Eyebrows

I desperately needed to get my eyebrows waxed. Desperately! I don't know when they started growing in, but this morning I woke up and realized they spanned from hairline to hairline (straight through-no break in the middle...yes, seriously I was sporting a uni brow). It's not like there is a shortage of places to go or that it's a major expense, I just manage not to notice until things have gotten way out of control. So, I booked myself an appointment at the American Club (so I could put Caitlin in the nursery) and arranged to meet Matt there for dinner (so I could take the night off from making dinner). What a perfect plan!

Hmmmm...so it's fair to say that most things don't go as planned when you are planning life around a toddler. Caitlin would NOT stay in the nursery. This was really no surprise to me, but somehow I thought I would have the will to just leave her there and let her figure it out for 15 minutes while I took care of myself. I couldn't. She took one look back at me with tears streaming down her face and a look of total devastation and I completely caved. "Okay Caitlin, you can come with Mommy. But you have to be a good girl." Up the stairs to the salon we climbed. Wiping tears from her eyes and in between gasps for breath she said, "Caitlin be a good durn Mommy. Caitlin be a good durn Mommy."

I put her on the floor with a sippy cup and Cheerios and told her she had to stay seated. I laid down on the bed and the eyebrow girl got started. Caitlin popped up to investigate the situation. Listening is not her strong point. She was quietly munching in my ear, rubbing my arm, holding my hand and putting my shoes back on until the eyebrow girl put a towel over me.

"What's towel doin' Mommy?" When I didn't reply she yelled, "Mommy, wake up!"
"I'm getting my eyebrows waxed Caitlin."
"What's eyebrows doin' Mommy?"
"I'm getting them fixed Caitlin. So they look nicer."
"Fixin' um?"

Then the eyebrow girl started to apply the wax.

"Soap Mommy? Is the boy have soap on dere Mommy?"
Cailtin referes to everyone as a boy regardless of gender.
"No, Caitlin not soap. She's using wax."
"What's wax doin'? Wax come off Mommy?"

The questions went on and on and on! Caitlin was trying to wrap her little mind around what I was doing. It was hysterical and I had a really hard time NOT laughing! I assume the eyebrow girl couldn't understand Caitlin because she never cracked a smile.

Overall, Caitlin handled the whole situation really well. And we managed to leave there without spilling the cup of Cheerios (bonus!). When we were through I took her downstairs and gave her some fruit. While we were seated at the table she said, "Mommy's eyebrows are red. Red like Elmo." Well, at least now I know she knows her colors!

She loved it!!!

DO RAVE REVIEWS GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS?

Caitlin ate my pudding today and LOVED it! Happy girl, happy mommy.

Pudding

I made pudding today. My most memorable and coveted childhood snack! I can clearly remember coming home from school and seeing the small, plastic, blue tinted, cone shaped, pedestal Tupperware containers sealed with their matching plastic lids lined up in a row on the bottom shelf of our brown refrigerator. Brown refrigerator - can you imagine? Gotta love those left over appliances from the 70's. But when you're 6 years old and there is pudding in fridge you are the luckiest kid on the block.

I love that Caitlin is old enough to enjoy foods that bring back so many warm and fuzzies. Some of my greatest joys of motherhood are putting together pieces of my childhood and incorporating them into our lives...especially now that we are so far away from "home." As I recently told a visitor, when you step into this apartment you are on US soil...even though I have witnessed our daughter turn carrot sticks into chop sticks and try to pick up pieces of grapes with them. She also boasts a proud "peace sign" in her latest photographs. Next she'll be asking for a face mask when we go outside! I guess we'll compromise on US/Asian fusion here.

Anyway, I looked in all the usual import places for the boxed JELLO pudding mix, but much to my dismay, was only able to come up with vanilla or butterscotch (eeewwww). So I made my chocolate pudding from scratch. Chocolate is the way we roll around here. Poor Caitlin has been "blessed" with my sweet tooth and I just can't help but feed her fancy. Chocolate pudding it is. Or, well...sort of.

Milk here is not like milk in the US. It is reconstituted from a powdered form. It tastes a little different too. We've found one brand that is a little more pleasing to the palate, "High Quality Milk." The rest of the label is in Chinese. I carry the labels around in my wallet so I know which is low fat and fat free because like most things, I can't just figure it out by looking at it. So, through the heating process the milk got a little funny - I guess you could say that it curdled. Ugh. But, it tastes normal so we'll give it a shot. We'll see what our littlest food critic thinks of it later.

The joy of grilling (Matt's first blog)

Matt here. There have been many occasions on this Taiwan journey when I wanted to blog, but today marks the first such occasion where it was paired with the opportunity (Tara's giving Caitlin a bath and my work calls have ended for the evening. Yes it's a Sunday night so why should I have work calls, don't ask).

I dedicated~5 hours today to grilling and the result was spectacular. Why 5 hours? Shouldn't grilling take 20-40 minutes depending on what you're cooking? Not when you're beginning from scratch and living in a 5th-floor apartment in Taipei! But lets start from the beginning.

Last Sunday Tara, Caitlin and I went to dinner at the home of new friends of ours in Taipei (a new expat couple who just got settled into their apartment). To our delight, they cooked steak! It was amazing... first time we've tasted steak in Taiwan that was worthy of anything we've had in the USA. They had purchased a mini charcoal grille, briquettes and lighter fluid, and some fantastic looking USDA steaks from Costco. When we arrived the charcoal was glowing red and they threw on the steaks. This is all happening on the utility porch of their 4th-floor apartment so the ambiance is air conditioners and washing machine, but that made it all the more special... anyone can grille when you have an acre of land and a propane Weber. The porch saturated with smoke... part smoky charcoal smell, part beef drippings burning on the coals. It about knocked us over but it was such a novelty we wouldn't go indoors until the steaks were done. I even lavished in the smoke smell that my clothes picked up (Tara calls it "grillogne"). I wasn't very hungry before we arrived but it was so good I ate every morsel.

Fast forward to Friday when I needed to make a Costco run on the way home from work to get a key ingredient for our traditional Friday night pizza (you can't get good mozzarella cheese anywhere else in Taiwan). While I was there I spotted the grilles my friends had purchased. I don't recall the price - it didn't matter - I had to have one!!! I grabbed one. But the charcoal only came in huge 6-bag multi-packs and I didn't think I could carry it home, so I passed that up thinking I could get some closer to home. Since I had the grille I also picked up some steaks. It's Costco so steak only comes in jumbo packs I was betting this whole grill thing was going to work out. But I hedged my bets by getting cheaper steaks than the New York Strip steaks I'd get back home. Yet I paid double, but that's a topic for another blog.

Now it's today (Sunday) after lunch and Caitlin's just gone in for her nap. I started with plan A for getting charcoal and lighter fluid. I walked ~10 minutes in the light rain to the grocery store nearest our house (Wellcome) which both Tara and I thought had charcoal. After a thorough search for charcoal and another thorough search (anything to avoid asking for help) I broke down and asked someone. He didn't speak English but he ran off and quickly returned with a lady who also didn't speak English (another topic for another blog). I said "charcoal" a few times, nothing. Then wrote it down and showed it to them. Still nothing. I said "barbecue" and "grill". They both discussed in Chinese and then shook their heads. Either they didn't know what it was or they were telling me they didn't carry it. Either way, a "Xie xie ni" and on to plan B.

Back out to De Xing East Road and another 15 minutes walk in the light rain to Carrefour, the big grocery store that's similar to a Wal-mart in its variety of products. 20 minutes of light rain adds up to being quite wet, but I can handle it. I got pulled into their newly remodeled wine area which was very nice -- I was impressed enough to grab a bottle for our Taiwan collection which is now up to 2 bottles. Oh wait, make that 1... I'm enjoying a glass right now. I didn't spend as much time searching before I asked someone. Again, she didn't speak English or didn't know what the heck charcoal was. But she knew how to say something like "please wait" and she literally ran away zig-zagging around countless, crowded customers (refer to one of Tara's earlier posts on what Carrefour is like on a weekend). A minute later she returned zig-zagging with a lady who looked like a customer (no uniform or name tag) but who spoke really good English, so I didn't ask if she worked there. I showed her my paper where I'd written "charcoal" at the prior store. She said in perfect English "what's that?" I described that it's used for barbecue outdoors, blah blah blah, and then it hit her! She exchanged a few words in chinese with the employee and then they both turned to me and said in unison "upstairs!" "Xie xie ni."

Upstairs I found the camping aisle and voila! Kingsford charcoal. Hallelujah. But right next to the Kingsford (English and Spanish packaging, ahhh) was the Carrefour generic brand (French and Chinese, booo) but it had to be the same thing, right? And at 1/3 the price! And since I'm cheap, I got that. Now where's the lighter fluid? I looked all over that section and no luck, so I asked (my don't-ask-for-help manhood was just about gone by now). She didn't speak English (seeing a trend?). But she quickly returned with someone who did. This lady was the customer relations manager and was from Long Island but was Japanese, so English was her 3rd language. Either way she knew what I was talking about, but not really... she heard what I was describing but she'd never heard of such a thing. She called to another employee who ran down the aisle and returned with a bag of what looked like Hershey's Kisses except the aluminum foil was wax paper. She said to light a couple of these under the charcoal. After she saw the puzzled look on my face she explained that here in Taiwan (and in Japan), where most people live in apartments, they don't use lighter fluid because of the initial high flames (bad combination when there's a roof over your head). Made sense to me. "Xie xie ni."

I exit the Carrefour with a heavy bag on each shoulder and pray to see the 280 bus coming. Instead I see it leaving, which means the next one will be between 5 and 40 minutes away. It's raining whether I stand there hoping or walk so I walked. I walked 15 minutes in the rain with sore shoulders (those shopping bags need shoulder pads) and the 280 bus never passed me, so it was the right call. Got soggy wet again, but who cares - I'm barbecuing tonight, baby!

Now think about the last time you grilled on charcoal... How long did it take for the coals to get ready to cook on? I guessed 30 minutes, so I started setting it up at 5:00 so we could eat at 6:00. Little grille assembled and set up on the non-flammable porch - check. Two wax Hershey kisses in the bottom - Check. Unzip the Carrefour generic store-brand charcoal briquettes - What the heck? Not briquettes. They're chunks of burned wood. It even smelled like burned wood. Maybe that's what Kingsford briquettes are made from in the first place - I never pondered it. Oh well, lets give it a try. I made a pyramid out of the wood pieces, sorta. Then I lit the wax kisses. They burned. 15 minutes later I returned expecting to see red coals but instead I saw nothing... the wax had burned out but the charcoal stuff hadn't caught. OK, lets re-think this.... I grabbed four wax kisses, put them close together, lit them all at once, and put charcoal pieces on top right into the little candle-size flame... thin pieces first (early 1980's campfires weren't wasted on me) then bigger pieces on top of them. I waited until I saw the charcoal turning gray and red. Then I went away for ~15 minutes. Do you think it was burning nice and hot this time? Of course not, but it was burning. A tiny little area had 'caught'. I stoked it, and returned after another 15 minutes. Then another. Then another. Finally after 90 minutes I had enough heat to maybe cook a steak!

From this point forward the night was glorious. Two thick USDA steaks sizzling over red hot coals, 5 minutes per side. Bam! The rest of dinner that Tara had made was keeping warm in the oven and Caitlin had been appeased with back-to-back Elmo DVD's, so everyone was hungry. And it was good. It was amazingly good. We ate every morsel, even Caitlin.

Indeed it was worth all the time I had put into it, from Costco to Wellcome to Carrefour and back. In the rain. On foot. I would do it all again if I had to, but I don't. Next time I think I can get the fire going in under an hour. And maybe next time I'll spring for the Kingsford. And with any luck I'll find some lighter fluid.

Tonight was a turning point in our Taipei lives: We found a way to barbecue. Life in Taipei is great.

I'm Back!

Just a quick photo to prove to you that I'm still here...

Yes, I know. Its been a while. A llllooooonnnggg while. No time for excuses. Where did I leave off? Hmmmm....oh yeah, the holidays. THE HOLIDAYS. In a word, WHOOSH! Okay seriously, ZOOOM! But really, they flew by me so fast even I find it hard to believe they were impressionable enough for me to remember them 2 months later. Was Christmas really over 2 months ago? I feel like it was yesterday. A quick look in the mirror the other day reminded me that the time has actually passed. Yes, those wirey gray hairs I had camouflaged on December 27th by my now future sister-in-law are beginning to boast their silvery shine. And that inch or so she cut off this insane head of hair is back with a vengeance...do I wait 15 more weeks for a haircut or brave a haircut in Taiwan? Decisions, decisions. Back to the holidays.

We left for the US on 12/19 at 11:55pm and arrived some 25 hours later in Raleigh Durham on 12/20 at 10:30am or so. Caitlin was the best she could possibly be (she slept the entire time) and we miraculously made all of our connections despite random snow storms in southern California and Illinois. I cried tears of joy when the landing gear hit the runway at the Raleigh Durham Airport. I could have popped a tent right there and called it home. Anywhere in the same time zone as our families was good enough to call home at that point. We were tired and smelly (Caitlin threw up on the landing in CA...2 flights earlier), but Matt's parents embraced us anyway and brought us to our house. And so it began - "it" being the race to see everyone and do all the things we miss doing AND the holiday season was now, truly and officially upon us. I still get goosebumps and tears when I remember feeling the air on my face in Raleigh. My thoughts were something like, "I have arrived Lord. Let the spirit of this miraculous season fall upon my thoughts, my dreams, my actions and my family." And so it did. More than ever before, it did.

The spirit of Christmas is something I haven't felt in ages. There seems to be more obligations, productions, commercialism and less festiveness and Matt and I haven't really found the time to carve out traditions of our own because we're so busy running from family to family each year. So, here we are away from everyone and everything familiar to us for a while and then suddenly plunked into the middle of a seasonal wonderland-complete with the frenzied buzz of both the Christmas Day gift gathering deadline and our own personal grip on those few precious days that we would actually be living in our house. Oddly enough, it was perfect. It was an absolutely perfect way to feel. We kissed and hugged our family, ran through each room of our house just to make sure it was still there, then kissed and hugged each other. It was hard to believe we actually owned that house! We lallygagged through Harris Teeter (our local food store) at 1:00am and hugged boxes of Cheerios, canned tomatoes, organic milk and fun food treats that we haven't seen since August. We sorted through the piles of boxes of gifts we ordered online, wrapped and prepared packages for "the big day." We drove around and looked at lights, smiled at people and soaked it all in. Time stopped for us a little bit. We didn't experience the rush. We just basked in the glow of it all. It was beginning to be my most favorite Christmas EVER.

Probably my most fond memory of Christmas 2008 is a little trip Caitlin and I took to Target. I have always loved Target, but I can't begin to tell you how much more you will love Target when you are away from it for a while. We went stocking and supply shopping for our return trip to Taiwan. The first 2 novelties came all at once - 1 being the fact that the shopping cart actually had a little seat in it for Caitlin to sit and 2 is that I was able to use my "Floppy" which is a little cloth wrap around thing so that Caitlin doesn't have to touch the drooly, germy, fecal matter coated handle while I shop. I LOVE THE USA. First hit the snack bar for a giant soft pretzel and juice to share. We munched and lingered down every isle reading all the labels just because we could. We shopped kids clothes and shoes and greeting cards that I could read and books and toys and food (don't you just love that Archer Farms line of food they have there? Fun stuff to pick on!) and then came the Christmas isles. Keep in mind here that Caitlin hadn't really seen that many Christmas lights. When she saw the trees all lit up she started screaming, "Merry Christmas! Look Mommy, Merry Christmas!!" Then we would go down another isle and she would start up again, "Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday!" For her, it works that way...Christmas, New Year's, birthday (her birthday is on 1/1). Boom! Talk about one stop celebrating. People were looking at us like we just fell off the turnip truck...which in some ways, we had. She unabashedly expressed sheer joy - the kind that made her baby blue eyes sparkle with all the wonders and magic of childhood. Yes, for me the spirit of Christmas had arrived. I was so filled with Christmas cheer that I wanted to wrap myself in "Jersey bulbs" and dance around in the yard. Finally, I didn't care about all the travel and the gifts and packing (ugh!) and decorating and not having a Christmas tree and creating a feeling that was just never quite there...finally. It was a freedom and a happiness that I wish to unleash into my everyday life, (although I must admit I haven't), but at least perhaps into each Christmas from here on out. I believe that in those moments at Target (of all places!) God smiled at me and said, "Merry Christmas Tara."

Just for fun, I thought I'd type out a chronological log of what we packed into 2 weeks...

12/19 at 11:55pm - Depart for LAX

12/19 some 11 hours or so later - Arrive at LAX, go through customs, eat and board plane for Chicago.

12/20 really, really, stupidly early - Board a plane for Raleigh.

12/20 around 10:30am or so - Meet Matt's parents at RDU Airport. Head home.

12/21 at 12:00pm - Matt's family comes to our house to celebrate the winter birthdays (Matt, Denelle and Caitlin).

12/22 at 8:50am - Caitlin's 2 year well visit at the doctor!

12/22 - Wrapped presents!

12/23 at 9am - Matt & Tara go to the dentist.

12/23 at 11:am - Caitlin visits Miss Jeannie for her 2 year portrait.

12/23 - shortly thereafter Caitlin and I went to lunch at our favorite spot (Whole Foods), had yogurt parfaits and chocolate chip cookies!

12/23 - sometime after lunch we went to Target.

12/24 - Packed our overnight bags and headed to Matt's parents' house to drop off our gifts and then dinner at Denelle's house and then off to church. Slept at Matt's parents' house because they had a tree for us to celebrate with.

12/25 - Heller Family Christmas!

12/26 - Packed our bags and flew to PHL for Hunter Family Christmas!

12/27 - Had my hair done by Leslee and hopped in the car for a trip up to NY for the Della Torre Family Christmas!

12/28 - Drove back to PA.

12/29 - Caitlin had a really high fever so we brought her to an urgent care center and found she had an ear infection.

12/30 - A much needed pajama day! Mom and I went shopping in the afternoon.

12/31 - Drove up to NJ for the family New Year's Eve party.

1/1 - Caitlin's 2nd birthday! Party at the Gigi's!

1/2 - Another pajama day.

1/3 - Flew back to Taiwan.

Whew. See what I mean? Attached is a link to our pictures. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/taralheller/20081225ChristmasAllOverTheEastCoast?authkey=Gv1sRgCPOo8MKWgtao2QE&feat=directlink

Here are some shots from Caitlin's 2nd birthday (up north):

http://picasaweb.google.com/taralheller/20090101CaitlinS2ndBirthday02?authkey=Gv1sRgCOGQlc7Gk8-sHg&feat=directlink

And then some from her southern party:

http://picasaweb.google.com/taralheller/20081221WinterBirthdays?authkey=Gv1sRgCI_vup-k8eCaVA&feat=directlink