For the past four weeks straight we have had at least one person in our family sick. Some kind of mystery flu that exhibits different symptoms in each person. It’s bizzarre. Sometimes things are just low, you know. Let me give you some more examples. All taken from my own life, although probably…hopefully…not on the same day.

(1) You know you’ve reached a wardrobing low when you change out of your “good” yoga pants into your “cruddy” yoga pants before going to workout.

(2) You know you’ve reached a hairstyle low when your child says to you: “Mommy, your hair is all tangly. I think you better get the pony-tail.”

(3) You know you’ve reached a personal hygiene low when your son says to you: “You’re stinky, Mommy. Go away!”

(4) You know you’ve reached a house cleaning low when you actually consider getting a dog just so it can take care of all the food dropped on the floor. Or maybe that’s a sanity low?

So that’s me. How low can you go?

In Taipei you never know how long you are going to have the sun. It could start raining at any moment. My weather app calls for rain every single day, I finally figured out that the humidity is always so high that the computer can’t imagine any other possible outcome.

In this little respite we have been enjoying between the misting drizzle of winter and the spring rains (which lead into summer typhoons), what I call “California Days“, we have been hitting the parks hard. And having a grand time. Eating packed lunches with dirty fingers, forgetting naps, catching bugs, digging holes, climbing trees, throwing rocks, running, jumping, chasing….it has been glorious.

These pictures are a couple of weeks old, from one of our earliest sunny days this spring. Taken on a trip to one of our favorite parks. It is large enough that the kiddos can run off and feel like they are playing in their own little world, yet small enough that the mommies can keep an eye on them. There is a nice little play area safe enough for the babies and another one with taller slides and (Ellie’s favorite) monkey bars. There is a pond with fish, ducks and turtles. There is lots of grass and trees and a little place that my kids call Rock Forest. Rock Forest is a group of large boulders under the banyan trees. This is where they like to go to climb on the rocks and trees, swing on the vines, and develop their fantasies. They can play there for hours. The best part is that it is right close to where some of our favorite people live, and so we have friends to play with whenever we go there.

John-John’s pal Evie.

“Come on Evie, let’s go see if we can find some dog poop over here on this hill.”

Evie says, “I am a lady. Ladies do NOT play with dog poop.”

It’s not very easy to catch pictures of the big kids when they are running like wild things and you have a baby in tow.

Ellie was not expecting to see me standing there as she raced around the corner.

Not very pleased either.

I wanted to get a picture of John-John and Evie on this bench. But Evie was too busy sitting like a lady to stand up and turn around.

So I went around to her. But John-John was too busy climbing like a monkey to sit down.

Sing with me now: How do you take a picture of a toddler? How do you take a cloud and pin it down?

How do you take a picture of a toooooddlerrrrr? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

My children act as if they own this park. I’m pretty sure sitting out there and dangling your feet in the water is discouraged.

Guess who found a mud puddle to play in?

This is a time when Chinese just works better…玩累了…wán lèi le…or “played (until he was) tired”. A day well spent.

That’s why it’s nice to know that some things don’t really change. Like this eyes-crunched, crooked smile…

One-year-old Abram.

Three-year-old Abram.

Same crooked grin. Same crunched up eyes. Precious.

Let’s not forget Ellie, in some ways she doesn’t change either.

This winter was one of the wettest in Taiwan’s history. At one point we had 30 straight days of rain. Our walls grew mold. Our kids started saying, “It’s a nice sunny day!” whenever the rain stopped falling. I think the lack of Vitamin D and accompanying sickness made us all feel a little low.

We are well into spring now—yesterday gave us the first summer thunderstorm—and have enjoyed our share of sunshine. Now that I’ve gotten through all the birthdays, and before I move on to regular blogging, I want to share this priceless picture of my boys dressed up in their winter sweaters, fighting for space in the chair.

Here’s a tip: If you are going to throw a party, try to do co-host with your incredibly creative, slightly over-achieving friend (Thank you, P! You are amazing!). You won’t have to do a thing, and will practically end up as a participant at your own party. It’s a very relaxing way to throw a party.

Ellie had a joint party with her friend Sarah. (Feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of three parties I decided to outsource as much as possible this year.) Sarah’s birthday is three weeks before Ellie’s, and they were both born within the range of the Chinese New Year holiday. Similar to having a birthday over Christmas in the West, this means everyone is busy with travelling and family right during your birthday time. So we waited until the holidays were past to have the party.

And what a party it was. A huge bash (20 kids and their parents!) reflecting the whims of two five-year-old girls. The “theme” if you can call it that was Mermaid, Dinosaur, Princess, Pink. There was cake, food (although I was so relaxed about the whole thing I almost forgot to bring a dish!), good friends, homemade party hats, presents, an egg hunt, and a pinata. I can take credit for pretty much nothing, but I did take lots of pictures. Although, not very many pictures of Ellie. My shy gal was very overwhelmed by the whole thing had carried a rather dour face for most of the party.

It was impossible to get focused action shots of the egg hunt. I started asking kids how many eggs they found, worked beautifully!

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

“Two!”

“Four!”

“One!”

The beautiful pinata. It was a shame to bust it up.

There is a great deal of concentrated anticipation going on in this picture.

Yay! Candy!

Mmmm…yummy candy.

A wonderful party!

John’s birthday party was truly wonderful. Being Chinese New Year break and all, it turned out the most of our friends with children were away or busy, and so there were lots of grown-ups and only our three kids plus two more at the party. There were no kid-friendly activities. Instead the kids entertained themselves and there was lots of grown-up conversation (I almost said adult conversation…but I believe that has an altogether different and unwanted meaning…I’ll go back to slogging now…), my famous lentil soup (what? you didn’t know about it?), good German bread from our neighborhood bakery (admit it, you want to move to Taiwan), and carrot cake.

It seems that when I am having fun and hosting a party I do not remember to take pictures.

We did sing Happy Birthday to the birthday boy. He wasn’t completely neglected. And Jason took a video*.

At some point during the party I was telling the story of Ellie’s first birthday party. We were still green expats back then and didn’t know where to get birthday candles. On the day of her party (because I’m so good at planning ahead), I naively went to my local grocery store. Ha. Hahahaha. My friends asked if I used a votive candle because I couldn’t find a proper birthday candle. I told them I bought the only thing I could find. A big red candle that Taiwanese people put on their altars. As in, altars where they worship idols and their ancestors.

Isn’t that a funny story?

And then when it was time to put the candles on John Amos’ cake…I couldn’t find them. The candles I brought from the US years ago and have been saving for just this reason. Missing. Disappeared. Gone. We had to use a votive.

Perhaps being the third child isn’t all that blessed?

*Sadly, I cannot figure out how to get that video from there to here. I worked on it for an hour. I could have been watching Friday Night Lights (Season 2). Or sleeping.

Abram’s will be first.

We originally planned to have a party at the zoo for Abram and his friend E (their birthdays are two days apart). It would have been wonderful. But despite the icing-melting, sweltering weather we had experienced four days prior, the day of the party dawned cold and rainy. And cold. We all agreed that if we went to the zoo we would end up hudled under the shelter waiting to eat cake so we could all go home. So we moved the party to our house. A good decision, as it turned out very nice. Low key and fairly quiet, we played, ate cake, hunted for dinosaur eggs, played some more. The kids required very little adult intervention, which meant all the grown-ups got to have lots of nice chatting time.

I didn’t take very many pictures…I was too busy chatting and Jason had to miss most of the party for a church event he was responsible for. But I did capture Abram and E blowing out their candles. Abram’s is plopped into one of the pudding cups and E’s is on the positively gorgeous and delicious cake his mom made.

Of the five people in our family, four of us have birthdays within the same 30 day period. John Amos starts us off on February 4th and Abram closes out birthday season on March 6th. My birthday is one day after John Amos’ (I made my goal of having three kids before my thirtieth birthday with only 12 hours to spare!), and Ellie’s is on Valentine’s Day.

I am an introvert, and so it has taken me almost an entire month to recover from all the celebrations and merry making. I believe I’m finally ready to blog about it all.

I am not a big fancy awesome cake decorator. Fondant scares me. In some ways I think things have gotten a bit out of hand with kids’ birthday cakes these days. I have seen birthday cakes for a three-year-old’s birthday party that are fancier than my wedding cake. Whatever happened to the sheet cake with “Happy Birthday So-and-so!” written on it??

The theme for this year was melted chocolate. So simple. So easy. So semi-fancy-awesome.

Knowing Ellie would choose a pink cake and Abram would choose green and blue, I picked my own favorite colors for John Amos’ cake: yellow and orange. It was my birthday, too, after all. A lion’s face seemed to make sense on a yellow and orange cake.

It was so cold the night I made this cake that I couldn’t get the butter to soften. There were tiny pieces of butter in the icing. I got the idea here, it’s pretty much a cheater’s way to do an ombre cake. Any recipe that has “easy” and “real people” and I’m all in. It turned out very, very nice although I wish I had done three layers. The cake is carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

I also made vegan chocolate cupcakes using my go-to chocolate cake recipe. This is my go-to cake recipe because: (1) it’s cheap…no eggs or butter, (2) it’s easy…takes about 5 minutes to mix up, and (3) it’s delicious. Why would I make any other kind sof cake? It’s called Crazy Cake, you can find it here except you want to cut that sugar in half.

This next section could be titled, “How I failed to meet my daughter’s birthday cake expectations.”

Ellie wanted a strawberry cake with a princess on it and a candle in the shape of a 5. Her birthday was on a Tuesday with a party planned for the following Saturday. It seems, to a five-year-old’s thinking, that you are required to blow out your candles before you can actually turn five. And so, on Ellie’s birthday we had cake and candles and the Happy Birthday song with just the five of us.

Given Ellie’s zeal for all things pink, I figured pink was more important than strawberry-flavored. So I whipped up a Crazy Cake and added some food coloring to our favorite cream cheese frosting. Whoops. The next day Ellie explained that she wanted her cake to be pink AND taste like strawberries.

Take TWO.

For Ellie’s birthday party I decided to make a white cake filled with strawberry jelly and frosted with strawberry buttercream.

Isn’t it beautiful. I was so proud. Three layers looks much nicer.

Just one problem. No princess, and omission that did not go unnoticed. I was decorating this thing 10 minutes before a party that was not being held at my house. As in, I had to finish it up and haul it over to the party location. I was in a rush and I wasn’t sure an entire princess was going to fit on the round cake. I improvised with flowers, hearts and dots. It’s girly. It’s cute. I had already done one princess, right?? It seems girly, cute flowers, hearts and dots do not make up for a princess.

The strawberry buttercream was finicky and wanted to separate. In the end I decided I couldn’t risk saran wrap and—for the 1000th time wishing I had a fancy cake carrier—just hand carried it unwrapped over to the party. What a picture I must have been. Have I mentioned that there is a wet market just outside my apartment building? Imagine me, with John Amos in the Ergo on my back, balancing three layers of strawberry cake goodness while gingerly wending my way through the Saturday shopping crowd praying every. single. step. that no one jostles me. I feel stressed out just thinking about it. But we made it and it was delicious.

Moving on. Abram wanted a monster AND a dinosaur. I tried. And tried. And tried. To get him to narrow it down to a monster OR a dinosaur. But no. It had to be both.

Oh my. Oh. My.

Once again it’s the Crazy Cake with cream cheese frosting. Except this time the only cream cheese we could find was the ‘spreadable’ kind. What on earth? Who has trouble spreading cream cheese? It’s ALREADY spreadable. What they should call it is ‘impossible-to-incorporate-into-frosting’ cream cheese.

Unlike the day I made John Amos’ cake, it was 80 degrees inside our apartment on this day. I checked. My butter melted just fine. What I ended up with was drippy butter emulsified with the ‘spreadable’ cream cheese. It’s a good thing it was a monster cake.

With my other cakes I practiced the design on paper first. It seems I was feeling a bit sure of my self by this time. This was a mistake. Despite the fact that I read dinosaur books to my sons multiple times daily, it seems I still don’t have a very good grasp on what T-rex’s legs look like.

I believe I was trying to perk the cake up with the blue border. I started at the lower left corner and worked clockwise. You can see that by the time I was nearly finished I had just given up and smudged out the rest.

Abram is such a dear, he loved his Angry Fry Kid vs. Handicapped T-Rex cake.

We all scraped off our frosting. ‘Spreadable’ cream cheese, I hate you.

For Abram’s big birthday party I didn’t even make a cake. I made pudding. Vegan pudding at that. The idea was to dig in the “mud” to find the surprise hidden in your pudding. I don’t have a picture of the finished product. (It was 1am) Imagine more pudding covering the treats and then some Oreo crumbs on top.

I spent a LOT of time searching the internets for a vegan pudding recipe. But they were all too dern fancy. I like foodies, I’m glad with have foodies, maybe I would be a foodie if I had more time and money. But seriously, rein it in. Is it really necessary to specify in your ingredient list that I must use “good quality chocolate (please NO Hershey’s)”. No thank you. Where’s the “easy” recipe for “real people”?

In the end I used the Quick Chocolate Pudding recipe from my trusty More With Less cookbook and substituted coconut milk so it would be vegan. (One of my best friends is vegan, and so vegan cake and vegan chocolate pudding are important.) Here’s the recipe:

Real People Vegan Chocolate Pudding (serves 4-6)

Combine in heavy saucepan or double boiler:
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 cups coconut milk
A tiny bit of salt…a few grains to half a pinch
Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly (or, in my case, often).
Add:
1 teaspoon vanilla
Serve warm or cold.

So, so, so good.

…this little boy changed from a baby to a toddler. He started walking. FAST! Complete with turns, pivots, and attempts at running.

We also had a caterpillar (that Ellie caught) form a cocoon and emerge as a moth. We were able to watch him dry off his wings. We were all amazed.

I like blogging. But I also like not blogging. Not blogging opens up all this time for more important things like sleep, exercise, and spending time with my husband. So I may do less of it in the future. Blogging, that is. Not not blogging.

Next up: Birthday-palooza! Coming (somewhat) soon.

Building Duplo towers…pretending to be a meat-eating-dinosaur…pretending to be a bird…being a peacemaker…charming everyone he meets…asking questions…learning letters…learning numbers…practicing jumping…wishing for a pet dog…hoping to catch a seal in the ocean…pondering things…taking things to heart…helping with chores…being the sweetest three-year-old there ever was…

Happ-ty Berfday, Abram Asher Bear!