He loves phones!

Here's Reister enjoying two phones at one time - listen to his cute conversation with "??" on the phone! It might be helpful for you to know that in the local language you answer the phone by saying "wei" and good-bye is "zai jian". By the way, he's on the couch in our new apartment...

Moving Post #4

Well, we moved! We just got our internet hooked up and I'm going to post this short one...

Moving Post #3

We decided to move on Friday - even though the kitchen cabinets/counters won't be in - so we're trying to pack everything up in our current apartment. We're using "rice bags", our luggage and some boxes, too. Any of you who have moved know how crazy it can be trying to pack up every little thing. We bought a washing machine, microwave, and bottled water dispenser today. Micah cleaned up the last part of the new apartment and waited for the delivery of the washing machine and microwave, waited for the locksmith to come change the back door lock, waited for the washing machine installation guy to come, set up our new TV and cable box... whew, he had a long day - no wonder he crashed early. Reister doesn't know what to think of all this packing - boxes and bags everywhere. He keeps grabbing toys and books that are important to him and handing them to us - I guess he wants to make sure his stuff gets packed, too!
Hopefully we'll get everything into the moving truck that's coming at 9am Friday. If it all doesn't make it in one trip we may do a couple more ourselves... Please pr for us this week as it's going to be crazy. Ask we won't lose our focus in the midst of it all!
Oh, and by the way, the living room curtains got installed later that same day - the electricity came back on and Micah happened to be there when the guy called to come back by!

Moving Post #2

It's inevitable that living in this country you run into things that slow down a process of getting a new place ready to live in. I guess it kind of started yesterday - the lady who made our living room curtain orginally said she could have her installation guy come Friday afternoon but yesterday morning she called and said that he had a family "shi" (something to do) and had to come Saturday morning instead. So I said okay. He arrived before I did at 8:45am. But then he asked if I had a stool or ladder for him to use. Since our place is pretty much empty right now, I didn't have anything for him to use. About the time I got there, the people came to fix our back door which somehow got jammed shut and no one can open it. They suggested the curtain guy use one of the yard's maintenance guy's ladders. So the curtain guy went looking. He didn't find a ladder but a makeshift sawhorse. For some reason he got in an argument with one of the maintenance guys working on our back door in the process. He keep saying something later about that guy having "eaten too much" - must be some kind of cultural slang i don't understand... Anyway, he finally brought the saw horse around in the front door and got his drill out to start drilling for the curtain rod. Then he promptly announced that there was no electricity. Turns out the whole building was out of electricity (not uncommon in this country). Fortunately he was willing to wait a while to see if it came back on. Ten minutes later someone came buy to say it was going to be an hour more at least. During this time, they still hadn't been able to get the backdoor open. They took off the handle but it still wouldn't budge. The guy working on it made a call and said he'd have to wait on another guy to fix it. He also commented that if we could go to the nearby jail and hire a burglar, they'd probably have in open in just a couple minutes. Huh... I guess he's probably right... So anyway, the curtain guy says he's going to leave and will come back when we have electricity. The door guy says he'll have to wait on the other guy to help him. So I say "okay, y'all leave first" and I hung around to snap a couple pics of our place. If I can figure out how to get them linked to my Facebook photo album, you can take a look! (oh, and hopefully I'll somehow get my living room curtains put up!)

Moving Post #1

Well the big news around here is that we're going to move to a new apartment. We will have been in our current place for two years - the lease is up on November 15. We have been thinking about moving for several months now, mainly for a change but also to find a place with a better layout and preferably four bedrooms. When we have another kid (no news yet), it'd be nice to have them in separate rooms and still have an office. We started really looking in early September and weren't able to find anything suitable. But just last week we found a new realtor and he showed us this great place in an area of town we hadn't previously been considering. It is a first floor apartment with four bedrooms (2 are pretty small rooms, but that's fine). It is in a fairly new complex, it's already "fixed up" meaning it is no longer a concrete box but has floors, painted walls, bathroom fixtures and a useable kitchen. One of the things we like the best about it is that it has it's own small fenced in back yard. So we decide to take it! It also has lower rent than where we're at now! We walked around the surrounding neighborhood and felt at home with all the small restaurants, fruit and vegatable sellers, nearby supermarket and "Dico's" (KFC knock-off). We signed the contract Sunday and got the keys. We're now in the process of getting things fixed up. We hope to be moved in sometime after November 1st (preferably before November 15 when we'll get kicked out of our current place ha ha!). Here is a picture of the "backyard" and of a playscape that's also within the complex. What a great deal for Reister!

Noodle boy

Last Thursday we went to dinner with some local friends and they ordered a dish of cold dark noodles that had a sort of vinegar taste. Micah & I liked them, but Reister loved them! He slurped them down! So on Sunday for lunch with several American friends, we ordered them again. We caught Reister on video taking them down:


On that note, we went to the same family's home for dinner Sunday night. They made the same dish AGAIN (that's three times in one week we ate it) and Reister ate some then, too. At one point during the meal Micah and I noticed Reister had a noodle hanging out of his nose. When I tried to pull on it, I realized it was actually coming from inside his nose! Somehow he had coughed or sneezed and the noodle went up into his nose and came out again! Micah and I about died trying to conceal our laughter (no one else at the table noticed and we opted to not point it out to them).


Here's a pic of Reister on Sunday morning with his buddy Micah:

BALLS!

This was at a new restaurant in town that has a ball pit and slide. Reister loved it! One of his favorite things right now is balls (and that includes anything that even slightly resembles a ball - balloons, tomatoes, bulb light fixtures on the street).

My wonderful husband

I found this picture from September - it was taken at our friends house during Micah's birthday party! He turned 30!! I'll post some more pictures from the party on the next post, but I really like this one of us two! When you have a kid, you don't get as many pictures of just you two, so I really am glad we got this one!

Lookin' cute

I had to put a picture in of Reister in normal clothes because the last two posts have him in pajamas! I promise he does get dressed! We thought he looked pretty cute in this outfit... (compliments to the Glorys for lending us Micah's hand-me-downs)

Also, it's gotten quite cold here, so here's a picture of how we dressed Reister up to go outside on Sunday! It snowed Monday morning here. It'll probably be in the high 40's today, if not hit 50 degrees. Brr! That's nothing compared to what we have to come in the long winter ahead!

Aunts, Uncles, Sisters, Brothers

Where we live, the polite way to address someone your parents' age is "Aunt" or "Uncle". Children call other children, depending on their age "older brother/sister" or "younger brother/sister" (There are different words for each). We try to teach Reister to say all these. He is starting to catch on a little but often mistakes an "older sister" for a "younger brother". Can you blame him? It's a little confusing!! But we applaud his effort! Here he is with a local "aunt" - can you tell he's having a good time (her face is blurred intentionally for security)? He's not always willing to go to an "aunt" or "uncle" who wants to hold him but recently he's learned how to give kisses. If we say "give so-and-so a kiss", he'll lean for their cheek. It seems like that helps him to feel a little more comforatable with them. :)

Pajamas!

I think Reister stayed in his pajamas all morning every day while I was gone on a trip the week before last. Micah stayed with Reister and they had great Father-Son bonding time!