Birthday in a Box

It's a bit late, but, as promised, here's a glimpse of Jonathan's second birthday party at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center.  The camera got handed around and I ended up with over 400 photos, so I'll make this a photoblog.  It will be just as if you were there!

Vivienne and Jonathan rode to the birthday
party in style since their strollers were
being used to bring the "birthday in boxes"
 (and a few bags for good measure.)

Jonathan loves his bike, but it this picture he's really smiling
about bubbles.

This is my favorite picture of the birthday boy in his daddy's
favorite shirt.

Rachel introduces Jonathan to party blowers.

Jonathan shows his sister how its done with the bubble gun.

Emily tries out the bubbles from her goodie bag while Hope
masters the art of the party blower.  My boss Sophia, Hope's
mother, is in the middle.

Fawkes shows that he is truly the master
bubble blower.

Breanna gets to work on the balloons.

Little Katie grasps her balloon in one hand
 and her  goodie bag in the other and looks
on.  She didn't get to stay long and didn't
 really know anyone, but hopefully going home
 with her spoils, she considered the party a success.

Daddy and Uncle Mike enjoys the main course of pizza.

Most kids get cake with a candle for their birthday, but mommy
really couldn't resist Costco's pumpkin pie and whipped cream.
We did the more traditional cake thing on his actual birthday
at home.  Pictures of that may get up by Christmas or so.

Jonathan's not to sure what to make of his birthday pie.

Vivienne votes for us to add "bags" to
our list of fun things that begin with a
"B," but since bags are usually not round,
they didn't make the cut.

This one's round, right mommy?

Jonathan's Taiwan grandma got to come join the fun and
brought him a fun monkey backpack that was his birth
father's when he was little.  Somehow it didn't make it into
any of the hundreds of pictures, though.  Can't you see where
he gets his lovely eyes from?

Hope really caught on fast to the idea of party blowers.

Beautiful Katie!

Vivienne hangs with her favorite Uncle Mike.

Lucas couldn't decide which hat he wanted.

Fawkes the Tiger.

My kids got food from any and everybody.

And then there were gifts.  I brought a few of our own, but
I totally forgot that other people might bring gifts to a birthday
party.  Kids birthday parties are really not a Taiwanese thing
to do at all, so it's been a long, long time since I've been to one.

Jonathan managed to get the hang of
 unwrapping gifts pretty fast.

Mommy enjoys the Spiderman shirt she bought for Jonathan,
but Jonathan is still gazing intently at the Cars/Cars 2 DVDs.
He had only ever seen them on shirts and stickers and such,
but these were soon to become two of his favorite movies.

Yup.  Here he's still grasping his Cars
DVDs, but mommy presses on, enthusiastically
encouraged by daddy to keep going if we
want his presence during the operation.

Vivienne naps through the presents, thanks to Uncle Mike
who took her on a walk in her stroller when she started
getting fussy.

The birthday boy takes a little break
from all the festivities.

Eric and family even brought their own ball to the party.
Their gift fit in well, too -- BUBBLES!!

Andrew shows off one of Jonathan's
awesome birthday presents.

Jonathan found another fun, round thing
that starts with the letter "B" -- the BUTTONS
on the sweater mommy made him for his
birthday last year.

Getting chilly -- Breanna might still be in short sleeves, but
mommy made Vivienne put on her sweater, too.

So glad Cliff and Leanne got to stop by.

Jonathan returns in style from one last bubble session with
the guys.

All good things must come to an end,
even birthday parties.  The party is back
in the boxes and loaded up and ready for
the trip home.

A Baby Book at Last!

Well, it only took me a year, but I have finally finished Jonathan's baby book for his first year with us.  I think I started it before Vivienne was even born.  At very least, I remember sneaking into Jonathan's room at night before I got my laptop and working on it while holding a very tiny Vivienne.  It was one of the few creative things that could be done one-handed.  Vivienne did not make it very easy for me to finish up these last few days, because for some reason the little journal I write in for Jonathan from time to time was so much more attractive to her than anything else in the house and she kept walking away with it every time I tried to copy something from it, but I persevered (and pulled an all-nighter) and got it done in time for Shutterfly's Cyber-Monday sale.  It lasted until midnight Wednesday, but that's where living in a timezone 12+ hours ahead of America finally pays off.  (I'm not sure how it's getting from my parents' house to Taiwan, but that's for another day.)

Jonathan checks out his baby book on mommy's computer.

I loved adding in all the funny little animals and cars and things.  Jonathan will like them.  I can just imagine sitting down with Jonathan and showing him all the pictures and telling him the story of his coming to us.  Since I think we will leave Taiwan before he's very old, I want some way to help him feel connected with his beginnings here.  Now to start all over again with Vivienne's ...  Ay-yo!

(I can't get the link to the book to work, but when I do I'll put it up here.)

Mommy Milestones Part 2: Homestyle

A little while back I wrote about some of the milestones I have gone through as a mother of two toddlers.  Yesterday, my apartment passed a milestone of its own from which it will never recover: wall, meet toddler with marker.

Now, my interior decorating style below-toddler-height can best be described as exploded-toy-box-meet-crumbled-cookies and above-toddler-height as about-to-topple-over-piles.  My walls already have years worth of while-board-marker-gray from my husband not using his eraser much at work, chocolate-covered-handprints, crayon scribbles, wall stickers (and peeled paint from when the toddler thought it would be a good idea to reposition some of those wall stickers), posters of abc's (and the Taiwanese equivalent, shapes, colors, numbers, etc.) placed at kid-eye-level, old maps with chunks missing (from our pre-kid cat days), abstract art from the landlady that took me years to figure out, and other such things.  Additionally, we have been in this apartment for almost ten years and between all of the above plus the generally damp and bubbling paint from living in a sub-tropical country with a rainy season and fairly porous walls, it's not as if my landlords aren't going to have to give this whole place a total re-haul to make it livable for the next tenants, so I'm not too worried about it.  Still this house is definitely now branded as the home of a toddler.

(As an aside, I am reminded of my first day in my job as a helper in the nursery school when I was in seminary.  Emma, one of the smallest and cutest little girls in the class, was enjoying the finger paints when out of the blue she looked at me and said, "You don't finger paint on walls" and made it clear that this was not her first experience with this artistic medium.  I'm guessing Emma's home also bore the marks of a toddler.)

Fortunately, only a few other things got branded with the red marker.  The lower bookshelves were scribbled on -- you know, the ones in toddler reach which are always empty, unlike the ones crammed to within an inch of their lives above toddler reach.  Those, however, are non-porous and the marker should come off them, being that it was a white board marker that daddy accidentally brought home.  (You can lock all the markers in a box out of toddler reach, but you can never really safeguard your home, especially with an unobservant dad like Jonathan's.)

The only book that I have discovered so far as having come in the way of the marker is this children's book in Chinese I bought years ago when I was actively studying Chinese.

Ironically, the book is called Mamma's Sick.  

It's a story all about mommy being sick and daddy and two young girls running the house.  Now, I wasn't sick when this marker matter was happening, but it did happen in the interval of time between me leaving for work and the nanny arriving on the only day of the week Stephen leaves for work after I do, and I don't think that was a coincidence.  (Vivienne's terrible shampoo incidents and 9 out of 10 dismantling of mommy's purse also happen on daddy's watch.)

Here's a page from the book where the younger sister gets
into mommy's makeup and toiletries.  On the next page,
she gives herself a haircut.  Fortunately, we haven't reached
that stage yet.

However, I am proud of my home and all the marks it bears, because it's so much better a home with this little guy in it.  (This is not to say that I am encouraging any future occurrences.)

My little interior decorator, pre-interior decorating.
(Post-interior decorating, the football on his shirt was a bit
more colorful.)

Party Planning, Clark style

(It took a while to get this up, but this was mostly written the night before Jonathan's birthday party a few weeks ago.  Hopefully it won't take so long to put up pictures of the actual party.)

Last year around this time we were celebrating Jonathan's first birthday.  I was also 9 months pregnant. Basically, I hijacked a church pizza supper, threw some birthday hats and blowers on the table, blew up some balloons with Josephine during the church service while we were watching Jonathan and her daughter, Anastasia, in the cry room, and brought big cakes for the adults and a tiny pumpkin cake for pictures and for him to make a royal mess of.  I figured, first birthdays are mostly for pictures, and we managed to get some good ones with him making a total mess of himself in his nice, bright Ikea smock/bib.

Jonathan at his first birthday:
He doesn't know what's going to
happen, but he thinks he might
like it.

He was so busy with the cake he forgot to pull his hat off
until after the cake so we got great pictures.

This year, however, I decided to throw him the real deal, even though birthdays aren't really celebrated much in Taiwan.  With two toddlers, it's really hard to break out of the rut of every day life and this is a good excuse to invite everyone I know to come and hang out and break up the monotony of life.  Besides, I figured he would be old enough to appreciate some of the fun.  My friend (and former roommate) who now lives in Taipei has a daughter who just turned one, and Vivienne and I decided at the last minute to go up for her birthday about a month or so ago.  (Well, I decided and I figured Stephen would be much happier on his own with Jonathan all day than with Vivienne so she came by default.)  Beth went all out with her ladybug theme and it was an awesome party.

My friend's amazing ladybug spread.

I also decided that with two toddlers who are always in the middle of everything, a theme was probably pushing it.  Instead, I decided that we would stake out a spot on the Cultural Center lawn and order pizza from one of the nearby shops.  It would be a truly Taiwanese experience.  We could choose from Pizza Hut or Dominoes.  Then I figured we would need cake.  At first I was going to go with an incredibly cute Taiwanese cake like we did last year, supplemented, again, by the good stuff.  But the only one I really liked was a rather huge chocolate blueberry panda cake, and really, standard Taiwan cakes are not bad but not great.  And so, we are going with the good stuff (a cheesecake and a black-forest-y type cake from the coolest, no-frills bakery in town) and, as a bonus, a pumpkin pie from Costco -- with real whipped cream in a spray can.  A friend is helping make a tuna pasta salad and I'm bringing chips (a.k.a. crisps) and other goodies.

I figured if I was going to throw a whole lot of invitations out there for a birthday party, we should do something birthday-y.  Two-year-olds aren't really into organized activities, so I had to think about what two year olds ARE into.  Fortunately, I've had a lot of recent experience observing a two year old in his natural habitat, so I came up with Bubbles.  And Balloons.  And Balls.  So there we go, a theme and activities all in one.  Round things that begin with B.  Not as catchy as some, but easy enough to throw together.  And fun.

But when you are mommy to two toddlers, there's not much unencumbered free time at home to get a party ready.  So pretty much what I've been doing is buying things in bits and pieces for the past few weeks and throwing them into bags and boxes out of the way.

The night before the party, with one baby in bed, I had Stephen help me pull out those bags and boxes from our bedroom, and Vivienne helped me pull everything out to see what we had.  Helpful kid I have there.

Bubbles in one hand, wrapping paper in the other ...

Vivienne made sure that everything
got out of the boxes for mommy.

Taiwan does stationary supplies really well, and a few weeks ago I found some great Winnie-the-Pooh bags.  Deep in the recesses of my memory I remembered that there existed these wonderful things called goodie bags and thought maybe I should make some up in case any kids actually showed up.  The challenge came in finding things appropriate for kids in a wide range of ages, but I think I managed fairly well.  (There are a few extras with safer balls and no balloons in case really little ones show up.)

Time to put the finishing touches on the goodie bags.
Here is Vivienne once again being helpful 

The contents of the goodie bag -- cracker sticks, stickers,
vitamin gumdrops, Kinder chocolate, and -- of course --
the three B's: a ball, bubbles, and balloon sticks
(those ones you blow up and release to make that
annoying loud noise that kids love.)

The night before the party and it all comes down to this: assessing what I actually have, rummaging around to find anything I might need (I am particularly proud of remembering trash bags and being able to use up all those plastic utensils from take away meals), and loading it all back into boxes and bags.  

Vivienne takes stock of the party supplies.  (Mommy passes
thanks to Toys 'R Us and Ikea.  It's crazy how to my knowledge
Ikea is the only place in town to buy party napkins --
other than the ones sold individually for decoupage.)

Vivienne helps mommy get out root
beers for the party.

The plan: put most things into two large boxes that can be emptied and used as a make-shift table in the park.  Fortunately, I happen to have both a single and a double stroller, so transport shouldn't be a problem.  The kids can be loaded into Jonathan's awesome new double tricycle, a birthday gift from his nanny.  I have a few people coming over before the party to help cart things over, so I think this "birthday party in a box" might just work!

Oh What a Day ... (or A (Mis)adventure of a Little Sis)

If you know anything about us, you know that we don't operate on the same clock as the rest of the world.  Usually, my earliest work "morning" is 4 pm (though I'm starting a neighborhood class next month at the ungodly hour of 11 -- we'll see how that goes).  Every once in a while, however, I get called into a recording job for a company that publishes junior high school English books.  The work is fun, the company is great, the pay is good -- the hours are insane in comparison to the rest of my life.  9:30 am to me is what 3 am would be to a person who normally starts work at 9 am.  

If Vivienne wakes up when mommy is out, daddy needs to
come be her teddy bear and doesn't get much sleep either,
So it's not always daddy's favorite kind of morning, either.

And so, last night when Stephen said he'd watch the kids so I could go into the bedroom and rest, I jumped at the chance. Well, maybe I didn't jump since I was pretty darn tired, but I definitely took him up on the offer.  

It sounded like things were going well as I wound down and the drifted off into oblivion.  I got a good half hour or so of rest when I was awoken by the most blood-curdling screams little 11-month-old Vivienne could muster.  I gave it a minute or two to see if it was something daddy could handle, but it was soon obvious that it was not so I stumbled on out to join the party.  

It turns out that Jonathan is better at opening door knobs than we have given him credit for, and where Jonathan goes, his sister doth follow.  They made there way into the bathroom where there was a baby tub full of water and ready for fun.  Jonathan even managed to divest himself of his shorts, leaving himself in only a nappy.  He couldn't manage Vivienne's romper, however, so when I reached down to pick up the screaming little miss, I found her sopping wet.  Jonathan must have been engaging in one of his favorite bath time activities, washing his little sister.  I'm sure she had quite a few cups of water poured over her.  

If he had stopped there, all would have been fine.  She loves her brother and lets him get away with quite a bit.  However, Jonathan got fancy and tried to wash her hair.  Unfortunately, the baby body wash was not what he went for.  Hey, when you're two, one pump bottle looks like the next.  From the tell-tale remnants of blueish shampoo strewn about the bathroom floor, we're pretty sure he went for daddy's Head and Shoulders shampoo, and let me tell you, that is NOT a no tears formula.  That is a many, many, many tears formula.  And a baby with stinging eyes really does not want her eyes flushed out with water or wiped with a damp cloth or any other thing the Worldwide Web says to do for a baby with daddy's shampoo in her eyes.  And, from the looks of it, it got not only into her eyes,  but also her mouth because every time she went to nurse (her usual panacea), she came up again with a mouth full of bubbles and more tears.  Jonathan, being the excellent big brother that he is, ran in and got his Baby Giraffe to give her, but that wasn't helping either.  All this time she was sitting in her nappy in mommy'ss arms screaming and screaming and scrunching her little eyes closed.  

Eventually, however, she began to nurse and daddy put on Veggie Tales.  Apparently, Veggie Tales not only works on split lips (something Jonathan is becoming quite skilled at getting), but it also helps sooth shampoo-stung eyes.  She kept popping up from nursing to watch Bob and Larry and Junior Asparagus sing.  Eventually, things calmed down and she even let mommy put on her new little outfit (bought in a nine month size so the pants wouldn't fall down around her ankles) and even had time to marvel at the long sleeves.  Finally, she drifted off to sleep.  

Oh, the blissful oblivion of sleep!

After a short nap she was back to her happy self.

This morning was the first morning in months that she woke up with crusty eyes.  They're still a little red and she really doesn't want mommy to clean them, but other than that, she's back to her normal, happy toddler little self.  And all is quite, for now, until the next (mis)adventure of this little sis.  Ay-yo, as they say here in Taiwan.