Uhh... this post is actually finished now :)

I just went on our blog and saw this post (in it's unfinished state). I had stopped typing midway through, probably because I needed to chase down a kid or something. Guess I accidentally posted it? Oh well. I was going to try for a series of posts (remembering last year at this time) around Trey's first birthday, but I'll just finish this post up now. I'm not organized enough for a series yet...

In the final days before Trey's birth, I went on a spending spree.

I'm normally somewhat frugal, but I started spending crazy lots of money, mostly on food. Well, it's not like a 9 month prego woman was going to spend money on clothes, right?

Anyhow, I stopped cooking. We started ordering American pizza for dinner 3x a week (Rob thought this was great). I took trips to the imported American food store after my weekly doctor visit. I'd tell myself, "Buy whatever you want. You're about to do something incredible and you deserve it." I might have also had the passing thought of "what if I die during childbirth, might as well 'eat up' now?"

All those thoughts combined led to me spending $15 on a small box of imported toaster strudels. I think they were fake strawberry & fake cream cheese flavored. I told Cosi she was going to love them. She didn't. I didn't mind, it just meant more flaky, strawberry-y, cream cheesy goodness for me. But, the store also sold gelato ice cream cones for $1 each. Cosi loved those. Sadly, Rob's egg allergy kept him away from both of those treats. Or - maybe not so sad, because it just meant more for me.

It's okay. Don't feel bad for him. We gorged ourselves on egg-free treats as well.

I remember deliberating about: what do I want my last meal to be? You know, the last dinner before the baby comes (as if things like that can be predicted).

I think it ended up being fruit and dark chocolate, which was possibly the worst thing for me. Trey was already BIG. I was supposed to stay away from sugar - both natural and processed (in an attempt to keep his weight down). I tried to stay away from it during most of the pregnancy, but what's a pity party without sweets? And, what overdue pregnant woman isn't throwing a pity party?

Now, this post leads into my next post (yet to be written) - I will name it 'One of the best things about adding a baby/kid to your family' and it has a lot to do with other people bringing you meals...

A Re-enactment. Nearing the end of the walker...

We would like to thank Max (aka Clifford) for his willingness to star in this re-enactment of Trey tipping over his walker. Max was not expressly asked, but he showed no fear or discomfort during the proceedings, which is more than we can say for the baby who inspired this picture. That said, Trey was fine once we pulled him up :)

Making 饺子(Jiaozi)! One of the many things I love about Asia...

Asian food is so good. Obviously, this is one of the things I love about living in Asia.

While making dumplings the other day, I decided to take pictures and blog about it. The pictures aren't great. In fact, I've noticed dirty counters, wadded up paper towels and other slightly embarrassing things as I add the pictures onto the blog. Even still, I'm kind of proud of myself for just taking these pictures and for following through on posting them. Way to go April! Way to take initiative and write a blog with those creative juices! Way to praise yourself! (no false humility here) We'll work on quality and true humility in later posts...

Picture 1: The filling - I used ground beef and cilantro. We are cilantro lovers, but you can put anything you want inside the dumplings. I have no idea what the measurements are, because I don't like washing measuring cups (therefore I avoid them).


Picture 2: I bought pre-made jiaozi wrappers. Our local grocery store sells out of them everyday, so I sent Rob over at 8am (as soon as the store opened). I went to buy more today at 8:20am and they were sold out. Filling the dumplings is easy. Plop some of the good stuff in the middle of each wrapper. Then, use your finger to run water around the edges of the wrapper. Finally, fold the dumpling over and seal the wrapper by pushing the wet edges together. Easy, but time consuming for a white-y who didn't grow up making these...


Picture 3: We like our jiaozi fried, but you can also boil them. Some people boil them and then fry them, but this seemed like too many steps for me and that method makes me wash 2 pots. This is what I do: I pour a little oil on the bottom of the pan. I pour a little water on the oil. I place the jiaozi in the pan, taking care to avoid them touching each other. Then, I cover the pan and cook it for a while. I have no idea how long, but they kind of steam themselves. Then, when they look cooked, I take the lid off the pan and I fry them until they look yummy.


Picture 4: This is when they look yummy. If I had this picture to do over, I would take the picture before eating one of the jiaozi and contaminating the soy sauce. Now the soy sauce looks a little greasy. Oh well, hindsight is always 20/20 or so I've heard...


Picture 5: A close up of the yummy. If I took this picture over again, I'd wash the cutting board first.


Picture 6: Another option is to individually freeze the raw jiaozi. I saw my friend Ang do this once. Look how small my fridge and freezer are - oh, how I suffer... ;)



Picture 7: After they freeze on the tray, you can scrape them off and put them in a ziplock bag. If you want, you can even put them in your imported cheese drawer. That's what we do.



Happy Jiaozi Making!!!!

The 2nd most painful day of Trey's life (so far)...

I'm assuming that the day of his birth was more painful.

Perhaps I should have titled this blog - "Fail Fail Fail!" That's how I feel.

Just in case you haven't guessed, I'm still feeling a bit emotional and dramatic over our latest failure as parents. I'm sure we have more failures in our future, being imperfect as we are. However, that reality doesn't change the fact that I feel like poo today.

We can't drink the tap water here. We can't even use it to cook. As a result - we have a water dispenser and we have large water 'tongs' (about 5 gallons of water) delivered to our home. Our dispenser is a little fancy for these parts, because it has the option of hot or cold water. Asians have no use for cold beverages, so we paid extra for the cold water feature.


Anyway - Trey has been becoming increasingly more interested in the water dispenser. He's also getting taller and I suspected that he'd be able to turn on the water. Rob and I had just yesterday decided to move the dispenser after we finished up the latest 'tong' of water. Until then, we were placing a chair in front of the dispenser and keeping the hot water turned off. At least, that's what we did most of the time.

This morning, Rob & I both screwed up. Rob was making oatmeal for Cosi and he forgot to turn the hot water off. I was helping Cosi do a craft and I moved the chair to sit on it. As Cosi was furiously squeezing a tube of glue, I suddenly heard (one foot behind me) the gurgling 'guh-lub guh-lub guh-lub' of water flowing out of the tong. I immediately recognized the noise and hoped it was the cold water side. It wasn't. Poor Trey started screaming as very hot water poured down on him.

In one motion, I grabbed the baby and turned off the water. Then I started running him to the bathroom. Rob was in the other room, but he quickly figured out what had happened from my disjointed and frantic mumblings.

I still didn't know where Trey was burned yet. His face was red, but that could have been from screaming and crying. At the time, it seemed like a good idea to me to shower him all over with cold water. Now, I realize this probably made an already traumatic ordeal even more traumatic for the little guy. And, I also know (now) that his face wasn't burned after all, so maybe I didn't need to shower his head with so much cold water?

As you can imagine, Trey's screams only increased with the addition of the cold water. Thankfully for Trey, Rob soon joined the rescue effort and stopped the full-body cold shower. We wrapped our little boy up in a towel and tried to inspect. He had a red mark on the inside of his right arm and his middle finger on his right hand was also red. The arm now has a blister. Here's a picture of the injury.



















After a two hour nap and some baby tylenol, Trey woke up happy. He is now sporting a gauze bandage and a sock on his right arm. The sock is hidden under the sleeve of an extra-big onesie. This hasn't stopped him from using that arm or hand. You can see Cosi sitting next to him in this picture. She's driving me a bit crazy, because she really really wants to touch Trey's 'boo-boo.' She's also making me laugh, because (not to be shown up) she is also sporting a sock on her arm. Goofball.


















I am still working on calming my self down. (writing this blog is supposed to help me) I would like to say that I am able to calm myself solely through prayer and trust in God. Instead, I'm trying to think of all the worse things that could have happened, like:

-drinking poison - definitely worse!
-getting hit by a car - way worse!
-baby cocaine overdose - never heard of it, but sounds bad!

Ah, yes....maybe a blistered burn isn't so bad after all... It's all about perspective...

A long-forgotten Happy New Year Picture!

I meant to take a Christmas picture of our family, but I forgot. No big deal. Here's our Happy New Year picture :) Thankfully, the tree was still up. Of course, I also forgot to post this picture, so now it's a Happy Chinese New Year picture and it's even late for that...

I didn't blog about Christmas day. It was actually kind of hard. I was so excited for Cosi to see her gifts and open them, but she kept wanting to open other people's gifts. I think Cosi was a bit over-stimulated by all the gifts, understandably. It made her crankier than usual. That makes me crankier than usual. And - We Edenfields were tired (mostly due to jet-lag). Bad combination.

I'm kind of hoping that next year is better. If not, then I guess I'll have to change my expectations of what Christmas with kids looks like. That said - we still have a lot to be thankful for, including those two little beauties you see in the picture :)

One Year!

Today we are celebrating one year with our precious little girl :) On February 5th 2011, Rob & Cosi arrived at Dulles Airport in VA. April was pregnantly waiting. We were finally & officially together as a family of 3.





We are also celebrating the fact that Rob & I survived our first year as parents. There's a lot to celebrate.










In this past year, Cosi has:
-grown 6 inches, which greatly affirmed her parents' feeding efforts
-gained one pound, which did not affirm the feeding efforts
-tried A LOT of new foods - including Chinese, American, Mexican, Thai, Italian & more - all in an effort to help pack on those pounds...
-flown on 10 airplanes
-lived on 3 continents
-gotten a new baby brother

















She has learned many things, including:
-a lot of English
-some Chinese
-all the shapes that were deemed important by her mother
-colors, although she tends to mix up blue and red (does this mean she might be colorblind?)
-how to fingerpaint, although we still need to set limits on the amount of paint used b/c her preference is to use all of it at once
-how to use scissors - she loves them, but we have to remind her that she isn't allowed to walk around with scissors (danger!)
-how to wash & chop fruits and vegetables, something we do every day in Asia
-how to help bake cookies & cakes, her favorite part is cracking the eggs
-how to sing a lot of songs, including "twinkle twinkle" and "the itsy bitsy spider"
-how to identify the letters of her name and a few others
-how to take a bath and this has become one of her favorite things to do
-how to play with daddy's guitar


















We are so thankful to have this sweet little, guitar-playing girl in our family!

Jet Lag and the Sleepy Daddy

I'm typing this at 4am. Why? Insomnia? Crying baby? Nope. Far worse. It's baby jet lag.

Jet lag is something we've had to deal with as long as we've lived overseas. When you take an airplane across 12 time zones, your body gets confused and it takes a week to get back to normal. In the past, it was quaint. I'd get really sleepy at 1pm and try to power my way through with some caffeine. I would fight to stay up until 8pm, then I'd wake up at 3am, wide awake and hungry for dinner.

But with kids, jet lag is horrible. Imagine a toddler flopping on her back on the floor in the middle of the afternoon, moaning and trying to sleep, but also fighting sleep- for an hour. Or a toddler and a baby waking up for the day at 1am. I can't imagine what our downstairs neighbors think when they hear Trey's walker rolling across the floor at that hour.

Honestly, this time around our jet lag has been the best we've ever had. It only took 3 days to get to a 6pm bedtime, thanks to some mid-afternoon baths and trips to the playground. We were thinking we would be back to a normal sleep schedule tomorrow. But just when I think I'm safe, Cosi is shaking me awake at 3am and I'm blogging in the middle of the night while Sesame Street plays on the TV...

Our Kids Make Us Smile

Fact: Trey loves to use a walker.
Fact: Trey is strong (for a baby).
Fact: Trey adores Cosi and will do just about anything for her.

Cosi is learning to take advantage of these facts:

The Five Stages of Sleep Deprivation

I've written before about my struggles with Cosi being up at night and with being sick. This post is a slightly more light-hearted look at the same topic, since it seems I will be doomed to experience it again and again throughout the youth of my children, possibly as a much-needed experience in my sanctification.
This week, Cosi is sick with a cold, and she has generously shared that with April, Trey and me. Last night, she woke up at 1:49am and didn't go back to sleep until 3:54am. During that long stretch, we had many fun experiences, such as Cosi asking to fly back to East Asia, asking to see Pawpaw "just one time," asking me to wake up her Aunt Erica so she could hold Cosi, asking to have her nails polished, telling me to "go away, Daddy," asking me to hug her until she fell asleep, demanding juice, refusing to drink juice, demanding milk, refusing to drink milk, etc. During that time, I realized I was going through the five stages of grief:

Denial: She isn't really awake. If I ignore her, she'll go back to sleep in a minute. This hand insistently tapping my stomach is just a dream. I'm going to get a full night's sleep tonight, I just know it.
Anger: Why are you doing this to me? This is so unfair! I just fell asleep an hour ago! I hate this!
Bargaining: OK, if you go back to sleep, I'll let you watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as much as you want in the morning. And I'll let you eat chocolate. And you can help with the laundry. And you can touch the computer. I'll even let you touch the computer now if you promise to fall asleep right after.
Depression: It's no use, I'll never sleep again. Go ahead, scream, cry, whine, whatever. I can't do anything about it. (This stage is usually experienced while lying on my back on the floor next to Cosi, closinng my eyes and not moving in the vain hope that she will think it's time to sleep).
Acceptance: It'll be OK. I'll be alright. Maybe April will watch the kids in the morning so I can sleep in an hour or two (she did). I just need to love my daughter and try to make her comfortable, even if that means lying in the dark and talking to her for an hour about the puppy that jumped up on her that afternoon. In fact, in 10 years I'm pretty sure I'll miss having moments like this.

Clauser & Jee-Zee

Cosi loves Christmas! We've been working hard to catch her up on the holiday - telling her stories about Santa Claus & Jesus, interjecting with some appropriate songs and such.

On Christmas Eve, we took her to meet Santa Claus at our local mall. I kind of felt obligated. It was her first Christmas as an American.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse helped her to know what he would look like with the red coat, white fur, long beard & hat- so she was ready! In typical third person narrations, she kept telling us what she was going to do (& not do) when she saw Santa - "Cosi touch Clauser's beard, Cosi pull Clauser's beard, Cosi punch Clauser, No no punch Clauser, Cosi run to Clauser, Cosi hug Clauser..."

Typical Cosi - she kept her trash talking going, right up until the big moment. In the end, however, she panicked and wouldn't go near Clauser. Trey, on the other hand, sat right on Clauser's lap and looked at Clauser like he was an alien. We don't blame him. Surprisingly, Trey didn't cry. We really thought he was going to cry, but I guess Clauser is pretty interesting for an 8 month-old to look at. We finally coaxed Cosi onto Mommy's lap for a quick picture next to Clauser.

Here's that picture:
























One minute after she left the vicinity of Clauser, Cosi started the 'trash talking' all over again. We told her that she could have a second chance with Clauser next year. (Except it's going to be at a Bass Pro Shop where we don't have to pay - why didn't anyone tell us about that before Christmas???) Of course, she has no idea what 'next year' means, so she still asks to see Clauser a couple times a day.

Now, who is Jee-Zee? That's Cosi's way of referring to Jesus. We did our best to tell her about how Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Birthdays are awesome to her, so she was happy to listen. Then, she told us how "Jee-Zee love Cosi, Jee-Zee hold Cosi, Jee-Zee rub Cosi's belly." We agreed with most of what she said, but we expressed some doubt about Jee-Zee pulling Cosi's hair...

We're already looking forward to next Christmas with our two little ones, even though I expect Cosi's pronunciation might be a little better....who knows, maybe Trey-by will be ready to make us laugh with his versions of their names? I can only hope...