As summer is quickly approaching, I feel like my list of things to get done before we leave Beijing is only getting longer! These last few weeks have been so busy and crazy that I haven't really been able to accomplish much. Will has been having such a hard time with teething for two weeks now. I can see that little bugger of a tooth right beneath his gums and I can feel that it's almost out, but it just won't pop out! So for two weeks, Will has been waking up every 2-3 hours ALL NIGHT LONG. Joel and I are almost at the end of our emotional ropes. I started running low on infant Motrin about a week ago and started to ration it for when Will seemed to really be in a lot of pain. I almost brought enough to last me our whole stay here, and if I'd just brought one or two more bottles, we probably would have made it. But, I ran out three days ago so the last two nights have been terrible. He's had such a hard time falling asleep and he won't stay asleep for long. He just cries and chews on his fingers and drools everywhere. I felt so bad! I finally asked around our branch at church to see if there was anywhere I could buy imported infant pain meds and my wonderful friend Nicola had lots of extra bottles she brought with her from the States and happily gave me three bottles of infant Tylenol. So hopefully, our sleep deprivation will start to lessen in the next few days and we can all get some sleep around here.
Summer excitement is definitely spreading! (I've definitely caught some summer fever, I think I have a dream every night about going home) Most expats head home for the summer or on a long vacation somewhere fabulous. Bali, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines are some of the great destinations that are relatively close to China. When Joel and I first came to Beijing, we entertained the idea for a while (don't worry Mom, it was a VERY short while) of spending some of our summer vacation seeing more of Asia. But that didn't last very long. My dream destination for the whole summer is Utah. I honestly can't think of anywhere else I would rather spend my entire summer break. If it were feasible, I would love to spend my whole two months home in the mountains with our families. I just miss open spaces in nature and clean mountain air. I'm itching to go hop on my bike on a trail or climb a (really easy!) route with Joel. I have really enjoyed spending time in a big city, but it can be a little suffocating at times.
Summer should be pretty interesting here in Beijing, our church meetings quickly empty as June gets closer. Our branch usually combines with the other branches in the summer just to have enough people to hold a decent meeting. Joel is the Elder's Quorum president now and will probably have to preside over a few sacrament meetings before he heads home just because there will be no one else there to do it.
I wanted to share our latest "I can't believe we live here" moment that we had last week. It had me doubting our whole entire move here and left me absolutely furious:
Tap water here is not drinkable. The government has labeled it as "safe" to drink, but no one does. Everyone buys bottled water or pays to have a filtration system installed. The tap water has all kind of heavy metals and probably some other contaminants as well. Our apartment building provides every apartment with a water dispenser and then you can buy the refill jugs of purified water from the front desk for a pretty reasonable price. So about every 3 or 4 days, we call down to the front desk and have a new jug delivered. They bring it to our door, remove the empty jug, and install the fresh jug of water. Well, I had recently heard from a few other moms that there was a website where you could check the serial number of each jug of water to verify that it was authentic water from Nestle and not an old Nestle jug that was just refilled with tap water and then re-sold by a dishonest distributor.
I found the website and wanted to check our water, but I felt certain that our apartment would make sure to have authentic purified water available, I only wanted to be 100% sure that our water was clean. The website was all in Chinese but by using Google Translate, I was able to figure it out. When you put in the serial number, you should get a manufactured and an expiration date, letting you know that you do indeed have the real deal. But, when I checked our serial number, I did not get a manufacture date but instead got a message (in Chinese, I had to copy and paste the characters into Google translate. Love Google!!) telling me to call a phone number for assistance. I was furious, I was certain that that meant that our water was not authentic. I checked and rechecked the number, inputting it multiple times hoping that I had made a mistake. My mind was racing, I was thinking about how I had used that same water to make all of Will's formula from the day we had moved here and how we could all have been drinking contaminated water for the last 9 months. I called Joel and almost started to cry on the phone because we had unwittingly been giving Will unclean water for most of his little life. We have a neighbor who speaks good English and Chinese and he accompanied me to the front desk to explain my grievance (The staff all began to panic as well because they drink the same water!). They ran the serial number on the website and got the same message to call the phone number but when they called, the company gave them a manufactured date and the expiration date. I have never been so relieved in all of my life as I was in that moment. (I'm not sure why that particular number didn't work online but I have been checking all of our jugs since then and I haven't had any problems checking the serial numbers on the website.) Clean, drinkable water is something I will never take for granted again for the rest of my life!
I mentioned in my last blog post that our friend Kimi works booking models for photographers and needed a child model for a project and asked us if we would be interested. She got back with me early this week and told us that the original photo shoot fell through but she now needed a foreign baby to be in a commercial and that Will was the only foreign baby she knew. I was a little reluctant because I had no idea what to expect but it ended up being a fun (and sometimes really difficult) experience. It took two days and the filming crew had clearly never worked with children before. They were very patient and kind but didn't really understand the special needs that a baby has, namely nap time. We started early and by the time lunch came around on the first day, Will was ready to hit the hay but the director was certain that a 10 minute nap on the floor would set little Will right. Right, like my baby is just going to go lay down and go to sleep on your hard floor and be bright and chipper after only 10 minutes. Like I said, they had clearly never worked with kids before. Will takes a three hour nap every afternoon and without it, he's a total bear. I can't even get him to sleep in his stroller, let alone a hard floor with people running around everywhere. Kimi had to translate for me to the director, but she finally convinced him to let us go and start again the next morning.
I didn't figure out what the commercial was for until almost the end of the second day, I guess it was a Sony phone commercial. The last thing we had Will do was take the phone, put it in the washing machine and close the door. It took quite a bit of teaching, but he figured it out and it turned out really cute. The downside is that now we've taught him that phones belong in the washing machine....
It was a totally random, very Chinese, experience. Will had to wear this ugly tank top with a dinosaur skull on it and our footage might not even make the commercial but they paid us and said to watch Chinese TV in two weeks when it comes out. So we'll see!
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| This is the photographer trying to get a still photo of Will playing with the Sony phone but he just was not interested! He only wanted to go walk around. |
Will is a full-blown walker now. He toddles around the apartment with his Frankenstein-ish walk. It really crept up on us! He took his first real steps before he turned one, but he wouldn't really walk anywhere without holding our hands and then, bam! All of a sudden, he wants to walk everywhere. I still forget that he can walk and am constantly having to move things from off the edge of the table or the counter because he can how reach them.
PS We'll be home in one month from now. Woo-hoo!!!
