This and That

It has been quite a week here. But more about that later. Right now I have a photo backlog...

In early June (or was it late May?) we went up to Khao Yai National Park, a great outdoors sort of place we really like that's about 3 hours north of us. It's nice to be out in the jungles of Thailand. It was a pretty low scale wildlife day, as there were no elephant sightings, and only one monkey, but he sat and devoured the bananas we threw to him, peeling them efficiently with his limber little hands and downing them as quickly as we could provide them. Speaking of monkeys, isn't this little guy the cutest you've seen?

This waterfall was absolutely magnificent...

...but this little miracle was even more so!

This is part of the group we went with, comprised mostly of the college interns that have spent the summer here with us working alongside us. They have been a real blessing to us as a team and as a family.

When I said there wasn't much wildlife before, I forgot about the leeches. They were abundant. And incredibly agile. I always thought leeches were flattish and attached themselves flatly to your skin, but these guys are long and tubular, and you could actually see them standing up on one end on the trail, waving their bodies around looking for someone to latch onto! Really gross. They were tenacious, and our whole family got leech bites except for our little guys, who were riding up high...



Asa doing battle with the tiger at the welcome center. He's an actual park native, killed some years ago and now he graces the welcome center as a warning to all visitors to beware the wildlife!

Changing course, here's Emmy arabesque-ing during the mini ballet class she took a number of weeks ago at the church, lead by two lovely ballerinas who are part of the intern group. Such fun!

We decided to forgo the embassy 4th of July shindig this year, thinking that the late hour and travel would be too much with an infant, so we had a picnic at our nearby King's park, and it was perfect. Hot dogs, chips and salsa, watermelon and apple pie. A good time was had by all and we were home for bedtime! You can see in this picture that Emmy recently lost her other top tooth. That makes all 4 front ones and she looks so beautifully like a growing up little girl!



Julian considers our country's history...these flags were a project with Daddy that morning.

Enjoying the sand and water table Daddy recently built for them. You can see part of our little garden in the background. It's looking pretty wild out there, but no produce yet. We're novices, so we'll see what comes of it.

Finally, here's our Em and Melanie being silly together, which is what they do best. Melanie worked with us for two years and has just returned to the U.S. to apply for and prepare to come back and work long-term. She has been a great friend and 'auntie', and we miss her very much!

Time to Eat!

Our smallest member celebrated his 6 month birthday (or half-y birthday, as Em so cleverly called it...) this week. We celebrated yesterday by awarding him his long awaited first meal at the table. He's been lunging for my food for quite some time and would certainly have injured himself with my fork by now had I not been very diligent. So we mixed up some rice cereal, all gathered around for the big event, and watched as he devoured his food. No hesitation whatsoever. And so it begins!

My favorite new Julian thing is a sleeping quirk- he loves to sleep with a blanket over his face. When I put him down to sleep, I always put a lightweight blanket on him, and he immediately begins to pull it up. Often I'll go in later and find him sound asleep with his head completely covered. I thought this was alarming at first, but he has lots of breathing room. Makes me think he might become attached to a blanket as his lovey...

Here he is at his checkup. He weighed 16.7 pounds, putting him between 25-50% for weight, and was 28 inches long, putting him at the top of the chart for height. His eczema has improved dramatically, so I will be continuing to avoid dairy for the foreseeable future. Thanks be to God for the good health of this little one!

A note about his doctor's mask...lots of people here wear these face masks. We regularly see a number of people at the hospital (which is where all doctor's appointments happen) with them, presumably protecting themselves from germs or perhaps protecting others from their own germs. I'm not sure if people have a stash of masks at home or if they'll give them to you at the desk, or what exactly. However, when we went to the hospital this week, there were an overwhelming number of people wearing them. Probably 80% of both staff and patients and families. Even little babies! We asked the pediatrician about it and she said people are concerned about the flu. Makes you want to wash your hands...

Waiting for the appointment, conspicuously mask-free...

On a completely unrelated note, our grocery store has begun selling free range chickens. This is a good thing. However, the free range chicken people, perhaps in their quest to be as natural as possible, feel the need to leave the head (attached to a very LONG neck) and the feet on these particular birds. This turns preparing dinner into some kind of horror movie! I found myself at the sink this afternoon, getting this chicken ready to go into the oven, trying to avoid its beady little eye and sharp little claws, talking out loud to myself, "It's okay. This is not a big deal. I'm like a pioneer!" However, I remained unconvinced, and there was a great deal of cringing involved in the process. Emmy pronounced it "creepy", and I concur. Mr. Chicken's remains are down there now, bubbling away in a pot of water making broth, and I have to admit that I turned my head as I dumped him into the pot. Yikes!

Belly Laughs

This video makes me so happy. Please excuse the fact that I sound (and look) remarkably like Miss Piggy. Anything for a baby laugh...

We are loving, loving, loving this baby boy.
He'll be six months old soon!

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!