Good day with somewhat fussy kid

This week has been a bit of a wash. Fast retreat, some drama over assorted projects, need to get visa moving, etc, etc, etc. So Saturday rolls around and it struck that perfect toddler balance of (1) a fair amount of joy, bliss, kid happiness, and (2) some tantrums, whining, and frustration. Sam is just a really fine kid, and yet today was a little hard on us. He woke up early. We let him watch some DVDs. We set up our little toddler pool nearby, and he did fine in the morning, playing happily for about an hour. The sun shifted and we came in (he was okay about it). He took a huge nap (me too since I have been sleeping weird). Then he was just kind of fussy when he woke up. He really wanted to go back to the pool. I took him but it wasn't a great time (buggy). I brought him in to switch with Em and he did the full crocodile tears-fussing-whining deal. Emily took him back out which went better. We went to dinner at a little pizza place down the mountain. As soon as we went in he started complaining: "outside, outside, outside." Emily eventually let him walk outside for a while as we waited for dinner to come. Then everything else was smooth: dinner, a very nice walk, a ride home, toothbrushing and book, bedtime. This was a pretty normal Saturday for us. Good kid. A bit exhausting. Hope he stays mostly adorable. Still not sure we can handle two more.

Excitement and fear

Boating

At Nine Ethnicities Park

Sam in cable car

He would have happily sat here all day if we'd let him

Last night I hung out with the Baptists across the street (they're the local English church, and they are always hospitable). There I met another American with an older kid and then two younger ones, almost the same age (one was adopted). He offered this folk advice: the transition to marriage was not hard for him, but adding a kid was a huge adjustment, adding the second was not bad, but going to three was the biggest change he's had. He suggested the type of bargain I've seen others make, where one parent is "on" for a night or two and then the other is on. He said you can only see hope if you know you'll get a good night's sleep eventually. He also said that initially they would sometimes each take a kid, but in the long run it was better to just have one parent take both children. This is sounding about right to me, even if it's a little depressing.

I know we shouldn't be this scared, but it's still a bit scary to think of the adjustment it will be. (I will also say that most parents of twins have said basically, "it will be as bad as you can imagine it will be.") I think I will have to rotate the following mantras: this isn't forever, we can ask for help, it's suffering now but then a lifetime of knowing each other... Any I missed? Our situation actually isn't bad. We're probably going to need to consolidate language study into blocks (5 hours 2x/week) and I'll have to figure out some ways to make the limited teaching better. Ok, enough of the frightened rant.

We just came back from two days of retreat, and it was a great experience. We went to a touristy destination, but were surprised that there seemed to be no foreigners. I'm not totally loving it when people take lots of pictures of Sam, but I guess if he doesn't mind it's not a big deal. He's gotten to the stage where if people are too touchy he let's them know. He learned to say "rain" and "boat" in Chinese on this trip, which were both good things. I got in some bonding with some pastors and their families. All in all, a good trip.

Parenting Classes

These are three pictures from our trip to a riverfront town to our north, about a month ago.

Yesterday we did our first parenting class in Northern Island. It was pretty interesting. Whereas in the States our parenting classes were a fee-based series that treated infant care and childbirth, here the hospital provides basically a series of large free lectures on major topics (birth process, nursing, breathing, after birth). The one yesterday was on breastfeeding and the birth process. The section on the birth process treated c-sections and natural birth, pain control and anesthesia, things that can go wrong, etc. It was fairly clinical and straight-forward, which I appreciated. I was surprised by a few things. The hospital was very pro-breastfeeding and taught things like avoiding pacifiers and bottles in the beginning. They showed us how small the babies’ tummies are to begin with and how they expand during the first ten days. They offered feeding advice. I would say in our birthing class in the States they pretty much avoided this and the nurses in the US were anti-nursing (gave Sam a pacifier when we said not to, high anxiety over how much he milk he was getting in the first day, etc.). Anyway, I think this is a very good hospital and we will be happy there. I think I could come around to having hospitals be the center for medical care, where you get scales of efficiency, instead of everything run out of little offices open 9-5 that refer you to specialists. I know every system has problems, and I may well eat my words later.

We’re back into language again. Emily hit a wall on Monday and I hit mine on Friday. I think we’re both basically doing well, but weren’t quite ready to head back into school. I only really had two weeks after the end of the semester and our cold/Sam’s class being closed killed one of those weeks. My brother once laid out the stages of parenting as: (1) complaining about how tired you are, (2) complaining about how sick you are, (3) complaining about all the activities you have to take your kids to. Right now we’re in #2, but we’re about to regress to #1. The flip side of all of this is that it’s a sunny July, we have some kid care that will let us eventually finish our work, and we could probably take a week or two at the beginning of September to get caught back up. Emily seems physically quite well, for which we are very thankful. The daily sickness has dissipated and the hugeness has not yet arrived.

That’s the news here. Oh, and it’s a boy and a girl we learned a week ago Friday. We saw the boy on the ultrasound first, so I think Emily was worried. (Although three boys could have been fun also.) It will be interesting to see the dynamics of the three. I hope big brother is up to the task.

Declining Cold, Cute Kid

We've all had a cold for the last two weeks. It's lingered, thwarting our plans to get away during this transitional month when we aren't in language. Two weeks ago I pretty much wrapped up school stuff. Around the same time Emily finished taxes and we did our taxes here. I'm working on copy-editing different projects, which has taken some time, and I've done some language work and spent some time on campus figuring out next semester.

We kept Sam home a few days last week with the cold, and then when we went to his school on Friday we heard that several classmates have "foot and mouth disease." It's basically just a virus that spreads quickly with kids. But the policy here is if two students have it they close the class for a week. So we've had him home this last week. It's been fun, although our productivity has dipped. Sam is saying a raft of new words: all of his colors, parts of the face (even "eyebrows." thanks to a faces sticker book from Em's parents), foods ("yogurt," which he pronounces like "Rutgers"), machinery ("tractor" and "helicopter" are new favorites, both pronounced something like "gokter"), athletics (b-ball, ball, big ball), and some new spatial terms (fast, high, go, drive). Sadly, he can say "bite," because he gets mosquito bites. He can say the neighbors names and is still pretty friendly to strangers.

We did several park trips this week. Sam can stay at a park for hours and getting out of the house and spending time together was good for all of us. I got a full sized basketball at the store, and we spent a good morning playing around campus with that. Those of you who know me know that I am pretty much a loss at any team sports (I can't do a lay-up, kick a goal, or ground a ball). Nonetheless, it's fun to have a kid who's enthusiastic about all of this and shows a high level of patience and concentration (something I never had, as the kid who was picking grass in the outfield) and some coordination.

A classmate of Emily's left Taiwan this week and one of the things she passed down was two doll babies. Sam doesn't play with them a lot, but they're helping us to communicate what is coming for Sam. Tonight he had the babies "sleeping" on Emily (this is one of his new words also), which is a good sign. Emily thinks he may be realizing that her tummy is growing, and hopefully his own development will proceed such that he's not entirely horrified when they arrive in another five months or so.

Tomorrow's (hopefully) the rescheduled doctor visit. It's possible we'll find out gender then. Sam goes back to the nursery tomorrow, which should be good for all of us. He's coming along fine on Chinese, but we're hoping to find a couple of people on campus who could play with him in Chinese a couple of hours a week. He really gets a lot of attention at school, but we want him to get a bit of reinforcement now.

Otherwise, all is well. I think Emily's excited to be back full time into language. I am feeling a little over-committed, but am doing my best to flex. The weather's been reasonable, although it will soon inch into the boiling range. It's hard to believe we have just a couple of months of summer, and then a few months beyond that before the new arrivals.