Eat Your Heart Out

My youngest is turning out to be quite the charmer. He knows his smile melts my heart and he uses it to his advantage! Dimples and giggles this cute get him all the attention his little heart desires.







*since there's several comments about the blanket... it was made for Caleb by a friend, Glenda. She's a Jedi-Quilter and has made all three of our kids an incredible blanket. She wanted pictures of Caleb on it so I snapped them yesterday. He was in such a great mood for them that I felt they were blog-worthy. :)

Boring

The other day Brandon and I were watching an episode of The Amazing Race. Something about what they were doing made Brandon think. He turned to me and said, "Our life seems boring compared to this."
We sat and felt sorry for ourselves for about two seconds.

And then I reminded him that every morning he takes our daughter to Chinese preschool on the back of a motorcycle down streets with live chickens.



Turns out...maybe we're not so boring after all.

To the Capital and Back Again

Every now and then we make a trip to the Big Chicken's capital.
Sometimes it's for mere sanity. A big, fat, juicy cheeseburger can really do a lot for your emotional state!

Sometimes it's for furniture shopping at IKEA.

But this time it was for shots. Immunizations. Vaccinations. Whatever word floats your boat.
We threw in some time for cheeseburgers, subway sandwiches, shopping, and wayyyyy too many hours wandering the maze of IKEA...but the purpose of the trip was for Caleb to get up to date vaccinations, and flu shots for the rest of us.

We usually take the train up to the Capital, which can be an adventure in and of itself. This time around, it was thankfully without many stories to tell.


Blog reader, meet Chiner's countryside:


Vast stretches of farmland cover the land between our city and the Capital.

Now, blog reader, meet the exact opposite:


That was our view from our hotel down to the old train station on one of the most muggy/smoggy days I've seen since being here. The day before was gorgeous...which is a rarity around here. So don't let the picture completely fool you. Occasionally, it's a pretty place to live! But yeah, the crowds are the same, regardless of weather. :)

On the agenda was to visit the frighteningly crowded Silk Market to get the kids some new shoes and snow suits for bundling up during bike rides. Salem happened to be sleeping in the stroller during the purchasing of his snow suit. So for his sake (and our own) we didn't wake him up to try it on before buying.
oooops....


Oh well...at least it'll fit him next year, right?
He kept calling himself a fireman.


Eden's fits...though it may not fit next year.


And after our arms were all sore, our bellies were all happy, and new shoes had been bought...we got back on the train and came home. Have I mentioned that this train goes 191 mph? Oh yeah. I forgot that part. It makes a 5 hour car ride turn into a 1.5 hour train ride.


We had almost an entire train car to ourselves on the way home...


That kind of space in this part of the world is a rarity. We took full advantage of it.
Even giving mini-man his own space to stretch out.


All in all...another successful trip to the Capital and back again.

Halloweenies

We're total weenies when it comes to Halloween. If the "holiday" totally got wiped off the face of the planet, I couldn't care less. It's just never been something I've been "in to."
Don't get me wrong...kids in costumes are cute! Who doesn't love a little boy dressed up as a cowboy or a blonde little tinkerbell?!
It's the freaky faces. The hoards of candy. The strangers my kids encounter while out knocking on doors. The festivals, the candy corn (gag me now!), and those rubber "fingers" that look like witches wrinkled old fingers.
I really could just do without it all.

And then I moved to Asia. A place where Halloween is almost unheard of. It's one of THE very few things that totally makes me fit in here...the fact that the billions of people around me couldn't care less about that holiday.

And then my blessed husband went out for a bike ride looking for a gym. He stumbled upon a place called "My Gym" which totally suckered him in since he was looking for a gym, after all.
Turns out, it's a kid's gym! SCORE!
With truly great play areas for the kids! SCORE AGAIN!
That was having a halloween party that evening and who really wanted the foreign white kids to attend! oh blast.
We juuuuuuuust almost made it through October without the mention of Halloween. I seriously had JUST posted on facebook that I was glad this year that Halloween was passing us by.
But like all things "western" here, Halloween is becoming more popular.

So I got over myself, my pity party, my tendency to want to crawl in my bed and pull the covers over my head at the mention of Pumpkin Carving, and we loaded up and went to the full blown Asian Halloween party.
What would be appropriate for an Asian halloween party??
Answer: Entirely too many people crammed into one room.

Eden and Salem were promptly lined up for a million flash bulbs to ensue.
What makes white kids stand out even more in an Asian crowd??
Answer: Put them in superman and princess costumes.

What's the little girl to Eden's left supposed to be dress as??

Answer: no idea.

What did Caleb think of all the hoopla?

Answer: He's indifferent. Like his mommy. 

Or, maybe he's less thrilled than me...

Either way, he was the cutest little cow there...even if Eden insisted that he was a Giraffe.

I'll try to have a better attitude next year about it all...because you never know what can come from a Halloween party.
This year's halloween party resulted in me teaching a parenting class (wha?!) next sunday at the Gym for attending parents so that our kids can attend classes for free. That's right...occasionally we take full advantage of our "foreigner" status. :)

It's just not that Unusual

Doors are over rated right?

I mean, who needs a door when you can just crawl through a window to enter a building?

Because that's what Eden has been doing the past few weeks when she goes to preschool.

So this one day Brandon came home from dropping Eden off at preschool and said, "They want us to drop Eden off at the back window now when we take her and pick her up."

After some semi-confusing conversation with her teachers (semi-confusing because my Chinese skills are still under par...over par? I have no idea. My golf skills are bad too.)
Anyway, what we think they were saying is that the preschool is next to an elderly couple's apartment. The preschool is in an apartment so it's surrounded by actual tenants. And apparently they complained about the door to the preschool opening and closing too often, loud children, and what not. So the solution for awhile was to climb through the back window.

And then the elderly couple kept complaining. And kept complaining. And kept complaining.

Not about us specifically. But just about the noise level of the kids. And we all know, kids are going to be noisy kids, no matter how many times you ssssshhhhhh them and no matter what nationality they are.

And since the preschool's teachers are too nice to say, "Get over it Granny!" the preschool is moving to a new location. It's bigger and better, so really, it's a win/win.

We realized just how adjusted to the culture we've become though, when they told us that we needed to pick her up from the window for awhile. Because our immediate thought was not, "hmmmm, that's strange." or "uhhhhhhhh....alllllriiight....."

It was more along the lines of, "ok. sure!"  Because, well, that's just China. And in China, picking your kid up from preschool through a window is just something that's not that unusual.

Pie Month has Arrived

I scoured our blog this afternoon for evidence of me ever informing you of one of our family's traditions. Lo and behold, I think this is the first mention of it!
Which is so sad, as it really is a great little tradition.

This is our Third Annual Pie Month!

Yes, you heard me correctly. Pie Month!

Three years ago Brandon declared October to be Pie Month. He felt that October kind of got the shaft as far as holidays are concerned, with Thanksgiving in November, and Christmas in December. Plus he thought we kind of needed a "warm-up" for all the eating that comes in November with T-Giving.
(why not go ahead and give your waistline a little stretch in it before the big event comes along?! :) Since I've finally gotten back into the routine of exercise post-baby, I'm ok with the arrival of Pie Month!

If you know my husband at all, you understand that his declaration for completely-made-up-holidays or traditions is not unlike him at all.

And so yesterday, yes the 21st of October, I finally fulfilled our Pie Month tradition with a warm apple pie.

In Brandon's perfect Pie Month world, he'd like one pie per week during Pie Month. I'm still playing my I've-got-a-newborn card though, so we're over half a month in to Pie Month and we're just now getting around to it!

But isn't it a fancy shmancy pie to kick things off with?!

Next week: Buttermilk Chess Pie! (yes, we miss you Bekah!)

Next year I vow to get our 4th Annual Pie Month off to an appropriate start with a pie on the FIRST day of October! Anyone want reservations at Hotel Chancler next October?!

The Dawning of a New Era

Well, we've done it. We've made the jump into electric transportation.
I know. I know. All you Ford 150 Texas Edition people are totally hating on us right now.

And believe me. I get it.
In all of my driving years I've owned three cars.
(I'm using owned loosely...as I didn't purchase a single one with my own money. But lets not get nit picky here...)
And all three of those were trucks.
They ran the gamut. Chevy. Ford. Toyota. All using more gas than should be spoken of.
But then we traded in our gas guzzler for a society that depends on the bicycle.

The past several months our mode of transportation has been taxis. Occasionally buses. And we have a bike that we've shared. And until recently, that's been sufficient.

But then we found out that Eden's preschool is moving to a different location. Which gave us reason to think about finding a quicker mode of transportation. Quicker than a bike. Quicker than walking a couple blocks away to flag a taxi. Quicker than a bus that makes 7 stops between here and there.

Enter: The Electric Bicycle.

Well. okay. This one is actually our house helper's. Which is a good thing as it's pink, has flowers all over it, and has flower "pedals." No lie.
But we rode it today to the bike street. You know how in America all the car dealerships seem to crowd right next to each other, creating miles of cars on display?
It's the same thing here. Only it's bikes. The normal kind. The three wheeled kind. The electric kind. The scooter kind. you get my drift...

So our tutor rode our bike and went with us to help work through any details that might cause any trouble. He rode our bike because he doesn't have one. He doesn't have one because he's a scaredy cat. He's a scaredy cat because Chinese traffic is nutso.
(ok...scratch that last sentence mom and dad. You never read of such nonsense.)

So we arrived at the bike market.

Brandon picked out a black one. Any surprise there? ummmmm, no.

Kudos to him though for picking out the one with the safest kid's seat. I mean, it's no Britax Roundabout car seat strapped on the back and passing all DPS child restraint laws... but I don't think they can fall out of it at least.  :)

It's got a removable battery that'll plug right into our wall when it's low. It came with protective knee gear (but no helmet...does anyone else find that strange?!) And it's got pedals just in case the battery goes dead while you're out. But good googly if I have to pedal this thing with a kiddo on the back, I'm in a world of trouble.

So we're green now. We're saving the ozone layer one bike at a time.
And if anyone wants to come and visit us I'll let you take it for a spin. We can ride it together and make Dumb & Dumber jokes all day long.