites from the yolks and the egg whites are going everywhere while you try to direct them into the bowl? Egg whites kind of have that slimy, gooey you-can’t-get-a-grasp-on them-before-they-slip-through-your-fingers feeling, right? That’s the same feeling that mucus from a two-year-old’s stomach feels when you’re trying to catch it, but you have nowhere to direct it. What a mess.

After that pitiful episode, I cuddled R on the couch with a towel on her so she wouldn’t get stuff everywhere again. In the midst of all this misery, R’s learning mechanisms were working overtime. She eventually dropped her towel on the floor and went back to playing. Suddenly, I saw her throw the toy she was playing with on the floor and make a beeline for her towel. She prostrated herself on the towel and coughed up a storm. No gagging, though. I told her she did a good job and then went back to my work. Being the mom who worries way too much when her kids are sick, I kept an eye on R the rest of the morning. That poor girl definitely didn’t want to gag everywhere again. Every time she felt a cough coming on, she’d drop what she was doing and run and throw herself down on the towel until her coughing fit was over. Unfortunately for her, she was running back and forth too much to get anything done but exercise.

We were supposed to go to our meeting that Sunday morning, but I couldn’t imagine having R throw herself down on her towel in the middle of the meeting hall! We might’ve gotten a few weird looks, so I kept her home.

I also have to add this because I thought it was cute. K’s school bus is a lovely mustard yellow color. It’s really easy to see coming. R knows that she’s going to preschool in the fall and she’s pretty excited about it. Today as we were walking to get K and bring him home, she asked me if her school bus could be purple. (I think purple is her current favorite color.) I told her we’d talk to her teachers about it when she starts school. That’s it. End of story. I know it’s better to have been there to see it, but maybe someone will find it humorous! Mom? Dad? Are you laughing?

One more thing. I don’t think I have to worry about K kissing any girls soon. I was asking the kids if I should shower before A gets home from work. R, of course, said “no”. I can't figure it out, but she never wants me to do that. K, on the other hand, said “yeah. That way you can smell good and daddy will loooooove ya and daaaance with ya. And if he kisses you on the mouth, me and R will say ‘eeeewwww, that’s disGUSting.’” All of this was said with a very stuffy nose, which makes it even funnier coming from my 4-year old.

Sleepovers!

Our kids are growing up. I hate to say it, but it’s happening. K had his first sleepover a couple weekends ago. He’s 4.5 years old. His friend is, too. Some may ask why I got the bright idea to invite another 4.5 year old boy to our house to sleep over. After I did it, I realized all kinds of things could go wrong: 1. his friend could get freaked out in the middle of the night and we would have no way to get him home. 2. he could get really bored and decide he wanted to go home. Talk about being shunned as a cool parent! (yes, I did forget that he’s four. ) or 3. our kids could decide that they didn’t want to play with him, so instead go play by themselves, leaving the poor friend to his own devices all night. Once again, I forgot that he was four and I’m sure by now that everyone realizes this is not K’s father writing. Yes, A apparently isn’t quite as worried about being shunned by K’s preschool friends.

Anyway, he rode home with K on the school bus one Friday afternoon and both boys nearly jumped off the bus they were so excited about the sleepover. K practically screamed the entire way home and J, his friend, kept asking all kinds of questions. The night turned out pretty well, actually. I had a couple activities for them to do, and the kids played really well together. After baths I made some popcorn from our awesome whirly-pop and the kids watched a movie. K and J slept on K’s bed after we soothed K’s worries that he would fall off the bed since he had half the space in which to sleep. R, of course, had to be in on everything, so she was at the foot of K’s bed, hanging out. Both boys passed out, but R was hanging in there. She just wouldn't go to sleep. Well, since J got to come to our house for a sleepover, the next Friday, K got to go to J’s house for a sleepover. J’s mom and I decided that she would pick K up at our apartment since she wouldn’t be home to get J from the school bus. (Her father, who speaks only Chinese was picking J up.) Apparently, even though we discussed this with K, he had other ideas. He and J convinced their preschool teachers that K was supposed to ride the bus to J’s house, so that’s what they did. Everyone please say “LAWSUIT waiting to happen”. It turned out okay, but K did get a talk. The boys must’ve had fun because we didn’t hear anything from them most of the night. While I was on the computer, we got a message from J’s dad. This is what he wrote:

“I put J and K on the same bed and I put a big yellow Teddy Bear next to K and then I left and closed their door. Then I sat down to listen to their conversation. K said 'it is so nice to have a sleep over tonight.' J said, 'Yeah! Where is my mom?' Then K said, 'She's gone. I think that she went downstairs with your daddy.' J said, 'Really?!' K said, 'Yeah! I'm a little bit scared because they are gone.' J said, 'Don't Be scared, don't talk, just go to sleep.' K said, 'OK'. After two minutes they were both out.”

Talk about hilarious! I could just imagine what was going through those boys’ minds. Priceless, just priceless. Unfortunately, things have magnified. K came home today and said that he wants to have a sleepover with more of his classmates. Unfortunately, they don’t speak English. This could be interesting…