The Little Things

Now that is a cliche title but today I was thankful for:

• The sun that shined for an hour, promising a hot shower.
• The sick 5.5 year old who said she prayed to get well twice and "I feel so much better". 
• The 7 year old with hurt feelings who was comforted by a bike ride with mommy and making chocolate chip pie (almost all by herself), just being together. (the pie was delicious, a great way to use the last of our chocolate chips).
• The 3.5 year old who thinks his mommy has a great singing voice (ha) and asks for a song every.night.
• Baby (okay, 13 month old), who finally slept through (though we were up with another sick one most of the night---still progress, let's see if she goes 2 for 2)
• A stellar washing machine that cleaned out so much gunk from the sick one's night.
• A house helper who could help in the morning while I got a little sleep and David worked (set up shop in the Home school room)
• so many more 'little things' to thank our God for...

We move the shoe baskets near the back screen door to keep G from tumbling out of the door. She discovered (was taught by Sophia and Bella), how to climb under the bench and play. She loves it.

Perspective.

Bella was quarantined all day. She watched videos, ate what she could, took a nap and sat in the window playing. I thought the bars on the windows quite appropriate.

 Poor girl, she cracks a smile when Tobin talks to her. He said sweet things like, "I am sorry you are sick, Bella"

Daddy's birthday

That's right, David joined me by turning 37 on October 25th. (it is great living in Asia where people say: 'you look so young' or fat, or old, or tired, depending on how you actually look, he happens to look young)

If we didn't gain five pounds each over the weekend, it wasn't for lack of trying. 

I made my mom's cheesecake recipe. In the past I have used substitutes for sour cream and it went all wrong. For this I soured whipping cream and, other than being slightly burnt on one edge, it was fabulous. I made a strawberry sauce (2 cups of sugar!) to go with it, but I preferred it plain with black coffee---soooooo good. 

On Friday night I also almost burnt 'Paula Dean's biscuits' but they turned out great too, we had those for birthday breakfast: Bacon and Egg Biscuits. (I ordered the bacon from the provincial capital).

We actually celebrated Friday night, so we grilled hotdogs (also from the provincial capital), I made Pioneer Women's Onion Straws (family fave now), and had baked beans (also from the capital). Can you tell how special birthdays are, hardly anything local (but cream cheese is local but imported so quite expensive). 

Earlier in the day I took the kids out to buy gifts, each a lego gift 'to do with daddy' (this is what I coached them to say as David opened the gifts). I thought this might be utter fail, but it turned out fun. They also bought chocolate and cookies that he loves and we never buy. 

Tobin had his gift in the shopping bag still. He is waiting while David opens my gift.

My gift was a book via Kindle and these Dewberry Cookies which are imports found here. Not to mention the cheesecake, onion straws, and biscuits all from scratch. I love to bake, so this was a delight for me, and of course quite tasty! 

Sophia made this special box to put her gifts in...

Hershey's Chocolate. This, too, has just started showing up a local grocery store, it is expensive so we never buy it.

Tobin's gift, Hershey's kisses and a Lego Helicopter.

Tender kisses from Bella.

Bella hid her gift and made him find it. What is it? He shakes the box.

Oh, a lego airplane "for us to do together" Bella said. 

David had a bad cold coming on, all of our family does. He felt pretty bad on his real birthday. His body also has various aches too so he regularly gets a massage from the blind guys up the road (they are professionals, very good, and all a local minority, so David really chats it up with them). On this day, Bella just wanted to be with her daddy, so Tobin and Bella took books and toys up there with him while he got his massage. What a birthday blessing. They did well.

Happy Birthday David! I love doing life with you.

Theodora's Crown

 Touted by Sophia as "The Best craft project we have done all year---or ever" we made the crown of Empress Theodora. This was the wife of Byzantine Emperor  Justinian. I got out all of my shiny stick on things, buttons, flowers, beads, etc. and they had a blast.

 They have played and played with these, ruling their various kingdoms.

 

When daddy got home I started commenting on what we were studying in History, all proper-like,  while the girls promptly ran over to our den and started acting out scenes from the movie Frozen. Then they wanted us to video them. And we did. It was hilarious. Then Bella was sad when she forgot to twist her hips and stomp backwards like Elsa in the movie, and Sophia showed her how she should slam the cabinet door for emphasis in the song "Let it Go". That's right girl, all about that attitude. (Love saves in the end, right?)

Brick Laying, House Making

 Back at the construction site, the girls (and friends at various parts in the day) started making different rooms to their house. They have a little couch in a 'sitting room', an oven, a bedroom, and a bathroom.

The designer, Sophia, at work.

Bella baked me  a cake.

 We sat down to enjoy our meal together.

I was shocked and amused to see their bathroom. It looks like many village bathrooms we have seen, they even made it private. And they actually used it.

Me: 'You peed over there?'

S: "yeah, why not?"

Me: 'any number of reasons, we have indoor plumbing for one'

S: "daddy knows"

Me: (laughing) "no more okay" (and I went on to explain how you get sick from playing in pee pee, etc.)

The path up to their sleeping mat.

And then Tobin used the bathroom. "one last time"

These kids!

Our Cuddle Girl

 This girl is our cuddliest baby! Almost anytime we pick her up she puts her head on our shoulder and often will tap us with her hand. We are treasuring this now. She is growing up!

 I really don't use this sling but was taking the picture for a friend.

She is standing, but not quite cruising. She is still strengthening her core, and can do some amazing squats :). 

She has a bad cold (our whole family), so she is not sleeping well. We keep saying that when she starts sleeping well consistently (longer than a week), we will move her in with Tobin or the girls....maybe by the time she is two (hope not).

She is still babbling like crazy but really doesn't have any words she says clearly. She can say 'bye bye', but doesn't do that much. 

She can sign the sign language for 'more' 'all done' and 'please' but is still learning how to use them. 

We are trying not to give her too many 'nos' in our house, there could be a zillion. Right now: No going in the kitchen, no throwing food off the highchair' and 'no touching outlets', this is what we are training right now. So....she pulls books off the shelves and we let her, yes, she has ripped a few. 

Her personality is still coming through and we think she may be the biggest jokester with her little mischievous grin.

That's our Gabrielle these days at 13 months old.

Quill Pen Making

 Every week, on Fridays usually (unless we have time on a History day), we do a fine arts/science/ and/or History project. Sometimes these are combined, sometimes not. This week we followed Story of The World's project for Quill Pen making, and partially succeeded. 

I got fresh plucked 'quills' from the market. I found this to be much more disgusting than the chicken feet and pulling the tendon. I had a bottle of alcohol handy and soaked the quills a while before we handled them. 

I don't have great pics of this process because my hands were---dirty. We cleaned the inside of the quill, made our ink with walnut shells (here I goofed because as it got thicker I added water, which made it too watery in the end).

 The girls were not disappointed and started writing things as if they were monks from long ago writing books.

Tobin Talk

At 3 1/2 Tobin comes up with some pretty funny things. He is now trying to maneuver through figuring time lapses and Chinese/English Language, as well as other things....

Some examples:

"Is today tomorrow, mommy?"  (he has all kinds of questions like this)

"When I was five, I will ride my bike like Bella"

"Caleb is SunZhiJie(Caleb's Chinese name)"
"Caleb and Mommy and Daddy, and Sophia, and Bella and me are all Wai Guo Ren (foreigners)" He is learning this category though he doesn't really know what a waiguoren is, he just gets called it a lot and he is starting to figure out the grouping. Which reminds me of when Sophia asked at his exact age: "how do they know I am a wai guo ren?" (at that point she didn't quite know she looked so different from everyone)

And Tobin sometimes mixes the languages: "I 'bu ting Ayide hua' last time'" Which means: I did not listen to Ayi (Aunt) last time. He was referring to our date night when he did not obey our helper. "But I apologized two times". Yes, he did.

Construction Zone Fun

This is the house directly behind our apartment building. It is unfinished. It has had this pile of bricks and pile of sand there for a few months now, I think.

 Not to worry, our kids (and the neighborhood kids) take full advantage of the fun to be had at this construction site.

 Sophia and friend, LuBingHua built 'thrones', you can't see it but the clay dust is all over Sophia's forehead. And she never wants to change out of her school uniform. (I will explain the new red scarf in another post).

And yes, there is a little cause for caution as you take a closer look at all the rubble and such.  So far no real injuries....but I am not holding my breath.

Chicken Feet Science

We are in CC Cycle 3, Week 3 and really enjoying it so far. We are digging into American History read-alouds, and figuring out how the body works. 

I opted to do this Science Experiment instead of the one on the schedule because it looked like so much fun and because we have chicken feet so readily available to us. When I brought them home Sophia said: 'oh, I have eaten those before', yes she had. 

There is nothing to this, just grab a pair of pliers and show your kiddos how to tug at the tendon. The toes curl up. I then explained how tendon and muscle work. I let them really feel the foot with their gloved hands. "Feel all those bones, our feet and hands hold most of the bones in our entire body"

Then the grossness of pulling the tendon and watching it curl.

Bella loved it and still claims to want to be a doctor.

Sophia was thoroughly grossed out but did participate. 

If only I had a cadaver available we could really do some great Anatomy lessons....too bad we don't live at the medical college anymore.

Date Night Fare

David and I went on a date!!! We went on one last week only because the three olders were all at a birthday party and our new helper only had Gabrielle to take care of. (We couldn't put her in charge of all four too early in her career in our house, don't want to scare her away). 

 

This was date number 2 in 2 weeks, WOW. On our first date we ran into another ex-pat couple whose kids were at the same party. We were at a more 'western' restaurant. We talked a bit with them, and then sat on the other side of the restaurant. Meanwhile, the owner talked our ear off for about 10 minutes, then gave us two free beers. David texted our friends across the restaurant who came and got them. In the end, they took them to someone else. Apparently not great tasting beer. 

 

We ordered steak and tried to chat, we were so tired, what we really wanted was a nap, but we were not going to miss the opportunity for  a meal with no kids...and that was our date.

 

The steak was decent.  But on date number two we decided on local fare, and food that our kids would not enjoy. And this time we DID put our helper in charge of all four, which went okay, not great. 

Our date, however, did go well.  We chose to go to the big wet market and eat at the food stalls out front--almost all of them. Yes, we ordered various dishes from almost every stall and enjoyed the bustle of activity around us.

David ordered this dish first:

This is a type of congealed Tofu with lots of stuff on top.

I ordered these cold noodles with the same toppings as David's, I had just mixed them in!

I had never had this before and it was okay. I ate a bit of it and moved on. As our nephew, Ryan says: 'not my favorite'.

All the food stalls:

David ordered this 'ma la cai', which is spicy vegetables, they are pretty good, and pretty spicy.

Lemon drinks of course.

meatballs in a mint soup

And first desserts were Pao Lu Da, sweet bread in coconut milk, with fresh coconut and gelatin. Yum.

And to end with a local flavor, we walked up to KFC and got an Oreo blizzard thing that did not taste that good, we think they must have changed their ice cream recipe.
We walked and talked and held hands (husbands read this link). We went to Minority park and watched people and talked some more.

When we got home, chaos ensued.
All pics courtesy of my new iphone (HUGE Thanks to Mike M! Bless-ing!)

A village day

Over the National Holiday we visited two family's homes in two different villages. Though it is a lot of work, and hard with a crawler, we always have a great time.

The highlight at our first visit was the 'arrow helicopters' and playing house in the sand pit.

 Our friend's built a nice house in their village, which is becoming more common here in the valley. We always joke with them about our family moving in.

The kids got these helicopters going very high, as high as this bamboo:

Gabrielle did well, drank her bottle and remained mostly content, even though she missed her morning nap.

All three kids said they liked playing with the helicopters (rubber-band propelled), going 'up stairs' to the roof, and making food in the sand.

David visited and caught up with his old language teacher. 

I helped very little in the kitchen, everything was mostly prepared, but I can use a mortar and pestle, so I 'chopped' the peanuts for our hosts.  These went atop one of my favorite dishes that I can't really describe because I don't know the English name for the vegetable. It is topped with cilantro and hot pepper flakes and in this case peanuts (though not always).

Their new house and new kitchen hardly look like we are in a village.

AiMuan stuffed the fish. It was yum.

The rooftop view. I quoted Ps 121 to each of the kids every time I went up there to retrieve an 'arrow helicopter'. 

Workers were in the fields, but we saw many coming in for lunch, bringing their water buffaloes with them.

And another new house going up. 

We had a great time. At the other village we visited we were welcoming a newborn baby, so cute. The kids had fun there chasing ducklings, catching them, watching the hosts prepare the food, and playing house near the tractor. That family is a bit poorer than the other ones, but they have a refrigerator and served us ice, a first ever for a village visit! Little blessings, that and the cute, cute baby, of course.