2 years!

A wee bit late. Josiah turned 2 last week! We've been so blessed with a laid-back, funny little man. It has been amazing to watch him grow, especially this last year. Wow, the differences between a 1yo and 2yo are drastic!! Ok, newborn-1 is also drastic. But, really. When the talking begins, it just gets funny!

We plan on celebrating in the States with friends and fam, but also wanted to celebrate here.

We started the day with banana chocolate chip muffins. Who doesn't like those?!

Then played, went outside, visited Daddy at school for 5 minutes, then a long nap. I guess he was tired..?! Hard to see, but hand in pants (sick) and the door is wide open...and this was after 2.5 hours already.

Then played some more, ate another muffin, had quesadillas and Ranch (special here) for dinner, and another muffin to blow out his candles.

 

Last weekend, we had a party with our teammates, some friends, and a few students. We even played Hot Potato! haha. Hilarious. Josiah got some interesting gifts, as expected. Everything is "interesting" here for kids. This included graffiti pants that had a huge Chinglish word on the rear (forgot what it was), an all-in-one visor with sunglasses AND a fan, a China spoon and fork set, etc. Perhaps he will get a few normal things when we throw him a bash at home. :)

Speaking of home, we leave in 3.5 weeks. I'm stoked. I'm interested to see how Josiah will react. Probably not well at first. And he will think all our friends and family are strangers. Sad. But, I'm sure he'll warm up. We may have to re-teach some habits he has. For example, when kids see each other on the street, their granny usually wants them to stop and wo wo shou (shake hands). We have taught Josiah this, and he does it every time. Most of the time, the Chinese kids are afraid of him and the grannies begin to (gently) scold them until they shake hands. Haha. I'm sure if he walked up to a kid in the States with his hand extended, he'd get some crazy stares. Shoot, I'm just excited for him to go to a real park. Here, the "parks" consist of several different pieces of exercise equipment. It was funny and a little sad to watch him run from one piece to the next the other day. He had no idea they weren't really for kids! He just watched how the Chinese kids adapted them to make them more fun, and followed right along! What will he do with swings and a slide?! :)

Must be documented

A few days ago, Josiah--out of the blue--pretended to hock a loogie . I wish I could say I didn't know where he learned this. With sadness (and some laughter), I have to say he learned it from the Chinese grannies. Well, everyone does it here, but the grannies are the funniest. It just seems so backwards! Anyways, he caught me laughing. You know what that means. He continued to do it the rest of the day. If he does this in America, people are going to think I'm the worst parent ever. haha

The next day..again, out of the blue, he started practice sneezing into his arm. We taught him how to cough into his arm a few months ago when he had a cold. Maybe the memory just came up. Of course I laughed. So of course he keeps doing it. Tonight, he did it in the middle of our team worship. Classic. When he really sneezes, he forgets the arm part. Isn't that how it always works?

Oh, Chiner

Lately, I've been waking up in the early 6 o'clock hour and having trouble falling back asleep. It's not that I'm ready to get up. No, siree. 3rd trimester tiredness has set in. I need more sleep. Rather, it's the sun already high in the sky beaming into our window. I have an eye mask, and most of the time it works.

But then I find myself lying there wondering, why is the sun rising in the 4 o'clock hour again? OH yes...because China has no time zones (remember, it's about the same size as the US) nor does it have daylight savings time. I know people get annoyed with setting their clocks forward and backward, but believe me...you wouldn't mind the short nuisance if it meant you wouldn't see the sun at 4am.

I have no idea why they don't participate in these time helpers. The east side of the country suffers the worst, in my opinion. In the west, the sun doesn't rise until 7am. How nice.

Of course, even if the sun did rise a bit later, the fireworks would probably be the next thing to wake me up. Think I'm joking? There's not a single day that goes by that we don't hear fireworks. And I'm not talking bottle rockets. More like half sticks of dynamite.

And today, we had no water in the kitchen or washer. (Our bathroom water is a different system, thankfully.) I let the dishes pile up all day, hoping for the minute I would try and water would come gushing out. It never happened. By evening, Michael came home and saw the ants had invaded. Bummer. So I had to fill my handy dandy bucket to fill the sink a few times. It could've been worse--I could have had to trek 5 miles for one bucket like people do in other parts of the world. But, just a nuisance. Why was there no water? We will never know!

Oh, China.

Blood

My blood and baby's blood don't hate each other!

A few posts ago, I explained a little about the blood issue I have this pregnancy. Every month, they draw blood and measure how many antibodies (things that fight baby's blood cells) I have.

March: 1:32 Getting to the "alarm" stage where something more drastic would need to be done.

April: 1:16 Going down!

May: 1:8 YAAAY!

I have NO clue how antibodies can decrease. If anyone can figure that out for me, I'd be interested to know. But what it does tell me is that baby's blood must not be so different from mine, so everyone inside can just calm down.

What a relief. All glory goes to Dad for working this one out. Sadly, I'll have to go through this with every subsequent child...

We really need to start even looking at names....

Live for today....

Warning: This is being written fresh after hearing some news. I'll try to keep the snide remarks to a minimum, but no promises. Raw emotions here.
 
...because you don't know what tomorrow will bring.

This verse cannot be more true anywhere else in the world than here.

This culture functions on vagueness. On changing plans constantly, in an instant. And the locals don't even blink an eye....while I'm trying to either get my eyes back to a normal size or keep them dry.

I don't get it. I don't get them.

2 examples that happened within an hour today. Small one first.

I rode to McDonald's to grab lunch. (Please don't judge me. At least I rode my bike...?!) A few weeks ago, they promoted a double bacon cheeseburger. It was decent and a nice change. I was ready to get it again today. They don't have it on the English menu they usually hand me, so I was looking around for a picture of it, like they had last time. No where to be found. They have a new burger--double with bacon, a peppery sauce, and a blob of mashed potatoes. Yes. Mashed potatoes. Wow. A 2-week promotion and the other one is gone. I guess that means it didn't go over well? So ordered the mashed potato burger with no mashed potatoes. Somehow, they got that right. It was decent, but won't be ordered again.

The big one. SIGH.

We (the team) have been anticipating to move into the campus apartments the entire time we've been here. We currently live off-campus which is nice in some ways, but inconvenient in most because of what we do...teach on campus, meet with students, etc. They first told us October. Then February. Then our current apartment leases were extended through June, so nearly all hope was lost. Then they said we could either move over or stay where we are after May 1st. We have been able to look inside them, but they are not complete. Still lacking furniture and a little more work...but doable. We were anticipating the email of "Go! Move! yay!" Sadly, we got a different email.

We just received an email that says we won't be moving in until after we get back from summer vacation. What a blow. Even worse, they want all of us to move our stuff into one apartment so they don't have to keep paying rent for all of us through the summer. A: We have to move some furniture and all our boxes up 10 flights of stairs?! Uhh... B: How will it all fit?! These questions are currently being asked and I'm sure something will work out.

For our family, this is annoying news. Baby is due at the end of August. We're supposed to be back here by then. Paperwork for the baby will probably take 3-4 weeks, putting us at the end of September. Michael will probably have to come back a tad earlier so he doesn't miss so many classes. My parents have graciously offered to come back with the kids and I so I don't need to go straight to a padded room once arriving. :) BUT, still, that means we have to move all our stuff and get set up once we get here. With 2 kids. Just not ideal.

But when is life ever ideal? Usually never OUR ideal...but always HIS ideal. If only that was easy to remember and apply.

Living in this culture is forcing me to learn how to be flexible, which I've never been good at. I could go on and on with stories that show how I despise change. Funny how He put us in a culture that thrives on change. Ugh.

7 weeks!!

Our plans to visit home are finally coming together! I'll reveal details as things are finalized.

- Leave Beijing June 23rd at 8am.
- Arrive in KC June 23rd at 11am. (Yes, that means we'll live the same day twice. Yay for jet lag! Too bad it's not a day earlier--Michael could've had a doubly-long birthday.)
- Eat somewhere delicious. Chik-fil-a? Chipotle? Jason's Deli? Whole Foods? Cheesecake Factory? We'll be so overwhelmed with options, whoever picks us up just may have to decide.
- Go to Sheridan's. Hey, if we're going to have to stay awake, you may as well pump us full of sugar. I have no other choice but to eat a delicious Andes mint concrete. And now I'm salivating.
- Try keep ourselves and Josiah (uhh..don't even want to think about this) until 8pm. 
- Sleep in a soft bed. I don't even care where it is.

And that's all we know for now. We have tentative dates for when we'll be in KC and Branson, but we're still waiting on a few details. We'll be in each city for 4+ weeks. Plenty of time to catch up. :)