welcome to jupiter, little girl

Freed of her sneakers and penguin backpack, Sadie ran right inside this morning, and discovered the book corner, the mat with the duplo blocks, the clay station, and the table with water wheels and yellow smocks on the chairs. She stuck a laminated hot air balloon (upside down) with her name on it onto the wall where a blue sky and fluffly white clouds were painted. She didn't understand that she was supposed to leave it there, and by the same token, not un-stick the handful of other laminated balloons with other names and redistribute them around the room. The frustration had started. 

She sat on the carpet with the others, briefly, and accepted the offer to put the orange "Tuesday" card on the rectangle space on the wall where someone had already affixed a gray "Cloudy" tag. She danced a little to the songs, but didn't clap. She observed the bathroom break with great curiosity.

Like a little lemming, she followed the others into the corrider. They started emptying the shelves, and she too started to grab shoes and hats. "Let's put those back, Sadie," an adult gently told her. She looked confused. Then, "Your cubby is over here. See your shoes?"

Green sneakers upon her feet and her brand-new sunhat velcroed under her chin, she seemed to be thinking that she was going to be set free at least. No matter how much she struggled to open the door leading to outside, she was met with the resistence of an adult hand on the door handle and a "Today it is Hugo's turn to open the door". A few frustrated and confused tears were shed here in the corridor.

Outside, she had a turn on the swing, scooped some sand and rinsed off her feet afterward, was excluded from the playhouse by some of the others, tried to ask for a drink of water (successful), and pushed herself around in a big purple car.

And then she was done. She stood firmly in the corrider again, as the others filed past her, through the door, to wash their hands and sit down for a snack. "Shall we get your penguin-pack?" I asked. She nodded, looking tired, confused, and overwhelmed all at the same time. "Okay, we'll come back tomorrow."

the tale of the snack-table smackdown

Sadie, now a vetern of our Saigon toddler group, bounded into the classroom after fifteen minutes of running around chasing balls outside and headed straight for the small little snack table with it's eight tiny chairs. She started to to slide her little bottom into an empty seat, only to find her progress impeded when a full-grown woman threw herself over the chair first. I am not kidding!

"No!" the other mother exclaimed, and then she indicated the EMPTY chair at the snack table and  added, "This is for my son!"

But there wasn't a child there. The child she indicated was cruising around the (really large) classroom in one of those large Little Tykes cars, and when he zoomed closer to the vicinity of the snack table, I realised that he's the Cute Little Korean Boy. We've met before. 

Luckily, Sadie got over her confusion and diplomatically picked a different EMPTY chair at the snack table and went on to have cornflakes and orange wedges. But if she had instead chosen to throw one of those fabulous tantrums that I know her two-year-old self specialises in, I would have let her carry on for a few minutes, staring at Cute Little Korean Boy's mom the entire time. Grr.

 

doesn’t everyone’s date nights end with bugs?

Is is that just us? On Friday, Chris and I came home from dinner at one of those fabulous restaurants that Saigon has so many of, and delightedly found our children both dressed for bedtime and smelling of freshly-brushed teeth. All looked good, until we heard about how about twenty tiny insects had been pulled out of the curly fluff on Sadie's head. Now, if you have a child, or perhaps have been a child at some point, you understand where my bug-related thoughts immediately went and how much I probably shuddered and inwardly sighed at the imagined hours I had ahead of me, combing and nit-picking and laundering sheets and pillows and all that.

Over in a small Rubbermaid container sitting on our sideboard, one of the accused bugs was trapped, awaiting our inspection. I don't think that either of us really wanted to look, but we did. The tiny critter had wings. Wings!

Hurrah! I have no idea exactly how a family of small winged bugs ended up in Sadie's hair, but they sure were better than the alternative. 

year of the … kitten

As the lunar new year approaches, other countries in Asia will usher in the Year of the Rabbit, but Vietnam does things a little different. Felines are more in style, I guess, as the Year of the Cat is upon us. The lunar new year, otherwise known as Tet, has been on my mind a lot this week. Ever since we moved here, I've heard other foreigners recommend that we leave HCMC for the holiday, as "the city shuts down!" – whatever that means, exactly. Lately, I've been hearing more about how all the beach and mountain resorts here are booked up already and stories of families who decided to stay in the city running out of food! I'm not sure if we're going to be able to go anywhere, so I feel that I should start nuturing my hoarding instincts (Side-note: I knew that there were some benefits to buying the shelf-stable milk here!). 

The other thing about Tet is that theft also ramps up in the weeks before the holiday.  A friend explained to me that the locals who have come into Saigon from the country to work are under a lot of pressure to bring expensive gifts back to their families, so muggings have been on the upswing, as well as reports of home-invasions. We don't live in particularly nice neighbourhood, so we've upgraded the lighting in our yard such that it's now bright enough to play baseball at midnight (not that our yard is bigger than a postage stamp) in the hopes that no one is going to come after our laptop computer and iPods at night. I think that the night that I discover someone with a flashlight rummaging through my kids' bedrooms will be the swan song for Saigon for me – could you even imagine how freaky that would be?

On a lighter note, today Sadie and I happily skipped Gymboree – we're never going back, thank you very much. We've found a lovely regular toddler playgroup for Wednesdays that actually encourages them to be individuals. And my little individual seems to have made a New Years resolution to mature some – communicating with actual words, sitting to play quietly with lacing beads, cutting food, looking at books, doing "crafts" – it's so not like her, but it's a lovely change for sure.

 

blizzards, airplanes, and a certain little toddler

This winter (such as it is, here in Vietnam), we'd been feeling that there wasn't enough challenge or excitement in our lives. So, the obvious remedy  was to take our two children, one of them a twenty-six month-old, on a eighteen hour flight. 

I remember how anxious I was when I first started flying with Madeline, usually between St. John's and Edmonton. She happened to be two year old at the time. Four years later, she could probably fly herself. Okay, maybe she still needs some assistance navigating the airports, but honestly, she is such an easy child to travel with. She packs and carries her own carry-on backpack, and is pretty happy to write in a journal, occupy herself with an activity sticker books (like these), or watch inflight programming. That's largely why I haven't posted much at all in the last couple of years about flying with her. It's very nearly like traveling with my husband, only she carries much less in her pockets  so I'm not waiting while she takes a really long time to get through airport security screening 🙂

But then, there is Sadie. She isn't really interested in stickers, colouring, or books, which is what her older sister occupied herself with on long flights at the same age. Sadie likes running, climbing, bubbles, playdough, and making things out of blocks – none of which really lend themselves well to air travel. I was either an optimist or an idiot, as I was carrying around about ten pounds of stickers, crayons, markers, and snacks in a large backpack. The great majority of those items never saw the light of day during our twelve-day trip. The keys to surving a long-haul flight with the toddler seem to come down to two things:

1. Taking a night-time flight, so that 6-10 hours of the flights are absorbed by sleeping and do not require entertaining (or restraining) her.
2. Having the Toy Story films on the inflight entertainment system. She could watch Buzz Lightyear and Woody all day long, I think.

 This actually worked out well on our out-going flight, leaving Hong Kong in the early evening. Our return flight was scheduled to leave NYC at 9:15 in the morning, which was quite a concern as there was a distinct possibility that she'd be awake for sixteen of those eighteen hours back to Saigon.

But hurrah – NYC received a dump of snow on Boxing Day!!!!! Our flight back on New Years Eve was delayed by something like six hours; we probably were the only passengers on flight CX841 who considered this to be the best news ever! And yes, the toddler slept for most of the flight. Thank goodness. 

favourite things

One of my favourite things  in this whole wide world happened today. 

After a lunch of Saigon's best fish tacos, after squeezing (and I mean that literally) through the masses at the Consular Charity Bazaar, and after the slow ride home, I'd pulled my sleeping little toddler from her carseat in our van, and settled down on the sofa with her head resting against my chest.  

She stayed asleep for half an hour, and it was just lovely to hold her like that again. 

completely random tuesdayness

What sort of brain pills is my toddler taking and where can I get some for myself? I'm joking, of course, but I never cease to be amazed at how almost overnight, Sadie seems to have gained thirty IQ points.  Over the last three days, she's started to talk a bit more, and understand an awful lot more. I discovered her new-found brilliance during her midnight-to-half-past-three party that she held on the wee hours of Sunday morning. Hurrah … and yawn.

How on earth did I ever get my own homework done when I was in first grade? I also had a younger sister, but I don't remember having to fight her off from scribbling in my homework book. Madeline, however, does. Whenever she brings out a worksheet that she needs to complete, Sadie is right there, trying to elbow her way in with a marker in hand. I have no idea how to get Sadie to lay off and leave Madeline to do her work in peace unless I lead her away somewhere else, which isn't often possible as I usually have to stay with Madeline to keep her on task. Ugh. 

I've somehow found myself going on a decorating/organizing binge over the last few days. It started with me hanging up the rest of the pictures and framed photos in the girls' rooms (vain of me, but it makes me happy inside if my kids have nicely decorated bedrooms), but by Sunday, I was re-arranging furniture in our guest bedroom and computer room, displaying knicknacks, and marking the walls where I need holes drilled to hang up more decorations. It's carried over to today; this afternoon I was assembling some IKEA stuff, shuffling the dollhouse from one corner to the other, hauling stuff up to the storage room, and doing more measuring for our artwork. I spent much of our first few months in this house lamenting over how much this house didn't feel like our home and how I missed our apartment in Nichada, but I have to say that hanging up a handful of our family photos in our bedroom really helps me to feel settled here. (But I would go back to a single-storey home in a minute – the stairs here are just inconvenient!)

 

Did I ask your opinion? (and other things I am grumpy about)

Today, I must have had a wardrobe malfuntion and left the house with my "please tell me about my child because you know her better than I do!" sign accidentally taped to the back of my shirt. I say this because Sadie and I had another weird incident at Gymboree early this morning. We arrived only three minutes early (and were the first pair there, naturally). Shortly before the class began, ten minutes late, another little toddler was sitting outside the classroom, chugging back a bottle of milk, and Sadie wandered out the open classroom door to sit beside her. The instructor saw Sadie leave, saw where she was, and then said to me in all seriousness, "You should make sure that she has breakfast before she comes here!" 

Maybe I'm alone in thinking that this was a weird comment, but it came across as some sort of unsolicited parenting advice that is outside the realm of someone who is paid to dance around with a creepy clown doll. Sadie's instuctor is wonderful with the kids, but really, does she have x-ray vision and could see into Sadie's stomach? It's not like Sadie was wrestling the bottle of milk from the other kid. Have I been labeled a negligent parent by the Gymboree folks because of our arriving-in-time-for-class ways? Maybe Sadie just wanted to sit on the bench beside the other little girl today, you know. 

After doing our weekly penance at Gymboree, we headed to Sadie's two-year well-baby check-up. The pediatrician proclaimed her to be a completely normal toddler, but also told me that she'd be talking more if she wasn't still "confused by all of the Thai that she's heard" but to give her more time before worrying. That comment also seemed sort of strange to me, but maybe it isn't. It actually makes me more worried, though, because I imagine us moving on to our next assignment somewhere else, with Sadie still having very simple language skills, and hearing, "Well, it's because of all of the Vietnamese she'd heard!". Gah.

Am I allowed to whine about just one more thing here? It's my gas stovetop. It hates me. It has two burners, and for the last two weeks, they have pretty much refused to ignite. They go "poof" and then when I turn the dial back to the set the flame level, they extinguish completely. My husband, however, has no problem using the stove. It's really too bad that he wasn't around when I wanted to steam some broccoli for dinner tonight …

faux-deedoh: what happens when i try to be creative

Be assured that I have no ambitions to enter the realm of design blogging, but I thought that a wee little makeover that I did in one of my daughters' rooms this past weekend was really cute. See, both Madeline and Sadie's rooms have a wall that is completely full of built-ins – a wardrobe, a few cupboards and drawers, and this large space:

To me, it looks like that space was designed to contain a large screen television, but somehow it just seems improbable to me that a typical Vietnamese home would have large screen tvs in all of the bedrooms. Maybe I'm missing something? Anyway, these big brown spaces that really only held a clutter of toys kind of bothered me, being wasted, brown, and boring. But this weekend, I transformed Sadie's  big boring brown space thusly:

The photo may be too small to really see, but I stuck regular boring wooden clothes pegs (going for either a shabby-chic or minimalist look, depending on one's decorating sensibility) to the back of the big brown space using one of my favourite decorating aids, 3M Command Strips. And then I hung a small colourful quilt in the space, and now there is something pretty to look at there. Much better.

I could actually write a whole post on my love of the 3M Command products; I've relied on them profusely in my life overseas with it's concrete walls that I can't hammer a nail into. Why, this past weekend, I also used the velcro version of the Command Strips to put up a pair of pictures on the big brown doors to Sadie's wardrobe. Love them. 

 

 

twice as nice

scooting
Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

We didn't make a huge fuss over Sadie's birthday on Friday, but I hope that she still had a great day. Her new scooter was waiting for her downstairs when she woke up, and she was terrifically eager to hop on and tool around on it for most of the day. Chris managed to duck out of the office a little earlier than usual so we had a nice dinner together, followed by Sadie's cupcakes, and then we let her tear into her gifts. Which she actually did this year; I think that Madeline might have been a little disappointed that she didn't get to help unwrap as much as she has for Christmases past and Sadie's first birthday. 

The cupcakes were yummy; I can make cream cheese frosting (which we all like) in my sleep now, and I used a recipe for banana cake for the actual cupcakes. I have no natural talent with a piping bag, so I really should have practiced the eyes and mouths on my clownfish before I started piping the melted chocolate directly onto the orange sugar cookies, they were a lot more Nemo-ish in the example I was inspired by. I had the scale all wrong, sadly. I was really hoping that Sadie would see her cupcakes and happily shout, "Mum-O!!!" which is her current wordfor Nemo (the only licensed character she admits to recognizing), but I only got a "Fish!" from her. 

We took her out for a slightly-belated birthday lunch on Saturday, too, and I think that she had fun at the Snap Cafe here in HCMC. They have a fairly shaded playground with a lots of opportunities for swinging, and their blueberry pancakes are quite good. 

The one thing that I'd hoped to do for her birthday but wasn't able to was buy a bunch of balloons. Every Friday, there is a man standing opposite Madeline's school selling balloons (Hello Kitty and Transformers figure heavily) and live goldfish from the back of his motorbike; I figured that I'd go over and buy half a dozen helium-filled balloons and totally surprise the kids. Except that the balloon-and-goldfish man wasn't there after school! The students are on vacation this week, so maybe the balloon man was taking one as well???