June 2008 Archives

It is the rainy season here so I'm lucky I got a little break today to take a picture of how the rice fields are moving along.

Dr. Lee let Sarah pet her today (and Sarah did a good job being gentle). Chopstick is coming around, too.

We started off our day with Slipper-Mania. Sarah loved walking around in these pig slippers. In fact, she walked backward and sideways (as well as forward) in them.

Bed-time at last.

Everyone was super excited for Craig to come home today. It didn't even matter that it was raining cats & dogs outside. We were happy to stay inside and play all together again.

Our last day of Tumbland was also probably our most fun day of Tumbland. I'm going to guess that we won't sign up for classes there again. Sarah & I will check out the classes at Home Plus and then when Anna is 4 she can sign up for ballet and art classes outside of school. I think that should be enough activities!

Signing "cat."

Dr. Lee on the left, Chopstick on the right.

Sarah loves the kittens and they are finally not running away the instant she enters the room. Dr. Lee will let Sarah touch her a little bit but Chopstick is still skeptical (but he still not totally confident in the rest of us, either).

I could barely contain my excitement yesterday when I was in the produce section at Home Plus and there were fresh blueberries! They were in 100g packages and cost 5,000KW each (about $5). I bought a package for each of us and they were heavenly. I will probably just hold out now until we go home and get more for less but it might be tough to pass them up when I go to the store again next week.

We survived day 2.5 of 5.5 days of no-Craig. (He is in Bangkok for work until Saturday morning.)

Anna is suddenly really into to talking to me and Craig on the phone the past few days. She will answer some questions and not run away. I don't really know why she's been so slow on this, I attribute it to her shyness. I'm sure some day I won't be able to get her off of the phone!

I often find the Home Plus jingle is stuck in my head and I walk around "singing" it (I only know the words "Home Plus" because the rest is in Korean). We only hear this when we're at Home Plus (and in their parking garage) but Anna & Sarah, of course, hear me singing it all of the time, too. Anna is now walking around singing it as well. I should really find out what the words are so we don't sound like complete idiots when we're signing this while we're out and about.

Yes, Sarah is still a messy eater. Nana & Grandma might buy some plastic to put around her seat at the table...

A profile of what she did to her hair. She definitely got a good scrub-down in the bath tonight!

I made some five-layer bean dip today because I found some good-looking tortilla chips at Lotte Mart yesterday. I had to go to two separate stores to find sour cream and we still had a container of guacamole in the freezer. The stars aligned. The girls loved it. Anna preferred to eat her dip burrito-style and Sarah followed suit but Sarah was also really into reaching into the chip bowl to get her own chips (take a bite, get a whole new chip... I caught on pretty quick and gave her her own bowl so I could just toss the ones she took out back in).

I got Anna this super-cute plush pizza that I've had my eye on for over a year now. I gave out a couple of boxes of plush petits-fours for birthday presents and am annoyed because now they are out of stock everywhere and I didn't order a box for us so I didn't want the same thing to happen to the pizza. Anna has had a blast playing with it. Sarah will have fun with it when she learns to actually not put the toppings in her mouth (she just gets a plain slice to play with for now).

There have been a few pictures over the past year that I know I haven't posted and they have been eating at me. There is a category right now called "catch-up" so you can see what I've updated if you don't subscribe to my blog on a blog-reader.

I still have to go through a lot of files on my "little camera" (pictures and video) to update so I'll put a reminder here when I get it all finished so you remember to look at all of the stuff.

Sarah is just so cute right now with her big little personality. When she gets up in the morning she knocks on Anna's door if it is shut (luckily she is not loud so if Anna's still sleeping it won't wake her) and she is babbling up a storm. I really have to try to catch this on video before she moves onto another sound, this is an "L"-filled babble so there is a lot of tongue-action. Her other new thing this week is to stomp. So, if I sing "If You're Happy and You Know It," she can clap her hands and stomp her feet.

Sarah can point to her nose, ears, and teeth. I think she can do others (tongue & eyes?) but this is what I've jotted down in my notes on the counter in the past couple of days.

She is getting better about not putting everything in her mouth and I can actually trust her to go into the next room without me for a very short period. She likes to open and close doors. She has a very strong interest in shoes.

The rainy season has started here so we've been using the umbrellas a lot. If I happen to have an umbrella with me but it's not actually raining, Sarah will get very upset until I open the umbrella and put it over our heads.

Sarah can almost get on and off the ride-on toys in our apartment safely. It's not quite to the point where I'm ready to leave them out all of the time but we're almost there. I think her legs are just a little too short to swing over the seats. She can get herself going forward and back but mostly likes to practice getting on and off.

New signed Words: help, hot, car, toilet (when she's pooping now), and our own made-up sign for "strong"—she thinks this one is hilarious.

I took the girls up (and down) to the big pool this afternoon. The water was still too cold in the big pool but the water in the little one had warmed up quite nicely. Anna (and Sarah) had fun playing with Eleni (& Kostas).

Chopstick is on the left, Dr. Lee is on the right.

Anna and I decided to lengthen Suhyup's name to be "Chopstick Suhyup" and we're calling him Chopstick instead of Suhyup. I prefer Clementine but we still call the girl cat Dr. Lee. They are both coming out to play during the day (even when both girls are up) and they have both come to sit with me and Craig on the couch at night after the girls go to bed. Dr. Lee is more interested in human companionship at this point though. Chopstick must still have to work through some issues on that front.

I told the girls that they could play in their butterfly wings from Halloween and then I'd just toss them at the end of the day when they were totally destroyed. I haven't had the nerve to toss them though so I found a new storage spot for them where they'll be out of the way until I have another cleaning spree...

Anna & Sarah had fun finger painting today. Sarah was a little more into it because she doesn't mind getting dirty. Despite the paint on her lip in the picture above, she actually didn't try to eat the paint!

The mold is back on Anna's ceiling so I've moved her bed back into the office again. I hope this time they actually fix it and that they get it done faster than last time.

Windy! First three photos by Craig

One of the pieces of art Anna liked before I saw the "no pictures" sign. There were some good pieces here but we definitely didn't see the whole place because Anna was getting a bit tired from all the walking we did to get there.

Today was super windy and the ferries were not running back to Geoje. The hotel is awesome but it doesn't really have a concierge so the lady at the front desk wasn't very helpful. She told us there was a bus to Gohyeon at 6:30 PM but she couldn't get a hold of anyone to find out if we needed a reservation. We wanted to leave our suitcase at the hotel desk because we didn't want to lug it around town all day. So, Craig & Sarah took the subway to the bus station (45 minutes away!) to buy tickets and Anna & I had the more relaxing day of Starbucks, quick subway trip, and a visit to the Busan Museum of Modern Art. We all met up again and hurried back to the bus station to catch the 4:30 bus (it turns out buses to Geoje run all day long so we could have just all gone together the first time and saved Sarah & Craig a lot of grief).

The bus trip wouldn't have been too bad if we hadn't bought four tickets and only gotten two seats. We had the girls on our laps and not much room for anything. Then Sarah had a dirty diaper after Anna had fallen asleep but Sarah wouldn't fall asleep with a dirty diaper on so we had to rustle around and wake Anna so I could change Sarah on the seat. Sarah fell asleep less than five minutes before we got to Gohyeon...

Anyway we had a really good trip and it was nice to get away before Craig's business trip this month and our big trip to the US this summer.

Our awesome room. The stairs up to our loft were pretty scary but we were able to easily block Sarah from them with the ottomans. The kids room was on the right and they did a good job sharing the room.

The girls getting ready to check out the pool at the hotel.

We had a good day today despite the weather being cooler than hoped (and a little windy). We went to the aquarium and to some Western restaurants. I went to a book store and to Casa Mia (it was like being in Crate & Barrel... what a luxury!). We also tried to swim in the pool but the water was just too cold to enjoy it.

Anna was super excited about the giant pictures of desserts on the wall at the patisserie.

View of the sunset from our hotel. Photo by Craig

The girls & I caught the 3 PM ferry to Busan today and hung around the hotel, beach, and restaurants waiting for Craig (who caught the 5:30 ferry). Luckily the girls were pretty easy to entertain even as the clock rolled well past their bedtimes.

Our hotel, the Seacloud is pretty awesome. It's a great location and we have two bedrooms, and we got a fantastic rate through the apartment managers here.

We met up with Constance & Tobias today at Okpo Great Victory Memorial Park (where I typically do my portrait sessions). The girls had fun exploring and Sarah took an awesome nap in the afternoon!

After Sarah's nap we went over to the Home Plus building (have you caught on that there really aren't many places to go on Geoje yet?) to ride the carousel. Anna has finally stopped being too scared to ride the horses and unicorns (a year after the too-fast-carousel at Colorado Mills) but Sarah & I still have to ride in the sleigh because I'm not allowed to stand next to the horse/unicorn and Sarah can't be trusted yet to stay on one!

Anna got her "acceptance letter" from Okpo International School today. She will be a Ladybird starting September 1.

Reading a bedtime story with Dr. Lee.

Anna likes to read with the kittens if we can catch them. Suhyup escaped from the fence we had them in so I took it down thinking I'd rather have them have free access to the litter box than have them in the family room... so now they spend most of their time in hiding. I am trying to catch them multiple times per day to get them used to us. We'll see how it works (socializing the cats).

The girls had fun at Tumbland again today. Today was an art day and we painted with bubbles. The real reason I'm posting is to record what Anna said after her first day at Tumbland when Craig asked her why she had a bunch of stickers on her shirt, hands, and face (the teachers had put them there). Her response was, "so I can enjoy them later at home!" The way she said it was hysterical and sounded like a commercial (which she is not exposed to at all).

Anna really seems to like her (Korean) teachers at Tumbland and when I asked her who is her favorite teacher at Playschool she said "Stephanie" (who is Korean as was "Minnie" at school).

Sarah was pretty proud of herself when she got my sling over her shoulder but mine is way too big for her so I found the kid-size one for her. She wasn't happy until I put her doll, Elsa, in the sling though. She walked around with her in the sling for quite a while.

We think Dr. Lee is a girl and Suhyup is a boy so I'm adjusting Dr. Lee's name to "Dr. Clementine Lee" because I keep getting confused by the gender neutrality of their names. Anna won't budge on Suhyup's name so I guess he's going to stay that although it's really like naming your cat "King Soopers" or "Safeway." I told Amelie their names yesterday and I think she has confirmed in her mind that we are insane.

Anna wasn't feeling cooperative for a picture today...

Sarah was getting really tired.

We drove up to Goseong today to check out the dinosaur park recommended by Aksana and Valerie. It was pretty nice and we didn't get a chance to see it all so we'll have to go back again some other time (maybe this fall when it cools down again). The girls seemed to have fun and it's always good to take a break from Geoje now and again.

Dr. Lee is on the left and Suhyup is on the right

It looks like we're going to try to keep these two cats. The vet thinks they are about six weeks old. For now they live in a little fence with a carrier, litter box, bed, and food & water dishes but eventually they can have the run of the house. Suhyup purred when I washed him/her on Tuesday night and Dr. Lee purrs as well but not as quickly or as strong. Craig named Dr. Lee (Lee is one of the most common surnames in Korea and "Dr." makes it unisex since we haven't figured out what they are yet!). Anna named Suhyup after she was given a list of choices. Suhyup (pronounced SOO-YUP) is the name of the grocery store here. Anna had been leaning toward "Orange" all day but the other choices were Kimchi, Kimbap, Pajeon (Korean pacake), Ooyoo (milk), or Dalki (strawberry).

I decided to take Sarah to the doctor today because she was up from 1-3 last night and still has a horrible cough from her cold last week. Tomorrow is a holiday so I thought it was best to get her checked out before the long weekend. Hopefully the medicine she got today will help right away! (Anna was a little jealous that Sarah got a "perscerption" and Anna didn't.)

After the doctor we went to Anna's school for a Teddy Bear Picnic. The girls had Fairy Bread for the first time (bread with butter and sprinkles on it) and loved it. Anna got a pink bear and a certificate from school since she'll be moving on to the Ladybirds next year.

Sarah checking out the cat bed.

She really wanted to feed herself yogurt this morning so I put a bib on and let her at it. She did much better than I had anticipated, actually!

The girls had fun at Tumbland again today. Anna didn't want to get dirty when we painted but Sarah didn't care! Anna actually had a good time with the teachers today and was laughing and squealing which is always so nice to see from her in a new situation. The classes are a little long (two hours) and the teachers are a little unorganized though. I hope they get better as we go along this month.

I keep thinking I should take a photo of the rice fields each month to document how they change so today is the first one in the series. The fields are (purposely) flooded now.