can the love of all things two-wheeled be a genetic trait?

Many of you know that Matt loves all things with two wheels.  Bikes, dirt bikes, motorcycles.... loves them!  

[Actually, I'm not sure Matt loves our electric scooter.  He is glad that I love it.  He is thankful that it gives me freedom to cover some territory with the kids in tow.  And he uses it to take the girls to school (since two girls won't fit on one bike).  But, all in all, I think his basic opinion of an electric scooter is not very favorable.  He thinks it's wimpy (and you must admit that it hardly compares to a motorcycle, even a little 250 cc has a lot more power than our scooter.)  Plus, he likes to point out that his peddle bike is just as fast as the scooter - and he's right. When we go out together I can pull ahead of him on some steep hills, but for the most part, he keeps pace with the scooter!]

Anyways, back to the love of most-all-things two wheeled. I think it might be a genetic trait.  And I am sure that Isaac got it.  

It's like Isaac has some sort of magnetic pull towards everything two-wheeled.  Bikes, motorcycles, even his big sister's purple unicorn bike with training wheels.  He loves them.  Wants to ride them, wants to touch them, wants to play with them.  

After lunch Matt got down his "real bike" (as opposed to the bike he rides most days, the one with a kid seat that he refers to as his 'grocery getter bike').  He 'parks' his real bike in our apartment, hanging it from the ceiling in the extra bedroom.  Every wife of a bike-lover knows that a bike that nice is not going to be left in some outdoor parking garage, and every husband in a cramped apartment in Asia knows that floor space is a premium..... so we landed on the "hang the bike from the ceiling" solution. 

So Matt gets his bike down and starts gearing up for an afternoon ride.  Isaac was so engaged in everything Matt did, I'm pretty sure he thought he was going too.  It was pure disappointment when Matt walked out the door with the bike and Isaac headed towards his bed for a nap :(  

I can't wait for them to go on rides together.  Isaac already loves to ride in the kid seat behind Matt.  And it won't be too many more years before he's ready for a bike with training wheels.  The next thing I know, the two of them will be headed out for a long morning ride. 

the dying computer

I really love our computer.  It's a 4 year old Dell and it has never given us a single problem.  That's pretty remarkable, at least in my book, where I assume computer life span is barely three years.  We knew we were pushing it, hoping this one would last til we arrived home this summer.  It looks like the computer might not survive quite that long.  

[We actually have two computers.  Matt uses a Dell Mini that he basically doesn't leave home without.  I'm serious.  It's so small and so convenient to carry that he takes it just about everywhere. When Matt got the Mini, our old family laptop became "mine".  And it's still our main computer.... it's got all our music, our photos, and whatnot.  And I use it for email.]

Several times in the past few weeks the computer screen suddenly went black.  I put together everything I knew about computers and hit the restart button.  And each time the computer came right back on with a perfectly functioning screen.

Until today.  The black screen is here to stay.  So I have to plug the computer into our tv screen using a VGA cable.  I'm sitting on a kitchen chair about two feet from our tv screen, with the computer on my lap.  Clearly, this is not a long term solution.  

Matt is shopping for a new computer, but it will be a while before we can order, get it shipped somewhere in America, and have it brought over to us in Asia. 

In the meantime, I'll be using the computer plugged into the tv screen option.  Yuck.  Anyone else ever have a similar problem and know a quick fix?

the head of a chicken

Tonight at dinner, totally out of the blue.....

Julianna: Do you know what 鸡头 means?  It means the head of a chicken.  (dramatic pause)  We eat it at school.

Matt: Really.  The teachers eat it or you eat it?

Julianna: Just me.  

Matt:  No one else eats 鸡头?  

Julianna: Yeah, some other people eat it too.

Matt left for a meeting and while the girls were in the bath I attempted to do a little "chicken head eating clarification". 

Me: Julianna, do you eat 鸡头 at school?

Julianna: Noooooooooooo.  

Me: Who eats it?

Julianna: I don't know her name.  

Me: So you don't eat 鸡头?

Julianna: Noooooo.

Lydia:  But I eat it.  I eat 鸡头.  

Julianna: No you don't Lydia.  No one in the small class gets to eat 鸡头.  

Well, I'm sure glad we got that cleared up.    

Yep, crystal clear. 

Easter Egg decorating

So today we started dyeing Easter eggs.  Well, technically we started yesterday afternoon..... but after about 5 minutes I realized that Easter egg dyeing is an activity that needed either fewer children or more adults.  And, since I was the only adult around, I decide to postpone the remainder of the egg dyeing session until this morning during Isaac's nap.  

Announcing my decision to delay the egg dyeing for 18 hours was not a happy moment, but I am glad that I stood my ground.  It made for a much more relaxed mommy, and a much happier group of little egg dye-ers.  Isaac will have to wait til next year to join in the fun :) 

Lydia was thrilled with the entire process.  She was continually amazed by watching her eggs change color.  I was pretty amazed too.... she left each egg in the dye for approximately 7 seconds, so I was pretty impressed that the eggs actually showed a tinge of color!  Of course, while she didn't leave any one egg in any certain color for any significant length of time, she was not afraid to double, triple, quadruple dip.  In.  Out.  Choose a new color.  Repeat.  

What can I say?  Her fingers might never loose their brilliant Easter hue.  But she had a blast!  

Julianna was much more determined to create "art" and worked very hard to make stripes and patterns.  I love watching Julianna do crafts.  She's just at a fun stage where she really has all the motor skills to create what she dreams up in her head.   

Her patience far exceeds Lydia's, and she was rewarded with some pretty special looking eggs.  Nothing I would consider a masterpiece, but she's got real Easter egg dyeing potential! 

We only broke one egg, which I promptly peeled and served as snack.  I kept our cups of dye and we'll be decorating more eggs before the week is over.  I just need to buy and boil some more eggs! 

the little two

Last week ended on a not so great note.  I ended up sick with some sort of flu bug and wanted to spend Thursday in bed.  Unfortunately, Matt was out of town until Friday at midnight.  So I stumbled through Thursday and Friday, and when I heard Matt's key in the door on Friday I was so relieved. 

I ended up sleeping most of Saturday, and felt much better by Sunday morning.  

Early last week Julianna spent the night with her buddy Kayleigh.  Although I miss her tons when she is away, I also really enjoy the different dynamic in our home when it's just Lydia and Isaac.  

Lydia really enjoys her spot on "top of the heap" when her big sis is away and she loves to be the boss!  Isaac usually gravitates towards Julianna, but when she isn't around, he loves to play with Lydia.  Their 'style' of humor is a lot different when Julianna is gone, and tends to revolve around ridiculous faces and little games they play.  I love it. 

 

It was also a nice change of pace to only have two children around.  Funny how perspective changes with the addition of more children.  Before Isaac was born I thought two kiddos was plenty of work.   

But I mostly love having all three together.  And so do they.  Even though it's a fun change of pace when Julianna is off at a friend's, it just feels right for everyone to be home with me! 

the birthday party

We all enjoyed watching Isaac eat his first piece of cake.  He definitely has a natural gift for cake eating :)  Just one of the many many ways he is a lot like his daddy! 

At this point he was busy enjoying the singing, unaware that the cake was on its way. 

But once I put a piece on his tray, he knew exactly what to do!

He is in a really photogenic stage and likes to smile for the camera (especially if I am behind it - he's definitely SUPER attached to me right now, and is generally not too happy with anyone else). 

The evening of his birthday we ate together with all of our visitors.  Katheryne cooked chicken and wild rice soup and it was so yummy.  I love wild rice.  Dessert was another favorite of mine - angel food cake - and it turns out Isaac is not picky when it comes to baked goodies, the angel food cake was a hit with him too!  It was fun to celebrate with our friends, and nice to have a part of the day "off" (no cooking dinner) - especially since I like to think that moms deserve an extra special pat on the back when they make it to baby's first birthday! 

one year ago today....

... we welcomed Isaac Luther into the world.   He was born at 5am and I seriously loved every minute his first day.

What joy and delight he brings our family!  We can't wait to enjoy many more years with this sweet little man.  

PS - He still loves to hold on to my finger, just like this photo :) 

new arrivals

There is something really special about hosting visitors.  Mostly because there are (relatively) so few of our friends from home that really GET our world here, it's just a neat thing to invite a few more people into it with us.  

I know when I am in America and see people who have lived or seen or experienced a piece of what my life in Asia is like, there is an instant connection.  A sense of "they really understand a significant piece of me that many people don't grasp". 

So it was with great JOY that we welcomed a group of visitors this past Saturday.

It's busy (of course).  But so worth it.  I LOVE watching visitors experience life here. 

tis the season

Any idea what Julianna is doing in this photo?

What about this one of Lydia?

Yep, it's officially Easter egg hunt season in our home.  This is, apparently, a game that little girls can play for hours on end.  I hide the eggs in the living room while they hover in the hallway, squirming in anticipation.  They run in, scramble to find all the eggs, and then say "Let's do it again." 

Now that they are a little older I can actually hide some of the eggs.  Last year the eggs Lydia found were 'hidden' in plain sight on the carpet.  It was more like an "Easter egg pick up" as opposed to an Easter egg hunt.  But still, our living room is not that large, and the number of places to hide Easter eggs is limited.  They don't care.  They just want to play Easter egg hunt over and over and over.  

Here they are posing in the hallway ready to run in and starting looking.  

We've also started using our set of Resurrection Eggs.  If you have young kids I highly recommend them as a great way to teach the Easter story.  We put them all in an Easter basket and open a new egg every morning at the breakfast table.  They are so popular with our kids that we start well in advance of Easter, so we have time to go through all the eggs twice before Easter Sunday arrives.  But there are many ways to use the set, and you don't have to do "an egg a day" like we do.  Anyways, if you are interested, click here to learn more. 

the pet store ???

With three young children, a smallish apartment, and a lifestyle that involves plenty of travel, I am convinced that the last thing we need is a pet.  

So I'm grateful for these "roaming" vendors that show up in town.  It's fun to look.  And after a few minutes of shopping, I decide (once again) that we are not buying a fish, and we head on home. 

These vendors know their audience :)  They park right by the school gates at lunch break.  And they are always willing to show off their wares. (This guy had Lydia pretty interested in the turtle.... the turtle, on the other hand, was clearly not too interested in Lydia, and kept its head tucked deep inside its shell.)

Usually I am 100% not even tempted to buy.  But today Julianna almost convinced me.  I think the girls would stay interested for at least a few days, maybe even a week (which is probably about what we could expect in terms of fish life expectancy).  

Lydia's going to have to wait on the turtle.  But the fish.... maybe one of these days we'll just get one.  In the meantime its fun to build anticipation, and we'll keep shopping. 

lunch?

Part of me hesitates to post these pictures and this little tidbit.  After all, if you are living under the impression that I walk through motherhood feeding my children 3 perfectly-matching-the-food-pyramid meals each day, well, get ready to have that blown out of the water. 

Weeks get long.  Meals get hairy.  Some days we eat jelly beans.  For lunch.  

Just kidding, up to this point I have never fed my kids jelly beans for lunch, but if things got desperate, I might consider it. 

So Saturday noontime rolls around and off for a picnic we go.  I packed milk for the kiddos, and planned to buy the rest "en route".  

We went to the market for a few treats.  This lady typically has lots of bread-like goodies.  Bummer is she was sold out of potato-filled spring rolls.  But she did have a few other things, so the girls picked out what they wanted and we went on to the next stop. 

This steamed bun is incredibly popular here.  The girls each wanted one "of their own".  I knew there was no way they would ever finish it, but the price was right (about 7 cents each) so I let them each order one anyways. 

At this point the nutritional value of our lunch was hovering at about ZERO.  But I was holding out hope that maybe we'd run into something a tad more nutritious.  

And we did!  I love these roasted sweet potatoes (aren't they huge?  they aren't usually this big).  We then headed to our picnic spot. 

I had three milk cups, one utensil (a small pair of scissors) and some wipes.  It worked out perfectly.  I peeled the skin off the sweet potato and cut into the yummy insides.  Isaac's bib doubled as his "tray" so I just dropped chunks of sweet potato into the pocket and he grabbed away. 

We sat on the track near our home and watched a soccer game.  The main lunch attraction was definitely the sweet potato, and just as I predicted the girls barely made a dent in their steamed bun.  

Not the healthiest thing I've ever fed my children, but better than jelly beans. 

no boys allowed

The girls are in a neat stage where they play really well together.  So nice for me!  They get really wrapped up in their little pretend worlds and only come running to find me if they need help with something (like moving furniture to make a little house, or using clothespins to fasten a cape).  

Of course, there are times when the screaming gets loud and I hear "mine mine mine" or "no don't you touch that!"  but it is nice to be in a season where that seems to be happening less and less.  

Only one small problem.  NO BOYS ALLOWED.  They haven't actually come up with these words quite yet, but their point is clear: Isaac is not part of this girly girl play club.  

And it sounds like this: 

"Isaac, this is the big girls dancing class and you can't come.  The little boys dancing class is over there" as she points across the hall.  Good thing Isaac's feelings were not hurt in the slightest, and he has no desire to go to "little boys dancing class".  

I've also heard "no babies can come across this line". 

In part, I can't blame them.  Isaac is a destroyer.  One small touch with his hand and he can knock over 95% of the little plastic pieces in the baby doll house.  He grabs and pulls and just generally doesn't understand how much "destruction" he can leave in his wake.  

Trust me, he looks innocent enough, but he can make one huge mess in about 5 seconds.

So the girls prefer that he steer clear of their play.  But guess where he wants to be?  You got it, right in the thick of it.  [Well, most of the time.  He also tends to stick really close to me.  His optimal situation would be for me to be with him, while he terrorizes the big sisters.]

Something tells me we'll be dealing with this situation for years :) 

Lydia's first day

This morning Lydia went to preschool for the first time. Over the past few months Matt and I have talked and prayed, wondering if this was the right time for Lydia to start school. In my mother's heart, she still seems so young. She still is so young!

I want to treasure these years and invest in them well. So I hesitate to send her to school. I want Lydia (and our other children) home, with me :) But we also feel strongly that Lydia needs to learn to speak Chinese. We believe this is super important for a lot of reasons, and though we cannot guarantee that any particular thing we do will result in a child who is able to interact with the local culture, we do think that school attendance helps tremendously in that endeavor.

In Lydia's case, the situation is intensified by our upcoming 6 month stay in the US. If Lydia didn't start school now, her next opportunity would be January 2011. So, after much discussion and prayer, today was the day.

New students wear name tags for the first few days to help teachers quickly learn names.... reality is, I think most every adult on the school property already knows Lydia (thanks to her big sister's almost-celebrity status) but she wore the name tag anyways.

Matt takes care of school drop-off duties, so Lydia hopped up on the scooter with her big sister and off they went!


Lydia can be hard to read sometimes, and I really did not know what to expect. Part of me feared that it would be a complete disaster. Lydia has strong opinions, and if she decided she didn't like school, it would have been a long morning (and a long semester, for that matter). But I was also hopeful that it would be 100% success. She's out-going, loves friends, and talked enthusiastically every time we mentioned school.

Guess what happened? (that's her, standing at the school gate before classes started this morning)


She loved it! LOVED IT! Matt said she marched right into the classroom like she owned the place, didn't even look back to wave goodbye. I picked her up at lunchtime and she ran right to me, beaming from ear to ear. (This is pretty much the exact opposite of Julianna... school was not an instantaneous win with her.)

Now Lydia and Julianna both attend school on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (same hours, their classrooms are right next door to each other). Julianna will also go on Fridays, just like last semester.

Part of me wonders if Thursday will be a little tougher. Maybe the "I love school" thing is a passing fancy? I hope not!

We are so proud of you Lydia!

Matt's birthday

This year Matt's birthday lined up with the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. In other words, several billion people celebrated :) Kind of fun!

(The 15th day of the new year is the official 'end' of the celebrating, so everyone finishes off their fireworks stash. I think last year's New Year's eve celebration deadened Matt and me to the fireworks. We both agreed that last night's festivities paled in comparison to what we've experienced in the past and both remarked on how 'tame' and 'quiet' it seemed in contrast to last year's new years eve blasts.)

Our day started off with presents! Here's Matt with his gifts from the kids :)


After church we iced his cake (we're saving the second layer of the cake to eat next week when we celebrate with some friends). Julianna is getting pretty good at spreading icing and really good at eating it!


In the late afternoon we went out to try flying kites (one of Matt's gifts). We surprised ourselves with how successful we were (it helped that it was very windy).


But the kites did end up in the bushes on several different occasions!


After supper we went out again to set off some fireworks (a great gift that Matt got from the Andy and EA). It was pretty fun, but Lydia hated it. I mean, HATED it. Oh well, maybe next year :)

It was a super fun day celebrating! Happy Birthday Matt!