Bangkok and Growing Babies

The current political situation has caused me to ponder Bangkok a great deal lately...this place we've come to call home (baan thii song, in Thai- home number two). I was just watching this coverage on CNN.com, and I found myself getting teary. It surprised me, but I realized it's because I have truly come to love Thailand, and Bangkok, and I'm sad about the current situation. If you have a few minutes and sufficient interest, the three videos further down on the sidebar are particularly interesting and indicative of Thailand, its people, and the current situation. The reporter goes up north to meet with a village, which I love, and they pass around coconuts and do the traditional Songkran hand washing ceremony at the end (the part that made me cry:). This report offers really good insight, I think, into the current crisis, and will help you to pray, if you will do that.

As I'm pondering Bangkok, I'm thinking Bangkok is, to me...

-our neighbors sitting at the playground with all the children playing on the rusty, broken slides

-worshiping with our church community in Thai- loving the singing, understanding very little of the sermon, hoping for Yu's massaman curry on the lunch buffet afterward
-the occasional stroll through the night market with a mango shake, maybe finding a cute 100 baht dress for Em
-sitting down to a plate of pad thai from our favorite vendor with Tim after the kids have gone to bed
-downtown with its city heat, traffic, pollution, good restaurants, the river
-our area with all of its people, its busyness, its dirty, bumpy roads still suffering from flood damage
-the skytrain, taxis, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, songtaews, food vendors everywhere (some riding motorcycles with grills attached- food smoking away as they drive- this is efficiency!), cars, cars, cars, dogs, the occasional cow, water buffalo or elephant
-glittering temples, dirty buildings, skyscrapers and wood/corrugated tin homes, pieced together to keep out the elements
-heat, tropical birds and tropical flowers
-Lizards, big...

...and small...

-an evening trip to the king's park, kids playing on the playground with the pulsing beat of group aerobics in the street nearby
-a 7-11 on every corner
-buying cold watermelon from a street cart
-Emmy's class of many cultures and the gift of the community at her school
-greeting with a wai
-people from all over the country that come to find work and send money back home
-going to the market for a fruit shake, Vietnamese spring rolls, some bananas and flowers
-smiles
-people loving our little, light-skinned, light-haired children
-really good food (I think I mentioned that)
Y'all come see us! (when the travel bans are lifted...:)

Closer to home, I must share that our little man is beginning to walk on his own. He's taking his time, that one, but that's his way- he's liked to keep us guessing from the beginning. He is a joy. And a pleasure. And he's incredibly cute. Wow, we're thankful for him...

(I'm not sure why all of our video looks like it was shot in 1973...I think it might be because Tim compresses it so much)

And these are just bonus...

All Quiet

There were some disturbing, violent developments in Bangkok's political demonstrations yesterday. If at any point you want to read the latest, the Bangkok Post is a good place to do so. It's quiet here this Sunday morning, and we're preparing to go to church, which will be an opportunity to pray with our Thai friends for this country.

It's Songkran this week, the traditional Thai New Year, and many people have left Bangkok to visit their homes. Many of the red shirt protesters are from the countryside, so it remains to be seen how the protests will affect the usually spirited celebration of Songkran, and vice versa. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of Em from school on Friday, when they had a school-wide Songkran celebration and were invited to wear traditional Thai clothing...

Thank you for praying for Thailand and for us!

Still Here

There's been quite a bit happening lately in this part of the world. Big political protests, but we've seen none of it up close. Our closest effect was that Emmy's school was canceled one day for fear of many students not being able to travel on the roads to school. If you're interested to read a bit of the latest, you can do so here And one of the more bizarre, bloody aspects can be read about here. All in all, things have been peaceful, and we're thankful for that.

This might be one of my favorite picture duos of all time...

When he's not attacking Khaw Meow, Julian is standing and cruising all the time, so we imagine it won't be too long until we'll have another walker in the house. His skin and weight issues have been causing me a lot of anxiety as of late, so we're prayerfully considering next steps, possibly including allergy testing. We've taken a stab at eliminating gluten from our diets this week, which has been a challenge, and haven't seen any improvement...it's all very inexact and confusing, but I'm trying to keep a proper perspective on it. I know there are much harder roads we could be walking. I took him to his pediatrician today (for an early 15 month appointment and to assuage my concerns) and she was overall very pleased with his Royal Adorableness, feeling that he's developing well and is altogether delightful (or maybe that's just my perspective...), but we need to focus on getting as many calories into him as possible. He diet is very healthy, just quite lean, and I long to spoon some whole fat yogurt or heavy cream into his cute little mouth!

So we've told him when he's hungry, just go to the fridge and help himself.

Here's Asa with his favorite friend, Yu, having their weekly after church lunch date. He sits in the midst of a group of women and eats his rice and veggies.

And enjoying some outside water play with his brother, a fantastic way to battle this intense heat...

Asa is at an age where his physical and verbal cuteness combine to be almost too much at times. He keeps us smiling with the things that come out of his mouth, and here are a few of our recent favorites...

-"Daddy, I bodged it!" (when playing Dodge Ball with Daddy)
-"Mommy, you be a robert and I'll catch you." (robber)
-We've had a wee bit of an issue (HUGE) with a downward spiral of words and attitudes of little ones toward one another. So we've been really working on 'building each other up' instead of 'tearing each other down' (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Asa told Tim the other day, with great earnestness, "Daddy, I'm going to start building Khaw Meow up and not tearing him down by hitting and kicking him."
- While I was standing at the sink recently, washing dishes..
Asa: Did your first husband die?
Me: (knowing he was in imagination mode...) Um, I guess so...
Asa: Can I be your second husband?
Me: Well, sure.
Asa: Good. I haven't been having a life (wife), and I've been sad because I haven't been having a life.
-And of course, our old favorite- "Amekiwa" (America:)

This is a schedule Em made for herself the other day. What a delightful routine, eh? Emmy is devouring books these days, which makes her mama so happy. She's been enjoying the Magic Tree House series as of late, and is also partial to American Girl books. I often look at her and squint my eyes, seeing that first little baby that came into our lives. Oh, for the grace to enjoy each day with these precious gifts!

A really neat development in Emmy's life has been the start of piano lessons. She's taking lessons from our dear friend Catherine, who is also her music teacher at school. I'm going through right along with her, and we've mastered such classics as "Merrily We Roll Along" and the introduction to "Ode to Joy". Here she is composing her own song, a recent assignment.

Her work in progress

Performing her composition

I had the fun of helping in her classroom this week when they made cookies on 'U.S.A. Day', a part of their American curriculum. It's an interesting concept, given that the entire first grade has only a few American citizens. It does give the kids the opportunity to learn some basics about America's unique history and democracy, which is valuable, and the day is a big hit with the children, as they do fun things like play baseball, have a picnic, and have a U.S.A. parade, in which the first graders ride scooters and bikes and throw candy to eager onlookers. We were both able to go that afternoon and enjoy the festivity.


In a completely unrelated vein, it's mango season! Which is a happy time of devouring fresh mangoes, mango shakes and mango and sticky rice. One of these years when I have rekindled my dairy flame, I'll have to give mango ice cream a go.

And here's our warrior, never without his sword, who can often be heard striking fear into the hearts of all (English speakers) on the playground, with proclamations such as, "The Terror of the Seven Seas!" Watch out, Amekiwa, he'll be coming your way before long!

Year of the Tiger

Well, we've had a woeful lack of snow around here. You just can't expect it in 90-something degree weather. The hot season is upon us and it is HOT. Makes me tremble to think what April, the hottest month, will hold. While we've had no snow, we have had tigers...

and lions...

...and, less glamorously, lots of germs.

But first things first. We had the opportunity to go up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to help with a conference for people working in south Asia, mainly for Tim to lead worship. So we had a lovely time getting to know some lovely people and the kids got to do a VBS led by some really great folks who came from Atlanta for that purpose. What a blessing for us. Emmy now has new friends who live elsewhere in Asia and is part of a 'girls club' that wears water bottle cap rings and has plans to keep in communication via email. We took her out of school for a few days for our trip, but as it turned out, her grade was closed for the week because of a number of H1N1 cases.

We had done elephants, monkeys and snakes before, so we decided to enjoy some tigers this time around, which was a treat.

Isn't he beautiful? I just wanted to show you that they were, in fact, alive. They were very docile, but they insist that they don't drug them; they're just trained to be around people and apparently are naturally lethargic in the heat of the day. I do hope that's true. The visits are also highly supervised. They don't allow children in with the adult tigers (seems like a good precaution), so we enjoyed the 4 month olds, and they were indeed beautiful. Just look at those paws- it was fun to touch them!

Chinese New Year coincided with Valentine's Day weekend this year, and we were invited to celebrate with some friends who had quite a party. Tim was working and missed the fun, but I'm glad we went ahead. I have a vivid memory of being at Epcot as a child, in the China area, watching dancing dragons, and it was amazing to stand in a friend's yard and watching dancing lions as an adult! I wonder if our children will remember it? Perhaps Emmy will; probably she'll remember that she held her hands over her ears the whole time as the accompanying drums were quite loud!

Emmy receiving her 'red envelope' at the end of the party. These are traditionally given (with money inside) to celebrate the New Year.

Valentine's Day was quiet. We had a little fun with breakfast, and then I had a small scavenger hunt for the kiddos. Unfortunately, the Wretched Stomach Bug of 2010 had hit Asa by then, so only Emmy really enjoyed this activity. Still, it was sweet...

finding a clue

treasure!

This book was part of their treasure, and I highly recommend it, especially for adventure loving boys like ours. We didn't know until we read it that one of the characters is named Asa! Bonus!

(As an aside, we ordered books for the holidays from betterworldbooks.com, and I highly recommend them because a) they raise funds for global literacy, b) they save books from landfills by specializing in used books (almost all of the ones we ordered were used and former library books from around the States, but we have ordered new from them too and have been pleased with everything) and c) they ship anywhere in the world (free in the U.S.!). That's my little plug.

This is what most of Valentine's Day looked like, an on the couch, watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sort of day. Delightful movie, by the way. Asa was the only one suffering at this point, but Julian began reminding us what he'd had for breakfast about lunchtime and Tim joined in the fun later that afternoon. The girls remained well, amazingly. Girl power!

Just for fun, because I love the expressiveness of this child!

Dancer, Artist, Warrior

Any day (and week and month) that begins with an overflowing (cloth) diaper, oozing its murky contents on to every available crib surface, causes one to enter with a certain level of caution and suspicion. This wasn't our most stellar day. But Julian cheered me considerably after lunch with his enthusiasm for dance, which I captured on video. I wanted to post it, but, alas, he was scantily clad, and we're a little funny about that. I'm going to mail it to grandparents, but if you'd like a good laugh, let me know and I'll send it your way.

A few recent things:

Emmy's first art show, displaying her work from the first semester of first grade.

Khaw Meow is doing just fine, and becoming an integral part of the family.

He's cute with clothes on, too...

Sometimes, on Tim's day off, he'll take Asa on a boys' adventure outing, often riding the soeng taew to the King's Park for some treehouse/paddleboat fun. If we time it just right, they go during Ju's nap, and it's amazingly great for me. They come back all hot and sweaty and sometimes bring somtam, chicken and sticky rice for lunch...yummy.


This guy is our little warrior. He emerges from his bedroom each morning, clad in next to nothing, with a sword in each hand. He directs me to be nefarious characters and dragons all day long so that he can defeat me. He only wants to read books with battles (hard to come by in appropriate form for a 3 year old), and scours every book carefully for any picture of swords, shields, spears, even guns. He'll take shovels and machinery if no pictures of weaponry are available. I often coerce him to read Beatrix Potter, Robert McCloskey and Winnie the Pooh, and he enjoys them once we're into them. He also loves fairy tales, because he loves the princes with swords.

After some recent, ahem, incidents, I'm really trying to develop his sense of knightly honor and valor to extend to love for his siblings. Our recent drill has gone like this:

Me: "What is your duty?"
Asa (standing at attention): "To protect Julian!"

It's working, too. He still occasionally bops him on the head with a sword, but he's becoming quite aware of the need to close doors so our little bottom scootcher doesn't head for the hills (or the stairs), and that sort of thing.

And this was fun...our friend Catherine brought us polynesian sauce from her trip home over Christmas, so we had a taste of home!