Tomorrow is the day

We decided to go ahead and plan an induction for didi. We will head to the hospital at 6:30 Thursday morning (our time) and hopefully all will go smoothly and fairly quickly. Though I usually choose the most natural route, we decided to induce because 1) I had such a fast labor with Austin, combined with bad Beijing traffic, made the fear of giving birth in a cab all too real 2) this guy is measuring big 3) mom is here and we want to maximize our time with her with the baby.

Speaking of Nana, we are so glad she is here! Austin is already totally warmed up to her and having fun. Today Nana produced the first item from Nana's "Fun Bag"- a daily event with new little toys, crafts or fun things inside. Today it was glue sticks and glitter- see below how Austin enjoyed it. Oops - I just realized i have not uploaded those pictures from today- and am headed to bed soon. I will show those another time.

Also, Nana was the bringer of the long-awaited (well about a week, but that is a pretty long time to wait if you are 22 months old) bubble bath. Thanks to Aunt Emmy for finding it!

Mac and cheese or jiaozi?

Today we had playgroup - a very fun one. The girls surprised me a little baby shower, complete with a blue cake. We had a "landmark" day- almost an hour went by while us moms talked and the kids played by themselves. Even clingy Austin managed to forgot about mommy for awhile and played very well with the toys and other kids. We decided this was a definite turning point in the playgroup.

Angie fixed macaroni and cheese for the kids for lunch- a staple American lunch food right? It may be but I have never really been able to get him to eat it. I forced him to try one bite and he said "don't like it noodles". His favorite lunch food, however, is jiaozi. That's right, Chinese dumplings- a combination of ground meat and vegetables inside a dough wrapper that is usually boiled. It is his current favorite pick and he often asks for it. I have begun buying frozen jiaozi at the grocery store so we usually have some on hand and its always a hit. That is cross-cultural growing up I guess.

Still no didi, obviously. We are hoping he will hold out until Nana gets here on Monday afternoon at least.

Slow day

There was not too much about today that was blogworthy, but here I am posting anyway. Today was one of those days I really wanted to lie on the couch all day, but Austin did not think that was too fun. I have a cold (which I got from Austin and Chris is starting to get as well) and am officially 39 weeks pregnant today...not a very fun combination. Fortunately, Austin and I both got to take a pretty long nap this afternoon and Chris took Austin with him to pick up our passports with our new visas. So I had two whole hours to myself to fix dinner and check email...very nice.

Otherwise, life keeps going as long as this baby stays inside.

No news is good news...I guess

Well, another Monday and another trip to the doctor. There is still no change, except that the baby has moved down a little bit. Again, the doctor told me often the second time around everything just happens at once, as opposed to over a longer period of time. So, we will just continue to wait and see what happens this week. If he doesn't come by by appointment next Monday, we will talk more about options for inducing and see how things look then.

If anything more exciting happens, we will post as soon as we can. But that's it for now.

Austin working

If imitation is the best form of flattery, Chris should be very flattered. Austin has been imitating things people do and most often what Chris does.

This morning, Austin got out Chris' nicer "work" shoes and was trying them on. Then he said he was going to work (Austin go work) and a meeting (Chris has had some long days out with meetings lately). He later got out Chris' running shoes, tried them on and said "Austin go running". He pretty much has down a lot of the basic things Chris does in day (Daddy do email, Daddy practice music, Daddy go work, meeting, running, etc.)



The other day Austin said he wanted to "read Bible". But he only wanted to read it on Mommy and Daddy's bed, laying down and listening to the IPOD, which is usually how Chris' QT routine goes.

Here he is "taking a shower". He will take the bucket to the corner of the living room, stand in it and say he is taking a shower.



So, its flattering and also sobering to think how much he notices what we do. But he doesn't miss a thing, that's for sure.

The Doll

Ok, so we got Austin a doll this week. We had been talking about it so he could "practice" how to hold a baby and be gentle and then I saw one at this store and decided to get it. I think Austin is secure enough in his manhood to play with it . :)

When we gave it to him, he kept saying "oh Wow, oh Wow" over and over. He immediately held it and gave it a kiss and hug.

Patting the baby

Kiss!

Then he ran to his crib to get one of his paci's to share with the baby (for about 10 seconds, before taking it back for himself). At first I was afraid he thought this was the baby we have been talking about, but now he seems to know this is "Austin's baby" and not "didi" (little brother).



He also wanted to get a clean diaper for it (his own initiative) and let it sit in his highchair. I convinced him that he was too little for the highchair, so he is sitting in didi's bouncy seat at the moment. He has been somewhat gentle, but also wanted to share a chopstick with it, rock him (not so gently) in the bouncy seat and "cut" him with "scissors" (not real scissors- we of course do not let him play with scissors). Yikes! So it has been a good taste of how he might react and also what we need to watch out for!

No big news at this week's doctor's appointment. No change, but baby's heartbeat sounds good and he's still head down. And still growing - if he goes to full term he might be a big one.

Do you like Duke? No, I like ice cream!

Chris has been "training"Austin in a few things lately. They play this game where Chris will ask Austin a question in a certain tone of voice, to which Austin answers every question by saying "no". The two Chris likes to ask the most are "Do you like Duke?" (no) and "Do you like soccer?" (no). Sometimes it backfires, like when Chris asks "Do you love Daddy?" and he also answers no, but Austin knows its a game and that he is being funny.

We had our friends and neighbors the Shaffars over for dinner tonight and had ice cream for dessert (a rare treat for Austin). While he was eating it, Chris asked him if he liked Duke, to which he answered verbatim "No, I like ice cream". Not only was it very funny, but also the first time he actually answered the question by saying something he liked and by using the grammar pattern "I like"- he usually will either leave out the pronoun or refer to himself as Austin.

Austin enjoying his ice cream

We are sad to say goodbye to the Shaffars for the next 6 months- they will be in the States until February. They have been good friends and fun neighbors, so we will miss them. We took a picture of the kids on the couch after dinner.

Here is Austin with Benny, Simeon and Jasmine Shaffar. It will be a long winter without them!

A few days ago Chris was outside playing with Austin and they had one of these conversations- so you can hear how it goes.

Life with Boys and email

I am sure I will learn a lot of new things in the next few years that I would not have otherwise learned having boys. Coming from an all-girls family and being one myself, there were certain things I never learned.

For example, I now know what an excavator is, that is uses crawler tracks, different types of cranes and other construction vehicles. Today I found myself outside digging around in the dirt for snails. There are these little snails that are out and about these days and Austin has found several of the shells. He calls them "nails" and loves to find them. We found one today and spent several minutes watching it crawl and wave its' antennae around. Probably a 22 - month girl might also think snails are interesting, but it felt very boy-like. Austin also went around looking for dirt and rocks, splashing in puddles and throwing things (snail shells, water cup, rocks) down the slide.

Oh and email. Doesn't quite fit the outdoor experience you say? There are these funny little "exercise" machines that are in about every Chinese neighborhood. The activities you can do on them are not exactly what I would call exercise, but it does get your body moving. One is this thing that has circles you can stand on and twist your body while holding onto a rail. Austin really likes to "drive" the circles or spin things on them. But today he sat down on the ground, put his hands on the circle and started moving his fingers and said "Austin do email". He knows that Mommy and Daddy do email on the computer sometimes, though I don't think he knows what that means other than you are typing. He also sat in front of our computer later this afternoon, pretending to type and again said he was doing email. This is certainly a different generation from me- he knows about Ipods and email before age 2!

In other news, Austin is suddenly acting like a temperamental 2 year old- well not so suddenly but it has become very evident this week. Perhaps he is also sensing a big change coming with didi, but is both very clingy and possessive of my time and having tantrums and saying "no" a lot. Pray for wisdom in parenting through this stage and especially when little brother comes into the picture. It is rather tiring having to discipline many times in a row. Austin is also into repeatedly asking the same question over and over- also rather tiring. He can ask me what I am doing or Daddy is doing literally 25 times in a row and not tire of the same answer!

Well, no pictures of snails or dirt today, but you can imagine.

Last Olympic post for now #2

I couldn't get all our pictures into one post, so this is part of the previous one. Here are a few more shots of our final Olympic experience.

Here we are at our last Olympic event- the gold medal baseball game. It was Cuba vs Korea. It had few runs and was pretty uneventful for the most of the game. Then in the bottom of the ninth, Cuba was down by one run, had the bases loaded and looked like they could score. But Korea held them off with a double play and beat -the past 4 Olympics' gold medalists- Cuba. US got the bronze.

Korean team celebrating their victory.

While much of the game made you feel as if you could have been in America (despite the many Korean and Cuban flags) the dancing lions during the seventh-inning stretch definitely added Chinese characteristics.

The medal ceremony. The US team is on the left in navy.

One more shot of the Bird's Nest from Friday- a very clear night. Austin knows the Bird's Nest by name now. :)

Last Olympic post for now #1

I never did get to post our final Olympic events and want to before it gets too far behind us. This will mostly be pictures of the final Friday and Saturday night with some comments. Olympic fever has died down a great deal, but is not over yet with the upcoming Paralympic Games starting next week. So we still have half the cars on the road, shut down factories, flags all over town etc.

A peek at The Today Show as it was just starting. Our friends' Travis and Sonya were on TV that night, but had to get to Track and Field so we just walked by as it was starting. They were featuring US gold medalists - men's beach volleyball and women's soccer team.

Not the greatest picture of us, but we had a great view of the torch.

This was the women's 5K race. We also saw the Men's and Women's 4x100 relays (no Americans medaled, but we saw the Jamaican men beat the world record), the end of the Decathalon, the women's long jump finals and the men's high jump finals (an Australian kept jumping AFTER he had already won the gold to beat the Olympic record on his final jump).

There it is in the middle- The Star Spangled Banner. We were excited to see American Bryan Clay win gold in the Decathalon. I know running the 100 meter finals or other events are more "exciting" and grab the public's attention, but a Decathalon athlete is really worthy of praise. It is so hard to be good at 10 things. Clay came in last running the 1500 meter run - the last event- but knowing he could easily still win it all. He was too tired to do a victory lap, but was near us when we wore the American flag.

Visit to the Doctor

We had a family trip to the doctor this morning that went well. My doctor here routinely schedules a late ultrasound and I had one first thing this morning. The baby looks fine, but estimates put him weighing 7.6 pounds already! Already bigger than Austin at birth, though my OB said they are only estimates and they often overestimate (I hope so). His head is still measuring big as well, but I think that just runs in the family.

Then we met with my OB and everything looks fine- but no early dilation yet. The baby is head down, but has not moved very far down yet and I am not effaced or dilated at all yet. It is early for that, but since I was 2 cm dilated with Austin at this point I sort of expected it. But I am already reminded I do not need to compare everything with this baby to Austin :) .

Austin had a check-up as well today and is very healthy. He weighs 24 pounds now and is close to the 25th percentile now for height and weight! His head circumference is still off the chart, but since his development is normal and big heads run in the family, there is no concern. He did very well for his one immunization and seemed pretty happy during the whole visit (which lasted about 3 hours total between the three stops and waiting in between). Chris had a lunch meeting at Peter's Tex-Mex restaurant, which is just around the corner from the hospital. Austin and I ate lunch there as well by ourselves and then all went home together. Austin slept 20 minutes during the taxi ride home and that was all the nap he took, so we had a somewhat long afternoon but nothing a good night's sleep (and some Tylenol for his sore leg) won't help.

I also did let my back-up helper go last Friday. My original helper moved away suddenly the end of July and her replacement has been ok, but isn't great with children. I won't give you all the details, but we are without one now. Not great timing at this point in the pregnancy, but of course most people do life without one and we will too for the moment. We are hoping our neighbors the Shaffars' helper can help us out this fall while they are in the US and then relook again after the New year.

Well, that's all the news from here today. Except we had another exceptionally beautiful day (though a little hot) again. I think this will be a nice September.