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.