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.

Couch Potato Traveller

My child has probably watched TV 80% of the last two days. Judge me all you want. We didn't use drugs, which we did consider.

Samara and I, along with my mom, flew from New York to Frankfurt and then to Singapore. A total of 24 hours, 28 door to door, and this is the first time that Samara's attention span included more than 2 minutes at a time of TV. Holy awesomeness. It changed our whole experience. Yes - my daughter was sitting on the seat, watching the same (ONE!) Elmo video that Singapore Airlines had in their system, eating potato chips out of a bag, giggling. I was explaining to the German couple next to us what a couch potato is.

All in all, though, Samara was amazing. I had more anxiety about this trip than...well I'm not sure what, but I really couldn't think about it before we left - travelling with a child this age is just completely not fun.

I had decided that we would go to New York the day before our trip to Singapore for two reasons - it would break up - remove about six hours from - the long trip, and also if there was winter weather or whatever, and our flight from Detroit was delayed, we would have another day to play with before our separate ticket back to Singapore. While we had a fabulous time in New York eating burgers, bagels and knishes and visiting Ellen and Davey, Eli, the whole Shiovitz clan (minus David), Jeremy, Terese and Max...it actually prolonged our trip. My amazing sleeper (my pediatrician has warned me that I'm not allowed to talk about sleeping with other moms) woke up EVERY hour and wouldn't sleep at all from 2:30 - 4:30am. This was Sam's SECOND night of her life where she wouldn't just SLEEP (the first was at Michigania). It was miserable. She ended up sleeping in bed with me and Savta. Oy ya yoy. This meant that I barely slept Thursday night, and our flight was at 8pm on Friday night - arriving on Sunday morning. That's three full nights of not sleeping. BRUTAL. I thought about not going back. I thought about just sending Sam with my mom. I thought about drinking a lot on the plane. Possibly locking myself in the bathroom. But in the end, Sam was amazing. She had about a total of 5-7 minutes of meltdown (which is pretty good for a 1.5 year old on a 24 hour journey).

From NY to Frankfurt we had two extra seats, and we could raise the armrest for her to sleep on the seat. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep, because she nearly rolled off twice, and I had to peer at her every couple of minutes (that whole maternal instinct thing is super inconvenient when you want to just sleep). She slept for about three hours on that flight, and she watched Elmo and played the rest. In Frankfurt she ran around like a crazy woman. She then slept in the ergo for about an hour until they made me take her out for take-off - and then she fell asleep in my lap (unheard of). She literally spent the whole next flight watching the same 45 minute show. She had a few runs up and down the aisle and up and down the stairs (thank the lord for spacious A380s), and she appreciated a good game of peek-a-boo with the people around us, but really - she was unbelievable.

Now - all I want to do is sleep. For a week. Good night.

Florida

Since my last entry, all has been going really well. On Monday Sam and I went with my parents to Florida for three days. It was Sam's first time in Florida, second time seeing my grandparents and it was my first time in Florida since I moved to Singapore. When we first moved to Singapore we thought it was Florida, but with a lot more Chinese people. It turns out it's not that similar, but it was more pleasant than I had remembered. The weather was not as hot (at ALL) as Singapore, like you can do stuff outside! Also, while it all looks equally fake and manicured, Florida is so much more spread out and spacious. Also the wildlife - really just the birds - were totally amazing in Florida.

Overall, the point of the trip was only to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa and give them time with Sam. We spent a lot of time walking around their driveway and around the clubhouse across the street. Sam got her first (and second) skinned knee. She learned all about different rocks, wood chips, pavements, lawn ornaments. She learned about crossing the street. She really enjoyed seeking out geckos. She looked for them everywhere and yelled "gecko!!"

While she was suspicious at first, Sam was very excited about Grandma's food. She wouldn't part with her waffle for anything. She held on TIGHT! She loved potato kugel, cheese blintzes and she even drank her borscht!! It was crazy. She's a true Jewish baby. Don't forget that she also loves other types of kugel and challah - and those are some of her only foods.

Grandma and Grandpa loved having Sam around. Grandpa loved watching her the most, and Grandma was really able to take care of her and play with her. Sam liked to take her hand and show her where she wanted to go.

We visited a bird conservation area and also the Palm Beach Zoo (expensive but a fun thing to do). Sam loved the zoo - she pointed to all the animals and was quite excited about some of them.

I think this was Sam's 30th and 31st flights (if I counted correctly), and the one on the way back was her worst. She wouldn't sleep, and she was literally throwing herself around in a difficult way. Lots of screaming. Sucked for everyone around us. I'm hoping our trip back to Singapore is much much easier, considering it's about 7 times as long.

We got back on Thursday night, and on Friday morning at 7:30, I had a flight to NY to check in with my doctor. He said that the surgery was successful, so that was REALLY good news. While there I got to see a few friends and also went to eat at my favorite cafe in the West Village, and it was CLOSED! Good news is that I just looked it up, and it has three other locations in NY, and I didn't know! (Grey Dog Cafe). We'll have to check that out next time...

Now, I woke up this morning at 4:15, yesterday at 4:45 and the day before at 5:30, so I'm a tired disaster, but we are in one place until Thursday, so we will do a lot of sitting around, which is good!









Sam's current words include:
hot
hat
cheese
cream cheese
grilled cheese (cheese cheese)
all done
oh dear
knee
elbow
elmo
banana (nana)
apple
grapes (that's my fav - grapeseses)
ball
baby
bubbie
papa
gecko


She understands soooo much - it's totally weird, but it's so much more fun!

Animals