Kitchen

Our kitchen in the US was really special. We could look at bowls, and know that each came from a special person in our lives. We knew our everyday dishes came from special ladies who threw our wedding shower. Each piece came from someone else who means something. And all the rest was Bubby's.

Since we were only moving to Singapore for a year or two, we decided not to take our kitchen with us (other than a pot, a pan and the obligatory knives, obviously - who can live without amazing knives?). I thought it best to leave them to stay kosher at home and away from this traif country...and we knew we were "getting moved" there, but we didn't know if we would get moved back, and that stuff is important (and heavy=expensive!).

So, here we are, three years later, and we definitely have no plans to come home for the next two years (at least). But, as a good, nesting, entertaining (not the fun part - but the "I like to have people over" part) woman, I/we have had to build up a new kitchen. I didn't realise the uniqueness of it until Thursday night when we unpacked all of our kitchen, washed each item, and put them all away in our new home. This is why it sort of blew my mind:

• Plates and bowls are from our "babymoon" in Lombok
• Some mugs from Chiang Mai - when I went with Jer in Dec, 07
• Some mugs from a cool bar in Bangkok - they're shaped like tubas
• Wine glasses from the weekend market in Bangkok
• Serving bowl from a random street in Seoul
• Three other serving bowls from the weekend market in Bangkok
• Mugs from: a co-worker at AWARE that hated me and probably got it for me as a "good riddance" gift, Marc and Arthur who left a really long time ago, Google (I just love Google), SAIS, GW, the Fed...
• Ceramic kitchen spoon holder from Nachalat Binyamin in Tel Aviv
• Mortar and pestle, and masala set from Little India (don't worry - we still live in Little India)
• Measuring cup from my tripping days at Camp Ramah (not that kind of tripping...)
• Measuring spoons, grater, measuring cup from Bubby
• 9X9 from Langkawi, an island off the NW of the Malaysian peninsula (it's not especially cool - but they just had one for a good price, so why not!?)
• Two plates from the Dominican Republic - one of our first big trips that we took together

The moral of the story is - nearly everything in there makes me happy and reminds me of something neat that we have done (mostly together).

In other news, we moved on Wednesday, and all went smoothly, though it took much longer than expected. We are now settling in our new home, which is nearly three times the size of our old place, and we are slowly (or quickly, really) acquiring our first furniture. Most major things have been taken care of, but we are headed today to find a bed and dresser for our helper, a desk and chair, and possibly some rugs. Yesterday we acquired a neat Indonesian day bed (trundle!), a tv console, a neat piece with drawers for the front door area and a bookshelf/buffet piece. We also had our couch delivered yesterday (which I'm sitting on, and it's fantastically comfortable).

In yet other news, our stubborn little baby (takes after both of us?) has yet to turn into a nice birthing position, so we are currently doing what we can. I have:

• sat in a "all-fours" position with my arms down (polar bear position) for hours over the past few weeks
• swam, belly-down
• put frozen peas (and a frozen loaf of bread) on the baby's head. The doctor said that only makes its head cold (oops)
  
• visualised it flipping (a lot)
• asked it nicely
• tapped in the lower regions
  
• Matt has talked to the baby from the lower region, to try to get it to move closer to his voice
  

And now the doctor has said to sleep with the foot of our bed elevated, so we have raised it about four inches, and hopefully this will "dislodge" the baby's bum from my pelvis, and then apparently walking around all day will then encourage it to be head down, since the head is heavier.

If the baby doesn't flip by two weeks from now, the doctor will try to flip it himself, which apparently could be quite uncomfortable for me and the baby, and the trauma actually makes many women go into labour. Hopefully it will flip itself. I have always wanted to naturally birth a child (or two, three or four), and though I know it's not the end of the world, as long as everyone's healthy...I would really like to avoid a c section. On the flip side, Matt's worried about all of the money we have spent on hypnobirthing classes and our doula (birth coach).