The Evolution of EB3

Elijah Carlsen Barlow was born on the morning of November 12, 2008 in Elmira, NY.  I will never forget the 4.5 hour pushing stage to set him free, because he was sunny-side up and had a good-sized head.  My midwife was just about to call in the doctor to try a vacuum extraction, but I somehow managed to work him out before she made the call.  The next morning I could barely move, all of my muscles were so sore and I felt like I'd done a triathlon.  Yet I was so happy and felt such satisfaction in the work I had done and the beautiful blessing of a healthy baby boy.

EB3 was born on November 12, 2011 in Shanghai, China, in honor of Elijah on his 3rd birthday.  My first attempt at making a shape-cake, as I am more of a cook than a baker.  I probably spent 4-5 hours total making the robot cake, between baking 2 layer cakes, cutting and shaping, making the buttercream frosting and giving a robot face to EB3.  I used lollipops, licorice, marshmallows, coco puffs, M&Ms, Kit Kats, gummmy worms, gummy rings, wafers, and Hershey's Kisses.  It was worth the time and effort to hear Elijah scream with delight when I showed up at school with the finished cake for him and his classmates.

Elijah is a cutie pie, even if I look like one of the fry guys (McDonalds).  I need a haircut!

Elijah helping to make the buttercream frosting.

Adding in the powdered cane sugar.

Playing with his robot birthday gift.

With Daddy and Addie and his new T-Rex dinosaur.

Happy 3rd Birthday Elijah!  We love you so much!

Vietnam, Part II

After our visit to Ho Chi Minh City, we hired a driver through the Somerset hotel to take us to Ke Ga Bay where we planned to stay for the rest of the October Holiday week.  We were supposed to leave early in the morning on October 4 to drive 4-4.5 hours to The Princess D'Annam Resort in Ke Ga Bay, but our plans changed a bit after Elijah got very sick during the night with severe diarrhea.  We were concerned about leaving the big city of Saigon and heading to a more isolated area on the coast and making the long trip with Elijah not feeling well.  We made an appointment for him at the International SOS Clinic (which happened to be right around the corner from our hotel) early in the morning, so our driver ended up taking us there instead of leaving for Ke Ga as planned.  The doctor there saw Elijah and confirmed that he was well hydrated and seemed ok to leave. She prescribed some rehydration solution, diarrhea medicine and good bacteria viles for us to take with us.  Before leaving the city we made a quick lunch stop at KFC (popular US chain here in Asia)and bought some plain white rice for Elijah.  Elijah was not happy with just white rice and insisted on some chicken--so I peeled away the fried skin and gave him a few little bites of plain chicken.
I'm not sure if it was the chicken or our Vietnamese driver's crazy, fast, jerky driving,but a short time later Elijah threw up in the back of the car.  Luckily I caught most of it with a plastic bag. Poor kid.  He fell asleep in my lap after that and I held him the whole drive to Ke Ga Bay. 
So, now that I have "whetted your appetite" for the rest of our Vietnamese journey, here goes. . . 


PRINCESS D'ANNAM  KE GA BAY

The very tranquil lobby of Princess D'Annam. 

When we arrived there were no other guests in sight and it was oddly quiet.  We were greeted by staff dressed in orange silk.
They asked us to sit down and rest, gave us warm towels for our hands and served us a fresh juice drink made with peppermint and hibiscus flowers.  Wow, nice welcome.  I have to admit I felt a little like we were in a Scooby Doo episode, when the gang arrives to an out-of-town resort and there are no other guests around because they've all been scared off by some ghost or monster.  I asked one of the bellhops why it was so quiet and he explained that it was the end of the rainy season, so not many people around until the following month.  The less populated resort ended up working out well for us since we had kids in tow and we were a bit worried about cramping the style of honeymooners or other couples there for a quiet, romantic getaway.  At times we felt like we had the place all to ourselves.

Fresh fruit platter waiting in our villa with
dragon fruit, mango, dragon eyes, apples, bananas,
passion fruit.

Beautiful ginger gardens on the grounds of the resort. 

Addie loved playing with these coconut ladles and the water basin for
 cleaning sand off of your feet after being on the beach.

Addie and Elijah heading towards the beach for the first time,
after breakfast.  One of the kind waitresses went looking after them
so I could finish my breakfast.  Shay was on a work call back in the room.

Addie making friends with one of the sweet hotel girls.

Pale little Elijah digging around and trying
to get used to the bright sun.

Ke Ga Bay Lighthouse.  We booked a sunset "cruise" out to the lighthouse.  

Here we are on our choppy evening ride out to the lighthouse.
 Wait until you see the boat we rode in.

We were ferried over to the lighthouse in one of these little round
Vietnamese fishing vessels captained by a local fisherman.  The water
was pretty choppy in places, and I was nervous that we might flip.
Our life vests were pretty flimsy.  

Adelaide's 6th Birthday!

I will have to put off my second installment about the Vietnam trip to report on a much more pertinent and recent event. . .the 6th birthday of our not-so-little daughter Adelaide! Since Addie's birthday falls on October 26th, so close to Halloween and in the midst of the fall season, we have been doing fall festival themed celebrations the past few years.  Especially since we moved to Shanghai and we have been missing the vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves turning in upstate NY and our yearly trips with Grandma and Papa Barlow to Iron Kettle Farm www.ironkettlefarm.com, Addie wanted to go with the Fall theme.  She actually wanted to incorporate some skeletons, ghosts, and spider webs, as she is a sucker for scary stuff, but I thought that might put a damper on the "birthday" celebration.  So we stuck with pumpkins, turkeys, scarecrows, owls and leaves.

Here are some photos from school, when I brought cupcakes for Addie's class, shared baby photos of Addie, and read the terrific story "The Ugly Pumpkin."

So excited to make that wish ;)

Homemade chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and
pumpkin peeps on top

Still thinking about that wish, the anticipation keeps building

Addie with her Chinese Teacher Du Laoshi as the class
sings "Zhu Ni Shengri Kuai Le."

Finally!

We had a party at our home last Saturday morning to celebrate Addie's birthday with a few close friends.  It was a great time with fun activities and games including, make-your-own pizza faces, pin the feathers on the turkey, leaf sort game, pomelo bowling and pumpkin painting.

Addie and Eric with the pumpkin face cupcake-cake :)

Making mini pizzas with sauce, cheese, mushrooms,
 olives, pepperoni, pineapple.

Zoe and Addie's pizza faces.  I ordered the 7" pizza shells from
City Shop bakery and the kids had fun decorating the tops.

The whole birthday party crew--friends from school and church--
representing Australia, New Zealand, England, and the USA!

Pin the "feathers" on the turkey with blindfold--we used colored
fabric leaves.  I made this turkey last year out of a Wegman's paper
bag and now he is making his China debut.

Little bro Elijah, looking for attention from the
party guests in his Superman costume.  He changed into
this outfit about 15 minutes into the party, when he
realized that he wasn't the center of attention.

Pretty Adelaide digging into her cupcake.

VIETNAM, Not Your Parent's Family Vacation

We're back from our week long October adventure in Vietnam with lots of stories to tell and pictures to share.  The direct flight from Shanghai Pudong airport on Vietnam Airlines was just under four hours, so it worked out well with the kids.  Elijah slept most of the way.  We arrived Sunday evening shortly after 6:00pm to a very humid Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon.  Once off the airplane, my thick, curly hair immediately started to frizz and turn itself into a nice puffy ball, and my clothes stuck lovingly to my skin.

It took awhile to get our visas after we got off the plane, even though we had applied ahead of time on-line through myvietnamvisa.com. I stood in a long line with a bunch of other foreigners waiting for them to process our paperwork and hand over our passports before we could clear immigration.  Shay chased the kids around the airport for about 1 hour until we finally had the new visas in hand.  First hurdle succeeded, then on to customs, securing currency, finding a taxi and getting to our hotel.  Vietnamese currency is in Dong, and 20,880 Dong equal 1 US dollar.  This took some getting used to, as a 100,000 bill would only be about $5.00.  So even though it seemed like you were spending a lot of cash by forking over handfuls of bills, you weren't really   setting yourself back much.  

First impressions of Ho Chi Minh on the taxi drive from the airport to our hotel--throngs of motor bikes like you've never seen before! Like moto armies.  Not much English spoken, so it was hard to communicate with our driver. We arrived at our hotel in the late evening and ordered in Pho Ga (chicken Pho soup) from the   coffee shop/cafe located downstairs beside our hotel/serviced apartment Somerset Chancellor in District 1.   We woke up to an overcast sky and then down pouring rain. . .the rain slowed a bit and with the help of the front desk we arranged for a driver to take us around for the day to several sights. We started out with the Reunification Palace, the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  It was the site of the end of the Vietnam War during the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, when a North Vietnamese army tank crashed through its gates.

  

Here is a photo I found from April 30, 1975  

After visiting the Reunification Palace we went to Ben Thanh market, a sprawling marketplace that's been around since 1914 in the downtown area of Ho Chi Minh City.  Shay bought some fresh mangosteen, Addie picked out some cute Vietnamese style dresses and I found a lovely bright colored patchwork fabric purse.  It was hard to keep track of the kids and shop here, as Addie and Elijah wanted to run around and explore and touch everything.  Lots of little stalls crammed together and connected with little pathways.  It was like a little market maze with new discoveries around every turn.  The market opens up near the fruit section.

Our last activity and first real adventure for the day was our excursion to the Cu Chi Tunnels, about an hour and a half outside of Saigon.  The way there was bumpy and our driver was going a bit too fast, honking his way around every bend and warning motos on the road that he was coming and they better move out of the way quickly.  This was a really fascinating tour of the elaborate underground tunnel system built by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War to elude the American soldiers and to fight stealthily with quick escape routes underground where larger-framed American soldiers could not pursue them.  

An original entrance to the tunnels

Trying out the tiny VC tunnel entrance in the ground

An American tank left from the war

Crater left from an American B-52 Bomber

Shay and Elijah navigating one section
of the tunnels made larger for foreign
tourists to fit through.  Still very
claustrophobic and tight, hot, and
a bit creepy.

Addie loved exploring the tunnels and
wanted to keepgoing with our guide,
though the rest of us were ready to get
out after a few minutes.

Tight squeeze

This was on old boobie trap with spikes
--nasty and definitely creepy, considering
it was built to kill American soldiers

And just when we thought things couldn't get any
more like Rambo First Blood, Part II, they asked
us if we wanted to buy some ammo and shoot guns.

Look at this crazy pile of shells

Getting out some pent up aggression

Washing up at the "Bamboo Sink"

After all of this, to end our tour,
we were taken to picnic tables and
served tea and tapioca root dipped in
sugar.  This was our friendly guide,
son of Viet Cong who fought in the
"American War" as they call it.  

Stay tuned for the next installment with pictures of our trip to the southern coast beaches of Ke Ga Bay and Mui Ne area.