The Little Things: Augmented Horticulture

It's not the prevalence of plastic plants that gets me. It's how often they are mixed in with real ones, outside, when the real ones seem to be doing their job just fine.  I hope someone can explain this to me one day.

Naming Animals, Literally

"Float through the jungles of the world and see how many animals you can name."

These are the instructions in Magnolia's bedtime book of choice, Fun Finger Mazes. Maggie is a good listener.  She drags her finger through the "water" maze and proclaims, "The hippopotamus is Shilong... The Elephant is Haozhong... The monkeys are Teresa and Sharni."

What's next Fun Finger Mazes, what's next?  Bring it on.

The Little Things: Squiggly Straws and Pop Can Pull Tabs

There are plenty of big differences between Beijing and Bellingham.  These are some of The Little Things, the things you probably won't find in any travel guide.

Words of the Week: Guhwrinka and Doo-bicy

Guhwrinka (verb): to take water or another substance into the mouth and swallow it

Doo-bicy (adjective): containing, to an extensive extent, spice that causing pain in your mouth

When in China, lots of the food is doo-bicy so you might need a guhwrinka wah-der, but make sure you don't get it from the tap. 

Maggie Cam: Lama Temple

On an unusually fussy day for Magnolia, while we were attending to the labyrinthine bureaucracy that is expat life in China, a new colleague offered her digital camera to Magnolia to amuse her. Maggie loved it almost as much as we did. The strategy has continued to be a valuable parenting tool. An unexpected bonus is the unique perspective her shots give on our adventure. Sure, there are many out of focus but in the midst of the dozens of shots of her legs, there are some real gems. So it is with great pleasure that we announce our newest regular feature: Maggie Cam.

Our first edition is our trip to the Lama Temple. 

My New Favorite Tradition:

Saturday morning breakfast with my girls. 

Word of the Week: Penne-tayo

Penne-tayo (noun): an arrangement of the hair in a long lock drawn tightly against the back of the head and cinched so as to hang loosely.

"I want to have a penne-tayo!" - Kaleia

Nĭ Hăo!

Sometime a few weeks ago.S: Brian, do you realize we haven’t had a blog post since April 27th?!
B: I know. Life has been a little crazy.
Screams heard from the other room.
M: Moooommmm, Kaleia is pulling my hair...

Later.
S: Okay where were we?
B: Blog. Do you want to write a post tonight?
S: Sure, but where do we start? At the beginning with what started all this craziness? Or with the current insanity?
B: Maybe a little of both, tell the now while it’s fresh and fill in a few holes while we’re at it. Let’s just brainstorm for now.
S: ...
B: Shan? Are you asleep?

Another night.
B: We're in China!
S: Yeah, there is so much I want to write about!
B: I know.  I feel like people don’t even really know Kaleia. We have this little character to unleash on the world!
S: Maybe we should kick off our grand re-opening with this video:

B: Perfect. Now, to figure out how to get a VPN so we can post it...

Lion Gets a Haircut

I walk into the girls' room and find this scene:

Poor Lion! Is he a victim of the girls' inability to express their feelings during this time of chaos? Or a result of our distracted crazed minds? Maybe a bit of both. I wonder if Lion has lost his strength and who did a better haircut: Magnolia or Delilah?

Animal Pile Up Re-Creation - 2 Years Later

Our friend Josh took some pictures of Magnolia just after her first birthday. One of those pictures -- you can see it in the May section of this post -- hangs on our living room wall, amongst others, and always grabs the girls' attention. 

Today, they wanted to recreate the picture. I don't have Josh's skill or equipment, but we still had fun piling up all the animals.