Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
Just to make that clear; sorry I forgot to mention this earlier. No time, ever. Max is wailing because he’s in sickie mode, but I want him to go to school to snap out of it. The babysitter just came, so we can get ready to go.
Oh, and Mina can sit up, pull herself up to her feet, and walk if she has something to grab onto. She might walk really soon… Please, god NO.
…some days there just ain’t enough time for simple pleasures. And apparently, even that isn’t enough because Nam pulled a large glass marble out of Mina’s mouth about an hour before I found her about to swallow a rubber band. She has very quick hands, and follows her older brother around, whose purpose in life seems to be breaking things into little pieces and strewing them all around. This is a bad combination.
Speaking of Max, he got in a squabble with a girl at school today and she apparently stuck a finger in his eye, because his upper eyelid is all swollen up. When I took him to brush his teeth, his own reflection in the bathroom mirror set off a long string of sleepy crying and exclamations of pain.
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So actually, I was conscious of the soggy diaper in my hand and also that I was eating a plate of cold food (I hate cold “warm/hot” food) as fast as I could, but it didn’t bother me so much because babies were crying all over.
Ungh.
First born in particular has a habit of spinning around and crocodile rolling, but number two pulls hair and bites in her sleep.
Today is Mother’s Day in Thailand since it’s the Queen’s birthday, and the Queen is mother to all Thais. Nam and Max went to Khon Kaen with my mother-in-law and I spent the day watching Mina. She basically slept on me all day, only waking to feed and put everything within reach in her mouth before throwing it on the ground.
While she slept, I trashed several thousand mailing list messages in Gmail that I’ve no longer got time or interest in keeping up with, and hit the Empty Trash Now link. The following message ran across the status ticker thingy up top:
Oops… the system encountered a problem (#793) – Retrying now…
Gmail continued to suffer from Excedrin headache #793 for a few minutes, after which the beautifully empty trash page appeared with this message in the middle:
No conversations in the Trash. Who needs to delete when you have over 7000 MB of storage?!
Cheeky.
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On a related note, I don’t really like the new Gmail interface (mainly, the Compose mail button sticks out like a wart), but I can live with it. If you can’t there’s a way to switch back to a much older version of the interface, albeit without Labs support.
ACT FAST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!! GET YOURS TODAY!!!
@ the baby store conglomeration on the third floor of SermThai Department store, Maha Sarakham, Thailand (link to hp removed due to malicious script warning).
Mina reared back as I was holding her today and smashed the side of her head into my nose so hard I saw stars and involuntarily shed tears for a couple minutes. If I had much of a nose, it might have broken; as it was, it only bled profusely. Mina thought it was funny as hell, then she peed on me through her cloth diaper. Then she cried when I put her down to stop the nose bleed, and finally, she took a huge overflowing dump in her pee-soiled diaper, which I had to clean up after I stopped crying and bleeding.
Pete Rock FTW, yo.
To one side lies the Little Dozer, who cries out happily while seeing visions of puppies and other dreamtime pals, but also piledrives you off of pillows he suddenly wants. To the other, the Angry Rabbit who claws your eyes, pulls your hair, and screams until she gets a fresh bottle of milk.
Some nights seem to last forever…
And then typically between 6 and 6:30am, BAM!
@Seaside, CA.
