Rolling Along

Rolling along here...busy but happy.

I love how this photo captured a moment in time. We had decided after dinner to do a quick grocery run, and Sojo volunteered to write the list for us. Each item was simply a straight red line on her paper, and she carried her red crayon in the grocery store to check things off her list (the list is still in her hand on the way home). Even though we passed the apples first in the store, we couldn't get them because cheese was first on the list. Riding home with the basket filled with a bit of yumminess for everyone and a slight cool breeze on our faces made me realize that sometimes I forget these small moments in life. A whole series of them makes for one amazing existence.

Wonderings

I recently read an amazing education book called A Place for Wonder by Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough. It left me completely inspired. The gist of the book is how children are naturally curious and wonderers and how we adults can embrace that curiosity and teach them how to find answers.

Sojo is ripe for this type of wondering right now. She is crazy curious and has a million questions, mostly about bones at this moment in time. What do the bones of dinosaurs look like? What about the animals that roar? What about fish? I can hardly keep up, but I love that I can go right to the computer and find a piranha skeleton (today's query) in 2 seconds flat. I've been collecting printed skeletons and bone books for a week or so waiting for the right time to make our wonder wall.

It rained all day today, so we took a chunk of time and cut out the various skeletons and even wrote the names on the bottom. I volunteered to help with this, but she wanted to give it a go (I did do the outlining of the bones lettering on top). I love, love, love that she wrote Pteranodon all over the picture with no concept at all that the letters actually have to go in some order. These literacy steps are precious to watch. My plan is to add to the bone wall over time and even put up some of her questions on the other side of the window.

Kinda makes me want to home school.

Separation & Ice Cream

Even after all these weeks, Sojo is still a bit sad when we leave in the mornings. One afternoon, when we returned home, she showed me this piece of paper she had made. She explained that it was her message that says, "I love mama and baba," and then asked me if I would help her put it on her wall. Our hearts melted when she said that her reason for doing so was that if she was feeling sad during the day, she could look at her paper to remember that she loved us. This new stage of expressing herself is so beautiful to watch.

And on a totally random note, living in Asia can be so surreal at times. Take our trip to the mall last weekend. As we were walking around, we heard a marching band. Yes, a marching band. We follow the sound and come upon this parade announcing the opening of a Cold Stone Creamery in the mall. Just the concept of a statue of liberty AND an Uncle Sam walking around Bangkok carrying cardboard ice cream cones blew us away. That being said, how psyched am I that my favorite ice cream shop on the planet is now a short bike ride away.

Caught

All was quiet in Sojo's room. We naively thought she had actually gone to sleep without much drama tonight.

When we peeked in to see, we found this.


At least she was quietly practicing headstands.

Lovely Sunday

If only every day could be the weekend...

We had a ton of fun today and wound up being busy doing all sorts of random things.

First, a special trip down to Funarium, the indoor kid playground. It was crawling with kids, so we didn't stay too long. Just long enough to do the crazy fast bumpy slide a gazillion times.

Then we headed to the bookstore and did some browsing & shopping for the school library. Sojo is the best tester of books. We are loving this new book called Little Owl Lost--perfect for the early readers.
Oh, and did I mention that somehow over the weekend, Sojo has become a dog? Harry the dog (formerly known as Harry the horse and Harry the frog and Harry the duck) wished all day that she could drink out of a bowl like dogs do, so we obliged. It was comical because a friend walked by our apartment as I was on the floor taking photos, and she couldn't resist stopping by to see what on earth was going on. As Sojo said, "Dogs get a lot of water on the floor when they drink." Yes, they do, as do children who pretend to be dogs.

We then had a big ol' playdate with friends and finished off the day by taking her caterpillar for a sweaty walk around the lake. Yup, Mondays are sometimes hard around here.

Conversations

Normally, we hop on our bikes and cruise almost everywhere in our neighborhood. I love the ease of that, but I notice that if Sojo is trying to talk to me, I can't really carry on a conversation that way. There's a whole lot of me twisting around, asking her to repeat and sometimes even stopping the bike. So, when our friends moved on and left us their fabulous stroller, I started to take advantage of having wheels again and finding some time to take walks on the weekend.

A hotter means of travel, definitely, but the conversations we are having as we walk to Starbucks early in the morning are fantastic. Last weekend we talked about abbreviations (what does ISB, our school, mean? what is a vet?) and another time we had a big discussion about bones in the body. She's super curious right now, and I'm trying to answer her queries and find books in the library to match her curiosity. Horses and the human body are two biggies at the moment. Horses because her newest character is Harry the horse, and the body because we've been talking about full bladders of late as we transition out of diapers at night. And the prize at the end of that sweaty walk--a cinnamon roll for her and two big coffees for us.

Twirly Girl

I am still not sure why, but I can hardly ever convince Sojo to put on a dress. And no way can I get her in a super girly dress like this beautiful one that Nie Nie and Grandpa Pat bought her. My mom would probably say it's something subconscious I'm doing because I hated those kinds of dresses as a kid. However, her nanny, Momo, seems to have a knack for it. I've come home three times in the last few weeks to find her in this cute dress.

We quickly discovered that the dress is not only beautiful, but it twirls like a charm! I was snapping photo after photo of her on afternoon with the dress on, and I had a hard time choosing pics because they were all so gorgeous. And this one looks like it's staged, but she had just seen a bird in the sky and that truly was her expression. Priceless.

Toy Story 4

(just a random cute feet picture with no connection to the post)
Last weekend, we took Sojo to her first-ever movie theater experience. We saw Toy Story 3 in 3D, so her first time was a bit overwhelming with the 3D glasses and the 3D stuff coming out everywhere and the very loud volume. Wow-it was loud. But we loved it, and Sojo even shed a tear during one part.
Since the movie, the game du jour in our house is "Toy Story 4!" When Dale and I shout, "Adults are here!" she falls on the ground in the splayed position of the toys from the movie. Then Dale gets to be Andy, the boy who plays with her. She even came up with the name of the game, which is quite clever.
Smart moviemakers had good previews at Toy Story, so we are looking forward to our next movie theater experience in September when another 3D movie about a turtle comes out.