Flat Stanley Does Bangkok

Here's a picture of Flat Stanley. He's a little paper man that Pat's cousin's son sent us as part of a project for his second grade class. The kids are to send Flat Stanley to somewhere far away for an adventure and he's supposed to return with a souvenir and letter. We took Flat Stanley to the mall to enjoy the Siam Ocean World and ride a tuk tuk. I paid the tuk tuk driver 20 baht to hold Stan. Siam Ocean World is an aquarium in the basement of the mall. Sounds awful but it's an amazingly huge and modern aquarium. Flat Stanley loved it. Sawyer's favorites are the little fish in the smaller aquariums and the big sea turtles. The 3 of us (oops, I mean 4, sorry Stan) had a great weekend and did a lot of vegging out and scooting on the floor. Speaking of scooting, Sawyer has taken to doing the belly scoot on wood floor and regular run of the mill boring crawling on carpet. He seems to get better mileage that way.

Now, just a quick story about before Pat got home. Last Saturday was awful. Well, I exaggerate. It was just exhausting. We'd had a somewhat normal morning, just Sawyer and I. He has an endless and exasperating fascination with doors. Open, close, open, close. I've bought some little foam block things that go on the edge of the door so that you can't slam the door or close it at all. That doesn't prevent children from smashing their fingers underneath the door. Sawyer's cry was shrill and in such a frenzy of pain that I couldn't calm him down for about 15 min. Thought I was right there (you're thinking, "Yeah, sure.") I didn't catch which finger got slammed. Later I found out when one of his fingertips started turning a sad purple with some blood underneath the nail. Okay, Kelly, that's life. Sawyer will be fine.

Later we're on the changing table. Sawyer had a fun bath, I sang "Rubber Ducky" a million more times in different styles. Lately I've been adding a Marilyn Monroe style "rubadubadubby" but keeping the rest of the song a little Broadway. So I make the stupid mistake of handing Sawyer the baby lotion bottle. This is my lazy attempt to get him to sit still while I put on his diaper and jammies. He chews on it a moment and when I took it away I realized that a piece of plastic was missing from the cap. A sharp piece of plastic. Great. He's not choking, nor does he seem in any pain. I check his mouth and there doesn't seem to be anything foreign in there. In hopes of finding the piece on the floor, I set Sawyer down in the middle of his room and get on all fours to look under the table. In the 10 seconds it takes for me to look under his table, he's half-way pulled up on his end-table and I turn in time to watch him fall down and hit his mouth. Blood on the face, blood on the hands, blood on the jammies. What really got me was that he'd done this while I was trying to solve the problem of him swallowing something. God, can you please just give me these mishaps one at a time.....PLEASE??? The bleeding stopped and I never panicked knowing that mouth bleeds almost always look worse than they are. Sawyer actually enjoyed sucking on the baby-sized ice pack that there was no fat lip. He even went to sleep and only woke up briefly in the middle of the night to cry for a minute.

The next morning, Sawyer and I took a little walk to Bumrungrad and visited the pediatrician who told us that if he'd swallowed a pin it would be a big deal, but not a little piece of plastic. Besides, he told me, his little teeth are not strong enough to break a hard piece of plastic like that and he would have shown some signs of choking or trouble breathing if he had swallowed it. Arlyn to the rescue: she said she'd found the piece the other day and threw it out. Must have broken off from one of the many tosses off the changing table onto the floor. It really wasn't a big deal overall, but I can't help but wonder if I'll survive when he's one of a few kids and these days aren't in isolation but perhaps back to back.

Oh yes, thank you for voting. As a safety issue since a few more people have told me they think the Soi 11 pirate is on drugs, I'm not allowed to hang out with him. Much to Pat's dismay, I do like to throw him into our conversations. For example, "That party was fun. Imagine if the Soi 11 pirate showed up and was dressed to the nines speaking perfect English and orders a martini." This will probably be the way I end all my blog entries, but I'm SO excited about coming to visit. Hooray for JUNE!