Don't tell Asher, but this is actually a gift for Baby Jack.
Asher and I went and had coffee with one of my friends last week. She had gotten this elephant basket for Jack and filled it with newborn diapers.
Asher was thrilled. I mentioned that it was for Baby Jack. He said, "No. Asher."
Hmm....
I guess at this point it really doesn't matter.
I'm excited to add another elephant to the boy's room. It goes right along with the elephant light, elephant coat rack and stuffed elephants. Right now I'm just waiting on the changing table to be made so I can see what size of basket I need to buy to hold all of Jack's cloth diapers and then their room will be ready to go.
When my friend gave us all of those newborn diapers I did realize that they were the only diapers we had for Jack. I guess that might be another thing to add to my to do list.
We had a pretty low-key Thanksgiving celebration this year. Just some good friends, good food and a lot of desserts.
The original plan was to just have chicken because turkeys are super expensive here, but Celeste came through with a very fresh (like on Tuesday it was alive and Wednesday it was in my fridge) and reasonably priced turkey.
Turkey Before.
Turkey After.
Please note that I had very little to do with the transformation of the turkey besides being the only one with an oven and a refrigerator that was big enough to house the turkey.
Turkey Cutting.
We all brought a few of our favorite things.
Angela wowed us with her desserts.
We had cherry pie, apple pie and her very famous pumpkin cookies.
We ate a lot.
Had time to talk to our friends.
Made a turkey.
Made some new friends.
Took a group picture.
And another group picture.
And, at last, we took a good group picture.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(note to pregnant friends: hosting Thanksgiving while almost 9 month pregnant will leave you a bit sore, but very thankful for friend that will wash your dishes for you)
It's an outside only ball, so we have been spending a lot of time outside with it. He loves to throw it and kick it. He's getting a lot better at kicking balls (thank you Little Gym where they only play soccer and not basketball).
Asher is still obsessed with vehicles. When we go down the street he names everything we see. When he gets hurt or gets in trouble he will start crying and then start yelling for a taxi car. His favorite mode of transportation is usually a taxi car, but he loves to ride motorcycles, too.
He has gotten very particular about which clothes he wants to wear. His first choice every day is Hippo shirt, followed by Monster shirt or Dinosaur shirt. Usually he will settle for one of his shirts that has a car on it. Plain shirts or stripes are out of the question.
Asher is still sleeping great in his big boy bed. He does get out of the bed when he wakes up in the mornings and after his nap. His door stays shut so we just let him roam around for a little while. Normally his roaming just consists of going to his bookshelf, getting a book and then getting back in bed to look at the book. Every once in a while I will find the curtains pulled back a little bit and I know he has been looking out of the window.
His favorite book at the moment is "Bedtime for Francis." It's a book that I loved when I was a little girl and I'm glad that Asher also loves it. He reads it with Daddy almost every day before nap time. He also really like "The Cat in the Hat" (also known as Big Mimi Hat Book and no, I don't know why he calls the the cat Big Mimi).
Once or twice a week he goes to childcare while I go to Bible Study or MOPS. It's the same teacher for both events and he really likes getting to listen to music and mess around with Play-Doh. He comes home with a new art project every time, I think that painting has probably been his favorite so far. After class was over on the first day his teacher asked me what language he spoke because he was saying stuff in Thai and English. I told her he could speak Thai (which is a bit of stretch) and to not speak English to him during class. Since then he has been understanding more Thai. He also does Thai tutoring with me twice a week. We have a lady come over and talk with me and play with Asher. He's picking up new words and knows most of his animals in Thai.
Asher's favorite place to go is the park. While we are there he likes to run with the other runners around the track, drink water on the bench, watch the big boys skateboard and play takraw and go look in the pond to see the turtles.
Asher's favorite things are still his cars, his elephant and his stuffed bear. He loves to look at pictures of Mimi, Granny and the rest of the family. He loves to do push ups, planks and stretches with Daddy. He also loves to strum Roger's guitar.
Here's a little video from today. My new favorite Asher's phrase is definitely "ice water." He says it at the beginning of the video and I think it is so funny.
I'm trying to get a few things done before Baby Jack gets here. One of my big projects is to have several meals in the freezer so that we don't starve after the baby is born. I still remember the first few days after Asher was born and before my mom arrived in Indonesia, if we didn't get pizza or McDonald's delivered we didn't really eat. (Side Note: I do love that in Asia you can get pretty much anything delivered to your house on a motorbike. What better way to eat unhealthy food than to not even have to leave your house?)
So far I am planning on making Chicken Spaghetti, Meatballs, Spaghetti Sauce and Sloppy Joes. I would love to have a few other dishes, but I don't know what to make. What do you suggest?
Here are a few rules: 1. If it has cheese it must be cheddar and even then cheese is a precious commodity. 2. Asher is allergic to peanuts and cashews and we try to avoid nuts in general just to be safe. 3. The more made from scratch the better. We can buy a lot of things in BKK, but really can't afford to pay $6 for a can of cream of mushroom soup.
Do you have any favorite meals that you like to make ahead and freeze? What did you do so that your family didn't go hungry when a new baby arrived?
Tonight we had some of our friends over for dinner. They live in a nearby country and haven't been to BKK in several months. We had fun catching up, swapping language learning stories and celebrating their birthdays. Actually their birthdays were several months ago, but we hadn't seen them since and I love any reason to make a cake (especially with this icing).
Asher got pretty wound up when we met them at the park, his excitement grew when he got to eat rice with them and he reached a near frenzy when he got to eat cake (that he helped to make).
Welcome back to our house tour. You can see Part 1 here.
Today we are going to see the rest of the downstairs.
Last Saturday night we had all of our language learning buddies over (and they had a surprise baby shower for me), so the downstairs got cleaned up a bit more than usual.
Here's our downstairs bathroom along with all of Asher's potties. They pretty much just sit there under the sink, one day they will get used...
I promise this is actually the floor after being cleaned. It just doesn't ever really get to be a clean color. I love that this bathroom is the classic Asian wet bathroom. There's a spigot under the sink and a drain in the corner. When I want to scrub the floor I just turn on the water, get out the Comet and go to town. When I'm done I can just rinse it down the drain.
When we moved in this bathroom was dark green, so one day we went and bought paint and brightened it up. Between the paint and the new mirror over the sink the bathroom looks much better.
Now on to our office.
(In case you missed it, the office would be the part of the kitchen counter containing the printer.)
This is our kitchen. I can honestly say I was blown away when I saw it. I was expecting a repeat of the Surabaya kitchen (small and built for someone under 5 feet tall). Instead I got a big open kitchen with actual cabinets!
When we moved into this house it was completely furnished for people coming to Bangkok for medical reasons. We had like 3 different food processors missing various parts, lots of plastic cups from the movie theatre and an interesting array of take-out containers. We just stuffed all of that stuff into the top parts of the cabinets and into the cabinets that we can't easily access. All of our stuff fits in about 3 cabinets especially since we don't keep much food at home.
The handle was taped onto the refrigerator when we moved in and after it fell off over and over again I decided it was easier to just leave it off.
Just for the record, my kitchen actually looks nothing like this under normal circumstances. There is usually a lot of stuff sitting on the counters, dirty dishes next to the sink and generally a lot more clutter in the "office" area.
