I tend to think of myself as a rather cynical person.  Despite this, I am also a little bit of an optimist.  So while I don’t really take things at face value and can be rather pessimistic when I think about outcomes, at the same time I can usually find an upside to whatever misfortune might have befallen me.

Annoying.

And so while this week has been a little on the rough side for me — single parenting an active preschooler and a baby with sleeping issues — there were some good things about it as well.

• Tomorrow Mark comes home after a week in TX.  And while HK to TX tends to be his roughest trips, at the very least he got four nights of uninterrupted sleep.  Color me jealous.
• And if everything goes as planned, this trip will have been Mark’s last business trip for the year.  Fingers crossed!  (Although now I’ve probably just jinxed myself).
• Sleep deprivation for me usually means daily trips to Starbucks.  And had I not been so tired this week and so terribly in need of coffee all the time, then I wouldn’t have found out that Starbucks is offering their holiday lattes again.  Yay!  Plus in keeping with trying to live just a smidge greener, I bought my own Starbucks tumbler so now every time I buy a latte that’s one less cup that goes into a landfill (not to mention I save HK$3 on my coffee).  So technically the more I drink, the more money I save and the better it is for the environment.  It’s the kind of logic that guys tend not to understand (“So I spent $100 on a new pair of shoes but they were half-priced so really I saved you $100″) but it’s how my mind works so there you go.
• Because Mark arrives tomorrow morning, I signed him up for a spa day in the afternoon which means I’ll be single parenting again for half the day.  To be honest, I’m a little burned out and not looking that forward to it and I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of something low maintenance to do with the kiddos for about five hours.  But had I not been looking then I wouldn’t have found out that Clockenflap, a big music and arts festival, is going on this weekend at Cyberport so we’ll probably check that out.  By no means will it be low maintenance — outdoor concerts with two kids in tow — but at least it’s just down the street from us so if I need to check out early it won’t be too bad.  And as an added bonus I have an automatic blog topic for Sunday.
• I had been slightly worried about Julian’s eating the last few weeks because it seemed like he went from eating 8 times a day to just 5 times now in a rather short amount of time.  His 4-month appointment today confirmed what I had suspected — he’s lost some weight.  But his weight is still in the 75th percentile (vs. 98th percentile at 2 months) which is where his height is as well so I guess that means he’s proportional now.  At least I don’t have to hear from his doctor that he’s overweight anymore.  And at least she stopped comparing him to her dog this month (although the nurse kept mentioning that he looked like a girl.  But no one pays attention to nurses anyway.  Just kidding if you’re one of my nurse friends.)

Anyway, that’s about all the optimism I can muster for one evening.

I realize I’m only on day 6 but this blogging every day for a month thing is getting to be a pain in the butt. Mostly it’s because I’m so tired. Julian decided this week that sleeping at night is purely optional and naturally this coincides during one of Mark’s longer business trips so I have no backup to help out with those sleepless nights. And sadly, I looked at him this afternoon and he had some really dark circles under his eyes. Poor guy — so worn out for a four-month-old. So in lieu of a real post, here’s a picture of Julian instead. Asleep. You know, wishful thinking and all that good stuff…

I recently downloaded a children’s album from iTunes by They Might Be Giants.  We have an older one from them called Here Come the ABCs which Noah could really care less about but their latest one is Here Comes Science and it came with video versions of all their songs so I thought it might be worth a shot.  Noah loves watching the videos (they’re animated so no surprise there) but the cool part is that he’s actually picking up a couple of things.  His favorite song is Speed and Velocity so now he knows that velocity is speed plus direction; thanks to Meet the Elements he knows that people are made up of elements (although he sometimes slips and says people are made of elephants…they are quite close in pronunciation…); and that paleontologists study dinosaur bones, mass extinction and dig up fossils (thanks I Am A Paleontologist).  Still, there’s only so much science you can pick up from music videos.  Take this conversation we had at lunch today…

Noah: Mom, a shooting star is not a star.
Me: That’s right Noah. Do you know what it is?
Noah: It’s a meteor that’s falling down in the sky.
Me: Yup. And do you know why it shines like a star?
Noah: …um…well…like in Ben 10 the shooting star was falling and it changed direction because it wasn’t a star, it was the Omnitrix and it almost landed on Ben and a watch jumped out and he could turn into so many aliens.*

Uh, I guess so.

*Correct answer: The friction as it travels through air produces heat and light.

Julian, as soon as he turned three months old, magically stopped being a super high maintenance baby and is now the most chilled out, happy baby I’ve ever met (with the exception of nighttime when he is still quite the crankypants).  This coincided with my parent’s visit to us so I don’t think they quite believed me when I said that Julian was difficult.  Whereas before it was rare that I could catch his smile on camera, now I’ve got a ton of pictures of him laughing and smiling.  And just as miraculously, his hair stopped sticking straight up.  On top of this are the usual milestones — holding his head up, almost holding up his bottle by himself, being able to support his weight with his legs, blah blah blah.  But I’m sure no one really wants to hear about that (you want to know more about his hair, right?).  With each new skill he picks up or masters, as happy as I am, I’m also half-sad that he’s growing up so fast — this Saturday he goes in for his 4 month appointment and in two more months he starts solids.  Really?!  Already?!  The crazy part of me wants to have a third baby and then the sleep-deprived part of me mentally slaps the crazy one and then they have it out for a while in my head.  Usually sleep-deprivation (and an unwillingness to contribute to the planet’s overpopulation by producing more than two offspring) wins out over baby nostalgia, so in the meantime that translates into taking a lot of pictures of the baby while he’s still as baby as possible.

For all intents and purposes, Noah is a boy’s boy — he hangs out with boys, he likes boy things, he plays rough like a boy.  But one of the few exceptions to his uber-boyness is Isabelle — one of his classmates at HKA.  And it turns out the feeling is mutual.  Sam, Isabelle’s mom, told me that Isabelle talks about Noah nonstop at home and at their parent-teacher conference, Ms. Joanne told her that Isabelle likes to give Noah hugs and kisses in class (which, being a boy, naturally embarrasses the hell out of him).  Sweet.  A couple of weeks ago, Noah came home from school with some “homework” — go on a playdate with someone from the class and talk about it that Friday.  Noah had chosen Isabelle as the classmate he wanted to go on a playdate with but because of some scheduling issues (i.e. — he had way too many playdates that week) I didn’t quite get around to coordinating the playdate with Sam.  This week, however, we decided that it would be fun to take both of the kids out to Ocean Park for the afternoon.

Noah was so excited when he found out that 1) that he had a playdate with Isabelle and 2) that it would be at Ocean Park.  We met up today for a few hours and seeing the two of them was ridiculously cute.  Initially they were shy around each other but soon enough they were running together ahead of me and Sam and anywhere that Isabelle wanted to go to, Noah immediately agreed to.  She wanted to see the pandas so Noah wanted to see the pandas — and trust me, I normally have to cajole Noah into the panda house — she wanted to go on the merry-go-round and so did he, she didn’t want to go on the Ocean Express and apparently Noah suddenly didn’t want to either.  Totally cute and just a little alarming if this is a glimpse of how he’s going to be in all of his future relationships.

Today was Noah’s first day back at school after a week-long midterm break. Normally I dislike it when Noah has days off from school (hello two week swine flu closure) because although he only goes to school for three hours a day, you don’t realize how nice it is to have three hours of silence in the house until he’s home and you’re pulling your hair out by the end of the week. But because he’s been doing some crazy traveling lately, Mark decided to take a week off from work so last week I had all of my boys at home with me.

The week was a good mixture of low-key and big event type of activities. We took Noah to see Astroboy, he attended Angus’ birthday party, there was an obligatory Disneyland trip, and some general hanging out at the house as well as some alone time for both me and Mark. One thing that Mark had been wanting to do with Noah for some time was to take him camping, so on Tuesday the two boys took off for Lantau Island for an overnight camping trip. Being a lousy camper (read: high maintenance and just germaphobic enough to be freaked out by the outdoors), I opted out of the camping trip — staying at home with Julian instead.  Lo Kei Wan campsite is right on the beach so they had a fabulous sea view, they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, slept in tents, told ghost stories and did a little hiking (although I can attest to the fact that Noah is a terrible hiker. And by “terrible” I mean he’s whiny and wants to be carried all the time). Of course, when they got back Mark was totally wiped — having had to lug all the camping gear to the campsite by himself and getting virtually no sleep because he couldn’t fit in the tent and the ground was so uncomfortable — but they got in some good male bonding time and really, that’s always worth a headache the next day, right?

It’s November 1st which means it’s the first day of National Blog Posting Month.  I’ve still got a about an hour and a half left in the day so I think I’m going to make it on time, but still…this doesn’t bode well for my posts for the next 29 days.  Luckily for me, yesterday was Halloween, which means there’s something for me to actually write about.

This was the our first year in Hong Kong that we actually did something for Halloween, in large part because Noah is old enough now that he’s actually aware of these events and holidays (thanks a lot school!) and we can’t get away with just ignoring them anymore. My parents had brought over a pirate costume for Noah when they came to visit and of course Noah loved it because it came with a) a hat, b) an eyepatch and c) a sword. He had planned on wearing it to his school’s costume-themed casual day but I spazzed out completely that morning and put him in his regular uniform. It wasn’t until I dropped him off at the bus and saw a bus full of costumed children that I realized that I dropped the ball. I beat myself up over it all the way back to the apartment when I finally decided that I refuse to be known at “that mom” at his new school (at least, this early on in the school year) so Mark drove me to Noah’s school where I pulled him out of class right before it started and dressed him up in his pirate costume in the bathroom. Happily, I wasn’t the only mom who had forgotten to dress her child in a costume that day — about half of his class was in uniform. I was, however, the only one crazy enough to actually drive to the school just for an outfit change. And so now I’m known as “that mom”. But a different kind of “that” which I guess is more socially acceptable. Oh well. As I was changing him, Noah told me, “Mommy, thank you for coming to my school with my pirate costume” so that made all the weird glances at me totally worth it.

Halloween thankfully went a lot more smoothly. Mark and I had found a box of Noah’s old clothes that we’d been saving and inside was Noah’s first Halloween costume — which meant that Julian now had a costume to wear (hooray for hand-me-downs). Here is Noah in his little chili pepper costume four years ago:

And here is Julian:

I know it’s not fair to always compare the two boys but I can’t help it — I find it amusing. Noah hated that chili pepper costume. Of all our pictures of him from that first Halloween, if he wasn’t crying then he was passed out (probably from heat exhaustion). But Julian on the other hand…well, see for yourself:

After lunch I took Noah over to Cyberport for a charity Halloween carnival where we met up with his friend, Angus. It was ridiculously hot and poor Noah had on his pirate costume. Every 10 minutes he would hand me another piece of his costume that he had stripped off — first the eyepatch, then the hat, followed by the sash, the belt and the sword — so there was no costume contest for him, but he still had a good time running around with Angus:

In the evening we took Noah and Julian to the Halloween carnival that our building was holding. In theory it was a good idea, but the reality of it was the lines were just insane. In the hour and a half that we were there, we managed to go to a haunted house and make a bead bracelet. Noah had wanted to get in line for a tattoo but I couldn’t fathom spending another 30 minutes in line so I bribed him into going home instead by telling him I would give him marshmallows at home.

All in all, a very hectic day but worth it to know that Noah enjoyed himself so much. Next year though, we’ll skip the carnival.

My blogging has been ridiculously delinquent this month. Ironic since October was so busy and so many things happened — big and small things alike — that I would want to remember and keep track of. Things like:

• My parents visiting for two weeks.
• Mark’s brother visiting for a weekend — making him just the second person in our family who has met Julian (counting my parents as one unit of course).
• Julian hitting the three-month mark and going from colicky, screamy baby to an incredibly well-behaved angel baby.  Weird.
• Our first parent-teacher conference at Noah’s school.  Or, as I prefer to call them from now on, “Go on, tell me just how awesome my son is” conferences.

Suffice it to say, I’ve got some catch up work to do.  But because I’m also a bit of a masochist, I’ve also decided that for November I’m going to do this whole NaBloPoMo thing. NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month, is a challenge where you write a blog post every day for a month. These days there’s a challenge for every month but it originally started out as just November and really, I’m not ready to commit to more than one month right now. So hopefully for me, you’ll be seeing a lot more entries next month. And hopefully for you, they won’t be boring as dirt.

Until then, here are a couple of pictures. I always get a kick out of seeing how weirdly similar (yet different) my two boys are and I see that “alike, but not” thing so much in these two pictures. The first is me, Mark and a three-month-old Julian at Ngong Ping village this month and the second picture is me, Mark and a two-month-old Noah at his baptism four years ago.

You see? Alike, but not.

There must be something in the water here in Hong Kong. Or perhaps it’s all the air pollution. Because in the three days that my parents have been here, my mom appears to have grown a second head:

“I will pick up the hook.
You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun.”
Then, out of the box
Came Thing Two and Thing One!
–Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

Just a few, quick things about my Thing One and Thing Two.

In Which Noah Learns About Addition
A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen minding my own business when Noah walked in very upset and asking what happened to his fingers. They looked ok so I asked him what was wrong and the following conversation ensued:
Noah (in a very whiny voice): My hands! I used to have ten fingers and now I only have five!
Me (laughing): What?! You still have ten. Count your fingers again.
Noah: (counting one hand) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. See? Only five.
Me: What about your other hand?
Noah: (counts the other hand) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Only five!  I told you!
Me: No, I mean add them together. Count all of your fingers.
Noah: (counts both hands) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…7…oh.

Boys vs. Girls
Another conversation that Noah and I had recently:
Noah: Mom, I don’t like girl friends.
Me: What?! What are you talking about?! But you have lots of friends that are girls.
Noah: I know. But I don’t like girl friends.
Me: Whatever. Girls are cool man.
Noah: Well…you’re ok.

Conditional Love
Noah also let me know where I stand recently when he told me this right before I took him to his swimming lesson, “Mom, sometimes I love you and sometimes I don’t love you. But right now I love you.” Thanks, kiddo.

Why Elton John Rocks
For some random reason, it turns out that Julian loves the song Bennie and the Jets. And by loves, I mean that if he is doing his inexplicable crying thing, he almost immediately calms down as soon as he hears those first few opening piano chords. My guess is that the song encourages me to perform the ideal combination of bouncing and swaying that will magically calm babies down. I downloaded that song only two months ago and iTunes shows that I’ve played it 97 times already. And that number doesn’t include the times I hit repeat without waiting for the song to completely finish or the zillions of times we’ve played the version sung by The Sippy Cups. So yeah, he’s a fan.

Julian Laughing
I take a lot of pictures of Julian to try to capture this very brief, but awesome, part of his life. But there are some things that you just can’t capture with a camera. Like laughter. Which is why video comes in so handy: