Nervous and repentant

Tonight there was a special meeting for some of the church branches here in China, Dallin H. Oaks was in town. He was accompanied by Elder Hallstrom and President Perkins, who were/are currently the Area Presidency for Asia/China.

Anyway, through some twist of fate (our Branch President is out of town, so Andrew was invited to fill in) we attended a pre-meeting supper with Elder Oaks, and his wife and the visiting authorities and their wives. Andrew and I were introduced, and as he shook my hand, he looked me right in the eyes, searching my soul (at least it felt that way).

I have to confess I was nervous, I had just had an extremely painful afternoon with William, he had woken up from his morning nap (an unusual 3-hour long one) at 12.30, and, though tired, he then refused to take a second nap, and instead cried for 1.5 hours total (in two unsuccessful nap attempts) while I sat rattled in the study, trying to ignore him (we're working on re-sleep training him), and hoping/praying he would eventually give into it and just sleep. No such luck.
By the time we needed to leave for the Church this evening, I was tired, stressed and not in an emotionally great place. I had previously been on the verge of crying but had done the British thing and put on a stiff upper lip and carried on. On to nervously meet an apostle of the Lord. A little emotionally drained, I tried my best to look into his eyes and be confident, hoping, in the back of my mind, that he couldn't x-ray into my soul and find me wanting because in addition I am not regularly reading my scriptures or saying my prayers - seriously what is my problem?
I must have done ok (because I haven't yet been released from my calling and he didn't call me out), and was then fortunately saved a little by sharing William with Sister Perkins (who I knew from when we lived in Hong Kong - she is lovely by the way).

What I wasn't expecting, though, was through an even trickier twist of fate, I ended up sitting next to Elder Oaks when we started eating. Oh boy. I am not good at small talk, and although I can usually make conversation with most people, I was not sure what to say? Talk about pressure (because you know everyone else is listening in)... So how's that whole apostle thing working out for ya?
Well, I asked him a question or two - no, not the above question (he was eating so I didn't want to disturb him too much), then left the remainder of the dinner conversation to the rest of the table. Fortunately our friend Katie broke the ice pretty well, she is a great woman, and things went pretty easy after that.

The member meeting/devotional was good, and although I was rocking William to sleep for most of it, and I did leave with some good thoughts. I also left with the renewed perspective that apostles are regular people too (I knew that logically, but it's good to get a reminder), and that they do a great work (and wow, do they travel a lot). I'm grateful we're blessed to have opportunities like these to meet the apostles, to be reminded we all have opportunities to improve and develop relationships with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and that now is always a good time to start doing what we need to do. The Lord will consecrate our best efforts, but we need to at least be moving and doing.

I also learned Elder Oaks doesn't have x-ray vision - or at least it wasn't working today :)

Bouncing

We bought the exercise ball with the intent to help improve our core muscles, it's definitely helping us workout - but not quite in the way we imagined.  We discovered that William loves to bounce along to a good song. He has plenty of stamina and can go for four or five (or more) songs in a row. Which is great for him, but gives us a good workout, whether it be holding the ball still and steady, or holding/bouncing/lifting William along to the music. I've tried doing it with him sitting on the ball (for a little more safety) it doesn't last long as he definitely prefers to be standing, and his sturdy little legs work with the bounce, making it slightly easier on us too. It often feels like he's adding his own energy to it, and you can tell he wants to keep going if you stop by the waving of his little arms. How can we say no to that cute face? :)

William and his drum

We discovered pretty early on that William likes to pound things. Whether it's his hand on the bath tub edge, on his food tray, on boxes, my chest, or himself, when he gets excited or happy about something, those little arms start pumping and the hands start finding something to connect with.  He's also at the age where anything that he can shake that will make a noise is a hit or attention grabber - even if only for a few minutes. This is great for distraction, and so many things can work to fit the bill, keys, breath-mint tins, rattles, crinkly paper, etc. We also have one of those Asian drums with a bead on each side that if you rotate in your hands starts beating itself (do you know what I'm talking about?).

Anyway one of our Chinese friends recently got him a little drum. And William loves to pound away. I'd say he has about an 85% hit success rate, which as his mother makes me think he's a genius! :) but regardless of what I think, he can go at that thing with abandon, most times he doesn't even look - but he still hits it in the right place. He's also started flipping the drumstick over in his hands - first one end then the other, we think it's pretty funny. He's also showing a real preference for his left hand, (he started out pretty right dominated), which is interesting as neither of us are lefties. I think I read somewhere that hand preference isn't set until age 2 (can anyone confirm?), so I guess we'll see what ends up sticking.

Anyway he here is on a more sedate day, playing his little drum.

While I was on a walk...

William and I try to get out at least once every day to walk around the neighborhood. Sometimes the pollution doesn't make it easy, but I find we both do better if we've been able to look at something other than the apartment, plus the brisk air helps clear my mind :)
Anyway we've been living in our complex for 2.5 years now and I have yet to get a picture of the decorated arches they put up (almost) every holiday. Every holiday is slightly different. Christmas they had silver tinsel with blue lights, last year they had red tinsel and white lights, for China National Day, red tinsel and red lights (I think). Anyway with the Chinese New Year / Spring Festival right around the corner this time we have cherry blossoms and silver tinsel. I tell you these things have paid their dues.

So the other day when William and I went out, I remembered to take my camera and get a shot. Of course I had to include William too - Happy Chinese New Year!! :)

Then as we walked up the block, I spied some strange somethings hanging outside someone's window...home-made sausage/salami! I'm not sure it's the most hygenic environment given the fairly busy street of traffic below and the quality of air, but hey if we're breathing in all this pollution anyway - I guess ingesting it can't hurt much more right?

We also saw this guy hanging by a rope, cleaning off some advertisements from the building. This is the kind of thing you see fairly frequently in China - 20, 30, 50-story buildings with brave window washers hanging by a single rope, carefully swinging their way down a building's face, washing as they go.

It's part of what I enjoy about life in China - there's always something interesting to see when we're out and about :)

Keeping up

Andrew's parents arrived here the day before Christmas Eve to spend the holidays with us. They're here until January 11th, so we have plenty of time with them all to ourselves. It's been a good week so far, though having a little one means we don't get out and around the city as much as we would previously have been able to do (everything is done in 2-3 hour slots) but we've had some fun times nevertheless. We hosted a Christmas Day dinner for a few friends from Church, we've done a little shopping, some cooking, some present-opening, some picture-framing, some eating, some movie-watching and some journey-planning.

On Sunday, straight after Church, we head to the airport and fly to Yunnan for a 5 day adventure to LiJiang. We'll be attempting to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and maybe a trip up to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain too. We've never done this with a baby before (in fact I've never done it at all) so it will be a new experience in travel-parenting. We just hope no one gets altitude sickness!

Wish us luck, and I'll tell you all about it when we get back... :)

Happy Holidays!

Despite my best intentions, we ordered our Christmas cards late, and though they arrived before Christmas, it wasn't in time to get them sent out to everyone.

Hopefully they'll be arriving to you lovely folks sometime around the Chinese New Year (Jan 23rd). I don't want to spoil the picture surprise so consider this our Christmas/New Year/Season's Greeting until then.

We hope it was merry and bright, and brought you joy and peace amidst all the craziness that often ensues during this wonderful season.

Much love to you and your sweet families.
Nicola, Andrew & William

p.s. these are two photo options we considered for our card before finding something much more suitable on which to send you our holiday greetings :)

First snow of the Season

Dec 2nd 2011, and we just got our first snow! When I looked out the window this morning I just thought it was another really bad pollution day - (actually it still is...the Air Quality Index is currently reading at 359 on a scale of 0 to 500, with a description of "DANGEROUS - Health warnings of emergency conditions; the entire population is more likely to be affected."  Yikes, I prefer the days when it's only bad enough to impact the demographic that doesn't include us:) - but it also appears we have snow in those soupy skies. Yay for first-of-the-year winter-time whites. This will be William's first contact with snow - though I'm sure he won't think much of it till next year. Still it's exciting for us, I guess Winter really is here, which means Christmas is just around the corner.

Goodness, this year has flown by, I still feel like we just got back from Summer! But now I have a delightful 7 month old who is intent on exploring everything he can get his hands on - which fortunately for now isn't too much, as he hasn't learned to crawl...yet :)

I'm thankful for all the milestones and development he's making, but I am mindful not to want to rush things or wish this time away. I love this stage of life, and I appreciate all the sweet baby hugs and snuggles he gives me. I hope I never take them for granted, for soon, I am sure, he will be off and independent and I won't have these tender moments when all he wants is to lay his head on my shoulder while I sing him a goodnight song.

After weeks of hand sucking/chomping, plus a week or two of major tongue sucking/air-testing - so much so that Andrew gave him the X-Men villain-sounding name "Lizardo" (which he insisted on pronouncing in his best Jeremy Irons accent) - finally his third tooth broke through the other day. I discovered it as he threw his head back while nursing to smile at my friend Carrie, exposing both me and his new tooth as he flirted away. He is a cheeky one, but how can you not love that cute face? The crusty nose, on the other hand, is perhaps something only a mother can love :)

William is such a wonderful blessing. He is a happy boy, and always has a smile for his Mama, which warms my heart no end. I love his little personality, his grunts and ga's, his cute tongue poking out all the time, the way he flaps his arms when he wants to be picked up, the way he loves (practically inhales) applesauce, pumpkins, sweet potato and he's getting the hang of chewing those little baby food puffs which is really adorable.

He loves to rumble and be tickled, be thrown in the air, touch your face (especially your eyes, nose and mouth), and smother your neck (or face) with slobbery open-mouthed kisses. He continues to love to bang on things, preferably if they make a noise, though his guitar skills still need some work. He's getting really good at hair pulling, reaching for anything you have in your hands (especially phones or remote controls), has started to reach for books he likes (he has three current favourites), and has figured out how to tell me the direction he wants to go or when he sees something he's after by contorting or throwing his body (all 20lbs of it) forward.

When meeting someone new, he likes to study them a bit first, figure them out and then see if they are worthy of a smile. Most people are. He is definitely more of a morning person, and miraculously I am becoming more so too, when you are faced with his cute face looking up at you in the morning, who wouldn't be? That's not to say we don't have our moments of challenge (aka: tiredness - mostly me in the mornings and him in the afternoons). But overall I would say things are going really great. I love having this little guy in my life.

Pimp my family

William's 1st Halloween at our Branch party...

 You'll never meet a cuter or less threatening (not to mention non-law-breaking) pimp in a velour jumpsuit.

No- No- No- Notorious W.A.D.

Pimp Papi and son

We kind of won best family costume :) 

It was a joint prize with Carrie who dressed up as Princess Peach and her two boys at Mario and Luigi. So awesome!

6 months

William just passed the 6 month mark last Monday, the same day a new nephew was born to Andrew's sister in Seattle. They were exactly the same weight and length too! We're excited to get to know this new boy and hope his parents enjoy having a boy (their first was a girl) as much as we enjoy having William.

In lieu of this milestone, this is an update on what our little man is up to these days.

William has been discovering and exercising his vocal range, it ranges from screeches to grunts and many things in between. Nothing resembling a word yet - but that will come soon enough. He has a special musical grunting type of noise for when he's eating.
Speaking of food, we recently tried bananas which he seems to love. He also likes pears, apples, sweet potato and broccoli.
He is a good eater, but still loves to nurse - especially to sleep, though we are working on changing that. These days while nursing he likes to reach for my hair and run it through his fingers (occasionally he grabs it too, and I have to remind him I don't have much and would he please not pull what I do have out?). He still strokes my clothes, he also bangs on them or pulls at them depending on the ferocity at which he's feeding!

His fine motor skills are getting pretty good. He's working on his finger and thumb coordination, picking up or grabbing at small objects with them. He likes tags. He also loves to shake and bang anything he can make a noise with. He particularly enjoys crinkly plastic wrappers for things. He often prefers them over the toys! Truly kids don't need much to keep them interested - just give them the containers for foods you buy and they're happy.

Hardware and shiny things tend to catch his eye, door hinges and handles, necklaces, electronics, keyboards, cameras, etc. He also enjoys putting them in his mouth and slobbering all over them - which reminds me I need to check and see if our iPod Mini still works after it's close encounter! He continues to be ever-interested in everything going on around him.

William can sit up by himself and remains devoted to standing (with help). He is still not a fan of tummy-time, and usually just lays his head on the floor and cries (after a few minutes) when we make him do it. I try and turn it into a game and tickle him, but he's not fooled for long. I've been working on showing him how to push with his feet, and the positions for crawling and bearing weight on his arms, but he's not interested. Maybe he will just be a walker first and skip the whole crawling thing?

We like to coordinate our stripes :)

With all the new food, he is developing a cute belly, which I think helps stabilise him when sitting up. Similarly his cheeks are increasing in size, and we love it. They are most delicious.

He still enjoys bathtime - but not so much for splashing anymore. These days he likes to stand up and bang on the outer edges of the tub, preferably with a plastic container. He is fascinated by the water stream that comes out of the tap, and can't wait till he can get his hands on the shower head that hangs just out of arms reach. He loves the containers of shampoo and body wash and likes to hold/bang/reach for them while I wash him.

Apologies in advance if this is TMI - but the change in diaper action has not been as bad as I thought it might be with the introduction of food. I know that can still change, but for now I'm grateful.

We continue to love and dote on this little guy and all the ways in which he is growing and developing. It is a miracle to watch and learn and relearn through his eyes.

Almost 5.5

A break from normal programming (aka me doting on my son) to blog about a much belated but not forgotten anniversary. Next month, Andrew and I will have been married for five and a half years. We had only known each other for 5 months when we got married (half of which we spent on different continents), so making it this far is a good sign, right? :)
Andrew has been on a work trip in the US these last two weeks, and there's nothing like your spouse being gone that makes you realise all the things you love (and consequently) miss about them, and how much you appreciate them being your partner in life. And so, I want to take this opportunity to say Happy Belated Anniversary to my sweetheart and to give him a few of the reasons why I fell in love with him, and why I am still in love with him. Andrew here are your top five (in no particular order):

1. I love you because you are committed... to basketball :), to serving and helping others (in church and outside of church), to creating music, to your family, to helping me realise my potential, to realising your own, to your job and being in China, to serving the Lord, and to many many other things - even if sometimes I think there are too many! :)

2. I love you because you think I am funny. I love that I make you laugh, even when I'm not trying to. I love that your impersonations of me are getting better, and I love that you still get a kick out of the differences in our language useage. I love that you think I am awesome, even when I don't often think I am that awesome myself.

3. I love you because you make our home happier, more adventurous, more fun, more interesting, more studious, more musical, more service-oriented, more open, and pretty much all-round more good.

4. I love you because of your tenderness, your kindness and compassion, your generosity and your passions. I love being associated with you, and watching others see just how wonderful and talented you really are. I love that you are genuine and warm and honest. I love that this means you make friends easily. You have a big heart, and sometimes this means there is just not enough time for you to do all the things you want to do, like keeping up with all of them :)

5. I love you because you love our son. I love that you miss him when you are away, and carry around pictures of him, which you show to everyone. I love that you check the blog just to see if I've posted new pictures and to go over the older ones. Here are just a few of the two of you to date:

These and so many more reasons why I am looking forward to the next five years, and the five after that, and the five after that, and so on :)