goggles

makayla's been taking swimming lessons for the past couple of months. she is now at a stage where she can use goggles. makayla insists on wearing them every day when she showers so she can show off how she can have her eyes open in the water. so naturally ethan wants to wear them as well.

i love how they try to pose without knowing what they really look like.

living off the land part 1

joe's dream is to "live off the land". he doesn't really want to be a farmer - just have magical trees and land that produce fruit so that he can reap the harvest. he gets really excited whenever we pass some kind of a farm and screams "i want that!!!!"

so when we saw that there are gazillion chestnut trees here in krakow, he got a bit excited. he will drive around looking for a chestnut tree and try to pull over every time he discovers one. which got to be a bit dangerous. one rainy sunday, he was determined to collect some. he went out with a broom in one hand and returned with some of his finds. when he got to the tree, there was an old lady who was also collecting them as well- the competition was on! unfortunately, old Polish grandma's are faster and better at collecting chestnuts than a city boy from new york. anyhow, he was able to return with handful of them.

we were convinced at that point that the chestnuts joe picked up were edible. why else would an old lady be picking them up in the rain??? so without thinking too much, we popped them in the oven and baked them. when it came out, joe handed them over to me and i opened one and popped it in my mouth.

i ran straight to the sink and spit it out.

me: "ummmmm.... i don't think we're suppose to be eating them."
joe: "is it not ripe? or is it not cooked enough?"
me: "i don't know but it just doesn't taste right. my mouth tastes so bitter now. gross."
joe: "hmmm. maybe we should look it up online."

few minutes later.

joe: "yeah, you're not suppose to eat them. it's called horse chestnut or buck eye and it's toxic - it apparently thins or kills red blood cells. . . .. sooorrryyy."
me: "**%$#@!!! thanks alot!"

so much for living off the land. this is what happens when you have cityslickers trying to be one with the nature.

after much research, we were able to locate "real" chestnuts here - hidden inside the zoo. joe is now preparing for next year so that he can go to the zoo during the peak time to pick up more "real" chestnuts.
can you tell the difference? one is the toxic buck eye and the other, yummy chestnut.

oh yeah, and you are probably wondering why in the world the old lady was picking up the toxic chestnuts in the rain. apparently, it's every Polish child's duty to create an animal using these things as a craft project. though my love for crafts run deep, i will not be utilizing any material that almost killed me.

i have no doubt in my mind that if i'm lost in the wilderness, no amount of watching "man vs. wild" will save me. or joe for that matter. sad, but true.

the most random thing

i gave up Polish completely. it's difficult and there's no motivation - other than the fact that i look like an idiot using all kinds of body language to communicate that i want my beef cut thinner. and you know me, i can live with that. i have no shame.

so i turned my attention to wanting to learn mandarin. mostly because i want the kids to learn. i'm ashamed that my children speak only 1 language when between the two of us we speak 4 languages fluently. now, that's a shame. so if i had to pick a lanugage, it would be chinese. but not cantonese which joe speaks - hong kong - i highly doubt will become up and coming city, it has seen it's glory days and it just is getting more crowded and polluted. so off to the rest of china we go!

do you know how random it is to find a class or teacher to teach mandarin in poland (and mind you, teach mandarin in english NOT polish)? do you see the sheer madness of it all? well, i may have found that one random person! my friend stumbled upon an ad and hearing me whine about wanting to learn mandarin - she wrote down the info. and you know what? she is a native mandarin speaker here doing her ph.d. how crazy is that? so i'll meet her next week to make sure she is not a psychopath and make sure that she speaks decent english and start lessons in november. whoo-hoo! now, joe is doubtful that he will get a decent return on this investment. yes, i'm generally a quitter. i'm not afraid to admit it. and i keep having to remind him that i have to try 10 million things before i find what i really like and enjoy :P and really, the way i see it, i never quit on what's important (relationships) and i just know when to stop - very wise indeed.

i will end with a video of the kids' favorite activity lately. makayla wants to be a teacher and a mommy when she grows up. i bought this whiteboard to foster that dream and they've been playing with it non-stop. though it means i have to be a student and copy down whatever they write on the board (10 times!) - that's the downside. neither of them want to be a student - only a teacher. in one scene, ethan cracks himself up and holds his tummy - i think it's so funny! where do kids learn that kind of gestures? it's hilarious. makayla also scored that lanyard around her neck from a supermarket which makes her look more teacher-y. nice.

conjoined banana

so how do you tell someone who is excited about something that what they have discovered is no big deal? well, i had to be the bad guy. joe came hoem from a supermarket with this "special" banana. he thought it was the most unusual thing and just kept going on and on about it. i was like "i hate to say it but if it was that unusual, don't you think that the farmer or the store keeper would have kept it instead of selling it?" well, he didn't believe me. he said "they worship this stuff in India!!" ofcourse, i can't just let it go so i needed to delve more into it.

and guess what? there's bunch of blogs and youtube video dedicated to conjoined bananas. it was so funny. in fact, one of the blog was someone who lives in India ~ ahhahahahhahh. so obviously they don't worship this stuff. we were cracking up as i kept giving joe the eyes of "i told you so."

bedtime ritual

as a stalling tactic, our children have developed this ridiculous ritual of putting their stuffed animals to bed. they change the configuration EVERY night and then decide where they are going to sleep.

for example, below, you see that ethan has given the top portion of the bed to the animals, thus squeezing himself on the bottom portion of the bed almost about to fall off. and if it's not done the way they wanted to, they freak out.

ethan was obsessed about blankets being completely flat for a while and drove us totally crazy. while we were putting him down, he would demand the blanket to be "fwatter, fwatter!!!! fwatter, fwatter!!!!" the person who was putting him down for the night usually gets so annoyed that the other person has to intervene and continue with flattening the blanket. thank goodness that phase is over - he would come out middle of the night screaming - "the blanket is not FWAT!!!! it's all wrinkleddddddddd!!!!" and one of us has to go fix it and remind him that the blanket cannot be flat when he is in it. kraygee.

ethan is happy with tonight's configuration with snoopy and bear tucked inside the pillow
makayla putting the baby blanket over her koala before she slides into her blanket. makayla's ritual is much tamer though for a while she was collecting all kinds of toys under her bed like a bag lady. that drove our cleaning lady batty. today she only has a colored picture of hello kitty by the foot of the bed - progress, i tell you.

summer highlights: one

It turned really cold all of a sudden this past weekend. it's now in it's 40's - brrrrrr. to look over these pictures from the summer is a bit torturous thinking about what is to come. . . .

disclaimer: makayla doesn't like to be photographed - ethan on the other hand loves it.

chinatown: philly - oh how we miss you salt baked squid!
natural history museum: ny - not as big of a hit as we expected with the kids
bike tour (or rather a quick hop from the museum to the park) : ny - note: never let kids have popsicles on a bike, it melts at ridiculous speed and splatters everywhere . . . .
central park: ny
pinkberry: ny - note: you're not allowed to take pictures inside pinkberry - give me a break.

visiting friends: ny

the apple store: ny - joe little too happy to stumble upon the shop while going for a walk at 10pm

FAO schwartz: ny - my goodness! the best toy store EVER. haven't been there in ages - you can spend good 3 hours in there!

ethan in 15 years

recently, i've been obsessing about this korean hip hop boy band - "big bang". they seem to be really popular and i like their songs too. but the reason i'm obsessing is not because i like them necessarily - but because one of the member reminds me of ethan so much. i keep looking at him and say to myself "that's what ethan is going to look like in 15 years!!" okay, okay, i hope that no fans of "g-dragon" randomly finds this blog and send me hate mails. . . .

joe thinks i'm so weird because i would look up "g-dragon" on youtube and make him watch it with me and confirm the fact that they kind of look alike. is that so weird? as a parent, don't you imagine what your child will look like when they are older?- and if you find someone who kind of look like they could be the grown up version of your child - wouldn't you obsess about it??? now, i would like to see someone who looks like makayla!!

i obviously think ethan is going to be better looking :P (i guess this is where i get the hate mails....) but they seem to have some similar aura and expressions. dont' you think??