Christmas, New Years, Moving, etc.

So we've been back in town for almost a month now. Christmas and New Year's have come and gone, and we've moved back into our old house. After we had been living in our old place for a few days, I asked Timmy if he liked his house. He responded with, "Timmy's house BIG, I wike it!" This is hilarious because I think we own close to the world's smallest house! He seems a lot happier being here.

For Scott and I it seems like weird deja vu. Its our home, but strangers were living here for a year. They changed a few minor things just enough that you almost can't tell they were changed. But I can tell and it sort of freaked me out at first. Like the handle on our one and only toilet. Its different. Who remembers exactly what their toilet flusher looks like? Not me. But I know it didn't look like it does now. Weird.

Helping clear the deck after the lastest snow storm.

This is Timmy testing out his old Moses basket when we were babysitting our friends little girl.

Beijing Day Two: Great Wall, Great Fog, & The Olympics

Our second day in Beijing took us to the Great Wall. The weather that day was not optimal for viewing much farther than your hand in front of your face. We had a good morning on the Wall with Timmy doing some physical therapy on his healing, no longer casted leg by climbing for a while. We were planning on taking the toboggan down the wall, but it was closed due to the rain. We got to wear some sweet ponchos though.

Timmy climbing the wall.

Diaper change on the wall.

After the Great Wall we headed over to the Olympic park to check out the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. The whole place was pretty amazing. We self-toured the inside of the Water Cube. Although really neat, time has already started to take it toll on the weird plastic-y material that its made of because the place looks a little bit dirty now. Again we wished the fog would break, but it was still a great experience.

Choo, Choo and stuff.

So Mrs. Zhang, our nanny has quit. Well actually she just moved back to her home town, because her father has lung cancer. I'm more than a little upset. She was the one thing that I genuinely loved about life here. She was trustworthy and Timmy loves her. Now we start the search for a new helper.

In other events, it has rained almost every day for at least three weeks. If its not raining, its threatening to rain so you can't really enjoy being outside because you always think its about to rain, or it just rained and everything is wet and muddy. Despite all the rain, we didn't get hit with any extra from the typhoon-turned-tropical storm that annihilated Taiwan and the south eastern Chinese coast. It was supposed to come, but we just really got a lot of humidity, like we didn't have enough already.

Timmy is obsessed with trains these days. I am attempting to avoid letting him know about Thomas the train. For now, he just has a wooden train from IKEA and some stickers, hopefully he won't learn the difference and just be happy with any kind of train. He talks about choo, choos endlessly. We tuck the trains into bed with him every night and he gives them kisses.

Choo, Choo!

Our little monkey.

Homesick :(

I think the long summer is starting to get to all of us. Scott and I have been feeling homesick - mostly induced by watching the movie Cars too much. It is so utterly American that it makes us long for a summer road trip, or camping, or anything outdoors and not Chinese! I've been dying for some Lou Malnati's. Chinese Papa John's pizza just doesn't do it for me.

The worst I think was when Timmy went into a closet, grabbed a suitcase and starting saying, "Home, home, home." It was so cute and super sad all at once. Instead of going home, we settled for a Skype call with Grandma B that morning. He seemed to be satisfied with that. For now we will continue on the long road of potty training, and look longingly forward to the end of September and the visitors it will bring! Shout out to Jim, Cindy and Lauren, we can't wait for you guys to come!

Solar Eclipse

Timmy and I watched the solar eclipse this morning. It was around 9:30 in the morning and for about 6 minutes there was complete darkness. It was really cool. It would have been cooler if it hadn't also been thunder storming at the same time. There was a bunch of lightning and the sky was all clouds so you couldn't actually see the sun get covered. Bummer, but I forgot to get the special glasses to look at the sun anyway, so I guess we were lucky. This will not happen again in Shanghai for another 500 years, pretty cool. I turned off all the lights so we could really see how dark it was, but Tim didn't like that and climbed up on the bed to turn the lights back on. "Mama, light, Mama." :)

Our Almost Fearless Son...

So as most of you know by now, Timmy falls a lot. He always has a bruise or twenty somewhere on his face, head, knees, legs and most recently we found some bruises on his spine! How does that even happen? Anyway, these "injuries" are due to his recklessness in jumping, climbing, running, etc. He has no fear when it comes to physical challenges.

Recently, however, he has developed a fear of bugs. Hilarious. We will be walking outside, merrily jumping along, when all the sudden my tough little boy melts into a puddle of, "Mama, bug, bug, buuuuuuuug!" I can't help but laugh most of the time. He does really like butterflies though. He chased two today for almost 5 minutes, yelling something that sounded almost like the word butterfly.

Here's a picture of him playing in our tiny baby pool on the balcony, trying to beat the heat, when a gnat flew by his head. Priceless.

Xiamen Highlights

Our long weekend in Xiamen was good. It was really nice to get away from the now familiar Shanghai sights. Here are some highlights from our trip...

Day 1: After insane amounts of transportation (taxi, bus, plane, van, ferry & tram) we arrived finally on Gulong Yu, an island right next to the island of Xiamen. Both are located west of Taiwan. Our hotel in Gulong Yu was the only 4 star hotel on the island, but was definitely not what Scott and I would

consider 4 stars. There were no elevators!!! We were on the third floor, so that got a little annoying with Timmy and stroller in tow all the time. The island itself was only worthy of a day trip, but we enjoyed the time anyway.

We were traveling with 7 of Scott's coworkers, all young/our age single people. They were

traveling cheap, so they stayed at a hostel. We joined them for a few meals and got to experience what traveling cheap means to a twenty-something Chinese person! Some of the places we ate at I would have never thought to set foot in, much less actually eat at. The first meal in Gulong Yu was delicious. Since these islands are in the ocean, lots of seafood. Some

good, and some gross.

Day 2: We took the ferry back over to Xiamen and found our new hotel, much nicer. We searched the internet on our phones for "American Restaurant Xiamen" because after two cheap Chinese meals, we were ready for a burger! We found some place called the Red Armadillo, but it didn't exactly have an address. We decided to go anyway and hunt it down. After an hour long taxi ride, and glorious tour of the southern coast of the island, the taxi driver dropped us off on the side of the road. We had no idea where this place was. We started wandering and after about ten or fifteen minutes, a really sunburnt white guy yells down the road at us, "Red Armadillo?" Sweet. We followed him to his home, which I should have taken a picture of because I can't even begin to describe it. Definitely not your normal restaurant. He was an American expat, who has been in Xiamen for 8 years. The food was delicious, and we talked to the owner (sun burnt guy) for a while. It was super relaxing, complete with Jimmy Buffet on the stereo and a view of the beach.

After lunch, we went to the beach. Due to a recent typhoon, the water wasn't what we

considered swim worthy. So we played in the sand, walked down the coast and watched 4 different engaged couples take wedding pictures on the beach. In China it is a thing to hire a photography company to take pictures of you

and your fiance in different wedding attires at different locations. Many are like costumes, some are more traditional wedding garb. Either way it was fun to see. While we were people watching the brides, everyone in Xiamen was watching us! Timmy seems to create a scene wherever he goes. Its really annoying. On our last day Scott and I both actually hit someone for touching Timmy because she wouldn't back off.

Day 3: We went to the 10,000 stone botanical gardens, but we didn't stay long or take very many pictures. It was ridiculously hot, so much that Scott and I were drenched in sweat and the whole place was full of stairs. Not exactly fun with the stroller. Not to mention the intrusive people that want to touch Timmy. This is where the hitting incident took place. So we made a short loop through the gardens and retreated back to our hotel for some AC. After some shopping with our Chinese friends, and lunch at the highest Pizza Hut in the world we came home.

For the rest of our pictures, click here.

Hot, Hot, Hot

IT IS HOT!!! Hotter than I have ever experienced. By 9:30AM its in the 90s, and the Weather Channel says it feels like 109 degrees F. I start sweating just thinking about it. Thank goodness for air conditioners.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from our first day back

in Shanghai. Timmy and I met up with the ladies and kiddos from our Moms & Toddlers prayer and play group at a cafe that had a great outdoor playground for the kids. Unfortunately it was a billion degrees, even in the morning. On this particular day there was a nice breeze in the shade, so we had a good time anyway. These pictures of Timmy and Maddie, my friend Meg's daughter.

Spring = Flowers & Frogs

Its starting to feel almost like springtime around here. Its not consistantly warm yet, but its getting there. All the flowering trees are blooming, and they are beautiful. All the frogs have mated, and they are plentiful. No seriously, in one day about a month ago I saw more than a dozen pairs of frogs mating. And the result of this are gazillions of tiny black tadpoles in the pond (click the pictures to enlarge and view them in all their glory). Timmy loves to sit and watch the little guys swim around. Its actually quite amazing that the three or four dozen large goldfish that live in the same pond have not eaten all the little guys yet. I am waiting to see if we will have gazillions of frogs this summer or if there are tadpole predators lurking out there somewhere to save us from this plague.

The Violation

Scott and I went to have a medical exam today that is required to obtain resident status in China. What an experience. First, we had to bring 9 passport-like photos with you, but they took another picture when we got there. Then we waited for about an hour in a waiting room that at first had only one man in it (and no receptionist at the desk). By the end of the hour there were at least 30 other people (all foreigners) with us, all standing around with no explanation of what was happening. We somehow managed to be the first two people in line, praise the Lord!

They took us to a little locker room like place where we had to take off our shirts and put on little robes. In a new room, they took 3 tubes of blood (after we were required to have fasted for 5 hours - not a good combination). The blood-taking nurse was not very good at her job, our arms are still sore.

Then we each went in another little room to have an ultrasound done. I think this was to make sure we had organs. I don't know what else they could have been looking for because they were probing the wrong area to be looking for a baby. Not to mention Scott had this done as well. He asked the nurse, "No babies?" She confirmed this for him, thank goodness.

In another little room we had and EKG done, complete with thingys clipped to our ankles, wrists and chest. Odd. Yet another little room brought an ear, nose and eye guy. He made sure I wasn't color blind, or blind and looked in my nose. Apparently he looked in Scott's ears, but not mine, hmmmm. Then we had our blood pressure taken in a different little room.

This next part was even stranger. Still in our pants and robes, we were given winter coats to wear to walk across the parking lot to a different building. This was the x-ray building. We got chest x-rays done, then walked back across the parking lot to the other building.

We were finally done, and by now, so was Timmy. He was not happy about being passed back and forth between MaMa and DaDa while all these tests were being done. Although a nice nurse gave him Hershey kisses. We topped it all off with a much needed, 2:30pm lunch at good old McDonalds.

For pictures from our first week here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=15202&l=6d5c9&id=1145683473 (you DO NOT need to be a member of Facebook to see these)

Arrived

We have arrived. Timmy is such a trooper. Its a little bit unreal that we got about 8 hours of sleep last night (7:30pm - 6:00am with a two hour break from 1-3am so that we could watch Baby Einstein and eat mini muffins with Timmy). And it is a bit unreal that Timmy is taking on his normal schedule like a champ. We will see what night number two brings. Currently (at 7pm) he is down for the night right on time. Scott is out for a traditional chinese dinner with some officials that are friends with his company. Last time this happened, he said he was willing to try any kind of food, and so he ate shark fin soup and a lot of wine. 

Before we got here everyone kept telling us that it is sooooooooo cold in Shanghai in January. Outside it is just like Chicago, maybe even warmer. But, alas, they were correct that it is so cold, because no one turns on the heat! We are the exception. We have every built-in heater cranked and we bought a few extra heaters today, so our apartment is toasty. Its strange, at dinner last night most people kept their coats on throughout the whole meal and at the grocery store today, no heat. Oh well. This is China. 

For those of you that read this only for the pictures, nothing picture-worthy has happened yet so stay tuned.