Now We Are Six

We celebrated our precious girl's birthday number six a few days ago. I always thought families with children who were, say, nine years old, were unimaginably far along. We'll be there in no time, it seems. But for this moment, we are going to savor six.

I think Emmy's most salient characteristic, in our minds, continues to be her BIG imagination. She constantly narrates story lines, and now she has a little brother willing and able to participate in her play, which is big fun for both of them. They get along beautifully 80% of the time. The other 20...well, such is life with siblings. Emmy is an emotional girl of high highs and low lows. She is every bit the little girl and loves lots of girly things, from ponies to fairies to princesses. She prefers to wear dresses and shuns shorts as "for boys".

She loves to draw and color, loves, loves, loves to be read to, and is a very capable reader herself, reading more on her own every day. We're currently rereading the Narnia series with her (she never tires of these stories, and you can often find her poking around in our wardrobe that stands in the upstairs hallway!), and she's begun watching the BBC version of the stories (thank you, Mitchells!), which is so very exciting for her. Her newest passion is recording her own stories on the computer, and she has spent hours doing this in the last couple of weeks. She is so very helpful around the house, putting away utensils, setting the table, folding small items of laundry, and helping with her brothers in a myriad of ways. I don't know what I would do without her.

We had a sweet family day celebrating, with everything chosen by the birthday girl. Here are some pictures from her big day...

The traditional birthday morning cupcake in bed

Sharing with Brother ("Just ONE bite.")

An early morning birthday call from America. What fun!

Playing a game that she got for her birthday with Daddy.

Ready to go to the pool, with their cool new goggles from Papa Jeff and Granna!

The Little Mermaid cake requested by the birthday girl. As always, I made it yummy and Tim made it pretty.

"Thank you, Papa Jeff and Granna! I love it!"

Happy birthday to our firstborn gift from God. You are loved to no end, little girl.

Get Your Motor Runnin'...

Bike riding is all the rage at our house these days. Some early mornings and most late afternoons find us out tearin' up the sois (streets) in our moobaan (neighborhood). Just a little Thai lesson for you there. I love that we're in this fun stage. I love it that both of my 'big kids' can ride independently now, and their little bodies are getting all kinds of good and wholesome exercise. Won't it be fun when our little guy is big enough to sit in the baby seat and we can all ride?

These two generally don't ride ordinary bicycles. When Emmy's in charge of the pretending, she's a princess on her steed Snowy, Asa is a prince on his noble Greenie, and Julian is a princeling in his royal carriage, pushed, of course, by the queen. When Asa's in charge, he's a "motorcycle man". There are motorcyles everywhere here- motorcyle taxis, the friendly motorcycle mailman, scores of motorcycles in traffic, families of 5 on motorcycles- so the concept is very salient to him.

This fellow began his riding career maybe three weeks ago. Pedaling was completely unknown and steering was iffy. He leaped the learning curve, however, and in no time he could start himself from standing still, turn around, and even go over the monstrous speed bumps. He rides an "ultraman" bicycle that was passed down to us by a neighbor not long after we got to Thailand. When we're a few doors down from our house, we have to stop and I have to say that I don't know where our house is, can he please help me? Then he rides ahead very earnestly and exclaims, with his characteristic grin, "There it is!"

Isn't it too perfect that her bicycle has streamers on the handlebars? And you can't see it here, but the little wrappy thing going across the handlebars says, "Too Sweet". She likes to have that facing out so that everyone can see it while she rides.

Like all good safety conscious Americans, we wear our helmets. No one wears a bike helmet here. I've never seen a single person on a bicycle, from very young child to very elderly person, wearing a helmet. So I often wonder, as we go toodling down the street and ride up to the little playground that we frequent, what do people think about us? Just one more way we don't exactly blend in...

An unrelated but fun story...The other day, we were out at our usual late afternoon time, after naps and after the sun has ceased its relentless onslaught. This is also the time that the school vans (same concept as school buses but they're minivans, some in serious disrepair) come through our neighborhood to drop children off. Being an obvious westerner in Thailand, people often like to practice any English they know on you. So you might be walking past a group of people and someone will call out, "Hell-ooo!" This particular afternoon, a school van drove by with many young faces peering through the open windows, and I heard someone call out, "Good morning!" I laughed and replied, "Good morning!" Then another voice cried out, "I love you!" Made me smile.

Sometimes I watch them and I think, Today, this moment, is their childhood.

And just for interest's sake...when we rode to the playground the other day, this man was hacking away at the nearby banana trees with his machete. Here he is carrying his wii (bunch) of bananas home, past the neighborhood spirit house.

Just Julian

I'm afraid that the grandparents have been denied an adequate volume of pictures of this boy lately, so I'm going to try to make up for that. I found myself with some time to devote solely to him the other day (a rare commodity in a household with three littles), so we took a slew of pictures.

We've been through a bit of a rough patch with Julian lately, with a number of challenging physical symptoms and a random and frightening salmonella occurrence. We have been to the doctor with him more in the last two months than I think we have been total with each of the other two. But that which is hard won is dearly treasured. We're in a much better place now, thanks be to God, and it thrills my heart to see him looking plump and happy. Here are a bevy of images of our newly-turned five month old...


He's becoming quite interactive, which is fun for the whole family. Emmy is the sweet helper, going to him when he's fussy and taking toys to him. Asa likes to lie next to "Du-len" and I have to keep my eye on him, as he's turning into quite the rough and tumble, stick wielding little boy. I hear things like, "Du-len! My finger's not your dinner!", and then rush to remove the finger from the vicinity of the baby's mouth. It's fun to think about the adventures those two will have together.

He likes to kick his legs fiercely, arch his back, reach for things, talk (his favorite word currently is aaa-ga), and laugh when kissed on the neck . He's a fan of the swing, the playmat, and his rocking seat, but all in fairly short bursts; if you put him in a corner for long he lets you know he's not happy. He usually sits in his swing by the table during meals, until he gets fussy and moves to my lap, at which point he becomes passionate about gaining control of my glass and taking sips of water. His favorite place to be is riding along with his mommy and daddy, and he's very much the content marsupial when worn in a sling.

We're still working on the theory that he has a milk protein allergy, so I've restricted my diet quite a bit, and, as you can see, his skin is looking much better. The eczema is still very much there and becomes more inflamed at different times (when he's angry, for instance!), but most days it is so much lighter and less prominent than it was. As I said, thrills my heart.

He and I spend a lot of time together, day and night. He's not cooperative with the sleeping all night idea yet, but as his weight gain has been a matter of concern, I've been happy (well, usually; it's really a challenge to be happy in the wee hours) to feed him whenever he seems to need it.

He has the most adorable crooked smile, and he often wrinkles his nose when he smiles. Too cute. Oh, and we've been impressed by his dexterity...he wears socks on his hands/arms when he sleeps so that he doesn't scratch his head and leave ghastly looking marks. Frequently as of late we'll find that he's pulled the sock of off his left arm, and we were puzzled about how he was managing it, as the socks are pretty tight, until I went in recently and caught him in the act. He had his left hand on top of his head, his right hand on top of his left, and was pulling with all his might. Pretty impressive for a little guy!