October 30, 1999

Today started it all.... he kissed me and said, "We should go out." I agreed.

10 years later, we've...

* been married for 6 years

* Lived in 4 different countries

* 3 different continents

* have 2 awesome Frenchies

* and a cute little baby girl

Who would have thought that kiss on the dance floor of the Pike house would lead to this!

I'm glad he finally kissed me that night.

Happy 10 years, Thomas! Its cliche but Time really does fly by when you're having fun.

The picture from our wedding invite.

terrible blogger...

Its been a while since my last blog. Not sure exactly what happened. Oh wait, yes I do. My cute little Sophie didn't really nap longer than an hour and a time for the past week and well couple that with trying to the regular house-wifey- things and blogging gets pushed way back on the burner.

But I'm back and here goes my retro-blogs.... Enjoy

Gate keepers

Everyday, my three 'children' stand at the door looking out. Molly walked away from the picture as it was in mid-click (I don't think she likes being photographed)... but you get the idea.

This one is Sophie talking to the dogs and trying to get them inside.

Service

We love, love cappuccinos so thinking a good way to save some money was to purchase our own cap. maker. Back in March in KL, we did just that. Used it every day, sometimes twice a day and then we went on home leave in June/July and when we came home- it just stopped working.

We went up to KL in August to drop it off for servicing. "It'll take 1 month," they said. "And no, can not send back to you in JB, lah." So we had to drive the 4 hours back up to KL and pick up the maker. Starting to be a little bit of a pain this maker.

September 1 came and I called- "not ready", mid-September I called again, " not ready". Called again the beginning of October - "not ready." Are you kidding me? Mid October- "yes, it just came in yesterday." (Yesterday was a Sunday- things don't happen on a Sunday!) Anyway, we planned an overnight up to KL this past weekend to buy some other stuff and pick this thing up.

Got to the store, picked it up- made sure it heated up (was the problem). Then I inspected it.... it was thoroughly cleaned out before I handed it to them in August. Coffee grounds everywhere, water residue all in it. grease where the coffee is actually made, absolutely disgusting. The frustration was starting to show on my face when Thomas stepped in to handle it. "Oh, they have to check to see if it works. That's why coffee and water." T-"And the residue and the fact they left it dirty at the the manufacturer's service center." CSrep- "Oh, so sorry sir, we send back to manufacturer for you - another month."

I spent an hour cleaning it yesterday... with a toothbrush. It better make one hell of a good cup cappuccino this evening.

And the service drama never ends in Asia...

Sore Knees

Our little munchkin is crawling up a storm. Its fun crawling around after her and hiding behind the couches or walls to 'scare' her when she come by. The squeal and laughter is ridiculously loud and only causes me to keep doing it. All day, every day, we crawl, we crawl from the kitchen to the front door and yes, out of the front door and to the gate. She crawls after the dogs, after the ball and after the remote or the phone. And we crawl... we're crawling after her... even under the table.

The other day, I went to bed with really sore knees and could not remember banging them on anything or well, there were no squats so what gives. Only until the next morning when I was, say it with me, crawling, I realized what it was from. Man, if my knees killed that bad, what would Sophie's feel like. She does have quite a bit of fat there but still it must not feel good.

So the search for knee pads/baby leg warmers began. The search in JB ended as quickly as it started and we then found ourselves in Singapore. Found and bought some knee pads (not the cutest) but it'll do. We came home and at first she wasn't sure what to do but then took off. I got this picture of her while she was standing. She looks like she's ready for the roller derby. Watch out, Drew! (the shoes have already been bought waiting for that day she takes her first steps alone.)

Wordless Wednesday

Check out my new kicks!

One thousand one hundred= eleven hundred???

Last Friday, I ran my usual monthly errand to the bank to pay on my car loan. My ridiculously high car loan. I drive a Nissan Latio Sport or in the States its a Nissan Versa Sport. Fantastic car but due to taxes, I had to buy it for maybe 3x the price in the States. Anyway, water under bridge.

Every month, I have to head to the bank to pay on my loan because

1. I can't pay online

2. My bank, citibank will "automatically" pay every month by writing the check and send it via snail mail to the lender bank. And they'll charge me a fee for it.

So anyway, I pay it every month. And every month, the teller has some sort of problem with my check.

1. The order of the payee (Thomas' name/ License plate no.) is switched - their instructions say to write one or the other or both in any order.

2. The check is slightly ripped (from tearing it out of the checkbook) and they say its unacceptable. Oddly enough after arguing with them - the check clears perfectly.

3. The written amount does not include the word "only" at the end of the value. A line does not suffice!

4. My favorite is the date. Payment is due on the 11th and in my checkbook I have the entire year's worth of checks written out. If I happen to go in the afternoon on the 10th with my check dating the 11th - "oh can not do, lah"

Friday came with a new concern from the teller... Check written for 1179. In the written amount, I wrote eleven hundred...

The teller immediately said I can not give her this check it does not say " one thousand one hundred." WHAT?!

Yep, I told her one thousand one hundred IS in fact eleven hundred. She then left to ask her manager who also agreed with his teller. "It is not their practice. The check will not clear." After stating that they are the same number and that I have not had any problems for the past 1 1/2 years, they decided to go ahead and enter the check "only if I will pay the return fee when it is rejected." I agree.

Funnily, I checked my checking account today and surprise: my check for eleven hundred seventy nine cleared!

Rain, Rain go away...

If you live or have lived close to the equator, you'd understand my obsession with the rain. Every morning, I look outside and hope that it'll be a pretty day for the pool. Sophie loves the water and well, so do Thomas and I. So, every morning, I look out. Some days its really cloudy and I think, "maybe it'll clear up this afternoon". Some days its beautiful and I think, "great, we'll hit the pool after lunch". Our mornings are usually taken up by any errands that need to get done before the the main artery of JB gets clogged with Malay drivers or by skyping the various familia that need their Sophie-fix.

Today, like all days, was a "I hope it's nice..." It was beautiful, then it was cloudy, then it was beautiful... then lunch happened and well, unfortunately I uttered those key words to Sophie... "Let's go to the pool". Big mistake, Big. Huge. Cue clouds, cue thunder, cue Monica's annoyance with the rain.

Maybe tomorrow...

Wordless Wednesday

Confused? Or should we get a 'dog' bed with Sophie's name on it?

Water and a Beer!

We spent this past weekend in Singapore which for all of you that don't know... we live in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Its like Newark and Singapore is like New York. Yes, we live in the Ghetto and traveling to civilization is having to enter a whole new country. Thomas and a friend from here were meeting up with some other guys visiting from the UK for "Boys' night". He wasn't coming back to JB after a night of drinking so he was getting a hotel room. Sophie and I tagged along for the night out in SG (well, a swim in the hotel pool, Subway for dinner and thrilling night playing in the tub and playing "chase the baby" around the room!)

Before Thomas went out drinking, I had my usual conversation with him... Quick recap of history... Thomas had pancreatitis back in 2001 and had a few episodes of pseudocysts stirring it up again. He basically killed his pancreas after Sprink Break Cancun '01. Woohoo! Drinking excessively is something in the past but every once in a while, Thomas lets hims self be "Fun Thomas". The Thomas from college. BUT... its not recommended so I had a my usual talk.. "Don't forget to drink water - a water for every beer."

Usually, my advice goes in one ear and out the other until the next morning when he's feeling it but somehow my advice stuck this time and as he reported back to me the next morning, all the other guys ordered water even though they gave him crap for it! Thanks to James for this picture.

Sometimes the nagging gets through!

Our first "child"

French bulldogs are a very interesting breed. I don't think I would really consider them full dog. Anyone who knows them, knows how stubborn, smart and human-like they can be. I don't think we knew what we were getting ourselves into back in March '04 when we got our first frenchie, Max. (All old photos of him are in print - before the days of digital cameras! Will post some when we buy a new scanner.)

The differences between other dogs and Frenchies was quite apparent early on. We had our first snowstorm in Holland when we got Max at 3 months. Training him was quite difficult because he didn't like his paws being in the snow and did not like getting wet. He would not move. Not typical dog behavior.

Then there is the sleeping under the covers... never taught to him but I guess he just saw me and Thomas do it enough that he started doing it himself as well. Yes, that's him below under the covers and yes, head on pillow. Not typical dog behavior.

The stubbornness continues with wetness. Living in India during monsoon was obnoxious for many reasons but this tops the list.... As we know from above, Max does NOT like to be wet or have his paws wet (he does however like baths - he likes to be clean... again weird). Taking him for a walk or as it turned out dragging him for a walk was a bitch. I ended up very wet, Molly would be thoroughly scared (the little Indian kids and all the honking scared her) and Max would just not move. So, we thought maybe if we got him a rainjacket that would help. It seemed to work well in Holland and Denmark. And while we're doing that might as well get booties since we can't see the ground - don't want them to step in something bad. That was fun. He walked a for a bit but his head and "tail" were uncovered so as soon as those got too wet- walk was over. Not typical dog behavior.

And my favorite Max behavior.... must sit/sleep not on ground. What?! Yeah, King Max refuses to just lay on the floor like a normal dog. No, no. he will find something, anything else that he will lay on/in. Case in point... Sophie's bassinett, a pillow on the floor, Sophie's exer-saucer. Is this normal dog behavior? I think not!

But we still love our Max. Even when he jumps up on a chair to sit at the dining table and hope for some Danish breakfast!

Movie Night

There seriously isn't anything better than movie night. Last night was a great night. Put baby to bed and watched two, yes 2 movies back to back!! Saw The Proposal and Pelham 123... while lounging on our couch eating ice cream and drinking coffee. How, you may ask?

Asia has a huge dvd market. I'm sure its not completely legal but we figure if they're selling them in the mall and well its loads cheaper than watching them in the theater... why not. Not to mention Malaysia is a country that censors. Really censors. "Boob" is cut out of shows. So to watch a whole movie in the theater we'd have to go to Singapore. The cost of going over, getting someone to watch Sophie, movie tickets, popcorn and drink, parking and the traffic we'd have to endure at the border isn't worth the 2 hour movie, no matter how many stars it may get.

Our video guy lets you have 12 dvds for RM 50 or around $15. Yeah, we know. NICE! Our Dvd collection has quadrupled since we've been living in the Ghetto.

Next showing: Year One with Jack Black and in a few weeks we'll have Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp on our screen. All while wearing our pjs!

Tinkle, Tinkle my little Star!

I love reading all the "In my day, this is how we did it..." forums from our moms and their moms. The many things they did when raising us kids is mind boggling. So when Sophie was born and I had my mom and Thomas' mom here, I started to get overwhelmed by all the things that Sophie should be doing by a year old. The list started with sleeping through the night, eating food, teething. As I was told, I never really crawled and was walking by 10 months and was toilet trained by a year. REALLY?!!

My little Sophie hit 7 months and I started thinking about these milestones. Can I really expect for her to sit on a toilet and go when she can barely keep milk in her mouth? We hadn't really hit many milestones by 8 months. Teeth hadn't come in, crawling was just about to start, sleeping through the night was a "maybe tonight, maybe not tomorrow" thing and well more food ended up on the table and floor which my now pudgy dogs LOVE. So I figured I'd give the whole potty training thing a go.

First try, amazingly a success! Then I tried a few more times that day and worked. It helps that she's very routine (something I'm sure when she gets older, she'll hate that I've posted on the internet!) but it makes for training very easy. I wasn't sure how often I should rush her to the toilet so I took her every 2 hours. Reason... we've successfully trained 2 stubborn French Bulldogs and we took them out every 2 hours so maybe that would work for Sophie?!

We bought those little kid toilets that sit on the floor but soon realized that was a waste of money. She refuses to sit... only the big girl toilet.We bought an insert so she can learn to sit on her own and she loves it. She gets a proud look on her face when she's done. Sophie is now 9.5 months and we go through less diapers and she's sitting more on the toilet. Maybe our moms were on to something when we were potty trained by 1. Is our generation just lazy?

Next on the list... getting the spoon into her mouth on the first try!

Zzzzz's..

Sleeping is something we love to do in this household. By we, I mean, Thomas, me and the dogs had always enjoyed a great night's sleep and the occasional mid afternoon nap on lazy Sundays. We even trained our little Frenchies early on to sleep until 9am before waking to go out.

December 25, 2008 changed everything! Our little Sophie Elizabeth Petersen was born.

The following night we came home with her and thankfully for me and Thomas, my mom and sister were here and ready to tackle baby's first night. Sleep is something they did not get nor did the dogs as they paced back and forth through the shuffle of Mom and Nikki's tired bodies attending the cries of Baby Sophie. Early on, we were excited as she slept beautifully through the nights waking up once or twice.

Grandparent Tour '09 changed everything...

Little Sophie came back home with extreme jet lag, teething woes and a month of being cuddled by grandparents and family galore. Sleep was lost in this house creating a very grumpy Sophie, Mommy and Daddy.

Fast forward to today and 4 teeth later, we're getting back into the swing of things. Sophie is sleeping a bit better but some nights she wakes up for 1.5 hours just for the hell of it. No reason to be awake. Just looking around her room. My many attempts at telling her nothing has changed in her room go unnoticed as she insists there is something to look at. At 2am in the morning after standing over her crib for an hour, patience starts to wear thin. And with the lights off its easy to get annoyed with this little fussing baby. But when you wake up in the morning and are greeted with her smiling little face, the small annoyance we faced the night before suddenly disappears... well... until the following late night! Sweet dreams!

Wordless Wednesday

In mid-yelling... (I love it!)

Memory

Its amazes me everyday how much babies learn. In the past month alone, Sophie has crawled, pushed up to standing, walking while holding on to things, drinking from a cup, using a spoon, clapping and my favorite (except for the clean up) she now knows where her toys are.

Now if we could just get her to put them all away!

learning to blog

I sat down at my computer this morning and neatly typed out 2 blogs. The only problem is that I can't figure out how everyone does those picture slides. I have some great pics to post but don't want them to take up the entire site. Any ideas?

I probably could have figured it but my little gummy bear woke up. Since our families skype to see her growth, she has a new found love and interest in computers. That's when everything I was doing stops. Waiting for her next time before I figure out the picture thing.

Welcome...

A few months ago, my lovely husband, T, and I watched an episode on Oprah highlighting how this lady was blogging and eventually it became her full time job. Her husband quit his job and some how they now make a lot of money by her blog and advertisements. Every since that day, T has been asking if I've started that blog. Fast forward to today... a blog about our little family.

I'm not sure how well I'll do at this. I don't seem to think our life is all that fabulous so if anything, this will provide my family and T's family loads of stories about "their little angel". Our little girl, S. Enjoy reading and I'll see what I can do...