I have failed you all, as I have completely forgotten to be more intentional about taking pictures. Oh well… life is busy and that’s okay!

Here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks:

We got to celebrate my 26th birthday! The day just happened to land on our off day, and so we got to do a bunch of fun stuff. We started the day with breakfast at my favorite restaurant, and then Nathan watched Hez so I could go to Starbucks and spend some time reflecting on the past year (it has been one heck of a year!). I came home to a sparkly clean apartment, and Nathan let me take a nap. We had some friends over that night to play games and eat some ice cream cake. It was a fun day and I felt so celebrated and loved.

Rainy season has officially started! It usually rains pretty heavily 1-2 hours out of the day now. I think it’s kind of fun, mainly because I don’t do as much motorbike driving as Nathan…but no worries! A friend gave us a new poncho (better than the disposable ones we brought).

Speaking of motorbike driving, I burnt my leg on the exhaust pipe of our motorbike and got a pretty gnarly souvenir of a scar. It has healed well thankfully!

Here’s a pretty accurate picture of what some of our days looks like. This was when we met with some of Nathan’s friends. Frizzy hair and a sweaty baby, sounds about right! Nathan’s friends were so excited to meet Hez. They kept saying he was “beautiful like Nathan” and now always refer to us as a “little family”.

Hez’s new hobbies include blowing bubbles, rolling over and sleeping on his belly! He never fails to wake up in a huge puddle of drool and it cracks me up (I’m also doing a huge happy dance because we don’t have to worry about turning his head so his head doesn’t get lopsided, ha!).

On an unrelated note, we decided to try not cloth diapering for a month because our utilities are crazy expensive! If you have cloth diapered—did doing so many extra loads of laundry make your utilities jump up? I also realize we are in Asia and things are just different here so maybe it doesn’t even relate. We are going to trial it and see what happens.

You can tell Hez has some librarian genes in the family—he loves being read to! We need to expand our book selection a little bit because I’m getting a little worn out from reading “Where’s Spot?” and “Goodnight Moon” all of the time! Thankfully there are book stores here that sell books in English!

It was fun to celebrate mother’s day and remember last mother’s day  when we first told our parents that we were pregnant! We are so incredibly thankful for our sweet little boy. He is a sweet, sweet gift that we do not deserve. He brings joy to everyone that he meets (and makes me feel like a celebrity when we walk around areas of the city that have probably never seen a white baby).

We also treated some local friends to their first BWW’s experience (except here it’s not called BWWs, its called B-Dubs). They have most of the same flavors, and then some others that I have no idea what they were, so we just didn’t order those. We weren’t feeling too adventurous!

Later that week, the same friends showed us a little park close to where we live. It didn’t even feel like we were in the same city! We couldn’t hear the traffic, there were sidewalks and there was grass! I was thrilled, Hez didn’t really care for it.

Some friends also graciously volunteered to watch Hez so we could go on a date night. We saw “The Hustle” and I’m not sure what was more funny—the movie or listening to the reactions of what the local people thought was funny. It’s pretty clear most of the jokes don’t translate well, but apparently it’s hilarious when people kiss on the cheek?! While we were at the movie, our friends bought Hez this sweet little puppy keychain. He loves it.

We have lived here for three months—the longest I have ever been away from home! This place is feeling more and more like home as we continue to get settled in. I’ll try to take some more pictures of things other than Hez (even though we all know that he’s the cutest). Thanks for reading and staying updated on our adventures. As always, if you have questions or if you want to receive more updates about our time here leave a comment with your email address! We love you all!