Oh how we will miss you, Thailand

We knew we needed one final vacation in South/South East Asia.  After a bit of debate about destinations, we decided to go to Thailand because not only could we spend a few days on the beach, which was bound to be blissful, but we love Bangkok and wanted a few days there.  

During our days in Bangkok we consciously slowed our Dhaka pace and embraced the vacation.  A highlight was a visit to the aquarium which was a big hit with the boys.  One of the favored areas was the long tunnel where we could watch sharks swim overhead.   

Another highlight was....going with both boys to a full length, 3D movie!  We miraculously managed to enjoy Epic, in 3D, with Henry who watched the whole thing and Elliot who slept through the whole, loud thing!  Without much effort we were able to keep Elliot awake until just before we went in to the theater at 11:30am. He opened his eyes for a sec in the beginning during the obnoxiously loud car commercials, then I opted to sit through the obligatory "stand for the nations king" to keep him asleep.  After that he stayed asleep until the last 10 minutes.  Amazing.  One thing that really aided in not only keeping the kids comfortable but keeping me motivated to stay through the movie was the plush seating! In this, and numerous other theaters across Bangkok, assigned seating comes complete with plush love seats or even full fledged beds.  You can also opt for the cheaper bean bag seats.

Sandwiched in the middle of days in Bangkok was a 4 day trip to Khao Lak, just north of Phuket, which was recommended to us by one of my friends who had lived in Thailand.  The beach proved to be just what we needed - relatively deserted of people while full of things to explore and find including tons of hermit crabs and shells.  After a session on the beach in the morning we spent some time at the pool before lunch. Then the kids napped and it was back to the beach then the pool.  What could be better? Oh, I know, getting an hour long Thai massage with the beach as a backdrop.  (Elliot became more and more confident with standing while he played on the beach.)
Deserted bliss

And this photo is hard for Scott to look at because right after I took it he got stuck by a big jelly fish!

Elliot was un-phased by the waves and would have been content if we let him sit there forever - even when the water nearly knocked him down or pulled him out.

There was pool time coupled with more relaxation 

We ate right next to the pool

Happy hour :)

One morning we pulled ourselves away from the beach to hang out with the elephants and see a waterfall
 

 At one point the thrill of the ride was taken to another level.  As Henry rode on the front and the elephant handler walked up ahead, our elephant decided to eat and turned to start munch on the bushes.  The first bite wasn't enough and she decided to head in to the dense jungle for more food.  Scott and I talked later about how we both got a little nervous that the elephant was just going to keep on going deeper in to the jungle - not worrying about whether we wanted to go too.  Luckily the handler came running and managed to get the elephant to turn back to the road before going too deep.

 

Some of my favorite photos came from my morning strolls on the beach with Elliot.  For some reason he just didn't stop smiling during that time - and let that show to the camera.

Eventually it had to end...

Birthday bliss

I'm finally to the birthday post!  At least while the boys are young and not sensitive about sharing everything, we have things pretty easy with birthday celebrations.  We start the momentum off slowly with Scott's birthday in March, turn it up just a little with my birthday in April, then go full force with Henry's birthday in mid May and finish off the fun with Elliot's birthday on June 1.  This year, by the time we got to Henry's birthday we were ready to parrr-tay which meant that Henry was spoiled with quite a number of Henry-centric events.  He felt like a big 3 year old king for awhile.  In fact, he got so good at celebrating his birthday that Elliot had to share some of the limelight with his older brother during his own 1 year old festivities.  Note, in the next photo Henry is opening Elli's present.  This might be a typical sibling thing, but it is definitely aided by the birthday schedule.

For Henry's birthday party with his other ~3 year old friends, I took the opportunity to have the ayah help host a party and, like last year, had the party one afternoon during the week.  The afternoon progressed as usual, with the same set of friends coming over, but Henry had the surprise of people giving him gifts and then we, of course, sang him Happy Birthday.  These play groups make me laugh whenever I stumble upon them at my house if I come home early from work.  There's always the 4 "older" girls (~4 yrs old) doing their girl-y things while Henry and Jafe run around making noise and fighting off monsters.  If Jafe gets distracted Henry will slink off to some corner to play with his dinosaurs and the like.  In the photo here Henry wanted to color so I gave all the kids the supplies but Henry didn't hold his ground. It's all in good fun and the kids are great friends...but the photos are quite funny. There's another one below of Scott braving the crowd.

Doing puzzles

He carried around his new toothbrush for awhile...who would have thought that present would go over so well.  The other popular gift, a set of slick goggles from the Beckmans.  Those have had a lot of use!

Cake and snack time!  If you look closely you can just barely see Henry way off in the back, closer to that window.  I cracked up when I noticed that a few minutes after the candles were blown out, Henry snuck off to play at his table, avoiding the "jamala" (chaos) of all the fun at the table - so classic.  He didn't even eat a piece of cake!

The next generation: Elliot with Shipi (our nanny), Gemma (the Beckman's daughter - we did Peace Corps with the Beckmans here in Bangladesh and they too returned, just recently) with Shobita (our maid), and Leon with his nanny (the son of our good friends who have an older daughter with whom Henry has always played. Scott and Leon's dad met when we were here for my PhD research).

 The brothers hanging, and bonding, out after all the excitement died down

On Friday, our weekend and Henry's actual birthday, we opened a few presents in the morning we headed to the club to swim.  This year Henry got some bug figurines, modeling / bake-able clay, a book, and....   Matching shirts for the boys!  

What morning could possibly be complete without a bacon break? Certainly not a birthday morning.

In the afternoon Jess came over.  Henry and Jess wiled away the afternoon making trees and dinosaur eggs with Henry’s new bake-able clay and reading Henry’s new books. 

Then, Jess surprised Henry with dinosaur themed, ie green and brown, cupcakes. Awesome.

Finally, on Saturday we went to Pollobi’s house were Pollobi, her family, and apartment - mates threw Henry a surprise party complete with a cake. The cake component is really exciting since she doesn’t have an oven.  She explained to me later with a smile that she made the cake in a pressure cooker on her burner.   

 PHEW!

While Elliot didn't have the same number of Elliot-centric events, we'd all like to think the birthday extravaganza was just as memorable.  Elli turned 1 on the day we flew back from a relaxing family vacation in Thailand.  That day we made sure to open a present but in truth he wasn't feeling to well.  When he got better we gave him a classic "Birthday at the pool" experience.  Elli is proving to just love the water. He entertains himself with climbing repetitively in and out of the pool and if I throw him up and let him fall under the water he just doesn't care.  I hope we find a neighborhood pool in Atlanta!

 Such a Scott face!!

"Can't I be like my Dada (big brother in Christian Bengali, oddly enough it means Paternal father in muslim Bengali)?"

I realized as I wrote this that I never wrote about my birthday back in April.  I actually spent my birthday on a flight to the US (kid free!) so we celebrated the event the day before.  Pollobi made a cake and a whole batch of donuts :)  We sang and had cake with our neighbors before Scott and I went out for a drink, as he led me to believe.  It turns out he had teamed up with some friends to throw a surprise party!! What a blast we had!  I even got to karaoke, impromptu, to Baby Got Back - now that was a birthday treat.