Scarlett at 7 months

 Guess what happens when you wait to do a 6 month post about your baby? It becomes a 7 month post. I feel like this perfectly illustrates how quickly this precious time is going. There are lots of different ways to measure speed. Speed of sound, speed of light; I think Speed an Infant Changes should be in there too. It seems to beat out any others.

 Scarlett is growing and thriving and a happy little girl. She has struggled to take a bottle and for the same reason, struggled to start solids but I think we finally can report success on the solids. The bottle? We are still working on it. I'd love to have longer than a 3 hour window during the day but I also try and remember it's really such a short time she needs me, I shouldn't be too quick to wish it away.

 She has just begun to sit up on her own and she also has figured out how to clap. My favorite thing she does is scrunch up her nose and breathe in and out real noisily. She does it on purpose and maybe even to be silly. I can make the same noise back to her and we will do it back and forth, she thinks this is extra funny... I do too.

A young mother in the ward recently asked me if Scarlett was "hitting all of her benchmarks". I know I probably cared about those with Kennedy, maybe even Kohen. But by now, and especially here where we don't have well baby check ups (and all of their stats would be in a foreign language called the metric system) I definitely don't think much about it. She's got rolls on her thighs so I know she is eating well. She fits in her clothes when she is supposed to. She does things around when I remember her siblings doing them. I feel grateful to have enough experience under my belt to know she is doing well with or without getting to go in to the Dr.
She is healthy and happy.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for our Mei Mei.

*Gush is now over.
(well, that's a lie. I maybe never stop gushing over her in real life. I'll just stop doing it here :)

A.S.I.A. Conference 2012

 Truth be told, this year, I really felt like I just didn't have the energy to go. Scarlett is not the most amazing traveler and bringing her with would be a handful. I tried to back out a couple of times and -here is where Nathan gets major husband-props- he wouldn't let me. He continued to encourage me to go until I was headed to the airport with my friends.

 Of course, in hind sight, I am so grateful I went. Thursday before the conference started a bunch of us girls met and went to the famous Stanley Market.

 It had a beautiful view and you could smell the ocean in the air...

But truth be told, I am starting to feel kind of "meh" about night markets and markets in general. I'm feeling a little bit like, if you've seen one you've seen em all. However, I remain committed to continuing to check them all out just to make sure. :)

 Anyway, that night the conference started and we met up with many friends who have moved to other places in Asia but we were able to meet back up in HK. I love that about the conference.
This years service project was for a local Boy Scout's Eagle Project- crocheting leper bandages to donate to a leper colony in Nepal (a throw back for me to my YW's project back in the day, remember doing these Heather H?). It was a fun project to do while listening to speakers or visiting with friends in between classes. Thank you hand model Matina for this pic ;)

 I was teasing Lori that I was going to put this pic in the conference slideshow, to which Lori replied, "Oh yeah, well those cookies were the ones I brought to you with your lunch." Touche' my friend, touché'.

 Scarlett was a good girl all things considered. And the girls all took turns taking her during classes for me or holding her when she was fussy, or so I could eat. I was so grateful for their service and help.

 And getting to see my girls, Lori and Nicole, made the whole trip worth while. Last year Nicole moved to HK and Lori moved to Chengdu China. I was not a fan of either of those moves, FOR THE RECORD. I love them both and miss them terribly. It was so awesome to have some time with them.  

 It was an incredibly spiritually uplifting weekend. When you are a mom with little ones at church you don't always get much out of it week to week. So I feel like I really get to recharge at conference.

 Annnd I get to go out to eat and shop in HK with my friends... that is a winning combination.

At Mask, a yummy restaurant that serves Sichuan food. Never thought I would put "yummy" and "sichuan food" in the same sentence. Boy I have come a long way over the last few years...

PingXi Lantern Festival 2012

2 years ago we went to PingXi for the Lantern Festival and had an amazing time and made some great memories. We did not have the same experience this year.

We went with 3 other couples, one of which brought their 2 boys and we also had Ms. Scarlett with us. We left home around 4pm. 

We got to the zoo to jump on one of the buses shuttling people up to the Festival and the line of people waiting was further than we could see. We waited an hour to get on the shuttle. Then we rode 45min on the narrow, windy road to PingXi. 

We all unloaded off of the bus, it was dark out now, and we headed with hundreds of other people up towards the lantern lift offs. 

 Next thing you know as we were walking with crushes of people, the crowd just slowly grinds to a halt.

Now, before I go on let's take a sec and discuss the fact that Chinese people have a very distinct difference in what is considered personal space. Um yeah... no, they don't know what that is.
Picture yourself in the U.S. getting on an average sized elevator. Picture the 4 other people who could comfortably fit with you on the elevator. Now picture the same scenario with Asians. After you and 4 others get on, 6 more will squeeze on in until you're spooning a stranger and resisting the urge to cry "UNCLE!".
K, now back to the crowd that suddenly stopped. Lot's of people were holding their lanterns up over their heads because we were crushed so close together that there was only room above. We were all so close together, wow, I'm not claustrophobic but boy I considered converting. The frustrating part was not knowing why we weren't moving. And there was no where to go. We were stuck. For an hour. A very long hour... with a now fussy baby.

 We made the best of it though. We tried to enjoy our company... even though we didn't know 99% of them.

 And every 20 minutes or so we would see a big group lantern lift off (the red squiggles above) which was beautiful to watch. Eventually the crowd opened up inexplicably and we headed to the area where they do the group lift offs. It was different though this time and we weren't allowed to let ours off there. So we just watched others and then went and found a spot to send off our own wishes for the year.

Those few minutes were wonderful.
I should leave it at that but I'm sorry, I just can't.

So after our lift offs we hurried back down the hill and quickly by passed the crazy long line for a seat on a shuttle home and joined the line to stand on the way home. We waited in line for another hour, now with hungry tummy's, fussy and exhausted baby, tired backs and feet... we finally got on a bus and Scarlett was hungry and I'm thinking, I guess I'm going to have to feed her standing up (again) this time on a moving bus. Thankfully- seriously, thanked him specifically in my prayers that late night- some young guy who had stood in the line for a seat, insisted that I have his seat. I was SO grateful. I was able to feed Scarlett and not get as motion sick as another in our party did.
We got home at ONE am. That my friends, is a lot of hassle to let off a lantern!!!! Good thing we were with good friends. (all 10,000 of em!)

To see one of the beautiful group lift offs I taped, click the video below.

CNY, Year of the Dragon

Guess where we went over Chinese New Year Break this year? Guess what we did?!

NOWHERE and NOTHING.

It was wonderful. 

Because everything shuts down and no business goes on, Nathan was home and the kids were out of school. We had no plans. Un.heard.of. 

 It rained 95% of the break. So... we did stuff indoors. We have a Wii but the menus are all in Chinese so Nathan is the only one who can navigate us to the games. Works out super conveniently because we hardly ever play it but when we do it ends up being a special family activity. Above, I am kicking everyone's trash in Just Dance. And yes, I took great pleasure in it, even if my biggest competition is only 9.

 We stayed in our pajamas more than usual and spent a lot of time snuggling. The children still always want to hold Scarlett. It surprises me a little bit that even Ander requests to hold her daily. Some kids argue and call "Shotgun!"; Our kids argue and call "Scarlett!". Someone is always claiming it's their turn to hold her.

Our favorite babysitter Cecily was competing in basketball and since the Lower, Middle, and Upper schools of TAS are all under the same roof, we definitely felt it was our duty to go and cheer on our Tigers! You can barely see Scarlett on my lap next to Ander but we had the whole crew and we were quite the cheering section. I was somewhat surprised how much Ander enjoyed the game. He loved cheering for the team and had his eye on the basketball the whole time. Made us miss our days in VA cheering on our Bell girls!

 I'm never inspired to take pics when it's dreary and rainy but as soon as the sun comes out for it's five minute tease, I grab the camera. It makes for a deceptive representation of things but I'd rather highlight the nice weather anyway. We had it for one day. It was so incredibly lovely. The kids even jumped into the frigid pool.

 When we were getting cabin fever from being inside too long we searched online and found this thing called Baby Boss where you go and your kids get to try out all sorts of different jobs. They wear costumes, have lessons about the jobs and even earn baby boss $ after they "work" each job. The $ can be spent in the Baby Boss store. Sounds amazing right?

Reality: Kids under 3 are listed as "free", but in actuality are not allowed to participate in anything. Would have been nice to know. There are about 25 different jobs but they have it scheduled and you have to go wait in line to get a spot for the job. The popular jobs where you actually make pizza, ice cream, or doughnuts were always filled with people waiting in line forever before hand. Worse than Disney lines. 

Our kids really wanted to try the Captain and flight attendant job. They had a huge plane replica they got to work in and everything. We waited in line for an hour. The place was absolutely swarming with Chinese people on CNY break. Oh, and did I mention all of the Job lessons were in Chinese? 

Lastly, the $ they earned bought absolutely nothing in the store. Our kids did 3 jobs and earned enough for a sticker. That would be fine if they didn't pimp out the store with all sorts of toys utterly out of reach for the kids to earn. Epic fail. 

One morning during break Nathan gave in to the older 3's request to make a volcano. We got a classic Kohen moment at the end of the 30 second clip. Enjoy.

I loved our dreary, rainy CNY. Bring it on Dragon.