Phuket, Thailand

Thailand is amazing. The beaches are beautiful (especially if you have a two year old that wakes up early to beat the crowds!). The biggest decision each day was pool or beach. We ended up doing both each day.

Enjoying the delicious and spicy Thai food.

Kay does not get juice at home very often. Here she is guzzling her fresh squeezed guava juice. She loved every drop of it!

Riding in the open air tuk tuk. Tuk Tuks are taxis that you can take around the island. We took it to a show called Phanta Sea. Kay loved watching the dancing and danced along. It was a little too "touristy" for us so when Kay started showing signs of being tired we left early!

A bar with an amazing view. We got to sit in the trees and watch some of the locals play volleyball on the beach.

Kay loved listening to the music in the lobby.

This is how you buy gas along side the road...

Kay proud of her new cover up.

The Beautiful Kamala Beach...

The high-light of the trip was riding on, learning about, and feeding the elephants. Kay LOVED it. Now, when you ask her about an elephant she says they are "bumpy" because it was surprisingly bumpy riding on their backs. She giggled so much watching the baby elephants. I have a great video of her feeding the elephants that I will try to post too! The hook that Kay is holding is to help tell the elephant which direction to go. It looks scary but they hardly use it and when they do it does not hurt the elephant! Our elephant driver used his toes in the back of the elephants ears to encourage them to move.

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YUMMY!

I thought YUMMY would be the appropriate title for this post. We ate at our first Michelin Rated Restaurant this weekend and it was... YUMMY! It definitely lived up to the rating! The best part...we all ate for $13! We wanted to try this restaurant becausewe heard it was amazing and there is a little strategy to getting in. First, you stand in line very early (the line starts at 9:00 am we got there at 10 am) and get a number. The man said it would be about an hour so we left to visit the Jade Market. We returned to enjoy the best dumplings we have ever had!

Kay and Daddy marking down what we want to eat...

The line to get a number...

The Jade Market...

Enjoying Lunch...

In other news...

We spent Saturday trying to comfort Kay and taking her to the doctor. She was in so much pain she basically sat in our lap and whimpered. We took her to the doctor here and he suspected an ear infection. We know now that her tubes are officially out (it came out of the ear today!) and the Hong Kong antibiotics worked wonders. I had another "you know you are in another country when..." moments on the way home from the doctor. Craig met a co-worker for lunch so I was taking Kay home by myself. I had Kay in her PJs, slippers, and wrapped in a towel. After getting settled in the first Taxi he said he did not speak English. The second taxi would not even let me in the car. A very nice lady behind me offered to translate because she said there is no way they did not know the street I was headed too and were just giving me a hard time. I thanked her and explained I was just trying to get my sick baby home. Thankfully, the third taxi knew exactly where we were going and took us safely there. She was feeling much better Sunday and was eager to get out of the house and eat some Dim Sum!

A very Hong Kong Saturday...

We started out our morning by having Kay open her red envelopes for Chinese New Year. Craig's co-workers were so sweet and included Kay in the tradition.

We had lunch at a very local restaurant. I was so impressed with Craig's Chinese and how far it has come! He ordered our entire meal in Chinese- no English in this restaurant! When you walk in the restaurant you see a bunch of small tables with stools. You sit with anyone at any table. When you tell what you want, they just yell it out loud to the kitchen. A few minutes later... a yummy lunch appears! Notice the meat hanging in the window... I am sure one of those I ate.

Look at all the people! This is to get into the MTR in Mongkok (a huge shopping area)

We stopped for a snack on the sidewalk. We only ate the waffles which are DELICIOUS! When you come visit us we will get one!

We also had a bubble tea. The little black things on the bottom are tapioca pearls- delicious!

We took Kay to the market to pick out her watch (her reward she has been working toward with not sucking her thumb). She was SO excited to have so many choices. She ended up with a pink watch with frogs on it. She was one proud little girl!

We bought one! How can you not resist?? There are people on almost every street with microphones selling stuff. We always have to stop because they gather such a crowd and Kay is mesmerized by the microphone. This one seemed handy enough and we could not leave without experiencing the sidewalk, microphone purchase in Hong Kong. We are now the owners of a wine stopper that suctions the air out of the bottle!

You never know what you are going to see in Hong Kong. We came out of the subway and were greeted with music from the Wan Chai band!

While walking home today I saw this man delivering meat. I must be honest and say it still turns my stomach inside out when I see it. I know when we eat out, this is what we are eating! I am adjusting...

This is a pretty bad picture, but I am willing to publish because of what it shows - our first date night in over three months!! It was wonderful!

I have been working on teaching Kay to calm herself before bed. We have been practicing taking deep breaths (now that she has them down they usually lead to many yawns) and closing our eyes. This is how she closes them...

I had to laugh...

I had to laugh when I saw this on the back of our water bill today. To be honest, there has been nothing fun, fast, easy, or joyful about learning how to pay bills here. Just when I think I have it all figured out there is a new one!

You know you live somewhere fast paced when..

1. The stoplights go from green-yellow-red-yellow-green. The second yellow gives drivers a heads up so they will be ready to move when it turns green.
2. You usually cannot move on elevators because they are so crammed with people trying to quickly get where they are going. Don't bother waiting for the next one... it will be crammed too!
3. There are not really lines for waiting to get on the subway, go up the escalator, get on the elevator, etc. Everyone is in charge of getting themselves on as quickly as possible.
4. Taxi doors open and close automatically so the driver does not have to wait for the passenger to do this.
5. The buses start moving before people are seated. Get on, pay, and sit down as fast as you can!
6. The buses don’t stop for more than a few seconds. If your stop is coming up, get your stuff organized, stand up and be ready to get off!
7. There are very few elevators. Don’t think about bringing it with you unless you can carry it up many flights of stairs!

Kay's favorite things...

I thought I would post some of Kay's favorite things at the moment. She loves reading. She will get us book after book now to read. She points and asks questions about things happening in the story.

Some of her favorite books:

* The Seven Silly Eaters or "silly eaters" (thank you Miles & Hazel!)

* Purplicious and The Pout Pout Fish (Thank you Great Aunt Pat!)

* Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb or "the monkey book" (Thank you Lopes Family!- my mom bought this at your garage sale when I was a child)

* She still likes many of her board books from when she was a baby because she can "read" them with us from memory

Some of her favorite activities:

* Kay loves to take care of her baby dolls. We walk them in the stroller outside, feed them, change them, tuck them in and give them milk

* Kay loves her scooter and is continuing to practice being able to ride it (poor girl seems to have gotten my coordination)

* Kay LOVES and I mean LOVES bath time

* Kay loves going to school and has begun making friends there

* Kay loves to talk. She will talk to anyone about anything. When we ride in the elevator she makes sure to look everyone in the eye and tell them if we are "going up" or "going down". The elevators here are often packed and her "going down" usually involves a little dance. Kay is usually very entertaining for those in the lift with us.

* Kay loves picking out her outfit for the day. This is usually a long process as she compares pants and shirts.

Grossly Underestimated....

I am guilty of grossly underestimating how hard this move would be on Kay. I spoke with her nurse/doctor from home last night at 2 am because I was desperate for some guidance on her sleep. As the nurse put it...”You have rocked her world. Everything is different; people look different, they talk in a different language, she is in a new home and room, she has left her friends/family, she switched from crib to bed, she has a new school, and you and your husband are her only constant.” When I told her Craig is also gone now during the week she said “oh yeah, you are in for it for awhile if you are the only constant...” Just the words I wanted to hear after struggling until 10 pm to get my two year old to bed!

On a positive note... Kay is almost done with her thumb sucking! She has been getting sick a lot and her teeth are moving very badly from it. I know this is yet another change for her! We are around so many people and ride so much public transportation that the sucking was a perfect avenue for the germs. We have been working on it for several weeks. We have been using lots of encouragement and a magical nail polish that had 800+ positive reviews on Amazon. Now when we ask her if she sucked her thumb during the night she says "no way!" She (and we) are proud of her progress. So far so good....

Kay graduated to her new classroom this week (another change- oh my!) The kids move up at 2 years, 8 months. She LOVES it despite being exhausted. Yesterday we were going to go on a play date and she got very mad because she wanted to go to school instead.

Overall, we are hanging in there. Sometimes I feel like it is by a thread, but we are hanging in there. Like most things in life... this too shall pass and I am sure we will forget about this phase until we look back in our blog book in the years to come...In the meantime, we will continue to enjoy the snuggles and little girl giggles when we get them!