Oh the fun we’ve had! In the past week Gracie has learned to crawl and has also managed to sit herself up in the process. So, the baby girl is now mobile. Thankfully she hasn’t mastered it well enough to shoot across the house, but she has no problem getting from one side of her play mat to the other. She also likes to play steamroller… one of my all time favorites! Our little girl is growing too fast. She learns something everyday. I’m just waiting for her to learn how to take a nap… in her bed!
We’ve been having some electrical problems lately. It is quite common for the power to go out and for things to break… so we weren’t too surprised when our door bell broke. You may be thinking “No Big Deal”, well when you live on the 6th floor and the door bell is the way you allow someone to enter the security door at the bottom it becomes a BIG DEAL! So, Matt had to trek down several times to let friends in, then one day he went some where and didn’t take the keys. When he returned Gracie was sleeping, so there was no way I could go down to let him in. He suggested I throw the keys out the window, so I did. Guess what – yep, one bent. And of course it was the key to the apartment. 90 degree angle; and when Matt tried to bend it back it snapped in two.
Finally a repair man came to fix the doorbell, which looks like a phone on the wall. When someone comes over they push our apartment # from outside the building and it rings obnoxiously loud until we answer, then we are supposed to be able to push a button and unlock the door downstairs. Our nanny was here so we asked her to tell him to make it ring a little softer so it wouldn’t wake the baby… They went into the baby’s room to look around??? Not sure why, then they came back out and he announced that we needed to line the curtains. Huh? Guess he thought we were asking for his advice. Thankfully he fixed the bell, but it still blares the little tune every time someone pushes our number.
Just for laughs, some naughty little girls thought it would be funny to push the foreigners’ bell and run… but Matt happened to be on the stairs and busted them. It was pretty funny, especially since that sounds like something I would have done at their age.
By the way, we did take the repair man’s advice. I had a black curtain made (it has a shiny lining to reflect the sun). Now Grace’s room is really dark during the day. She is sleeping a little better, but she still hates to take a nap during the day. At night, however, she sleeps well. By 7:30 she’s out! Last night she was sleeping peacefully and Matt and I were watching a movie. We heard a loud sound and Gracie started screaming. I wasn’t sure at first what had woken her… then Matt noticed that some nearby neighbors were shooting fireworks – at 10:00! It sounded like someone was shooting a gun. We had both forgotten how much Chinese people like fireworks. They shoot them off for every occasion it seems. I don’t know what was going last night, but about 5 minutes after we heard them on the front side of the building they started going off in the back as well. Grace didn’t mind so much once she was on Mommy’s lap.
We hope everyone out there is having as much fun as we are, if not, come for a visit! It’s always an adventure in our neck of the woods.
Love to all - Jenny
