kids

Spring Break: A Story in Pictures (and words)

/ Ali Craft / 2 Comments

We had a great trip to the Philippines a couple weeks ago. We went with 7 high school students, 4 teachers, and our two kiddos; sadly, we were supposed to take two more students but one ended up with the flu and another one’s grandma passed away. They were missed!IMG_6636

Needless to say we were a little anxious to wake our two cherubs up at 3:30am, load them in a car to the school, a bus for an hour to the airport, a plane for four hours, and then another bus for eight and a half hours to our final destination. Hear this people, there is no surer sign that God is good than us making that voyage without mental breakdown. Hooray.

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Waiting on our bus in Manila to Baguio. It was hot, especially compared to the Korean winter we had come from.

 

 

Our days were filled with breakfast at the seminary we were staying at, vacation bible school in the morning at a local school, lunch provided by the wonderful staff, then back to the seminary for Bible time and then some good old fashioned manual labor. The days were long but obviously worth it. In the evenings we would either order food in or clean up and head into town via a jeepney (the most common means of transportation in the Philippines) to grab dinner. We would come back and get our kiddos in “bed” just in time to debrief our day with the team.

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Isaac and I feel very strongly that the main benefit of short term mission trips are to expose the people on the trip to cultures outside of their own, as well as a different way of life, and even just a reminder that we don’t serve an American (or Korean) God, as opposed to the idea that we are providing some sort of life changing aid or spiritual enlightenment. There were even many times this trip as we were teaching VBS that the Filipino kids would finish our sentences during the Bible story. The real value we saw was the impact the trip had on our students. They are very privileged and they were able to witness people satisfied without material things. It was also a great time while they were out of their normal routine and comfort zone to talk more about the role that God plays in their personal life. And not to go unmentioned, the obvious impact of short term missions in our family was to broaden our horizons and to give us a heart to share Jesus with rest of the world.


Being my first mission trip as a mama, the best part for me was watching my kids interact with our students, the fellow leaders, and the local Philippine people. Needless to say, they were the stars of the show. I was told as we said goodbye on the last day, “We will miss…Judah and Asher”. All week the awesome ladies from the school watched our kiddos while Isaac and I taught bible stories. At one point one our VBS students came to me and said, “Mrs. Craft, can I hold your baby?”, I told her that I didn’t even know where he was, to which she replied, “oh, he’s with the security guard.” Well, at least he’s safe, right?

On Monday of our trip, our sweet Judah turned the big T-W-O. We celebrated in style with lots of balloons, love, and cake. Lots of cake. Our awesome co-leaders and the ladies at the school had coordinated to get Judah an awesome double layer birthday cake to celebrate.

This post would not be complete without a proper shoutout to our fellow trip leaders. These rockstar ladies kept all the balls in the air while we changed diapers, feed kids, and coordinated naps/betimes. Not to mention they did more than their fair share of Craft child herding/holding. We humbly refer to ourselves as the Dream Team, but really, we are awesome. (It is critical to know that the sign they are pointing at says DANGER: HOT WORK IN PROGRESS KEEP OUT) It is photos like this that need posting to the internet that validate all my hard blogging work.

Our team was plagued with something resembling the flu and threats of getting acquainted with Philippine hospitals kept things interesting. Four out of our seven students ended up sick but luckily the leaders dodged the bullet. During our last day we stopped off at a local market for a few souvenirs. Naturally the guys on the team had no interest in getting out so they got put on kid duty. Much to their chagrin, moments after we left them alone Judah started throwing up. Bless their high school boy hearts. One of the students managed to find us to deliver the message, “Judah just threw up massively”. Massively; great word choice. The next words out of his mouth were, “I tried to entertain him (the child that had just thrown up) but it didn’t work.” How bizarre, usually you can joke a toddler right out of the stomach flu…bless. Bless. BLESS. We got him home and cleaned up (with our precious driver buying Judah two brand new “I-love-the-Phillipines”-esque  t-shirts so he had clothes to change into. He got sick one more time as we somberly packed up for our 3am departure for our voyage back to Seoul.

We braced for the long travel day ahead, packing extra outfits for Judah, a t-shirt for me, and plenty of barf bags. The vans pulled up at 2:45am and we loaded up, Judah burning with a 102 degree fever. Praise God that his fever broke somewhere between Isaac and I almost throwing up ourselves from our driver’s enthusiastic maneuvering through the mountains and our arrival in Manila. We ended up at the airport with plenty of time to spare, so we set up shop for the next 5 hours.


Finally, we boarded our plane and thought we were home free. In case you didn’t know that God has a sense of humor, as the wheels left the ground I was graced with the sound of not Judah, but sweet baby Asher (the child with only one set of extra clothes) throwing up on Isaac (the parent with no extra clothes). We survived with only one more round of vomiting; I can’t say as much for the handy airplane blankets.

We landed in Korea a little worse for wear but so happy to be home. Let’s just say that when we approached the customs line that ended up taking our friends two hours to clear, I took it upon myself to take my foul smelling and acting children directly to the line reserved for more important people than us and dared someone to stop me. They didn’t. We got through, grabbed our bags and a taxi home, stepping foot into our apartment 20 hours after leaving that morning.

And I know I’m crazy because I would do it all again.

 

How are the Kiddos?

/ Ali Craft / 3 Comments

Well last night we found ourselves looking through old videos and pictures on our phones of the kids (the kids…still weird to say). I totally realize the absurdity of my natural reflex to say things like, “Look, Judah looks like a baby!” at every picture when he is basically still a baby. I can only imagine how small our kids will look to us in those videos when they are say, out of diapers? Teenagers? In college?

Judah

Judah’s vocabulary continues to expand daily, which has lead us to a major milestone in parenting…Judah has learned the word “no”. It happened this week when Judah was touching the TV and I sternly told him no. He looked at me, paused, and said “no”. HA. I am finding that half of parenting at this stage is learning not to laugh at things that are completely inappropriate yet really hilarious.

We have been really surprised by how much Judah loves to be around Asher. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is run to go find him. He will hold his arms out asking to hold Asher. Let’s be real though, at a year and a half old, loving your little brother and hating your little brother look very similar. Eye pokes, slaps in the head, finding (pinching) brother’s nose. Asher is a trooper. We figure we will give it a year or so before letting Judah babysit.


Judah hasn’t really learned proper paci-etiquette. Like the paci always goes in the mouth, never the eye. And if you give a screaming baby the paci and they stop crying, leave the paci in their mouth…

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He also hasn’t lost any of his adventurous nature. The other day we were at the playground at the school where we work and Judah kept getting really close to the edge. I told Isaac there was no way he would just try to walk off…I really hate having to eat my words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpYZseqDTZM

Judah be all like…

He is also in a phase to where anything he eats needs to have some sort of dip to go with it. We can thank Isaac for this. One day we realized he liked cucumbers, so Isaac let him try it with some ranch…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf1O84brMLw

…so now, be it ketchup, ranch, guacamole, salsa, even yogurt, everything must be dipped.


Asher

Asher is awesome. He is becoming a bit more fussy; we fear he is colicky, but it is so fun to have a little baby back in the house. We especially love the snuggles, seeing how Judah gave up sitting still a long time ago. We may have therein created a child that doesn’t want to be put down but…c’est la vie. We fully believe there are worse things in life than having to hold a cuddly baby (please see: why I never have a spare hand to blog). The baby wrap has become a necessity in our house.


  
He is starting to be more alert, coo a bit, and even smile. It is THE best. Moments like these are what keep me from moving to the funny farm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z59E8eJjY6o

I have been *trying* to avoid dairy to see if helps Asher. Sadly (for me) I think it may, but I am the worst at avoiding dairy. I mean really, what is life without it? I don’t even think about it; no sooner have I said, “I’m trying to avoid dairy”, have I ordered a latte…sorry bud, I’m trying!

I do need to make a brief public service announcement. Should you be avoiding dairy for any reason, do not, I repeat, do NOT try to make scrambled eggs with almond milk. Just forgo the milk and risk non-fluffy eggs, otherwise you will just have eggs that smell/taste like almonds. I assure you it’s way worse than is sounds.

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And it is worth mentioning that this baby has some dark hair! A child that actually resembles both of us!!


And just in case you were worrying that Asher wasn’t getting enough attention…


  

Well that’s all for now.

Yours truly,

The lowly parents of Korean royalty

P.S. Go Rebels. Beat Bama Again. Fins Up.

Here’s to the Birthday Boy

/ Ali Craft / 6 Comments

Good news: we found time in the hospital to write this fun little post about Asher’s birth.

Bad news: that means this post was written by two extremely sleep deprived individuals, so please excuse any errors.

So, it’s movie night here in the hospital. I’m snuggled up to my pain pump button, and Asher and Isaac are both on food binges, as is appropriate for movie night, I guess. Things have honestly gone more smoothly than expected. We have been playing fun games like, “Name that Korean Hospital Food” at meal times before resorting to some kind of sustenance from our snack bag. They seem to be fond of serving something that closely resembles wall paper paste. We assume it’s an acquired taste… so as much as we have come to like Korean food, we’ve found that a hospital cafeteria may not be the best place to expand our horizons.  They have western food options, but where is the fun in that? (Just kidding, we totally asked for western food, but that was yet another thing apparently lost in translation)

Soon Chun Hyaung Hospital

We came in Tuesday night for my scheduled C-Section on Wednesday morning. Despite our many miles walking, spicy food, and all-natural supplements to induce labor, Asher wasn’t planning to come out on his own; he comes by his stubbornness honestly. We were fully prepared to wait it out until his 18th birthday, but when the doctor started throwing around words like “risk” and “very dilemma” (we don’t understand either), we decided that now was the time to meet our new baby boy. We were told to come in the night before in hopes of getting one of the coveted private rooms, as fun as the alternative sounded: sharing a room with seven other people (no we are not kidding). I imagine it would be like summer camp…except worse.

Picture with Brooke (Ali’s sister if anyone at the Korean hospital asks) and chauffeur extraordinaire

Brooke drove us to the hospital and provided comedic relief well into the night. After snagging the last parking spot, taking the obligatory selfie, and wandering around like lost Americans trying to find admissions, we finally got all checked in. The evening was filled with a mix of charades, Google translate, and extremely poor Korean to complete all of the mandatory hospital paperwork. Let us be clear, the staff was very sweet and attentive, and while many had some knowledge of English, our Korean skills were the ones that were seriously lacking. We were asked all of the standard questions like, “Do you eat any medicine?” and, “Do you have any family history of deeabeets (diabetes) or carcinoma?” We had one last fetal monitoring test to check Asher’s heart rate and to see if I was having contractions. My body was kindly pretending it wanted to have a baby with a series of strong contractions so we agreed to keep an eye on them, and proceed as planned if they stopped. (Spoiler alert: after about 20 minutes, they did.) All the paperwork and questionnaires took the better part of the evening as we continued trying to figure out what they were asking. We feel confident that the “guess and check” method is the best way to fill out important medical documents.

Three words. First word…

The next morning it was go time! This was by far the most informal surgery prep I have ever experienced. I received the top the night before (no gowns here, they do shirt and pants). I got the pants at 5:00 am. The “surgery hat” as she called it came at 6:00 am. At 7:00 I was told to make sure I had no metal on my body and to go ahead and use the restroom.

At 7:30, there was a knock at the door and they pointed to a stretcher right outside the door. My chariot awaited me.

It felt so surreal. No pre-op meeting with the doctor or anesthesiologist, just, “Hey if you’re not too busy, wanna come get on this stretcher and have a baby?”. I hollered for Isaac to grab his shoes and to come on.

Isaac was ever vigilant throughout the night.

As I was wheeled through the hallways, we had a quick FaceTime chat with Judah and granddad as they ate breakfast.

Judah’s favorite trick: “Show me your muscles!”

I was finally pushed into an operating room that looked a little too much like a scene from a horror movie with it’s institutional mint green walls and metal equipment. By the time the wheels came to a stop I realized that Isaac was no longer with me. My fears were confirmed that Isaac would not be allowed in until after the epidural and initial set up. This is when a young Korean man double checked with me that I wanted spinal anesthesia (epidural) as opposed to general anesthesia. I said yes, to which he responded, “Spinal anesthesia–very difficult.” This would be number one in things you don’t want to hear your doctor say during an epidural, which would lead to number two, “we need a bigger needle.” And number three, “We try again. Don’t move.” I’m glad we can laugh about it now…Praise be to God, somewhere around the sixth attempt they got it. It was time to meet our baby.

They finally let Isaac in, and surgery began. Turns out Koreans must not be as squeamish (or tall) as Americans since, unlike in the states, they let Isaac stand at my head, as opposed to sit, and he had just enough clearance to see over the curtain. I’m sure seeing the inside of your wife’s belly really adds another level of intimacy to a marriage. I warned Isaac that if he passed out and abandoned me I would kill him.

So, after about 20 minutes, a few doses of nausea medicine for me, and a couple good heave-hoes from a Korean woman on top of me pushing my belly, Asher was born. Isaac managed to snap one picture as they pulled him from my womb. Naturally it was booty up, which will be great for his scrapbook cover and or high school yearbook. We’ll choose to leave that photo off the internet until our son needs to be taught a lesson the old fashioned way. 

  
I was on the operating table for another hour while they put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They wheeled me to recovery and told me, “You will be here for twelve or thirty minutes.” Bless their hearts. I really should learn Korean. I spent the next thirty minutes staring at the clock, the Korean man next to me, and dozing off between blood pressure checks. I was also trying to scratch my skin off like some kind of addict as I forgot to warn them that pain medicine makes me itchy. When they wheeled me out of recovery, Isaac was waiting for me outside. He had been to the nursery with the baby to watch him get his measurements taken, then was told to come wait for me. Asher had been taken to get cleaned up. 

Much to our delight, Asher showed up in our room about 20 minutes later, and not long after granddad brought Judah up to meet the newest member. And so our lives as a family of four began…

 

Asher is Here!!

/ Ali Craft / 10 Comments

Hello, everyone! Isaac and I are happy to tell you that Asher Thomas Craft was born at 8:41 am on July 29, 2015 in Seoul, South Korea. He checks in at 8 pounds 11 ounces. He is 20.6 inches long. He looks a lot like his big brother, so he should have the Koreans eating out of the palm of his hand in no time. While that might seem like a figure of speech, last week in a Korean BBQ restaurant Judah literally had a woman eating soggy crackers from his hand, so it isn’t that far fetched. Mom and baby are both doing well.

We will have more information and pictures coming soon. Glory to God.

Psalm 127:3