Putting It Back Together, January 2010

Two weeks since my wife came back from rehab and things feel like they are slowly falling back in to place. Most days are still long and tiring for me since my wife isn't really able to help very much yet. Her condition is holding, but progress is painfully slow and it hurts just to watch her suffer. There's nothing I can do for her condition.

A small blessing is that Little Nio doesn't appear to be affected by what's going on. Perhaps there may be some effect later on, but we can only hope for now and then deal with things later on. Well at least his appetite hasn't been affected.





Little Nio really likes fried chicken and he makes no bones about it. He dives straight into the drumstick with real passion. Almost makes one afraid to be a chicken.



Here's Little Nio with breakfast. A nice bowl of fruit loops cereal. He's not very enthusiastic about this particular breakfast. I guess he's not much of a morning person. Either that or he's not a fan of cereals.



Posing with his Mommy at our swing bench in front of our home. He's got a great big smile and is really happy that Mommy is back home with us.





Lunch at Greyhound at Major Avenue. Little Nio is finishing off a big bowl of spaghetti and fried corned beef. This dish was actually for his Daddy, but after he finished off his own food, Little Nio though that Daddy's food looked yummy and decided that he should help out.



Our Christmas tree is still up on New Year's eve and Little Nio thinks it would be a great idea to herald in the coming year with some fanfare from his little trumpet.





Our last dinner of 2009. We all went out to have a family meal together at Sizzlers at The Mall Ngamwongwan, which isn't too far from our home. Little Nio always enjoys the quails eggs and the noodles from the salad bar. It's always very nice to go out together as a family.



Little Nio's Mommy enjoying dinner before our New Year's celebration.

We don't light fireworks at New Year, instead we fill our pockets with money and put coins in cooking pots. When the clock strikes midnight we shake and rattle the coins in the pots to make a tremendous noise to drive out all the bad things from the last year and make sure our home is clean and ready for all the good things from the coming year. We go through all the rooms in our house, all three of us shaking pots filled with coins at every nook and corner, making sure that nothing but prosperity and good luck fills our home.



A simple breakfast on the first day of the New Year. Still a bit sleepy from the night before, I didn't have much energy to prepare a proper breakfast, but Little Nio looks perfectly happy with a peanut butter and jam sandwich.

Christmas, December 2009

There are still such things as Christmas miracles.



After only thirty-days up in rehab, my wife, Kanittha, returns home to join us for Christmas. She's gained some weight back and her eyes have regained some clarity and a little more focus, but she's still very frail and her skin is still in poor condition. She's better, but not well at all.

She says that being there in Khon Kaen, separated far away from us was a terrible eye-opening experience. One that she would never want to repeat, and an experience that has taught her an important lesson about drugs. She said that the feeling of loss will be enough to keep her away from drugs.

Starting our Christmas day properly, we all went to hear mass at the Church of the Holy Redeemer. Having my wife back with us has been the most amazing Christmas gift ever. We give thanks and celebrate the miracle of the child, Jesus, our Savior.



Here we are right after the mass paying homage to the Christ child, the little bambino lying in the manger. Little Nio is a bit confused about the baby lying there and attempts to take the statuette home with us.



Little Nio giving his Mommy a big Christmas kiss.



Little Nio posing in front of the big Christmas tree at one of the malls.



After the mass we joined the office Christmas party, which we all celebrated together at the Tetto Lounge on the 12th floor of the new Anantara Baan Rajprasong, located very near to our office. Little Nio seems to like the vibrant red carpet and marches around the private room.



Little Nio enjoying some cake after a scrumptious buffet lunch.



Here he is making sure that my colleague, Khun Jiew, who is our Business Development Manager, is getting enough to eat. All the staff at the office know Little Nio quite well and most of the ladies have a soft spot for him. Little Nio knows this, so he really turns on the charm when he knows he can get away with it.



Making friends with the son of another office mate.



Not quite a children's party, but the two little boys seemed to get along quite well. They even share an interest in die cast toy cars.

Safari World, December 2009

Little Nio loves animals. As a treat, I decided to take him out to see some real live animals, rather than just the ones he can see on the Animal Planet channel. We drove out to visit the animals at "Safari World". Living life vicariously via the television isn't the same thing at all as actually living it.



Don't ask me for directions, I'm one of those poor folks who is "navigationally impaired". All I know is that it's about an hour away to the north of Bangkok in the province of Minburi. I took care of the driving, but the route was all plotted out by GPS. Above is a satellite image of the park (courtesy of GoogleEarth), but the cloud cover isn't showing very much.



Here's Little Nio wearing his "tiger" t-shirt all strapped in and ready to enter the park. Admission into the park (without any of the shows) for children is free, and adults only pay something like a hundred baht, or less. We didn't do any shows, which could last the entire day, so we managed to drive the course of the park in a little less than two hours. Tickets for the various shows are more expensive and they go up to 450 THB for children and 875 THB for adults.





First looks at zebras for Little Nio.



He looks a little bit upset that there's a cement mixer in the park with the zebras, but apparently that truck is mixing feed for the animals.



Some really ugly looking ostriches. Some of them had large patches of exposed skin missing their feathers. They're not exactly attractive birds to begin with, so without the feathers they are even less so. Let's not even talk about the smell.



Little Nio points to a camel. The camel just stares back at us. I'm not sure if camels can point back with their toes.





There is a large water reservoir in the middle of the first part of the park and in it there are several "islands" that the birds use for nesting. You can see a couple of giraffes in the background.



Safari World boasts having one of the largest giraffe herds outside of Africa.



They also have an impressive number of rhinos mixing in with the zebras.



Little Nio pointing to one of the deer.



Here he is pointing to a whole bunch of them. I think these are actually a kind of antelope, the Oryx.



Impressive horned beasties of some sort. I forget what they are called, but as soon as I figure that out I'll jump back in and edit this post. These beastie beauties were near the end of the park section where you are allowed to roll your windows down. Every where else after that section needed to have the windows rolled up all the way and the doors locked securely.



Driving through a series of gates arranged as a sluice passage, we enter into the more dangerous part of the park. We pass a pride of lions lounging in the shade.



Not much further along we pass a whole group of tigers underneath a makeshift shelter out of the sun.



Here's a more active group of tigers. I started to wonder how the park staff managed to separate the lions from the tigers, when clearly one could easily drive from one part where we saw the lions to the next one where most of the tigers were sitting around.



It appears that the park doesn't bother to separate the lions from the tigers. Here they are all sitting around together. There are a few birds hopping around between the big cats just to make the menagerie even more interesting.



Towards the end of the park, Little Nio starts pointing to one of his most favorite animals - the bears.



We had a really good time together that morning. After Safari World we drove back to the nice air conditioned comfort of a modern mall where we had lunch before going home.

Christmas Party, December 2009

Little Nio joined the Christmas Party at his daycare center. Unfortunately, because it was held in the middle of the day, I wasn't able to attend so I lent one of our digital cameras to the staff at the center so that they could take some photos for us.



Here's Little Nio posing in front of the pin-up Christmas Tree. I suppose having an actual tree would be too much of a hassle, specially with a few dozen little children running around. A real tree would take up too much room, be a real obstruction and who knows what kinds of allergic the kids might have to it. And that's one of the things I appreciate most about Fullakids, there's a lot of foresight given to decisions made for the children. Always very safe and sensible.







Looks like storytelling or singing time, with Little Nio sitting right beside his teacher, Miss Radeane, who owns and runs Fullakids. She has three of her own children, but she enjoys taking care and teaching the kids.



Here's Little Nio posing with his little hat that has his name "Antonio" written on the hem in nice big silver letters.



Looks like they're ready to have some activities here.





Dancing time! Little Nio has picked out a friend to be his partner. The daycare has about thirty to forty children from ages 2 to 5 years old, but the average age seems to be 3. The children are from all over the world, with about half of the kids Asian and only a handful of kids from Thailand. This is excellent exposure for Little Nio at a really early age. Reminds me of that song from "South Pacific"... "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught".



A very thoughtful little Christmas gift from Fullakids!

Fifteen Days, December 2009

It has been fifteen days since my wife, Kanittha, has been in the rehab center up in Khon Kaen.

Little Nio and I are doing well. We manage, but I would be lying if I said things have been easy. Things have been very difficult for us both, but we manage. I'm not sure that Little Nio knows what is going on, or if he misses his mother, but I know that I miss my wife.

Our regular daily schedule has us waking up at six in the morning. I run a bath for him and double check to make sure that his day bag, prepared the night before, is squared away properly — four bottles of milk, two bottles of sterilized water, a full pack of wet wipes, four diapers, plastic bags, a spare set of clothes and some cloth diapers for wiping his nose. This should be enough to last the day. It takes a bit of effort to get him out of bed and into the bath, but if he wakes up nicely he can be very cooperative. If he's not really awake or grumpy, it's like moving a heavy bag of potatoes.



Once in the bath things go fairly quickly. There's the expected resistance to getting wet initially. Then, once thoroughly soaked in the tub and enjoying himself, there is the resistance to get him out of the water. Drying him up and getting him dressed is a challenge since Little Nio does tend to run around quite a bit. Get the cream to prevent diaper rash on him, followed by a layer of powder to prevent chaffing and help keep him cool. Followed closely by putting on the disposable diaper are his shirt and trousers. Dressing him up is actually very easy, he only needs a bit of guidance to get all the limbs placed into the right holes of the clothing. By next year, he should be dressing himself up, I think.

I give him a chance to run around and play with a few things while I clean up the bathroom, make the bed and tidy up the bedroom. Once everything is put in to some semblance of order we go down to the second floor. I switch on the television for a wee bit of cartoons while I go downstairs to get him his breakfast. I make sure to bring down the empty bottles from the night before so that our household help can wash and sterilize these used bottles. Once Little Nio is settled down to breakfast, I rush to get showered and changed myself. That doesn't take too long as I usually prepare things the night before and it's almost an automated process.

At every stage of getting ready, I sneak out to see what Little Nio is doing. Get out of the shower - check on him. Finish brushing teeth - check on him. Get dressed - check on him. Stuff pockets with all sorts of stuff (wallet, handkerchief, keys, etcetera) - check on him. Samuel also comes to keep him company.



By the time I'm done, Little Nio is just about done with breakfast and I have a moment or two to make sure that he's eaten enough. I clean him up, put the family room in order and take down the breakfast dishes and our bags. He usually follows down by himself, but I make sure he's holding on to me or the handrail properly.

Little Nio gets his own shoes off the shoe rack and puts them on by himself. By this time the front door is open and I'm loading our bags into the car. My gear in the rear, all his stuff in front with him in the front passenger seat securely strapped in to his car seat.



Huge debate about that being the best place for a child, but when it's just the two of us in the car it's really difficult to tend to him when he's sitting in the back while I'm driving. This way he can see where we are going, what's going on and we can even have little conversations about all the lousy drivers in Bangkok.

On the elevated toll way there are a lot of motorcycle traffic police stationed at every on/off ramp and when Little Nio spots them he yells out "POO-LEE-KAH!!!" repeatedly, which translates as "police car". Even though there isn't a car in sight, or even if it is a lone policeman standing at an intersection, they are all collectively lumped under the term "poo-lee-kah". He will continue yelling this out at the top of his lungs until I acknowledge that he's spotted them. He'll be quiet until the next junction where there are more policemen stationed.

By the time we get to the last traffic light before his stop, I have time to make a quick call to the day care center, Fullakids, so that they can send someone down to fetch Little Nio from the car.

Once he's at the Day Care, I can then start my regular work day. Some days I manage to have lunch with him. I walk over from the office, pick him up, then we walk together to find some place to eat. Sometimes it will be simple like a bowl of noodles from the sidewalk vendors, other times we will sit down at a nice restaurant across the street from my office building. On a few occasions we even walk all the way to a big department store, Central Chidlom, spend time in the toy section and then grab something simple to eat. After lunch I walk him back to the day care center and continue my day.

At the end of the work day, I will come by to pick him up then we walk back together to the office where the car is parked. Walking back with Little Nio is an adventure in itself. He is a master of "lollygagging", the aimless meander with only a vague intention to get led back to the parked car. He will stop to inspect everything. He will wave to all the familiar faces along the way and he will try to make friends whenever he meets a friendly smile. He will check uneven paving blocks, stomp at fallen leaves and point animatedly at any vehicle that catches his imagination. It takes me two minutes to get to his day care from the office, but it sometimes takes fifteen minutes to get back.

Once we finally reach the building we get invariably dragged into the grocery at the ground level, Villa Market, where we usually grab a snack for Little Nio and do some last minute shopping. He is very popular with all the ladies who are at the cash registers, not only because he is cute but because he is such a character. By the time we get into the car and start our drive home it is almost six in the evening. Some days even later than that.

If we are hungry and I know that there is nothing to eat at home, or I am out of energy to prepare anything myself, then we will make a stop for dinner along the way home. One favorite place is the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, where they always have lots of good things to eat and a lot of things to see.

With traffic and dinner behind us we get home at about eight in the evening. This give us just enough time to put our things away and prepare his bag for the next day — four bottles of milk, two of water, four disposable diapers, two cloth diapers for wiping, plastic bags for soiled clothing, and a spare change of clothes. Then it's time for the evening bath. We try to do this as quickly as possible, but that doesn't always work. He enjoys himself in the bath and also enjoys getting chased out of the bath dripping wet, but once he's in his night clothes he slowly starts to change into low gear. He'll do a bit of playing and watch some television while I take care of my own thing, and he does pretty well on his own but I do keep an eye and an ear open just in case.



By ten at night we are usually in bed. Some days I get lucky and we are under the sheets by nine in the evening. Other days are not so good, and even though we are in bed Little Nio is still wide awake at midnight. The only thing that seems to work for him is switching the channels over to "Chic Channel" which has a show called "Midnight Fashion" that features scantily clad women modeling lingerie and swimwear. Little Nio calms down, takes his bottle of milk and settles in to watch the bikini beauties prancing around and he eventually drifts off to sleep.

And then we start the day all over again.