Category Archives: motherhood

what are wii doing with no wii?

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since the wii fried what have wii been up to?? for me pretty much the same thing. you know. being the mom. but the kids have been busy swimming. a lot. 5 hours a day is probably not a bad estimate. and who can blame them.

and no one else uses this pool. it’s been just them. until… a few days ago. s8 came running into the house dripping wet yelling at me to bring the camera. there was something at the pool they wanted a picture of.

(i got photo shop skillz)

turns out this fellow has been hanging around watching them swim. isn’t he cool??

and yes, this is the same pool that this happened at.

life – sometimes it gets in the way

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what great things have we shown my mom today? well, the hospital – at least the outside of it – when we dropped bh off to have his infected ear (ouch) looked at. and the drug store – where we attempted to pick up bh’s over the counter prescription drugs, but weren’t able to. the kids’ school – she got to wait with the kids’ while bh and i had a meeting with c14′s math teacher, whom i would love to tell you all about, but my mom’s here and she always said, “if you can’t say something nice, then shut your pie hole.” or something like that. and then she got to stay at home while bh and i went to teach our english classes. and i know i said y’all at least 5 times during my class. but i have yet to say tumpt, but i’ll figure how to work it in winey.

about the best we’ve done today, as far as giving my mom a taste of thailand goes, is bringing home dinner from the market. a veritable thai feast.

oh, and we had another tokay spotting. she’s thinking she might like one if she could get it leash trained!

haiku friday – culture shock

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~

are we adjusting
is ev-e-ry-thing normal
today we find out

no joke culture shock
thailand’s not america
that’s not suprising

kids are still having
occasional crying jags
don’t know how to help

think that it’s best to
look to the professionals
help us get through this

~~~~~~~~~~

today we, the kids and i that is, head off for a head check. the kids are going to meet with someone while i’m meeting with someone else. and then i get to meet with both of these someones to see what’s next.

so far c14 really seems to be doing great. my only concern about him is that he seems to have developed some sort of funky accent. i have a tendency to mimic the accents around me, not intentionally, sometimes i don’t even realize i’m doing it and i think he might do the same. it seems that c14 apparently is turning japanese, i think he’s turning japanese, i really think so… okay, well, maybe not japanese, but you get the idea. however, i am worried that maybe there is something hovering just under the surface, waiting to break or crack or whatever it’s gonna do.

a11 is doing okay at this moment. but that might not be true for the exact moment we walk into the counselor’s office or even the exact next moment from this exact moment. things change quickly with her.

s8 hated thailand before he got here and this hasn’t really improved at all. he has good moments, but when he’s having a bad moment – it’s bad. it’s heartbreaking.

hopefully today we will get a bit of help. really, i think for the kids someone other than their parents saying this is normal will be very helpful, but also some tools to help process all of this.

bh isn’t left out of all this because we think he’s doing all that great, he’s left out of this fun because he isn’t here to participate. he gets back saturday from a two week jaunt to india and singapore. and this time his being gone has been so much better than mongolia. no freak-outs on my part. it has helped that i have had some contact from him, but i think the biggest difference has been that i have been so very busy informing the whole of thailand that i farted.

that hurt

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i am addicted
to sharing it all with blog
don’t be embarrased

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

him: “you know your mom blogged about our conversation the other day?”

her: “she did? why’d she do that?”

him: “sweetheart, your mother blogs about everything, nothing is sacred.”

her: “you need to stop talking to her, daddy.”

chiang mai knows mexican

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spending the first 32 years of my life – you know, the formative years – in texas i feel pretty comfortable saying, “i know a teensy bit about mexican food.” and the 5 years i spent in colorado allow me to be fairly comfortable in saying, “colorado don’t know mexican.” great mexican food was the one thing i never found while in colorado. after 6 weeks in chiang mai i have found some good mexican food. made my day.

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the kids and i are doing the weekend alone, no bh, he’s at a retreat. and my original plans were to do nothing. get plenty of sleep, read, never leave my new bff, the interwebnet. but we did have to get out. i’d scheduled an appointment with the lady who will be a11′s harp teacher and since we had to get out of the house i figured we might as well do something. that way the kids couldn’t yammer on and on to their dad about what a dud they got stuck with for a mom. so we went to miquel’s and had some lovely mexican food. then we went to mike’s for some rich, thick milk shakes (2 chocolate, one strawberry and an oreo, please). made a stop by a used book store and then detoured into a wicker shop.

 

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maybe not as good as being head butted by an elephant, but i didn’t hear any complaints. (not that i was listening for them in the wicker shop)

 

mom, get off my facebook account…

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i have a facebook account. i have no idea how to use it and for a long time it just sat there. until i recently discovered c13 also has a facebook acount. and i did what any good mom would do – changed his password and locked him out of it. he’s not old enough to have a facebook account. he’s supposed to be over 18 or at least 13 and in high school. well, he is 13, but he’s in the 7th grade. what to do… what to do? hmmm… delete it? yeah, i should do that. punish him? oh, yeah, i’m definitely gonna do that. get mad? well, i did sort of do that, but got over it really quickly. i ended up doing something very out of character for me. i asked him about it. his answer, it’s for a school project, for a history project. which explains why he’s friends with the likes of kublai khan, toyotomi hideyoshi, and yuan shikai. and then he reminded me that he is in high school. at the kids’ school if you’re 6th grade grade 6 or below you’re in primary school and 7th grade 7 and above is considered high school. i also added myself to his friends list, so i could keep tabs. and a few days later this appeared on my wall… (that’s facebook talk for he left me a message)

“mom, get off my face book account…”

he doesn’t want to be friends – like a knife through the heart. now i know how the whole of england must have felt when prince harry said “but i generally don’t like england that much…”

 

wwf – s8 style

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i have one big regret about today’s post – that i wasn’t camera ready as the action was happening… this incident only took a split second, but i’ll do my best, without pictures, to stretch it out into an eternity.

yesterday we went to an elephant park – maetang elephant park to be precise. we had a wonderful time. lots of family togetherness, absolutely no fighting remarkably little fighting and no whining. 5 hours with no whining. wow. we saw an elephant show – they dance, they hula hoop, they play soccer and basketball, they paint and they deliver flowers. then we rode an ox cart. c13 took the reins for a bit. well, really, i think those oxen could have gotten from point a to point b with blindfolds on, but he felt important. then we rode elephants. which is really alot more work than i thought it would be – i imagined it being far more relaxing. the elephants were amazing. not once did mine head for the jungle and try to knock me off at the first tree branch it could find. after elephant riding we had lunch and then it was time for a bamboo raft trip down a jungle river. on our way to the bamboo rafts we passed a small group of elephants – a mini herd. now, s8 has a problem with dogs, he just can’t not pet one. and in thailand you can’t just go around petting all the dogs – you’ll get rabies or something. we’ve been working hard on this – started working on it before we left co. since we’ve never really been around other animals that might be tempting to pet we didn’t know that it’s not just dogs. apparently, it’s elephants, too. so, being the highly attentive generally oblivious parent that i am i didn’t notice as s8 took an interest in the cute elephant standing not 4 feet away from where we were walking. and i also didn’t notice as he stretched out his hand and gently approached this cute, cuddly pachyderm. and i even missed this lovable creature making a mini-stampede at my child, head butting him and knocking him to the ground. the cloud of dust is what caught my attention. but all is good. s8 was warned – don’t know if it took, he’s difficult that way. and the elephant went about his business with a little help from his mahout.

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this is an after shot. i’m pretty sure they’re sizing each other up, trying to see where this friendship will go. maybe a sleepover?

i’ve added our elephant park pics to flickr if you wanna see…

randomness

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how can you stay mad at this?

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this morning as we were leaving the house – and running late (not my fault) – pui gets out. we’d already chased him down twice. so we let him go. hoping he will return before we get back this afternoon. he’s taken to hanging out with a bad pack. they lead him astray and that’s who he was off with this morning.

a11 is in pretty high spirits today. she has a play date after school. she’s going home with a girl from her class after school and they are going swimming. two days ago a11 spent a little bit of time in the school counselor’s office discussing some of the issues she’s having with this move. when she mentioned that she had just started playing the harp before we moved the counselor told her she might be able to help with that. yesterday, a11 came home with a note for me from the school counselor. on it was the name and phone number for a lady who plays the harp here in chiang mai. i called her and we are going to talk again next week to arrange lessons. good day for a11.  c13 has a study group tomorrow for science, he’s looking forward to it.  it makes things here a bit more normal.

we had language classes again today – homework was done. well, i did mine, bh cheated off of me.  thai’s have the r sound in their language, but our teacher keeps telling us that thai’s generally can’t pronounce the r sound.  why do they have it?

i think i mentioned this…

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i am not a dog person. i am the only member of my family who is not a dog person. all the other members of my family think dogs are wonderful – how cute they are, how cuddly they are, how fun they are… not me. i think, what a pain they are, what work they are, what responsibility. so why, if i am the only member of the family who is not a dog person, am i the only member of our family losing sleep because the dogs are scratching at the screens wanting out. and, no, they don’t need to go potty – they just went. they just want o-u-t. whining and seeming to be so very ungrateful that we rescued them from the dog rescue place. when we could have just left them there to hang out with all other 60 or so dogs and not receive the one on one kind of attention they can get from our house of five. oh, and when they must be left home alone – which at times they just must – why do they have to do things like this?

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or course, this might not have been possible if the counters in the kitchen weren’t approximately 18 inches off the ground. and, yes, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one.

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and the lack of sleep makes for one very grumpy mommy – the kids can tell you all about it. i spent the entire ride to school ranting and raving and going on and on about how – since i am the only one in the entire family who doesn’t like dogs, didn’t want dogs – unfair it is that i am the only one in the family losing sleep because of the dogs. inconvenienced because of the dogs. and when we finally got to school s8 starts crying, he’s not at all sure how he could possibly related to someone who does not absolutely adore dogs. so the mom of the year award goes to… well, once again, not me, possibly it goes to sarah, over at the bean bag. she really wanted her boys to have a dog, her husband was the hold out. smart man, i say.

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he’s got nothin’ on me

ice cold milk and an oreo cookie… (well, no milk)

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he ate them all… bh ate all the oreos. my secret stash that i had hidden in the best ever hiding spot. in the cupboard with all the other food. you know, in plain sight. now, before anyone starts to think he ate an entire 1 lb. package of oreos you should know that they only come in single servings here – okay, maybe it’s not really a single serving, but it isn’t like it’s a real package of oreos – it isn’t even like one sleeve. it’s a snack, an oreo snack. and i had eaten some of them already. not many, mind you, just some. so, what i really should say is he finished off my oreos. normally, i’m a pretty generous kind of gal but when i’m really jonesin’ for some comfort food – that’s not the best time for him to tell me he ate all the comfort food in the house. and then it turned out he was just joking. you know, playing mind games with my delicate psyche. which of course left me in such a state that i had to finish them off. and man, were they good. and how nicely it works out – i can blame someone else for my oreo binge… leaves me able to take no responsibility at all – as a11 would say, “sweet.”

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i took my first stab at cooking thai food last night. and it was bad. really, really bad. i think so bad there’s absolutely no way it can’t get better – and possibly edible. i think it all went wrong with the fish sauce. i’m pretty sure that fish sauce is not what i brought home from the store, so it would also be not what i added to the soup. it’s the first thing i’ve been unable to eat since we got here.

our mâe bâan (maid) – yes, that’s something i never would have been able to say in the us – came today. i’m amazed at how hard she worked and while we have no idea what the going rate for a maid is – and may not have negotiated all that well – i’m not feeling like we got a bad deal. i think that while a maid might be a luxury we could never have afforded in the states, there are plenty of other sacrifices being made. it takes a longer to hand wash dishes and translates into not being able to let the dishes pile up. hanging clothes out to dry isn’t so fun and i’m betting i‘ll be really, really sorry if i ever let laundry get backed up.

we got a little slip of paper – or at least that’s what we thought it was. we noticed that everyone else on the street got a little slip of paper, too, so we didn’t immediately throw it away. instead, i took it to the kids’ school and asked them what it was. turns out it’s the electric bill. and now we need to get to the electric company and pay it – cash only.

a few of you have asked what i meant when i said i was held hostage by motorcycles… they are everywhere and kind of like little nats, they just weave in and out and group up. here’s pics. it’s difficult to really get a feel for it from just pictures.

 

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and for a little comparison, here’s the way i define family transportation -

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here’s how some of the thai’s define it…

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if you look closely you can see the little girl in front of her dad. i’m not sure if that’s the equivalent of shot gun or not.

oh yeah, and i did save one oreo for bh