We were leaving the chaos of Bangkok for the chaos of the Thai countryside. Inside our ubiquitous white tourist van were a driver, my in-laws, my husband, and our four-month-old twins. It was our kids’ longest journey; from our apartment in Bangkok it was a four hour drive south to a semi-private beach near Prachuap […]
Bangkok
Surviving the First Week with Newborns
Just over a week ago, my new blogging buddy, Rob Shep and his lovely wife Monica, celebrated the birth of twins. Their son Hayden has been home for a bit, and yesterday their daughter Reese was discharged from the hospital. This post is a Welcome Home message for all of them. And a walk down […]
The Vegetable Truck: Lying to My Children
When our twins were born, my husband and I were in year four of a five-year-stint in Thailand. As you can imagine, there were a plethora of noises in Bangkok, most of which assaulted our ears with video-game intensity. Sounds reverberated off skyscrapers the way noises echo in a canyon. My husband and I talked […]
Raising Normal Kids
This parenting thing baffles me. Generally I’m so lost in a labyrinth of fuzz that I don’t even bother to think about it. But today, I’ll wander back in. In many ways, I don’t have high expectations for my twins. I don’t expect (or want) them to be the top of the class, famous actors, […]
Fat in Thailand
There are stories that become part of a family’s lore. These are the stories that are pulled out at dinner parties like an old, time-tested joke. Even if people know the punchline, it’s a guaranteed laugh. The story of my husband taking our five-week-old twins for a stroll in our Bangkok neighbourhood may be one […]
5 Funny Memories from the First 6 Months: Raising Twins in Bangkok
I’ve spent a couple days trolling through emails from 2004, the year our twins were born. We lived in Bangkok at the time, and email was the way we communicated with people from home. What is interesting is how little the base personalities of William and Vivian have changed in the five years that have […]
Why Our Kids Love Having a Babysitter
We don’t get babysitters very often. This disappoints our five-year-old twins immensely. They’ve always loved babysitters. I have a few theories on why they love having other people look after them. Theory One has to do with the fact they’re twins. There’s comfort in numbers, especially when your partner-in-crime has been with you since the […]
5 Great and Not-So-Great Memories of Our Family Vacation
Memory 1: Seeing the Ocean My kids haven’t seen salt water since they lived in Thailand, and that was before they could walk upright. Because we now live in a landlocked province, they’re not exactly sea-savvy. We’ve grown tired of them asking “Is that the ocean?” every time we drive past a slough in a […]
Pregnant in Bangkok: remembering
There are things that scare me more than pregnancy, such as raising children or having a camera crew chase me around as I attempt to parent. But even after disasters such as lying face down on a golf course amidst a spectacular lightning storm (and I don’t even golf), pregnancy still ranks up there on […]
How Starting a Blog Is Like Having Twins
Starting a blog is like having twins. Well, sort of. There are similarities, in the same way getting a splinter is equivalent to hacking off your finger. Before you realize you’re going to start a blog – or have twins – life is pretty cruisy. You have free time, and later on when you’re truly […]