Birthday videos

Here are a few more scenes from Bennett's birthday. Chris is out of town for the next 10 days...he left yesterday evening and is still on a train as I write this. We already miss him lots, but are doing ok. We made a paper chain to count down the days he is gone and this time Austin immediately thought of 10 things he likes to do with Daddy with no suggestions from me. Chris and Austin had a nice date Monday night to pay the internet bill and McDonalds. You may think paying the internet bill is not much of a date, but Austin loves it because they ride the bus there (he loves the bus and I rarely attempt it with 2 kids) and play silly games while they wait. Austin was beaming when they came back (and he got a sundae at McD's). So, we miss Chris but it is nice having neighbors right next door especially when he is gone.

Austin had his third day of school today and it has continued to go well. He is silly and laughs with his teacher a lot, even if he often doesn't understand her. Today she said he did really well, repeating some Chinese phrases and games they played. Yesterday he came home saying "Xiao bai tu, xiao bai tu" over and over again. It means "little white rabbit" and is part of a little poem kids often learn here. When I asked Austin what it meant, he had no idea, but he still said it and laughed every time. Today he came home and was singing "Zhe shi Ye He Hua suo ding de rizi"...which is the song "This is the Day" in Chinese. He has definitely heard that before, but seemed to have memorized the whole thing in Chinese after today. So he is absorbing some bits and pieces already and having fun, which I am mostly concerned with at this point.

yeah! I got the pictures to post. Here is the big two year old sitting on the swing.

The kids eating dinner- grilled hotdogs for the kids with black bean salad (Bennett loves it!), grilled vegetables, watermelon and chips. I am SO thankful for our backyards- truly a blessing to have.

Since Bennett seemed really into Elmo this summer, I tried to have a (minimalist) Elmo theme. I almost gave up on this cake a few times, but it wasn't really that hard.

Here is Bennett attempting to blow out his candles...he also tried to grab one of them, but was unsuccessful.

Bennett tried to grab Elmo's nose off the cake initially, so i gave him the nose as his piece - hence all the orange. I am pretty sure he liked it.

So I brought an Elmo back from America and Bennett's first response was to kiss him. However, since the first excitement he hasn't really been that into him. Kids always seem to surprise you with what toy (or non-toy) they will love.

At the very end of the party, Chris got out the bass and started playing the Veggie Tales theme song. After two notes, Bennett started singing it (and was soon joined by every kids at the party I think)- it was a great finale with everyone -kids and parents alike- singing about talking tomatoes and waltzing potatoes. Sadly, our other camera battery died 5 seconds into it- after being charged up the day before. But you can imagine.

Tonight after I put Bennett to bed I heard him saying over and over "Happy Birthday Bennett" and singing "happy birthday to Bennett". I think he liked his birthday.

Bennett Turns 2

Happy Birthday Bennett! We are so thankful for your life and part in our family. We love your big smiles, love for people ( or maybe at this point in life it is more love of people, which will hopefully translate to love for people as you grow), ability to do puzzles and all things involving building (Legos, blocks, shapes), love of coloring, snuggles and big hugs and many cute sentences you are learning to say.

We had a small party that ended up being so fun last night. It was a beautiful day and evening and we had about 4 families over to grill out and celebrate Bennett. We used the Hunemullers new grill (which sits on our side of the yard) to grill burgers and hotdogs, played outside with chalk and the swing set, ate outside and then went in for cake and presents. A fun night for a fun boy.

OK, sad..I have tried all day to upload the photos from his party and I keep getting an error message. I have tried multiple things and restarting the computer with no success. I will keep trying...I don't know if it is a blogger issue or me, but for now I will just post this update. Hope to get them up as soon as I can!

New parks

We have been pleasantly surprised to discover that there are quite a few parks in our new area. Though in many ways it is a much less developed part of the city, there is more space and therefore more parks. We have only been to a couple of ones nearest us, but I was excited to find another park within walking distance (though a bit of a walk) from our house. I went with the boys yesterday- they played by a little lake with a lot of sand around it, visited a playground and had a snack picnic. I was exhausted from pushing the double stroller there and back when we got home, but it was worth it. There is another one that I am hoping to explore later as well (which I think is also the one Austin's school visits when they go play outside). We have also enjoyed some beautiful weather the past few days. It is almost eerie how right before a holiday it is very rainy and then...wala...the holiday comes in with the bluest sky and brightest sunshine you have seen in months. Well, it is kind of weird, but I guess I will take the pretty weather!

First Day of School

Still not really wanting to smile...despite the fact that he was really happy and cooperative. He got dressed, "folded" his pajamas and put them in the drawer and got all ready by himself.

Austin had a great first day of preschool! He woke up really excited in the morning and ready to go. We had a special breakfast of pumpkin muffins. Angie drove us and thankfully the traffic was much lighter this morning than it had been. Austin walked right in, we put his "inside shoes" on and he and Bree started playing. His teachers were praying when we got there (I am glad they do that!) and then greeted us. When I picked him up, he said he had a fun day. His teacher said he didn't talk much, but seemed to have a good time. He didn't eat a whole lot of the lunch, but drank 3 glasses of yogurt. Maybe I should tell them they can say no to him if he keeps asking for more. He said his favorite part was writing...which meant coloring a picture, though if I said coloring he corrected me. "No mommy, writing." The teacher told me he (nor Bree) had to go the bathroom all day- hopefully he really didn't and wasn't just holding it, but he seemed fine.

Well, I am really thankful for a good first day- thanks to all of you who prayed for him. Now there is the Mid-Autumn holiday so he doesn't go back for another week, but at least he had a good first impression. Here are the promised pictures.

Giving Bennett a hug before we left. He was so sweet all morning. Doesn't he look adorable in the little backpack? I felt kind of sad as I watched him get ready this morning- I can't believe he is so big.

Walking to the car with Bree- they were a cute pair. It rained a TON the night before, but at least was not coming down on our way.

Austin started scouting out the toys- and went straight for a drum of course.

For some reason Austin was willing to pose for this picture- Austin with his teacher Sun Laoshi and Bree with her teacher Zhou Laoshi (with previously mentioned makeshift bathroom screen in the background).

Meet the teacher day

Meet the teacher day went well today. We went over to the school about 3- via a beng beng (more about that another time- but it is an electric rickshaw basically and there are a lot of them in our new area- $0.80 one way fare). Austin was being very brave and had a good attitude, though I could tell he was a little nervous. We met his teacher- Sun Laoshi (laoshi means teacher and it is proper to address them with the title) and another teacher at the school. The kids were still napping, but they were really nice to him. I was so proud of him- even in our short visit he spoke more Chinese than I think I have ever heard him speak in one sitting. I had prepped him to say "Ni Hao Laoshi" (hello teacher) and he did very nicely when we arrived. She wanted to "bao bao" him and he said very politely "bu yao xie xie" (no thank you). They asked him his name and he said his full Chinese name. On the way there I asked him if he wanted to use his nickname (Wei Wei) or his full name (Gao Wei Wen) and he definitely wanted to use the full name. They asked him how old he was and he answered in Chinese. I had to fill out a form with all his information- including his daily sleep and eating habits, things he might be really afraid of (I said drilling and thunder) and health background. His teacher showed him around once- picking him up this time, but he didn't object. He was also rather concerned about the bathroom. Well, maybe with good reason. They have a regular Chinese bathroom down the hall, but for convenience have set up a makeshift bathroom in the classroom. There is a screen and on one side is the girls and the other is the boys...but behind it are two buckets. If they have to pee, they just go in the bucket. Austin kept asking why the boys' bucket was a former Lego container. I think I would be glad I was a boy if I was him. If they have to poop, apparently they do take them down the hall to the real bathroom, though it is a squatty. Fortunately for Austin- he usually has to poop after dinner!

So, overall a good experience but we will see how tomorrow goes. His class only has 5 other kids and the older class has 9- so I think that is an ideal set up. I might be more nervous than he is. Pictures tomorrow, I promise.

random cute things

We are all officially better now- yeah! Stomach bugs are no fun. I had to be careful NOT to call it a stomach bug around Austin because he got confused and was afraid he had a bug in his stomach after the rather recent ear-incident. Whoops. Poor guy. I am sorry I still don't have many fun pictures, definitely not of any bikes. It went from 90+ degrees and sunny to rain and very cool temperatures this weekend and we did not ride outside. But the boys have been saying and doing some cute, funny things and I wanted to record them before I forget them.

Austin has started to "spell" things lately- and sometimes he is remarkably close. He has created a word called "burs" I guess is how I would spell it. He and Chris have been playing baseball outside some and he says it and laughs whenever he is up to bat. Yesterday he was playing with the fridge magnets and had "brs" spelled and said look mommy, burs. Then today he said "mommy, I spell burs "b-r-m" now, but it's a silent m, you don't say it. Then tonight in the bathtub he had our bath letters out and he put "dcm" up in the tub. Guess what he said it spelled? Dot com. Yes, dot com. Wow, how did he even know about dot com? Guess he is pretty technologically savvy :).

Bennett is talking and saying new things all the time too. He loves to grab my hand and say "come on mommy" and take me somewhere or "let's go mommy". Today I asked him how he slept after nap and he said "good". I have never heard him respond that way before. He also has this cute "mm-hmm" that he says a lot. "did you have a good sleep?" "mmm-hmmm" He is also picking up a lot of Chinese words in the short time we have been back. Last night he was pretending to talk on the phone and was practically screaming "ni hao aiyi" "ni hao shu shu". He also has subconsciously learned to say "thank you mommy "(or other white person) and "xie xie Aiyi" (or other asian person) automatically. It is amazing how quickly they not only pick up the words of language but intuitively know who to speak it with. He is learning to count but loves to count 1,2, 8,9,10 and also will say "yi, er,yi,er (1,2,1,2) in Chinese. He is also becoming interested in the potty. He has had no success nor is it something really big on my radar, but most nights before bed as I change his diaper he wants to sit on the potty. He will say "pee pee coming" but never sits for more than 2 seconds and usually pees on the floor right after getting off if he does anything at all.

Right now it is after 9 pm and both boys are in bed talking and singing and interacting very loudly. They both took long naps, but at least they are staying in the room and happily interacting. They were just singing the A,B, C song and laughing and Austin likes to say things and have Bennett repeat them. "say silly cricket Bennett" " say poo poo" "say veggie tales" ...always random. Bennett is usually happy to comply but if not Austin gets upset.

Well, that is all I can think of at the moment though I am sure there is more. Tomorrow we hope to meet Austin's teacher and start on Tuesday...however this week is the Mid-Autumn festival holiday and they only have school on Monday and Tuesday, so he will only go one day...but eventually he will really start a school schedule I think! I will be sure to take pictures then. Chris is gone again for a night but back tomorrow night (well, technically his flight lands at midnight, so more like two nights).

still sick

After a fine evening where Austin ate dinner and seemed to feel much better- he threw up into his cereal bowl in the middle of breakfast this morning. Sorry if that is too much information. He slept late again and seemed really tired but insisted he was hungry and wanted granola. My mom instincts said I should not give him cereal with milk, but I didn't listen to them. I think in hindsight you should almost always go with the mom instinct. I have also continued to feel bad all day today after feeling better last night- this is a funny kind of bug (not to be confused with ear climbing bugs). Chris goes out of town tomorrow and I think we will just wait till next week to think about school. We have had a very low key day at home- poor Bennett feels fine but was bored. Hopefully he will not get it while Chris is gone (or Chris- he is riding the train for 10 hours tomorrow to save money- sick on a train is very miserable so pray he stays well).

No new pictures, as I don't consider lying around on the couch very picture-worthy.

not what I expected

Well, today did not go how I expected it to go. Austin's preschool is now 100% going to allow him to start at 3 days a week. Yeah! So we were planning to go this afternoon to meet his teacher and let him see the school and then officially start tomorrow. Until Austin threw up all over the couch this morning. He slept late and did not quite seem himself, even though he ate two bowls of granola for breakfast. Then he wanted to lay back down and lay on his bed for almost an hour. Not long after that he came and sat on the couch a few minutes and then...well, that was that. I did not feel great either today though i did not ever throw up. We both felt better tonight, so if he seems fine in the morning maybe we will visit the school tomorrow and start on Thursday.

We are praying a lot for a good transition to preschool and a Chinese-immersion environment. Chris travels on Thursday though for an overnight, so I am partly tempted to wait till he is back and start next week. We will see.

Bennett is hilarious these days and starting to sing. He can chime in for a good bit of the Veggie Tales theme song with Austin and will repeat any little song he hears. He is starting to count, though currently counts like this 1, 2, 8, 9, 10! Today for the first time he said yi, er, san (1,2,3 in Chinese). He loves Xiao Chen, our new helper and is already bonded pretty well.

Well, I am rather beat after this little big today. Hopefully I will take some more pictures soon.

Biker

Today I bought my friend Meg's electric bike and rode it all the way from my old area of town to my new one. It only took me an hour and a half! It took that long partly because I was riding slow and being really cautious as I got used to the electric bike, partly because I had to stop and change the battery part way through and wasn't used to the process and I did make one wrong turn and had to go back. But now that I did it, I am glad to have some wheels. I went to the grocery store/mall complex near us and it was so much faster on the bike. I also bought a bike helmet for me and Bennett (the other two have helmets already) and a new kids' bike seat for the back.

I still feel nervous a little about riding with a kid on the back, but I know I will get used to it. I won't really go too far on the bike, but it will be great for getting to preschool and back and other local places. The road to the preschool is a small one without a lot of traffic. Speaking of school, we have an answered prayer! The woman who runs the school talked to a friend of a friend who runs the other school in this same network and decided to let us try 3 days a week! I am so excited and have felt all along that this is the best option. She still had to talk to the teacher and get back to me, so I am pretty sure it will work out but still waiting for final confirmation. So hopefully he will either start a day or two this week or definitely by next week. Austin is also learning to ride his bike. He has never really learned to pedal and it seems like that is a hard concept for him to grasp. But Chris has taken him out the past 2 days to practice and he has made definite improvement. Chris has also taught him the concept of "concentration". Austin is VERY easily distracted and that also hampers his learning to ride, so they have times of more intense concentration and then time where he can just be silly and look around and ask 20 "why" questions.

Soon I will try to take some bike pictures...both of me and Austin.

settling in some more

Our home is feeling more and more settled, though I still need to get pictures on the wall and the "playroom" is still sort of a hodge-podge. This has been a slower week and I think the boys really need that. Yesterday and today we stayed home, went to the park across the street and started "school". I have been doing some more intentional preschool activities with Austin and he likes it. I realized he needs a lot of practice with fine motor skills with coloring, drawing and eventually writing. He basically colors like Bennett does still- just big scribbles. He has never had a big interest in coloring and seems to have a hard time with it, so we are doing some tracing and copying shapes and lines (we tried letters and it did not go so well) and other thinking skills. He is better with the thinking skills (circle the things that rhyme, put things in order in a sequence etc) than just writing or drawing, but that will come in time. We also did "science" today- experiments with air (he loved it and kept asking to do more science). So that has been fun and gives a little structure to our day until we make a local preschool decision. We decided we don't need to be in a hurry to decide and so it may be another week or so.

We are also enjoying the Hunemullers next door and play together most days. If Bennett can finagle his way outside, he runs to their door and tried to get in. Yesterday I "lost" both boys at different times while they had gone next door and it happens to Angie too. Here are a few pictures of the apartment and our friends.

Austin and Bree watching Veggie Tales...Bree and Jesh are almost as into Veggie Tales as my boys became this summer and Bree can sing the VT theme song with as much zest as Austin. I think they will be in a band together one day :)

The little guys join in too. When the older ones start preschool the little ones will probably play together even more- they both are pretty social.

The boys room, now with bunkbeds. As of now, Austin is the bottom and Bennett is still in the pack and play, but I think his p and p days are numbered. He has never actually crawled out but will swing his leg over the side in protest when he doesn't want to go to bed.

Living room

Playroom- still a little random but you can see my second attempt at the orange. I definitely like this one better though it is a bit bright.

Guess what they found?

Well, we went to the doctor this morning. They flushed Austin's ear with warm water and some wax came out. Then I could here the doctor and nurse muttering in Chinese- "what is that?" as they peered in his ear. A minute later they pulled a BUG out of his ear!!! A dead, black bug about 1/2 an inch long. Gross. Austin was relatively unphased by this news, but I was rather traumatized. The doctor was also relatively unphased by it and seemed to think the bug or a combination of the bug and wax was the main reason for his pain. His ear was a little red inside, but the drum was fine. He needs to finish his dose of antibiotics but otherwise is totally fine now. I think maybe after we got home and I told Chris and Xiao Chen and Angie about the bug and everyone had a strong reaction, Austin realized having a bug in your ear is not such a normal thing. But we all laugh about it now- though who knows how it got in there or where it came from. So, that is our story of the day- one that will maybe go down in our family history.

ER and school decisions

Well we have had an exciting few days (for the grandparents- Austin is fine now, so keep that in mind as you read). Wednesday night (or Thursday am to be exact) about 1 am I woke up hearing Austin screaming. I ran in his room and he was crying and screaming that his ear hurt and he had his hand over his right ear. I picked him up and he just kept screaming. Not just like he was crying hard but he was screaming at the top of his lungs and stiffening in pain. We gave him some Tylenol and called our SOS insurance to talk to a doctor. He continued to scream with no stopping and we decided to go to the ER- I had never seen him in pain like this. We called the Hunemullers and Jason graciously drove us to the ER (we left Bennett sleeping at home with Angie on call to listen out for him). Austin screamed the whole drive there and kept having waves of worsening pain where he would stiffen up. I was pretty scared and felt so helpless as a parent, unable to do anything to help him. At one point he said "Mommy when will I ever be happy again?"

We got to the ER and they took all his vitals and he had no fever. They gave him a strong dose of ibuprofen and within 20 or 30 minutes he was feeling better and not screaming. The doctor looked at his ear and basically could not see much . He said his ear looked a little swollen and he couldn't see the ear drum. He started him on antibiotics and made an appointment for an ENT the next day. We went home and he slept fine the rest of the night and woke up not in pain. We went the next day to the ENT and she said his ear was so full of ear wax she could not see in the ear canal. So she sent us home with ear wax softener drops and more antibiotics. We go back tomorrow morning to hopefully get the wax flushed out so they can get a good look at his ear. Most likely it is just a bad infection that the antibiotics are already helping with, but we want to make sure. And Chris has excessive ear wax (he has been told) so maybe that is heriditary.

This was my first time as a parent to have my child really be in pain and feel so helpless. It was not a fun feeling, but we are thankful he seems fine now and has not been in any more pain. And I am so thankful that there is a good hospital with English speakers for moments like this.

We are also still debating the preschool options. We visited the local, public one that is literally next door to our front gate. It looked nice and has a regular part and a Montessori part. They have never had a foreigner or anyone go less than 5 full days, but are willing to consider letting him come 3 half days. BUT it will probably be expensive- they didn't seem willing to give a discount for coming half days. The Montessori option was almost twice as expensive, but had smaller class size with more teachers and a better way of disciplining disobedience in my opinoin. The first school- which is pretty like minded to many of our values and is small, inexpensive and where Bree is going- is the one that won't allow less than 5 half days. A third option near the first one we looked at will allow 3 days at a more reasonable rate, but is bilingual and won't give him as much exposure to Chinese, but does have violin as part of the program 2 days a week. SO, these are our choices and we hope to decide by Monday. Pray for our decision and what is best for Austin and our family. I really am not leaning more towards any of them at this point.