Sick baby…

Happy New Year! Evelyn caught an awful cold so she and I are staying in tonight… Early to bed. Welcome 2012!

5 years old!

A big Milestone
Two milestones, in fact. In the last couple weeks Luke has started Kindergarten and turned 5. He’s not a preschooler or a toddler anymore.
5-year old Luke is still struggling with emotional outbursts and anger issues. He yells at his parents, hits his sister, breaks his toys and throws monstrous fits. He is terrified of Thunderstorms and still wakes up nightly because he is scared, or has bad dreams.
Luke has two loose teeth! His bottom front ones both loosened up in recent weeks and we are waiting with anticipation for them to fall out.
Luke stopped napping during the week. His school day does not include nap or rest time, so he trucks right on through until he makes it home in an exhausted, frustrated mess. Everything upsets him when he is overtired. Dinnertime was a disaster, food was thrown, mean words were shouted, sisters were hit – all in all a mess. He is getting better now, 3 weeks in, and seems to handle the lack of naps better.
He does homework now too, 6 assignments every week to be completed for 20 minutes each day. To say we are meeting that quota would be a joke. Our average school night goes like this:
4:15 Luke gets off the bus. Ayi gets him home, has a snack, and then plays outside or inside with friends.
5:45 Mommy and Daddy get home from work
6:00 Dinner
6:30 Try to do homework
6:40 Collapse in frustration and go have a bath
7:00 Watch a TV show while nodding off on the couch
7:30 Fall into bed and go right to sleep
We got a good shock when Luke only got 50% on his first week’s homework. And his sight word test? A disaster. Kindergarten has real grades and real tests and real homework. Somehow I feel we’ve been catapulted from happy-smiley Preschool where a good day involved playing cars nicely with classmates – to fourth grade with huge expectations, major new schedules and real educational goals.

Oh and he plays violin too, because all children should learn a challenging string instrument at age 5.  Really.

5 Years old

A Chongqing Christmas

We spent this Christmas in Chongqing – a family of four for the first time.  Our last Christmas without extended family and in our own house was 5 long years ago, the same Christmas morning we discovered we were pregnant with Luke.  Luke is now luckily that magical age where Christmas makes sense, and this year was incredible.  We started out in late November getting the Christmas tree and decor up around the house.  It’s always a challenge decorating a new house for the first time, you never know what pieces fit where, if the lights will reach around that bannister, or where to put the Christmas tree.  In the end, we had to buy a bunch of lights, get an extension cord made (they don’t have them here??) and buy about $60 worth of power converters to avoid blowing up our Canadian lights in the 220 voltage.  But it looks fabulous.

So fabulous in fact we decided to hold a little party to have all our friends & neighbours partake in some Christmas cheer.  Kyle and I both have childhood memories of Christmas parties – mine due to my dad’s birthday on December 23, which often had over a hundred people visiting our house – and Kyle’s due to his family’s Christmas Day Open House, which involves another 100 or more people dropping in all day.   Once we started throwing out names for a guest list it was hard to stop – we ended up with 89.  Surely they wouldn’t all come – people have got to have conflicts, right?  Nope!  We woke up the morning of the party truly concerned about how we would fit 89 people into our not-super-huge house on a rainy dark day.  In the end, it worked perfectly.  We had a wonderful mix of festive foods & drinks from various countries, plus over 90 people in the end.  We had big kids upstairs playing Wii, little kids downstairs watching Polar Express and playing with toys, and adults mixed in throughout it all eating and drinking.  It was so much fun we’ll have to do it again next year.

Christmas this year involved introducing Luke & Evelyn to a number of traditions and the magic that really makes Christmas fun.  The advent calendar was visited nightly by Elves who left little notes explaining Christmas traditions and giving the kids an activity or idea of something to do that day.  While the elves sometimes ‘forgot’ to come due to their busy days in the toy workshops, and the artsy beautiful notes they left diminished into scratches on folded paper almost 30 days later, Luke loved it nonetheless.  We talked a lot about Santa, and how he’d get into our chimney-less house.  Mommy decided Santa would probably climb through the skylights in the living room, which on afterthought was a bad choice.  Luke still looks skeptically at them and asks if the dirt he sees are cracks.

Our Christmas was bumped back by a week as we wanted to take advantage of the Long weekend to go to a beach resort in Sanya.  I (another bad choice) decided we’d just wait – Luke is 4 and shouldn’t know when Christmas is anyways, right?  Wrong.  I forgot he has friends, and they talk.  Even more – one of those friends was at the beach with us!  Santa visited his hotel room’s balcony, why didn’t Santa come to ours?  Did we miss Christmas?  It was a long week of much fudging, but I don’t think it scarred him too much.  When the actual day came around it was truly magical.  It was almost more fun than I remember Christmases being back when I believed in Santa.  To bring such excitement and magic to their world was truly incredible.  We had a fabulous Christmas morning, wonderful breakfast, and a great day spent opening and playing with our new gifts.  We invited some friends over for Christmas dinner (a challenge in itself, as turkeys here come whole, with all the bits still in their original places – and our oven was too small to fit the whole thing) – but we had an amazing day nonetheless.

Our first Christmas on our own as a family of 4 was definitely a success, and I loved not having to pack up toys, worry about Christmas lights up at home over the holidays, or deal with jetlag.  I think next year the family should all come here for a Chongqing Christmas!

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,000 times in 2010. That’s about 12 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 445 posts. There were 22 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was November 28th with 135 views. The most popular post that day was Becoming the Margenau’s.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were margenau.blogspot.com, margenaubaby.blogspot.com, nuggetsnursery.blogspot.com, facebook.com, and watchcaldergrow.blogspot.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for hcg 7dpo, hcg at 7 dpo, margenau.wordpress.com, hcg 7 dpo, and hcg at 7dpo.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Becoming the Margenau’s December 2005
1 comment

2

7DPO November 2005

3

3 DPO or CD 16 November 2005

4

Evelyn’s Growing Page May 2009
1 comment

5

Hao guai! October 2009
8 comments

It’s been a while.

On the blog also, but this post isn’t just my way of making up for not writing in ages. In fact, since December 15 2005, I have been either pregnant or nursing. That’s almost 59 months!! And now, since last week (as far as we know!) I am neither pregnant OR nursing.

Evelyn has gone more than a week now without nursing. I was the instigator of this weaning – with Luke it went naturally through the course of pregnancy and he weaned himself completely at about 22 months old. With Evelyn, her 2nd birthday came and went and she was still completely happy to keep nursing. I was really done though. Evelyn tends to be very ‘busy’ while nursing, always rubbing my arms, feeling my face, pinching and pulling on my skin – not a very fun experience for mommy. She has been going 1 then 2 nights without me as my work trips are getting longer and she has been absolutely fine. So when I came home from a 2 day trip to Chengdu last week I simply started refusing to nurse her. It wasn’t the gentle baby-led-weaning I do honestly believe in – there were a few tears once or twice. But nothing a quick snuggle and reassuring words couldn’t fix. It had been more than a week now since the last time she nursed and I am certain this is it. Almost 5 years later it seems a bit odd to have my body back to being completely mine again.

Time for number three?

The “STOP killing each other!” phase.

Sibling rivalry definitely beats sleepless nights, nursing troubles and potty training all rolled in together.  It’s an absolute nightmare – enough to make me realize why the majority of people who originally want more kids stop at 2.   I love my kids and have a ton of fun with them – when I have them one-on-one.  As soon as the other one steps in the room, the gloves come off and we are in pure battle.   There is pushing, yanking, biting, hitting, kicking, yelling, screaming – you name it.  I sometimes wonder what would happen if I didn’t step in, and just let them to figure it out.  But I honestly think it would end in a serious injury, it’s like they both (go figure, they’re 4 and not-yet-2) lack the common sense to realize that they are hurting one another.  It’s exhausting.  And it’s frustrating to constantly try to pull them apart and go in different directions with each parent.  We’re a family, we want to spend time together.  But I seriously find I am so overwhelmed lately trying to manage their often-horrific interactions I don’t enjoy spending time with them.

Evelyn is in a particularly tough pinching-and-biting phase.  She does it for no reason, sometimes just walking by Luke she’ll reach out and pinch his arms with both of her hands.  Inevitably, the crying starts and then he lashes out at her, hitting her or something worse, all in front of our eyes as we are scrambling trying to get there fast enough to separate them.  Mealtimes are a disaster, if one gets the particular colored spoon that the other one wants, there is a fit of astronomical proportions, often involving flipped over food dishes and thrashing on the floor.   Seriously – how did we end up like this?  I feel like one of those families on Super Nanny, it’s awful and embarrassing.

Did I mention I am taking both children BY MYSELF next week and flying for 24 hrs on 3 flights including 2 stopovers?  Lets hope this ‘phase’ wears off by Friday.

New milestones

 

It’s official – after 3 years, 11 months and 7 days of continual use we’re out of diapers!  Luke didn’t potty train until Evelyn was about 6 months old, so given the overlap is has been a long time of diaper use in our house.  Evelyn is fully potty trained almost a year earlier than Luke was.  When it got really hot in early July, she started getting terrible rashes because of her diapers.  So I was leaving her diaper-free more and more of the time, and with Zhu Ayi’s help, she learned very quickly how to use the potty.  We definitely went through 3-4 days of puddles on the floor, but she got the hang of it and now rarely has an accident.  Unfortunately public bathrooms are still a big issue – they are all squat toilets in China, and Evelyn’s used to sitting down to pee.  I try to hold her, but it just doesn’t seem to work, so that is still a challenge.  She has been wearing diapers at night but has woken up dry for a complete week now, so I think it’s time to give that up.  All in all – success!  And doing it at only 20/21 months old, we’re so proud of our big girl.  Time to put away the change table, and give away the remaining 3 boxes of diapers and pull-ups I shipped over here.  We’re done!  — At least until the next baby.

Preschool Diplomacy

Last night as I read Luke one of his favourite books – The Berestein Bears on the Job – he asked me “Mommy, what do YOU do at work?” Hmm. What DO I do at work? And more importantly – how do I explain that to a 3 yr old, for whom jobs are “Doctors who make people well” or “Teachers who help you to learn”. In that context, how do you explain international relations and diplomacy? In the end, I told him that Mommy helped our country – Canada – and this country – China – to talk to each other. Luke’s response? “Why don’t they use a telephone?” which was quickly followed by “Maybe Canada should learn Chinese.” Agreed babe.

Back to the Blog

Wow, that was a long break.  More than 2 months since our last blog post, and I have so quickly forgotten how to do this that I am struggling to post pictures, struggling to remember the WordPress functions!  Anyways, we’re back!  Kyle tends to post a lot of photos and updates to Facebook through his iPhone, but with the WordPress app on there he should be able to post those here too, so we can update a bit more regularly.  I know many of you see everything on Facebook, but I like being able to look back at the blog as a record – Facebook isn’t as convenient for that.

So I’ll use this first post to update on how the kids are growing.  Both have now hit their half-birthdays and I really want a reminder of who they were at these unique ages.  Luke turned 3.5 on March 5, Evelyn 1.5 on April 20. I don’t think either of them could imagine life without the other, a true benefit to having them so close together.  They are entering the more challenging sibling rivalry stage though and get into some huge fights.  Luke is becoming so much more capable of fine motor skills tasks now – building things, designing things, drawing pictures… then Evelyn, in all her 1.5 yr old madness, comes in a ruins what he’s working on.  She just really wants to be involved, but unfortunately he doesn’t see it that way.  But the times they do play together are incredible.  Hearing Luke yell “Come on Evelyn let’s go!” and watching the two of them take off on some common task is one of the most amazing feelings in the world.  They love playing together, and for the 40% of the time when things go good, it’s absolutely worth it.

Luke at 3.5 is a big boy – still hovering around 43/44 lbs but growing taller every week it seems.  He towers over most of his friends and continues to be a stocky solid little boy, just like he always was.  He is growing into an extremely sensitive little boy who really thinks about the things we point out or the things he sees.  We have some fascinating conversations these days about tough stuff like death (why do people go in the ground to die?) and his language skills continue to improve.  We think he may have a bit of a speech impediment, as he doesn’t enunciate things like S and R very clearly, but I imagine that will still develop a bit in the next couple years.  He loves his preschool class and his Chinese is incredible.  In the space of about a month he went from primarily using 1-word and pointing to speaking in complete sentences.  He switches easily between the two languages when talking to our Ayi and his sister, and his teachers are all really impressed in how quickly he is picking it up.  He continues to be a wild, rough-and-tumble, difficult-at-times little boy, but by and large he is more and more fun to hang out with.  I only wish I had more time one-on-one with him, because I think there are a lot of fun things we could do.

At 18 months Evelyn is between 24-26 lbs, and is also growing in height more than weight these days.  I don’t think she’s gained a pound since she was about 10 months old.  She moves like a 3 yr old, running, jumping, walking so confidently you’d think she had been doing it for years.  Her verbal skills are so much broader than Luke’s ever were at her age (remember, he said his first word at 17 months!).  She will say almost anything, even repeating long complicated sentences.  I don’t think she knows what she’s saying, but her fascination with words and language is so different.  I would say that she speaks about 70% Chinese, 30% English.  Being with the Ayi all day it’s no wonder.   She has a little gaggle of friends who live in our neighbourhood – another 4 or 5 little girls around the same age as her, and she spends most of every day with her “xiao pengyou” (little friends) and their Ayis.  She goes to an accompanied preschool program and is enjoying it more and more, sometimes even sitting and listening to the teachers (as all 18 month olds are expected to do in Chinese school – no hands-on exploratory learning here…).  My dreams for a baby with long hair like I had, that could be braided and put in ponytails are quickly fading.  Although her hair keeps filling out and getting longer, it is curling so tightly around itself I can’t imagine it will ever be long.  Some of her ringlets curl 4 or 5 times in a spiral already!  She has her Aunty Heather’s hair for sure, and I can’t remember my sister having long-ish hair until at least Kindergarten, if not later.  I’ll keep trying, but for now, it’s just a mess of wild curls.   She is very much a girly-girl.  She loves wearing skirts, dressing up, and putting on things like bracelets and necklaces.  She’ll put on something new, like a hat or a barrette, and if we say “Hao Piaoliang!” (so pretty!) she’ll happily trot off to show everyone in the house, repeating her “look, how pretty!” phrase everywhere she goes.  She has a fierce temper, particularly when she doesn’t get her way, and I think we all accept that she’s going to be quite the challenge when she gets a bit stronger.

Luke sitting in class