to the mom lady

my beautiful girl


what am i going to do with these kids?


big man on campus


I wanted to take a few moments to express my appreciation to my own fabulous mother and embarrass her with obscene amounts of gushing about how perfect she is. Ha-ha, kidding mom. But seeing as how it is Mother's Day and I don't get to give her a big hug to thank her for all she's done for me over the years, I thought I'd send out a big virtual hug from me & Michael & her grandgoobers (I mean kids). Seeing as how I'm that much closer to the big 3-0 you'd think I wouldn't be as much in need of my mother's guidance and counsel, but you would be dead wrong. Just this weekend I turned to her in pitiful need, aching for some girl talk and for someone to tell me everything would be all right. Who better to turn to than my mother? And, of course, not only did I come away feeling refreshed (because she did, in fact, let me feel that everything would be all right) but also motivated to be a better person because that's what she does...inspires me to be better because she is better. Funnily enough she also told me to stop being so prideful and basically to get over myself, but it is a major tribute to her sensitivity and love that she was able to word it in such a way it wasn't until quite a while after our conversation that I realized she had done so. And she really only has the ability to do that because I know she has been there before, she has found herself desperate or lacking faith or strength or desire or endurance and yet she has pulled through it (although she will be the first to tell you that it is with the help of the Savior and not her own abilities that she has done this) and so I know her counsel is tried & true. That's why I love my mom. Not because she's perfect, but because she's not perfect, but she's trying to be. And she's willing to let me watch her and walk carefully in her footsteps to see if I can be just as awesome as she is someday.
I love you, mom.

foreign language lessons

Yesterday John & I were practicing his alphabet on the computer, when suddenly he jumped up and started shouting "pih!" "pih!" We're usually pretty good at deciphering his jabbering but occasionally it takes a while to catch on.

Me: What?
J: (excited) pih!
Me: Pih? What's pih?
J: (frustrated now) Mommy, pih!
Me: Ok, John can you show me?
J: (grabs my finger and pulls me off couch) pih!
(we walk together to the middle of the room, he drops my finger and starts twirling around)
Me: Oh, you want to SPIN!
J: (excited again) pih! pih!!
(we spin in circles for 3 or 4 minutes until we are too dizzy and giggly to do any more)

This, I think, is why I became a mother.

a taste of home

Being a stay-at-home-mom leaves me a fair amount of time to surf the internet for fun stuff (oh, wait I mean it leaves me time to play with my kids! and sometimes feed them!) But in-between the playing and the feeding I like finding people's blogs and reading about their hobbies, especially when they're good at what they do. So here is a really cool website I like: PIONEERWOMAN and this specific link is for a really freaky recipe that looks just bizarre enough to try it...Mountain Dew Apple Dumplings. My first reaction was something like...eeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwww...seeing as how I have never consumed an entire can of Mountain Dew, much less used it as a main ingredient in a recipe. But the pictures and description are really what get me, so I am dying to try these. However, there is a problem: I live in a country where I am unable to buy either refrigerated crescent rolls OR Mountain Dew.

Therefore, I am giving one of my loyal readers (out of the whole 12 of you) the assignment to make these for me and then post a comment or email me about how amazing/disgusting they are. Then I will know if I need to bother bookmarking that page to make them whenever I get back in the States. OK, ok, it's really already bookmarked, but I'm drooling over them and really need someone to tell me that they're worth the wait.

And since I am living in a tropical, curry-filled country, here is a more local recipe to give you and idea of the things we eat sometimes.

Chicken Curry Soup

Heat oil in a large pot, saute some fresh grated ginger, couple cloves of garlic, and 2 or 3 chopped green chiles with chopped chicken breast. Cook until chicken is done. Add a few Tbsp. curry paste (we use a sort of sweet honey-chicken curry sauce). Stir in a Tbsp. each of vinegar, fish sauce, and sugar. Add about 4 cups of chicken broth (maybe that's 2 cans?) and a can of coconut milk and mix it all really well together. Finally scoop in about 4 cups of cooked rice (or until it is more thick like stew than runny like soup) and serve!

I know that is a REALLY specific recipe with the amounts and all, but that is how I usually cook here, which is why Michael has lost so much weight since we've been here. If something doesn't turn out there's no desire for seconds. Well, life's an adventure right? OK, let me know if you try the curry soup. And also get cracking on those dumplings. Thank you.

happy asian birthday to me

Michael got me the COOLEST present for my birthday, so I had to take a picture. These are my cool new earrings from Tradewind Treasures


They are made with porcelain shards that have been found in shipwrecks throughout the South China Sea. The certificate they come with boasts they are sourced from a company that is "working closely with the Malaysian Department of Museums & Antiquities to map, research and excavate shipwreck sites in Malaysian waters." These particular ones were made from 17th Century Ming porcelain recovered from the Wanli Shipwrick circa 1625. Does he know how to spoil a girl, or what?
Oh, he also took me to get my feet eaten by fish. Seriously. It was awesome. And freaky. But mostly awesome.

speaking of flour...

My last post about the flour-debacle with John the other night reminded me of a traumatic experience I had here, strangely enough, also involving flour. And bugs. You see where I'm going with this? My wonderful friend Anne introduced me to a great store called Bake With Yen, a wholesale baking store here that sells bakeware as well as baking products (5 pounds of hazelnuts, a bucket of shortening, etc.) and we frequent it when in need of cheese or breadcrumbs or whatever. So a few months ago I bought several bags of flour in a brand I can't remember but I'm sure it has something to do with Anchor-something-or-other because there is a large anchor on the front. Right.

Anyway, I was making cookies one night and innocuously opened a new bag of flour, dumping it into the plastic container where I store the flour. I casually dipped my plastic yellow 1-cup measurer into said flour and unceremoniously dumped it into the cookie mix. Without warning, a torpedo-sized insect LEAPT up out of the flour I HAD JUST DUMPED INTO MY BOWL and streaked across the room in an attempt to sever my head from my body. OK, not really, it was just a moth and it flew the other direction and landed terrified on the wall, but try telling that to Michael who was convinced from my scream that I was being attacked by an axe. He was not amused, by the way. Still, a moth. A LIVE moth sitting in a plastic bag of flour for who knows how long on a store shelf, waiting for me to buy it and bring it home so it could wreak its revenge on mankind. John thoroughly enjoyed the whole process, helping immensely by jumping around like popcorn, shouting "BUG! BUG! BUG!" until Michael trapped it in a cup and dumped it out the window.

SO...a word to the wise. If you find yourself living in Southeast Asia anytime soon, NEVER under ANY circumstances should you buy flour that has an anchor on the front! Unless of course they decide to change their logo, in which case I cannot help you.

baking lessons

Lately John wants to see what we're doing when we make food in the kitchen. Even if I'm just getting him a bowl of cereal, he'll get all excited and say "see!" while he drags in a chair from the table so he can be at eye-level with the counter. So this also means he wants to help a lot, opening things, dumping items into the bowl, etc. Anyway, he wanted to "help" me make cookies last night, so I would measure out the sugar and let him dump it from the cup into the bowl, stuff like that. Well, at one point I was transferring brown sugar from its package into a storage container and I blew some sugar off the lid, so of course he had to copy me and started blowing on everything.

After a few steps it was time to add the dry ingredients, so I let him dump the flour into a separate bowl and turned to get the baking powder when I heard him sharply blow and start coughing. I turned around to see my counter dusted with droplets of flour and my son wearing a fine film of white flour-dust from ear to ear. I started to scold him but the sight of him blinking at me under a layer of flour and smacking his lips to get rid of the grit in his mouth made me giggle so I just couldn't be mad. Unfortunately I was too scrambled, trying to deal with a slightly explosive mess, rocking Emily with my foot while she screamed in her car seat, and attempting to wipe down a wiggly, flour-covered boy, to think about grabbing a picture. Trust me, it was priceless.

smiles.

Emily has become much more interactive as she enters her third month, cooing more and smiling at us a lot. Of course, none of this have we been able to capture on camera or video, since she suddenly decides to do her imitation of a wooden puppet whenever we pull one of these strange recording instruments out... is she afraid it will steal her soul? Anyway, if you want to know what it looks like when she smiles, just imagine the Stay-Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters... before he gets all grumpy and bursts into flame, i mean.

ode to art

There is an art gallery here that we like to visit. It's fairly intimate and set at the furthest corner of a mall where not many people go, which makes it nice and quiet, always a bonus for an art gallery. There's another one, same company, at the hotel we stay at when we go to Singapore. (HERE is the link) Anyway, we found an exhibit recently that we liked, so I thought I'd post some pictures. It's not really Asian art, which is what we usually like to see, but I thought these paintings were really cool and would make for a fun kids room, if they didn't cost several thousand dollars. The artist is Coplu (his website is HERE) We tried to find prints as well, but they're also rather expensive, so that may have to go on the back burner for a while.

Also, I've been tagged...

I got tagged a few weeks ago by my cousin Heather, so I'm finally getting round to it.

FOUR PEOPLE WHO EMAIL ME REGULARLY
1. mom
2. posse (technically more than one person, but who's counting?)
3. anne
4. bookbrowse

FOUR PLACES I WOULD LIKE TO VISIT
1. the great barrier reef
2. hong kong
3. disneyland (haven't been in a few years and it's calling to me)
4. bali

FOUR FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
1. suzy's
2. the okonomayaki place (don't know what it's called)
3. michelangelo's (mom & dad have spoiled me SO bad... granted i've only been there once...)
4. that sushi place on 3rd so./2nd west, or something like that... i can never remember the name of it

FOUR THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE COMING YEAR
1. deciding where we're going to live
2. possibly visiting utah (if we don't come home to stay) and seeing my clothes again!
3. having john out of diapers
4. emily rolling over, crawling, eating solids, etc. the first year is so full of cool events!

FOUR THINGS I AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE COMING YEAR
1. potty-training john
2. packing & moving (either back to the states or to a new apt. here)
3. several of my friends turning 30... that means i'm not far behind...
4. missing out on the snow family vacation to cali. dang it.

OK, so there's my fulfillment of Heather's tag. I guess I'm supposed to tag someone else??? (Never done this before... by the way, thanks Heather for my first tag!) So I now tag Lisa, Laural, Stacy and Brookie to post the same list on their blogs.
Have fun!

Lots of Stuff

Wow, I love this girl.
So I've been negligent in my posting this last month. We had a great, busy time and are still trying to recover. Emily turned 2 months and doubled her birth weight, John got a haircut, we all went to the beach & to Singapore, we had friends from the States come stay with us... there were over 100 pictures in my camera from last month, so I'm just going to do a brief review of the big things. I'll post the web album later with the whole caboodle if you feel so inclined to look at such a ridiculous number of our pics.

The many faces of Emily... she is definitely a growing girl.

John stuck his Shrek doll on Emily's changing pad and said "Shrek wet"... now if we could only get him to tell us when HE'S wet. Sigh... potty training will be harder than we thought.

Michael finally convinces me to let him buzz John's head. John looks great and he is SO much cooler. The clippers scare the bejeebies out of him, but we can usually sufficiently bribe him to sit still until it's over.

Moses parting the sea :) She slept like that for about 10 minutes one day.

Why is it we think our kids look SO much older when they're wearing pants? Probably because they never wear them... it's too darn hot.

Goodness, where did this child's neck go??? Cute chubber-head. This was on Emily's blessing day. Tracy Friend gave me a set of baby pearls on a necklace that we put on her for this special occasion. It almost disappeared in the folds of her neck.

John learning his alphabet... with goggles on. Of course.

We make another trip to Singapore... we love coming here for a breather because it's so clean and efficient, things often sorely lacking in Malaysia. This landmark statue is right at the waterfront.

We go to a Pakistani BBQ with our friends.

Good food, good conversation. Good times.

A rare pic of just us 2 lovebirds.

A family photo!

Just sittin' here... lookin' cute.

I caught her mid-sneeze :)

We spent an amazing week in this beautiful paradise... Redang Island off the northeastern coast of Malaysia. Michael perfectly summed up our first visit to the beach: It's like walking on powdered sugar. And everything was that perfect. Crystal blue pristine waters, soft sand, beautiful weather, abundant sea life, relaxed atmosphere... everything you want out of vacation. The 7 hour bus ride there & back is a different story (as is the ridiculously rocky boat ride out to the island... thankfully only one of us threw up) but looking back it was well worth the effort to get there. If we could manage it we'd love to take another trip to Redang.

Matching outfits. It was too cute, I couldn't resist. Besides, I have to do this now before John's old enough to know better & protest.

John & Zach, 2 peas in a pod.

Michael & I finish our SCUBA certification!!! We were so excited to go and had an awesome time diving. An ENORMOUS thanks goes out to our friends who watched our kids so we could do this together. You guys are all awesome, we can't even thank you enough. We also can't wait to go diving again, it was amazing!

The boys chillin' at lunch. One of the rare moments John actually ate something... poor kid was sick all week. Not sure what it is about this boy and vacation that they don't agree with each other, but he always seems to get sick right before we go to the beach.

The GORGEOUS view from our resort.

Changing diapers... she HATES being wet & will calm right down when I put her on the changing mat.

My mission comp. Amy & her husband come to visit Malaysia! Eating at Suzy's, one of our favorite places.

We FINALLY went up the Petronas Towers while Amy & Jimmy were here and got them to take a family pic of all of us (even though all you can see of Emily are her legs). It was fun to see the city from a bird's eye view!

This is the first time we've ever strapped Emily in her car seat to take her anywhere. She looked so huge to us we had to take a picture.

Man, I love close-ups of this girl's face. She is indescribably beautiful to me.

Oh, and I got a haircut! Michael's never seen me with short hair (except in old pictures) but he seems to like it. I'm still adjusting, but MAN it feels good to have short hair in this heat.
Phew! That seemed like a busy month. We have a nice lull for a few weeks and then we'll be ready to have Michael's family come visit us in May! Anyone is welcome to hop on a plane and drop in on us any time... we have an air mattress waiting for you. :)

an observation

Having a 2-year old means that when someone tells you that they're pregnant, instead of telling them congratulations, you just start laughing.

anyway... coming soon, a trip to the beach, a haircut, and some good friends.

grammar 4 kids

a few weeks ago john started saying something that sounded like "mice" all the time and we couldn't figure out what in the world he was talking about (which, of course, was infuriating to him and would usually end in a screaming fit). finally, we realized he would use it in a possessive sort of way, indicating that something belonged to him. it dawned on us one day when michael said that something was "daddy's" and john firmly corrected him, saying "no, mice!" that's when we realized he was duplicating his daddy and stating a possessive "my's". and although it's incorrect, i'm still astounded that little kids can be so brilliant to apply grammatical rules to their words like that.
seriously, i don't think it's possible to not enjoy watching kids grow up.

name that tune...

Fun diversion for the day:
LYRICS GAME
If you want to check your answers you don't need to actually click on the "Answer" link for each one, just hold your mouse over the word Answer and it will pop up. I thought this was totally fun although I have to admit to only getting 15 out of 50. yikes.

Boy 4 Sale

Literally from the day John turned 2 our home has become a war zone. He has several melt-downs a day, including major screaming fits that leave us so exasperated he ends up in his room half the day because we don't know how to deal with him. We're crossing our fingers that it can simply be attributed to his lack of ability to communicate yet...he's learning slowly about pronunciation of words, he's started stringing together words to make simple sentences...he's really getting there, but apparently it's too slow because he gets wildly frustrated with us when we can't understand him. Anyway, a result of all this hullaballoo is that I revoked movie-watching privileges, making him (heaven forbid) actually play with his mom and, oh i don't know, read and stuff. What a concept. We do, however, still let him watch video clips on YouTube and he especially loves Sesame Street. Michael & I have found the coolest clips that take us on a trip down nostalgia lane...Ladybug Picnic, Pinball counting, Rubber Ducky, C is for Cookie, etc. Anyway, we discovered this the other day and John requests we watch it at least 14 times in a row before I pull the plug because anything is obnoxious after 14 times. The sound is pretty bad and it's totally old school stop-animation, which looks completely primitive after getting used to digital animation. But it is pretty darn amazing when you think about how they accomplished it. So, for your viewing pleasure, here is...an Orange Singing Carmen.

Etched in Graphite

My friend Miow Lin is from Malaysia and she told me that when she went to vote in the national elections, they gave her a slip of paper with the candidate's names and...a pencil. I am totally not making that up. Indignantly she declared it to be ridiculous, that anyone could change her vote by simply erasing her marks. To which she received the reply, “but who would?” And it is that kind of forward thinking that has made Malaysia the super-power it is in the world today.

More birthday pics

I almost forgot to post some more pics from John's birthday. We wanted to plan a small play-date with John's friends for an informal birthday party and one of our friends that works at the US Embassy invited us to do it on the embassy grounds. There's a lap pool and a small kids pool where we gathered with 5 other kids and their moms for a lunch/swim party. A bunch of the embassy pics here were taken by Anne so thanks to her for sending me copies!

John 2nd Birthday

Happy Birthday to John

So last week was John's birthday (yay! Can anyone say 'terrible 2s?' That's kind of like saying World War II was a border skirmish) and he got some sweet presents from G&G Weist as well as Aunt Hilary. We've now got a couple more cool books to keep him quiet at church (something I'm sure the rest of the congregation will be thrilled at) and John had the grand experience of blowing out his own candles for the first time. (We had to re-enact that part over & over & over... sigh, I have to remember that he's a boy and will always think that fire is cool). And in return for the awesomeness that was his birthday (that's funny, my spellchecker didn't mark awesomeness as an incorrect word) John decided to show his appreciation by suddenly turning into a monkey and attempting to climb on every available surface in our apartment.

It started when he got a time-out and I put him screaming into his crib. After about 20 seconds the screaming stopped and I was mid-way through asking Michael, “Did that sound like a door opening?” when the plonking of 2-year-old feet was heard banging down the hall and a little head popped around the corner. We were so shocked we couldn't even be mad at him, and instead got the video camera and made him re-enact the escape.


Apparently he learned to pull himself up to the top rim, balance somewhat precariously while he swung his legs over, then slowly lower himself until he was low enough to plop down to the ground. The whole exercise took him about 8 seconds. I noted while watching this escapade that “he's going to topple over and fall right on his head” which is exactly what he did the next time he tried it during his afternoon nap. That's one major problem with having tile floors everywhere. Ouch.

Unfortunately the large purple goose-egg on his forehead did nothing to deter his enthusiasm for this endeavor because I woke that night at 2am to the pinging of DVDs on the ground next to our bed. The little goober had climbed out of his crib, retrieved a DVD from our room, taken it out to the living room to try to watch it, climbed up on a table and took a picture frame from a shelf on the wall, and who-knows-what-in-the-world-else-he-did or how long he had been awake at all!!!!! And because he was having so much fun climbing everywhere he decided the next day to climb on the kitchen counter to retrieve snacks from a shelf that's about parallel with my head.

Of course he didn't know how to get back in his crib or get down from the counter, so needless to say we've been a bit worried about the little monkey's safety. So, back to my main point at the beginning of this post, which was about John's birthday... the main present he got from mom & dad came 2 days after his birthday when we took a trip out to Ikea and bought him a big-boy bed.

He has been excited for naps and bedtime ever since and takes up chanting “new bed! new bed!” at regular intervals. He still gets up and plays for a while sometimes, but at least he can get himself back into bed when he gets tired (which, since he turned 2 is, basically, never).
Oh, and Emily is growing like a weed (6 weeks old and finally fitting in 0-3month clothes instead of just newborn stuff) and, of course, she is just as beautiful as ever.

Happy Presidents Day

Things have been more up-tempo lately as we've returned somewhat to normal life... I've started going back to teaching Institute with Michael on Friday nights and I'm also getting back in my Primary calling. On top of that, Emily decided she wanted to start getting enormous, so she eats about every hour of the day. Thankfully she gives me a respite at night when she sleeps 3 hours at a time like clockwork, but it still means that we have fallen behind on some of our usual routines. However, John has been remarkably adaptable to everything, taking it in stride when he has to wait for something because mom has to feed the baby. He still insists on kissing his sister at least a dozen times a day and has started sharing his toys, food, pacifier, etc. Anything he enjoys and thinks she would want as well. The other day I left Emily on her changing pad and went to get a diaper. When I came back, John had lined up all of his rubber ducks next to her so she could play with them.

Another relatively new development for John is his desire to talk on the phone. He sees us use our phones and, naturally, wants to copy what mommy & daddy are doing. However, he doesn't quite understand the concept of non-face-to-face communication so he will sit with the phone at his ear not saying a word for minutes at a time. However boring this may seem to me, if Michael is out somewhere and one of us happens to call the other, John will insist on “talking” to his daddy on the cell phone. And by “talk” I mean he wanders around the apartment with the phone up to his ear while he listens to Michael tell him about his day.

His affinity for this cell phone thing was emphasized by the following experience:
One song that I am requested to sing several dozen times a day is “The Daddy Song” from the Primary Children's Hymnbook (actually it's called “Daddy's Homecoming” but John has shortened it for easier reference-- the link for the song is HERE.) John loves to follow along, interjecting a word here and there and doing actions along with me: clap hands, climb on knees, hug, cheeks, kiss.
Anyway, I was getting tired of daddy always getting the forefront in the song department so I decided to throw in “The Mommy Song” from the same book (HERE) and subsequently made up some more actions for our mommy song. The first line begins “When my mother calls me,” at which point I put my hands up to my mouth to amplify the word, as if hollering out to someone in another room. The other night we were trying to entertain John and I began singing “the mommy song” with usual actions. At the end of that first line I had my hands up around my mouth “calling” out as usual and I asked a busy little John, who was happily running in circles around the room at the time, “John, can you 'call' with momma?” To which he stopped suddenly and put his hand up to his ear as if holding a cell phone and looked at me expectantly like, “ok, now what?” It was so unexpected that Michael & I just burst out laughing. John just realized we weren't singing anymore so he continued running happily in circles. Just one small way technology has changed the way we interact with each other.

OK, so here are a few more web albums:

More Jan 2008

Feb 2008

monkeys & more

And let me leave you with a parting thought... we had rented a car for 2 months (hallelujah, it has been heavenly!) but we are on our SECOND rental because the first one failed to live up to my standard of not containing any disgusting, filthy, disease-carrying vermin. That's right, we started finding little cockroaches IN THE CAR. And these suckers were FAST. We would try to kill them (OK, Michael would try to kill them, I would try to keep from squealing with horror) but they would dive UNDER the seat and hide somewhere in the nether regions of the "boot". Thankfully the rental company agreed that this was a less-than-desirable attribute for a car that someone actually wants to SIT in, so they brought us another one. Even now it gives me the complete willies just the think about it. And now I've shared it with you. You're welcome.

You know you're a parent when...

Ahhh remember when certain songs, smells or tastes could instantly take you back to a certain place in your life. For me when I smell nice and ripe peaches I can close my eyes and I'm transported to Okayama Japan where I tasted some of the best peaches I've ever tasted. Or when I listen to Bruce Springsteen sing Blood Brothers I am back in a tiny little apartment at BYU with my roommates. Imagine if you will an "oldie" on the radio, instead of taking you back to a memory of younger days (and I know we're new at this parenting thing), is switched to a new and.....uh different memory.

So Erin and I were driving to teach Institute on Friday night (Feb 8) and when we pulled into the parking lot an homage to the Spice Girls and their current reunion tour was playing on the radio, now what does the Spice Girls singing "Wannabe" bring to mind to you?

Is it this:


Or is it this:


If it is the second image, of Abby and Runt doing some karaoke then well you too watch WAY too many kids movies and have seen Chicken Little as many times as we have.

Here's to the memories, the ones that were associated with our pasts B.K. (Before Kids), and how quickly they're replaced......