Maybe you should just get a sign that says " TOURIST "

DSC06574, originally uploaded by dumplingrrl.

We're heading up to Chiang Mai for a few days since the Mr. will be in town for some business. Don't you love the hat Mari picked out for the occasion? Oh, ok ok. It's a dorky hat that looks so adorably dorky on her, and we picked it out, not her poor thing. Anyways, it'll be my first time traveling with her and I'm a bit nervous but I'm also excited to be seeing the Mr, again after he's been away for over 2 months.

Hey Mr. we miss you!!

Mother tongue.

I've begun to notice that my ability to read or write Thai is slowly deteriorating. It may be because I use written Thai so little in my everyday life. It's pretty strange to think that I might be losing my own language. I can speak it just fine but if I read I feel like I have to try a bit harder to understand than I would if it were in English.

Thai was my first language but when I was 6-7 I moved to NY for 4 years and subsequently forgot almost everything. I had to re-learn it when we moved back, I was about 11 then. It's a really hard language to learn because it's a tonal language and I had a very hard time training my ears to here the tones again. And don't even get me started on the god damn spelling! We have letters that are actually silent. Then why the hell do we put them there!? Because it's always been there. (And that says a whole lot about how the education system treats outdated things here.)

Yeesh. Just thinking about how hard it was to learn it the second time round is going to scare me enough to brush up on my skills.

Your little white face is my moon.

Mari laughed for the first time yesterday. A really loud 'Huh huh huh'sound. It was just wonderful. I will tell you, there is no sound in the world like a baby's first laugh, I can't describe it and I am just so lucky to have heard it. She was quite surprised by the sound herself and looked quite bewildered for a second or so.

This is now one of my favourite memories.

All this AND I cook!

I'm soo tired. I saw something on the news the other day about a Japanese man who died from over-work. Well, now I know the Mr. isn't the only Japanese work-a-holic. If I suddenly disappear you all can be sure that I had a heart attack from trying to match his pace.

When that happens please have a nap in my memory.

Behind the wheels.

It turns out moving a whole vehicle isn't so hard. I still can't believe how easy it is to move a whole car. I mean, it's sort of like the driving dreams I used to have where I feel like I'm moving the car by sheer force of will :S Anyway, I got in to the driver's seat and my friend K sat clutching the hand brakes while I drove in circles round a vacant lot v e r y s l o o o w l y y y. . . And a few old men sat watching from next to the parking lot no doubt betting on when the chic will drive right in to the nearby garbage pile or one of the HUGE moving trucks parked nearby.

I was forbidden from stepping on the accelerater.

Hm.... All in all, twas pretty much fun.

Gotta go feed the munchkin. Good night all.

Mari doesn't like you.

DSC06448, originally uploaded by dumplingrrl.

I just love her mushy little face on this one. The Mr. has requested that I update more often. Yes, honey. Sorry for slacking off :P I've been thinking about trying to post more anyway..

Random stuff that's been going on:

-I'm about to learn how to drive. Up until now I didn't think I needed to drive, but getting around Thailand by taxi pisses me the fuck off. So I guess I better learn to do it myself. (as always)

-Some kids think it's fun to light firecrackers around our house to get our dog to bark. And ring our doorbell constantly. They're just kids but are really annoying and it makes me feel petty and mean for hating on them. I know I should be a kinder/better person now that I'm a mom, but I'm not. I want to hunt them down and punch their oily little pre-teen faces in.

-Mari on the other hand, is just melting my heart. She's almost 6 kilos now. She always wakes up in the best little mood. She'll smile and laugh. But she insists on staying on my arms all. day. long. Mom says I've throughly spoilt her. Oh well, she'll be a baby for only such a short while. I don't mind holding her at all. It all seems to go by so fast, she's already trying to turn over on her own!

I'd write more, but I gotta save something for my next post, eh?

emerging from the fog

I've been lost in some kind of maternal fog since Mari came about a month ago. It's been a whirlwind of feeding, changing, bathing, cuddling and getting stuff done. My head is still spinning. I finally have a moment to use the computer so I'm going to make this a quick update:
-Mari has gained 1 kilo, she loves walks in the garden, cuddling with her dad, and Jackson Browne's music. She has real stinky neck cheese :)
-I am finally one kilo below my prepregnancy weight and can fit in to my old jeans. (Vain, I know but YAY!!! anyway) I think the weight I lost might be my brain though, I feel like it's missing.
-We can not stop kissing, holding, playing with Mari. My mom swears I'm spoiling her rotten.
-Mari decided at around 2 weeks that she would rather sleep with us in our bed. She cries when we put her down in her crib and immediately settles down when we bring her to ours'. I really love co-sleeping with her though. I think she's decided her crib is her 'changing room' because that's become it's main purpose. She becomes quite indignant when she wakes up to find she's been left to snooze there.

Here are some pics folks:






Oh, and I am still crafting. Mostly mindless zombie knitting but hey, it's pretty relaxing! Anything I can knit while nursing is game. Right now it's the pinwheel baby blanket using Bouton D'or Medina. It's a viscose/wool blend and is very pretty:

Mari.

Well, she's here. My own little girl :) Mari Wangsai born on August 15th 2007 at 5:35 pm. A total surprise popping out at 37 weeks. I was caught completely un-prepared. She's so tiny, 2.5 kilo and 48 cm long with a darling apple dumpling face. She has lots of fine black hair, sharp little nails that she scratches me with and a tiny little bud of a mouth. I'm completely in love. Here's her birth story:

At 6 pm. the day after my 37 week exam I started having irregular contractions, they became pretty regular at about 10 pm. coming once every 5 min. It was so early I actually thought it was false labour and went to bed, tried to sleep through them until at 8 am. I called the hospital and they had me come in immediately. Turns out I was 1 cm. dilated and 75% effaced. Went to the delivery room and laboured there till 5 pm. The doctor came in and checked me, it turns out I hadn't made any progress at all and her head wasn't engaged. They decided that it was probably because my pelvis was too small for her to fit through and advised me to have a C-section. I really didn't want one, but I was worried about her, I don't know how much stress she was under during the long labour, so I agreed. It turns out that the C-section wasn't as bad as I thought. Kinda like watching an episode of ER... Anyway, the epidural blocked out any feeling in my lower body so I had no idea the doctor was actually lifting her out. I thought they were still looking for her when I heard her whimper, then cry and the doctor was saying she's a girl. I just laughed out loud! I was so happy to have her here and it was so unreal that they have actually lifted a real live living human being out of my body. I remember thinking 'Now we are two.' Me and Mari have been occupying the same space for so long having her out of my body felt like a huge step.

After that was the long road to recovery. I'm really glad the hospital here is so pro-breast feeding. It was really hard learning how to feed her, I'm not sure I could have done it with out all the advice I recieved. She's a very good feeder and has a very good appetite, but in the beginning it hurt so much. Like someone pinching your nipple over, and over, and over again. But I'm really glad I'm able to breatfeed her. I look at her poo and feel like, yeah, that's my breast milk right there :D

I'll try to post pictures when I have time again( God knows when that will be, it's been all Mari 24/7 since we got home.) The Mr. has been wonderful, I couldn't have hoped for a better partner through all this. He's been very patient and attentive during my recovery from the C-section, and he's just so in love with Mari. I think he's used up all the memory chips we have taking her pictures! Anyways, pics later. I promise. Right now I have to go get some sleep before the little miss wakes up for her next feed.

Losing my religion.

I went to re-new my ID card the other day. Had to change from Miss to Mrs. since me and the Mr. are now officially married by Thai law, and I decided to change my religious status too. I used to be Buddhist but had stopped believing for more than 6 years now. I never really identified with the Theravadi Buddhism that's pre-dominant in Thailand anyway, so I didn't want it written on my ID that I do. Simple enough, I didn't expect to be turned in to 'the woman with no soul' at the city office.
Here's what happened.

I went in, got in line, had my photo taken, blah blah blah... Then the staff person asked for my blood type and religion. I told her B and to leave my religion as a blank, she said ok. On to the next que.

The woman who checked my info looked at my blank religion and said:
Her: You don't have a religion!?
Me: Yeah, can we leave that as a blank?
Her: But how can you not have a religion? Don't you believe in anything?
Me: I'm still looking around... (Thought:It's none of your business anyway!)
Her: What was your religion before?
Me: Buddhist.
Her: And now?
Me: Nothing. I'm still looking.
Her: Why aren't you Buddhist anymore?! (Voice getting louder and higher)
Me: I stopped believing in Buddhism...
Her: Hey! Hey! She doesn't have a religion! (Shouting to the person in the next stall)
What about your parents!? What do they have to say about this!
Me:....

I can't believe she actually started asking about what my parents thought. To a woman almost 30 years old, Married, heavily pregnant, what would that say about me if I still had to ask my parents for permission about my faith. I opened my mouth to tell her my father had passed away, and my mom didn't mind what I believed, but I just couldn't waste anymore words. I just shook my head. At that moment the person next to her told her 'It's ok for her not to have a religion, it's not important info.' So with no back up she just started going on about how the ID didn't look complete and so on and cranked out my card.

LADY, WOULD IT BE COMPLETE IF I LIED ON IT?! WOULD IT?!

sheesh...

7/8/07

It's my birthday today. I'm 27, officially. 26 was a rollercoaster of extreme ups and downs, so I'm hoping 27 will be a smoother ride.

Plans for the day:
-Doctor's appointment, to check up on lil' red and see how s/he's doing.
-Home, a bit of laundry, maybe some crafting.
-Dinner out with the Mr.? We'll see about that one, I haven't decided on a good place yet.

Well, here's to what I hope will be a calm, mellow, happy year.

*Hmm.. The post goes up as 6 Aug. Must be the time zone difference, for the record, it's already 7 Aug here in BKK.

Joy!!

I FINALLY FINISHED THE BAG ORDER!!!!

No more teeny tiny bits of bag to sew in place, no more teensy weensy little stitches and finally some time to knit!! Yay!!

Here's some pics of the bags:

Here they are pre-cloth pom pom. I don't have any completely finished pics yet coz the Mr. took my camera to Chiangrai, so I'll just say that this is the photo I took when I was soo close to finally finishing I could almost taste it.

Now, aside from sewing (and more sewing...) I've been baby sitting this lil' devil:

And I do believe I'm satrting to understand his language...

And this is a pair of felt booties for little red (The baby's belly name)

See more of these babies here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bittybooties/

Undercover

I've finished the baby blanket. An order came in for some small change purses due next month meaning I needed to finish up my current projects so the quilt was done yesterday. I just cut out the back fabric (hot pink really soft cotton flannel) and the quilt batting. Layer it with the right side out and the batting sandwiched in between and tacked all that together. Then I sewed a border around all four sides and quilted the whole thing and it was finished! The quilting was very simply done just quilted along the borders of each square so in all it took just a day. Yay!

Sling thing

I bought a length of fancy printed cloth to make this sling since I was in Tokyo. It was a designer's print, I can't seem to recall here name... Amy something... but the print is REALLY cute and I finally dragged out the fabric and made up this baby sling. Here's some pictures of my dog Taka test driving the sling. He's around 6 kilos and he didn't feel heavy at all. But then he would only stay in the sling for maybe 5 minutes at a time so I'm not sure if I'll be saying the same thing after half a day of lugging baby Red around...

balls of string

I was in the stationary store the other day and they had some strings with really cute wrappings.

I really love these Thai/Chinese packagings. They're usually printed on really primitive printing machines using these LOUD colours. They have a style all their own. They were about 15 baht a ball so I bought 2. I didn't really know what to make with them but thought I'd figure something out.

I knitted up a small sample and it knitted up pretty well creating a sort of candy cane stripey pattern. The fabric was firm and not scratchy. So I decided to try a hat pattern I'd been waiting to knit from Erica Knight's Baby Bloom book.

The little earflap hat. I added some scrap yarn I had left over from my natural dyeing class, and a wee bit of blue washi yarn, and it was quite pretty. The reddish pink is cochineal at 50%, the brown is walnut hull, yellow is jackfruit bark at 50% or 100% and mordanted with alum (I'm not sure, need to check my dye log to be sure.) Green is... I think some kind of fresh leaf, but extracted using the alkaline method so it's really really bright green. I didn't dye this green, a classmate gave it to me as a sample.

Yeah, when there's not a yarn shop in sight you just have to make do. I'll see what other things I can find to knit with.

Layout

Something was begging to be started yesterday. I didn't feel like making more diapers, I'll admit it: I'm a project juggler. I have to have at least two big projects up in the air or I loose steam. I can't go on pounding out diapers, I needed something a bit different for a few days and then I'll go back to making those lil poopers.

So I dug around in my drawer of scraps and pulled out some black silk I had left over from making a jacket and a bunch of scrap kimono cloth I squirreled away. Actually, I'm a huge kimono scrap hoarder. I buy little bits of 100 yen scraps and use them for crafting, they're cheap and you wind up with so many cute little patterns. But these were the ones I loved the most. These were the pieces I hid away and dreamt up projects I would someday use them in, the ones I pulled out to drool over when I had time. They aren't expensive or anything but something about the patterns on each one had a special appeal for me. I've finally found a project for them.

I arranged and re-arranged them on a tabletop, this took like half a day. And this is the result:

A baby quilt.

I pinned them down,ironed and hand stitched them in place with a plain ol' running stitch and right now I'm going to applique them in place with black thread. After that the quilting.

Here's another pic that isn't so blurry. But the layout isn't the one I ended up using.

Diaper update

Here are some finished pics of the cloth diapers.



This is a diaper folded up and ready to go.



Pic of leg detail, the elastic creates a sort of border that helps the poop or pee stay in.



These are the ones I've finished.

Up to my ears...

in diapers. I need to make at least 12 diapers in sizes newborn, small, and large. That's the least I need, if I wanted to be more realistic I'd make 24 in each size, but I'd rather fool myself and remain sane. I've cut out all the tiny little newborn size diapers and their lining, and their soakers.


I got these patterns from mama bird's free diaper pattern at http://www.geocities.com/rew4birth/Diapers.html I think they work pretty well. I'm using the Mr.'s old t-shirt for material so it's almost all organic cotton and is soo soft. I managed to sew up and finish a few yesterday, pics of that coming soon.

(Come to think about it, I'm glad I started writing this blog again, it keeps me from shoving these tiny lil' monsters in people's faces and going 'LOOK LOOK aren't they CUUUUTE?! and they're so TEEENY!!!' yeah, they're cute, they're a lot of work, but I don't want my family to kick me out yet.)

As for unpacking and moving in, here is how the shelf looks now. My room is almost rid of the damn paper boxes. Yay!

Well, so much for good intentions...

I gotta say, I've been meaning to add to this blog for a long long while but I kept putting it off. Why? Because I was moving, and pregnant. Yep. I've recently moved back to Bangkok from Tokyo. The first few months of the pregnancy were very, um sleepy? I don't know how to explain it, but those of you who have been pregnant will probably understand. I just was really unmotivated and felt like sleeping all. the. time. Top that off with the class exhibition I was having at Tokyo Textile and I just fell right off the blog wagon.

Fast forward to today. I'm seven months along with a whole room of stuff I can't find places for. But we're about halfway settled in and I'm finding I have more time so I figured I'd give this blog thing another shot. I still want this to be a kind of log book for all my crafting endeavors. so to start off I'm going to put up a pic of how my crafting stuff look like now:



I'm having a hard time just looking at it. The other half of the room is a mess as well. I'm thinking about sewing up some big bin-like bags to store all the yarn in and take it from there. Let's see if posting it up here keeps me motivated.