6 Years with Elias

It’s hard to believe that this guy....

Used to be this sweet little answered prayer!

For his 6th birthday, Talia and I filled ice cream cones with white vanilla cake batter and sprinkles!

His class was really excited to eat them.

Especially frosted with chocolate icing and sprinkles.

For home, Talia and I experimented with turning yellow cake batter (with sprinkles) into a tie-dye cake.

Elias loves all the colors, so sprinkles and tie-dye seemed appropriate.

It turned out fairly well!

Cutting into it was pretty impressive for him. His “wow!” made me smile.

It was really fun, we might have to do it again sometime.

We are thankful for six years with Elias. His stubbornness, silliness and sweetness are his defining marks. He has really taken off in reading this year! He loves his baby sister in the sweetest way. He has adjusted to school and not had any trouble going this year. He’s always teaching me new things he learned from Khmer class. We are glad he’s part of our family.

Elias Turns 5!

Elias has been looking forward to being 5 for several months now. Play places are scarce here, as public parks don't really exist, especially around where we live. For his birthday, we went to a mall that had a fun play place inside and the kids ran and played for a long time.

Another fun thing at this mall was the stuffed animal-like child version of motorcycles they could ride around a non-developed floor of the mall.

Instead of cake, he asked for doughnuts from the bakery. The kids enjoyed theirs on the way home in the Tuk Tuk. Elias and Ezra crashed as soon as we got home. That is birthday success, right there!

Something Elias has been wanting for a while was this exact book of a collection of Curious George stories. My grandmother had given that exact thing for us to bring in our luggage before we even knew that's what he wanted. It was hard not to laugh, then, when he mentioned wanting it while I knew we had it hidden. He was very happy and has been reading it constantly since he received it.

Happy Birthday, Elias! We love you!

September School, Birthday and Baby News

We've been deep in school routines and work lately. My second-born finds change the hardest, so it's nice to hear that he's adjusting better to classroom activities.

Some more exciting news we found out since the last post is that our new baby is a girl!!!! Everyone was hoping for a girl and very excited to know. I don't have check ups here, we just called a reputable ultrasound clinic and went. I think it was $15 for everything. We are also almost finished getting the midwife plane tickets! It's exciting!

My Talia turned 9 this month. To celebrate, we went out to a big mall with a dollar store (the best) and got really good pizza! That's rare since pizza on the street here is sweet and has weird toppings like boiled eggs. Instead of a birthday cake, she opted for doughnuts, also a rare treat.

On the way home, it started raining and the kids were excited to ride home in a downpour with the sides down on the Tuk Tuk.

Family pitched in to get her a good used bicycle, which she has wanted for years. She was ecstatic! Here, the best bikes are used ones from Japan. The shiny new ones from Vietnam break every time you look at them... But that's a story for another day.

Elias Turns 3

Elias was so excited about his birthday this year! I think it's the first one he's been old enough to anticipate and really understand. He (very nicely) asked if he could have a chocolate star cake this year with strawberries, his favorite. He also wanted "lots of balloons!"

I had two circle cake pans, but I figured I could find a tutorial online to turn two circles into a star, and sure enough, I did! Basically, you turn one into a pentagon and cut the other into 6 (one extra) even sliced triangles by removing the rounded part, and stick them together.

I used this devil's food cake recipe by Laura Vitale and the icing again is chocolate whipped cream (from this recipe) because it pairs so nicely with the fruit my kids always request. I did the writing with cream cheese icing for color contrast.

We recycled one of Ben's pretty blue flavored water bottles for a vase and put one of the gorgeous yellow marigold's from our garden in it. It has lasted all month.

Elias is a thoughtful, decisive little boy. He is always observing what's around him and figuring out how things work. We love him very much and look forward to many more birthdays with this special guy.

Elias Turns 2

Elias turned 2 this December, man that is hard to believe! Right now he is really interested in tools, trucks, airplanes, trains, babies and giraffes. Talia thought we should make him a giraffe themed cake, so we looked to see what we had in the pantry after Thanksgiving.

We decided to go with pineapple chunks for the "spots" and chocolate cake for the "skin" to make a giraffe print look... well, sort of.

I used Laura Vitale's chocolate cake recipe for the cake, but did a pineapple upside down thing first, to make a "2" with pineapple pieces. We had leftover cherry pie filling and whipping cream from Thanksgiving, so we decided to make a chocolate whipped cream filling and layer it with cherry and the rest of the fresh pineapple. This way, more of the sweetness came from the fruit than icing. The flavors balanced perfectly. Talia picked out a giraffe to print and tape on a skewer to help decorate and she made him a really nice birthday card.

For his birthday we found a jungle-themed lego set with a giraffe... that was his favorite piece to play with!

Seen in Abu Dhabi: 14

Strawberry tart dessert:

...at a nice restaurant that serves everything imaginable. Berries are one thing that are difficult to find (and expensive when found) in Abu Dhabi.

Blueberries were a big hit with Elias.

We had a great time with friends!

Kids Unscripted; Chapter 15

Talia: "Purple and grape rhyme when you look at them, just not when you say them."
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Talia: "My eyes are getting tired. They make me feel like there's a half-onion laying around somewhere."
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Talia: "I want to be a thing-maker when I get big."
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Talia: "Elias, you're my favorite brother!"
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Talia: "Is this vitamin good for if you accidentally eat a bug?"
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Talia: "Mommy, I don't think my brain is working right. I tried to turn on my dreams last night and they would baaarrrely work!"
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Me: "Talia, where is your plate?"
Talia: "Sitting patiently on the table waiting for something to fill it up!"
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 Talia: "Mama, you're my favorite thing to play with."
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 Me: "Talia, what do you think we should make for breakfast?"
Talia: "Scrambled egg and peanut butter sandwiches!"
Me: "All together? Ewwwwww!"
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Talia: "What if you had a voice like a tum-nimmy song?"
Me: "What is a 'tum-nimmy'?"
Talia: "It's a special kind of mouse song."
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Elias: "Waaaaaah"
Ben: "Why's Elias crying?"
Talia: "I put his shoes on his hands..."
Elias: "WAAAAAAHHH"
Ben: "Now why is he crying?"
Talia: "Because I took the shoes OFF of his hands... and that just doesn't make sense!"
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 {Note: Angry Bird stuffed animals are a big thing in the U.A.E. So I told Talia what they were and she said:}
Talia: "I want the play the 'birdy get out of the rubberband' game!"
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Talia: "Sometimes 'helpers' make things even harder, don't they?"
Me: "Haha, how did you figure that out!"
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 Elias' 16-month-old guide to understanding his talk:

"Balala" = "Banana"
"booboo" = "I have a dirty diaper..."
"Biaper" = "diaper"
"BITE" = "I think I'm going to die if I don't get food in my mouth right NOW!"
"tay-too" = "thank you"
"boom" = "broom"
"tee-koh" = "tickle"
"dedos" = Spanish for "fingers" or "toes"
"ish" = "shoes"
"down!" = this can mean "up" or "down" depending on where he is at the moment.
"uh!" = "up"
 "Dada" = "Papi" (and we've never called him anything else, so I'm not sure why he's saying 'Dada...')
"dis" = "this"
"Pahpah" = "Pawpaw"
"ow-sigh" = "outside"
"beh" = "bear"
"nai-nai" = "night-night"

Then there are words like: "bye bye, Mama, wow and Talia" that don't need any translation.
He understands exponentially more than he says at this point in time. I have a feeling it won't be long before he is talking my ears off just as much as his older sister.