Happenings

The last time I took a month away from the blog, I was partying it up in America.  The time before that, I was comatose on the couch during the first trimester of pregnancy.  I wish I had an equally exciting excuse for this unfortunate break.  But I don't.  It's just been life as usual around here, except for a few interesting highlights.

Littlest Man has decided to become wickedly mobile.  Not walking yet (thankfully) but crawling like a mad man and pulling up on anything he can grab ahold of.  It definitely makes life more interesting having three little people on the move, especially when certain ones pull themselves up on coffee tables and can't get back down.  And instead of coming to their aid, certain mama take pictures instead.

Growing up seems to be the name of the game in our house.  Micah is finally out of diapers and into his beloved big boy underwear.  (No, I did not teach him to tuck his shirt into his underwear.) 

I don't say finally because it was a long process getting him out, just a long process of getting started.  He turned three in November, but we were staying at my parents house then and I didn't think they (or their nice hardwood floors) would appreciate participating in this rite of passage.  Then when we got back to China, our apartment was so cold that I couldn't stand to let him freeze while running around without pants for those first few days.  But once we started, he figured it out in no time at all.  I even kept him in his underwear for nap & bedtime on Day #1 and he's been dry while sleeping ever since.  So my lesson from all of this has been that there are definitely some perks to waiting, waiting, and waiting some more when it comes to potty training.  

On the same day we started potty training, Sam informed me that he didn't want his pacifier during nap anymore.  He had chewed a hole in it a few weeks earlier, and I guess the sucking wasn't very fun anymore.  He told me he wanted to throw it away.  Even after I reminded him that if he threw it away it would be gone forever, he still insisted on marching to the kitchen and chunked it in the trash.  And that was the end of that.  

In other news, it's still cold and, as our Chinese friends say, the wind is very big.  Therefore, playing outside is still kind of a challenge.  So we got a slide for our living room.  It matches quite nicely with the dryer I also keep in my living room.  The boys think it's pretty rad.

So until we can ditch the layers and head outside, we'll keep sliding.

I've had to get more creative with my indoor activities these days.  I've been seeing a lot about "sensory bins" on some of the homeschool blogs I read, but it that seems way too complicated for me.  So I stuck it to Pinterest and made my own sensory box out of expired baby cereal, rice, and noodles.  Messy indeed but nothing a few sweeps of a broom couldn't fix.

We are heading to sunny Thailand in 8 days for meetings and then a few days at the beach with some old friends from Louisville who also now call the Big Chicken home.  Both of our youngest children were born within two months of each other and their names are only one letter different (Hudson & Judson).  Plus we have a lot of history with them and greatly enjoy their attitude toward China life.  To say that I'm looking forward to it is a severe understatement!