Happy Birthday, Juliet!

Juliet turned the big ONE on Tuesday. What a historic, curveball of a year it's been. I feel like the first year with a new baby is always hard but we certainly padded our strength of schedule with an international birth, 25 hours of travel across 12 time zones (and back), and 5 months of a global pandemic with no end in sight. 

So yea, its been a doozy! But we survived it and are settling into the 'new normal' here in Thailand. We are oh-so-homesick but with the way things stand this is the first time we aren't desperately trying to get back to the US. Things in Thailand are stable. There are some things that are a hassle (wearing masks apparently indefinitely in 100 degree heat, often having to make reservations for every little thing, having to show passports, supposed to check in with an app everywhere we go, etc) but we are able to gather with a small group of friends, go to play places, etc, all while feeling reasonably sure that we aren't at risk for contracting Covid-19.  

Juliet and Jonathan have birthdays 3 days apart so we smooshed them into one combined celebration. Last Saturday we met with some friends for brunch at our favorite watering hole, Sweet Poppy, and then everyone came to our house for cake. 

Juliet demolished her smash cake. I'm not surprised. 

For her actual birthday we lathered her with gifts and took she and Forest to Harborland (a giant indoor play place) to play. 

I haven't been so great about keeping up with milestones and all the little details this time around, so here's my best attempt at it...

Stats: 31.1 inches (>97%), 25 lbs (>97%). So basically she's off the charts. She's technically overweight but the doctor wasn't concerned since her height and weight have both skyrocketed over the first year and she's very proportional. Plus he said most bigger babies can be hindered in physical movement and since that's clearly not the case with her, her chunky cheeks are not an impediment to her gross motor development. He made many comments about her strength and muscle tone. We are thinking she may have a future in the WNBA.  Her head circumference is 46 cm which is around 80%.  She's wearing 18 month clothes and size 5/5.5 shoe. 

she looks especially large compared to her petite nanny (and her petite momma)

Schedule: Juliet is toying around with the idea of dropping down to one nap a day. I'm trying to hold on to the double naps until brother is back in school (August 11) because it's nice to have a morning nap to spend 1-1 with him and then a second nap for he and I to have our separate quiet alone time. She struggles with very early mornings (looking back I used to stress about Forest waking at 6:30 and only getting 11 hours of overnight sleep- Juliet is 'sleeping in' if she makes it to 6:15 and 10.75 hours overnight). We are averaging the following:
6/6:30 wake up
7 breakfast
9 snack
9:30-11 nap
11:30 lunch
2- snack
2:40-4 nap
6 dinner
7 bottle
7:15/7:30 bed

When she isn't fighting naps she's a fairly talented napper. I wake her from most naps just to keep on schedule for an early bedtime. 

Feeding: We are trying to transition Juliet  from formula in bottles to cow's milk in a straw cup and it's not going well.  We had success mixing it with formula and giving it to her in a bottle and now she will take straight milk in a bottle and is starting to drink a few ounces here and there from her cup. She also loves banana milkshakes (frozen banana blended with whole milk) so we are cobbling together enough ounces to reach the minimum suggested. Forest just switched cold turkey to milk in a cup and never skipped a beat so this has been a curveball. 

Juliet is...um....persistent. Which is a positive spin on 'strong-willed/stubborn.' Forest was always wild and challenging but mostly because he was high energy and just extremely motivated to always have fun- not because he had super strong opinions about anything. We can already tell Juliet is WAY more opinionated and not as easily convinced to do something just because I turn it into a game. She's also cutting her one year molars so I know that isn't doing us any favors with the whole 'changing up eating and drinking habits' issue. 

She eats fairly well. Loves chicken, beans, sweet potatoes, squash, yogurt, most fruit, etc. 

Favorite book: This breaks my heart but Juliet is not a book fan! She likes to flip through them but can't be bothered to sit still long enough to read through one with me. I definitely have to speed read if I want to finish a book cover to cover with her. Her favorites are definitely the touchy feely books. If it doesn't have some sort of tactile, pop-up, or lift-the-flap feature you can forget about it! Her favorites are the Jellycat line 'If I were a... (bunny/panda/lamb/etc' and the Usborne 'That's not my... (bunny/panda/lamb/etc' series. 

Favorite toy: Soccer ball (or balls in general)! 

Forest gave me reading, but Juliet is my great hope for giving me sports. She always has a ball nearby and she will just kick it around the house. She also enjoys the play kitchen and the only thing she'll focus on for any real amount of time is taking out the play can goods and taking the tops off and putting them back on or pushing around the shopping cart and piling in everything she can. 

Favorite foods: Chicken, avocado, sweet potatoes, fried rice, French fries, kiwi. And blueberry shortcake, obviously. 

cake drunk

Words: Juliet was really picking up words at a fast rate but seems to have plateaued a bit. Her favorite word is definitely 'this!' and she uses is to communicate fairly efficiently. I want THIS. I dropped THIS. Look at THIS. She also says daddy and momma consistently and has several words for brother. Sometimes brubba, sometimes baba, sometimes 'dada' (Nepali for brother), and then sometimes a very clear 
'bruder'. She has also said (but not consistently)- cat, that, ball, baaa (like a sheep), done, down, dog, book, three (if you count 1,2, she will sometimes say 'three!'), jump, bye, hi, eyes, buzz (like a bee), baby, uh-oh, bubbles, and fish. So I feel like she says a lot but it's really sporadic and mostly just a bunch of 'this!'. I feel like she on the cusp of a language explosion but time will tell. 

New skills: Climbing and getting down safely. Coming along with her soccer skills too! 

She's making progress with spoons and forks. She's starting to stack rings on her stacker toy but she's got a super short attention span so trying to work with her on puzzles/sorters/stackers is generally a non-starter. 

Dislikes: Being confined whether that's in the car seat or high chair or baby carrier or mommy's arms. She's a wiggle worm and can't stay still. She also hates milk apparently. 

General observations: Juliet is busy, active and fearless, just like her brother. I have anxiety about this, for real. I was hoping a girl would be a bit more mellow but so far she's been a carbon copy, but more advanced physically. 

We have to watch her because she'll run off if given half a chance. And she'll climb anything too. 

She's very friendly- has never seemed to have even a smidge of stranger anxiety. Her doctor even commented on how social she was at her appointment. She walked right over to him and the nurses, let them pick her up and gave them big smiles. So she's VERY different than her brother in that regard. 

She's so persistent. If she's learning a new skill she will practice it over and over again. We have a step going down into the bathrooms here so one day she just practiced going up and down that step probably 20 times in a row. Since she's an avid climber, we've had to work with her on turning around and scooting backwards to safely get down and she would randomly practice backward scooting on the ground. 

Happy birthday, Juliet! We are buckling up for a wild ride as you enter toddler-hood. Keep laughing and lighting up rooms with your contagious smile and confident spirit!

Getting our Travel Groove back: Kanchanaburi Road Trip

It's been 45+ days of no local cases of Covid-19 here in Thailand. Though social distancing is still encouraged and masks are mandatory, the country is adjusting what it campaigns as 'the new normal'. Borders remain closed unless you are a citizen and a few other exceptional cases but not without a negative Covid test and a 14 day state quarantine upon arrival (and yet all of our positive Covid tests have come from returnees in quarantine). 

A large part of Thailand's economy is dependent on tourism so it's been dealt quite the blow. The government is incentivizing domestic travel by adding in holidays and offering rebates on travel expenses. Many hotels and activities are remaining closed until they can justify the costs of reopening and figuring out the logistics of all the new safety protocols.  

Anyhoos, we decided to do our part to jumpstart the tourism industry and picked a place within a 2.5 hour drive of Bangkok: Kanchanaburi. 

We upgraded for the trip and now I think we need a full size van. 

Kanchanaburi is most famous for it's WWII significance of housing the bridge on the River Kwai. The bridge was built by Japanese prisoners of war, many of whom died in the labor-intensive process. 

We stayed at Away Dheva Mantra, a sprawling resort on the river. We had a beautiful room with a large riverside balcony. 

View from balcony. So relaxing to sit out in a rain storm. Felt like home. 

The grounds were gorgeous and it was worth the trip just to be able to let our kids run around in nature. The windy riverside location coupled with some overcast rainy season relief made for cooler temps than we've been dealing with in Bangkok. 

The resort had a gorgeous pool as well with large shallow areas perfect for Juliet to splash around in. 

Shallow area

Another favorite feature of the grounds were their rescued bunnies. 

We weren't overly impressed with the food there but also only ate one dinner there from their pool menu since the rest of the restaurants were closed or fully booked. 

Also, we have a travel highchair that I could have easily brought along, and I knew better than to just assume a resort in Thailand would have highchairs in their restaurants so I even called to confirm. 'Yes, we have baby high chairs', I was told. When we arrived to eat they showed up with this. 

I was like 'yea, I don't know if you've ever met a baby but that is not a high chair, that is a death trap'. To my surprise I saw several Asian babies and toddlers using the very same high chair during our stay. Freaks. Juliet just ate safely strapped in her stroller the entire trip. Every single non-resort restaurant we went to had proper high chairs with straps and trays and everything. So the next time I call a resort ahead of time about high chairs I know I need to ask specifically if they have a highchair that my child can't easily topple out of. You live, you learn. 

Our main agenda while in Kanchanaburi was to 1)visit the bridge on the River Kwai 2) Hike Hellfire Pass 3) Do a half day experience at Elephant World (caring and cooking for elephants) 4) Hike and swim at Erawan National Park waterfalls. Because of Covid-19, many of these things had to be amended. Hellfire Pass is still closed indefinitely, Elephant World is only open for elephant feedings, and Erawan Falls were open but no swimming is currently allowed. 

I'm not sure what covid-19 risk swimming in waterfalls poses especially since they are restricting the amount of people allowed in each day/time slot (we had to sign up ahead of time to reserve our spot and it was basically empty) but we complied with the rules. Jonathan and I both said that we preferred to go and hike it/no swimming with very little people vs getting to swim but with tons of tourists there so it was certainly a trade off. 

Our resort was very near to the Bridge on the River Kwai. For those who don't know what I'm referring to, the bridge is famously part of the Thailand-Burma 'death railway' that Japan built during WW II mostly on the backs of prisoners of war and Burmese slave labor. It was brutal work in deplorable conditions and over 100,000 people died in its construction. It's been commemorated in the famous book/movie 'Bridge on the River Kwai' (which FYI is not available on Kindle) but is also the subject matter of the book 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' by Richard Flannagan and the movie 'The Railway Man' with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman if you're interested in going down the history rabbit hole. Kanchanaburi has many war memorials/cemeteries/museums but with the kiddos in tow we only made the bridge the focus of this trip. 

Having visited other sites of WW II significance in Europe, this had a much different feel. Instead of reverence, it was treated more like a tourist trap with hawking and prisoner of war memorabilia. Since the Thailand borders are closed the crowds were minimal which we appreciated. We were able to visit twice and take our time walking across and we ate twice on the river with a view of the famous bridge. 

Forest said 'That's the famous bridge? It doesn't look famous.' I can always count on him to provide the comic relief.  We also gave him the cliffnotes of WWII and he said Hitler and Voldemort had one very big thing in common: 'They were both EVIL. But Voldemort isn't as scary because he isn't real.' Touche. 

We did Erawan Falls on Friday morning, hoping to beat the local weekend crowds and we did. The park was relatively empty during our 9 am time slot. We left Juliet with our nanny, Nanu, which turned out to be a good call because Forest ended up wanting to go all the way to the top which involved some scrambling (tough to do with a baby on your back). At first he was not enthused about boring old hiking but as soon as we arrived on the trail a dog appeared and started following us/leading us around. 

Forest quickly fell in love with the pup and followed him eagerly up the mountain leaving me, Jonathan and Khun Sak (our driver) panting behind him. 

The Falls have seven different levels of pools and increasing elevations. One through 3 are easily accessible with good paved tracks. 

Level 3 was my favorite. The temptation to dive in was pretty strong!

After Level 3 things steepen up and after Level 6 the trail basically disappears and you have to scramble your way to the final stop. 

I was glad we had the dog to lead us! It was about 1.9 miles from the car to level 7 with a lot of climbing so it was a satisfactory workout and so beautiful! 

We took a good long break at the top and though we didn't swim, we did dip our feet in for fish pedicures. (After the national Parks being closed for 3 months, we figured the fish hadn't had a good dead skin meal in a while.) 

And of course, Forest eventually 'fell' in. Who saw that one coming? This kid can't help himself with water. He's been "accidentally falling" into bodies of water since he was 2. At least this wasn't Lake Tahoe in March. 

Oops! What happened? How did I get into the lake when my mom told me not to put so much as a toe in?

It was such a good day and hike and Forest surprised us with his good attitude. Our driver (who also has a 6 year old boy that he's taken here many times) was amazed at F's unending energy. He kept saying 'I've never met a kid like you'. Neither have we. Ha! I really wish we still lived in California or Scotland where these sorts of outings were a weekly thing. He'd really thrive with more outside active time and Bangkok is about the worst place for those opportunities. 

After the hike we gorged ourselves on Thai food with a good view of a nearby lake. 

If you squint your eyes and imagine it's 30 degrees cooler you can almost imagine you're in the English Lake District.

Then we raced home so that we could all nap during Juliet's afternoon siesta. Except for Forest, of course. He rested by watching Netflix. Then we headed back to the bridge area for a walk around and to find some dinner. PS-We like brining our Thai driver with us to dinner because he always knows what to order and how to explain 'American spicy, not Thai spicy.' 

The next day we relaxed at the resort in the morning. I mentioned this already but we loved the pool! 

It's so hard to find pools that are good for little ones here. They are usually massive and deep and even our strong swimming 6 year old has a hard time getting across them without tiring out. Juliet is a maniac in the water and constantly tries to throw herself out of our arms. I appreciated that the pool at Away had a large Baja shelf sort of step and a very large shallow area with long very shallow steps and fountains where Juliet could explore a bit independently and Forest could play without having to all out swim the entire time. I would stay there again just for this feature alone. 

After Juliet's nap we headed to Elephant World to feed the elephants at the sanctuary. Elephants are a big draw in Thailand but it can be tricky to find an ethical elephant attraction.  Elephant World rescues elephants that have been retired from unethical tourist businesses or been mistreated or harmed in other ways. Even though their full range of experiences wasn't being offered, we were allowed to purchase food and feed them for as long as we wanted. Forest and Juliet both really enjoyed this! 

Juliet really got a hang of it by the end and would hand her banana leaf over to an elephant and then circle back to get another. She was a bit hesitant to give up the bananas though. 

If you want this banana, you're gonna have to pry it out of my cold dead hands. 

For our final night, Jonathan found a sushi restaurant. It had a really cool field adjacent where the kids enjoyed romping about. 

Pretty amazing sushi display. 

The next morning we decided to time our 2 hour drive with Juliet's morning nap. This totally backfired as she fought sleep the whole time and was totally miserable. She kept crying for 'momma, momma' which meant I was tasked with keeping her calm the whole way home. THE WHOLE WAY HOME.  I still can't believe she never fell asleep. I thought sleeping in cars was the most natural thing for a baby to do. I risked my life several times trying to keep Forest awake in the car so that he'd nap well at home. Juliet was a pro at napping on the go up til 7 months when we stopped leaving the house for 4 months. Thanks Covid!  But really, that was the only hiccup in a really good trip! We are trying to take advantage of traveling with a nanny while we have the opportunity and it really does help balance out some of those large-age-gap logistics. 

Our trip also fell over the 4th of July so I took some red, white and blue photos of the kids on our gorgeous balcony. 

Happy birthday, America! We hope to see you again someday. What a crazy time to be an expat.