mama eggroll made it online!

What follows is perhaps my most random post ever, full of all the thoughts I’ve wanted to blog about over the last several days but have been prevented from posting due to the thorn in our flesh, the broken underwater fiber-optic cable:

What a great life it must be to know that Dora the Explorer and chocolate can solve all your problems! Not that I have ever underestimated the powers of chocolate, but still…

Today was Emma’s first accident-free day! Yeah, I know…it was December 27th when we started the whole potty training ordeal. There were many days that almost won the title of “first accident-free day”, but then something would happen – either an early mistake when she first woke up, or being too careless late at night. Oh well, it finally happened today! AND, I might add (to brag on my daughter a bit) today was accident-free even through 1)going to clara’s house for most of the morning and early afternoon (meaning TWO taxi rides where she set me in a panic by announcing with a dead-pan look on her face “poopoo mama!”) 2) wearing her cute little panties even at naptime and staying dry and 3) spending most of the evening running errands with us and going potty at her first public restroom (in the States, even public restrooms are not so clean. You can just imagine the situation over here…) SO, props to emma, huh? She did great today.

The thing is, we’ve been luring her by the promise of adding a Dora sticker to a little piece of paper that is taped above her potty chair whenever she goes poopoo on her potty, and of course, a small piece of chocolate. Amazingly enough, after she would poopoo, she would be so distracted by the thrill of putting the sticker on the paper, she forgot about the chocolate!!! So, thank you dora, for being such a good inspiration to my sweet girl.

Speaking of Dora, josh recently has been making up bedtime stories for emma, which she totally loves. She will lay mesmerized in his arms while she listens to him spin a story that would impress anyone. One important part of the story is personalizing all the characters. Josh will ask emma, “who should mommy be? Who should daddy be?” The usual characters shake out as follows (if you are not up on your Dora trivia, tune into Nick Jr. if you want to be a friend of Emma’s!): EmmaDora (pronounced as one word, not divided), DaddyBoots, MommaTico (how I was chosen by her little mind as Tico I will never understand) and ManthaIsa.

So as josh’s tales get taller and taller, I just listen with amusement while I watch them bond. So a few nights ago, Josh was telling a story about how mommatico was driving through the forest, picking up all her friends, including of course, emmadora, daddyboots, and manthaisa. An interesting thought hit me as I pictured Tico the squirrel driving through the forest: he is the only character on the Dora show that speaks no English (the rest of the are bilingual, you know) yet, he is the only character on the show who has a drivers license. Where’s the logic in that???

Emma lately has been quite the bucket of laughs. It seems like everything that comes from her mouth is so innocently funny and cute (except, of course, her impetuous “NO’s!”) Here are two of the funnies we’ve had around here:
-I was admiring emma one evening as she was reading a book. Her hair was messy (as usual) but something about the way it fell on her face that night, the way her little eyes twinkled all full of toddler excitement, and the precious curves on her face just melted my heart. So I said, “Emma, wow, you are such a pretty girl! Momma loves you!” She smiled with innocent pride. Then I said, “Emma, we can thank God for everything – we can even thank God for your beauty! You can say, ‘Thank you God for my beauty!’” So, in obedient fashion, Emma replies, “Thank you God for my booty!” What’s not to love about that?! J


Samantha has decided that she will not give up the limelight easily to her big sister! She is getting to be a big girl in her own right! Recently, I’ve stood her up next to this activity table that she loves, and I’ll surround her with pillows on all sides in case her leanings take her a bit too far. The girl can stand up by herself for 10 or 15 minutes! Holy moly, where did that come from?! This ability has been the delight of her days recently, and has freed up my arms quite a bit to actually get some stuff done!

I’m sorry to say, though, that her eczema is not doing so great – it’s particulary itchy on her head because in the morning when I go to get her, she has red scratches and bloody areas on the back of her head where she has cut herself from scratching! Yuck! So we are trying yet another strange form of asian herbal remedies…actually, I’m not sure if its herbal or medicinal, or what. It smells weird, but they all assure me that its safe and stuff. I just want her to be more comfy! So we’ll see how that all works out.

Well, there you have it for now. Tomorrow night is game night with a few other foreign couples in town. Hopefully, the kiddos will go to bed early and we can stay up late and catchphrase or scrabble or quiddler to our hearts’ content…