HKG073: Loogies

today dawned sneezey with a chance of snottiness for quinn, so we laid low. we normally have playgroup on wednesday mornings, but we stayed home to contain the contamination. quinn is mostly happy...just a little snotty.

fortunately, quinn does not yet know how to hock a loogie. i am sure that if he did, he would have found more creative ways to deal with his output issues today. even though quinn doesn't know how to hock a loogie, i am exposed to them every.single.day. loogies are a part of everyday life here. spitting is such an issue here that there are signs in some public/gov't places telling you that spitting is cause to be fined. a week or so ago, quinn and i were out and about when someone hocked a loogie right next to us. my son, who thinks nothing of playing in dirt and/or shoving his hands into his diaper to check out the status/contents thought that the loogie was disgusting...he told me "eeeewww gohs!" again today, quinn and i were having an apple/gatorade break while sissy was in dance class, and we watched a nicely dressed young business man spit in the street repeatedly. ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. this grosses me out to no end. since having the kids, i no longer have the weak stomach i once did, but listening to and watching someone hock a loogie makes me nauseous.

so, other than having my stomach turned by disgusting manners, the day was pretty low key. we took sissy to school, picked her up, and took her to dance class. quinn and i had some street market adventures, and then went to get sissy and come home for dinner. once again, la fu was the highlight of our day today. he loves it when we are home to play with him all day. he is becoming more and more interactive with the kids. i am now useful only for cuddles (gee darn), cheek scratches, litter box maintenance, and food provision. oh, and i provide endless recon/attack opportunities at night. though la fu is sleeping more at night than he did a week ago, he is still spending a lot of time running the la fu 500 and performing surprise attacks on our feet. now that my duties have been outlined for me, i am finding that la fu has shifted all play responsibility to the kids and josh, though he will also cuddle with olivia. sometimes, la fu lays across this built-in we have in the dining room...it's tall, so when q walks by it, he is at the exact right height to receive head baps from la fu. this makes both of them deliriously happy. i need to capture this on video because it's pretty darn funny.

livie and la fu sharing a snuggle. that's livie's flamenco dress...we had just gotten back from class.

kitty bliss...la fu is being snuggled by me while livie scratches his chin and quinn scratches his tummy. i think he liked it.

look closely at la fu's tail...he was talked into playing dressup with livie. my mom tells some pretty great stories about our family cats, tinker and rusty. they came to live with us around the same time that kimmy and i were born, so they grew up with us. they let us do anything we wanted to them, and they never scratched or bit us. i think that la fu will be to livie and quinn what tinker and rusty were to me and my brother and sister. tinker is the reason i am a cat person today...he was 17 pounds of chilaxed love (by the way, his full name was tinkerbell...he didn't really live up to his name). he was super chill and very, very sweet. he's been gone for more than 20 years now, but i still think of him often and miss him.

la fu playing with olivia

q insisted on wearing his swim goggles most of the day today...called them his gasses (glasses).

sweaty boy. i am not a huge fan of the buzz cut on a baby boy, but i think we're going to have to go really short on q's hair. it's very humid here...not as hot as texas, but much, much more humid. quinn is usually dripping after just 10 or 15 minutes outside.

see that yellow tag on the back of q's shirt...it's a citronella stamp. i am testing these out to see if i can keep the mosquitoes off the kids without slathering them in chemicals. right before i put this on quinn, he got dive bombed by a mosquito that came in livie's open window...the window that will have to remain open until the air con situation is fixed once and for all. tonight, i put these stamps at the heads of each of their beds to help ward off the hungry little suckers that think my kids taste so delicious.