Trip to the dentist's office

Joe said his gums were hurting so we went to a dentist's office. Wow... It looked like a five-star hotel lobby inside.


Right after the panoramic x-ray. It looked like a CT scan machine.


Being examined by the doc. He said it was probably because of a sinus infection and the cold he's had recently. If the pain doesn't go away soon, we are to go to the ear, nose, throat doc to see if Joe has a sinus infection.



In the lobby. Nice furniture, big screen tv, wow...


After the dentist's office, we went to Home Plus (It's like a big target) on a date. We looked at many different things, ended up spending more money than we should have. We always drool over books and study material for Alden's Korean.


No, this is not for Al's Korean nor his English. Joe liked that it said, "Miffy goes to stay."




In Korea, most women's bathroom has small urinal/toilet and sink for little kids. They're really cute.


Alden's been just favoring real food over breastmilk, he pretty much weaned himself off. I only breastfeed him maybe once a day when he's really tired and sleepy (if I do it when he's awake, he bites me and refuses to eat). He's so cute when he eats. I'm trying to teach him to say "more." I've give up trying to teach him sign language. I think he'll be able to speak first.

Give me food.....

Alden likes to hang out with daddy. They're so cute together.

And here's a bonus picture.

Sorry baby...

Superman and Exploded Mosquito

Alden really likes to crawl everywhere and climb on things. All day, he sweats like crazy. So one day, I decided to play with his wet hair. Superman style.

A couple nights ago, I forgot to turn on the mosquito repellent thingy. I got mercilessly attacked and was bit 7 times. I had to get up at three in the morning to kill the mosquitoes. I found one flying towards me, and I didn't have time to react and kill it with both hands since I had a book in one hand. So I just smacked it with the book, and the mosquito got knocked off to the ground and exploded. I HAD to take a picture.. Sorry... if you are more sensitive towards this type of pictures, I apologize.

My precious blood....

Happy Father's Day!

On Saturday, we went to the beach with the Grandys. They are a Korean American family, and they have been very nice to us. We went to the beach to eat meat (Sam gyup sal). The beach isn't a sand beach, it was a pebble beach. We had a lot of fun but we forgot sunscreen (I felt so bad for forgetting it since I'm the mom...). Joe got sunburned pretty badly....

We had to put those big rocks on the flap of the parasol to keep it from being blown away.
Cooking meat under the parasol. Yum.

The Grandys. Joe-Jaeran-Ian.

Having a good time with daddy.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, especially Joe... (We didn't remember it until 10:00 pm...)

My aunt and grandma took us out to dinner today to eat raw fish. It was exotic. lol. and good. (for me. lol)

(Mom this picture is for you)

Alden has been showing a great interest in picking my wallet. (Already). Here's an example of him being caught in the act.

Sitting on a money cusion (this is a Korean phrase for "rich").

More improvements

So.. a lot of korean ladies told me that Alden must have been sick because he was going through a growing spur, and he'd be able to do a lot more tricks once he got better. And it was true! It is so fun to see him being able to do more things everyday. Here is the list.

1. He is more lively than ever, sometimes we wonder where he gets all of his energy. He crawls everywhere with super speed and tries to get into everything, especially plastic bags (that often say "Keep out of reach of babies. Danger of suffocation") and electric cords. I put all of his toys in one plastic bin, and he likes to knock if over and get all of his toys out, one by one, and throw them on the floor.

2. He can say "Mom" "Dad" "Food" in Korean, kind of. I'm not really sure if he knows what they mean. I think he knows what "mom" means....? Well, at least, he really likes to repeat after what we say.

3. He's a real screamer. He likes to scream for.... nothing. lol. I don't know why, but he would just randomly scream.

4. He can also grawl really well.

5. He can smack his lips and make kissing noises but he doesn't know how to properly kiss yet.

6. He give us hugs sometimes but not on demand.

7. He likes the company of other kids more and likes to play with other people. He cries when people leave the room.

8. He can sit up on his own.

9. He can pull himself up and stand.

10. And finally and mostly, he pooped in the toilet today!!! I was so proud of him. :D He was making sign of pooping (mostly the face and the yell that he does), and I heard him fart, so I pulled off his diaper and put him on the toilet. I encouraged him to give it a try, and he pooped! I was so happy. :D I missed the second time he pooped today (he's been having stomach problems lately from the antibiotics so he poops 3-4 times a day), but hopefully when he goes back to the regular schedule, we can really work on him pooping in the toilet.

Little update

Oops. I never published this entry....

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Alden's feeling much better. We went up to Seoul to the temple and spent some time with Joe's mom over the weekend. Alden can say Mama, and he can give kisses (except they are open mouthed so we gotta teach him how to approapriately kiss). He's pulled himself up once to stand but he still doesn't have the guts to start walking. He much prefers crawling and he's really good at it. (He wakes up in the middle of the night to crawl all over us). Now that he's feeling better, we're having him sleep in the playpen. :D Joe's going to start at the Public Relations department this week for the next 5 weeks. He doesn't know what he's going to do, and we're not sure if they do either but it'll be fun. After that, we'll be free to play.

Pictures

Studying Korean/English with Gomo


Going out for fun. :D


These are pictures printed on tiles. So cute!


We went to a Baby Fair. This guy is called The King of Fart, and he farts and does magic on a kid's show. lol.

At an church activity with Gomo

Roasting marshmellow. It didn't really work. They were Canadian.

Happy baby!

Playing Korean board game.

Joe's the king of the game!

And our team won!

Falling asleep in Sunday School.

Playing on the floor.

Playing on the bed

Eating Korean food. Yum!

Tom, this is what Ojing-o looks like alive.

Running away with the diaper.

Catch me if you can, mommy!

Oops! This is what happened....

These are disinfection trucks. They go around the streets and spray insecticides.

This is how the dog gets punished for pooping and peeing where she's not supposed to.

This is how much room Al leaves us on our bed when he sleeps with us.

Sick baby.........

Really sick baby...

Feeling better baby playing with blocks.

Updates

Hi. I know I haven't really updated the blog lately... There were a lot of things, well, just one big thing going on that kept all of us busy. Little Al's been pretty sick with a double ear infection, and I've had to go to the doctor's office pretty much every single day for the last couple weeks. Anyway, long story short, i'll just post a copy of email that Joe wrote to Jamie. That'll sum up our last couple weeks pretty well.

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Hey buddy-

What is up? I'd say this has been another good week, but Al and I were sick. We went to a local doctor several times when Al first got sick and he gave us two different sets of antibiotics. Well, Al kept getting worse, so we went a Pediatrician in downtown Ulsan (he was recommended to us by some Korean/American branch members). The doctor did a good job of checking him out and he finally got some effective medicine and has been doing better. He ended up having a cold along with both ears infected really, really, really bad.

One thing I noticed about Korean medical care is that they want you in a lot. You know how in America they will give you medicine good for a week then tell you to come back if it doesn't work?, well here they give you like a day or two worth of medicine and have you come back every day or every other day.Good thing it's cheap to go to the doctor here.

I got a cold from Al last Friday, but I'm doing almost good now. Poor YY has had to tend to Al almost the whole time (he is super clingy when he is sick) and she is exhausted (and all of her shirts have baby snot on them). Bless her heart. Work has been good, I even took off Monday so YY and I could take Al to the hospital (and I was sick too). Nothing too much else going on with us other then sickness.

[Some side note. 목욕탕 is the public bath house, and it's a part of 찜질방 (jjim jil bang), that has many different sauna rooms with different temperatures and themes. 위국인, which should be spelled 외국인, means "foreigner."]

A mildly funny story about a 위국인 named Joe. YY and I went to the Jjim jil bang the other day (while Al was sleeping) and I still haven't gotten the hang of it. I undressed and put all my clothes in the shoe locker..., and then went to the 목욕탕 first instead of the jjim jil bang... which kept YY waiting for me right outside. She called the 목욕탕 i was in and told them that her 위국인 husband is probably lost in there. They found a 위국인, but it was the wrong foreigner. Eventually they got me though. After I finsihed the call with YY the guy that worked there showed me that my shoes goes in one locker and the bigger locker is for the clothes.( I thought it was strange to get naked right next to the entrance anyway.) . We stayed in some of the really hot rooms and got a massage in one of those massage chairs. It was fun. I think that by next time, I will have the whoe jjim jil bang thing down

Anyway, if we get time, I'll have YY send some pics of this week. Thanks for keeping us updated.

Love ya a bunch!
Joe, Yaeyoung and 유선

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Pictures coming right up.