Typhoon Day!

Remember snow days when school was cancelled? Well, imagine a snow day on the first day of school! That's what we have except its wind and rain instead of snow. Yep, tomorrow is supposed to be our first day of school, but it's been cancelled due to the upcoming typhoon. It doesn't look like it'll be too bad in Taipei (it'll make landfall quite a ways southeast of here and then cross the mountains), but still it's strong enough to cancel all work and school in Taipei city. If you're bored and want to follow the storm, you can check it out here or here.

Life on the 'farm'

OK, so I'm finally getting a chance to get some pictures up here from our trip to America.

Although Grandma and Grandpa aren't actively farming anymore and the only animals they have are a couple of cats (who had kittens while we were there), Keanu still had a great time enjoying the great outdoors of their Minnesota farm. In these pictures you'll see how much the corn grew in 3 weeks and how Keanu helped with some of the chores. Several times a day he decided he had to feed the cats and water the flowers. One day Del Monte was harvesting the neighbor's peas, so we got a small bucket of fresh peas off the truck and Keanu helped wash all of the peas. (It only took an hour!) He also helped with the dandelion population by disseminating the seeds for future generations.

Finding his way out of the corn field - he was scared! (July 3)

Playing football by the corn field. (July 21)

Feeding the kitties

Baby kitties

Watering the flowers

Washing peas

Picking dandelions

Culture Shock

Every time I return to America after being in Taiwan for a long period of time, I notice something interesting or unnecessary about American life. The first time it was the miles of different kinds of orange juice to pick from in the grocery store. Really, how can there be a need for 8 million different kinds of OJ? Another time I remember thinking about how much space is wasted for things like sprawling suburban elementary schools which build horizontally so they don't need to put in an elevator or parking lots that are 4 times the size of the store. How many times have you gone to your local supermarket and seen it more than half full?

Every time I've returned to America, I've noticed how big Americans are getting. Just spend a little time people watching and I'm sure you'll agree. Maybe more people need to park in the last row and carry their groceries all the way to their gas-guzzling SUV rather than using their cart to push them to the third parking space from the door.

On a related note, I usually enjoy a fair amount of shopping, err, I mean buying, while in America. As I sit here this morning thinking about unpacking I need to be doing, I can't help but think about some of the purchases I made. Now, I didn't buy a lot for myself, but what I did buy surprised me. More often than not, I found myself coming out of the dressing room for a smaller size. I don't think I've shrunk since getting married and having a baby, but according to the clothes I'm buying, I have. I just don't understand this vanity sizing. I'm not extra small, but if that's the size clothes I'm buying, what do the women who really are considerably smaller than me wear? I still have a problem buying clothes that fit properly in Taiwan because theclothes are too small and I know Taiwanese women who can't buy clothes in America because the people are too small. Somewhere, there must be a happy medium, like what I used to wear.

We're back...!

Alright, so we've had a busy and delightful time in MN, but it was time to stop playing and return to regular life. Again, Keanu was a great flier and slept alot. The flights weren't overbooked this time so he actually got his own seat for as long as he would sit alone! THe big excitement came at landing of the first flight. Remember how I complained of "evening sickness" earlier? Well, I've concluded that it's really caused by heat and fatigue. You know how often planes get hot and stuffy during landing because someone decides to turn off the AC? Well, that's what happened here, and of course it was bumpy (which I still don't understand - how can air be bumpy?). Anyway, add these flight conditions to a pregnant mom with the hot toddler snuggled on her lap and what do you get - you guessed it - a reappearance of breakfast! Yeah, I kind of made a mess, but the 3 grandmotherly women sitting nearby us were all sympathetic and the preteen girls across the aisle occupied Keanu while I cleaned up a mess. Ahhh, the joys of pregnancy - and you get to read all about it!!

Speaking of pregnancy, we missed our week 16 appointment since we were in America and made it up this morning with a long visit to the clinic. Are you ready for the big news?? Every time my mom mentioned Keanu's little sibling, she referred to his sister. Is she right?? Hmmm... I think I'll just let you ponder that thought for a moment.

4th of July fun

We spent the weekend with Early Bird and Berry Princess to celebrate Independence Day and family fun. We drove down on Friday afternoon after a delicious as usual 4th of July noontime meal at Jim's and got to Eitzen (a tiny, tiny town on the Iowa border) in time for Grandma and Grandpa to watch the combine derby that evening. For those of you city folk who are new to "derbies", a combine derby is a bunch of big tractors which are used to harvest crops that smash into each other until only 1 is left running. I've never enjoyed this excitement in person, but I've heard a bit about it and Early Bird likes to watch them with his Grandpa.While the boys and Grandma watched the derby, Berry Princess and Keanu hung out with their moms and did some "little people" activities like eating, bouncing in the blow-up jumping contraption, and watching the big kids play basketball (that was just Keanu). Aren't they cute?

swimming

Most of the time we've been here, the weather's been beautiful and even a bit cool in the evenings for our tropical tastes. However, on Tuesday it finally got nice and warm so we spent the afternoon at the pool.


Actually, it's a great pool. As you can see, it's just for little kids (deepest point was up to his armpits) and filled with fun stuff for younguns. I was a bit hesitant because everytime Keanu has gone swimming in the past few months, he's been very afraid of the water and wouldn't let go of mom or dad. He was a completely different boy on Tuesday. As soon as he saw it, he was ready to go and Mom was more hesitant about him wondering around the pool alone! He took a couple of drinks of the water and loved the big kids splashing him when they came down the slide, so nothing could stop him!

I guess we'll have to go back when the weather warms up a bit.

A trip to the mall

So far we've only had a few little adventures here with Grandma and Grandpa. On Monday we decided to go along as they did some errands and shopping and it's a good thing we did, too, because we ran into lots of people! After making a few necessary purchases at Target, I was HUNGRY, (already - my dad said "but it's only 4:30!) so we went to the food court to eat some early dinner. Soon enough my mom convinced my cousin Roxanne to join us and Keanu enjoyed having another pretty girl to look at and play with.

Keanu was also enthralled with the horses on the merry-go-round, so we decided to give it a try. He enjoyed sitting on the horse until it started to move... then he was much more happy to hang on to Mommy for dear life! Something that was much more to his speed was a trip to the kids' playland while visiting with another cousin, Andrew. He enjoyed burning off some steam and jumping off the thermometer (seen here).

We were about to leave (by way of DQ because Keanu's little sibling was hungry again) when we ran into my friend Arianne and her parents who were also filling a craving for Dairy Queen treats. It's a good thing we were able to sit down and visit for a while because Keanu must have also been hungry since he ate half of my BBQ, and he doesn't usually like meat! We'll be able to go up and spend some time with Arianne next week so there'll be more info about that trip later.

Jet Lag

FYI, we've arrived. It was a long trip of 20-some hours, but we're enjoying hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa. I was worried about what a busy toddler without his own seat would do on a packed to capacity flight, but he was fantastic! He was excited to see the big airplanes at the airport and the droan of the engines lulled him to sleep at take-off during each of our three flights.

Then we arrived in MN... We took a little time to get to know the new surroundings before going to be the first night at a reasonable 10:30, but then my little king slept until 3 the next afternoon with only a couple sips from his cup overnight! I guess he was tired. That started our fight against jet lag. In the evenings since then, we've gone to bed at 12, 12, 2, 1, and tonight it was just after 11, so I guess you could call that progress. I'm hoping that after spending next weekend with Early Bird, he might decide to go to bed earlier?!