Hipster Baby

We got a surprise package in the mail from my sister Becky the other day. It contained this adorable headband, a pair of cute-as-can-be bloomers, my brother-in-law Josh's most recent albums--what a treat! I am especially enjoying his Christmas album, which hasn't even been released yet, hehehe. That's a perk of being related to a musician!
My sister found the headband and bloomers on Etsy.com, a website which I have only recently heard-of thanks to living on the other side of the world. (Haha, that's my excuse anyway--I like to think I'd be "with-it" if I lived in the States!) Anyway, sometimes if I am bored I will browse their site and see all the creative, adorable, unique homemade stuff they have. Its probably good that they don't deliver to Asia or I'd be tempted to buy stuff!
Sarah was also very interested in the cute penguin notecard my sister sent, full of warm thoughts and love from her aunt. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our dear friends and family! We celebrated the day with several other American families who live in our city by indulging in a delicious feast together. Each family brought several traditional side dishes/desserts and we got a turkey, already cooked, from a local American food restaurant. Our meal was delicious, the conversation and fellowship was wonderful, and now David and I are enjoying a mid-afternoon break while Sarah naps. So, I thought I'd post some photos!

The Outfit: We had a cute little corduroy dress in fall colors for Sarah to wear for her first Thanksgiving. She looks thankful, right?

The "uniform": David and our friend Jeremy discovered they were wearing identical sweaters!

The Spread: Green Bean Casserole, Homemade Macaroni and Cheese, Herb Stuffing, Sweet Potato Casserole, Turkey, Gravy, Deviled Eggs, Cranberry Salad, Mashed Potatoes and Crescent Rolls . . .
And Chocolate Pies for Dessert!
We borrowed a friend's food mill so we could puree some of the food so Sarah could enjoy a taste of our Thanksgiving feast as well!

The kids table:

The Grown-Ups Table:

The Decor:

The After-Party:

The Aftermath:

Movie Night

This week we invited some good friends, Erin and Brennan Mullis, over for dinner. Erin is the mom and Brennan is 2. Erin's husband Marty is out-of-town this week doing some very adventurous things out in the countryside in the coldest weather of the year so far, and deserves some major kudos for that. But since its no fun to cook dinner for just you and your toddler, we invited Erin and Brennan over for some beef stew. After dinner, David promised Brennan he could watch a movie on our wall (we have a projector we use to watch movies--what can I say, we love entertainment in the Dean household!). Erin and Brennan only had an hour, so we watched the last hour of Ratatouille. Brennan loved the movie, Sarah loved hassling Brennan throughout the movie. Photo evidence:

In this last shot, Brennan has finally had enough and crawled out of the frame, while Sarah (thrilled to have a big-kid friend to play with/annoy) is clapping and giggling hysterically. It was a fun evening!

Winter is Here!

Winter arrived this week. Suddenly. And Dramatically. Very winter-like, I guess! Monday the high temperatures were suddenly in the 40's, and today it is wet and in the 30's. Yuck, you might be saying. Well, that is probably how I will feel in a couple of weeks, but for now I am really enjoying the change of seasons! This is now my sixth winter in Asia, sixth winter living in a home that does not have central heat, and so over the years I have developed fun little traditions of ways to keep warm that I actually look forward to each year!

This year, a new fun thing was getting Sarah all bundled up in her coat and hat and gloves for the first time! All of these winter items are currently slightly too big for her, but that just adds to the cuteness factor in my book!
Sarah wasn't really sure what to make of her new apparel--I think equal parts curiosity and annoyance at the way these things limit her mobility. When we came home from our first winter outing the other day, David set her down on the carpet in the living room as he usually does and began to take off his own shoes and coat and all that while Sarah was still wearing her winter get-up. She tried to crawl across the floor wearing all this, and the result was hilarious. As soon as she made it to the hardwood floors, she would try to move forward and instantly her mittened hands would slide out from underneath her and SPLAT she would go flat on the floor! Crawl attempt--SPLAT--crawl attempt--SPLAT--crawl attempt--SPLAT. Please forgive our horrible parenting for letting this go on for a minute or two! She was so well-padded there was no chance of injury, and it was hysterical. Sarah is so good natured, she wasn't even upset by it! She just approached it as a challenge and kept getting back up on all-fours just to slip and slide around once again!
She's our precious little winter angel!

Teefs

Ok, Sweet Sarah, Mommy's going to try to get a picture of your two new little teeth. Are you going to let Mommy get a picture of your teeth??

Ok, well, let's try this again. This time, will you open your mouth for Mommy?

Ok, that's better, now lets try to show those cute little teeth this time.

Ok, well my darling, that is your TONGUE not your TEETH. Let's try this one more time . . .

Perfect! That's my big girl with her two tiny new little teeth!

Nine Months!

Sarah is officially nine months old as of last Saturday, and we just can't believe how fast she is growing up! Every day we see more and more glimpses of the little girl she is becoming, and have to grieve (a little bit!) the tiny baby stage she is leaving behind. So, you ask, what is she like these days?

• Sarah loves laughter. One of our favorite things she does these days is that when she hears David or I laughing at something, she jumps right in and starts cracking up too, even though she has no idea what the joke is!
  
• Sarah loves to dance to music. If David's listening to something on the computer or if her musical puppy dog toy starts playing a song, she always responds the same: wiggling her abdomen up and down as her little baby-dance. This morning I was singing to her in her high chair and she did the usual dance--and I of course was THRILLED that, at least in her mind, my singing also sounds somewhat like music!
• Sarah loves wiggling. She wiggles and moves so much that we've started to have a problem with her wiggling out of her diapers and them coming loose inside her clothing! Speaking of diapers, the wiggling makes changing her these days quite a task! We've started changing her on the carpet in the living room instead of on her changing table because her wiggling makes any height super-dangerous these days. I would say the average diaper change these days includes at least six flip-overs and four crawl-away attempts. It is always better to try to do this with David available as back-up.
  
• Sarah loves foreign objects and electronics. She has a sixth sense for finding things she shouldn't get a hold of and being uninterested in things that pose her no harm/she poses no harm to. For example, she is constantly pulling the remote controls off of our living room side table. I try to trade her a coaster (safe object) for the remote (electronic), which is similar in size, also not a "toy", comes from the same side table--but she KNOWS and will immediately drop the coaster and head for something else she knows she shouldn't have.
• Sarah loves to read books on your lap. This has only begun in the last couple of weeks, but I am THRILLED! We are enjoying some sweet, sweet times together reading--too bad we only have like 5 books. She loves to point out the faces of the people and animals in the books. I am of course convinced she is a genius.
  
• Sarah loves to give kisses. Big, sloppy open-mouth kisses. She loves to kiss us, her parents, and especially her own reflection in the mirror or on the television or in a piece of glass . . .
  
• Sarah loves "talking." She's totally at that adorable stage where she is speaking her own make-believe language. Her cadence often sounds like sentences, and you can definitely "understand" what she's trying to say through the emotions she is expressing. Its really fun to have little conversations with her.
  

Birthday Party

Last weekend David, Sarah and I were invited to go to the birthday party of one of our local friends. After living in Asia for over 5 years now, often long-ish periods of time will pass by where I don't experience culture shock per se. Especially now that I am a stay-at-home mom and spend most of my time at our apartment where, generally speaking, I am in control and I have essentially created a little America for myself. Even when we are out with friends in public, I guess I have just adjusted to the way things work in our city and what its like to be out with local friends. But I am always reminded that I truly am a foreigner here when I go to people's homes!

Anyway, the party was wonderful and we had a great time. Our friend whose birthday it was is a single girl living at home with her parents, and the party essentially was her family, a couple aunts and uncles, her best friend and us. Sarah did great and let everyone hold her and really played-up the adorable factor so that everyone was thoroughly in love with her by the time we left. So, yeah, overall the evening was fantastic and really enjoyable, but not without its cultural moments . . .

. . . like when our friend put on a cartoon movie to entertain Sarah and we discovered the main character of said movie was a pile of poop. Dog poop, to be specific. The English translation of the name of the movie in the credits was "Doggy Poo." We are not even kidding about this. However, we discovered at the end of the movie that it was actually produced in Korea and just translated into the local language here, so that kind of lets our part of Asia off the hook for producing childrens' entertainment where the main character is an anthropomorphized pile of feces.

. . . and when we watched the evening news together with our friend's family and the International News section revolved around the leaders of this country's primary allies--i.e. Putin, Hugo Chaves, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Berlusconi. OK, so I don't know if you'd consider Berlusconi an "ally" per se, but it was just hilarious that we watched about 3 minutes of the local news and THESE guys were all featured prominently and positively!

. . . and how the way I dressed Sarah kept coming up as a conversation topic. I put a dress on her, since it was a party and since the temperature was in the 70's that day. Since the local folks tend to dress their kids warmer than we do (understatement) I did add a sweater to her ensemble. Still, I got asked, "Don't you think she's cold?" "Aren't you afraid of her getting a cold?" and my personal favorite, "So you foreigners never put pants on your children?" I really like how Sarah wearing a dress to a party somehow became evidence enough that ALL us foreigners NEVER dress our children in pants but ALWAYS let them go around with just bare legs and socks! Still, it was my own fault. I have lived here long enough to know that I should have dressed her in a snowsuit before I took her to a gathering of local folks, even if it was 70 degrees outside!

. . . also, dinner was a little further outside our realm of comfort than normal. We absolutely LOVE the food here generally, but you have a lot more control when you order at a restaurant than when you eat in someone's home. There were actually several really good dishes, like some delicious marinated chicken legs, stir-fried lima beans, and some really good Eight Treasure Rice for dessert. There was also some Bitter Melon, which neither David nor I touched. It really is terribly bitter, but the people here are convinced its absolutely essential for good health. Thankfully, our hosts said up front they didn't expect us to eat it, which was very considerate! The main special dish they served, since it was a birthday, though, was shrimp. My standards for shrimp are pretty high--I won't even eat it in the U.S. unless its "de-veined," I am totally incapable of doing the peel-and-eat thing. Well, here they take shrimp to a whole different level and serve it totally whole and you are expected to eat everything except the head and the tail, including the legs and shell and all that!! Thankfully, David can totally do this (isn't he amazing??? Swoon.), so we foreigners didn't look like total jerks not eating the main fancy dish of the meal!

Something that has spread from OUR culture, however, is the tradition of birthday cakes! At the end of the evening, our friend's parents unveiled this beautiful cake that also ended up being delicious. It was yellow cake with a berry filling and berry flavored icing, with white chocolate accents. Yum!