mommapalooza

Things they never told us about moving to Thailand with a kid:

Make sure that your child has one yellow shirt and one red shirt in their wardrobes.

The yellow shirt is to wear on the King's birthday in December. The red shirt is for the Lunar New Year. By fluke, I was able to dress her appropriately for both occasion, but I'll have to buy her clothes for next year a little more strategically.

Madeline's school celebrated the Year of the Rat today, and her school yard had been transformed into a magical land of red paper lanterns with a sea of little red shirts running around. It was awesome!

epiphany in a buddhist land

  Madeline at the Teddy Bear Tea 
  Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

The three of us had the most delightful afternoon today. A few days ago, Chris heard about a Christmas Teddy Bear Tea (in support of UNICEF) at the Peninsula Hotel here in BKK. Since he and I like tea, and Madeline is rather fond of teddy bears, we made a reservation. It was a wonderful event with delicious little finger sandwiches, scones with strawberry and mango jam, a dessert buffet, and (finally!) a good cup of chai tea.  It was kind of like the time that Chris and I, pre-Madeline, had afternoon tea at the Savoy in London. Except, Madeline was with us this time. She introduced the two teddy bears that she'd brought to the large teddy bear (read: person in a head-to-toe bear costume) who came around to our table. She was initially shy when the gentleman in the Santa costume came to chat with her, but an hour later, she happily chattered away with him, delighted with the chocolates and trinkets that he pulled from his sack.  And the magician blew her away with his vanishing red foam balls, his mysteriously-changing deck of cards, and the colouring book where the pictures would appear and disappear when she tapped it with a magic wand ...

I nibbled at my scones and sipped my cup of tea, somewhat disbelieving that we were having tea in a hotel reputed to be the world's best because my three year old was being treated like she was the most important person at our table. I could almost forget that the sun was beating down on the bustling Chao Phraya on the other side of the window to the tune of thirty-eight degrees Celsius in this predominantly Buddhist country because if I looked the other way, I saw a massive and real Christmas tree covered in lights, ornaments and bunting, and hotel staff running around in red-and-white elf outfits. The band was playing holiday music. We'd clearly found a little bit of Christmas spirit, and we had the best time.   

Today was probably the most enjoyable day I've had with my daughter and husband since arriving here five months ago, and Chris and I have already agreed that we'll come again for the Teddy Bear Tea a year from now, and the year after that, if we're still living in Bangkok. In the past, we've tried to fit our family-of-three into the Christmas celebrations of our originating families. We each grew up with different traditions, and it's not always easy to appreciate the differences and have the same feeling of connectedness to practices that we didn't grow up with.  As a threesome, Christmases felt a little untethered.

There was something really comfortable about our tea today. It fit the three of us perfectly. Who knew that we'd find the first Christmas tradition of our own in country where Christmas Day isn't even a holiday.

"it floats on water" quoth madeline

Everyone's preschooler came home from class today with a krathong, right? For Loy Krathong?

Oh. Maybe just in Thailand :)

I am not entirely sure how much of this krathong was made with my child's own two hands (I'm guessing that she stuck in the incense sticks and some orchid blossoms and called it done), but it's one of the neatest things that she's brought home from preschool.

Madeline's school had a small Loy Krathong celebration this morning. Several of the Thai parents helped with activities, and quite a few of the little children were dropped off in Thai costume. As usual, I wished that I could be a fly on the wall of her classroom - I'm so curious about what they learned and did today!

Tomorrow we'll take Madeline's krathong down to the Chao Phraya river and let it set sail ...

down with the mouse

I took these photos in July, when I visited the Children's Discovery Museum with Madeline for the first time. It was packed with Bangkok school children, dressed in identical shirts, supervised by megaphone wielding teachers. It was really hot outside that day, but Madeline still loved the imaginative play area that they had outside. There was the pictured store with fabulous wooden food, an impressively-equipped play kitchen across the way, and a pretend doctor's office right alongside it. Madeline could have played there for hours, and I'd made a mental note to bring her back when the weather was cooler.

So, fast-forward to today, when we made our second visit to the museum together. I should have known something was up when I saw the large cardboard cut-outs of Disney characters outside the main entrance, and didn't find any sort of Disney exhibit inside the indoor part of the museum. Reality became clear when we stepped outside to the open-air part and saw a large pink castle standing in the spot where the imaginative play around had formerly been.

Now, Madeline loves an animated Disney princess as much as the next marketing-susceptible preschool girl, but even she thought that this exhibit was inferior.  Most of the rooms in the castle were dark, which she found scary (especially the Dwarfs diamond mine). The music was loud, which she found scary (even at Cinderella's ball). The Sleeping Beauty section wasn't about Princess Aurora - it was about vicious-looking dragons. We were in and out of the Disney area in fifteen minutes flat.

I know that so many other children must think that this change at the museum is a terrific thing - it's brand-new, flashy, and comes with a smashing gift-shop. The exhibit was using Disney animated features to teach about science, music, geography, and such, and it probably was intended for school-age kids. But I'm still kind of sad for my little kid, and all the ones like her, who think that nothing can beat a white doctor's coat in her size and a stethoscope, or a toy cash register and pretend baked goods.