Back on the Rock Update

Not too much new to report. Drai is starting to pull himself up on everything. And loving it. He can now crawl from our living room into the Japanese room. (Which is on a different level that the living room floor.) Every time he does pull himself up, he gets this cocky smile on his face and then laughs. Today, we were laying in bed and because of the heat, I didn't have a shirt on. He was standing triumphantly over me with his hands on my chest, smile stretched ear to ear as he had just pulled himself up to a standing position. He then lost his balance and fell backwards, taking a handful of chest hair with him. My god it hurt!

On Wednesday, Jenny brought him to my school to see the teachers. Jon was upstairs teaching and didn't know we were coming. So I took Draidan upstairs, placed him in front of the classroom door, knocked and hid around the corner. The class was a typical grade 3 class. Loud. Excited. Chaotic. Jon opened the door and the whole room went totally silent. Drai looked up at Jon and smiled and Jon just let out a "Huh?!" He hadn't see Drai in 4 months and didn't even know it was my baby. God, I wish I had a camera in that room to see the look on their faces when they saw the baby waiting at the door. I think some of them thought he had knocked.

He then showed everyone his dancing and jumping prowess. Much to the laughter of the kids. Draidan loves kids and isn't shy at all. I stood him on the desk in the front of class and he just began jumping up and down beaming at all the students.
He managed to tire out Zoya and Sharon's arms.

I have had a rough welcome back to Taiwan. The flight back finished off my back. And my knee started to seize up as well. Upon further inspection by my physiotherapist, I was told that my PCL in my knee is almost gone. So I am supposed to start wearing a brace to put off having to have it replaced. (Chalk another injury up to my list.) As some of you know, just before I left, a doctor noticed something strange on my pelvis while X-raying my lumbar. So he ordered a Bone Scan, which is when you get injected with a radioactive material and they scan your body. Similar to an MRI but this gives them a complete 3D visual of your skeleton. It then shows where bone injuries are. So I got my results last week and it turns out I have an "Active Bone Lesion" on my pelvis. The doctors are pretty confident that it is not cancerous but they ordered an MRI done to see what it is and how to remove it best. I am a little worried about that because I think it will involve cutting it out of the bone.
My big toe also stopped bending. WTF? Then, to top it all off, I have an infection in my bowels which has caused me endless grief and hospital visits but I think is better now.
I get my MRI results back next Tuesday. I am feeling good about it though. I think it will be fine.

Then, our lawsuit finally settled. Or so we thought. Long story short, a wealthy real estate guy sold us stolen property that didn't belong to him. It belonged to the strata council of our building. He owned most of the floor but not all of it. They never used that area, so he cut it into apartments. So for two years we have been in a class action suit over it with three other people who bought places on the floor. In the face of the evidence and witnesses which included, all four families involved in the lawsuit, two real estate companies, the strata council, building security and the police collaborating our story, the judge couldn't decide who was in the right. Moron. So she said we had to hire government architects to come in and measure the place and look at the blue prints etc. This cost us $3000 each for what literally took them 5 minutes to do. She would then base her decision on what they said. The architects took 5 months to give us our report but when they did we were totally delighted as they said he owed us about $10000 CDN more than we were sueing him for.
So finally the judge, with their report in her hand, finished the lawsuit. Her decision, not only does he not have to pay us a dime, but we have to pay him about $7000 of the money he lent us to buy the property he stole. Her reasoning... we are teachers and should have known better that to buy stolen property. Huh?! She said we should have reviewed the blue prints better before buying it.

She didn't even seem to think the fact that he switched all of his numerous properties into other people's names the day after he found out about the lawsuit was odd. She literally disregarded every piece of evidence given and sided with the crook.
I was furious and the first thing I said was, "She got bought out. He bribed her." To which Jenny replied, "That is what the neighbors and lawyers are saying too." I knew the judiciary and pretty much everything else in this place is corrupt but this just blew me away. So we are now deciding whether to appeal and take it to a hire court, which will cost even more money and time. I don't think I could handle paying this guy another cent though. It goes against every fiber in my body. So frustrating.

Oh well. At least I got a cute baby.

A Month of Firsts

Draidan had a busy month which included his...
- First time riding on a plane.
- First time meeting his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
- First time trying to steal papa’s whiskey.
- First time crawling.
- First time pulling himself up on things.
- First time climbing over things. (scary)
- First time sitting unsupported.
- First time eating solid food.
- First time standing up unsupported. (He was sitting in the middle of the living room and suddenly, much to my surprise, swung his feet under himself and stood straight up. He then promptly fell straight as a board onto the marble floor, which made a huge thump as his head whacked the floor. Much crying ensued and he hasn’t tried that again.)
- First time peeing on his cousin.
- First time bouncing in a jolly jumper. (Now a pro.)
- First time getting denied by a girl. (He tried to put the moves on Elicia’s gorgeous baby Delia, which consisted of grabbing her red hoodie and pulling her face towards his open drooling mouth. She wasn’t having it and pushed him away.) Ironically, this is the same move I used to try on her mother.



Denied!!

Babies are for Bouncing

Canada Trip- A Short Retelling

Well…what a trip. First off, let me apologize to those of you that I didn’t have time to see. I was so happy to see half of you anyways but wish we had longer to catch up. So many people… so little time. I was so jetlagged for the first half of the trip that I felt like I didn’t get a chance to really talk with most of you. I was kind of wandering around in a dream state. We were jetlagged and the baby was jetlagged. So when we would try to sleep, he would wake up and vice versa. Long story short, I didn’t do have the stuff I was planning to do.
Shawnigan Lake was great. We had beautiful weather and I actually beat my dad twice at crib which is next to impossible. I finally got to spend some time with my half sister Heather and her boys. I can’t remember their names. Zack and Little Tony I believe. Anyways, her and I are so much alike it is scary. Up until this trip, I had spent maybe a grand total of 8 hours with her my entire life. But we have so much in common. We even like the same whiskey. Clay flew out to meet us too which was awesome. As you probably saw below, I rewarded his love of family by tossing a snake on him whilst hung over.
We were so happy to have Aidan, Peter the Gay, dadd, James and Jennifer at Draidan’s Welcome to Canada party. Aidan flew out from Alberta on Friday to see us and within minutes had us laughing hysterically as he made inappropriate comments about our children. At one point looking at Sullivan, who was puttering by making his trademark “Mum mum mum mum” noise and saying, “What’s wrong with that freak?!” A couple of minutes later, he pointed out how Drai has a hairy forehead and drools too much. When he opened his luggage we were a little sad to see that he hadn’t packed any costumes or props. An odd thing for him but in true Aidan form, he later busted out a pair of the tightest short shorts a man could fit into and put them on. Then, after very little coaxing, ran over to the neighbor’s house, who he had only met briefly two years ago and danced provocatively outside her window. He then tossed her in the sprinkler when she came out, which wasn’t part of the plan but Darcee is hilarious and just rolled with it. Ahhh life is never boring when there is an Aidan about.
For those of you that didn’t hear… it was a great party. James, Jennifer and I started drinking at about 1 O’Clock and the day whizzed by as more and more relatives and friends showed up. I really adore my relatives. They are all total characters. Some almost cartoon like. About 40 people came and the weather was perfect. Around dusk, things apparently took a turn for the worse. I don’t remember any of it and only have some knowledge of the events due to the stories relayed to me from others and photos. Many of which I took myself but have no memory of doing. As my mom put it, I knew it was going to be trouble when James and you started following me around asking to let the chickens out. ‘Mom. Can we let the chickens out? Can we? How about now? Can we let out the chickens? There are no eagles. Can we let them out?’ You were like a couple of seven year olds.” Then, my mother’s evil neighbors, busted out the Absinthe. Not fake Absinthe. The real McCoy. Czech Republic 70% Worm Wood Absinthe. Chris and I had taken a shot of it the night before and now with about 12 hours of whiskey in me, James, Chris and I started downing more of it. James informed me that I also drank more of his because he couldn’t finish it. 20 minutes and almost half a bottle later, Chris is wearing a silver halter top and a toilet paper cozy on his head. I felt fine and eventually went to bed. I awoke around 5am shaking uncontrollably and vomiting. Long story short, James and I both had one of the worst hangovers of our lives. (Karma for the snake in Clay’s bed?) Mine lasted until about 8 O’clock at night. It sucked because my visit with Peter pretty much consisted of him sitting on the deck with me the next morning watching me tremble as I tried to eat a piece of toast. He would then comment on how nicely tanned my feet were or how I needed to trim my nails. Occasionally, we would see James walk slowly by like a zombie looking for more brains. I don’t know what it was about that Absinthe but literally every muscle in my body was tensed up and felt like someone had beat me with a baseball bat. Peter would just giggle and say, “Poor Danny.” I then left him to go puke up my piece of toast. Needless to say, no more hard alcohol was consumed for the remainder of the trip. Peter gave Drai a Dolce and Gabbana jacket that probably costs more than any jacket I even own. Gotta love the Peter. Poor James then had to drive 3 hours south to Victoria with that hangover. I almost felt sorrier for Jennifer having to drive him. That must have been a quiet trip back but I am SO happy they came.
So anyways, Sunday was a total write off. I did nothing and was then angry at myself for wasting a precious day of my vacation. My initial plan was to go get a new tattoo that day but it wasn’t in the cards. My “Norm 4 Eva” tattoo will just have to wait.
We got to see Nate in Vancouver before we left, too. The flight was long. Almost 13 hours. Draidan did well but got fussy a couple of times. He probably cried for a total of 45 minutes during the trip. Which isn’t too bad for a 5 month old. When we arrived in Taipei at around 3:30 am, we were sad to see that it was too early for the HSR (Bullet Train), so we were stuck waiting in the airport for another 3 hours. I hadn’t slept in almost two days and was exhausted. Luckily, I had bought those “No Jetlag” pills before I left, which helped me recover quickly. I love those things. The HSR back to Tainan was great. I love riding that train. It is so comfortable, quiet and fast. Well, quiet until Draidan decided he was fed up with traveling. It has been almost two days of non-stop transit and or waiting to transit. Luckily, we were almost home.
My back did alright. It is quite sore now though. I am back in physio and he says my progress has regressed a lot. So I am doing way less weight in traction.
I want to get back to the pool this week but it is hard because I am so crazy busy in the mornings and work all night. I will figure it out though.
Anyways, that is a really condensed version of our trip. I can’t sit long enough to give you a huge retelling.
Bye!

Super Baby

A Couple of Videos