Christmas in Bangkok

This year we are spending the holiday season in Bangkok awaiting the birth of baby #2. Despite it being 80degrees and no santa, we still had a wonderful Christmas meal at a local American restuarant complete with Fajitas for me, a burger for Jeff and Chicken tenders for Chloe. We were also able to spend some time with friends who live in another country who are also here expecting a baby any day.

Here are a few pics:

I'll post again when our new addition has arrived- any day now!

Happy Loy Krathong

Chloe would like to wish everyone a happy Loy Krathong.

Loy Krathong is a national holiday where everyone lights big balloons that float up into the air. There are lots of fireworks as well as candles that they light and float down the river in the evening.

The picture below is at the main city gate where hundreds of paper lanterns were strung across the square in celebration of Loy Krathong.

We decided to participate as well this year and sent off a few balloons of our own.

update

The last two months had been so quite that I didn't have anything to post on our blog.

Last week, Chloe was sick and we were in the hospital for a few days. Nothing really very serious she just has a problem with seizures when she has a fever. She had a fever last week and a seizure on the way to the doctor. She is fine, though. The fever was from a urinary tract infection but we had to stay in the hospital until her fever went away. That took four days!

We are home now and all is well. The doctor is going to run a test in a few weeks just to make sure she does not have any kidney or bladder problems that would have caused the infection. Remember Chloe during your quiet times that the tests are normal.

Also, in case I forgot to mention it earlier- we found out that we are having another girl! In December, we leave to go to a bigger city to have the baby. Our doctor thought it would be best to deliver in the larger city because of the complications that I had when Chloe was born. We will be there about a month and then return home for two months.

We plan on returning to the states in April.

See you all soon.

Family Time

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in two months. Chloe and I have been busy training for the 2012 Olympics. I'm looking at competing in the group synchronized swimming competition (since my belly is getting too big to do anything but sit in large pools of water) and Chloe is pretty sure she can secure a spot on the Chinese women's gymnastics team (since they're a little lax on the age restriction and all) and Jeff has been busy saving the world from earthquakes, floods and WMD's. In between all that we were thrilled to have some of our family come to visit.

Here are some fun pics from their adventure to the land of grass huts:


The place just wouldn't be the same without Ronald McDonald.


And of course, you have to visit the local markets.

And the beautiful waterfalls

And the elephants

And top it off with some Chocolate cake. This is from Chloe's birthday celebration. I gave her the entire cake and she thought I had lost my mind.

Vacation Pics

This year we were very blessed with a few visa problems (the stamp in our passport that allows us to stay in the country not credit card problems). Unfortunate for us, we just HAD to go to Australia to get our visa renewed in order to return legally to Thailand. So we decided to take a short plane ride over to New Zealand and spend a little vacation time there. I know it's a rough life, we're just making the best of it. :)

We began by spending some time in Brisbane to work on our visa. Then we spent a couple of hours on the beach where I ate the yummiest fajitas ever at a Hard Rock Cafe. We can't get fajitas in our city so I take any chance to eat them when we are away.



Then we flew to Christchurch, New Zealand and visited the international antartic center. Chloe and Jeff slid down the ice slide in the snow room.

We spent a week in this campervan driving around the south island (the place where the Lord of the Rings was filmed). Since New Zealand is in the Southern Hemisphere it is winter down there as their seasons are opposite ours.

It was quite beautiful

We rode a luge down one of the mountains. Chloe thought sitting on the sled was fun at first. But as her and Jeff headed downhill she no longer thought it was fun.

We saw a glacier. You can see a person in the very right-hand corner of the pic. That's how big the glacier really was.

As we approached the west side of the island, we spent a little more time on the beach.

You may not be aware that New Zealand has more sheep than people. The sign we saw as we were driving down the mountain road said "Stock 30 km/h." Of course, we didn't know what that meant until just happening upon this sight a little further down the road:

2nd verse same as the first

Good News!! We left last year as three and we just found out that we will come back next year as four. Our second baby is due Jan. 15. Hooray.

In other news: We will be traveling again the next two weeks. I spent most of today packing to appease the airlines strict luggage policies. I walked into our room and found Chloe had "helped" me unpack everything I just packed. Oh, well. At least she had fun throwing the clothes all over the bed.

Beach Pics

Hi Everyone,
Last weekend we were able to spend some fun time on the beach. Here are the pics.
H

She don't like Mac-n-Cheese

This week, we received a couple of beautiful packages from the states and inside were four, priceless boxes of Mac-n-Cheese. We were so excited about them we decided to wait for a special occasion to break open a box. We decided we would make Sunday a special occasion and eat our bounty for lunch.

As it has been over a year since I have cooked mac-n-cheese- I forgot. Really, I did. Fortunately the directions were in English as opposed to the majority of things I'm not sure how to cook here with directions in Thai.

Anyways, I lovingly prepared our feast- excited to present our child with one of the tastiest foods on earth. I carefully spooned a portion into Chloe's bowl- careful so as not to drop a piece and laid it before my family.

Jeff and I took the first sumptuous bite and watched Chloe as she ate what many could describe as "manna from heaven." She promptly spit it out with a look of utter disgust.

How could this be? What have I done to raise a child that would rather eat rice than Mac-n-Cheese? And, what do I do now?

I had a choice, I could force her to eat and enjoy the mac-n-cheese or give up hopes of raising "An American Kid" while we are here.

Jeff and I stared at her bowl of unconsumed gold and decided that if she didn't like it why force her now? We fed her something else, put her to sleep and fought over who got to eat her Mac-n-Cheese.

By the way, here is an updated pic of her and I doing her favorite activity-reading.

Happy Birthday Jeff

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a month. Saturday was Jeff's 30th birthday and other than that nothing newsworthy has happened in over a month. Can you believe it. So here are some recent pics.

Life Update

Since we last posted an update, a lot of new things have occured.

Chloe has been really busy catching up on all the work she missed from her hospital visit:




We have spent the last several weeks on the beach. Partly for work, partly for play. Don't feel bad for us, this is the view from our hotel room.

Before we left, I got a shiny new grill on my teeth. This should help with my jaw problems and the doctor says I'll only look 13 for a couple more years.

Chloe's first visit to the beach was a bit scary.

This is one is Jeff trying to get her to touch a wave. Poor Baby!

She wasn't injured and enjoyed some popcorn at a carnival the next night as well as....

going down the giant inflatable slide.

Well, I think Jeff enjoyed the slide more than Chloe.

In the end, we were able to spend some time with our friends. This is us using the public transportation system to go to a restaurant.

We should be back home this weekend.

Chloe May Sabay*

Chloe wasn't feeling well last week. On Monday morning she was running a little fever but was fine by the afternoon. She was acting a little whiney all week but was still playing and drinking fluids although her appetite was slightly reduced.

Last Thursday, she woke up with some minor chest congestion and by the afternoon she was running a fever again. Her fever never seemed too high. It kind of hovered around 101 all afternoon and evening. We were traveling on Thursday so I wasn't able to take her to the doctor that day. Before I went to bed that evening I checked her fever again and it was 102.1, so I gave her some Tylenol and planned to take her to the doctor the next morning.

At around midnight, she woke up kind of whining. I went to lay down with her in her bed and check her temperature again. It was 100.6. I laid down with her for about an hour and checked her temp again at 1:00am. It was 101.8 so I was planning on giving her more Tylenol at 1:30 which would have been four hours.

At 1:15am she began to seize. It was dark in her room and I was half asleep myself so when the convulsion began I couldn't tell if she was choking or seizing. She wasn't breathing. When Jeff ran into the room and turned on the light I saw her clenched jaw, drool, and tight, convulsing body and I knew it was a seizure.

We ran out of the house and drove to the hospital like mad people. (This isn't an usual sight since traffic laws are a bit loose here). Her seizure lasted maybe 3 or 4 minutes but to us it was a lifetime.

We were at the hospital within 7 minutes and they were cooling her down instantly. We won a 36 hour stay in the hospital just to make sure she didn't have another one. They let us come home yesterday and she is doing just fine now. The fever was caused by strep throat. She never really was all that sick and her blood test showed only minor infection.

She was pretty out of it Friday morning until almost 9:00am when she just sat up and started "talking" to us and wanting to get down from her bed to walk. The transition from limp, lifeless baby to playful toddler was almost instantly. The cool part is the minute she was back to normal was also the same time that people in our company were in their usual quiet time. Behold the power of group prayer.

Our biggest fear was that seizure would cause brain damage but she is completely back to her usual self- waving, smiling, walking, talking and giving us "5's"- even throwing temper tantrums.
Remember in your quiet times to thank our father that he saw her through and all is well.
Here are a couple of pics.

*May Sabay translates to not well or sick.

She's walking now

She's still a little tipsy but Chloe can officially walk all by herself.


She has to keep her hands straight in front of her to maintain balance. She is very, very tall for her age.

Sometimes she gets stranded and needs help.

Speaking of Chloe, here's a funny story:

Chloe was boycotting her nap one day. She decided to protest peacefully and stage a sit-in. She was quietly playing on her bed and waiting for me to come get her when I peeked in. She was so quiet I thought she might have fallen asleep thereby avoiding the hassle of a dinnertime fit. I was wrong. She was staring at the door for the slightest hint that I might be checking on her. As I cracked the door 1/2 inch she began to wave at me and smile. So, of course I laughed at the cute little critter that refuses to talk but understands much more than she lets on. I layed her down and a few minutes later I went to check again. I expected to be waved at again but instead I found this:

She had fallen asleep on her bed sitting up with her blanket. Her head is butted against the wall as close to the door as is possible.

It was a bat!

Since many of you were wondering what I am eating in the picture below, I thought I would let you know it is a bat.

I didn't want to alarm you so I didn't tell you.

Okay, I'm totally kidding.

It wasn't a bat. It's a rat.

No, really it was sticky rice mixed with black beans and wrapped in a banana leaf.

Just thought you would want to know.