He's Mobile!

Xander has learned his first baby sign, "all done."  Ideally, this allows him to tell us he is finished eating, so that we can teach him to stop when he's full, avoid bad eating habits and childhood obesity, etc.  In reality, it means he'll decide he's finished about five minutes into the meal, we will let him out of his high chair, he'll toddle around for a few minutes, then return to ask for more food.  As it turns out, toddlers don't know when they are all done.  Who knew...

He's walking!  When I took this video off of the camera, I noticed that we have a lot of cute footage gathering metaphorical dust on the camera.  My next post will include some of these videos.

The proper way to eat cottage cheese

With your hands, of course!

Humanity

A terrible thing happened a few weeks ago that made a small town elementary school a household name.  I was not able to find the words to talk about it then.  Like most of our nation, I was profoundly affected.  As a parent, possibly more so.  I can't bear to think of my sweet boy facing a shooter in elementary school.  I was so angry at all of the nuts who came out of the woodwork to promote, of all things, more guns.  Because it's obvious to me from where I live now that the only solution is total gun control.  I never have to worry about my family facing gunfire while shopping, while in a movie theater, at a political rally, or, for the love of god, in school, until we go back to the United States.  No amount of rhetoric can obscure the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time in the US, and does not happen in South Korea, Britain, Japan, and all of the other countries who have come to their senses about firearms.

As with gay marriage, I am sure that our country will eventually come to realize the folly of our current policy.  I hope that this happens before too many more innocents die.

As for the emotional aftermath, I have learned that there are two ways to view the world.  You can concentrate on the shooter, the gun nuts, and the internet trolls, or you can look at the way volunteers remodeled a middle school in three weeks, raising the bathroom floors, repainting the walls, and salvaging furniture from the old school to try and bring the students a modicum of stability while they deal with the tragedy.  You can concentrate on Wall Street and the growing gap between rich and poor in America, or you can look at the volunteers for Occupy Sandy, who have worked tirelessly to provide relief to disaster victims.  You can share the youtube video of the teens tormenting the poor bus monitor, or read about how people donated $700,000 to the woman, who was able to quit her job and start a nonprofit combatting bullying.  The few can be baffling, infuriating, and, in the case of Adam Lanza, incomprehensible.  But the many show that humans can show great, well, humanity.

My husband is one of the former types.  I am one of the latter.  I hope to raise my son to think like me.  If you believe that people can do great things, you are far more likely to do them yourself.  In this global era, we can see the best and worst of humanity with a simple click.  I hope that my son will join the best to alleviate the affects of the worst, and will do it with an earnest heart.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

In our grand tradition, we went to Seoul for Christmas this year.  Well, the weekend before Christmas.  Besides enjoying the Mexican food and cute decorations the Dragon Hill lodge has to offer, we went to Seoul to visit the Coex aquarium.  As an added bonus, said aquarium is in Gangnam-gu.  Since Gangnam Style is a global sensation, we thought it only appropriate that we visit.  We found a disappointingly vanilla looking area.  The aquarium had some neat exhibits, but man was it crowded.  Xander enjoyed the first few tanks of fish, then turned all of his attention to the people around him.  Bobby and I liked the undersea tunnel the best, but the sharks made Xander a little nervous.

Christmas was a blast.  Xander loved his new toys, and we had a nice dinner with Jin.

This was at the train station

all is loot laid out on Christmas Eve.  We may have overdone it

Are these for me?

Wait, dad, I can do it!

Christmas cake!

Parental cons

Xander's mac and cheese always has vegetables in it.  So do his grilled cheese sandwiches.  He happliy eats them, unaware of how I have altered a time honored kiddie food.  He has been watching his daddy drink Mountain Dew from a can for awhile now, and he finally started demanding to hold the can.  We filled an empty can with water, and he happily sips from it, going "aaah" when he finishes, just like his daddy.  It's really stinkin' cute.  We're wondering how long we can lead him along like this, convincing him that water is soda and all food has vegetables in it.  One day, he's going to go to a friend's house and realize that his parents have been conning him all these years.

Baby in the Snow!

That's right, it snowed!  It's supposed to be a harsh winter here, so I guess we'll get tired of it eventually.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying the sight of Christmas lights against a snowy background.  I don't think I've ever seen that before.

So of course we had to take Xander out for some exploring.  He was intrigued by the snow, but not pleased when it touched his bare skin.

In other news, I was rear ended.  That would be wreck #2 in the past year, neither of which was remotely my fault.  This time, the other driver preferred to deal without insurance, which was fine with us.  We ended up with some cash which we may or may not use to replace our bumper.  Sometimes I feel like a hardass requiring the baby to always be in a car seat, especially when we are stalling a cabbie while Xander screams and fights to avoid being strapped in.  Incidents like these reaffirm my resolve.  Koreans are notoriously bad drivers.

On the mountain

I'm not sure how I feel about this

Cyber Monday

I never participated in Black Friday.  Cyber Monday, however, is another story.  I enjoy picking out Christmas gifts online, particularly for a baby.  So I picked out an activity table that was half price.  It looked like something right up Xander's alley--it has a little ball you throw into the center of the table, which then comes out in the leg.  Kind of like baby pool.  Xander loves balls of all shapes and sizes, so I know he'll love this table.

Unfortunately, hundreds of other parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles had the same idea I did.  I was sidetracked during my shopping, and before I was able to check out, the table was sold out--curse you, job--and I was unable to find it anywhere else at the sale price.  Oh well, I thought, I'll just pay full price.  Unfortunately, every place that ships to an APO turned out to be sold out (Target, in a cruel tease, let me check out, and sent me an email the following day telling me the item was sold out).  So I registered for email alerts when the table is back in stock at a few places.

I currently have the table ordered with two stores, with plans to cancel my order with one when the other sends me a shipping notice.  I have spent countless hours hunting down this toy that I didn't know existed before Cyber Monday, but now am certain is the only Christmas present for my boy.

I guess I have eighteen years of this to look forward to.