Preston, Franklin, and Baby Nathaniel: April 2006

Working hard

Ya-ping is good. Preston's two loves are his blanket and his pacifier, but Ya-ping just says "Before we go out, you need to put down your blanket. Look! Mommy's blanket is right here!" And he obediently puts down his blanket, and then "And you need to put down your pacifier so we can go outside," and out pops the pacifier, no fuss, nothing. Then we leave our room.

I've been really busy this week, and doing lots of biking. It's fun, though.

Preston is a little problem solver, if a ball rolls under something and it is too far away to reach, then he gets a stick or a shoe to try and fish it out. He is also very trusting, he will readily jump off of anything, no matter how high, if Yaping or I is beneath him because he knows we won't let him fall. Also, if one of us is holding his hand, he will suddenly go limp so that he can hand from our hands, fun for him, terrifying for us.

He gets so excited about attacking mommy

Preston's new thing is climbing people, especially mommy

Yaping loves this picture

Yaping's oldest niece gives her a lift (the umbrella is to block the blazing sun)

look at his concentration

Massaging mommy's feet

Watch this sequence

2

3

4, and yes, preston sucessfully soaked her

this is the excercise equipment that preston get's a-swingin'

Look at the splash

Playing with water with cousins on a hot day

Yaping's house, all four stories are theirs, we live on the second floor (see arrows). Notice that if people have really small cars they can kinda park them on the front porch. Ya-ping's brother's car is too big for that, though

bouncing on mommy

Poor baby is going to have gender issues.

Our ambidextrous little son, give him two spoons, and he'll use them both, sometimes he'll pick the food up with one, dump it into other, and use that one to eat.

Like father like son, one hand on the keyboard, one hand on the mouse, it's HIS computer and anyone else who touches it is in big trouble.

Preston Stories

Cute things Preston has done in the last little while:

He can now sing along with the song "Down to the River to Pray" from the O Brother where art thou soundtrack. He only knows the word 'down' and mumbles the rest, but he's singing, even if it's not completely in tune.
Sadly he's gotten back into the habit of waking up in the middle of night asking for milk (he's probably dehydrated, poor little runt sweats all day long), so Ya-ping's trying to get him out of the habit (by just giving him water). The first night he just cried like normal, but the second night he just sat up in bed with his arm outstretched and the saddest look on his face, didn't cry, didn't make any noise other than an occasional plaintive "uh," and just stared at Ya-ping. She said it was much sadder than any crying he could ever do, and that she felt like he had just grown up overnight.
He now head-bangs to rock music, conducts folk music, and wiggles to reggae.
"Beethoven" (a dog movie) was on TV today, and he was totally mesmerized by it, just staring at the screen and saying "dog, dog, dog" for about fifteen minutes straight. He also loves fish.
The family has an excercise machine that's kinda like cross country skiing, and Preston has learned that if he keeps one leg steady and swings the other he can get it swinging really high without losing his balance, so he gets that thing a rocking (similtaneously giving his parents heart attacks)
He has gotten extremely adept at getting people to take him outside by asking for someone other than mommy or daddy to pick him up, and then waving goodbye to everyone else in the room. It works almost every time.

The rest I'll have to show you in pictures.

Preston the Mimic

Preston has gotten extremely good at mimicking those around him. He sees sister#3 giving foot rubs all the time, so the other day his cousin had her feet up so he ran over to where the massage stuff is kept, grabbed some lotion, pretended to spread it on her feet, ran back to put the lotion away, ran back to his cousin, and began to rub her feet. He repeated this whole process at least five or six times. It was hilarious, and he's since done it with other people.

His vocabulary is increasing daily, some of his new words are juice (in english) fish (in chinese) and "one-two-one-two" (in chinese).

It's been raining a lot the last few days, and that causes the local school playground to flood, so Preston and I walked over there and he had an absolute blast playing in the 6 inches of water that covered the whole place. His dad of course got in big trouble with all the natives for allowing him to do this, but it was worth it (Taiwanese, for those of you who don't know, are terrified of rain, and avoid it if at all possible). Preston and his dad both quite enjoy the rain, except that it means no one will go outside with us.

On the much more boring parental front, poor Yaping may be getting sick, and the water here is tearing up her hands. Daddy got a nice used bike from sister#2, her family wasn't using it (it hadn't been ridden in a couple of years so it was all rusted and a nice old man/local bike guy spent 4 hours fixing it up and charged us 200NT [about $6] for his efforts). So I'm happy to have a decent bike, I plan on spending a lot of time on it (Friday, for example, I rode for ~2 hours getting to various appointments).

He could walk really well in these shoes

The pouty lips are his new thing

Lets hear it for cute facial expressions

Playing with Grandpa

Dance dance dance

He's taken to running with his hands way back

More copying his cousin

Copying his cousin who was doing gymnastics

I thought this was cool, he kicked the shoe towards the camera

In response to Allie's big shoes picture

I don't know why he was doing this... but it sure was cute

Biker Dude. Yes, he is balancing himself while standing on the bike frame (the bike, however, is secured)

Sick

Both Preston and I have gotten sick in the last week, I know mine was food related, we're not sure about Preston's (his was just swelling, and it might have been from mosquito bites). Preston is a trooper and didn't show any signs of unhappiness, just an ear the size of a winnebago. We're both doing quite a bit better now, although my stomach is still a little messed up (not eating anything for three days'll do that to you).

Work is starting to come fast and furious, so it looks like we'll survive. I'm even considering buying a decent bike to get around with rather than the old family bike (y'know, one that can switch gears) since I'm not really willing to tackle the streets of Kaohsiung with a scooter.

Preston still loves his american style food (this is yogurt). We bought cheese sticks at costco and he ate three of them immediately.

Notice Preston's absurdly large ear (you might want to view the picture full size to get the full effect). It got so big that it curled because it couldn't support it's own weight.

The lady is a friend of sister #2, Preston got to hold her dog for a long time, he was in heaven, the little girl is a cousin

At the playground of the local school

Babies get very thirsty in Taiwan

Playing by a local lake with cousins (and Uncle #3)

Preston is SO helpful!

Preston's grandpa lets him eat on the table in the living room. Notice how dirty those shoes get.

More work

Prospects have really been picking up for me teaching English lately. I have another student starting Tuesday, and last week an extremely nice teacher from Norway who is a friend of a friend of Sister #1 let me sit in on his classes and gave me a crash course in English teaching. That was quite a bit of fun, actually. I learned quite a bit about teaching in general as well, which should come in handy.

Ya-ping's grandmother is back in the hospital, and according to all medical science should already have passed on, but is here by sheer force of will. There is family infighting over what they should do with her as in "do not resuscitate" that type of thing, which I think is absolutely riduculous, but one of the uncles claims he is a minor god and therefore whatever he says is god's will, and he says to use all means necessary to keep her alive. It's nuts.

On a related but much less depressing note, Preston now knows two Taiwanese words from being around his great-grandmother, "Great-Grandma" and "It hurts!" (which is basically the only thing his great-grandma can say at this point) He can also say 'milk' in Chinese.