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Today's my birthday. This ends our streak of celebrations. We've just come through our anniversary, mother's day, Emily's birthday, (US) father's day, and now my birthday. Exciting! Exhausting! Tonight a great coworker went with us to dinner. I don't think we could have pulled off dinner without her. We're still hoping to pull off a movie sometime in the next few days. I kind of miss the movie theater in the small mall we used to have nearby in the garden state. It was nice to be able to pop over midday for cheaper tickets in an empty theater. Here it's a little more involved.

Sam's coming along. He's consistently pooping in the potty and stays dry through the night. Big things for us! The babies are coming along. Eli's a bouncing, jumping, exuberant baby. Eva looks a little more serious. We think her mouth has been bugging her, and she's even lost a tiny bit of weight. We took her to the doctor and they said nothing's the matter. One challenge of twins is that now we always have a comparison point, so "normal" is even harder to define.

That's the news from here. Photos to follow in a future post.

Campus Birds

These last weeks I was lucky enough to catch pictures of the two most beautiful birds that inhabit the campus--the "five colored bird" and the blue magpie. Beautiful! It's nice to be in such a beautiful place.

Father's Day #1

As I've discussed before, I now get two Father's Days, both the US one and the local one (on 8/8 which sounds like "ba-ba"). Actually, I'm coming to the opinion that you should get at least one father's day per kid. Maybe I could squeeze another one in in early winter sometime.

Emily took me to one of the best steakhouses in town today, at a hotel not far from church. It was really delicious. We got a steak-for-two meal that was possibly the best steak we've had. It came with four different types of salt and a roasted garlic plant (I don't know what it's called--not a single clove, but a whole plant cut in two and roasted). Yum! I ordered salmon as my appetizer (predictably Sam loved it) and Emily got a salad. It also came with desert and coffee and we ordered sweet potato fries for Sam. Truly an awesome meal. It also turns out, that if you show up at a very nice hotel with your three young children, they will give you your own room. So we had a small private dining room all to ourselves, which let Sam trade seats, try out sugar cubes, eat large quantities of bread, etc. Fun, fun, fun.

Our odd story of the day is that as I was waiting for Emily outside of a store with the twins, a little kid came running up, bit Eli on the foot, and then took off. His father came after him, whacked him once, never looked at me and then dragged him off. It took me (and I think Eli too) a minute to register what had happened. Eli had a little mark on the foot, but the bite didn't break the surface. A strange interlude in an otherwise pleasant day.

However, our children are not giving us the afternoon nap we'd asked for this fathers' day. Sam's asleep now but Eva and Eli are both quite fussy. We're hoping it will be a quieter night. We've just come off of several days of a guest and we get more guests midweek. All good, but it's harder to concentrate and keep working away on things. Also, I restart language this week, so it could be a busy week.

For fun, I've pasted pictures of Sam reading to Eva and Eli. What a good big brother!

Rainy Days June 2011

I started to title this and saw that, ahem, apparently I have titled posts "Rainy Days" before. We're now in full rain season. A typhoon is apparently passing by us. It won't hit, but it means tomorrow will be an inside day. At this point, I'm thinking I'll go with the astronomy museum tomorrow. Perhaps we'll make our first attempt at the movie theater there? I'm not sure how Sam would do with a dark room and a big-screen movie.

Not much else to report. An old friend and occasional reader of this blog did his dissertation defense today. It makes me very happy. It's such a long process, with the outcome never 100% certain, so I'm happy for him.

We think Eva's teething, which explains her general not-going-with-the-plan lately. She's not drinking or eating as much, pulling at ears, fussing a little more, etc. We could have some hard nights ahead of us.

Grading has started. About 5/11 students are finished. Next up is writing syllabi for the next semester. Also lots of reading for another project. Today I read an article and a half. Things are coming along. That's it for us.

Day 3

Swinging!
With her three
With mohawk
Sandbox kid
Birthday girl

As I write this, Sam is singing the name of the nanny, which is cracking us up. We're wrapping up three days. Three looooooong days. Three days where times were fun, but they just seemed to creep by. Actually, after a rocky start, day three came off pretty well. Eva woke up early this morning and wouldn't go back to sleep, so Emily was already in a pretty bad mood by the time Sam and I woke up (lateish). I took the two babies and Sam for a walk. I'd made the mistake of telling Sam we would be going to the park, so he was lobbying hard for an immediate departure, but he eventually assented to a trip in the backpack and a stroll to the retirement home nearby and back. It is getting hot! I think today was around 90, but with the humidity much hotter feeling. Anyway, it was an okay trip and when we got back we were able to head off to lunch, then park, then a quick grocery trip by Emily. The park itself was fun, with a sandbox, some time on swings, and a baby nap. But the logistics are always a little hard--parking, babies knocking cups over, fighting off the sun, and so on.

Emily's mom keeps saying that the time will go by quickly, which is true from a grandparent's perspective, but from the starting line of parenting, it still often seems like a really long race ahead of us. I know the babies actually are growing up quickly, but on a day by day basis, it's just hard to keep everyone clean and fed and disease-free, to slice up two parents three ways, and to do the other work we're supposed to be doing as our main job. Things are coming along, and we will genuinely miss these days. Emily and I joke about it a lot actually, because we'll recount a day and realize that it was pretty rocky, but already it's just becoming "Emily's fun birthday where we went to the park." This conceals the mom-headache, the twins who kept trying to pull the food off the table, the parking hassle, the beating sun, the husband complaining he has to read two articles and do a powerpoint by tomorrow, etc. The fun day at the park. Got that?

Well, I'm now over 200 posts on this blog. Emily's at 35 sparkling years, putting her half way to her biblical three score and ten (oops, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that). The babies are asleep. Sam didn't take a nap so he'll be down soon too. Life is coming along. Goodbye three day holiday! Back to the familiar tomorrow.

Dragon Boats 2

Coming back from the race
Our friend's boat
Sam nervously riding his airplane
Emily with stinky tofu!
Corndog!

There are a number of other pictures I didn't post here. Highlights included copious quantities of fried foods--yum! We also had samosas and a meat burrito thing. One of the funny things about the race was an advertisement for an eMBA. Not the type of thing you see back home! We continue to get people who take lots of pictures without asking us, which is kind of a pain. I am mostly polite, but I think it's the whole cross-cultural/spectacle aspect that gets to me. I just try to remember that people are curious and cross-cultural understanding is a good thing :)

Otherwise life is good. I'm more productive lately. The long Saturdays always kind of over-extrovert me, so I'm up in the middle of the night right now (something I usually do when I don't have the time/space to process what's going on around me). I know this is sort of crazy, but lying in bed doesn't seem to help.

Babies are thriving. Sometimes I realize I've only been at this parenting thing for a couple of years and am still a rookie, so we're still tracking down resources and trying to figure things out. Emily spent some time reading through Ferber today to see if there are any tips for Sam (not much). I'm reading Amy Choa's book, which is an interesting take on parenting east and west and the immigrant experience.

I talked to my brother last night, which was a lot of fun. We're both playing with android devices right now. I'm hoping that this summer we'll get to connect with people more online and by mail.

More today or tomorrow!

Dragon Boats 1

Riverside
Having fun by the boats, under the bridge
Ambulance
Audi was advertising--they gave him a balloon, so we'll put up a picture
Playing with little brother

OK, these are mostly just fun pictures of Sam from today. We went to watch a friend compete in the dragon boat races (they came in third in their heat, so they get to compete again tomorrow). Sam had a pretty good time. There was tasty food. He rode in a little airplane ride, but decided to get out after the first loop (he looked a little scared). He got a dolphin balloon (no picture). At one point I bonked him in the head with my camera by accident, so we took him to a tent and they dabbed it with alcohol and something. Oops! He was pretty fussy, but then he fell asleep in the stroller as we were wheeling up to our door, so I think he was just exhausted. Boats! Food! Rides! Balloons! Toys! A lot of excitement for a little kid.

Some pictures at home

Baby dangling
Smiley
Worthy Adversaries
Rocking
Power crawler

June

Sam with "tiger stripes" on his forehead from school today--Emily, Eva, and Eli in background
Close up--he really liked them
We went to a concert on campus! It was fun--time together is a great thing
Eva sometimes falls asleep in the jumper; she also likes to be upside down, like I did when I was a child

These last weeks of May and then early June are always exciting. It's a busy time, with lots happening, but people seem excited about the completion of the semester's work and the approaching summer.

I'm feeling about the same myself. I have one more class left. I preached three times in the last week and probably have one more sermon to go. Language will keep us busy, the summer is always more relaxed (even if scorching hot).

I'm trying to be more productive. I bought an android tablet this week, but then realized tablets are really best for entertainment. On the upside, it has a night reading mode, so last night I read a novel for forty-five minutes while I waited for Sam to go to sleep. This could be good for my soul.

We're heading into a three day weekend. I think under normal conditions we're both involved parents, but we're looking at three 16 hour + days of parenting ahead. We're going to a boat race tomorrow--should be fun--and then we're not sure what we'll do with our holiday day on Monday.

No great developmental news. Eva can just about sit up. We learned there's a saying in local language to the effect that "six months sitting, seven months crawling, eight months teething." Eli can now go five or six feet over the period of a few minutes and can, unfortunately, push himself out of his bumbo seat (which are supposed to be nearly untippable). Eva goes down a bit more smoothly at night. Sam is using the "spitting" toothpaste now (it can have a small amount of fluoride in it). Sam's still working on his bigger bike--it's still a little too big. He continues to love all manner of vehicles, but also really enjoyed stopping in the campus library tonight. He is now aware that he's speaking two languages and can tell you what the word is in the other language most of the time--pretty cool.

That's the news. I'll try to post lots of pictures and updates over the holiday.