Cute Kidisms

We let Ellie choose what to have for her birthday dinner. Nathan and I recited a long list of possibilities, none of which was too interesting until we came to french fries. Then her eyes lit up. We asked:
"What do you want with your french fries?"
"Ketchup!"
"Ok, what do you want with your french fries and ketchup?"
"Fries!"
"Ok, so we'll have fries, and french fries, and ketchup. Do you want anything else?"
Ellie didn't think anything else was really necessary, but agreed to hamburgers without the meat or cheese. (She did concede that Ed and I could eat the meat and cheese). And she even agreed to carrots and snowpeas for good measure. No Atkins diet for that girl.

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Ben's vocabulary is really growing by leaps and bounds. A favorite game for several weeks was to point to things and say "This is....". Just naming objections was something of an obsession, and in fact for a while he didn't really say hi to us, he just would thump on our chests and say "This is mommy!" and "This is daddy!"

The best part was that Ben's "This is" somehow sounded a lot like "Jesus" so we had "Jesus shoes!", "Jesus cheese!", and best of all "Jesus Daddy!"

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The other night we sang the doxology as Ellie's bedtime prayer, and apparently it was the first time she had ever heard of the Holy Ghost. She woke Ed up in the middle of the night terrified that the Holy Ghost was in her room!

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Ben's talking has advanced so far that he's even learned to rebut us. One of his favorite new words is "yesidooo". As in:
"No, Ben, you don't need the whole box of Kleenex."
"Yesidoo!!"

Another favorite word is "havsum", which can be used as a command with any noun, as in "havsum binky," "havsum blanky," and "havsum dis".

When he's not saying "yesidoo" and "havsum", about 60% of the rest of his words are "apple jooose!", followed close behind by "git down!" (Nathan has taken to referring to him as "Boogey Ben".)

Elena Turns Three!

Last week we celebrated Elena's birthday with a party for five guests and a little shindig for the family.

Ellie helped in the preparations by decorating her cupcakes.


At her party on Saturday, the adults were all amazed as the kids gathered quietly at the table to eat egg salad sandwiches, hot dogs, and fruit.

Twins Champa and Champei (or is it Champei and Champa?), Charlie (whose 3rd birthday party was the next day), Elsa, Ellie, and Cepheus

After a snack, we all went outside for an animal hunt in the yard. We hid little plastic butterflies and assorted animals in the grass and trees and had the kids go searching.


Then we retired to the shade, where we decorated plastic flower pots with stickers and planted flower seeds.


Next it was back inside for cake!

Yum!

Hey, I'm trying to eat chocolate here!

We opened lots of gifts--both from her party guests and also from family. Her new Elmo doll (Ben got one, too) was a big hit.

An Eventful Trip to Sihanoukville

September 21 and 22 were part of the Cambodian holiday of Pchum Ben--the festival of the dead, where Cambodians head to their home provinces and honor their ancestors by bringing food (for their ancestors and the monks) to the temples. Nothing against our ancestors, but we decided to take advantage of the four-day weekend and the fact that our good friend Amber and her boyfriend, Gerard, were visiting to head to lovely Sihanoukville and the beach.


Liz came along, too, so getting there was a bit tricky as we had 5 adults, 2 kids, and 1 Honda CRV. But we took it as an opportunity to try out Cambodia's intercity bus service, which I'll rate as pretty good. The bus was pretty clean, reasonably comfortable (except for poor Gerard who is about 6'3" and was considerably less comfortable than all the Cambodian passengers, who only came up to his elbow) and, best of all, our fellow passengers weren't smelly. I know from previous bus trips in the developing world that hygiene standards vary quite a bit in different areas, but Cambodians are big fans of bathing (our Khmer teacher in DC was appalled when he learned that, if we were exhausted, we'd let Ellie skip her daily bath) so it was really a fine experience overall.

We had a lovely time. The kids were a little timid, so the time we spent at the pool often looked a lot like this...


However, they loved playing in the sand (and their first sand toys!)


and on the playground

and we did even coax them in to the ocean eventually.


Ed and I even left the kids with Liz for an evening and had a lovely anniversary dinner at a French-Khmer restaurant overlooking sunset on the ocean. Ahhh...

We were just about to bring a successful mini-vacation to a close, when we decided to visit a temple on a hillside. The weather was crappy, we were all a little sunburnt, and we had a couple of hours to kill until the bus left.

Everything started off fine. We walked around, chatted with the monks, watched the cute monkeys, and had a photo opp with the Buddha.

Then one of the monkeys decided that he liked my camera bag and started to take off with it. We sort of yelled at him, which didn't do any good, so I picked up a plastic cup and threw it at him, figuring he'd drop the bag and run away.

Big mistake.

Instead, all of his monkey friends were at the site in an instant. About 2-3 feet from us, they had us surrounded and they were pissed. Hissing and showing their teeth. Suddenly those cute little monkeys were downright scary. Ed told us to go back up the hill past the Buddha, but that root was blocked. We looked around for an escape. People on one side would think we could slide past two monkeys on the other, but the people close to them said no way. The monkeys kept hissing and screeching. I noticed that one of the monkeys was missing an arm, which was really freaky. This really seemed like a bad horror movie. I hugged Ben closer.

Then, in a tactical error, the monkeys guarding the stairs down allowed an extra foot or two of space between them, and we all hurried down, not wanting to run, but eager to get the heck out of there. Amber ended up as the last person in line, and was actually scratched lightly by a monkey. We headed into the car, shut the doors and took off. We had lost the camera bag but had all the people, so we figured we had come out ahead.

I had heard of kids who had been scratched by monkeys needing rabies vaccine and so we called a doctor when we got back. The first (Khmer) doctor we talked to said she should come in and start the rabies shots, but didn't seem so certain. So we bothered a British doctor friend at home, who said that as long as there was no transfer of blood and saliva, Amber would be fine...a big relief!

Sure, he looks cute now. But wait til he decides to help himself to some of your possessions.

Liz Comes to Cambodia

Well, we are getting really far behind in blogging...but let's see if we can catch up. Lots of exciting things have happened over the last six weeks or so, which is why we're so behind.

Here's one of the biggies:

Liz is here!

Being that free-wheelin', thinking out of the box sort of woman that she is, Liz figured why spend all that money on plane tickets to Cambodia just to spend a week or two here when there are two adorable Spande kids and lots of other great things to see here. So, she took a semester off school, hopped on a plane, and came to Chez Spande.

Liz now has a part-time/contract sort of job, working for Baskets of Cambodia. One thing about Liz is that she has amazing luck in having things just fall in to place, and one example is that with this job not only is she getting paid, they are also letting her live in one of the furnished bedrooms above the store...for free! It's a great deal...mostly. The A/C in her room doesn't seem to want to work, and the wat next door starts up at 4:30. But that will just ensure that she still spends plenty of time with us!

In addition to helping out with the kids and just being fun, Liz is also a great photographer who has agreed to let us post her pics to the blog. So get ready for a big step up in blog photos!