Between the hours of 1 and 5 last night, I slept, at best, one half hour. Joash reached his apex of teething discomfort and refused to go back to sleep. We did the two hours of gently voiced commands to "go to sleep, it's bedtime." We did the half hour of feeding. We did some more of the other one. We got grumpy and woke up Dan (and, likely, the neighbors). Then finally, Joash crawled himself upside down in our bed and fell asleep. Today was an incredibly long day, during which the baby enjoyed himself for less than 20 minutes. His preferred method of comfort was being held from a standing position. All by the magical misery of teething.

I am too tired to care about the laundry mess, the toy mess, the puffed cereal mess, or the dish mess. I barely even care about writing this blog but that I have pictures my parents haven't seen. Also, I ate a lot of brownies today.

Something I really like about living in a foreign country is that language and cultural barriers sometimes breed surreality. Today Korrine and I were waiting on the elevator down the hall because the elevator nearest our apartment was too slow. We ran into an elderly man holding a pretty baby girl, about Joah's size. He was interested in us and our baby-having and wanted to connect. He spoke no words of English and what did come out of his mouth was nothing at all like Korean, but somehow he ushered us back into his apartment. It all happens so fast when it happens.

We walk in on a young woman sweeping the floor and two little girls sitting on the couch. The woman is his daughter and the girls are her daughters. She is Vietnamese and her parents are visiting for the month. She leads us to the couch, apologizing for the sweeping. Someone puts tea in our hands and both our babies are immediately cradled and then posed for many pictures. The only words exchanged are collective broken Korean and some English. We tried to leave several times, but they wanted to feed us oranges. One, two, three slices aren't enough. She has many oranges in the fridge; her husband works for Samsung. Joash forgets I exist and is chewing on rice cakes and bounding around in a baby walker. Miss Quinn is charming the grandmother. Korrine and I just keep looking at each other with the giddiness of bewilderment. Forty minutes later and Korrine announces that we'll be completing our E-Mart errand, but not before we deny an offer for coffee and, likely, endless other treats.

I guess we wanted to leave the whole time, but it was quite pleasant and so sweet and with that nervous twinge in your belly that tells you you're living. It made for a much better morning than just walking to E-Mart. And how else would I have learned to say "hi" in Vietnamese?

This weekend, the baby got two things.
A haircut.



And a visitor. Maya came to see the boy with no rat tails. He loved her so much that he laughed in her face more consistently than he's ever laughed for anyone before.

Over the weekend I accomplished an incredibly important thing. After two and a half years, many starts and stops, several life changes, including moving to Korea and re-spawning, I finally finished reading Great Expectations. It took Dan buying me a Kindle, us acquiring an hour long commute into Seoul, and several dedicated subway trips of reading, but I did it. And, no, I did not remember who Mr. Wopsle or Startop were by the end of it.

We had a date. Our first parental date in Korea, courtesy of our friends Justin and Katrina, who all but insisted that they watch Joash for our anniversary (and of course he napped for them! Whatever Mr. Anomalous Sleeper.). I don't really know what that means, date. I see Dan most of the time. I eat meals with him usually. Our baby is young yet that we can still have necessary conversations in front of him. I guess a date means that I get to wear a dress that doesn't offer full accessibility, that there are no undergarment prerequisites, that we can go to a movie and not worry about how loud anything is (the movie or the baby). It was nice. We took two taxi rides. Pretty romantic. And when we got home, Joash cried, and I have never yet been able to experience that kind of cry, the, "hey, you came back!" cry. Of course it was super sweet.

We had the longest day out today, and I fell asleep during some of it. And now I am falling asleep some more, and it hasn't even reached my self-imposed early bedtime. I think I just got too much of a good thing like Brother and Sister Bear. Man, Berenstain Bears is like the Cosby Show in that they are actually the Bear and Huxtable families respectively. What's up, media namers?