What Defines Us

You wonder what factors and events in your child's life will affect them and that they will carry with them. One example of this is that whenever we walk into a home, office or hotel room the girls insist on taking their shoes off -- especially if there is carpet. We have only enforced taking shoes off in our home and others in our area of the world -- but they have carried it into all areas. Quite honestly I say enforce, but because they grew up here since they were babies they just don't know any different and the first office Keely knew was ours in Thailand where we took off our shoes. Below are a couple recent examples for each girl:

Keely

During the first week of school a mom and her daughter were visiting with Keely while I was talking with her teacher and another mom. I overheard pieces of the conversation. When we got home Keely told me about the conversation with the mom. "Mommy, that mom told me that they just moved from California. Then she asked me where we are from. I told her we just moved from Hong Kong." That was the piece I overheard, and the mom had asked again about where we were from and Keely insisted it was Hong Kong. So I told her, "Keely I think she wanted to know where we are from in the States." "No Mommy, she wanted to know where we moved from and we moved from Hong Kong."

On our recent 12 day/ 3 city trip, Keely kept asking about our chairs and things and if they were coming with us. We thought we had explained we were just going on a trip and would be back, but as we were leaving she brought the toothbrush holder to me because where were we going to put our toothbrushes? Throughout the trip she kept saying that she wanted our things to come with us. I was glad when she jumped up and down outside our gate when we got home. I thought all of the talk about moving somewhere else was gone but then we got inside and she told me she still missed our old home. I asked her why and the first time she said the name of one of her old classmates. A few hours later she called out to me as I was working on laundry and said that she still missed our old home. Again I asked her why and she said because she liked our old kitchen. I asked her why she liked that kitchen better and she said, "because you could do the laundry in there." Our washing machine and dryer are outside on a balcony in this apartment. When Jacob got home I asked her if we could tell Daddy and after we told him the story, I asked her why she likes me to do the laundry in the kitchen (that was where the washing machine and dryer were in the old apartment) and she answered, "It was just better."

Jordan

In Taiwan, most bathrooms have several squatties and one or two western camodes. Sometimes there is just one or two western camodes and sometimes just a squatty. Since we moved here, Jordan begs to use the squatty. That's a good thing since that was mostly our option during our trip. When we got back to Taiwan, I took Jordan to the restroom in the airport and she repeating kept saying, squatty, I go to the squatty until I agreed. When we got in the restroom all of the stalls were western style except one, which was a squatty. Jordan still insisted on using it.

Also in Taiwan and during our trip, a lot of restrooms have a common sink area outside the restrooms to wash your hands. During our trip to the restroom that I explained above, the sink was inside the restroom. However, Jordan kept telling me that she wanted to wash her hands outside and that she would show me. We walked outside and there were two water fountains. I had to explain to her that those weren't sinks, they were water fountains. However this confusion could be some of my part. We do see water fountains some and we did in Hong Kong some, but I don't let the girls use them because Jacob got really sick when he was little and they thought it was from the water fountain and so I'm a little paranoid. So this example may be part of my doing too.