Victorious!

For those of you who haven't heard, I've been thrilled with the size of our apartment here in Bangkok, and not so thrilled with the color. The poor individual who lived here before must have thought...I don't even really know what to say. She decided that since the building people painted the doorways the darkest gray possible, she would just go with a gray color scheme throughout the entire place. The pictures you have seen have some views of walls in the living room. The walls (not trim) are a light gray. This shade on it's own is tolerable, it just gets worse in the front foyer where black is the color of the trim. Yes, black. And in our hallway and back bedrooms, with the dark gray doors and trim, well we live in a file cabinet complete with fluorescent office lighting. Anyway, while wall color shouldn't make or break your year, it's pretty gloomy in here and we complained. We complained a few times. We were actually lied to on a few occasions by the staff here. It's funny how they think they can say, "Oh yes, we speak with boss at embassy and we no paint," and that we would never find out that they did not speak with anyone at the embassy. Since that is where Pat works!!! They also told us all the A apartments (we live in 9A) are gray. Also not true. They also told us they carry no white paint in stock. And that if we paint over the gray paint and change it to white, we'll either have to pay a fee or paint it back to gray!!! Well, after considering installing some heavy artillery and painting a runway on the floor to create an aircraft carrier motif (dad's idea), I was okay and ready to live with this color. However, yesterday my English-speaking friend at the front desk told me they are going to paint! White! Victory!

In other news, Sawyer has his first cold. He's fine, a little stuffy, runny, sneezy. It's neat that I could just look at his eyes yesterday and know something was off before other symptoms started. My mommy superpowers are developing. I figured his cold would make today a good day to find a pediatrician at Bumrungrad Hospital and do his 6-month well baby checkup. That went well and fortunately the pediatrician didn't go into panic mode and run millions of tests. He said, "He looks great, just keep an eye on him." That's my kind of doctor! Of course, if something developed I would take action. I just don't like less than one day of sniffles to turn into 15 prescriptions and me being a nervous wreck. Right now Sawyer has fallen asleep in his bouncer. This is great because when he falls asleep with me holding him, he doesn't want me to stop moving or sit down. He will wake up and fuss for me to start moving again. Well in the bouncer he's asleep, but bouncing at the same time. When his sleep gets deeper and the bouncer stops hopping, he starts kicking again to get it moving. All this with his eyes closed.

In housekeeping news, Arlyn, our new part-time housekeeper is wonderful. She helps us out so much and all in a few hours, 3 days per week. Although she's from the Philippines, she speaks some Thai and helped communicate with some men who came to our apartment to take out furniture. Usually the building workers don't speak any English. Arlyn is also really taking to Sawyer. This week she's calling him Sower, which is just fine with me. In true ladies-man fashion, Sawyer gives Arlyn all the looks and coos. He really knows how to work it. I've decided that he thinks blonds are for food and brunettes are for fun. He also really loves long hair. He thinks mine is fun to munch on. I'll try to get some video of his new tongue trick. We think he may be using his tongue as a teething ring. It remains very long and pointy. Who knows if it will reach the length of his uncle's tongue. Time will tell. We do know that as of today, Sawyer is a whopping 7.8 kilos (that's 17 pounds)! The doctor said he's very strong. That's our boy!