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.