J dictated his letter to Santa to me. He really wanted it to just say, "Dear Santa, I want a Power Ranger, from J" but I told him he had to say something nice first and also explain if he'd been good. So this was his second attempt:
Dear Santa,
Thank you, Santa, because you give things to little kids if they've been good boys. I was good because Mama didn't yell at me or scream at me. I ask when I can take my seatbelt off when I don't hear the engine. I don't say bad things about the dinner. I always ask politely for milk.
Please, I want a Power Ranger.
D has also been good. D would like a car.
I like you Santa. Please.
J
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Christmakkah begins
We've been celebrating the first nights of Hanukkah. J is finally old enough to really participate; he loves to light the candles, eat suvganyot (sp?), and spin the dreidle. D is a bit bewildered but the one thing he is definite about is that a kippah is not going to stay on his head, thank you very much.
Roni ordered the powdered sugar donuts, but did the fillings himself. I made latkes of ever improving quality, and the two of them were our dinner Friday night. We've since added vegetables so we won't die by the end of the eight days.
Roni ordered the powdered sugar donuts, but did the fillings himself. I made latkes of ever improving quality, and the two of them were our dinner Friday night. We've since added vegetables so we won't die by the end of the eight days.Sunday we drove to a tree farm to get our Christmas tree, our first time cutting our own since I was a kid and we cut a couple of spindly trees on our property and put them together to form one decently bushy tree. It was kind of fun wandering about looking for the perfect tree - it had to be round, not too tall, not too wide, very straight, and not be one of the expensive types (I'm tree cheap). We found a perfect grand fir, compared it to all the others, declared it the winner, and then realized that we'd left the camera in the car. Then discovered the batteries were dead. Then discovered after charging the batteries that the camera was dead. So, no pictures of Roni cutting down the tree, but he did a masterful job while the rest of us sipped hot chocolate and gave advice.
Then home, via Costco for a new camera, where we put the kids down for a nap. Roni headed out to the pump house where he tried to change the filter but instead broke off the filter and the pipe it was attached to. Oops. So, no water for us for the next 24 hours.
When the kids got up, we had a great time getting the lights and ornaments sorted out and everyone put some on. J's favorite is his Snow White apple from last year during his crazy-for-Disney phase. D really likes the glass panda since he sleeps with his panda bear every nap and night.
So, an expensive day, what with electronics and plumbers, but in the end a lovely one.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Such . . . creative . . . children
A long while ago, Roni's mom gave the kids fingerpaints, which I promptly put up in a very high cupboard. Today we finally remembered them and got them out for the kids, who had a blast.
Unfortunately, the blue turned out NOT to be washable. Oops. 
Yesterday was my friend Paige's annual cookie party, which is always chaos and great fun. The children created these, complete with the ever traditional Christmas dinosaur and foot. They also are very stuck together in places, creating permanent cookie towers. But I can personally attest to the fact that they are very tasty!
(Not sure why the picture keeps turning itself sideways.)
Yesterday was my friend Paige's annual cookie party, which is always chaos and great fun. The children created these, complete with the ever traditional Christmas dinosaur and foot. They also are very stuck together in places, creating permanent cookie towers. But I can personally attest to the fact that they are very tasty!(Not sure why the picture keeps turning itself sideways.)Thursday, November 26, 2009
It's good to be with family
Success. Great family, good food, and the house hasn't looked this cleaned up in a long time! D had a great time at his first Thanksgiving feast, and J helped us sing the turkey song to his uncles, aunts and cousins on our phone calls back and forth. The turkey turned out perfectly, and although I forgot the rolls until the end, we definitely weren't short of food! This was a very good day.
Swedish turkey?
Is mine the only husband who thinks that Thanksgiving cooking should be done while blasting "Dancing Queen"? I don't think that the Swedes are particularly into Thanksgiving, or turkey. I blame it on a childhood devoted to the annual Eurovision competition.
Though we do have lefse, which is Scandinavian . . . but Mr. Al bought it, so it is more likely Norwegian lefse. (He says they were out of Danish lefse - Thanksgiving is ruined.)
Though we do have lefse, which is Scandinavian . . . but Mr. Al bought it, so it is more likely Norwegian lefse. (He says they were out of Danish lefse - Thanksgiving is ruined.)
Preparations are in the early stages:
Friday, November 13, 2009
Getting chilly around here
The weather has set its pattern for the darker months - cold, damp-to-soggy, and all around bleakness. I actually like this type of weather in small doses. Perfect for knitting in front of the (gas) fire, hot chocolate excuses, and without all that blinding sunshine my house looks less dusty. But it is making the boys suffer from cabin fever already. J wants to be out there digging and running and jumping and tricycle riding - drawing letters just doesn't cut it for him. We try indoor dancing and how-many-can-you-run laps around the living room/kitchen/hall circle, but that gets old quicker, and unfortunately Mom can be really unreasonable about long distance couch bouncing. D doesn't mind as much, he's content to follow J around and copy him (shirt off? me too! hopping on one foot? me too! crying because he can't eat Halloween candy for breakfast? me too!) but that can be dangerous for him. If he gets too close or bumps some important J project, D is liable to be punched. We're working on that, but it would be a lot easier to work on it if the sun was shining!
D has started daycare for real this week, after visiting multiple times over the last couple weeks. Three days a week, same as J, and overall it is going as well as can be expected for such a big change in his days. He is very sad when being left, and cries when Roni shows up to pick him up, but phone calls during the day have assured us that he's playing and eating and napping with everyone else in a generally happy manner. Roni picks the two of them up earlier than when it was just J. We'd both like to have him home longer before starting daycare, but Roni has no other options if he is going to go to job fairs and interviews, and we really need Roni to have a job!
Belated Halloween pics for the grandmas:
Saturday, October 31, 2009
These shots better work!
Today was one of the few days that the H1N1 vaccine was available in our county. They were going with high risk populations first - pregnant women and very small children, health care workers, people 6-24, and teachers/day care workers. Three out of four of us fit those categories, so we left Dad at home and headed off to one of the clinics offering the shots.
I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!
I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.
Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.
Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.
The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!
And now we won't die, so that's good too.
I went early, because in the only other shot day I'd heard about, my cousin waited for 1 1/2 hours to get his daughter the vaccine, and they ran out of shots by the time their turn came (luckily they had flu mist left, so his daughter got that). But apparently, not early enough!
I should have realized when I couldn't get through the intersection without waiting through several lights that we needed to get up a lot earlier, but I thought maybe there was an accident. when we passed the clinic, we could see that the line was very long, but it wasn't until we parked quite a ways away and hiked over that I realized that the line was many, many lines that snaked and doubled back and twisted all around the building. They'd used yellow "caution" tape to create the Disney rollercoaster type paths to keep everyone in order. There were hundreds of people.
Three hours and 45 minutes later (!) the three of us got through the doors and then soon after were rubbing our sore arms/thighs.
Next plaue scare, I come more prepared - lawn chairs, a lot more toys than the wimpy two I had, the stroller for napping and a food cooler. We were lucky that the woman in front of us had family to call to bring snacks and she shared the goldfish with us. Then Joey found left-over grapes from yesterday's lunch in my bag, which kept us from full meltdown.
The kids did really well for a very long time, and it wasn't until the last hour that I had to threaten to take away Halloween or switch carrying them on a five minute rotation. And we were even luckier that it didn't rain until we were coming out of the building!
And now we won't die, so that's good too.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The dream of sleep
A full eight hours of sleep has become rather mythological around here. Something like the golden age of Greece, with stories of how it used to be in that long ago time. The Greeks had their minotaurs and sun chariots, we had sleeping until 10:00 on Saturdays and ear-plug free ears. It is all lost in the hazy, distant past.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
I don't know when I last had eight hours of uninterrupted sleep - or even eight hours of interrupted sleep - but it wasn't recently, and the people around me are starting to suffer because of it.
There was a brief stretch of time - about four nights in a row until I ruined it by saying out loud how great it was - when younger son slept much of the night. However, older son makes up for it by waking up each morning at 5:00-5:30 and insisting that it is time to go downstairs. Attempts to use logic - "It is still dark, everyone else is asleep, therefore it is still night and you don't get cornflakes now" - were worthless, as were threats, bribes, begging, and tears (mine). When J is awake, he's awake and that isn't going to change. And no, he doesn't want to watch cartoons downstairs by himself, or play with blocks, or get a yogurt or anything else that lets us sleep. He will stand by the bed and stare at me in a really loud way (until I had J, I didn't know staring could be loud) and if I manage to persist in my stubbornness after that, the poking and pleading starts until his dad drags out of bed and down the stairs where they are really loud and perky directly under our room, so I am awake anyway.
Not that I'm bitter.
When J is asleep, he sleeps very soundly! Which is a good thing, because he insists on sleeping in the hall outside our room and we make a lot of trips past his little sleep cocoon - he's always been a floor sleeper, but the hall is new since bringing home D. A couple of times we've almost stepped on him, but now we're used to keeping strictly away from the closet side of the hall as we come and go. When I come up for bed I find him contorted like a pretzel, twisted around a pile of things he accumulated from various rooms as he was settling in after his stories and good-night kisses: extra pillows and books and bears and motorcycles. For a while he was putting on a sweater of Roni's over his pjs but lately he's switched to clutching a scarf of mine or a pair of my big woolen socks over his footie pajamas. He just likes to have something of ours with him.
On the rare days that older son sleeps until 6:00, or the heaven that is 6:15, younger son has been up three, four, eight times during the night. He sleeps very well from 8:00 to about 10-11:00 and then usually wakes up crying about every 45 (or 15) minutes for a couple hours. On lucky nights it is enough to go in and turn him on his side, retrieve his hand towel and panda from where ever they have landed, and he'll settle back to sleep for awhile. On unlucky nights, the only thing that soothes him is if I climb in bed with him and he can sleep plastered on top of me. Which is great for his bonding and his sleep, but I can't sleep that way. He squirms and likes to have his head jammed up against my chin and I'm a side-sleeper anyway. So I doze on and off, my thoughts drifting randomly between absolute warm fuzzies that this amazing, adorable little boy is actually mine, and counting exactly how many minutes of sleep I'm losing with every fifteen minute chime of the clock downstairs.
Sometimes bringing him into bed with us helps him sleep, but then there is still the squirming and kicking and plastering, so both Roni and I aren't getting sleep, so it is better to keep it to one awake adult in his room.
Roni does his share, but D often wants nothing to do with him at night so takes longer to go back to sleep, and I can't sleep through the crying, so then we're just both awake. (Another aside: much as I love him, it just makes me crazy with jealousy that Roni can fall back asleep again in about 4.3 seconds after getting up while it takes me 15-20 minutes to get back to sleep.) Lately, a few nights I've resorted to earplugs which gives me sore ears the next day but works really well! On Saturdays, Roni will often take the boys to the pool in the morning and I crawl back in bed. (Have I mentioned what a great husband he is!)
I know this is just a stage in our lives, but I am a sleeper by nature. Nine hours is about what I need to be a happy, patient, organized person. Right now, I'm a bit . . . we'll say short tempered and weepy and leave it at that.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Halloween was only one day when I was a kid
So, in the important question, "Am I the kind of parent who steals Halloween candy from her own children?" the answer has come down to a resounding Yes. In fact, I will even steal the best candies - the Reese's cups and the peanut M&Ms and the Almond Joys. I figure I have to steal now before they get old enough that they are counting, categorizing, rating, and hiding the candy and all that they offer poor Mom is the awful black licorice.Why do they even have candy, this far from Halloween is the other question. Roni decided to take them to the Zoo's Pumpkin Prowl Sunday night, which turned out to be a preview of the real event for little kids - I guess to have the practice wearing costume without screaming, which D definitely needs. They got a bag full of andy, some beanie-baby bears, and little LED flashlights amoung other loot. D was slow to catch on that if he got out of the stroller, people would give him candy for that minimal amount of effort, but he did figure it out eventually. J, on the other hand, remembers last year, so he had Roni and I help him practice saying trick-or-treat before they left so he wouldn't mess up and risk losing any candy.
D was a caterpillar (cause we have the costume from last year) and J was a fireman - just don't look inside the reflective yellow jacket because I don't think real firemen's coats have floral linings. 
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Getting into the Halloween spirit
We went out this afternoon to meet up with cousins to explore the corn maze and pick out pumpkins, which is becoming an annual tradition, complete with picture taking on giant pumpkins.
My favorite part is always the corn maze, which is designed to be the state of Washington. We entered on the Idaho border and had to find our way out at Neah Bay. Cousin Todd wanted to hit I-90 and hightail it west, but we let the kids pick the directions at each intersection and ended up spending a lot of time exploring the rural parts of Eastern and Central Washington. 
We spent some time in the barn maze as well. Less muddy and with a slide that they thought was so great they had to go around twice.
Then we began the great pumpkin search. I have strict pumpkin criteria - they must be round, smallish, and deserving of the label "cute." Also, J must be able to lift them. J participated enthusiastically, but D was more interested in his apple and rather angry that the pumpkins got to ride in the stroller instead of him.
It was a grand adventure until we somehow lost Todd and A and then J face planted into a major puddle. He recovered well, after the screaming died down, and we explained that he couldn't strip off for the remainder of the maze. Mud from toes to his hair. It was a very dramatic splash.
We spent some time in the barn maze as well. Less muddy and with a slide that they thought was so great they had to go around twice.Then we began the great pumpkin search. I have strict pumpkin criteria - they must be round, smallish, and deserving of the label "cute." Also, J must be able to lift them. J participated enthusiastically, but D was more interested in his apple and rather angry that the pumpkins got to ride in the stroller instead of him.Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A little natural beauty
Amazingly glorious weather took us out camping this weekend, near Northwest Trek and Mt. Rainier.
We were the only people staying in the campground tent area the second night, which was both wonderful for privacy and a little bit horror-movie-spooky while walking to the bathrooms in the dark.
We also learned that if you are going to take a little boy who hates covers camping in October, he is going to be a little boy popsicle by morning, despite your best efforts to keep him covered.
I'm not sure if I've been to Northwest Trek before - certainly not as an adult. It is a wonderful place to take kids!
Monday, August 31, 2009
Panda mania
We’ve been joined by the Polish team for the Deaf Olympics at our hotel (though the city is spelling it Deaflympics). It was a very full dining room, with blond, athletic people. Our waiter came over and asked us, “Where are they all from, they are so tall!” We couldn’t get Poland across, but he got Eastern Europe.
At night, as we tried to put to bed too overly tired children who were both wailing at having their fun time ended, we could only be grateful that we were unlikely to be waking up the neighbors.
While Roni was off on his bullet train to the south Mom and I got the kids up and out, off to the zoo. Thank goodness for my mother, is all I can say. There is no way that I could have handled the two kids, the two strollers, the backpack, the umbrellas, the water – all the stuff that it seems to take us to get two small boys out into the Taipei heat. At home, it will be slightly more pared down, and J will go back to being a walker – we haven’t used his stroller in almost a year before coming here. But for now, getting into a taxi is not a quick leap from the curb!
The Taipei zoo is great. Not the world’s biggest or best layout, but where else can you spend the day for $1.65 (Mom and the kids were free, though the guard gate “carded” Mom, to her thrill) in a green, entertaining setting. Complete with misters in the trees and juice/tea/water machines every few feet dispensing 30 cent bottles. Plus, we took travel advice and took the shuttle train to the top and so our whole visit was a downwards stroll.
Our first destination, and the highlight, was the Panda exhibit. My mom is crazy for pandas – way back when she visited the first pandas in the U.S., brought to Washington D.C. and she’s liked them ever since. And I know that it is anthropomorphizing, but there is something about those pudgy faces that makes you smile.
They had it set up so that you got a ticket time when you first entered the zoo, so we rushed there to make our time. However, we’d timed the day of our visit perfectly – today is the first Monday that all the schools start up again here, so the zoo was nearly empty after what was apparently a jam packed weekend. There were all the Disney type waiting areas set up with their snaking turns, but today they were unused. We just wandered to the main door and were
smiled inside. There is a narrow walkway across the panda enclosure and people are supposed to keep moving to let the people in line behind them to have their chance to see. But as there wasn’t much in the way of lines, we could stay and take lots of pictures. The keepers were setting up large bamboo branches in stands in the floor and pretty soon the pandas lumbered in and started to eat. Camera phones clicking on all sides. We stayed for quite a while, watching them on the far side of the enclosure eating carrots or something large and orange, and then were finally waved out with the group.
But after hitting the panda gift shop, Mom really hadn’t had enough pandas, so we went back to the front door and asked if we could go in again. The lady said sure (or the Mandarin equivalent) so we went in and got to just stand and watch the pandas wallowing in their bamboo and wandering to the ponds for drinks for a very long time. Conservatively, I’d estimate that Mom and I took 50-60 panda pictures, just to make sure that some of them would turn out, taken through the glass. In the evening, Roni was astonished that anyone could need so many pics, but as I may have mentioned, we are pro-panda people. J
We wandered the rest of the zoo, hitting our favorites (the penguin house is a little sad, and I always avoid cat enclosures as they need so much more space than they ever get) like the elephants and zebras. The camera battery eventually
died, done in by the pandas, but we had enough cute pics of the kids in sun hats racing or rolling about to mark the occasion. We focused on animals that had air-conditioning as well, so I saw more snakes and lizards than strictly necessary. D eventually faded out, but J stayed awake, probably fueled by his evil plotting against his brother. Sibling rivalry is in full force at the moment! The hotter J gets, the more he becomes sure that D is the source of his problems. A well rested, cool J can tolerate his once-beloved-when-mythical brother. A hot, cranky J is a secret squeezer.
Back at the hotel, I popped the kids in the tub and with grandma in charge, went off in a taxi to find that yarn store the receptionist had written down for me. It was a combo store called MamaBear, with quite a bit of yarn and even more beads. A big set of tables was surrounded by happy women working wire and beads into decorative thingies. The yarn took up several walls and rows and was all in plastic to protect it from the humidity. None of it was from Asia, as far as I could tell, so I ended up with yarn from Spain and Italy, but I’ll still be able to tell the boys that I wove or knit their scarves from yarn from our trip to Taiwan. So my yarn diet needs have been met. (Though there is unlikely to be much knitting, weaving or spinning time in the near future.)
We went just a couple of steps right of our hotel to a Thai restaurant for dinner. D was more interested in stacking the metal water glasses and J with his motorcycle, but the food was good for those of us who focused on it. Roni found us by spotting us through the window just as we were finishing the ice cream course, back from the south where his vendor visit was a little strange but interesting none the same.
We’re all packed up now, as we fly home tomorrow and have to be out of the rooms by noon. We’re definitely ready to get home and get back to whatever the new normal is going to turn out to be. Unfortunately, the non-stop EVA flights to Seattle are night flights, which is great for sleeping kids, but not so great for killing a day when we’re packed, without a hotel room, and feeling a little done.
So, I signed us up for another tour. It’ll kill half the day (see? The tourism excitement is definitely fading!) and we’ll see a part of the northern coast that we didn’t see on the last tour. I’m using these van trips as a way to test the waters for the day when we come back on our own and make our way around the island to really show the boys where they are from. So these are just little tastes to show us good places to go and how things work.
At night, as we tried to put to bed too overly tired children who were both wailing at having their fun time ended, we could only be grateful that we were unlikely to be waking up the neighbors.
While Roni was off on his bullet train to the south Mom and I got the kids up and out, off to the zoo. Thank goodness for my mother, is all I can say. There is no way that I could have handled the two kids, the two strollers, the backpack, the umbrellas, the water – all the stuff that it seems to take us to get two small boys out into the Taipei heat. At home, it will be slightly more pared down, and J will go back to being a walker – we haven’t used his stroller in almost a year before coming here. But for now, getting into a taxi is not a quick leap from the curb!
The Taipei zoo is great. Not the world’s biggest or best layout, but where else can you spend the day for $1.65 (Mom and the kids were free, though the guard gate “carded” Mom, to her thrill) in a green, entertaining setting. Complete with misters in the trees and juice/tea/water machines every few feet dispensing 30 cent bottles. Plus, we took travel advice and took the shuttle train to the top and so our whole visit was a downwards stroll.Our first destination, and the highlight, was the Panda exhibit. My mom is crazy for pandas – way back when she visited the first pandas in the U.S., brought to Washington D.C. and she’s liked them ever since. And I know that it is anthropomorphizing, but there is something about those pudgy faces that makes you smile.
They had it set up so that you got a ticket time when you first entered the zoo, so we rushed there to make our time. However, we’d timed the day of our visit perfectly – today is the first Monday that all the schools start up again here, so the zoo was nearly empty after what was apparently a jam packed weekend. There were all the Disney type waiting areas set up with their snaking turns, but today they were unused. We just wandered to the main door and were
smiled inside. There is a narrow walkway across the panda enclosure and people are supposed to keep moving to let the people in line behind them to have their chance to see. But as there wasn’t much in the way of lines, we could stay and take lots of pictures. The keepers were setting up large bamboo branches in stands in the floor and pretty soon the pandas lumbered in and started to eat. Camera phones clicking on all sides. We stayed for quite a while, watching them on the far side of the enclosure eating carrots or something large and orange, and then were finally waved out with the group.
But after hitting the panda gift shop, Mom really hadn’t had enough pandas, so we went back to the front door and asked if we could go in again. The lady said sure (or the Mandarin equivalent) so we went in and got to just stand and watch the pandas wallowing in their bamboo and wandering to the ponds for drinks for a very long time. Conservatively, I’d estimate that Mom and I took 50-60 panda pictures, just to make sure that some of them would turn out, taken through the glass. In the evening, Roni was astonished that anyone could need so many pics, but as I may have mentioned, we are pro-panda people. JWe wandered the rest of the zoo, hitting our favorites (the penguin house is a little sad, and I always avoid cat enclosures as they need so much more space than they ever get) like the elephants and zebras. The camera battery eventually
died, done in by the pandas, but we had enough cute pics of the kids in sun hats racing or rolling about to mark the occasion. We focused on animals that had air-conditioning as well, so I saw more snakes and lizards than strictly necessary. D eventually faded out, but J stayed awake, probably fueled by his evil plotting against his brother. Sibling rivalry is in full force at the moment! The hotter J gets, the more he becomes sure that D is the source of his problems. A well rested, cool J can tolerate his once-beloved-when-mythical brother. A hot, cranky J is a secret squeezer.Back at the hotel, I popped the kids in the tub and with grandma in charge, went off in a taxi to find that yarn store the receptionist had written down for me. It was a combo store called MamaBear, with quite a bit of yarn and even more beads. A big set of tables was surrounded by happy women working wire and beads into decorative thingies. The yarn took up several walls and rows and was all in plastic to protect it from the humidity. None of it was from Asia, as far as I could tell, so I ended up with yarn from Spain and Italy, but I’ll still be able to tell the boys that I wove or knit their scarves from yarn from our trip to Taiwan. So my yarn diet needs have been met. (Though there is unlikely to be much knitting, weaving or spinning time in the near future.)
We went just a couple of steps right of our hotel to a Thai restaurant for dinner. D was more interested in stacking the metal water glasses and J with his motorcycle, but the food was good for those of us who focused on it. Roni found us by spotting us through the window just as we were finishing the ice cream course, back from the south where his vendor visit was a little strange but interesting none the same.
We’re all packed up now, as we fly home tomorrow and have to be out of the rooms by noon. We’re definitely ready to get home and get back to whatever the new normal is going to turn out to be. Unfortunately, the non-stop EVA flights to Seattle are night flights, which is great for sleeping kids, but not so great for killing a day when we’re packed, without a hotel room, and feeling a little done.
So, I signed us up for another tour. It’ll kill half the day (see? The tourism excitement is definitely fading!) and we’ll see a part of the northern coast that we didn’t see on the last tour. I’m using these van trips as a way to test the waters for the day when we come back on our own and make our way around the island to really show the boys where they are from. So these are just little tastes to show us good places to go and how things work.
Fast train
This morning I got up to meet an important supplier in Taiwan. This meeting was schedules just because I am here, making it a good opportunity. I found that it might be a learning experience for me. This vendor is a big corporatation. I started this trip riding on a train that flies at 300KMH. It was great! I rode from one side of the island to the other side in 90 minutes.
The meeting went well. The lady took me to a good restaurant where we had a feast of endless dishes. But the most enjoyable thing was the ride on the train.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)