Pictures and other random happenings

Micaiah finished the Hooked On Phonics Kindergarten curriculum. He loved it! He flew through it and almost every time it was he who initiated doing it. Orin also loved to help Micaiah as he read his books. There was a point where I almost let Orin take over and do all of the lessons with him and teach him to read. Seriously, I didn't need to be there. Or maybe I'll just home school Orin and then have him teach Micaiah and Sora. He loves to impart his knowledge on others. :) Anyway, back to Micaiah. We had a big day for him when he was done. We got ice cream, went to The Sizzler (a "fancy" restaurant for Chiang Mai standards), watched Star Wars and got him a little car at the store. He worked hard for 4 months so we wanted to celebrate. I'm just bummed that we didn't bring the 1st grade curriculum!

Football season is back. The boys watching their first Saints game. It's nice that NFL has a special subscription for people who live overseas. The bad part is that they know it's the only way people can see games and totally take advantage by charging an arm and a leg.

Me with my language tutor. I'm still enjoying studying Thai 3 days per week. I've definitely got a ways to go but I still feel like I'm slowly making progress. In the next couple of months I'll probably cut down to two days. I'd really like to have more time to do some volunteer work. But I still know that it's helpful to keep learning too.

These things are fine in a museum pined to a board but finding one in your shower is not quite as fun. And since my husband hates bugs (at least some bugs) more than I do, I was in charge of getting rid of it. Oh, joy. Bug spray didn't do much. I ended up using a cup/plate and throwing it over the balcony. {shudder} But at least they are slow. I still think I'd take it over a big roach. We just need the other boys to get bigger so they can be our bug killers.

I know this is probably a very "typical" thing for kids to do but I thought it was cute that they set up their Lego's, Star Wars guys and cars to watch TV with them. It is a good example of their favorite toys these days.

I found Sora in her room one day reading to her baby. She's such a girl. :) She sings to it, puts it to sleep, feeds it (bib and all) and I guess now she reads to it. If she could talk she's probably have a name for it too!

Sora had her developmental evaluation this week. She did really well. By that I mean that she "played" with the evaluator and cooperated and I feel that she got an accurate of where she is at 28months old. I've never seen any type of evaluation so it was fun to see how she got Sora to show her what she could do. The good news was that she said she thinks that Sora is where she should be with her "receptive language." She follows commands, does pretend play, etc... Her "expressive language", on the other hand, is at least 9 months behind. No big surprise. The therapist is actually just here for one year. She's working at the school down in the South of the city (where Orin was initially going to go to school). It's almost 30 minutes away which wasn't fun to drive two days in a row and I was dreading have to go there multiple times a week for therapy. But I was happy to find out that she'll actually come to us! I guess it's better for the child to be in her own environment to get the best results. I'm all for that! The therapist is super nice and works in the US as a therapist with kids with hearing issues! How amazing is it that God has her here in Chiang Mai for the one year that we'll need therapy for Sora? I'm excited to get started and hopefully eventually be able to hear what is going on in that little head of Sora's!

Have I mentioned that she's potty trained? I didn't really plan it. About two months ago I figured I'd see what would happen if I let her run around with no diaper for a few days. I was so sick of poopy diapers. She seemed to be "getting" it so I stuck with it. It took her a bit longer than the boys - but to be fair, one was 3 years and the other was 2 1/2 when I potty trained them. She was 26 months so I wasn't sure if she was ready. Also, I wasn't as incredibly committed and I probably confused her by putting diapers on her sometimes when I didn't want to deal with it. She was great at home but went to the bathroom constantly. Since she can't talk she'd mostly just go to the bathroom when she wanted to. She was great at knowing when she needed to go but didn't understand that she could hold it in. This is why I was inconsistent because I put diapers on her every time we left the house. And the fact that she wasn't great at communicating when she needed to go. But over that first month she slowly spaced out her trips to the potty and I started venturing out in underwear (with plastic pants over them of course). We also figured out a way for her to tell us when she needed to go. She pats between her legs and will try to say "peee." She still doesn't know how to communicate what she's going so I never know what I'm going to see when I go to wipe her. ;) It's also really nice that it's perfectly acceptable for kids to pee in public and I've taken advantage of that for sure! She's peed in more parking lots more than the boys! It wasn't until about a month ago that I finally felt comfortable saying that she was completely potty trained.If they have more than one or two accidents a week than they are not potty tried. She's had maybe two in the last month so I think she's doing great. She goes to the nursery at church in underwear as well as staying at home with the babysitter (it took a long time for me to do that because I was worried she'd sit on the couch and have an accident). I still used diapers at naps and bedtime though. And I'm sort of sad about it. I wasn't really prepared emotionally to have no more babies in diapers. It's sad especially knowing that it could be the last of diapering for me!

We've found a couple of pools around town that the kids really like to go to. We try to go once a week or so. This one is really fun because it has these boards for the kids to jump off of.

We usually swim with M which makes it much more fun for me. Not sure why Sora is making a face...
Jumping with a friend!

Sora really loves that purse and brings it almost every time we leave the house. I guess she wanted to be ready right after her nap!