My Marvelous Mother's Day

Happy belated Mother's Day to all of my mommy readers out there! I hope you had a wonderful day! For me, I'm still getting used to the fact that I am a mom. This was my first Mother's Day as a mom of 2 kids though. Last year, I was very pregnant with Seoul as we went out for lunch at a nice Italian restaurant. Click here if you'd like to read what I wrote for last Mother's Day. It's got some great old photos!

Anyway, in regards to this Mother's Day, I just want to say that this is, so far, the best Mother's Day I've ever had. Feel free to outdo yourselves next year, Jeremy, Raelynn and Seoul!

What did they do to make me feel so special? Well, let me just tell you that they perfectly figured out what would make me happy.

It all started the night before when Jeremy declared he'd give Raelynn a bath and send her off to bed. And then he picked up the awesomeness again in the morning with Seoul waking at about 5:30am. She does this now, which is rather annoying since, during the work week, I don't need to be up until 5:55am. But she's just so cute. She can't help that she rises with the early-rising sun. So when she woke up, Jeremy took her to Raelynn's room so I could get some more sleep. 30 minutes later though, she was wailing for me. So everyone came back into our room and we had a lovely family snuggle. I really love those precious moments when Jeremy and I can cuddle up with our kids. We laugh and play and soon, Seoul is sleepy and ready for her morning nap. So I put her down for the nap and Seoul gives me her gifts - she falls right asleep and she STAYS asleep. For 2 whole blissful hours. And I get to nap right along with her. And Jeremy keeps Raelynn quiet and busy that entire time so I don't hear a peep. In fact, I sleep so soundly that I am astonished when Seoul wakes and I see how much time has elapsed. I'm amazed.

As if that wasn't a wonderful start to my day, my husband, I discover, is making me breakfast. He made some sort of eggy-crepe-like thing and stuffed it with homemade hash browns. Holy fuck was it delicious! Way to go, Jeremy!

On Sundays, we usually go to church but Jeremy wanted me to relax and not worry about rushing around. So I took my time getting ready to be taken out to lunch. I rummaged through my closet for something I didn't hate, did my hair and makeup and then dressed both my daughters in adorable clothes. We killed some time watching The Take Home Chef on TV and while we did, I had 2 glasses of wine without anyone pestering me. Ahhhhh. Bliss!

For lunch, my sweethearts took me to The Diner. It's a Western restaurant with several locations. Usually we go to the one in May 4th Square but fearing it would be crowded, we chose the location in the Taigu area, near The Canvas, just in case it too was crowded. That way, we'd have plenty of other choices within walking distance. I have always liked The Diner, but I also like The Canvas too. Jeremy has never liked The Canvas though and wasn't up for trying it unless The Diner was a zoo.

But it wasn't. The downstairs was packed but upstairs, there were plenty of open tables. As we sat down, I noticed on a board of specials "Artichoke Pizza." I took it as a sign. We were meant to be there. This was the right choice. See, one of my most favorite things ever in this world are artichokes. Of course, it makes sense that I would also adore it on pizza. So we ordered an artichoke pizza, an appetizer of beef nachos and a burger. Drinks were also buy one, get one. So I got mojitos.

When our nachos came, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven - there was guacamole on them. REAL guacamole! Probably tied with artichokes on my list of favorite things is avocados and guacamole. It was perfect. Soon our pizza and burger came out, and those too were so beyond amazingly delicious. We'd never been disappointed with The Diner on any visit ever, but on this visit, I swear it was the best it's ever been.

Seoul had been happily distracted with a crazy straw. But with food on the table, she wanted a taste too. She's still breastfeeding but we're of course giving her bits of this and that to taste and try. She's had bread and pizza crusts before. I shared some of that with her this time too but she seemed curious about the burger. None of her teeth have poked through yet so I thought the soft burger meat would be perfect. I'm happy to say Seoul is my little American girl. She gobbled up the burger. And potato wedges too!

After all this food, I was stuffed. But Jeremy insisted on ordering the chocolate lava cake for us with 3 spoons. And to make it even sweeter? He took Seoul and held her so I could enjoy the dessert without incident. God was it good!

At dinner time, I was still stuffed from lunch. Jeremy made us a light dinner and did all the dishes too. Yes, the whole day was just one fantastic thing after the next. Probably because my husband knows very well "happy wife, happy life." Thank you, Jeremy! Raelynn and Seoul too! You made me feel relaxed, refreshed, appreciated and so unbelievably happy. I love you all so much!

Engrish Birthday

You know what I love? When you give someone a meticulously-printed piece of paper that says "Happy Birthday Raelynn" on it so they will copy that exactly and write it in frosting onto the cake you pay them to bake and then they give your child a new name: REALlynn. Thanks, dummies!

Sigh. At least it looks pretty.

And speaking of pretty, you know what I really love? I really love Raelynn. I cannot even believe she's 4 now. Four years ago, I posted this post about my first born. Now I look at her and am stunned she was once a tiny, helpless little infant. She now does everything herself. She dresses herself. She picks out what she wants to wear. She has an opinion about EVERYTHING. She's a total drama queen. Not like me. What? Oh all right. She's EXACTLY like me. I love my mini-me with all my heart though.

Some days she makes me completely nuts but no matter how crazy she drives me, I just love her to pieces. She makes me laugh so hard my sides hurt and her smile makes my heart melt. I love the way she looks at the world. "Mommy, why is the sun following us everywhere?" And she's such an awesome big sister.

Raelynn, you're such an awesome kid. You're so smart too! You speak 3 languages! You are a good girl at school and everyone loves you. I say this every year but man are we lucky to be your parents. You truly make our lives complete. May this next year be full of new and exciting adventures for us together. We love you!

Celebrating 100 Days Of Seoul

Technically, last weekend was Seoul's 100 Day Celebration. But MIL felt I might be too tired then and decided to have it this weekend. Which really made no sense. But whatever. I also wound up having a sore throat this weekend so last weekend would have been better. Oh well. In any event, here's how Seoul's 100 Day Celebration went. Click here if you want to remember what Raelynn's was like.

It was only recently that China decided to nix the one-child policy so most families have only one child. When that child hits 100 days, they throw a huge party, just like we did for Raelynn, where all the relatives show up and bring you envelopes filled with cash. In Chinese culture, to have another child and have another big party like that is considered greedy. We didn't care about getting any gifts...we just wanted to celebrate Seoul. So we kept it very small and MIL only invited the old people in the family.

Seoul and I had to pose with all of them.

 This is MIL's older sister. I'm pretty sure anyway. They look alike, don' they?

 Yes! Score! I finally got one of the Chinese relatives right. It is MIL's older sister. And there's MIL in the blue shirt and Raelynn is trying to give FIL sunflower seeds. Seoul watches.

 Ok now these people...is this FIL's brother? I think it might be. God I suck at this. Sorry! And that little boy is a 2nd cousin to Raelynn.

Me and Seoul, trying desperately to figure out which relatives these folks are.

 So to honor our little guest of honor, we had a gigantic meal and gobs of beer. See? There are some things I love about China and this is definitely one of them. Jeremy helped his mom pick out which dishes to order so that I would not starve. Thank you, Honey!

 Jellyfish salad. I really dug this. Yum!

 Dates stuffed with peanuts. Another yum!

 Some sort of vegetable medley. Chinese-style of course.

 Spicy pickled vegetables. I was really surprised that there were peperoncini in this dish too. I haven't seen those since I was in the US.

 Here's a platter of assorted meat parts. With sauce. Which parts? I have no idea. I didn't try this one out. It all looked rubbery to me.

The Lazy Susan is beginning to fill up quickly. Now we've got steamed shrimp. Yum!

 While it might look like someone's dropped a turd into my soup, it's a sea cucumber. I just cannot get into these things. I do not like them. At all. But the soup surrounding it was really nice. It is quite the tradition to order a soup like this for your guests. It's basically showing off but everyone does it. I wonder if anyone else dislikes sea cucumber as much as I do but hasn't the balls to say so...

 A large bowl of soup and some other dishes are now on the table. To the right of the assorted meat bits was the dish I loved the most. It had squid and pork in a garlicky brown sauce. It was delicious! Also, I don't see it pictured but maybe by this point, we'd already gobbled it all up...there were these triangular pastries on the table. I have no idea what they are called but let me just tell you...wow. I figured they were filled with the typical red bean paste. That they were typically dry, as most Chinese snack things are. Not these. They were buttery and flaky. My best guess on the filling is sweet potato. Whatever it was, it was heavenly.

 Just to show you how classy we are, we're drinking our beer from wine glasses. Because. Because this is China and people do this here. No really. In most restaurants, you'll get what we'd use as juice glasses in the US. But this restaurant down the street from our house really wanted to class things up a bit. So there you go. Beer in a wine glass...ou la la!

 The giant steamed fish has come out, which I've learned from all my big important Chinese dinners here, is like the fat lady singing. It signifies the end in most cases. So if you go to China and someone is taking you to dinner, try not to fill up too fast. There will be tons of food and then when you see the big fish, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Wear elastic pants too. Seriously.

Oh but no! Not today! We had a tomato dish, another soup AND this giant roasted big head. See the snout? God. I couldn't eat the snout or other facial features of course, but the meat inside was like pulled pork and it was divine. It was served with those thin pancakes, green onions, cucumbers and some hoisin sauce. Yum!

 Isn't she cute? She has a look on her face like she can't wait to get teeth so she can eat the food too. Love her!

 Why look who it is! It's MIL! And she's not annoying me for a change. I know what you're thinking...why would I let her hold the baby? Well, for one, I'd look like a huge jerk in front of all the relatives. For another, after all that beer (which did NOT help my throat, sad to say) I needed to pee. Plus, she didn't hoard Seoul like she did at Raelynn's 100 day party. Thankfully, she seems to have learned.

At the end of our meal, after the gargantuan fish and skull of pig, they brought us these fried balls. Inside, it was like a chewy rice cake thing (for friends and family back home, rice cakes in the US - those crispy Uncle Ben's things you eat when you're dieting - are NOT the same thing as rice cakes in Asia). These were awesome. It has a nice little message on there too sending us good wishes.

All in all, a nice lunch. I wish the beer had helped fix my throat though. Oh well. We went to the doctor today and now I'm feeling much better. Anyway, here's to 100 days of Seoul, and to 100 years more for my precious angel. Seoul, we love you so much. You make our little family so happy. Your smile warms us through and through and we can't get enough of your sweet little face. I can't believe a few months ago, I was holding you for the first time. And now, I'm treasuring every second because I know from Raelynn that you will grow way too fast and I'll be missing these beautiful baby days where I can cuddle you in my arms, where you won't talk back and where you have no teeth and just coo. Thanks for being my baby.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho...

Tomorrow, it's back to work I go.

Technically, last week was the last week of my maternity leave. But much thanks to the Chinese National Holiday that was going on this week, school was closed so I couldn't return to work until tomorrow - Monday, October 6th. I'm very thankful to have had this time off, and even more thankful to have had an extra week on top of it because honestly, it went by way too fast.

I wish I could stay home with Seoul all the time. I'm going to miss her and you know I'm not at all thrilled about having to leave her with the idiots. But going back to school means Raelynn goes back too, and she needs school. She needs to get away from the idiots even more than Seoul does. Raelynn's behavior has become worse from being subjected to them. Seoul's just a baby who drinks breastmilk and sleeps most of the time. I just hope my in-laws remember to be sanitary. God, please let them be sanitary. And please let this kid take to bottles of my breastmilk as well as she's taken to drinking my milk straight from the tap.

And please, let my students have mercy on me. Augh.

I'm kind of looking forward to seeing those little munchkins. Some of them anyway. The Chihuahua is gone, thankfully, as are a few of my other students, some of which I liked a lot. And you know, it's not a bad job either. I work with some really nice people, so I guess it could be worse. Like some jobs I used to know.

But anyway, I've mentioned before that my dad carries a card in his wallet that says, "Don't be sad because it's over. Be happy because it happened." And that is exactly what I'm going to try to think of tomorrow as my maternity leave/vacation becomes a thing of the past. I'll think of those wonderful moments I've had during this time, the most notable of them being the birth of Seoul. How about the first time we went out as a family of 4? That was nice. Then there was the time I dropped ice cream on the baby's head. And who could forget our trip to Guangzhou? We also celebrated our 4th anniversary. And then we got that wonderful letter from the US Embassy approving us to begin Jeremy's visa process, which we're currently in the middle of.

Now I've got the future to look to. The rest of the visa process which will be a long and windy road well worth the travel, another package on the way from my folks (thanks again Mom!) and even better than that...2 months paid vacation in January and February PLUS a visit from my parents during the Chinese New Year. But in the immediate future, I look forward to shortly after 4pm tomorrow, when Raelynn and I will get home and I can hold my sweet little Seoul in my arms again.

Life With 2 Kids Summed Up In One Very Accurate Scene

Do you have kids? If you answered no, do you WANT kids? Well, if you answered yes, I'd like to describe for you what you're in for when you have kids. Plural. As in more than one. Because handling one is cake. Add one more though and what I am about to describe will soon be your life too.

The scene:
The Intercontinental, a 5-star hotel by the Olympic Sailing Port here in Qingdao. It's a lovely hotel (though not as fabulous as the Shangri-La, in my opinion) and on Sundays, our church hosts services in the large auditorium on the 3rd floor, which I never get to sit in on because just adjacent is a room for infants and small children to play in. As you may have guessed, Raelynn NEVER wants me to leave this room. EVER. Even though she's at the point that she completely ignores me while I'm in there. Until I try to sneak out the door that is.

Church ends and everyone is milling about, talking. Jeremy and I speak to some people we know but decide to get a move on to the supermarket as Raelynn is getting crankier by the minute. How do I know this? Allow me to illustrate with our actual conversation.

Raelynn: I don't want to stand right here!
Me: Ok, let's stand over there.
Raelynn: No! I don't want to stand there!!!
Me: Ok, where do you want to go?
Raelynn: I want to stand here!!!!!
Me: Um, ok...

As we  get ready to depart, I ask her if she needs to use the bathroom.
Me: Raelynn, do you need to use the potty before we go?
Raelynn: No! I no use potty!
Me: Are you sure?
Raelynn: Yes, Mommy!
Me: You really don't have to make a pee pee?
Raelynn: No! No pee pee! Let's go!

So we go. We take the elevator down to the parking garage. We walk to our car. We get Raelynn all buckled into her seat. I get into the car with the baby (Jeremy STILL needs to get a car seat for her and please don't direct your bitchings at me that we STILL don't have one - direct them at Jeremy) and buckle up and that's when Raelynn says:
"Mommy, I need to make a pee pee."

Oh yes. NOW she needs to make a pee pee. When we are all in the car and my husband has lifted up the handbrake and is starting to shift into first and roll out of the parking space. Now, I must take Seoul, who is strapped to me and sound asleep in her carrier, along with Raelynn and me back into the hotel to use the bathroom before she pees on the car seat. I unbuckle Raelynn from her car seat and we walk all the way back into the hotel. We wait for the elevator. We take it to the lobby. We hit the bathroom closest to the elevators. Raelynn pees. I pee. Seoul cries because the sound of the flushing toilet startles her but then she falls back asleep. I wash my hands. Raelynn washes her hands. We dry our hands on paper towels and discard them. Then we wait for the elevator again. And take it down to the parking garage, where I buckle Raelynn back into her seat and get back into the vehicle again.

Yes, prepare yourselves, childless masses that want children. Because this will happen to you too. All the parents out there are laughing at this because THEY KNOW what this is all about. And you will too if you have children.

But it's not all frustration and chaos. Just some of it. Most of it, honestly, is filled with moments you cherish. Moments that make you feel so full of happiness that you could burst out rays of sunshine. And THOSE are the moments that you become a parent for. But you can't have those beautiful times without getting a few bits of shit thrown in for good measure. Remember The Facts of Life? You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and then you have the facts of life? Ah yes. What didn't we learn from 80s sitcoms? 

The Many Faces Of Seoul

When Raelynn was one month old, I wrote this post showcasing the adorable little faces she made back then. Except for Problem Face. That one wasn't very cute.

So let's take a look at sweet little Seoul and the faces she's made over the last month...

Here's one of the first photos ever taken of Seoul. She has hair but much less hair than Raelynn did. Raelynn totally looked like she had Jeremy's hair when she was born.

After a bath in the hospital, Seoul and I are both left wondering why the fuck they've put a onesie on her head. It's not a hat, morons!

 Mmmm...tasty hand!

Sleepy baby. Must be full from eating that hand.

Seoul's first time on the baby play mat. Wow...all these trippy colors and things!

 Mom! There's some weird baby staring at me! Oh...wait...

Phew...no one suspects a thing.

A sleepy smile!

One of the first (of hopefully many!) sweet sisterly moments. Raelynn gives her little sister a big kiss!

Holding her head up all by herself to get a better look at her daddy! Whoah! I did it!

 Ah, here is Seoul's Problem Face. Looks just like Raelynn's version.

Say what now? People are making videos of themselves getting buckets of ice water dumped on them to raise awareness for Lou Gehrig's disease?!? And that helps out how?!?

 I'm gonna have to think about that and get back to you, chief.

Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. VOGUE!

Wazzzzzzzzzup!

And now, presented without comment, these darling photos of our precious Seoul as an official one-month old baby. No more Grandpa Face!

What? I didn't do it! I swear!

It was her! Yes! My sister, Raelynn. Blame her! Muahahahahahaha!

Happy 1st Month, Seoul! We all love you so much and can't wait to see all the things you accomplish as you grow!