November 28th

Sandstorm

China's newest expert to wreak havoc on the health of the world at large...sand. Their deforestation and damming have caused vast areas to turn into deserts. We now reap the benefits with literally clouds of sand blowing across the city. I have honestly never seen anything like it. I washed my scooter yesterday under perfect weather. Today, I walked out of the university after teaching a class for an hour and it was covered in a film of dust. When I came out of my school tonight, it looked like I had taken my scooter off-roading. There is probably about a hundred meter visibility right now.
Jonathon even had to go home because he went swimming in it and figures he sucked in too much of it from breathing hard.
He was having chest pains and couldn't take deep breaths.
Stupid China.

Anyways, at least my baby is still cute.

In the Garden

Crazy Month

Sorry for the long wait between blogs but October has been crazy thus far. Draidan had a really rough weekend. He started getting a fever on the Wednesday, so we took him to the doctor and she ran some tests and found he had a urinary tract infection. So they put him on some meds and he seemed to recover quickly but then on Friday night was starting not to feel well again. Jenny had arranged for me to get my belated father's day present Saturday night, which was a tattoo of Draidan's name over my heart.
(The typhoon killed our original father's day plan.) But we didn't want to take him to the tattoo shop how he was, so I went with Andrew instead, who kept my mind off the pain quite nicely.
When Drai woke up Sunday morning, he was not himself at all. He was lethargic, quiet and running a really high fever. We took him to a different clinic and they said to take him to the hospital immediately. Which we did. They ran a ton of tests and hooked him up to an IV right away. Which was a horrible thing to experience. We were in a pediatrics ward room with three beds and thankfully there was no one in there with us. So it was at least fairly quiet except for the kids screaming outside. It was a very long day but at about 11:30 Drai finally fell asleep. At 12:00 am we got new roommates who were absolutely awful. They burst in the door turned on the lights and started talking super loudly. This woke up Draidan who began screaming. Their son was also screaming. After about an hour, we finally got Drai to relax and go back to sleep, only to have him woken up by their loud cellphone rings every thirty minutes for the rest of the night. If they weren't talking loudly on their cellphone, the couple was arguing. Or rather, the husband was trash talking his wife. So none of us slept at all the first night. Literally. The next day was much of the same but a single room opened up and we paid extra to move into that one. It was a lot nicer but Draidan was so worn out and over tired that he was just miserable. He is so active, so to have him sit in a crib hooked up to needles in his arm was making him literally go insane. He was smashing his head against the crib, yowling away, slamming his wrapped up IV arm into the metal sides of the crib and screaming so much that he couldn't even breath. When we would try to feed him, he would throw up and twice he threw up on his IV arm, which they then had to redo to keep it sterile. (Which meant poking him again.) So he went another 16 hours with no sleep and finally I had had enough. He was trying to tear the needles out and biting at them. So I called the nurse in and explained that if we don't take the IV out, he is not going to sleep and he isn't going to get better without some rest. She argued about with me, so I told her to get the head nurse. She came in and did pretty much the same. She didn't want to do it either because they would then need to give him a shot every 4 hours. I said that was fine though because Drai only cries for one minute with a shot. (A hell of a lot better than 36 hours of IV crying) They still wouldn't do it but said they would ask the doctor. Ten minutes later, he tore the whole thing out and his hand started bleeding all over. So we ran out to get the nurse again and she finally took the IV out.
It was so cute afterward because they left and he held his hand up to me to show me. So I gave it a kiss and then he showed his mom. He then gave his hand back to me and started to smile. Then he started clapping and was out cold 20 minutes later.
So we finally got about 6 hours sleep that night. My school was awesome and gave me two days off to stay at the hospital with him. On Tuesday morning, they told us they would let him go home in the afternoon.

Since he has been home he has still been pretty quiet but sleeping a lot. Last night he slept almost 12 hours, which he has never done before. And he is out cold again 3 hours after getting up. He seems to be getting back to his normal self though. He is smiling and breaking things again. The little jerk managed to break our digital TV remote and two AC remotes in one month, which cost us almost $100 to buy new ones for. (The cheap ones don't work for the fancy appliances we have.)

Austin Powers aka. Mini Me

We have been having a busy couple weeks since Drai learned how to walk. He started doing it about a week before he turned 8 months. He then pretty much mastered it a week later and has since then kept us on the run constantly. No longer can we plop him in a chair or put him in a Jolly Jumper. He isn't having any of that. He just tears off at high speeds until his legs can't go any faster and then belly flops. This doesn't deter him though and he is up in seconds to do it all over again.

Beds are no obstacle for him now. He can climb in and out as he pleases. Which makes it all the more easy to slap my face or body slam me when I am trying to take a nap. It's pretty fun for the most part though. I took him to the park yesterday and got him up on the jungle gym for the first time. He found that quite fun but was already finding the more dangerous ways to play on things. Why sit on this when I can stand? Why go down this when I can climb up? He's definitely related to me.
Doh!

As most of you know from Facebook, I also gave him a haircut. Things started going awry almost immediately. Trying to cut an eight month old's hair wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. He kept moving his head to see what the buzzing sound was and I kept accidentally shearing off more than I wanted to. (We had decided to cut it because he was always really hot and sweats like crazy.) Finally, one side was so messed up that we thought, "Let's shave it into a Fauxhawk for fun." That was going well until the battery died on the clippers. So half-shaved we had to wait for the battery to recharge. That night, we got back to work but I forgot to adjust the setting on the razor and ended up bucking a huge patch right off. Long story short, he ended up with a real mohawk.
My mom was pissed when she saw it. She was ready to cry. I thought he looks bad ass. After her comments, I was terrified to hear what my father would say when he saw it. Much to our surprise, it didn't seem to phase him at all. So he has officially become the cool grandparent. Actually, everyone here really likes it. When I walk into a 7-11 they all call him the "cool baby."

I surprised Jenny with a new bike a couple of weeks ago, so she has been taking him around on that lately. I roller blade next to them and Drai seems to love it. When he gets in new situations though, he looks really intense. Not scared but totally taking everything in. We go to this market once a week which is just insane. Even for me it often sensory overload. Drai just sits on the bike checking everything out. People come up to him and tell him in Chinese that he is cute and he gives them the most hilarious dismissive facial expressions. I have never seen a baby make adults feel so stupid. They make all these cute clicking sounds and noises at him and he just rolls his eyes, cocks one eyebrow and tries to see what is going on behind them. Or he will look at me with a look on his face like, "Who the hell is this clown?"

If he knows who you are though, he is all smiles and hugs. These pictures are of him wearing an outfit that the neighbor gave us. Apparently he thinks I am British.

Bang Bang Clang

Kittens!

The quality isn't very good on this video. I was experimenting with a different output format.

Swimming with Uncle Mike