Dada there is a ball in my ear...

Well, apparently a piece of ear stuff got loose and was rolling about nate's ear. For a long time, much into my twenties, I did not understand the need for ear wax cleaners or the concept of ear wax, asian's as far as I know had clumpy ear stuff, not some waxy thing that somehow comes out from one's ear.

My mom said the nicest time spent with her mom is to lay on her lap and she slowly and carefully digs out these clumps from ones ear. In China or asia, we have little bamboo sticks with a teeny tiny spoon at the end that assists in the digging. My mom even has a piece of gold jewelry that has a gold toothpick on one side and a gold ear digger on the other side.

So to my greatest amazement, an australian caucasian friend tells me that one of his children has asian ear wax and the other has western ear wax. I had no clue what he was referring to. Sometime this year, the kid's pediatrician, Dr. Ahmed who is of Indian origin said to me that nate's earwax has hardened and all I had to was to add a few drops of olive oil... so I asked him if he knew that its "normal" to have clumpy ear wax... and he had never heard of it before! he has waxy stuff, so somewhere along the evolution chain... must be the cold and harsh mongolian gobi dessert that the waxy stuff turned clumpy?

So nate has the clumpy stuff and Ike has the waxy stuff. Poor Ike, dada has to clean his ears often because none of us remember to, since we don't have wax flowing out of our ears, I must remember to go ask Mabo and see what the black population has...

Here's Nate and Ike on kiddy gym exercising equipment, its amazingly only US$12 per machine. Ike with broom at Kindermusik which he did very well at today and was totally exhausted.

I plan to start Nate finally on night diaper training, I have probably left it for too long but the temptation of sleeping entire nights and not having to wake up at 430am on a brrr brrr winter morning is my excuse (so much for my environmentalism). I have now bought a absorbent sheet for his bed and we have discussed that after his 4th birthday we will "go for it"... he has once or twice forgotten to put on his diaper and woke up at 430am. He is quite keen to go to move his room tot he spare room so he has access to his own bathroom.