A Few Things

It is soo hot. I feel like I'm losing my mind! There is no relief from the heat. Night and day. 35-40 degree temperatures. Cooking is nearly impossible because with our gas oven it heats up the house immediately. So we're living on salad, tuna sandwiches, watermelon and cucumbers. The water in Korea, or at least in Daegu, is undrinkable, so we have to buy cases of it. I'm pretty sure we're going to use our entire income on bottled water cuz we're flying through it so fast. Anyways...

Yesterday we took a little trip to our local E-Mart ( the closest comparison would be Superstore- but think like 3x the size) to cool off. Every time that we go we see strange items that you could only possibly see in Korea. This time I snapped a couple pictures.



Here we have blood type salads. You have your A, B, AB and O. I'm not kidding. From what I have been told from my Korean co-teachers, Koreans assess everyone's personality by their blood type. After I had been working with them for a few weeks, they asked me what mine is. I told them I didn't know (is that weird?) and they were stunned. They started analyzing me and guessing what it might be. So if you come to Korea you can feed your inner self with some special salad combinations.



And this seems like a logical phrase for your scale. I really have no comment to make about this.


And at the risk of being a mean mommy who posts pictures of their crying toddler, here is Cate in the cart. She's a little mad at us for refusing to carry her. Don't worry, right after this crowds of people came to freak her out some more.

On another note, I thought i would mention a little bit about Cate and her walking.
This is a bit hard for me to talk about, I'm not sure why. I guess it's hard to realize that your little angel might be delayed in something. Cate is still not walking, or even standing on her own. She is scooting around the house on her bum which is great progress, but we obviously know she is way behind on her gross motor skills. At 13 months we brought her to the pediatrician and she said to wait. We went back to the doc. this week and Cate was terrified of this woman and wouldn't let her touch her. We couldn't get any type of physical assessment done because of this. So the doc. recommended that we go to see a specialist on Monday to test her in other ways (ie: blood tests, EEG).

If I could try to come up with reasons for her delays, I think I would say it is a combination of many things. Most people say that babies are resilient to change. Well, I disagree. Our move to Korea came at a time when Cate was on the verge of important developmental milestones. We took away everything familiar from her and on top of that, I left her to go to work, after never having been apart from her. We were stressed and as a result, we know that she was affected by this.

I think as we were adjusting to everything here, we didn't spend enough time on movement skills as we should have. Cate is a very cautious little girl and she needs an extra push. She has never been a child who will do things without coaxing. I suppose I figured that she would eventually do it when she was ready. I also think that maybe we gave in to her too much. We carry her a lot and I honestly don't think she feels much of a need to get around on her own, because she knows we'll eventually help her if she just waits.

So now, at 16 months, I really believe that her muscles are not developed as they should be. She is so nervous to take a step on her own, though I really think she is capable. She will stand against a chair or the bed for long periods of time, and, if distracted, will be completely confident. As soon as she realizes we are "practicing" her skills, she refuses. So stubborn!

Tomorrow we'll head to the specialist and hopefully reach some conclusions. Of course I can't help but be worried that we are going to find out something is seriously wrong, but I'm trying to trust that things will be alright. I should mention that she is right on track for all other areas of development. She's a smart little cookie. And after talking to some people who have had similar experiences with their kids, I feel better knowing that these delays are more common that I first guessed. I'm mostly worried that Cate will be too scared to let him examine her. So if you are one who prays, we would appreciate your prayers for our appointment, for Cate's progress and for our wisdom.