Eleven Months

Month eleven has been pretty low-key for Baby Jack. Besides one new tooth (bring the total to 8) not a lot has happened. He's still not walking and he's still really good at crawling around and getting into things.

I'm not sure how much he weighs, but I am going to try really hard to finally make it to the doctor for his 9 month shots this week. I assume he still weighs around 18 pounds.

*Okay, I was almost right. He weighs 19 lbs (8.7 kg) and is 28 inches (71 cm) long.*

His new favorite thing is the dog.

He also has learned to jump up and down while holding on to the edge of the couch or a small table. When music comes on or he gets excited he really gets going.

The baby sign thing was pretty easy to start with him. I signed "milk" and then held up a cup. He signed "milk" and then took the cup. We pretty much use that sign for anything in a cup. And really I think he uses it whenever he wants something to eat or drink. I keep trying to teach him to sign "more" but he prefers to stick to his own language and just bang his hands on his tray until we give him what he wants.

The boy loves to eat and will pretty much eat anything. I prefer for him to feed himself and I think he likes that, too.

Jack is still all baby and since he is my baby I think it will be a long time before he looks like a big boy to me. This next month should be fun as we celebrate his birthday and see if he will walk as early as Asher did.

Thanksgiving 2011

We hosted our second annual Bangkok Thanksgiving Feast at our home last week. We had almost an entirely new crew after a lot of turnover and moving around from last years group.

The food was plentiful (an un-photographed) and the company was wonderful.

I decided to finally make something from Pinterest, the famous Thankful Tree.

And another shot because we just got a "copy" of Lightroom and it's so much fun to play around with all of the presets.

This is Asher's new friend Emma. He calls her "My Emma" and I think that's just too sweet.

After all the food was eaten we caught an action shot of Asher all crazy from eating nothing but pumpkin cookies for dinner and all of the adults in their post-feast food coma.

We can't blame this on the turkey because this year we had chicken. Turkeys at the store near my house started around $65.

Somehow we got a decent picture of all the kiddos.

And a pretty good picture of the four of us. Jack was newcomer at this year's Thanksgiving Dinner.

Breaking News: The Dog

Turns out the dog speaks Thai.

Roger tells him "sit" and the dog just looks at him. Or occasionally collapses on the floor and goes to sleep.

Roger tells him "sit" and offers him a treat and the dog still just looks at him.

Our friend En came over and tells the dog "nang" and the dog sits.

Then just to make it better she says "kaah muuh" and the dog shakes hands.

No joke. Just turns out we have dog that doesn't speak English yet.

Meet Oatmeal

This is Oatmeal, our new dog.

He's a 9 month old Yorkie/Pomeranian. Which, yes, means that he is in fact a Yuranian.

Obviously he has some new buddies.

Asher goes back and forth from loving him to being terrified of him.

Jack just plays with him like he's another baby. They crawl around together, poke each other and chew on stuff together.

We let Asher name him and of all things he named him after his favorite breakfast food, oatmeal.

Here's Oatmeal's best trick: being a mop.

So far, he's a good puppy and pretty calm. He doesn't bark very much and doesn't seem to mind that he is constantly getting poked, prodded and stepped on by various members of our family. He did appear to have an adverse reaction to Target brand Puffs which is unfortunate because, well, we eat a lot of Puffs around here.

Here's a video from Oatmeal's first morning at our house. After sniffing Jack's bootie he started to get settled into his new home.

Buddies

These two hit it off when we met up in Nashville. I think next time they are together it will be here in Bangkok. We can't wait for the Jacksons to join us on this side of the globe!

Some Asher Faces

One day Asher woke up from his nap with some serious bed-head.

Amazing, right?

While the camera was out Roger decided to take a few more pictures of his sweet 3 year old face.

If you are wondering what Asher's been up to lately, here's an update.

Due to the flood all schools have been closed in Bangkok for the past month. That means between our trip to the States and the flood Asher has been out of school for two solid months. I think we are all pretty excited that he starts back on Monday. During his extended fall break he has spent lots of time driving cars, bugging Jack, eating, running around outside barefoot, going to IKEA, reading books and learning the letter A. We've done some crafts (he loves glue and otherwise could care less about crafts) and we've taken lots of big rides in the car.

Asher weighs 15 kilos now and sort of thinks he's a big boy. Recently he's been a big fan of drinking water from water bottles, but has decided he doesn't want to drink milk. Pumpkin butter and toast are one of his new favorite snacks and his current favorite fruit is Dragon Fruit. He still prefers rice or noodles to most other kinds of food and will do almost anything for a glass of juice or a chocolate chip.

He still takes a long afternoon nap most days, usually he will sleep for close to 3 hours. Thanks to his new alarm clock he will stay in his bed until he sees the green light come on in the mornings and at the end of his nap.

Almost everyday we talk about flying on the airplane to America. He especially likes to recount the beginning of our trip when the airport car picked us up and took up to the airport, and then we got to get on a big bus, and then a big airplane, and then Asher sleep on the airplane, and Asher eat on the airplane, and Asher poop on the airplane! I think it was a life changing trip for him.

After such a long break from school I wondered how his Thai would be, but during dinner tonight he showed us all that he can understand everything we are saying. One of our friends was asking us (in Thai) when Asher's school would open and he answered her before we could.

Asher is such a sweet boy and a sometimes-fabulous-sometimes-terrifying big brother. He's a mess.

Shopping Carts and Babies

Here's some fun that the boys had while visiting Mimi and Granny.

Mimi obtained a shopping cart for the boys to play with at her house. After Asher spent some time pretend shopping at Big C (sort of like Wal-Mart) for 3-in-1 (sort of like coffee) he went shopping for a Baby Jack.

They both loved giggling as they went up and down the hall in the shopping cart. I chased them back and forth the whole time convinced that Asher was going to have one of his little "moments" and decide to dump Jack out of the cart.

The night before we left America we got out some pliers and pulled the shopping cart apart and packed it in our suitcase. It may seem silly to bring back something like that, but we felt quite justified when we went by the toy store the other day and found a similar cart priced at close to $50.

In case you were wondering we also brought back a disassembled bike, a play stroller, 4 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, Duplo blocks and squash seeds. Plus most of Target.

Granny had a great surprise for Asher when we first got to her house. Actually, her first surprise was a new Lightning McQueen. Then she brought out three wooden cars that were Roger's when he was a little boy. A few days later Asher started carrying them around calling them his babies. So, I did what any mother of boys would do. I got out my sling, put it on Asher and showed him how to carry his "babies" just like Mommy.

I only regret that I didn't get a picture of him "feeding" his babies when they got hungry. It's not often that you see a 3 year old boy attempting to nurse a wooden car.

An Update From (a partially flooded) Bangkok

Well, the flooding continues in Bangkok.

Did you even know it was flooding here? If you look outside our house you wouldn't know. But a few miles from here there is water washing away neighborhood after neighborhood.

Here's a video that's very popular around here. It's in Thai with English subtitles and does a good job of explaining just what we are dealing with.

Remember how we were supposed to finally move to a wonderful Thai neighborhood? But then we just went on vacation to America instead? It was a great neighborhood. And a fantastic house. It had 3 bedrooms, which meant that Roger and I would actually have our very own room!

Well, we didn't move before we left because it seemed silly to pay rent and not even live there. And then this flood thing started. It wasn't anywhere near that house for a few weeks. We even talked to the landlord and began getting ready to move. Then the water started moving and moving and moving. Now that part of town is under almost a meter of water.

Here's a few links if you are interested in what is going on around here:

Crisis Chic - Bangkok is a very fashionable place and like this site says, "Style shouldn't go out the window, just 'cause water's coming in."

Bangkok Post - An English language newspaper, but really you can't believe much of what they say.

Bangkok Under Water - Amazing photos from around the city.

Do My Shoes Match This Flood? - Roger says the shoe of choice among relief workers are Crocs. They dry fast and still protect the bottoms of your feet.

Other Tidbits:

We are sitting tight at our house waiting to see if the water makes it this far. We've been told to expect everything from a meter of water to nothing at all.

After two weeks of bottled water shortages we are able to sometimes find water in stores. Luckily we still have our trusty lady on the side of the road that somehow always has water for sale. Our home delivery of drinking water was suspended almost a month ago and the tap water is getting yellower by the day.

Roger went with a group from our church last week to deliver supplies and food to a community near the city. This community was under almost 2 meters of water. After riding in cars, trucks and boats they finally were able to tie up to a dock built at a 7/11 and pass out bags of food to those living there. Millions of people in the city are being displaced by the flooding. Our church (and many others) are housing people and using the flood as an opportunity for outreach.

10 Months

Well, after another long day of flying, Baby Jack made it back to Bangkok to celebrate turning 10 months old.

He is all over the place! Jack can crawl pretty fast and when he really gets going he does this funny one legged crawl. He pulls up on everything and can sort of take a few steps while holding onto the edge of the bed or the couch. Although he is far more mobile than Asher was at this age, I think he will walk later. Probably because Asher spent a lot of time roaming around in a walker and Jack's walker got all moldy when we were in the States.

Jack loves to get into stuff. He tries to take toys from Asher, he pulls over garbage cans and he has been known to pull up on the toilet and try to stick his hands right into the water. He's also been caught a few times in various dog bowls going after food and water.

I've mostly stopped making baby food and I've just been giving Jack small pieces of whatever we are eating. So far we haven't found anything he doesn't like. For breakfast I can give him a whole banana and he will just eat it. It's sort of funny to watch the whole thing just disappear. He also loves dragon fruit, carrots and rice (of course).

When we left Bangkok at the end of September Jack had two teeth. By the time we got back last week he had 7. Of course, they are all in various stages of breaking through and this has left him looking a little lop-sided at times.

After a rough month of jet-lag and sleeping with me, Jack has turned a corner and has become quite the little sleeper. I don't have to rock him to sleep anymore and he's been taking good naps. I did enjoy having a snuggly baby to keep me warm in America, but it is nice to know that he can fall sleep on his own.

Jack is such a content little guy. He loves to just sit and play. He loves toys and he loves trash. Anything can keep that little guy entertained.