THIRTEEN months

I had intended on taking some really cute Valentine themed pictures to celebrate Sal's 13th month, but his one-year-old molars put a dent in the plans. Poor kid has two molars and two incisors emerging all at once. He's a trooper, but his willingness to pose for mama to take ridiculous pictures is lacking.

 

Can't say I blame him.

 

Aside from cutting teeth, he is getting more and more confident with walking, however, we still can't claim that he "walks". He can, he just doesn't.

 

Instead, he prefers to crawl on all fours with speed that would put Jeff Gordon or any other NASCAR driver to shame. The kid has wheels! He has also perfected this one legged scoot as pictured below. It's the cutest darned thing and he does it all the time.

 

Who needs to walk when you can scoot like me?

 

 

When he isn't crawling or scooting, he's furniture moving.

 

All. Day. Long.

 

Twenty bucks says that his college job is working for Meathead Movers. As I've blogged before, I think our neighbors are counting down the days til he gets over his chair moving infatuation.

Mama, Why I can't move furniture inside?

 

And when he isn't moving chairs, he's climbing. He has mastered the sofa, the patio chairs, and now the window seat in our bedroom. I know the day is coming when he will show up at our bedside after climbing out of his crib.

Breakdancing? Yoga?
Nope. Climbing up mom and dad's window seat.

It's been really cold here, and our household just rotated through illnesses, so the month of January found us indoors most of the time. We tried some easy toddler art projects--some with success, others--not so much. My favorite activity was blue crayon eating. I know I should have been stern, but that big blue toothy grin just melted my heart.

Ziploc mess free painting

 

Sal is still a great eater, polishing off half of a filet mignon, devouring eggs for breakfast and our little lefty is getting some hand control with the spoon.  Wuxi finally has strawberries and tangerines, and he LOVES both. He'd eat his weight in tangerines if we'd let him. He has mastered the sport top sippy cups, and now drinks milk. We're still doing nap time and bedtime bottles, but hope to transition out of bottles altogether in the next month or two.

He has started to transition out of the morning nap, which makes me a little sad ( I'll have to change my workout/shower routine), but he has exchanged it for a long afternoon nap, so I really shouldn't complain. Some mornings he still needs that morning snooze, but I foresee those coming to an end really really soon.

New words this month are "Uh oh" and something that sounds like " Duuuuuude" which cracks me up. He says it all the time. Guess that just proves that you can take the boy out of California but you can't take California out of the boy.

Kickin it off with a bang

Today is Saturday.

And as with most holiday weeks, this means that NZ headed back to the office today, to make up for the time he and his employees had off to celebrate the Lunar New Year. The fireworks around our apartment building have finally slowed down, and I can't say I miss them.

We've had enough fireworks to last us many many years, and there's a good possibilty that next Chun Jie, the Zentil's of Wuxi will not be in Wuxi. Yep--we may skip town like everyone else, and holiday somewhere where fireworks are illegal. Our poor cat. I think I swept up a coat's worth of fur this last week. Where's my ayi when I need her? On holiday of course. Fireworks and thirteen year old cats do not mix. We owe him many sweet snuggles when he finally emerges from his bunker behind our bed.

With the beginning of the New Year over here, and today being the first day back to work for many companies, it's customary to you guessed it, light fireworks. The fireworks symbolize the hope for a prosperous New Year, with good fortune for the business.

take a look at all them 'crackers!



Light em up

group effort. Even the driver is lighting some

Here are the fireworks that NZ's company set off this morning upon arrival to the office.  May this year be full of prosperity and good business!

Cabin fever

It's been great having NZ home this week. Sweats have been the norm--we've really only ventured out a couple of times due to the weather. We've caught up on some Deadliest Catch episodes that finally downloaded (one episode took FOUR days to download due to slooooow Internet connections), finished Parks and Rec and are darn near done with United States of Tara...to be honest, we watch wayyy too much tv here. Way more than ever before.

There's not a whole lot more for us to do.

Our hobbies back home aren't really compatible with our life here.

Surfing requires and ocean. Or at the very least, clean water and a swell. Sewing requires a sewing machine...which I could buy here but quilting fabric is not readily available anywhere near me. So, it just doesn't make sense to buy a sewing machine if I have no access to materials to sew. We both enjoy cooking, which is the one thing we've been able to continue to do while here. Ingredients are few and far between, so we can't get too fancy (still looking for Italian sausage), but we have managed to make many things like bagels and tortillas that are either not available to us, or too expensive to reason buying.

We stay home a lot. Most of the time we enjoy not having anything on the agenda, but after weeks like these, where we have unfavorable weather and limited access to a vehicle we end up with a mad case of cabin fever.

We fixed that today with a call to our driver, and a trip to HongMei market (we call it "stuff mart") to buy Sal a few new toys. After upgrading his collection with a few big boy toys, we enjoyed brick oven pizzas at one of our favorite expat restaurants.


A day out with my boys was just what the Doctor ordered.

Happy Valentines, all!

A letter to....

On Friday, Sal and I hopped in the elevator to meet up with our friends. I chuckled as I read the notice that had been posted.



Posted in the elevator



And then it dawned on me.

I think the letter is addressing....

..us!

You see, Sal loves to move furniture. He really does. He moves anything he can push. The sofa chaise, the coffee table, kitchen chairs, his high chair---and this is like his FAVORITE thing to do when he gets up every day.

And what time might that be?

Yep.

Between 7:00-8:00am.

mama, I think this chaise looks better over there.

I don't know who's moving chairs late night--we can't be to blame for that one...but the morning complaints might just be aimed at the 25th floor.

Until someone knocks on our door to complain face to face, I've decided that I will let my son get his kicks off moving chairs.

Spin Art Valentines

So easy, a 12 month old can do it!

I don't know about other moms out there, but I can not wait for Sal to be old enough to enjoy "projects". I have failed at tried a few age appropriate ideas off pinterest and my little guy either had no interest what-so-ever, or the "mess free" chinese ziploc wanna be  Ziploc baggie full of paint leaked all over the place, looking like a rainbow threw up on my floor/baby/highchair/clothes.

Anyways, I saw an idea for spin art with toddlers. Sal loves to play with our salad spinner while I am in the kitchen, so I knew he had the motor skills and coordination for this one. With Valentines day around the corner, and no Hallmark stores or scrapbooking supplies in sight, I decided we would try and make our own spin art hearts.

I had some left over cardstock that my sister had mailed me ( for Sal's Birthday bunting banner), so I cut out some 3" hearts. The only paints I have are chinese poster paints with a really thick  consistency. I picked out three "boy" colors ( Oh, I know, I'm feeding into societal norms), and diluted the paints with a bit of water so that they could be dropped from an old dropper I had on hand.

I let Sal pick up each heart and instructed him to put it in his spinner. He is really good with one step instructions these days. I then sucked up a little paint into the dropper and gave it to him, showing him how to squeeze paint out onto his heart. I put the lid onto the spinner and just let him go to town spinning the handle round and round.

We continued this method for each heart, and amazingly enough, the kid had a long enough attention span to make eight Valentines.

Not too bad for an almost-13-month-old.

And, best part of it for me?

Mess free.

Chun Jie

By the sound of the fireworks outside our window right now ( it's 7:45p on Saturday night), the celebration of the Lunar New Year has officially begun.

front row seats on the 25th floor

NZ is off this next week for Chun Jie, as it is a government approved holiday week. It will be nice to have him home, although we don't have our driver at our disposal this week, as he is with family, enjoying the holiday. We've been told to expect the new District, where we live, to be a bit deserted ( you won't hear us complain!), and that many restaurants and shops will close for a few days.

NZ picks a line. We always pick the slowest one!

We stocked up at the local super megastore earlier this week, and man it was a zoo! This morning we walked to the produce market and many vendors had already closed down for holiday. Thankfully, our fruit lady was open, so we stocked Sal up on his fruit of the week--cutie tangerines. That boy eats so many tangerines he might just turn orange! Heaven forbid he go a few days without his beloved cuties.

fireworks stand by the produce market

As for our plans while NZ is off?

Nada.

Well, not exactly nada.

We plan some long leisurely walks once the weather warms up ( it should get warmer as the week progresses--we had snow and -5c yesterday), and I plan on continuing my 30 day shred video ( I'm on day 15/30) and might just get NZ to try it with me. We're hoping to grab some noodles with friends, and just enjoy having time to do nothing.

Maybe next year we will leave the firework madness of Chinese New Year, and holiday somewhere where we can get sand between our toes, saltwater in our eyes and a real good tan.

Did I just describe California?

Why yes, I think I did.

Dora speaks Chinese

I've been sicker than I've been In along long time since Friday night. I'm thankful that NZ has been home over the weekend to tend to the boy, as I was in no condition to do so until late yesterday afternoon. We woke this morning, and I could tell he was still worried about leaving me alone with the boy while he heads to work- but, I think I am on the mend..just slow.

Anyways, we don't let Sal watch tv, or haven't really, yet. But with my reaction time still being a bit slow, and hoping to have a nice easy morning, I turned on Nickelodeon for the first time.

And guess what?

Our Dora the explorer speaks three languages! Move over NiHao Kailan! Dora's trilingual. Bowl cut girl speaks Chinese, Spanish and English. Our Dora program is dubbed in Chinese and she teaches the kids Spanish. If we couldn't confuse our poor kid anymore, lol.

It gave a me a good laugh this morning, which I could definitely use.