Proof of Mobility

As I've reported Ander is on the move. I am glad I snugged him up as much as possible while I could because he is way too busy these days to be bothered with such idleness. Even when he is strapped securely into his high chair while the rest of us whirl around him going about our day, you can see it in his eyes that he is sitting there solving the Yang-Mills existence and mass gap. That or plotting his escape a la Basil of the Great Mouse Detective.

Quick Story: I recently tried to trick him into eating my freshly pureed green beans by giving him bites of his favorite sweet potatoes in between. That worked for about 3 bites until he started straining to see over the edge of his chair to check which food I was putting on his spoon. Seeing he was on to me I reverted to several bites of sweet potatoes before slipping him another bite of greens- as he realized what I'd done he just burst into tears! I felt SO bad! Of course I ditched the beans at that point and stuffed him full of sweet potatoes. Teaching him to "eat his feelings" young you know.

In an effort to share some proof of mobility I video'd him ejecting himself from his car seat like he does the instant the bottom buckle unsnaps. It's about half of the time his arm will get stuck like it does here, and though I helped him it normally doesn't take him very long to escape on his own. But to to expedite the process, I helped okay?

This short video you will probably have to watch twice. Why? Well, you'll realize at the end that you got distracted and missed what I told you to watch for, which is Ander pulling himself up and standing around like it ain't no thang.

It's also a video that proves my life is a lot like the people who say they have "voices in their head" except the voices all over in my life are decidedly out of my head, making me literally out of my mind- (aka: the Jensen Insanity Theory, solved in 2006, proved daily. No monetary reward has ever been given.)

Anyway, enjoy.

Rant Canceled. I'm Too Tired.

Kohen literally refuses to wait for Ander to get bigger so he can play with him. I would rescue Ander more often except that he pretty much loves it.

The Fount of all Sass, both cute and naughty.

This is how I found Ander after a drive-by-dress-up from his brother.

Needless to say, there will never be Gak in the house again. In case you're wondering it took 45 minutes and quite a bit of Goo Gone to fix this debacle. And I still have no clear answer as to how Kennedy got the gunk in her hair in the first place.

After all of the random pictures I have here I was planning on writing a whole rant on how our kids have turned into Holy Terrors in the last few weeks, but I find my resolve slipping away with the minutes until my bedtime. Suffice it to say that Nathan and I have both found our selves saying shouting things at our children that we distinctly remember our parents saying to us in impotent frustration.

In an effort not to be a total Debbie Downer I won't begin to list all of the recent offenses, there are too many to list anyway. But it kinda gets me down when my job right now is being a mother, and it's obvious I'm sucking at it. Sorry, I shouldn't write the "S" word, we don't say that at our house. And I suppose somebody should be following the rules. Anyway, don't cry for me Argentina, it's just one of those days, weeks, months.

Papa John, Pixie and Justin Visit

At the beginning of April my parents and brother were able to come and visit us here in Taiwan. Due to Kohen's low tolerance for anticipation, we kept it a surprise until the morning my mom and brother walked in. We had a great time, though never enough time for exploring and enjoying Taiwan.

My dad arrived for the last week and Justin was able to take them down to Taichung and show them around where he taught on his mission and meet some of the people that he had written home about. We took my dad for his first massage EVER, a foot massage, and had a really nice time. It's always fun to have someone with you who speaks Chinese. Nathan does more than alright but Justin gets pretty much everything so we laughed and joked with the guys working on our feet.

Otherwise we played with the children and snuggled Ander to pieces. It was all just over too fast. Only solution is for them to come back soon!!!

One Man Band

If the whole modeling thing doesn't pan out, it looks like Kohen could have an illustrious career as a street performer...

Maybe he should have a Plan C... just in case.

The Moat is Moot

As you can see the Taiwan worker guys have been *SUPER* hard at work on the moat mess at our front porch. The pile of white bags next to the guy leaning against the truck are all full of our porch guts so I guess that's proof that they've done something. After the guys poured cement in the moat I looked out the window to find they were casually laying some random bathroom tile down, like that'd be fine. Apparently our Bob the Builder moonlights as Martha Stewarts Taiwanese stepsister- the miserly one with zero sense of color palatte.

A flurry of calls ensued - Me to Nathan- Nathan to Realtor- Realtor to Landlord- Landlord to Lazy Workers- The Lazy Workers (coined such by our Landlord and the only PG name of many he gave them) started swearing and pulling up the conspicuous tiles, smoking like chimneys all the while. They packed up and left and it was gloriously quiet for a few days. *bird chirp*

Then one tranquil afternoon the (!!!!!!)jack(!!!!!!!)hammering(!!!!!!) started(!!!!!!)again (!!!!!!)and(!!!!!!)waxed(!!!!!!)annoying(!!!!!!) Apparently we were getting new tile on our whole front porch rather than 10% of it. Great.
Having so much noise and mess hasn't gone unnoticed by our children. ^This is Ander's impression of the Lazy Porch Workers.

And this is Ander showing those fools how it's done! I give you: The face of motivation- no translation required. This kid is rolling, sitting, crawling, and just plain showing off by pulling himself up (albeit wobbily) on anything he can get his hands on. At the rate he's going he might figure out how to finish the porch before the other guys do.

And I Do My Little Turn on the Catwalk

So the modeling that the kids have been doing a little of has finally paid off in the form of the catalogs we've started to receive. Especially this one from Why and 1/2 where Kohen showed up on the cover :) I don't care who you are, if your child is on the cover of anything -minus maybe an America's Most Wanted poster- you're gonna be beaming with pride. Don't worry though, it's the really humble kind of pride, where I only take full credit for having created such amazing creatures, their inner light, trilling laughter- huh? what's that? God and Nathan?..... Fine. they may have been involved as well.

This particular brand of clothes are bright and bold and kind of eclectic. They are also pricey in my opinion, I'm not willing to pay $30 ish for a t-shirt. But the clothes are mostly cute and made well. This is the only company where the shoots are more than 2 or 3 hours. They take you on location and feed you lunch and your children work off and on all day. It's a long day but the children don't seem to really mind and the company is very professional. And of course you have the really nice catalog :) - there's that humble pride again......

Anyway, for a limited time some of the pictures from Why and 1/2 will be on their website if you would like to take a gander at something other than the picture of a picture you will find below.

Click here for the Why and 1/2 website

It often takes a good 20 seconds to load, fyi. You can just click around on the Chinese characters to find the pics or I will briefly explain where they are: When the site first comes up you'll see a cartoon bear. On the bottom of the page there are chinese characters separated by stars. Click on the second one. A list of ten chinese characters will come up. Choose the second one down that says Mini and then chinese. Aly is in this one. The 5th, 6th and 8th ones down have lot's of Kennedy and Kohen.

My Very Own Mote

Apparently though we didn't feel the earthquake a few weeks ago, our home did. Consequently we had water bubbling up from under the house, aaaand that's not good.

So after two days of NONSTOP jackhammering right outside our front door we had our very own mote going on that would fill up with water. Every princesses dream come true so what do I have to complain about, right?

There have been lot's of workers scurrying about and I have no idea what is going on but that is typical. I think I've gathered that it was a broken pipe??? Perhaps we should should look into a bridge for our newly minted mote.

Hong Kong, A.S.I.A. Conference

Ander and I up at The Peak

I recently had the opportunity to fly to Hong Kong with several women from my church to meet up with other English speaking women living in Asia for the Associated Sisters In Asia Conference. Besides our van being involved in a minor traffic accident on the way to the airport we all made it safely to Hong Kong. Riddle me this: who would be at fault when someone is driving illegally on the shoulder and someone else puts their signal on to move into said illegal shoulder and they have a minor bump???

Anyway, we did make it to Hong Kong, leaving a handful of capable husbands to wrangle 20+ children on their own.
As space is limited in Hong Kong you can't build out so you have to build up. I love the church building there. This is the 12 story meeting house where everyone meets for church on Sundays. It is made to accommodate many different wards.

We met here for several days to listen to awesome, uplifting and inspiring speakers. It was so awesome that it was geared toward women having similar overseas experiences as I have had. Everyone there understood what it means to have moved to and live overseas in Asian. It was just what I needed.
Course not everything was spiritually geared- got a chuckle out of ^ these two and their signs for instance. We actually did a lot of sight seeing in our limited time thanks to Nicole's mad navigational skills. My hands were usually full of Ander or something related to him so I didn't get that many great pictures. But Nicole did so feel free to click here to see what we did.

A highlight of the trip was taking this unedited photo. Man, I was feeling the burn from that squat, holding Ander, all on my tip toes. Any ideas how this was accomplished? Besides my Kung Fu Panda-like "pure awesomeness" of course. Lucky for you there is no charge.

This one ^ is for Lori. The picture is the product of a really late night in a HK night market and perhaps inhaling too much second hand smoke.

Because of Ander and other reasons I considered not going to the conf. this year. Above is one of the reasons I did. This is me with my long time friend Allison. If you'd have told me way back in middle school we'd both end up with our families in Asia at the same time clearly, I would've had to call you a liar.

Allison lives in China and I was SO glad to finally see her. We caught up while we diligently distractedly worked on the service projects. You know those friends who you may not see for long periods of time but when you do it's like no time has passed at all? That's the kind of friend Allison is for me.
I am so grateful for a husband who encouraged me to go to HK with these girls. It was so fun to explore, sight see and eat yummy food with good girl friends who, btw, were always willing to lend a hand with Ander or one of many things I was striving hard not to lose (ie: blankets, toys, burp pads, jackets, bjorn, stroller, back pack ETC!) as we got on and off buses, metro trains and taxis all over the greater Hong Kong area.

First impression of HK? I like it.

0.6 And 30

Well, I turned 30. After nearly 7 years I am finally back in the same decade as Nathan, ha! About the time I turned 30, Ander turned 6 months old. It's more fun, so let's talk about him.
Growing up in Asia our little white baby is, as you've heard, a bit of an anomaly. This is a small crowd that gathered while we were at C.K.S. Memorial. I had the blanket over the stroller so the baby could suck his fingers in peace without people trying to yank them out of his mouth like they've started to do (grrr) -when Aly threw back the blanket to the delight of the crowd who gave a collective little cheer when she revealed her brother. She was pretty proud of herself.
This is Ander on our first trip to Ping Xi, some of the locals took turns taking pictures with our little guy. They were all extremely friendly but don't worry, we still kept a watchful eye.
Our 2nd time in Ping Xi while we were writing on our lanterns the Father who was holding Ander was drawing quite a crowd. As a group gathered and started taking pictures of Ander Nathan started telling everyone to come in and buy lanterns here! trying to get the family some more business. He got his best response when he said, "Come in- paint your good luck wishes here- you will have white baby!" The crowd went wild over that, thought it was hilarious. And, well, it was.
To be fair, they were loving our friend's daughter Jaydn too, using just as much storage space on their cameras with her sweet little face as they did Ander's. I wonder what it's like through our children's eyes having all of this attention from strangers.
ANYWAY- besides being popular with the Chinese Ander has a few other accomplishments to report. For a little over a month now I keep walking in to get him out of bed and he will full on be up on his hands and knees, sometimes rocking back and forth which, if you have children you know this is a precursor to crawling. I'm not ashamed to say I usually *gently* pull his legs out from under him in a vain attempt to prolong the inevitable. He is just dying to get up and go with his siblings though.
He recently discovered his toes could be fun to suck on and he likes to yank off his socks and suck on his toes till they look like raisins. If you notice his irritated cheeks in the above pic- unfortunately I also think he is sensitive to dairy. I have given him milk-based formula 4 times- his cheeks flared up the first time and he vomited the next 3 times so I'm not really sure where to go from there.
We started solids with mixed results. I can't tell if he dislikes the food or just really enjoys spitting. Jury is still out on this one.
The one thing that is generally undisputed is that Ander continues to be a happy and easy going baby. I am so grateful because it's nice to have at least 1 out of 4 be that way. Holy cow you do NOT want me to post about the the older three right now. It's spring break and they are driving me nuts. Let's all pretend Ander isn't going to grow up and join his siblings in that shall we? You know, the whole ignorance is bliss thing.

Lantern Festival: Take Two!

Before you decide not to read this post, please know that the Lantern Festival (see post below) is my favorite thing that I've done yet in Taiwan. It certainly deserves more than one post. The festival runs for around 3 weeks and we so enjoyed our rainy day letting off lanterns with Ash and Shayn that we were excited to plan a date night with our friends Cody and Nicole to go back to PingXi on the last night when they do group lift offs every half hour. It is so packed with people you have to ride a bus up but other than some mild motion sickness that went pretty smoothly. Nathan and I wanted a chance to do our own lantern so we left the older 3 with a sitter and headed out on a most gorgeous Taiwan evening.

After I stole this picture off of Nicole's blog I realized she's not in it- just picture a pretty, hot mama :)

The crowds were insane. Trying to navigate two strollers through the masses was... trying. But we made our way down through the main street checking out all of the vendors and eating all kinds of different foods. Wait. I better be honest. Cody, Nicole and Nathan eagerly tried every new and different food- I typically nibbled, scrunched up my nose and passed the atrocity back to Nathan. For as much as I am coming to love and appreciate Taiwan and it's people, I have to admit I don't like much of their food. Sorry Taiwan.

Two foods we thankfully did not try this lovely evening: Snails still in the shell, and yes, you pop em in your mouth shell and all. I know, I just threw up in my mouth a little too.
And if snails aren't your thing you can always have Squid on a Stick! You know you want it.

As we made our way through the streets every half hour we would see, just up the hill, the release of hundreds of lanterns all at once. The whole massive crowd in the streets would suddenly quiet as we all turned to watch in awe the beautiful glowing lanterns float up into the sky. Nathan and I came to the realization right away that cameras were going to do a pitiful job of capturing the beauty of the lift off. I apologize for that.
Even in the crowds of people there were always random lanterns being let off on their own. Notice the wish on the one in the pic above, "Find a good woman" -makes me smile.

Some of the lanterns caught fire in flight and would come flaming down towards the crowd. We kept a watchful eye but also listened for the cries of alarm that would come from the crowd when a wayward lantern was spotted.

Also of concern were the lanterns being fueled by little kerosene tins (instead of kerosene soaked papers) that would drop flaming drops of kerosene down as the lantern flew through the air and over the crowd. I saw several people with gauze newly taped over an eye and we heard the ambulance sirens several times so I think there were definitely a few minor (?) injuries.
Eventually we made our way back to the Chinese family where we had made our first lanterns that rainy day. They were so happy to see us which made us feel good. The father held Ander the whole time while Nathan and I worked on our lantern. Cody helped Nathan with a few characters but I was pretty pleased to come across the ones Nathan had written below:

~ I love ej ~

Ander approved of our lantern, even took his fingers out of his mouth for the occasion.
After we finished our lanterns we headed back through the ^street lined with all of the food tents, up to the school grounds where they were letting of the huge groups of lanterns. It's a good thing we went up when we did because it turned out to be the last official let off of the festival and I would've been so sad to miss it.
Moments before we let our lantern off...
Notice the ginormous lantern above and how small the people are standing next to it and it will give you some perspective when you see it in the picture below.

^ Easily my favorite picture of the night.

It was absolutely breathtaking to see all of these huge lanterns all ablaze as they floated effortlessly upward. The pictures simply do not do it justice. I know the Chinese associate this tradition with superstition, luck and all manner of (lower-case-g) gods but for me and from my perspective it was different. For me it was like a visual representation of thousands of prayers lifting off in unison on an errand to heaven. Yes, many prayers may be sent Heavenward but each is individual and each will be seen and heard as such.
Amazing right? PingXi Lantern Festival 2011, join us? :)