here I am again, babbling about all sorts of things

I am here to announce, albeit with a bit of hesitation, my complete recovery of my no-blog-inducing ailment. The next two months on the calendar require only one small blip in what will otherwise be a very mundane and routine life, so hopefully that translates into more frequent blogs. It's not that I think you guys are a bunch of slavedrivers, waiting every day to analyze and devour my posts. Heavens, no...but it is that if I don't find the time to post, my memories seem to get caught in neverland. I do seem to be losing parts of my working memory, though I am nowhere near an age where memory loss ought to be a problem. Perhaps I can blame it on the pollution? :)

So anyway, Josh's dad left today; well, technically he's still here in Asialand and as I speak, father and son are chowing down on Hard Rock Cafe grub while I ate leftovers with the girls here in our home...but I was spared the 7 hours on a train with restless toddlers, so my leftovers don't look so bad. Plus, after I call to check on my sick friend Rach, I've got a hot bath, a slushy frozen coke, and a book I'm planning to re-read (note: I am NOT a re-reader, but I was inspired to re-read after my father-in-law finished this series while he was here.) After this last month of having FAB visits from our families, there were several things that I noticed in my children that I had not noticed before. Granted, they were out of their routine and allowed much (too much) wiggle room when it came to obedience issues (I mean, really, who wants to discipline their kids every five minutes in front of their grandparents?!) - AND when I noticed this morning that my homepage of msnbc.com switched the look of their page, I felt flustered all day...so maybe I should cut the girls some slack. But, here are a few things I noticed about them that I had not noticed before, in no particular order:

- Emma is a packrat. In a big and serious way. The girl is going to need some major organizational skillks if she will be able to cope later in life. As I make my way through the house, I find little "piles" of things that she has stashed away. This may not seem like such a huge problem, but the thing is I'm not allowed to move them or she freaks out. Those piles are for "my baby", she'll tell me. Or that jumble of puzzle peices and plastic fruit over in the corner is for her and mantha to have a "party" later on. Or it's a present for clara anne, or whatever crazy thing she can come up with. Just today I found a new, previously undiscovered pile under her bed. Sheesh.

- Samantha, like any good Asianese in this country, is a great imitator. She can copy with the best of them. If she hears Emma say something (in English or Asianese) she will chirp right along in there, even if it's a 10 or 12 word sentence. The flip side is if Emma wants to do something (ie, go to the potty) and samantha so much as hears a whisper of it, she will turn and scurry in that direction as fast as her stumpy legs can carry her, in hopes that she will be the one to arrive first. If Emma jumps on the bed, so must she. I'm sure this is fairly common in second children, but I've only recently started noticing it with her.

- Both girls are foraying into motherhood much earlier than I thought. Last Christmas, my parents and josh's parents both sent baby dolls for emma. At the time, I felt silly for not thinking ahead so that we wouldn't get two of the same thing, but oh! how that has worked to my advantage! Just like the dora dolls, each girl has their baby, and it is off-limits to the other, unless they are asking for babysitters. Last night, they spent a good 45 minutes playing "mommy" to their dolls, even samantha! They changed diapers, gave discipline, made some sort of dinner concoction in plastic bowls, carefully fed their babies, held them, hugged them, rocked them, pushed them around in various strollers and buggies...all the while making those female nurturing sounds and pleasantly talking to their babies. I just sat on the couch and watched them, fascinated at how much they mimicked my own life.

- I've always pegged Emma as our extrovert and samantha as our introvert, and while I still think that holds true a little bit, I've come to see where that's maybe not exatly true. Last year, we attended a function that had childcare and I stressed for weeks before it about how my sweet, clingy Samantha would live without me. I didn't give a second thought to Emma, who would be going to the pool and participating in many fun, planned activities with other two year olds. But, lo and behold, Samantha was the class favorite and emma spent much of that time crying and waiting for us to come pick her up. Fast forward almost a year, and the same scenario was still true when our families came to visit. Emma was much more hesitant about opening up and embracing new people, while samantha (if left alone out of range of momma!) would smile and ham it up with anyone! Eventually, on her own terms, Emma came to love both of our parents and truly enjoyed the time she spent with them, but it surprised me. The slowness of her acceptance of them saddened me a bit, too; I knew it wouldn't be the case that wham!bam! just because they were blood relatives, she would love them, but I expected it to be easier than it was. I reflected to my friend Kim yesterday that when we first moved over here, I didn't feel like it was a sacrifice to live here. We were young, adventurous, and had a full life of True adventure ahead of us - where was the sacrifice in that?! Even now, I look at many aspects of my life, and I am so content in my life that it seldom feels like a sacrifice to live here. But when our families were in town, perhaps for the first time, my heart counted the cost of this life.

Ok, this is not a realization about my kids...but did anyone else watch the CSI/Without a Trace crossover? We are SO without a trace fans, and were jazzed about the episode. Last night after we put emma to bed, we settled in on the couch to watch it, thanks again, seven million times over, to Tom's tivo...and just as it was about to start, we hear faint sounds of Emma crying. I go in to her room to solve whatever problem she might have, and I ask her why she's crying. here is a transcript:

Me: Why are you crying?
Em: Because I'm sad.
Me: Why are you sad?
Em: because you told me I had to go to bed.
Me: Well, it is time to go to bed.
Em: You mean, it's time for little girls to go to bed, but big girls get to watch movies?
Me: Er, well, um...yes, that's right, emma.
Em: That's why I'm sad.

Sheesh. Like I'm going to let her watch CSI. I think not. While Josh's dad was in town, she was able to watch CARS again (he had never seen it), so that brings our total up to about 34,675 times. Just in case anyone wanted to know.

Anyhoo, I've got all these pictures to upload when my internet and compute decide to both be fast at the same
time; until then...