Cousins Part II

Cousins 2, a photo by mdelagrange on Flickr.

Henri and Joel hanging out at the park. Joel is 12 so he's too cool to look at the camera... ;-) Joel (not to mention his even older cousins Jacob and Jeremiah) still take the time to play with their little cousin. I have dropped dramatically down the pecking order since our arrival here, in fact.

Rolling Slide

Slide, a photo by mdelagrange on Flickr.

Each morning here in Albuquerque we walk a couple blocks to the park where Hen gets his swinging fix - here he is going down a rolling slide with a pretty big drop off - he manages just fine.

Hen walking the dog

Hen walking the dog, a photo by mdelagrange on Flickr.

Walking back from the park this morning... And he didn't drop the leash once!

Cousins

Cousins, a photo by mdelagrange on Flickr.

5 days in...

Hen in the pool, a photo by mdelagrange on Flickr.

I've been up since 2:30 this morning and can't fall back asleep! Henri has slept through two nights in a row so I guess his youthfulness is helping him defeat his jet lag whereas my utter lack of youthfulness is keeping me up all night/morning. To help beat the heat hen is spending some time in a little blow-up pool. It tops 100 degrees everyday here but in the shade its tolerable...

Headed Home

Tomorrow evening Henri and I will begin our summer travel - We will hit Buckeye, Albuquerque and Atlanta - with a short stopover in San Francisco on our way back.

I'm so excited to see my family and to go shopping and I wish I could say escape Taiwan's hot summer heat but I'm replacing it with the Desert Southwest/The South's summer so I won't be escaping anything...

I will try to upload some pictures along the way.  Wish us luck tomorrow!

Today's Shoot

This week we had two shoots. I didn't take any pictures at the first one but remembered to pull out my iPad to take pictures today. I can't say that Henri was very cooperative. It doesn't help that they are wearing winter clothes in the heat of summer. He gave me a really hard time each time we changed clothes. When we got home I tried to have a heart to heart conversation with him to see if he really hates it - because I'm happy to stop taking him or just wait until he can tell me that he does or doesn't want to go - but he kept saying "I like it!" I asked "what about when they put make-up on you?" (he screams bloody murder during make-up) and I pretended to put make-up on him and he said "I like it!" So I'm not sure what to make of this... Here are some photos nonetheless:

Here he is with Sienna (better known as Ci Ci), his classmate from school

This was Henri not cooperating (as you can they are trying to get them to lean against the wall, like she and Sienna)

Very Shakey

Today there was a 6.3 earthquake right in the center of Taiwan. At the time I was laying down with Henri while he was definitely not falling asleep for his nap. I decided to take him under a doorway even though it wasn't violently shaking (I wasn't sure if and when the worst would be over, not knowing how these things work). It seemed to last forever. Nearly a minute according to reports - but a minute seems like forever when you are used to earthquakes that seem to end the moment you realize its happening. Nothing broke - just a bit freaky to watch doors moving back and forth, telephone cords swaying, curtains swishing, etc...

Finally to the top of 101

Today we finally made the trip up Taipei 101 - A really, really tall building (World's tallest from 2004-2010). I'll let you guess how many floors it is... Okay I'll tell you - 101 floors. Numbers are important to the Chinese and 101 was deemed auspicious as "it symbolizes high ideals by going one better on 100, a traditional number of perfection. The number also evokes binary code..." They put a lot of thought into this among other things...

The elevator is really fast! The observatory is on the 89th floor and it took 35 seconds to get there. It ticks off the floors you ascend on a television screen inside the elevator so you can monitor your progress. It actually took closer to 50 seconds to get down.

They allow you to walk up two more flights of stairs to an outdoor viewing area which wasnt as exciting as it sounds - there a bunch of older ladies tried to get pictures with Henri and were so persistent he cried and we had to carry him off because they just thought it was cute when he started crying (he was already hiding behind me which they also found cute...).

Overall I'm glad we finally checked this touristy trip off our list. Here's our cheesey touristy picture I made Maxime buy for us...

Last Day of School

Henri's first semester in preschool has ended. It was sad beause his lead teacher was sick the final 2-3 weeks of school and was unable to finish out the school year. I'm so glad that we decided to put Henri in Tiger Tots, I think it has been a very positive experience. Here is his class photo - Not one child is smiling! Probably because the people who could make them smile are in the picture with them and they were being forced to stand still... I'm going to miss school but our pool is finally open (well it's still filling but that hasn't stopped us from playing in it, anyway) and we are flying to the USA in two weeks!

My goodness look at these sad little people!

Why did they hand him bows to hold and then top it off with a pink heart background?!

Cute photos they included in his progress report