I love the Cirque du Soleil. It gives me a sense of what it must be like to take an illegal substance. But Cirque du Soleil is not the circus. I hate the circus. It gives me a sense of what it must be like to need to take an illegal substance. If you want […]
Thailand
Babies, Monkeys, and Bangkok
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]