HKG034: Furniture, School, and Internet

part of livie's finished room...her dresser and egg chair. that's a stack of blankets and quinn's monkey on the dresser...not sure how sissy inherited the monkey.

view of livie's new bunk bed and the stuffed animal zoo in the window

another view of sissy's new bunk bed

exhausted mommy trying to look rejuvenated by the makeover that livie just did...not succeeding

nakie baby. if this kid could manage it, he'd never get dressed. his favorite thing to do is scamper off after his bath shouting NO when you tell him it's time for a fresh diaper and jammies. lately, i keep finding him with his pants around his knees or ankles...this is the problem with using disposable diapers. he's skinny enough that when he's not wearing a cloth diaper, his pants hang on him and he can pull them down easily. i can't wait until we start potty training and he's whipping off the pants to "practice."

this is our room...still a work in progress, but we've come a long way from sleeping on an air mattress on the floor!

other side of our room...there's only about 6 inches between the foot board and the wall...will have to do some creative rearranging once the bike boxes are out. our headboard has a built-in/removable shelving system that we would like to keep for the storage, but we've got to move it somewhere else so the bed's not so close to the wall.

this is 5 minutes after the movers finished assembling the beds...they couldn't wait to have a fake sleepover. there were some tears when quinn figured out he wasn't sleeping in this bed tonight.

another view of q's room...notice the decor on his headboard...we handed him a pack of toy story stickers and told him to go wild. i did find a few on the wood floor that i had to scrub off, but for the most part, he decorated his bed.

livie's self portrait of her halloween socks. she explained to me that she was taking a pic b/c they are halloween socks and it's not halloween. at least she understands that. she's not bothered by it, but she understands it.

livie's self portrait for today. wanna take bets that her left front tooth will be the first one to fall out sometime this year or next? this is the tooth she injured when she was two...it is now dead, which is why it is discolored. it's only been the last six months or so that i've really noticed the discoloration...i wonder if that means the tooth is getting ready to come out. fortunately, livie is unaware of the discoloration, and no one has pointed it out to her.

today's been pretty productive. i got livie signed up for kindergarten (preschool) today. in somewhat related news, i have recently gotten some information that has made it clear that we were WRONG about when livie is supposed to be in school. we want to enroll her in the ESF system, and going by their rules, she is to start year 1 in the fall of the year in which she turns five. that's this year, not 2012 like we thought. so, not only did we get her into a kindergarten today, we are narrowing down the ESF schools we want to apply to. this is not going to be a fun task. the ESF school that is for our area is at max capacity and has very long wait lists, so the chances she will go to the school she's "meant" to go to are slim to none. *sigh*

i am quite excited about the kindergarten, though. we got an impromptu and informal tour on wednesday, which left me with a very positive feeling. the official tour today cemented that for me. i've also run into 3 different expat families from 3 different countries who have highly recommended this school.

after our exciting morning of getting livie into school, we came home for an early lunch and early nap (certain people were exhausted from several days of boycotted naps) and to wait for the rest of our furniture to be delivered. as of this evening, we all have beds to sleep on (and a cushion-y sofa to sit on). woooo hoooo! the last big task is to ship our bikes and bike trailer back to texas, which happens on monday, and then we will be free of boxes and strangely arranged furniture.

this afternoon, josh brought home a little gift for me...a wireless LAN card to do the job my network adapter is not. this is the first blog post i've been able to write in less than 2 hours for the last 10 days. wooooooooooooo hooooooooooooo. this also means i can catch up on skyping with friends and family........wooooooooooooooooooooooooo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

tomorrow, we have to leave the country briefly to activate our visas...we all finally have visas, which means we can now apply for IDs and finally be official here. this also means we can begin traveling...up to now, we have been unable to leave hong kong (except josh who is able to work in mainland china). we are headed to macau, a nearby island that is not considered part of hong kong island. we will head out for a little sight seeing and lunch before we come back into the country to activate our visas.