January 30, 2009

• A Few Low-Key Days

  After all the Chinese New Year hubbub, Jack and I have been enjoying a more relaxing few days. We wake up at Jack's usual time -- a little before 7 a.m., play during the morning (and I manage to get a bit of work done), then Jack goes down for his nap between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. I use the time to either get more work done, hang out with my mom, sleep for a bit, or exercise (but not all four ... I'm not Superwoman!). We then have lunch, and we try to find something to occupy our time in the afternoon; otherwise, six and a half hours with a toddler cooped up in a condo is not fun!  Besides, I want to do as much as I can while I'm here. By the way, this is a great time during my pregnancy to be here -- at 17 weeks, I'm not too tired, my belly isn't huge yet, and there are entire days when I kind of forget I'm pregnant in terms of physical symptoms, so I think the timing all worked out, especially since this trip was planned before I knew I was pregnant.

  The days are blurring together for me, so I'll just show you some pictures of what we've done in the last few days.

  Some family friends treated us to lunch at a spectacular buffet at the Hotel Shangri-La. Here, Jack and I are in the lobby. Too bad Jack's not looking at the camera!

  

  My mom and I also took Jack on a walk one afternoon to the junior high near my parents' condo. The track and courtyard are always open to the public, and there were lots of people there exercising. Jack enjoyed the opportunity to run around -- literally.

  Future track star?

  

  He has time to turn around and strike a pose!

  

  Jack and I on a pretty wooden walkway in the school's courtyard

  

  How cute are my mom and Jack??

  

  My parents and I also took Jack to Sogo (a big mall). We bought some "American groceries" in the supermarket below the mall for Jack -- cheese slices, peanut butter, toast. Jack likes all the food here, but we thought it would be good to have some staples on hand, some familiar things from home, in case he gets finicky sometime.

  Of course, the mall means that Jack gets to participate in his favorite activity: riding down the escalator!

  

  While at the supermarket, we passed by a Mr. Donut stall, and of course we had to buy some. Mr. Donut is the best donut place. Johnny can vouch for this; we pigged out on these donuts last time we were here. The "pon de rings" (which look like flowers or, to some perverse people, anal beads) are chewy in the center!

  Drool. The pon de rings are on the middle rack

  

  After Sogo, we let Jack run around a bit on an outdoor playground that we passed. Unfortunately, he wasn't used to the small play structure, which was basically a platform between two steep, covered slides. He's used to the sprawling crawl structures in the park at home, so he cried to get off of the structure. Instead, Jack delighted in the rocking horse.

  Yay, a park!

  

  I also took some scenery shots en route to Sogo.

  Motorcycles galore!

  

  

  Today, my mom, Jack and I went to another mall, the Miramar, close to where my parents live. For those of you who are familiar with Taipei, that's where the ferris wheel and the IMAX theater are. While we were there, we took Jack to get a haircut at a kids' haircuttery. Unfortunately, Jack cried from start to finish, even though this was his third haircut. Oh well. He's sure handsome now, though!

  Post-cut

  

  OK, so back to the mall -- after browsing a bit, we headed to the Carrefour (a Wal-Mart like place, but with independent retail stores on the bottom floor) across the street. There, I saw this sign in a bakery:

  

  Yes, folks, that does say "Obama Butter Bread," and yes, there is a reason why the bread is "black!" At first, I thought it was just a coincidence that the bakery had a brand of bread called Obama. But then I noticed the "Yes we can!" printed in English in the red circle, and I noticed that the line of Chinese below "Yes we can" translates to "Moving into and owning the White House," and that the line below that loosely translates to "Black frenzy." I thought it was so funny -- and cute -- that the bakery came out with a special line of "black bread" that "explodes with butter" (don't know what that means) to show its support of Obama. I was going to buy some, but then someone from the bakery came out and chastised me for taking a picture of the advertisement. Apparently that's not allowed. So then I got kind of annoyed, and we scurried from the scene.

  And tonight, my dad took us to an awesome beef noodle soup place. It was small, with only round chairs, and no high chairs, so we actually brought our own folding chair, onto which we could secure Jack's booster seat. It was so worth the extra effort, because Jack thoroughly enjoyed his meal of noodles and scallion pancake, washed down with a sippy cup of milk. This left me time to inhale a bowl of beef noodle soup, three bowls of hot and sour soup (I wouldn't normally have soup with soup, but the hot and sour soup was so good), and several pieces of scallion pancake.

  Here we are, waiting for our delicious food

  

  We had to share a round table with another family because seating was so scarce (pretty common practice here), and they also had a baby with them. Their baby, as per usual custom here, sat quietly on her mother's lap the entire time, not fussing or squirming, and eating nicely from her mom's spoon. The mom looked upon Jack's self-feeding (or rather, self-shoveling, in tonight's case) with a mixture of horror and admiration. Whatever, the other mom had to wait until her husband was done eating to really start digging into her food, whereas I ate from beginning to finish, so there. What I really want to know is how to get Jack to sit on my lap quietly for 30 minutes at a time, because gosh, that sure would be useful sometimes! Anyway, Jack enjoyed the scallion pancake so much that we ordered another one to go for tomorrow, and we got to watch it being made.

  Mmm, flaky and dripping with grease!

  

  In other news, as I'd hoped, Jack has picked up two more Mandarin words already: fruit and Grandpa. He also said "One, two, throw!" today -- something my mom and I say to him when tossing the ball back and forth. I can't wait to see what else he learns. However, one thing I'm not looking forward to is paci weaning. At home, he pretty much only had it for naps and bedtime, and long car rides. As you've probably noticed in the photos, though, here Jack demands it every time he's bored -- riding in the stroller, waiting for food in restaurants, etc. -- and certainly anytime he feels insecure, as when meeting new people. The result is that he has it so much of the time -- the only times he doesn't have it are when he's eating or playing. My plan is to take it away from him when we return from Taiwan, cold-turkey, as I tend to do so many of his other transitions, but I am not looking forward to it. I know the paci isn't a big deal, and frankly, it's convenient in public places, but you wouldn't believe the number of comments I get (probably because Jack looks older than his age) -- you'd think I was giving him crack or something. And, more importantly, I don't want Jack and baby boy to both have pacis. So, when we get home, I'm throwing away all the pacis to rid temptation (for both me and Jack) and buying earplugs for me and Johnny. I figure in a week or so, Jack will have forgotten the existence of the paci, like he did the existence of the bottle and the existence of swaddling when he was younger.

  OK, I didn't mean to get onto a paci tangent. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend, everyone!

  p.s. Sorry, one more thing. Some of you have asked about potty training while here. I did bring the Baby Bjorn toilet ring with me, and Jack's been pooping consistently on the potty here. Yay!

  • 8:07 am
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