Yoga in the Park

Today is my second day of part-time working. You can tell that I'm happier and that I have time, because I'm updating my blog three times in one week, after something like three months of no posting...

This morning Sam and I took her (Isaac's) car to the park for a little ride. She drove all around, and we ended up seeing a truck with a whole bunch of drums and colourful stuff - like stuff that they bring when they're doing a lion dance - like stuff that was involved in the super noisy parade outside our windows two nights ago. She hung out with all of the uncles, decorating the truck for a while. There was a little girl, Irene, who played with Sam in the sand, on the swings, and all around the park. Probably for an hour.

Then we saw a man doing yoga on the cement. Sam and I watched him for a while. He put his hands together and said, Namaste. She put her hands together, gave a little bow and said, sawadee-ka. He continued to do his sun salutations. She started to do hers. She reached her arms up, she touched her toes. She did downward dog. She did cobra. Here is a photo of her touching her toes while the uncle is in the background doing upward facing dog (that's dirt from sitting on the ground, not poo). At the end, she put her hands together, gave a little bow and said, namaste.

Samara's Second Birthday

Today is Samara's second birthday. Pretty crazy that we have been parents for two years, though in other ways it's hard to remember life before we met her! Today was my first day of part time working (technically Monday was, but today was my first day actually not working!), and it was so awesome to spend it with Sam. We slept in until 7:45 (heavenly!), then we skyped with Bubbie and Zaydie and made cupcakes. We went for a walk with the scooter (until they started spraying for mosquitoes and we had to come back inside). We read books. We build with blocks. We coloured. We even went mountain climbing on our bed. When Sam slept I went to two doctor appointments that I never had time to go to, and then ran other errands. I spoke with people I always want to call but never get a chance to. I got to play with Samara outside in the middle of the day...AND go to her music class. She has been going for over a year, and I have NEVER been (I wasn't so impressed, but that's another story). We then played on the playground, had dinner, sang happy birthday on skype with Savta and Papa (with Tita too), ate the cupcakes (Sam just liked the frosting, really), read books, opened presents from Tita and a new toothbrush from Mommy and Daddy (hey - if you wrap it and make it special, what do they know!?) and went to bed. What a great great day.

I want to try to capture what Samara is like right now.

• She says sentences like, "I have boo boo," or "I want milk." Or "mommy drink water too.
• She likes to orchestrate. She tells me where to sit and what to do. (I recently read that no one calls little boys "bossy", so I'm reluctant to use that word). She's usually pretty flexible, but she will sit on say, the red square, and she wants me to sit on yellow.
• She knows her colours. She sometimes confuses green and blue, but overall she knows red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, brown and white.
• She is extremely excited by diggers and cranes.
• When I'm not listening to her but she wants me to, she will physically move my head to look at her.
• She likes to lick ice. She loves ice cream, yogurt, raisins and cereal bars. She hates trying new foods, but she'll still eat purees if we make her.
• She can recognise books in her bookshelf (like if I'm talking about them, she will go get them), like one fist two fish, caps for sale, goodnight moon, goodnight gorilla, michigan book, pajama time and ALL of the Jewish books.
• She actually loves everything Jewish. She knows the bracha for the candles. She wants to practice shabbat everyday. She talks about the shofar non-stop, and sometimes she says, "I scared shofar," and kind of hugs herself while she says it. I'm not sure why she's scared of the shofar. She also loves to wear kippot.
• She has a running commentary through life. Singing. Dancing. Eating. All done. Start singing. Talking. Ringing. Anytime she hears a ring, she goes, "ding."
• She knows nearly all animals that I know. She's good with animal sounds too. It's pretty impressive, really. She does call the hyena in Goodnight Gorilla a rhino, but mostly she's got it.
• She remembers the weirdest things - like for example she remembered what cup someone used in our house more than a week after they had left.
• She is extremely good with names. She knows all of the names of the kids in our condo - and some of their moms' too! She's super social - loves to say hi, NAME and bye bye.
• She does not like sharing. She knows what it means to share, she knows the word share, and she uses it, but always at the last minute, she pulls it in (whatever "it" is) and says, "mine."
• She loves to clean. She hates dirt.

I could actually probably go on and on, but I won't.

In other news, there is some sort of parade in my neighborhood tonight - I think it's Chinese, since I saw a lion-dance character. It had LOADS of symbols, drums and people chanting. It had two cars with neon lights. There were probably 200 people trailing it (and the people didn't look Chinese - at least from the 7th floor). This was at 8:30 and again at 10pm. Don't other people's kids sleep? I mean really, SYMBOLS!?

Photos from our trip to the US

Breakfast with Savta on the deck each morning. Looking for ducks and boats.

Walking into the water. Playing with the trucks. Getting dirty in the sand.

Matt the pilot

 

Feeding baby fozzy.

Making waffles with Bubbie.

Checking something out with Papa.

First canoe ride with Jer (not so successful - but not because of Jer's sterning).

Congrats to Mike and Jess!

The groom!

Sarah and Talia - seeing the cousins again after they took such good care of Sam (and me!) in New York in January/February.

Aya. Sam's singing debut.

Wow does she love that scooter.

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit.

Visiting Grandma.

Feeding a bottle to the calf.

Learning to strum with Dan.

Just Normal

I suppose life got "just normal" because there hasn't been much to blog about. Or perhaps there is lots to blog about, but after waiting so long it feels like the next one better be a goodie...too much pressure, so I'll just do a life catch up.

We have lost a LOT of friends in the last few months - like everyday friends - core people to our lives, so that has been a bit rough. I suppose such is ex-pat life, but some years are worse than others. We said goodbye to Ari, Julia, Vishal, Therese, Seth, Geri, Stella and Max, Brad, Stephanie and Oscar, Francesca, Bernard, Isaac and Lilah...People we really genuinely like. Brutal.

This is Oscar. Sam and Oscar have spent their first two years together, and Oscar left in August.

This is Stella and Patricia (yeah - I can't believe Sam is in some princess situation). While we still have Patricia, Stella and her brother Max moved back also in August. Ugh.

At the end of June, I went to London for work and then we had a looooong July as we waited for August. August was long too, until we went to the US.

Our flight this time was through Tokyo only (on the way there - and a short stop in Minneapolis on the way back). Even though we didn't get a seat for Sam, somehow the trip was totally fine. We had lots of toys and things to keep her busy - mostly things she hadn't seen before (thanks to an awesome facebook post - actually thanks to the responses!). It included small farm animals (not real of course), a magnadoodle-type thing, colorforms from Bubbie and Zaydie, crayons, stickers, finger puppets, a few new books and random stuff like a shoe lace, rubber band and other weird stuff that seems to occupy young children. She slept for about 3 hours on the second flight, and she generally was awesome.

We had a fabulous time in Michigan. Jill, Ben and Joseph came to Michigan for the first weekend. My brother came in for a few days. My grandparents came in for nearly the whole time...we got to see my cousin Ashley, Nancy and all of the usual suspects in Michigan. The first week was at my parents' house, visiting the playground everyday, playing in the water in their backyard and generally doing nothing (as much "nothing" as a nearly two year old can do). We didn't call friends. We didn't really go and do anything. It was awesome.

The next weekend was Mike and Jess's wedding (Matt's brother) in Midland, Michigan. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, and we had a fantastic weekend with everyone. We loved what we saw of Midland, and just enjoyed spending time with family. Again, Samara was a champ. Super congratulations to Mike and Jess!

The last week we spent at the Hildebrandt's relaxing some more. We ventured to a few petting farms and metro parks, but generally we just hung out, and man was it nice. Our trip back was also totally uneventful, other than Allan who sat next to us. Samara will tell you that Allan wears headphones and sleeps, but she went up and down the aisles, probably for a few hours, looking for Allan. She was calling "Allan? Allan?" turning back a little to see everyone's faces. It was pretty hilarious.

Even though it was an American airline (Delta), we had our own movie system thing on the way back, and the service was actually really good. Seats were small, but we're pretty small too, so we can all three still fit in two seats - which was totally fine (some how - I still can't figure out why it wasn't terrible since it was 24 hours of travel with a small kid and no seat - but it wasn't!).

Since we have been back I have implemented the "Make-Melanie-Happy-in-Singapore-Plan" and it's working! I have been running outside (in the dark mostly - but cloudy days work too), cooking and baking, entertaining, spending more time with Sam and stressing less about work. In fact I have been trying to limit my iPhone checking in the evenings and on weekends, and since there are rarely Diversity and Inclusion emergencies (or at least I can check when such might happen...), it's been totally fine for work, and totally revolutionised my happiness factor.

Tomorrow I will start to work three days per week. This is an exercise for me on setting boundaries, so we'll see how it goes. I seem to be doing well in my preparations. In the meantime, I absolutely can't wait to have more time with Samara and time to do other things that make me happy (see above).

In the meantime, Matt was in Vietnam, and he's headed to Mongolia tonight. He will be in Vietnam again and London later this week, before a family short trip to KL. While I'm trying to slow down my routine, Matt has a LOT going on.

Samara is at a SUPER fun stage. She will be turning two on Wednesday. Today Samara told me that she's taking a boat to India to go see the mouse from her book. She is pretty obsessed with Buddhas. When we were in Michigan, we saw a giant blow-up MSU Spartan on someone's lawn in my parents' neighborhood. She looked at it, pointed, and said, "BUDDHA!" Not exactly.

Samara is a Michigan fan. When Dheeraj came over with a Michigan t-shirt on a Sunday, the very next day she chose her Michigan t-shirt from her drawer, and said, "Dheeraj. Michigan." Then she went searching through her books for a "turtle." (I had no idea what she was talking about or looking for). She finally found the book she was looking for, called "Little Michigan" with a turtle on the cover. Now every time she sees a Michigan t-shirt she says "Dheeraj. Go Blue!"

She also recognises the Google logo. In colour or no colour - that's a cool party trick. (She can't actually read yet believe it or not).

I have quite a few friends here who are pregnant, and she is pretty obsessed with babies in bellies. Today we saw Susie's baby move in her belly, so all night she kept lifting up her shirt and trying to make her belly jump like Susie's. She insists on folding her shirt up a certain way that makes her have a baby in her belly (obviously). Sam - not ALL women have babies in their tummies...I think this one might get us into trouble soon.

We have finally ditched the morning nap - which means she can go to school in the mornings, and that we can do more on the weekends. While she naps, Matt and I have gotten back into tennis (Saturdays only - we need a babysitter on Sundays!). Sam is also eating a bit better. We added one food in the last week (baked mac and cheese muffins - only the slightly golden brown part on the top), and when that's like 10% of your diet options, that's a good thing.

This is our fourth of July celebration with Eric and Christian.

Samara and Nathan - her best friend. They spend all day, each day, together.

This is Sam with her Tita, Rose, who takes AMAZING care of her everyday. We are forever grateful to Rose for making our lives do-able. We love her.

Note the tutu under Sam's dress.

All in all, we're doing ok.

Sam Videos

Bangkok - take 3, 4 and 5

Since my last post I have been traveling a lot for work and not around too much to ponder life (for better and for worse). In the meantime, I traveled to Bangkok three times, twice for work and once for fun. Let's talk fun.

Samara took her parents and Bubbie and Zaydie to Bangkok for a three day weekend as part of their trip to visit her in Asia. I thought that traveling with a child her age might not be that fun - we were out of practice, since we hadn't traveled since March. Turns out we were totally wrong. She was awesome, and it was super fun.

Overall, we got in late Thursday night (Sam walked up and down the plane aisle at least 40 times, but she was super flexible and great, even though we arrived after 10pm), spent Friday at the Grand Palace, Reclining Buddha and went for dinner in a fun area, spent Saturday shopping at the Weekend Market and swimming, ate great food, walked around, got a message, and we left on Sunday.

Highlights...
Friday Sam slept through the first hour of the Grand Palace. We thought we could skip her morning nap, but she didn't last. She loved all of the elephants, especially, when she woke up. We were hot. She didn't seem to mind. When we went to see the Reclining Buddha, she couldn't believe it. It's HUUUGGGEE, and she kept saying, "buddha sleeping" and going over all of the parts of her face (nose, mouth, hair, etc.) - again and again. She kept running to the next side of the pillar to see another view. She really loved it. She even pointed out the buddhas to women who were praying to them. She loves her buddhas.

Friday Night we went to dinner at a great restaurant near Pat Pong area. We walked around the night market in that area, and Sam walked on her own (in a super cute dress, so she may have drawn a bit more attention than necessary). As we walked from stall to stall, everyone would say "HI BABY!" and grab her. Some even kissed her - her arm, her face...there were men dressed as men, women as women and all switched around - seriously like a dream - all saying, "HI BABY!!" I thought she would be traumatised by all of the faces jumping in her way, but instead she just said, "hello" back.

Another highlight was Saturday night. We decided to go for a rooftop drink at the Banyan Tree, where we were staying. It's a fancy bar, and we have been turned away before for wearing the wrong shoes. I called before we went (even though it was only four floors up from our room!) and asked if they take kids. They said, "we don't serve kids, but you can bring them." Ok. We thought we would try. Well they may not "serve kids" but they sure as hell pay more attention to them than they have in any restaurant in the US! The waiters took her away to play. Everyone said hi as she marched around the bar. The bar tender made her a special diluted apple juice with a pineapple and flower stuck in for fun. We don't serve kids? That's the most she's been served anywhere!

All in all, another fabulous trip to Bangkok. It really feels like a vacation - especially when you have a small agenda, eat great food and relax a LOT. Considering my work recently - that's exactly what I/we needed.

In other news, not too much has changed since I last updated the blog. Fran and Tom were here for a month, with a bit of traveling in the middle. Samara LOVED her time with her Bubbie and Zaydie, and they loved it with her.

Samara is talking like crazy and developing many opinions. She's actually quite bossy (like me - I admit it). She tells me where to sit, how, which book to read, when, what music she wants to listen to...it's pretty funny. She says words like:
elphantant
yian (lion)
yellow (she likes the tongue "L" thing for that one and hello)
tail and lots of other body parts - though I'm pretty sure she thinks she has a tail. She keeps looking for it.
buddah
tuk tuk
turtle
fish
towel
flower

She constantly asks to skype with Alma (in Israel), Bubbie and Zaydie, Safta and Papa.

We are loving the time with Sam (whenever we have it). She's just hilarious. I will post photos and videos soon.

Kuching

We just spent three days in Borneo - an island that has two states of Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), one state of Indonesia (Kalimantan - which also happens to be one of my all-time favo(u)rite words), and the entire country of Brunei. We had flown there three years ago to get to Sipidan, but we had not yet been to Kuching.

Whenever we had a three day weekend in the last five years, I put together a spreadsheet of our options for where to go. We have to go somewhere, because I literally go crazy if I stay in Singapore longer than a month or so. Kuching and Kota Kinabalu always come up as cheap options, but we always decide that we can go another time, and the timings aren't ever ideal. This trip was actually planned for Chinese New Year this year, but we had to go to the US for my surgery...so we begged the airline and the hotel, which we had already paid in full, to let us switch for free - you know - for my health. So we switched both to the next long weekend, which was Easter.

All was good. For two weeks. Then someone asked us what we were doing for Passover, and we looked at our calendars, and we realised that we're going to Kuching for Passover! While my husband goes back and forth about caring about these things, I very admittedly DO care about Passover and about creating these family traditions, and teaching them to Samara. Last year was my first Passover (EVER!) away from my family. I have always done Passover. Always done seders. Not only was I not going to be with my family (my mom had 27 people last night, though having us might have thrown them over the edge...), but I wasn't even going to have a seder or Passover at all. At first I thought about pretending and doing something while we were there, but then I remembered that it's Malaysia, and it would just be really weird - since we were going on holiday - on Passover. Turns out that we went with another Jewish couple, and we also spent time with our other Jewish friends while we were there - so I felt a little less bad. At least we weren't the only ones.

Meanwhile, while we were there, we had a fantastic holiday.

We got there on Thursday night, and Friday we headed off with Jeremy and Maria to Bako National Park. Once we hurried to get there...we waited...for over an hour for the tide to rise. We finally got on a boat with four random people (a super hot pilot and his fiancee and her parents - from Iceland!), and we left for the half hour boat ride. There was shade. There were life preservers (that's more than we can usually say on boats in these areas...). We weighed our options for Samara - we decided that keeping her in the carrier would be safer, as there is a higher chance that she would jump over the edge than the boat going down without us being able to get her out of the carrier. She was happy to just sit there, on the seat, in the framed carrier. After about 15 minutes, we stopped. I recognised this feeling. We were grounded. All of the boats around us were going slowly, with their props raised a bit - but they were going. Not us. We thought about getting out and walking, but there are crocs. Nope. Well, we just waited for the water to rise and take us up with it. It did. It took us a mere one hour to get there. We had a really fantastic hike that was quite challenging - especially for Matt since he had Sam on his back - but GORGEOUS - and it ended at a beautiful beach. We had planned to hike back, in time to get back on the boat before the tide went back down, but when we got to the beach, there were boats waiting for us. It was the best 35 ringgit we have ever spent. We had a relaxing lunch and coffee instead.

That night, since we were not doing a seder, we went all out. We had awesome pepper crab and amazing grilled prawn. Sam sat nicely and played with stickers (she nearly kept Passover).

Saturday we got out early to get to the orangutan rehabilitation centre before 9, the feeding time. We got to see around 4 or 5 of them, mostly hanging high in the trees. Seeing the orangutans on Sumatra was a life highlight. We were alone in the woods - just us and the hairy dudes. This was totally different - there was a platform to watch, there were about 200 other people, there were ropes hanging in the trees...it was totally staged - although the orangutans are still free to roam the whole, huge park - so it's not like the zoo. It was cool to see them all over the high trees, but it was not as cool as the last time.

After this we walked all around Kuching - Matt loves shopping for stuff. We had some super yummy kopi ice and some fabulous kuay teow (hey - if the Sephardim eat rice, do they eat rice noodles?) and we saw the Indian neigbhorhood and also Chinatown. It's a cute little city. Matt and I generally call Malaysia the armpit of Asia, but this was different. Perhaps Borneo Malaysia is different to peninsular Malaysia? We liked it.

After swimming, we met up with Jeremy and Maria as well as Francesca, Bernard, Lilah and Isaac and went to a place called Junk. It was definitely not junk. The food was super good. We had pizza (it was thin crust - is that like matza?) and amazing salmon. Sam ate so much pizza. Lilah (4.5) and Isaac (2.5) played with Sam, and all the kids were amazing. It was really nice.

This morning Maria and Jeremy and Francesca and Bernard and family went off to do their own things with their additional day - we headed back earlier - and we prepared to fly back to the 'pore. We walked a bit more around the town, had some yummy food and took off to the airport. All in all a great trip.

Samara highlights:
Samara was amazing on this trip. She fell asleep when she needed to and chilled when she didn't. She was super happy to hang in the framed carrier, and she also spent a bit of time in the ergo. She ran all around the lobby of the hotel, saying "wow" at the same statues again and again (and day after day...). She ate nearly nothing local (we brought so much food with us - it's nuts), and she caused a lot of smiles, as usual. She says, "hi" or "hewuw" and "dai-dai" to everyone. She was obsessed with wearing my hat...sideways. She LOVED swimming - she could walk in the kiddy pool, and she just squealed all around it. She purposely went underwater multiple times and kept getting really excited. She sat so nicely at all meals - saying "all-done" multiple times when she wanted to get down, but she chilled with toys, stickers, books, whatever really. At least 6 random people took photos of her. One asked me to take a photo of her and my child.

Being a good mom:
There were multiple times on this trip when I thought, "wow - my friends in America would NEVER do this. I should be a better mom."

• Riding on a boat with my child in a framed carrier
• Being on a pretty brutal trail - in the sun and in a jungle - with no mosquito repellent and limited sun protection
  
• Riding in a car with my child in the ergo, and the carseat in the trunk
• Letting my child sleep in a crib that would clearly break if she jumped hard enough, and if she stood up, she could totally tumble out (I did move the coffee table out of the way, though, just in case she were to fall, she wouldn't have hit her head on the corner of the table...)
• Letting my child eat raisins off the floor of an airplane

I sort of feel that I can either obsess about everything - in which case I probably wouldn't travel to these places with Sam - or I can just obsess over a few things and prepare the best that I can. Look - she wasn't riding on a motorcycle!!

Click here for more photos.