TCM

Anyone know what "TCM" stands for? Nothing to do with thought or culture, if that was your first guess. It is Traditional Chinese Medicine. And I have just had my first real taste of it, after ignoring (or at times scorning) it these past 9 years. Recently I have had tingling and occasional numbness in my arms and legs. I went to a traditional doctor and a neurologist, but both seemed to find nothing wrong. Just about that time, I heard about this TCM doctor who used to work with my friend Angie's parents in the US. She now lives here and is coming to my city to treat Angie's family, who is visiting for Christmas. So I thought--well, I am not getting much from western medicine, maybe I will try it.

I have been twice now. There are definitely some things she says that are very different from a western mindset and a little hard to wrap my head around. At the same time, she is very wholistic and takes the time to learn all about you. And she has helped some somewhat famous people in America with everything from Parkinson's disease to allergies and asthma. So far she has told me I need more sleep and need to stop nursing before I can get better. She has given me massages every day (those are great) b/c my shoulders are really tight all the time, and done acupressure on my ears. If you live here, you may have seen those little pieces of tape on people's ears? Always wondered what it was there for? Me too. In the tape are little black balls and you press on them 3-4 times a day to do acupressure. No needles yet, but I think in 2 more days she may do some acupuncture on my arms. Definitely a new experience. The jury is still out on whether it will work, but I am actually pretty hopeful that it will. I will let you know. Chris may go too, to see if she can help with his headaches and MSG allergy.

Meanwhile, a package from Grandpa and Nai Nai arrived today! They keep rolling in. Chris had a big concert last night. It is really cold- 27 degrees F at the moment. Well, we having homemade pizza for dinner and I need to go roll the dough.

Packages

Tis the season for...packages! We love getting packages. If there is an unexpected knock at the door, we all think "maybe it is a package". We got on the other day from Great Grandma and Great Grandaddy Haney. It is sitting under our tree ( still in the mailing box, lest everything be destroyed before Christmas). Today we got our "pre-Christmas" and Chris' birthday package from Nana and Bop. THANK YOU! It was almost like Christmas already. The favorite item for all of us was the Little People Nativity set- so perfect for a 3 and 1 year old. This was the quote of the day as we opened it from Austin.

"Mommy, the Bible says we can open the Nativity (actually he says Ativity) before Christmas"

me "well, yes you can open it before Christmas. The Bibles doesn't actually say that you can, but its ok"

A "The Bible says we can't open it before Christmas?" in a worried voice

me "No, it is fine to open it. The Bible just doesn't talk about opening presents on CHristmas"

"Ok"

Cute :). Also, Austin wanted to immediately make the gingerbread house (she sent a kit) but we will have to hold off till Friday probably. Sorry, no pictures now but they will come. I was just making a to do list from now until Christmas and it is really long! Still have shopping to do, edible gifts to make for friends, a celebratory dinner for 20+ people to plan for next week (I think we will have chili and cornbread- great meal for a crowd), 2 white elephant gifts to buy, a cookie exchange to bake for etc. Good news for me...Chris' Christmas Eve performance was cancelled. I can't say I am sad about it. Well, gotta go work on my list some more.

The Little Reader 2

For some reason, since Austin has loved words and books since he was very little, Chris and I just assumed Bennett would be different. Well, he is certainly his own person and different from Austin in a lot of ways, but lately he LOVES books and "reading".

I will often find him in the room in front of the bookshelf, just flipping pages and looking at books. He often makes animal noises (he will make an animal noise he knows when he sees any animal...and will go through his repertoire of sounds- moo, roar and quack). He will actually sit there for as long as 30 minutes sometimes.

It doesn't take more than a few minutes for the floor to look like this- while he likes reading, he also likes pulling all the books off a shelf.

And sometimes it unfortunately progresses to this...pulling pages apart. Yesterday I spent awhile taping together several books that had been damaged. Not sure how to encourage the reading while still protecting our book collection.

Why?

Speaking of phases that Austin is in these days, he is also in a "why?" phase. I guess every child goes through this as they are learning about the world and how it works. Austin's favorite question is "why?" and there is a constant barrage of questions throughout the day. In a 20 minute span today between riding the elevator home from a library trip and lunch, we had the following conversations.

A "Mommy, why are there two "1's" in eleven?"
me "well, that is how you write 11"
A "why"
me "well, that is how you write it. It is one more than 10"

or

A "Mommy, why do polar bears live where it cold?
me "well, God made polar bears with thick fur so they could live where it is cold"
A "why mommy?"
me "God made all different animals just right for where they needed to live"
A "why?"
me "Because God knows everything"
A "oh"

or
A "Mommy, why did I grab my spoon when i was a baby?" (Bennett was trying to grab the spoon I was feeding him applesauce with at that moment)
me "well, babies like to grab things"
A "Why?"
me "they just do"

Usually at some point, my answer always becomes "It just does" or "that is the way it is" or something to that effect. You can only explain why an A make the "ah" sound or why baby Jesus didn't have running water so many times before you run out of reasons to satisfy a 3 year old. I love it, however. I am glad he is curious and thinking about the world and it is so fun to watch his little mind develop.

Nekkid

Remember not so long ago, Austin was in this phase where he hated to NOT be wearing clothes for any length of time? Maybe you don't, but it was only a few months ago, at the beginning of potty training (I tried to get him to go pants-less at the beginning of trying out the potty, but it didn't work). Well, it is funny how quickly things change. Austin is definitely in a naked phase these days. I go in his room in the morning to get him up and he has taken his pajamas off. He was literally naked all day except for wearing a diaper at naptime (no, we did not go outside today). Fortunately, our apartment in warm in the winter. Here are a few tasteful shots of the day. I have a few more not-so-tasteful ones, but you never know who might be out there in cyber-world.

Check out the shoes! He found them in his closet. It was about the only thing he wore.

Well, ok he did wear his Thomas outfit for about 5 minutes. We got him a new bow for his violin when Chris got his upright bass, so he has been back to violin playing.

Again, love the shoes!

We practically have an orchestra in the house now.

Happy Birthday, Chris!

Today we celebrated Chris' birthday. It was one day early, but he had Monday off and a busy day on Tuesday, his actual birthday (December 8).



Well, Chris has wanted this ever since we were exploring "music street" and found a store that had a really (relatively) cheap, second hand upright bass. I have been resistant for awhile, mainly because I have been thinking 1. where will we put something this big in our not-so-big apartment? and 2. how will we keep two active, curious boys off of it? Well, I am still not entirely sure how to answer those two questions, but we are now officially the owners of an upright bass (as Chris reminds me, a 3/4 size upright bass. You mean, they come bigger than this?). He is very excited, so I am happy for him.



Austin seems to have adopted the role of "official helper to blow out all birthday candles" in the family. So he "helped" Chris blow out his candles. For the second year in a row, Chris chose his to have a giant, Gingerbread Cookie for his "cake", since he isn't a big fan of regular birthday cake. Austin and I made it this morning and it turned out ok, despite having only a little bit of molasses that was rather dry. Happy Birthday, Chris!

Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree

I have spent about a week slowly decorating our apartment for Christmas. Last Saturday night, I got the tree out (2 years ago I caved and bought our first artificial tree. I love real ones and we always got a huge, potted evergreen of some sort in the past, but it is so expensive in our current city and more work than I could handle) and put the lights on. Amazingly, I have used the same string of lights for at least 3 years in a row. In this country, lights are rarely made to last.

Wednesday of this week, Chris had the day off so we did a little family decorating. I have always loved my family's tradition of decorating the tree as a family growing up, but I was a bit hesitant this year. As much as I love traditions and Christmas, I had a decorating disaster in my daydreams where the tree ended up crashing down on the floor. BUT, that hasn't happened. Yet. :)

I got out some of the ornaments. Austin wanted to put lots of them on, but had lots of trouble with the ornament hooks. I pulled out the safest ones I could think of (or he had help) for him to decorate. Either Chris or I had to be playing "defense" with Bennett. I really expected to spend most of the days of December pulling him away from the tree. However, while he has been a little curious, he usually ignores it and goes straight for his toys. We did have the bottom string of lights pulled off at one point, but mostly it has stayed up.


We are going with the "minimalist" theme with our decorating. The bottom third of the tree has no ornaments except for a stuffed elephant from Thailand and a plastic UNC basketball. Both relatively unbreakable. No ribbons running down the tree this year. Not so many glass balls either. I have one of my nativity scenes up, but the others I will save for another year. We have one really good spot that is high enough to be out of reach from little fingers and mouths.

Our countdown Advent Christmas tree is hung just high enough to be out of Bennett's reach and just low enough that Austin can reach to put each day's ornament on. Well, both boys are awake from nap and letting me know it. Happy Advent.