Pie Month has Arrived

I scoured our blog this afternoon for evidence of me ever informing you of one of our family's traditions. Lo and behold, I think this is the first mention of it!
Which is so sad, as it really is a great little tradition.

This is our Third Annual Pie Month!

Yes, you heard me correctly. Pie Month!

Three years ago Brandon declared October to be Pie Month. He felt that October kind of got the shaft as far as holidays are concerned, with Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas in December. Plus he thought we kind of needed a "warm-up" for all the eating that comes in November with T-Giving.
(why not go ahead and give your waistline a little stretch in it before the big event comes along?! :) Since I've finally gotten back into the routine of exercise post-baby, I'm ok with the arrival of Pie Month!

If you know my husband at all, you understand that his declaration for completely-made-up-holidays or traditions is not unlike him at all.

And so yesterday, yes the 21st of October, I finally fulfilled our Pie Month tradition with a warm apple pie.

In Brandon's perfect Pie Month world, he'd like one pie per week during Pie Month. I'm still playing my I've-got-a-newborn card though, so we're over half a month in to Pie Month and we're just now getting around to it!

But isn't it a fancy shmancy pie to kick things off with?!

Next week: Buttermilk Chess Pie! (yes, we miss you Bekah!)

Next year I vow to get our 4th Annual Pie Month off to an appropriate start with a pie on the FIRST day of October! Anyone want reservations at Hotel Chancler next October?!

The Dawning of a New Era

Well, we've done it. We've made the jump into electric transportation.
I know. I know. All you Ford 150 Texas Edition people are totally hating on us right now.

And believe me. I get it.
In all of my driving years I've owned three cars.
(I'm using owned loosely...as I didn't purchase a single one with my own money. But lets not get nit picky here...)
And all three of those were trucks.
They ran the gamut. Chevy. Ford. Toyota. All using more gas than should be spoken of.
But then we traded in our gas guzzler for a society that depends on the bicycle.

The past several months our mode of transportation has been taxis. Occasionally buses. And we have a bike that we've shared. And until recently, that's been sufficient.

But then we found out that Eden's preschool is moving to a different location. Which gave us reason to think about finding a quicker mode of transportation. Quicker than a bike. Quicker than walking a couple blocks away to flag a taxi. Quicker than a bus that makes 7 stops between here and there.

Enter: The Electric Bicycle.

Well. okay. This one is actually our house helper's. Which is a good thing as it's pink, has flowers all over it, and has flower "pedals." No lie.
But we rode it today to the bike street. You know how in America all the car dealerships seem to crowd right next to each other, creating miles of cars on display?
It's the same thing here. Only it's bikes. The normal kind. The three wheeled kind. The electric kind. The scooter kind. you get my drift...

So our tutor rode our bike and went with us to help work through any details that might cause any trouble. He rode our bike because he doesn't have one. He doesn't have one because he's a scaredy cat. He's a scaredy cat because Chinese traffic is nutso.
(ok...scratch that last sentence mom and dad. You never read of such nonsense.)

So we arrived at the bike market.

Brandon picked out a black one. Any surprise there? ummmmm, no.

Kudos to him though for picking out the one with the safest kid's seat. I mean, it's no Britax Roundabout car seat strapped on the back and passing all DPS child restraint laws... but I don't think they can fall out of it at least.  :)

It's got a removable battery that'll plug right into our wall when it's low. It came with protective knee gear (but no helmet...does anyone else find that strange?!) And it's got pedals just in case the battery goes dead while you're out. But good googly if I have to pedal this thing with a kiddo on the back, I'm in a world of trouble.

So we're green now. We're saving the ozone layer one bike at a time.
And if anyone wants to come and visit us I'll let you take it for a spin. We can ride it together and make Dumb & Dumber jokes all day long.

Who Needs Sleep?

Everyone loves a picture of a peaceful sleeping baby, right?



What you don't see in this picture is the minutes leading up to this moment. Minutes, as in about 52 of them. 52 minutes of inconsolable screaming.

Look closer.

Yep. See those four pacifiers? Four different kinds of pacifiers.
All to no avail. The boy just won't have any part of them.

It's a good thing I don't live in America because otherwise, last night at 2 am I would have fled to the closest Wal-Mart and bought every single pacifier in stock...just to see if he'd fancy anything at all.
He doesn't.
And he probably won't. Which makes my sleepy eyes a little more droopy just thinking such thoughts.
This is uncharted territory for me...a baby that won't take a NUK.

But he makes up for it during the day.
Because when 7 a.m. rolls around and he wakes me up with coos, smiles, and flashing his dimple, I forget about all the hours of lost sleep.

My Four Year Old Baby Girl

We ended the week last week with a birthday party for Eden. Can't believe how quickly four years has passed! She greeted me friday morning with, "Mama...Are you going to say Happy Birthday to me?!"
And then we had a conversation about why she wasn't much bigger that morning than she was the day before.

We're notoriously bad about remembering to take video. But we broke out the video camera and dusted it off just for her birthday. I compiled a video of the highlights...so I'm hoping the grandparents will at least make it all the way through it. :)



A four year old and her chonies. I hope when she's 14 she's as easily pleased with a package of Disney Character Underwear.
Her birthday party invite was all in Chinese and when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday" at her party, her little classmates had to remind us that we should sing it in English for her too. It's times like this that I hope our calling here isn't totally warping our children.

Eden, oh how we love you. You continue to challenge us, stretch us, make us proud, make us laugh, and make us wish we were childless and back in college some days. We hope you'll look back on your childhood and forget the times that we screwed up when disciplining you. We hope it will be a good example of God's grace in our lives.
We love you beyond words, Eden Grace!! Happy 4th Birthday!

Wordless Wednesday

Life as We Know It

Almost 6 weeks after Caleb's birth and we're finding a routine.
Ahhhh, Normalcy. Schedule. It's nice to see you again.

We've been back in the Big Chicken for about 3 weeks now. We've never been so happy to say goodbye to PadThai and hello to Dumplings.
I was quickly reminded of our welcoming back home when my texts started looking like this...



Normalcy and Schedule include a lot of time with this dude:


The Asian dude, not Caleb. Well, Caleb too.
But every morning our tutor comes and hangs out with us all morning, joins us for lunch, and occasionally stays through the afternoon if we're feeling the desire for more inundation of Chinese.
The kids knew we were back to normal when he started showing up at our door again every morning.

A normal day at our place includes plenty of brother time.


Salem so happened to get some of Caleb's first smiles.


The normal days also include this tall, gorgeous, almost-4-year-old, who is back in preschool again and truly doing great with it.


A normal day for Salem now includes sleeping on a big boy bed below his sister on their bunk bed.


I'll admit that Caleb is a fairly easy baby and his normal days include plenty of sleep.


While the other two enjoy living room forts...


Caleb also does his fair share of this...


But even through the screams. The scary fevers at 2 a.m. The baby barf on every.single.one.of.my.shirts. He's worth it. And I'm so glad my days include some alone time with this dude every 3 hours!


Normalcy. Schedule. Routine.
Stick around for awhile, won't you?

What should have taken 15 minutes...

In case it hasn't been noticed, I'll state it out loud.

Apparently adding a third child to the family seriously takes away from blogging time.

Thankfully though, the only thing that is suffering from the changes of adding a 5th family member is the blog. Us? We're thriving. We're loving this mini-man and what he adds to our family.

Sure, we're occasionally sleep deprived, covered in baby vomit or urine (learning the hard way yet again about baby boys!), and entertaining our older children by non-stop movies...but we're thriving! :)

My parents went home on thursday, which means we lost our entertainment for Eden and Salem, our cook, our dish washer, our extra set of diaper-changing hands, and extra shoulders for burping on.

We're truly grateful they were able to be here and to stay for so long!!

I wish someone would have told me with my first baby to throw the books out the window and to just stare at my baby, hold her, and enjoy her. We didn't do a good job of enjoying Eden's newborn stage like I think we should have. We were far too concerned with schedules, making sure she got her 15 minutes of allotted wake time before naptime, and making sure we didn't "spoil" her by holding her too much.

I feel like, finally, with our third, we're enjoying our baby. We're treasuring his newborn phase. Sleepless nights and all, we're holding him just a bit longer, laughing at him while he does the weird REM newborn eye thing, and doing our best to not be swept up in the scheduling that a newborn needs.

Meanwhile, Brandon has been taking care of business. Applying for a passport for my newborn and getting his Thai birth certificate translated are things that make me breathe heavily and want to pass out and never wake up. We're up a creek if I ever have to start acting like a responsible human being.

My one baby that wasn't born in Thailand sure is handsome in his Thai clothes...

And my two Thai babies...

Maybe the reason I'm enjoying Caleb more is because he's our third and we realize how fleeting this time is. Maybe its because we're "seasoned" parents and are more used to the grunts and growls and squeaks of newborns. (me thinks not)
Maybe it's because he's most likely our last newborn to have around.
Whatever it is, we're soaking up time with our sleepy head.

And now that it's taken me about 3.5 hours to publish this one simple blog, maybe I'll take that as a cue to take a blog hiatus!
over and out... for awhile.  :)