Halloween

We'e had a good halloween--event at church, kids can dress up at school and general fun. Last night we carved two small pumpkins, and Emily did decorations with them earlier. Here are some of the pictures:

October already

I knew this semester would be a kind of race. 4 classes, several papers to write, some travel, new responsibilities.

Sam was to have third week of tball, but it got rained out. He's been doing lots of legos lately. On Sunday afternoon we spent the day making spaceships out of legos. The twins like to play with them too, so after a few hours we had an entire fleet.

We also went to the astronomy museum then, which is one of their favorite places to go. We let them each pick out a toy. Sam got a triceratops. Eli picked out a horse. I asked him the name and suggested "Brown" or "Brownie" and he decided to call it "Brownie Chocolate" (funny because Sam had a plush horse toy he'd named "Corn Chicken"). Eva picked out a pink triceratops shirt. Yes, it's a stereotype, but she's already picking out clothes instead of toys.

They all seem to be doing fine at school. Sam has matching activities he does for math homework--he seems to have a fine spatial sense for a 5 year old. That's the main news on them.

Today I had a student meeting and have a small group and then class this afternoon. I have two familiar classes and two classes where I had some prepared materials. I am not drowing, but I am also not just going with the current. I'm trying to be more positive about it all, to recognize that I am learning things and gaining some new schools.

Emily seems to be making dissertation progress. She submitted an abstract for an east coast conference in January. I still haven't bought my tickets for late next month but am thinking about it. Anyway, it is all going along. More updates soon, I hope...

9 More Days

School started this last week. A week ago Friday we all went on a school retreat. It was a mixed bag. I did a "good" with a fifteen minute sharing time in local language. Eli through a gargantuan fit at dinner, but then all the kids played well with another little kid on the basketball court. Sleeping was a challenge. Eli migrated over by Emily during the night. In general it seems like the twins do well together. It's a big development--we can travel and stay in a room together!--but still not perfect, alas.

Eli was sick Monday and by Tuesday Eva was home too. Sam wanted to join them and his Fit of the Week was Tuesday morning. Nothing worked to calm him down. Neither threats nor bribes were effective and Emily was pretty upset by the time she left him at school. We began discussing how things were going. In the afternoon I went to pick him up and... he'd had a great day. We went to his first day of baseball and he joined in with no problems. It's so hard to figure out when and how and whether to push kids to participate. Thursday and Friday were a national holiday here (kind of) although I had school Friday and a retreat yesterday. The work culture here is pretty fierce. It was a pretty good first week of school, but I still think it's a bit harder than I hoped. About half of our teachers have high blood pressure and they all claim its genetic, but, hmmm, I think work culture may be involved too.

There were some other small victories this week:

• Sam loved going to church today with me and stayed in Sunday School by himself, helping with the little kids. Big success!
• Sam's still drawing his little books. He's big into Transformers now.
• Eva and Eli are both pretty hilarious. They are both speaking more, but are still only about 65% comprehensible. Eva says "Weva." Eli sort of slurs his words through his pacifier (we're probably too lax on this--he doesn't use it at school at all).
• They're all doing great on language. Sam interacts with other kids pretty much entirely in local language.
• They like music and it's probably something we should work on.
• We played with footballs outside this afternoon--pretty fun.
• Emily took them all to the student center yesterday during the typhoon.
• Sam's started reading the Ralph and the motorcycles books (I loved these as a kid, and my gerbil was named Ralph)
• Sam has homework now: math, local alphabet, and "proverbs." He likes the homework so far.
• I'm getting to relive my childhood, watching old Justice League Friends shows, transformers, Ralph, and so on. 
• Sam and Eli are a bit competitive, so that drives us a little nuts.
• They're also kind of picky eaters. Em made an excellent eggplant parm, and only Eli would eat it. The trend is: Eli will eat anything, Eva will eat pasta or rice, Sam eats little. They're all skinny, which just amazes me.

That's the news. Not a lot else to share. Will update as able.

A Harbor Visit

We tried a solo family vacation, leaving Friday afternoon and returning Saturday. It was fun, but as I read somewhere recently, with small kids you take "trips" and not "vacations".

We went to a harbor area with some attractions nearby. It worked out well, and we just missed torrential rains. On Friday night we headed to the night market, which had a range of foods: corn, fried squid, vietnamese papaya, baked sweet potato, etc. We haven't been to a night market in forever, and though there is one close. The nice thing about this one was it was not humongous and seemed easy to navigate. It was close to the hotel so that we could get back before anyone melted down.

We had a king and twin bed, so Emily took the twin, Sam and I slept in the king and the twins actually chose to sleep on the floor (I think they're used to it from nap time). The kids have just reached the age where a hotel room is super fun. You can jump on the bed! There's a harbor you can watch! Cable TV! They had a blast.

The next day we did breakfast, Emily got a quick swim, and we went to some sort of Buddhist-theme park, which is one of the main regional attractions. There were few people though. The only challenge was that the kids really wanted to ride the coin-operated vehicles that were almost everywhere. They got basically two rounds and that was enough for us. It's funny how enjoyable I remember Chucky Cheese and these kind of places being when I was a kid, and how much they seem like an incredible time suck now. I probably need an attitutude. I think Sam described riding on this moving car-thing as "the most fun thing in his whole life" or some such language. Anyway, it was a memorable trip for them. I'm kind of glad we won't be repeating this immediately, but know the kids had a great time.

Otherwise life is going pretty well. I have a quiet, creeping dread about the start of the new semester, but am trying to keep it in check. Church work is relatively contained, school is currently an "OK" schedule, but I have this feeling we may end up doing our apartment switch mid semester and Emily is "close" on dissertation. All good things, but also quite stressful.

Daddy Fun Week recapped

The summer is nearing its end. We probably still have some months of heat left, the slower (or just different?) pace is coming to a conclusion. Emily's had her week of conference and it was a really good week for me and the kids too.

I sold it as "Daddy Fun Week," sort of like Christmas or New Year's, a time of fun activities and new plans. They mostly bought it and had a good time.

My basic plan was just to keep things fun for the kids and to have something interesting to do every day. So it went like this:
Saturday: Astronomy museum
Sunday: Church
Monday-Tuesday: committee travel with visit to aquarium
Wednesday: typhoon day (unplanned but okay)
Thursday: Day of school (and maybe park gtrip?)
Friday: Day of school + Sam swimming lesson

There were several good things about the week, foremost that I had to do the full schedule and prep. It's embarassing to admit this, but I now know where all the kids clothes are, more or less, where the trash bags are, what the kids need in their school bags and so on. Doing the whole schedule solo really is exhausting. The challenge is each kid needs attention, but food has to be prepared and dishes and laundray done. I got basically 0 other work done, which is what I'd planned, but it still felt like a lot. I have so much respect for solo parents.

The week was also mostly smooth. There were some hiccups with schedule while traveling, but no serious travel breakdowns, no sick kids, and just the one day of school cancelled.

The kids themselves are doing well. I hadn't really understood how Sam's swim lessons work, but I talked with one of the moms. It seems to be a quarter system and parents can sign their kids up quarter after quarter for years on end. We've been meaning to add music back in for Sam, but haven't gotten to it yet. He is a little bit of a crooner now, although the words don't always make sense. He has some sense of pitch (better than before) but certainly not perfect. Eva and Eli are both cute little dancers. Eli has this funny thing he does where he jumps and swings his arms wildly--fun. The twins are both very smiley and giggly. I'm trying to focus on being engaged with them and encouraing their giggly sides.

There were also some unexpected surprised during the week. On Saturday, Sam had basically played with legos the entire day. We watched a little tv before the museum, but the rest of the day was really all legos. He was able to build some nice little cars and really liked working with the smaller legos. It's been nice to have all of these toys with us because we can alternate what they play with.

Emily continues to build our kid library and came back with a number of books from her trip, including a mix of local books, superhero books, and some others. They like all sorts of things. Sam spent some time reading a children's encyclopedia with me the other day. Fun, fun, fun.

That's the news from here. Life otherwise is "good." I'm pushing a little on work-life balance and I want to do whatever we can to help Emily get through soon. There are some intriguing possibilities for interesting projects here, but I have to sort of pry myself loose from the school, which always has plans for me. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

Recent Days

We're now into the middle of August, and it's scorching hot. Emily's temporarily ceased evening walks. We're doing some more creative child activities. I took everyone to the palace museum, which is close by and is really nice. The museums here are different than back home--fewer portraits, no suits of armor, etc. Instead, it is pretty much exclusively artistic works: paintings, religious sculptures, calligraphy, jade/bronzewear, etc. Painting is usually landscapes, birds, flowers, or calligraphy. Not exactly what most kids would be into, but for a couple of hours very enjoyable. Eli kept asking after the robot. Since there's one at the astronomy museum, he seems to expect every museum to have one. Undoubtably, a great idea, but rarely realized. I liked that the museum doesn't allow pictures, so it at least reduces the spectacle.

The kids are more into legos now too. We've done some great buildings and Sam is starting to use the smaller ones. Sam also got a transfomer recently, which he loves but is still a little too small to puzzle out himself.

For books, we're doing some more classics. We've had two nights of Winnie the Pooh. Emily just read Blueberries for Sal to the whole gang today. The kids are exhausting, but in an endearing way. I still wish children came with volume buttons, but we love them dearly.

The Kids are OK...

This is a little hard to make out but I believe it's one of Sam's recent pen drawings of Ben 10 in his various alien forms. They're fairly intricate. Emily recounts a conversation she had where she counted up about 20 different aliens and then Sam remembered he "forgot one." He's been watching a fair amount of Ben 10 lately.

The kids all seem quite happy today. This was our local Father's day dinner tonight and we went to our favorite pizza place. The kids had a blast. We ordered chicken legs, salad, pizza, and Emily got a calzone. Yum! The boys are pretty eager meat eaters.

Tonight, Eli's favorite toys were a snake, a Ben 10 watch, and a spider man. Eva had a little bag she carried around with her that she got at school. Sam got two dinosaurs and two black spidermans (spidermen?) from his teacher and has a favorite spiderman these last couple of days. Friday night we did some legos. They're into a lot of different things. We have a drawer of dinosaur animals that Eli loves also. He has to get a foot stool in order to pull out the drawer, but he does it daily.

Sam's had some growing pains with his legs. Last Friday and the Friday before he resisted his swim lesson. We let him skip once but Emily made him go the other time. We can't tell why he's resisting the swim class or how to push him to attend. Emily remembers refusing to swim or ride a horse at camp (for several years in a row), but she says her resistance was straightforward (and apparently more honorable). In contrast, she doesn't like how Sam is blaming it on his legs or being tired. We'll try to get him checked out Monday just to make sure he's okay.

I also took Sam to a movie earlier this week, Incredibles 2. Earlier movies were Cars 2, Brave, Rise of the Guardians, and something else. He liked this one a lot. It reminded me of happy movie viewing with the family over the years.

That's the family news from here. I've been complaining more than I mean to lately. Partly it's that the summer is the time when things are cemented from the fall. I know this will be a busy fall so I'm especially protective about extra things that take my time. Often what's fifteen minutes of work for a native speaker is hours for me, or at least a lot more anxiety than I want. I feel like we've made pretty continuous language progress and my workload has increased every semester, but there are limits to what I can do. That said, there's a lot in our life to be happy about, and we're glad the kids are doing so well. I am going to try to leave a little more of work at work. I know this stage of life is one that means a lot of balancing. I'm hoping that in coming years we'll continue to find our way.