Little Munchkin's A Little Less Little

Larkin turned One today!!!
This was him a year ago today:

And here's him this morning

He's all big, wiggly and WALKING! 

He's amazing.

We love the little munchkin to bits.

Can't wait to see how much he's going to change and grow in this upcoming year!

~Izzy~

Yeah, I'm Tardy, But My Baby's Cute

Almost done with a big post with a gazillion cartoon self portraits in it. Think that'll make up for all the days I've skipped. I'll post it in the next few days.

In other news, Larkin's' new helmet came in the mail! Thanks mom! Now little man can ride our scooter with us all protected like! Woohoo!

We quickly found out that he's not the biggest fan of it. 

~Izzy~

Sometimes I Just Have to Say to Myself, "No Izzy, Don't Be Absolutely Perfect. That's Boring and People Will Hate You For It. People Hate Perfect People. THAT's Why You Have No Friends. Also, You Talk To Yourself."

So I know I have this whole thing going where I do one self portrait a day for a whole month and all, but really, my face isn't all that interesting. And this is my blog, darn it!

I've decided that it wouldn't be failing, per-se, if I just took a momentary hiatus from the challenge today and did a portrait of my sister... without asking permission.. or telling her.. and just posted it on here for the whole interweb to see! So I did. Cause that's how I roll and that's how them healthy relationships function.

Look internets! It's like a magical fairy blew sherbet chunks all over her pretty mug! So many purdy colors...

Here's a giggling baby. That always makes it better.

Love you sister!

~Izzy~

YO. This is still going on.

Decided to try painting in photoshop this time. It's the best without all the worst. I love it.

Not feeling especially eloquent today and I don't really have anything else to say except maybe, DON'T DO DRUGS, PEOPLE. You'll end up looking like this every time.

Every. Time.

~Izzy~

Suzhou's Pretty Okay

It was just a whole lot of this:

*Shudup about how pretty you are already, China! We get it.*

We got to stay in a cute little place called Water Town Youth Hostel in an alley way that was pretty much the coolest place EVER for only 20 bucks a night. If you want to be a bit extravagant and pay $35 a night, you can have a multi-floor suite thing. I want to live there.

This was the route through the hostel and up to our room:

So much fun!

Because of our trip and my being negligent, I'm a bit behind on my new self portrait project, so here's some from the days I missed:

More Tomorrow,

~Izzy~

I Named This Blog Post Something Funny

We're going to Suzhou today! WOOWOOO! We're on break right now because all of the students have to participate in some sort of track and field games. I don't really understand it, but we get to vacation. WOOWOO!

There will be lots of pretty gardens in Suzhou for Lark to decide that we need one day and I'm going to get to do some drawings and will try to hunt down a Starbucks. Larkin will continue being a baby.

Self Portrait of the Day:

That's my "I'm still not entertained, so you can put the sock puppet away now, please"-face.

Also, not sure how up to date on your nail polish brands you are, but there's a brand in the US that's called "O.B."
Evidently the Chinese wanted to do a sort of knockoff of it cause the other day I found this:

Ooh yeah. That' happened.

~Izzy~

"Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person! I blow my nose at you."

Name that movie!
That wasn't really related to anything other than the fact that I'm feeling a bit stabby today and picturing myself yelling barely coherent silliness at the internet makes me giggle a little bit in my brain.

As of late I've been pretty antsy. Not really sure what I want to do. I came to China thinking that I would be doing some modeling here, like I had in the states, but it's taking longer than I would have liked. We'll see if it works out at all.

I'm now left wondering what I want to be doing with my extra time. What I want to do in the future. I love so many different things and am trying to pursue them all, but in so doing, feel like I'm not pursuing any of them with enough effort or passion to really accomplish anything.

I feel like I'm flailing a bit. So, while I'm trying to figure out what I want, what I want to do with that, and how to do it, I'm introducing some new busywork in my life. Because discipline is a good thing to grab onto when you feel like you're flailing...Right? Or one of many good things. Eh.

The point is that I'm going to be drawing a new self portrait everyday for a month and will post it on here as part of the process of trying to figure myself out (Yes. Pictures of myself while I contemplate myself. Feel free to be impressed at how deep I am). Hopefully my art skillz might improve a little as well.

I'm sure you guys will get just as tired at seeing my stupid mug day after day as I will, so I'll try to keep them interesting. Maybe I'll draw me, as a dragon, spitting fireballs at Godzilla. Or maybe we can play a Where's Waldo? game where I'll try to hide something in the picture. Or maybe I'll just draw my face... You'll just have to check back and see.

Today's drawing:

Side Note:

Someone found my blog the other day by googling "pooping in fire". Clearly I must still be doing SOMETHING right. 

~Izzy~

Happy Halloween, Ya lucky Jerks

Halloween as I pictured it in my head this year:

 

Halloween Reality:

Sometimes I miss America.

Sometimes I want to gorge myself on empty calories.

Sometimes I want I want to stab every single package of Spicy Soup Flavored Lays and Chicken Legs on the stores shelves with a steak knife until they turn into the artificially flavored sugary goodness that I recognize and am not scared to eat.

China would be much better if it would stop being China on Holidays and just act like America, like it should.

I kid... kind of. 

Hope you all had a great Halloween and your pumpkins and mailboxes avoided getting demolished by teenage deviants with baseballs bats,

~Izzy~

Fire Safety?

We're still working on getting used to living in China. Surprised? Not really. There are a good amount of differences between America and here. Surprised? Not really.

I've now learned how to order coffee and have been pretty content with only knowing that. I stick to the important things in life.

Lark's Chinese on the other hand has gotten really impressive in the month and a halfish that we've been here. He's especially eloquent on anything having to do with little Larkin since that's all that the Chinese want to talk about.  Larkin's a bit of a conversation suck but we love him regardless.

We're really enjoying making new friends and settling into our new home. We live in two rooms of our college's hotel that have been combined to make a sort of apartment. It's actually really nice and WAAY better (and maybe bigger!) than the house that we were living in before (read about that one here.)

We have some nice big windows, maid service, and a bunch of other foreign teachers live on the same hall as us. Our school really went out of their way to make sure that we were comfortable. We feel very blessed.

One extra perk that we've really been enjoying recently is all of the helpful signs that they left around the place. There's two on our bed stands that warn us:

            "NO SMOKINGIN BEDPLEASE
              GOOD NIGHT"

and

            "FORYOURSAFETY PLEASEKEEP CHSH AND
              VALUABLE GOOD SIN HEAD STAGE"

and just in case you were feeling like doing an Irish jig in the shower:

Now you know that you might slip. Whew! Dodged THAT bullet!

My all time favorite sign so far though is this fire safety sign that is attached to both of our doors:

 So pretty! A little more zoomed in version:

I guess I will tryyy to not worry if a fire is occurring. It might be difficult though since I'm not sure where exactly my excellency seat is and will therefore have a hard time pointing to it as I'm trying to run to the information hall to ride on a secure belt with the safeguards.

I guess things would be a lot easier if they just posted one of the signs we saw in a temple earlier this week:

Problem=Solved.

More updates soon!

Love you guys!

~Izzy~

Stupid Mu Mu

Sooo we didn't get to go to the island with the awesome sand sculpture competition. So Sad. Totally swiped some pictures from my new bff slash person whos Kindle I've stolen for all eternity, Tammy, and there would have been a lot of this:

And this:

And This:

Yeah. That's Spiderman AAaaaand a Sand Shark Trashcan. I'm angsting out right now.

There were a lot of other peoples going and long story short, I didn't want to (and didn't think anyone else would want us to) be sharing a room since we have this 10 month old who wakes up three (or 4..or 5..or maybe 6) times a night when we're traveling. So we are spending our national holiday in Hangzhou.

It's probably for the best actually. Lark went out and bought himself a new best friend and was insisting that we bring it with us on holiday.

Izzy: "Lark. That's a nice bush.."

Lark: "Bonsai. It's called a Bonsai. And it happens to be a tree. And his name is Mu Mu."

Izzy: "That's nice. You can't bring it to the island with us."

Lark: "But I need to water it everyday!"

Izzy: "Can't you just stick an upside down water bottle in it or something? I think I saw that on an infommercial once.."

Lark: "Infommercials can't be trusted and who will spritz down the leaves to keep them moist?"

Izzy: "Really? No."

Lark: "But I want to be it's frieeend!"

Izzy: "......"


Apparently my husband needs more social contact. China seems to be having a Wilson/Cast Away-esque effect on him.

Also, this:

Just in case you didn't get that:

The baby looks happy enough, but for some reason I feel like this product skipped a couple rounds of consumer testing. 

So, for you two people out there still reading my blog, what do you think the packaging says? (No fair if you actually read Chinese. Reading Chinese is cheating. Always. Remember that.)

For Example:

"BoBo. For the babies that prefer choking to drowning. "

But one that's actually funny. Ready, set, GO!

~Izzy~

We Made It!

Sorry it's been so long since an update, the computer and I have been fighting, but we're here you guys. We're in China!!!

Lark actually has just finished his third week of teaching classes at our University and we're on National Holiday now. Going to do a little bit of traveling and try and see a sand-sculpture competition on some island that's not too far away from us. *fingers crossed*

Not much time for a real post right now, but here's some pictures and a short video of Larkin, who's just started being introduced to different foods. We found out that he does not in fact like green beans. At all.

This is us on Hefang Street. A super fun street in downtown Hangzhou that looks like old kung fu movies where people fly from roof to roof without any effort. Loooove it!!

Lark on our new scooter. We're going to get some super british, round, white helmets to match.

And Little Larking being adorable. As always.

Also, I just uploaded a gazillion videos of him trying different foods to our youtube channel if y'all want to check them out. Click ME!

While I was going through them all when uploading I kept noticing how odd his toy choices are. When I really sit down and think about it, his favorite toys are toilet paper rolls, nail polish containers, and spoons. He REALLY loves spoons. He has a whole box of normal, brain stimulating, super colorful and cute baby toys that he takes real joy in ignoring. For spoons. Silly baby.

More soon!
Love you guys!
~Izzy~

Peach of a Beach

We're in Seaside, Florida!

We spent 13 hours in a car with a 7 month old to get here and visit our family. That's how much we love our family (i.e. lots and lots and lots and lots).

If a place could taste like a peach, this would.  It is the Brad Pitt of vacation spots.  The King Kong of beaches.  And officially the most comfy place to take a mid afternoon nap (while the rain is pitter pattering on the roof of course!).

We have traveled far and we have traveled wide,
with our baby always at our side.
We have had so much fun we've had such a time,
baby was so ballin' it must be a crime.

(replace baby with 9mm and you would have a supremely lame rap)

Lots of stuff been happening. Lots of beach time. Lots of quality time. Lots of this:

and this:

and some of this:

*Larkin's approved crawling/pulling-up/not-denting-your-head-falling spot*

One major thing that stuck out to me about this trip is the Gospel Body Workout plan I found out about while I was here. You haven't heard of this? My goodness you have been suffering. This is the new workout craze where you can praise the Lord WHILE shedding that unwanted poundage. Which (as I know from experience.... of watching an infommercial on it for half an hour. Don't judge!) really does work. Oh and sidenote: it's endorsed by Jesus. 

Back to the point.  We love it here.

This is in no way set in stone, but as of right now we could absolutely see ourselves living here one day!

*AAAARRRRRn't ya wanting to be moving to Pirate country already, mates?*

Lark has been teaching me how to skim board, note to self: you are above six feet tall. Falling hurts!  And to that little kid who rocked, I hope that either a) you grow up and hate skim boarding, or b) your growth is stunted.  Because being tall and liking this sport just doesn't work. I'd show y'all a picture of my now bloodied knees, but I'm guessing no one actually wants to see the mess. But it's there. I was scared to go deeper than my thighs in the ocean for the rest of the trip in case I was a sort of shark magnet now with my bloody knees. Better safe than shark food, right?

Uncle Jim (Lark's uncle) owns a surf shop right by the beach (Check it out! Ono surf shop. It's the bomb.) and he lent us the skim board, and if there is any surf tomorrow, will lend us some surf boards to go surfing!

We got to hang with some family here which is always fun,

Aaaannnd Lark bought me World War Z. So much genius and zombies, all in one book. It has been woOOonderful (sung in operatic voice with hands doing the Wallace).

Cheese Gromit! Cheese!

Annnnyways, looking forward to talking to you guys later!

Other things that don't go well together....

Insert your head here.

Words fail me.

Toby Mcguire? Silly you! You're not spiderman!

(I guess he just got the memo)

Heheheh sorry couldn't help myself :)

Aaaand I don't care.

Love you all!

God Bless!

~Izzy~