Airplane - Survival of the Preparedest

In three days we will board a plane to make that seemingly endless trek across the pacific ocean for a month of vacation with family and friends.
I can hardly wait. I can hardly sleep at night. I'm on pins and needles in anticipation.

But behind it all, I'm also anxious. Nervous-anxious. Hesitant-anxious.

Not about landing in Texas and hugging nieces and nephews. No. Not anxious about that at all.
Absolutely.can't.wait. It's been 2 years since we've hugged their necks!

It's that 14 hour flight that has my stomach churning.

Perhaps because the last time we made that journey, it was wretched. Horrible. Scary. Miserable.

Really, after having a seizure on an airplane, we can only improve upon that. Surely there's no way it could be worse, right?
So in order to make sure that this time around it goes off without a hitch, I'm covering ALL my bases.

* I'm not pregnant this time around. CHECK

* There's not a Pappadeux in the Beijing airport to tempt me with coconut shrimp. CHECK

* And we're flying American Airlines, so wafts of Korean food will not be floating through the already stuffy air. CHECK

* We've basically quarantined our kids for the past week or so, so as to prevent any excessive germ-sharing. (Although...what are the odds...Eden still has a cough!)

On top of all that, I've totally gone out of my way for the past month to put together activities, games, and new toys for the kids to enjoy and to pass the time for 14 hours.
Granted, I spent a lot of time making, thinking, and prepping this stuff. But I figure after seizing on an airplane, I'm not without cause in my obsessive preparedness!



Pinterest has all sorts of ideas for keeping little ones busy in small spaces.

So for starters, I got stickers, new coloring pages, empty notebooks for drawing on and sticking stickers. I grabbed some cheapy toys at the local market that I don't give a rip about if they get lost.
I'm hoping that package of twistable crayons will be a huge hit. Neither Eden or Salem have ever used them, so I'm hoping that'll peak some curiosity for at least 10 minutes.

I picked up a box of 9 kuai bandaids (so that my children look like they've been through a cat fight by the time they stop off the plane) and a 5 kuai calculator for Caleb and his need to push buttons at all hours of the day. What can I say...living in the land of cheapy cheapables is totally a bonus for stocking up on things that you don't care if they get lost of broken!
A friend provided the pipe cleaners and pony beads for stringing and keeping fingers busy for awhile.

Not pictured is a dispenser of floss. I'm going to let Caleb go to town on pulling out every inch of it when it comes time to distracting him from throwing a fit.
And an empty baking powder container with a slit cut in the lid for him poking puff balls in and out of it. He loves those little puffy balls.

I picked up a couple of other ideas from other blogs...



Puzzle Popsicle Sticks. I made 2 or three for Eden and Salem each. And totally expecting Caleb to chew on them.



Rice bags!! This project was fun. Empty water bottles would have been easier than sewing bags. But I'm all about as little rattling and shaking noise as possible so as to not make the entire plane hate us by the time we get off. So, I sewed bags instead. There's a jillion blogs out there for instructions on making these.

And then the time consuming things were a couple projects that I wanted to do for the two bigs.



I'm not sure why I decided to attach ribbons as the closure for this cars "book." As now I realize that I'm going to have to be the one that ties it every time. oops...



The idea stemmed from here. There's printables, pictures, instructions. It's easy peasy. It just takes time.
(But did I mention that Brandon was gone for 10 days in the past month?! :)

But my favorite airplane activity is this one.



Again, the idea came from here. I added a few tweaks, and facial features, and made a book out of it rather than just a page by itself...



Felt is so incredibly cheap here, so if an eyeball or mustache gets lost in the abyss under airplane seats, I won't cry too hard.



I tried doing a mix of girly accessories, as well as boyish ones. (although the pirate is my fave!)
And added in a Rangers hat, because after all, we're headed to Texas!


The kids haven't seen any of this. And are clueless that I've even been working on it. So hopefully the surprise of it all will buy us some time as well. If not, at least I'll have fun decorating Mr. Potato Head.

And of course, if all else fails, we've downloaded new movies and new apps onto the iPad, and I'm doing my darndest to get Caleb hooked on Elmo. (to no avail)

So even if I do have another seizure an hour into this flight, Brandon WILL be prepared this go around!

Three days! Can't wait!!!

When Daddy's Away

The kids are completely obsessed with our bed. Not just for jumping on, but they love to curl up in the covers and always comment on how comfy our bed is. 

It's true...we sprung for the higher end of what IKEA had in stock for us and the lower end for the kids' mattresses. Aint no shame here.

So when Salem saw the opportunity to sleep in daddy's spot while he was away, he leapt on it. 

"Mommy, can I sleep in your bed on daddy's pillow?"

So we made a night of it. Each kid had their own special night, got to pick dinner, got to stay up past bedtime while the other two went to sleep, watch their choice of movie with mommy, then sleep on daddy's pillow on daddy's side of the bed. (totally thankful Brandon insisted on a king size bed!!)

Caleb didn't really get a special Caleb night. Since he doesn't really know the difference I figure it doesn't matter. But here's how it would have looked: A thrilling 3-word conversation about apples, a 2 minute episode of Elmo (which is about all he'll sit still for), and then off to his own bed. So we just skipped it altogether.

Salem's night started off with a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Given the choice of anything he could come up with, he went his usual route. The ole standby. Which of course was fine by me.
(and yes my kids are still in jammies at dinner time. daddy's gone...don't judge me!)
Then after Eden and Caleb headed to bed, he and I conversed over a cupcake that we shared and discussed who would win in an epic battle between Superman and Batman...

Me: "So if Superman and Batman fought, who would win?"
Salem: pondering thoughtfully... "The dragon."
Me:  "There's a dragon there too?"
Salem: "There's always a dragon there."

I love boys. This is going to be so much fun.

And then he chose to watch The Lorax, because he hadn't seen it all yet. But please, whatever.you.do, please oh please don't tell him that it's not called The Lord of the Rax. Because I just lurrrrrv that he calls it that.

Then while we slept, I still got kicked in the ribs half a dozen times, despite the extra kingly room we've got in our bed. But probably because this is how he sleeps in his own bed.

On Eden's night, she chose blueberry pancakes for dinner. Thas my gurl.
Well...on second thought, when it came time to split a cupcake with mommy, she asked if she could have a sucker instead. Letdown.  I was soooo looking forward to another half of a cupcake.
Alas, maybe the last one really will make it to see daddy on friday!

It shouldn't have surprised me though. After all, this is the girl that chooses greasy duck leg over peanut butter and jelly.

The movie for her evening was Ice Age 4. Which is hilarious...and maybe not entirely 5 year old appropriate. I think we watched and rewinded (rewound?) the part of Syd puking up prunes about 7 times. So, maybe it does suit a 5 year old quite well.

Eden rounded out the evening by running a low-grade fever, attempting to confiscate my pillow in her sleep, and then proceeded to wake up and cough incessantly between 4:00 - 5:30 a.m.


This whole Kid's Date Night was fab. They loved it. I loved getting to spend some one on one time with them. But maybe we'll leave the sleeping-on-daddy's-pillow part to just Daddy. He doesn't steal pillows or kick quite as hard. :)

I couldn't have said it better myself...

And so, I'm not going to.

Since I'm solo-parenting for 9 days straight while my husband galavants across the country to a tropical destination down south (don't worry...he's not solo-vacationing. He IS there for meetings, after all!), I'm going to be lazy and re-route you from here to a separate blog where our kiddos are a featured.  We have friends as close as family over here who love me so much and care about my sanity while watching three kiddos by myself that they hosted a sleepover for the bigger two to attend! Uncle Kevin even went so far as to come and get both of them and take them back to his place making it possible for me to not even have to change out of my comfy pants and into my snow boots to make the trek over there. (I know...isn't it fab, and a little strange, that they're named Becky and Kevin! uh, hello confused kids!)

So, click here to read about how we're abundantly blessed with people who love on us and our littles!

Five more days until Brandon comes home. Counting down the days!!

The Adventures of FuMart with Children

We do "Date afternoons" here.  Date nights are fairly unheard of for us, so we occasionally take advantage of totally trusting our house helper and let her watch the kids while we take an afternoon for the two of us. (Reason #237 I have a house helper). 

On our way home from our date today, I asked Brandon, "Do you think people in America go to the grocery store on dates?"

Because here in the Big Chicken, we totally do.

No comprendo? 

Let me explain...

My house helper does most of our grocery shopping at the local fruit, veggie, and meat market. Other stuff like shampoo, diapers, bananas (don't ask) and stuff like that, she goes to FuMart for us, which is about a 300 yard walk from our apartment complex.  (Reason # 197 I have a house helper)

If I lose all sanity, forget to have her go to the store during the week, and decide to make the trip to the store myself, this is usually how it goes down:

1. Bundle yourself and the three kids up for the seemingly-endless-because-you-have-toddlers-in-tow-and because-it's-freezing-outside 300 yard walk to the store.

2. You have to take the stroller to minimize Caleb's movement. And because what else would you carry the groceries home in?

3. Make your way through the maze of traffic, cars, on-lookers, people taking your picture and asking you if all three children are really yours, and arrive at the mall. Watch out for pee puddles along the way!

4. Ponder grabbing Starbucks while you're there but decide that balancing coffee AND balancing the stroller going down the escalator is a bit much for today.

5. Decide whether or not you need to switch the stroller for a cart. (stroller! always stroller! making the switch from cart to stroller afterwards is never pretty! yes, I'm speaking from experience) Make your way into the grocery store after convincing the Grocery Store Nazi that it is, in fact, ok that you push your stroller through the store.  (or pretend that you only speak English and stare dumbfounded into his eyes)

6. Promise the kids that you will walk by the fish tanks, turtle tanks, squid tanks, and frog tanks if they'll just be patient.

7. Be on constant alert for the free food samples of questionable meat products,"yogurt", and chocolate that the store clerks insist on giving your children. (and that your children will want to accept)

8. Buy only what will fit in the basket of the stroller, what you can balance on top of it, or what your other two children will willingly carry for you.

9. Tell that Grandma that keeps following you for the 14th time that your children are fine in the clothes they're wearing, and do NOT need to put on more clothes.

10. Ponder whether detergent, toilet paper, or diapers is more of a necessity that day, because your stroller, and your hands can't handle all three.

11. Rifle through all the loaves of bread to try to find the ONE loaf that doesn't have a free soap dish taped to it. Because that's just the way things go here...they like to give completely random "gifts" when you buy certain items at the store and I'm up to my neck in free plastic soap dishes.

12. Pile all of your items up on the checkout counter then wiggle around the stroller to the other side of the counter to sack up your own groceries yourself. (blast...you have to pay for the sacks this time because you forgot to bring your own.)

13. Fit the groceries together like a puzzle so as to maximize your stroller space.

14. Holler at the other two kids to stop accepting food from strangers.

15. Wiggle back around the counter and pay for your stuff. Don't forget the insanely long receipt (not long because you bought a lot but just because that's how it goes here...) because you'll need to show it on your way out.

16. Oh, and because it's Chinese New Year, they're handing out free, personalized, hand-painted calligraphy signs for your front door. Politely refuse, because their suggestion of remaining in the store for another 30 minutes for the ink to dry doesn't sound tempting AT ALL.
17. Walk over to the "Packing Area" to do any taping or stringing up of your stuff so that you can balance it on your stroller, bike, electric bike, three-wheeled bike, motorcycle, or more conveniently carry with a handle.

18. Tell your daughter that no, she absolutely can not go to the potty right now because a squatty potty is the last thing that you're able to handle at this moment.
19. Promise to never.ever return to the grocery store with all three children by yourself ever.ever.ever again.
20. Go to the squatty potty bathroom because the thought of her peeing her pants and then walking home in below-freezing weather would surely get you fired from mom duty.
21. At the bathroom, run back and forth between your daughter over the squatty and your other children being gawked at outside the bathroom door.
22. Determine which is more important...the lady that just came out of the bathroom that didn't wash her hands and is now touching your 1 year old's "white face" or your daughter who needs your help balancing over the squatty. (hopefully you remembered tissue from home because that certainly would never be provided in a public restroom)
23. Apply antibacterial gel to your baby's cheeks.
24. Make your way back up the escalator, pondering whether or not you should reward yourself with Starbucks but realize you don't have a free hand to carry it home.

25. Walk home singing "Everywhere I travel, everywhere I go, Jesus loves me, this I know..." because the kids really need some distraction. And so do you.


......THAT is why we end up going grocery shopping on our dates. (and why my blessed house helper is so crucial to our lives here!)
And because walking around with your favorite person ever cracking jokes about chicken feet for only 6 kuai per pound is pretty priceless.
And today we actually did get to sit in Starbucks beforehand, and didn't have to balance coffee on a stroller either!

The Nonexistence of Filial Osmosis

When I was in high school, one of my English teachers had this absolutely fantastic poster hanging up to the left of her classroom door.

I used to stare longingly at Garfield, praying, wishing, hoping, that if I did indeed lay my head down and take a snooze on top of Death of a Salesman, that I'd wake up that much wiser and ready for my test the next day.
Alas, it was never the case. Turns out sleeping on books only gives you a creased face.

None the less, this osmosis thing that Garfield's got going on still seems to be stuck in my brain.

Story #2:
A couple months ago when I was plagued with a never-ending cold, there was a particular evening when I was really feeling out of it. Ok maybe that's really just an excuse for what I'm about to tell you.

In the middle of the night I heard Caleb crying. Being lazy so-incredibly-sick-with-the-never-ending-cold, I rolled over and tapped Brandon who, amazingly enough sleeps through any sound that the kids make between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., and asked him to go get Caleb.
Only, when I asked him it came out as, "Caleb zai ku. Keyi qu Caleb ma?"

At 2 a.m. I was barely coherently speaking (probably grammatically incorrect) Chinese to my husband about my child crying in the other room.
Loooovely.

At 8 a.m. when Brandon and I had had our coffee and I was hoping he'd forgotten the whole incident, I innocently asked, "so.......last night...."  And his immediate response was, "Yeah...you spoke to me in Chinese...what was that about?!"

And that's when I realized that my brain has gotten so overloaded with Chinese, even to the point that during sleep-awake moments I'm mumbling in Chinglish. Chinglish has become so engrained in me that I'm now dreaming in it.

So this is where I'm in trouble. I'm entirely too used to dropping words like "mafan" "bu shufu" and "dongxi" into my everyday sentences. Someday when I'm back in America and dropping Chinglish like it's totally normal for every American to know what the heck "mafan" is, it's going to astound me when they don't. When my mom and my dad don't automatically know what "dongxi" I'm talking about when I'm speaking to them, it's going to throw me for a loop.

Because somewhere back in the day when I was so caught up on Garfield and his osmosis idea, it just somehow made sense to me that whatever I picked up along the way, my parents automatically inherited through Filial Osmosis. However, back in May when they were here and they didn't understand my conversations with locals, it was so strange to me to realize the flawed idea of Filial Osmosis.

Although, I will say that I think I know my dad well enough to say that I'm fairly certain he'd probably try my sleep-method of studying Death of a Salesman via Osmosis as well. At least we've got that filial bond in common.

On Blaming Foreign Nations for Blogging Negligence...

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! And all the things in-between that have happened within the last month of my blogging non-existence!

Is it fair to blame an entire country on your blogging negligence? Probably not. But I'm doing it anyways. Yes, it's Taiwan's fault I've been a complete slacker. Because that's where we've been for the past month. And would you believe that after arriving back here only four days ago, there's STILL snow covering the ground ever since our White Christmas blog post? Certainly a rough welcome back after 70 degree temps down south! Well that coupled with the tonsillitis that I flew home with has been a bit of re-entry shock...but more on that later.

So in case you like continuity, I'm backing up a bit to our time in Taiwan and skimming over some of the best parts of our month there. (In case you don't, ignore my neurosis for needing to make things right and just skip over this catch-me-up post)

Taiwan's got some GREAT parks. With this awesome gargantuan concrete slides. And our kids choose to pose like morons, when mommy wants to take nice park pictures...

I'll admit that I was pretty bummed about having to spend Christmas day away from our home that's away from home. But eating it up at TGIFriday's is always the way to go if you're spending it in Taiwan. 

Christmas morning we woke up with a surprise ring at the doorbell of our guest house and were delivered mystery Christmas presents. He wasn't wearing a red suit and didn't have a white beard, but he blessed our day beyond measure that morning.

Christmas day we grabbed Subway for lunch (don't judge us, we get sliced deli meats about every 4 months) and headed to a university across the street to picnic in the shade. The below picture was captured during the .4 seconds we spent on the blanket before we scurried off to a less-mosquito-infested area.

Then we fed the crusts of our Subway sandwiches to some ducks for their Christmas meal as we strolled around on a It's-way-too-warm-and-sunny-to-be-Christmas walk.

Once Christmas passed, we spent the next couple weeks enjoying lots of Taiwan's specialty, bubble tea.

Roaming the beautiful streets of Taipei...

and building giant lego castles.

On New Year's Eve, we locked the kids in the apartment and ran up to the rooftop to see the fireworks being shot OFF of the Taipei 101 building.

We enjoyed meeting up with friends that Brandon met years ago when he spent the semester in Taiwan.

The second half of our stay in Taiwan was for Brandon to take some classes from SEBTS to help finish his degree. We met up with amazing old friends and made awesome new friends. It's amazing no matter how far you live from, travel from, or are disconnected from like-minded people, when you're brought back together it's as though there's been no time lapse at all. (besides the fact that our families have multiplied in size)

Overall, we had a great refreshing time there. Despite the pneumonia Eden dealt with, the constant snot and cough of Caleb, and my tonsillitis present that I brought home with me, we survived a month away from home and enjoyed adventuring in yet another Asian country.

A White Christmas

After my semi-rant/pity part blog post the other day where I mentioned that Christmas means there should be snow on the ground, we got three inches of snow the following day! That's definitely rare for our city!

Two days prior, our former tutor gave the kids small toy snow shovels for Christmas. I scoffed at the idea of them being able to ever use them in our city! Joke's on me!

As soon as the kids opened their curtains they ran in to find us and announced that they were going to go put their snow pants on, get their shovels, and get ready to go out and play...at 6:30 a.m. I suggested we at least eat breakfast first!
We were dressed and out the door by 8:30 a.m.

My three children handle snow very differently.
The Littlest One apparently isn't very impressed. He was either too weirded out by all the white, too cold to care, or too bundled up to be able to move. Either way, he wasn't digging our play time in the snow!


Every time I set him down in the snow, he'd scream and his feet wouldn't leave their spot.



The Middle, his approach was the opposite. He chose to become one with the snow.



Almost every time I saw him, he was making another snow angel.





The only time he seemed a little less enthusiastic about the frozen flakes, was when his daddy pelted him in the face with a snowball.



But it didn't take long for him to be thrilled about it all again.



And then there's The Oldest.
As soon as we were out the door, she set out on an adventure.



To find what, I don't know, but she was putting that shovel to use.



And her daddy taught her a thing or two about making proper snowballs...of which she later put to good use on innocents passersby.



A beautiful little snow bunny!



She also attempted a few snow angels, but was less enthusiastic about being in such close contact with the frozen stuff!



We found a few neighbors attempting a snow man...



So we combined our efforts....well, no, once we started helping, they just enjoyed watching. :)



The outcome was a midget snowman, with carrot nose and all!





Snow! Such a fun surprise! A white Christmas to fill up our hearts with fun memories!