Thomas goes into the army...nice.

So i can't be bothered to back track...but i guess i should at some point (no doubt that point will come and i will have forgotten what i did and when i did it, but life goes on)
So Thomas, my lovely Taiwanese boyfriend of well about 6 years if not longer..i can't remember, has joined the army....
Ok crazy thing to do right. well he had little choice if he wanted to stay in Taiwan. He has British passport and previously had in ARC (a visa to work here) Then the law changed and it was taken away as he has not done his Military service yet...as he's Taiwanese and male he has to do it for a year, which was previously 2 years so i should be grateful really.
Anyway he's away for a month of basic Training..and from what i can tell it's a like being in jail...lots of pointless rules and you don't get the chance to challenge them as they can punish you...nice.
This may be ok if your young and need to learn how to grow up and be a responsible adult and listen to people that are wiser and older than you... However Tom is there, he is over 30 (but thinks he's not) and has a PhD. the people who are telling him what to do and when to do it are a: younger than him, and B: far less educated than him. This can't be easy and is thus taking a toll. He tells me the two and a bit weeks in to the month and he got to fire a gun. This was the highlight of the whole dam thing. Everything else is pointless and boring (him learning to shoot a gun is pretty pointless too, as in the lab we don't normally have to shoot plants to kill them. However it was fun...so he tell me..i'd be scared i think that someone else with gun in their hands who may only be 18 and mentally unstable might just point that gun at me...not sure i'd be too stoked about firing riffles...
He tells me that he has to wear a face mask 24 hrs a day..yep when he is asleep under a mosquito net he has to wear a mask, and they come and check during the night, not just him i might add but all of them. Its mental. they say its to prevent germs...what ever! He got really sick the first week he was there with a throat infection and had to have 3 iv drips...he got to lie down for them..but was made to do other pointless physical work while he was "off sick" thus he didn't get to rest and thus had the illness for a long time. Every tiny brake that they gave him he had to go to the medics office to get medication ect... They did sign him off of work, but that just means that he doesn't go outside...instead he painted ceilings and attended lecturers about trench warfare...nice.
So he gets a week off on the 3rd of July, which is great can't wait. i just hope that its better than the weekend he just had off last weekend... It was not really off...he had to report to his officer every 3 hours (well at specific times) using a code word to make sure that it him (SERIOUSLY!) and had to be at his parents house by 10 pm every night. If he missed it or was late then they can take things away from him or punish him in some dumb arse way.
I was anti the whole making people go into the army thing but now i really hate it as i think its just such a waste of time. Toms not going to benefit from this, his time could be better spent...with me!!!
yes i am selfish and wish that he was home with us, i miss him and can't wait to see him in a week or so.
He finds out where he will be posted for the year on the 1July, he may get a uni place 75% chance of that, and that would be in Taipei...however if not then he could be posted to a little island in the middle of nowhere where he'll be for 3 months then off for a month...I don't like this idea at all, and pray he be in Taipei..but i guess it's up to God and what plans he has for Tom. So i try not to worry about that just yet.
Sarah seems to understand that tom isn't around and there is no point to ask if we can see him today (which is her normal question of the day). she also doesn't want to watch anything that had army stuff in it now as it upsets her. She told me on the way home the other day that she going to be in the ermy (ie army), so she can see tom. Cute. but fortune has it that here its only the men that have to join...plus she's about 16 years too young!
I'll try and post a photo of Tom's new crew cut...Sarah didn't want to touch his hair when he came home, she was on his shoulders with her hands behind her back, bless her.

The emperors new burger

So we are in a burger joint with tilly and Anna but before we go in I ask to make sure that they have a veggie burger. He says they do so we go in and order anna's comes first and then mine.... Well it came he said yea this the veggie burger, in front of me was I bun with a price of lettuce and gerkins on the side. So I ask where is the burger.??
There? Ok so this is their veggie burger. We won't be back soon!!
But they do have wireless and Thomas gave me an I pod touch for christmas so that' sweet

Sarah's List to Santa

My sister sent me some paper and envelopes for Sarah to write to Father Christmas/ Santa. So i sat down with her and asked her so what do you want for Christmas from Santa.

"Yellow Cakes" she replied, so i say ok anything else just think of some things that you want to have and maybe Santa can bring them.
"err yello cakes? ok blue cakes" So i probe again and say come on, something that you really like and want that mummy doesn't buy for you...
"tauw may (Strawberries), i'd like strawberries". OK great, Santa might bring you those..anything else??
"Yellow cakes", she says again and again.
So i give up and let her finish her list there as she really couldn't think of anything else she wants, she just wants yellow cakes really.
So guess what i'll be baking just before Christmas day!
I will i am sure long for Christmas list so easy when she is 13 asking for a playstation ect...

Ok its cold here now

So its finally cold here...cold Taiwan cold mean 11 oC and colder inside than out due to no heating in the houses and it set up for hot weather...go figure. So this time of year i freeze to death and so does my skinny little girl..she's not so skinny these days but still she's cold even with many many layers of clothes on. bless her.
We were lying in bed (she came and joined me) the other day, it was cold don't want to get out from under the duvet. She said she wants to play a game, ok, so she pretends to shot things pow pow she goes, she tells me we are the water park and then goes on to tell me all the things she likes to do at the water park. Then she starts saying and and and mummy's boobies mummy's boobies wobble at the water park! i crack up laughing and so she repeats it of course. We haven't been to the water park since august but she still remembers everything..even things i didn't think she thought or noticed..ie my boobies wobbling! It was pretty funny, and i suspect it is an accurate observation!

Still here..just not often

So i am still here just not that often, i think in the new year i will start to get the iternet at home as its doing my head in.
We baked with the kids on Saturday very cute, Tilly wanted more licking mum, meaning icing. Sarah liked to cut out the shapes and decorated them nicely, didn't like to eat them of course. however i make muffins this morning with little sugar in them and she ate 3, nice. They are teddy bear shaped as i bought a new mold...ok it cost way too much but its ace, Sarah never gets to eat cute food, there's no cute food for vegans here..
ok i have to go my boss wants her computer back..
i'll try again soon.

Its potty time for Sarah and Pickles!

So at my parents Sarah started to want to pee on the potty, which she has been strongly against for some time now. So i was over the moon to see she was interested in it again. So when we got home she peed on the potty a couple of times but never when we were out and often on the floor..you know how it goes. Then we were at Kelly's house and i thought I'd give it a go, so i took of her nappy and let her bare little bum run around. Nick was sleeping, which is only relevant later, so she sat on the potty there...for ages, no pee pee. then mum its coming pee pee is coming! quick. She rushes sits down and pees, then she claps and is extremely excited to the point that she wakes up Nick. Bless her, she was so pleased with herself ( i too added to the excitement!) then later she did it again! yeah way to go. this time I'd figured out that if you turn on the potty (i didn't know you could) then it plays music when she pees in it! how cool was that, for a little girl that loves music. She was over the moon.
So at home we made a star chart,and then she stopped peeing on the potty! yep it had the reverse effect. she refused to use the potty and thus i didn't push the issue. Then i tried again at a friends house and she did it twice. I gave her jelly (little mega sweet things that come in tiny containers that every kid loves). She was well chuffed that she got the jelly and went home and peed again, and asked for a jelly.
So the jelly worked the stars didn't.
this kid likes rules so i placed some, i told her when she was at home she wasn't to wear a nappy anymore (only at night). So this week we'd had a few fights where she wanted me to put on the nappy...so she could pee/poop. but I'd say no then when we'd go out I'd put on one and yep she's poop in it. so i told her if she peed on the potty she could have a jelly if not then no jelly's. If she pooped then she could have two jelly's (oh the other thing she learnt to do well in the UK was to count, so cute).
today was the first day i had a break though with the potty fiasco. We didn't go out all morning and see peed 3 times and pooped once, her first ever poop on the potty!! i was so pleased. however i am started to regret the jelly rule as this morning she has already eaten 5 jelly's...not so good!
So we left the house to go to the nannies with no nappy on, yep i risked it and she made it just fine. i am quite sure she will kill me when she's older and knows that i shared this information with the world, but I'd happy and i want to tell people.
the other thing that happened earlier this morning is that my cat Pickles, pooped for the first time on the toilet too. the real toilet that is. She's been peeing on the toilet for about 3 years now but normally she has a bowl with a little bit of sand in it and holes so the pee goes threw and the poop stays and she can cover it ect...
Well Thomas looked after her when i was in England and when he returned her he forgot her bowl. She'd been peeing just fine on the loo, but would poop in the "garden". today the weather is horrible and wet and she wasn't going outside so she just pooped in the loo.
thus I've had a very busy poopy day! :)
i will post a video of pickles peeing that tom put on line...i'm happy as after 3 years of trying to potty train Pickles, i now have no more cat poop to clean up...i hope!

flight home.

So we are back in Taiwan, Sarah was sick for the flight back but i got her some sinus medication to clear up the mass amount of snot she was producing just in time for the flight. The first 11 hrs went really well and i thought to myself wow i did it it was so much better than the trip there. Then we had a short flight from bangkok to HK, which i didn't relise was on the agenda, then HK to TW...the flight to HK wasn't too bad but she feel asleep and i had to wake her up..thus not so much fun waiting for the next flight and then dealing with the next flight...
However i have to say all in all that she did really well with the whole flighting thing. Seroiouly she was great, she never had a time that she cried inconsolably, never did she have a time where she threw herself about in a big old hissy fit. She cried a bit, yes but so would i, she hates to chew gum, sweets ect so the pressure up and down wasn't so great, particulaly on the shorter flights. I hurt me and i was chewing like crazy.
All in all i think kids will do much better than you think they will. i will say this that wrapping small (kind of crappy) little gifts REALLY helps. I have to thank Heather for this idea, it really works very well and she loved it. she would sit with one in her hand for ages waiting till we got on the plane, then open it taking another 3 mins then would play with it for well lets face it no more than 20 mins, it really helped to settle her down and pass the time. The other thing was that we took my little laptop that Tom had copied her dvds onto it so she could watch them. this was a life saver too, and made the 11 hr trip much better than it would have been, i even got to watch a movie as she was so into Dora. So thank you for the tips.
The plane that we had on the way back was just as crappy as the way there, i didn't think they even ran those type of planes still, it had just the one big screen at the front which is so well last year! haha. next time i think i will try and see if you can make sure you get the back of the head entertaiment system, its so much better.
The jet lag was worst coming back then going, i always fine that to be the case. It didn't help that i had to work the next day...i didn't relise that i would be but i had to. I told them that i was happy to go to the halloween party / not really a party. So they assumed that i would have normal teaching duty before...great. poor sarah had to go to the nannies less than 24 hrs after getting of a 15 hr flight. not good. and i had to teach...maybe not my finest hrs of teaching! next time i will make sure i come back late friday so i get a weekend before i have to teach again!