Adjusting? No Problem

Let me just say that I'm happy beyond belief at how well Annie has adjusted to a completely new life. She's happy, relatively healthy (we all have colds right now) and very active. Thankfully she's also back to entertaining herself, although she's always happiest when she has an audience. Christmas was hectic but fun and for the most part she's a trooper when I try to get stuff done. And yes, now I totally get it when people say you can't get anything done when you have a little one. I get it, I get it, I get it!

Haven't been taking many photos lately but here are a couple.

Annie enjoying the slide with her cousin Randi

Yes, she loves her baths and I love the hair!

A post, at last!

Yes, we kind of fell off the planet for a while. It all started with our "wonderful" adventure at the Hanoi airport and continued from there. Actually the flights weren't bad but on the ground I didn't feel like we were flying the friendly skies at all. Annie managed to sleep on the plane (thankfully Rie and I had an extra seat between us), Rie and I on the other hand, watched too much TV. We kept waiting for sleep to come and it never did.

Once home Annie decided she had had enough change and went from my adventuresome trooper to a "don't ever put me down" 14 month old. Thank goodness she's a petite little thing. I had to put Annie down at one end of my parent's family room and run to the other end just to show then she can walk (and scream while doing it too). Things are getting better and my jet lag would be gone if I could just get her to adjust just a little bit each day but no one makes Annie sleep when she's not ready to sleep (and I swear she'll fight it just to prove that she can). I think one night at 4 am I may have promised her a car if she went to sleep but it's a blurry memory at best.

Tonight's the first night I've been able to really get on the computer but don't ask about photos, I'm not totally sure where my camera is right now and we never got the USB cable for my sister's camera so I suppose she'll have to send me a CD of them at some point.

Over the next couple of days I hope to find my camera and take some pictures of Annie in her new digs, that is if I can convince her that being on Mommy's arms isn't the best way to see the world. :-)

Leaving for Hanoi

We leave for Hanoi soon and all I can say is bring it on. I'm tired of the heat and very ready for some cooler weather (should be in the low 70's there). Annie needs to get on a schedule and I'm looking forward to not feeding her on my lap. Rie is out doing some last minute shopping and I'm in the room trying to pack. If Annie wasn't being so helpful it would probably go quicker. :-)

Posts I owe everyone -

Waterpuppet Show
Cu Chi Tunnels

Internet access is not free in Hanoi and although Thuy told us about a cafe close to the hotel that has wifi I don't know if I'll partake. I'm pretty worn out and I'm really starting to the like the idea of "when the baby goes down, momma goes down".
Monday is our Visa/Immigration interviews (more paper signing), Tuesday is a free day and Wednesday we head back home. Home sweet home!

The Zoo

Friday was the Zoo, the history museum and shopping. Let me just say first thing, Rie and I weren't thrilled about the zoo going into this adventure. Annie's really too young and we had the "you've seen one zoo, you've seen 'em all" attitude. Well we were wrong, we had a blast because you can get much closer to the animals in Vietnam than back in the states. So after thinking we'd stay maybe a half an hour, we stay up to our limit. There were lots of small children at the zoo on field trips and it was fun to watch them try to feed the elephants. We watched several types of deer being fed (since it's near christmas there were all reindeer to us), there was a hippo and some very cute bears. At one point, my official photographer (aka Rie my sister) was a bit behind Annie and I snapping pics so we sat down near the bears to drink some water and munch on cheerios. A few minutes later I heard Rie call my name, I answered but I doubt she heard me because at that point, Rie's friends the Gibbons Monkeys began to shriek. If you never heard them they sound like a car alarm but louder. Sure enough I turned towards the noise are there was Rie scurrying towards us saying "they aren't in cages this time".

The history museum was not bad but there's that A/C issue and after carrying Annie in a carrier throughout the zoo, we were both pretty wiped out. Shopping, let's just say it's always an adventure.

Yes I actually managed to grab a quick photo of Annie before she realized I wasn't within three feet of her.

Mekong Delta

I'm only on Thursday? How did I get this far behind? Oh yeah, we are going all day long and when we are in the hotel room, I'm playing with Annie, feeding Annie, trying to get her to sleep (it's definitely getting easier) or just plain watching her.

So Thursday we went to the Mekong Delta. Our tour guide was great, she knew five languages and happily she knew english well enough that she was even able to joke with us. It was very interesting to see the houses on stilts in the water where people live and farm fish (below the houses the water is netted so that they can stock it with baby fish and hopefully a good portion of them will grow to maturity for them to sell). Saw quite a few houses boats and yes the people live on them and now they aren't two stories with all the amenities. We saw coconut candy being made (yes mom I tasted it and I'm happy to report that the peanut version doesn't even taste like coconut therefore it was quite yummy). We also were able to sample some of the local fruit, some I liked, others not so much. However the highlight had to be seeing the gibbons monkeys. We were warned prior to approaching them that they are VERY quick and have deceptively long arms so most of us steered cleared. That is all of us but Rie. Yes they grabbed her leg not once but twice. She wasn't hurt and both times it happened so fast that only the tour guide had time to react. Yes we all laughed a lot over that. In fact, we are still laughing about it. The last part of our trip we got to ride part of a canal in low riding boats which hold about six people. It was great to be that close up to everything. Although a bit surprising to float by a young man who was crawling along the shore looking for fish.

The only bad part of the trip was that the road was very bumpy and it was quite a long car ride and Annie's stomach couldn't handle it so....you get the picture. Thankfully another family traveling with us had an extra onesie because although I kept saying I needed to bring extra clothes, saying isn't doing. Unfortunately, I didn't have extra clothes and she was sitting on my lap at the time of the "incident". I think that's the only time in my life when we got back to the hotel and I got into the shower fully clothed. Woolite and some handscrubbing work pretty well.

Enjoy the pics (my camera is still giving me fits but I managed to take a few).