Category: Old Blog Entries (archives)

Baby Updates 11/10/2010

Max is going through a long phase of clinginess and separation anxiety. In order to get him to go to school without crying, Nam tried taking Mina and P’Kaew (our nanny) in the car when she took him to school. That was over a month ago, and besides one time when he was in a funny mood and let daddy take him to school all alone, it’s how he has insisted on going to school every day since then. Oh, well.

Max hoards his safety cloths (“safety,” as in, “safety blanket”) a lot less than he used to, but has instead taken up the habit of changing clothes several times a day and showing them off. Before he went to bed, he was wearing his school uniform (which he never wears to school), but after Nam put him to sleep I noticed he was wearing street clothes. Hmmm.

His new favorite drink is chocolate milk (he’s been weaned from Ovaltine and Milo) with a giraffe illustration on the box, and his favorite food is anything that daddy or grandma makes.

He is super artistic and can sit and draw or paint for hours. He drew a recognizable face (a painting recognizable as a face, that is) in watercolor the other day and it really blew me away. Then he made me draw one and he complained there was no nose (I told him it was a picture of Michael Jackson). He also plays all kinds of music and is a great dancer (he did not get that from me).

He pretends to love Mina in front of other people, hugging her and smothering her with kisses. At least some of that is real. He’s our big boy now; we can give him complex commands and he usually does them ([A.] if he feels like it, or [B.] there is a sugary bribe involved).

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Mina is a big girl – she is smart, strong, and super  advanced for her age. She makes other babies seem SLOW and FEEBLE. She is eleven months old and just this week started walking across the room of her own volition. She’s been able to take a few steps for a couple months, but now there’s no stopping her. For quicker applications, she still uses this crazy scrambling on all fours that I’ve mentally dubbed the “white wiggle tank.”

More than a few times, I’ve seen her fall and hit her head and maybe cry if it surprises her or she wants attention. Speaking of attention, when she wants it, she can get it instantly. She has a kind of mind control thing going. I saw her playing with my phone today, and she was pretending to talk into it, except that she can’t speak yet, so she was deeply concentrated on getting it to work through telepathy.

And yet, the most endearing things about her are the innocent baby parts. For instance, she thinks that our clay animal statues are alive (probably because I was treating them like they were alive in front of her by pretending they were biting me and so forth), and actually ran away crying when I chased her with one. Okay, maybe that’s not so endearing so much as me having fun being a dick to a baby, but still… Come to think of it, I’ve been pretending that many things are alive just to keep her away from them.

Like today, there was half of a dinner roll on the counter and I wanted to eat it, but I knew if Mina saw it, she would claim it first. So I cut a slit on it for a mouth, and pretended it wanted to eat her nose. She thought that was funny until it started munching on her ears, too, and then she didn’t want anything to do with it, so daddy took care of it for her and ate that bread monster right up.  😉

ngu singh

There’s a meter-long snake that’s been run over in the street in between our house and the next one. It looks like a fat rat snake, the ones they call “lion snakes” here. Too smashed to be much fun taking pictures, though. There have been a lot of smaller snakes run over around the neighborhood recently. I guess they come out to warm up on the road more now that it’s getting colder.

sleepytime baby notes

Yesterday I came home for lunch and Mina was having a nap, so I decided to supervise. Pretty soon, we were snoring and drooling together. She gets super hot when she sleeps, just like me.

When I woke up, I smelled her head and thought about how long babies retain that newborn milky smell. My best guess is until six months or so. It may linger a bit longer than that, or it might just be your imagination.

Cool season

Last night was the first night it felt a bit chilly since last “winter.” From now through January is the best part of the year in NE Thailand.

We start the new term at Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University on Monday.

I teach weekend classes all tomorrow; today’s class was cancelled because we were locked out of the building. Nobody complained, because my students are also teachers preparing for next week.

Watching the Nam Chi

Thailand has been suffering from record flooding in recent weeks. What sets this situation apart from years past is that previously safe areas have also been flooded out. Rainfall has been heavy in some areas, but what seems to have caused the problems this time is the steady meddling with waterways and ignoring what might happen when they overflow.

Maha Sarakham is said to be at risk from today until October 31st.

I think the area where our house is should be okay, but of course there is also the possibility of the roads being wiped out, so I went aggro at Big C last week and stocked up on loads of boxed milk for Max and diapers for both of them. Also, the Nam (river) Chi flows in a long curve along the back of the Big C parking lot before running parallel to the highway to Kalasin, so it’s a good place to see the water level.

I hope I never have to use the rubber raft I brought over from Japan.