Ten months with the Baby Grace!

Grace is 10 months and getting quite independent. She has really taken off with locomotion this month. Bye bye Army crawl and hello real crawl. Grace loves to cruise around a piece of furniture, drop down, crawl across the room (or park), pull up on something else and take off. She can even get up the steps on the playground slide (with me behind her to prevent disaster). This is making for some pretty dirty clothes at the end of the day. I don't remember Archie's clothes being this filthy at 10 months, but he was a lot more content to just sit in his stroller. I can't really think of a lot of other milestones for the month. She's still my little two-toothed friend, which is hindering her from a lot of non-mashed foods.

While in Hong Kong, Grace enjoyed our bath tub! (She and Archie had fun playing together in the water.) She and her brother almost always love playing together! I am so thankful for their good relationship.

Grace does love her little baby Puff's in any flavor.

She sleeps in the craziest positions. When I found her curled up like this one day I thought of a little hamster in its cage. Over half the time, we're still swaddling!

Pandas and Amusement Parks

This time around in Hong Kong our big outing was a trip to Ocean Park (a zoo/amusement park). Our primary purpose for going was to see the giant pandas. They had FOUR! Did you know a baby panda is smaller than a human baby? Can't tell it from looking at this giant guy!

Grace enjoyed the view from the cable car. (You can see Victoria Peak.) It was easily the steepest/highest cable car I've ever ridden in my life!

The carousel is always a winner!

Archie's favorite was turning this steering wheel, though. This is the kind you put money in and drive the little cars around. However, Archie was perfectly content to turn the wheel without money. I think he spent about an hour at this activity...

We watched some fun shows. Archie was too scared to have his picture made with these guys, but I think Grace liked the clown.

Dad and the kids watching the sea lion!

Victoria Harbor

Victoria Harbor is probably the most famous places in Hong Kong. Hunter read somewhere that crossing the Harbor by ferry was rated by somebody as one of the 50 must-do things before you die. Not sure how many of the other 49 I've done, but we have done that one. Archie LOVES boats - especially the ferry. I love to hear his little voice, "I ride the ferry?"

Looking at the harbor in amazement:

A view from the ferry window:

A little water on a hot day:

Hong Kong park fun!

One of the highlights of our Hong Kong trip was the sunny weather and living right next door to a great park. (Thankfully, the weather has finally warmed up in our frozen tundra home, and I'm able to take the kids to park near our house here almost every day as well.)

Archie and Grace had fun playing together.

They were definitely fans of the bucket swing. Our park doesn't have swings so they were a fun addition.

Archie also enjoyed bouncing away on this seahorse. (Looks like he's about to get bucked off!)

Grace enjoys just standing up and hanging out!

My little nine month old angel!

Archie's new Jie Jie

We had a great time stopping through Shenzhen on our way back home. We got to see some of our friends from our Louisville days. When we first met them, we were the home culture and they were the guests. It was fun for the tables to be reversed as we were the guest culture visiting their homeland. Archie's favorite thing about the trip was his new Jie Jie (older sister). Their little girl is almost five, and Archie was pretty smitten with her. He got ridiculously excited and was always saying, "I hold Jie Jie's hand. I hold Jie Jie's hand!" They walked around hand in hand all day at the park (except for when they were racing each other).

We took the subway from Hong Kong to Shenzhen and went through customs where we got out. Archie likes the subway.

Here is our friend Weiqi holding Grace. It was our first time meeting each other's children since our children had not been born when they were in America, and their little girl wasn't able to come with them.

Here's the group (minus Weiqi who was taking the picture).

Southern Culture

This blog post is probably not what you're expecting. I'm not talking about American grits and mashed potatoes with gravy here. I'm talking about the culture we just experienced from Hong Kong and the Southern part of the country we live in. (We made it back yesterday, by the way, and the initial reports about Archie's eye surgery are good.)

Never seen bamboo scaffolding before but it was EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong. Seems sturdy enough? Wonder if the pandas are upset. Did you know an adult panda eats about 18 pounds of bamboo a day? Would you want to crawl around on that?

The first few days we were in Hong Kong we couldn't find the market. I mean, we found a super crowded grocery store with some imports but not a nice open market like we're used to. I felt like I was home when I ran across this.

In the mornings everywhere you looked outside there were crowds of older people doing their Tai Chi and other exercises. TONS of them!

I love this picture because it is so revealing about cultural differences. We took a side trip to Shenzhen (a very developed Chinese city across the border from Hong Kong) on our way home. Everywhere we go, our white children always attract a crowd. See the photographers capturing Archie's antics on video. I also enjoy the guy to the far right of the picture with his shirt rolled up. This is a very common way for men to stay cool here. (People always call Grace a "foreign doll" and I nearly cracked up when Archie informed the crowd that he was a foreign doll, too.)

This next picture is a restaurant down south featuring food from our neck of the woods. Typically, food from the South and middle parts of our country is more popular around the world so I thought this was pretty funny. I think the waitresses were a little surprised to run into a foreigner from the same place as this restaurant! Didn't eat there. Figured we got enough food from our hometown. Opted for some frog on rice from the place next door. The flavor was fine but a little bony for my tastes.

Cute!

Happy Mother's Day!

Coming home!

The surgery is over. Everything went smoothly so now we'll just have to wait and see if it worked. Thanks for remembering us! We registered in the hospital about 4 p.m. then they took Archie to his room. He and Grace played for a few minutes together in the bed and then the trauma began.

As soon as the nurses came and got him for weight, measurement and clothes changing, he started going ballistic. Thankfully, after awhile I had the idea to take him to the activity area where he found a little car and some little friends to drive with. Archie spoke to all the foreign looking ones in English which pretty much worked. However, he was really confused when he spoke Mandarin to the Hong Kong ones and they didn't understand. (I think we all learned the word for car in Cantonese before the night was over.)

At around 7:30 the nurses came and got him for the surgery and it was all over again. I think all his memories from his hospital experience last July were coming back to him. Surprisingly enough, the nurses weren't used to seeing kids being taken away for surgery that upset. He was thrashing around so badly we could hardly hold him. They wanted to put surgery socks on him and you'd have thought he was being tortured. They didn't even put in the IV until after he was asleep!

They let me go into the OR and hold him while the doctor anethesized him with a mask. Then, we left and got some dinner in the cafeteria. Around 9:30 the nurse came and got us. The doctor said everything had gone well and that Archie would probably wake up screaming and disoriented soon. I guess he had gotten all of his screaming out of his system earlier, though, because he never woke up. I left the hospital slightly after 10 once Archie was back in his room to take Grace back to our apartment. Hunt said he stirred around 12:50 and then a few more times through the night but never for more than a couple seconds. Thankfully, we were spared the second round of screams!

Hunt just called me from the hospital (9:30 a.m.). They have seen the doctor. He said Archie's eyes are perfectly straight right now (normal for right after surgery) but it will take awhile before we know if the brain picks it up. He still has to wear his glasses full-time, but we can take at least a one week break from the patch until he sees the doctor again. They'll be heading home soon. I think he'll want to sleep a lot today, but hopefully we can go to the park and do some other fun stuff, too!

Tomorrow...Eye surgery day

Tomorrow is the long awaited day! Archie's eye surgery to correct his cross-eyed-ness. We arrived in Hong Kong today and are in the process of getting settled in for a ten day stay. Please remember him tomorrow. The surgery is planned for tomorrow night. If all goes well, he'll get a final checkup tomorrow afternoon, head over to the hospital for prep, and then commence the surgery at 8 p.m. He will come out with a naked eye (no bandages) and hopefully will go home the next morning. We will not know for some time if the surgery was a success, and he will almost definitely keep wearing his glasses (maybe for life).

Archie, totally unaware of tomorrow's planned events, had been counting the days to our trip down for two weeks. He associates going to Hong Kong with riding a red bus (cause we always ride one from the airport). He started by saying "red bus, two weeks" and we helped him take a day off everyday until today when we told him "today you can ride the red bus" and he was really confused by the word "today". Haha! Two year olds still have no concept of time...

The weather's finally warmed up and he's been having a blast at the park near our house. I took these a few days ago:

I feel like he could be the next Becker or something.

When Archie saw this other kid's bike, he just had to ride it. They obliged and let him. A little big for him. Hehe!

Archie had quite a bit of fun with bike-owner's dad.

Archie loves balls of any variety, but basketballs are a particular favorite. He also really likes soccer balls, which he calls "footballs" after the English fashion. Guess he'll figure it out when we get back in the States. I'm not sure if he's ever actually seen a proper American "football."

Here's a pic of Archie with the bike owner. Cute, huh?

Another trip to Oil City!

We had so much fun last year in Oil City, we just had to go back. Remember this? It's the ubiqutious oil drill. I heard there are over 40,000 in the city. The literal translation is "nodding head machine" cause that's what it looks like's happening.

Here we are at the train station with our friend Laura and her parents. (This station is one of the suburb stations so it's different than the one we rode into last year.)

Laura is a college student where we live so she rode back with us. Archie liked watching videos with her:

This was one of our train mates. I thought she looked like a typical older woman from our culture so I thought I'd post a pic.

This little friend was Grace's favorite train mate! They had a real baby connection.
Here's a nice family pic from after we arrived:

We didn't do much sightseeing this time around. The best part of the trip was hanging out with our Asian friends and their families.

Archie getting dressed for an outing:

Quality brother-sister time:

Grace enjoyed the full-length mirror:

She also enjoyed studying her characters. Haha!

She slept between us on this bed:

But, she took her nap on this pallet on the floor: