Saturday, January 27, 2007

Memory Loss

What happens when Anthony and the ayi are both out of town? Well, I think I go crazy. I realize that with each child I have given birth to, I have lost a part of my brain. I wonder if it will ever come back – the intelligence, memory and patience I used to have – ok, maybe not patience, I don’t know that I’ve ever been a very patient person, but still, it must be the kids that have made it worse!

We needed new pots and pans – we were using ones I bought back in Taipei from IKEA – the cheapest set they had – I think I paid about 10 US for 3 pots. They were starting to flake off into our food, so it was time to buy more. After visiting IKEA three times to get new pans (the first time, I forgot that’s what I was there for – see, the memory thing – the second time, they were doing inventory and the pots and pans were blocked off with no access for customers, argh), I have already burned 2 of them! In one week. First, I put some carrots in water to make them soft for Ryken to eat – and promptly forget they were there until I smelled something funny – luckily I caught them in time and there was just a small layer of burnt stuff in the bottom. The pan was at least salvageable. But on the second pan, I was washing dishes and decided I should probably boil Ryken’s bottle tops and bottle nipples since he’s using them often now. I put the water to boil, added the bottle stuff and went to play with the kids. Ryken was a bit fussy, so I put him down for a nap and by then, the girls were playing so well together in the play room, I thought I could finally sit and read a book and relax for a few minutes. I was reading and didn’t notice a thing, until the fire alarms started going off. Smoke was rising from the kitchen – the water had boiled out, the bottle top rings had melted and there was smoke everywhere. Needless to say, Ryken woke up screaming in fright from the fire alarms and my few minutes of peace were no longer! I had just completely forgotten that I’d put them on to boil!

Friday, January 26, 2007

Australia, the Rest

Ok, so it’s now January 26, 2007, and I never got to finish my posting about our trip to Australia. To make a LONG story short. Lady Elliot Island was amazing! Gorgeous weather, amazing sights and sounds. Birds nesting, birds hatching, turtles nesting – Ashley and I got to see a HUGE turtle lay eggs one night and Anthony got to see two different turtles build nests but he doesn’t think they laid any eggs in them. The snorkeling was amazing – seeing lots of fish, coral and turtles. We swam with turtles – turtles as big as Ashley – even bigger, how amazing is that? Anthony went scuba diving and saw a shark – that was cool. We also saw a HUGE ray at the bottom of the ocean floor while snorkeling. I have no idea how big he was, but I would guess about 8 feet wide. The girls had fun too, playing with the kids club “Reef Rangers”, playing in the sand and checking out all the things in the water on the coral reef.

We left Lady Elliot Island after 5 days and went to Fraser Island, which is just south of Lady Elliot Island. It is a very large sand island – nothing else, just sand – not exactly true – they also have dingos and some cool rock formations and a neat shipswreck called the Maheno. It is here where Ryken has an accident, we have to quickly pack up our stuff and take the ferry back to Hervey Bay (which takes an hour) and find the hospital to get him checked out. He bonked his head (his nose/upper lip area) really hard and since it was a head injury, we needed to get him looked at. He wouldn’t eat as it was causing him a lot of pain. They gave him some meds, then watched him for a few hours. We found a new hotel for the night and stayed there. The next day, we drove to Brisbane and stayed the night there, since we didn’t want to be far away from a hospital for 48 hours after the accident. He was soon back to normal and we weren’t worried anymore.

Our final place to visit in Australia was Lamington National Park at O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat. This is about a 2 hour drive south of Brisbane. It was absolutely stunning up there and we really enjoyed walking the trails and seeing nature at it’s finest. They have a wonderful treetop walk which is all suspension bridges linked together above the trees – it’s pretty cool and the kids loved it.

All in all, we had a great trip. I thought Australia was great – people were friendly and helpful. The best part of all – so many places had baby bathrooms – rooms where there were nursing chairs and baby changing areas and hot water for bottles and clean sinks and sometimes even little potties for the little kids. It was just brilliant! Really made me see how child friendly Australia is and how unchild friendly China is!

Australia here we come...

January 10, 2007
My first post of the new Year! And it’s already the 10th of January. Wow. We had a wonderful holiday in Australia! It’s been my dream to go to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef for many, many years. Although it wasn’t exactly in my dream to take 3 kids along on the trip, that’s life, though, isn’t it. Better with 3 kids than never going at all! It was a long flight there, although overnight, so the kids did sleep. Ryken was in a carseat, which is so much easier on planes than having to hold him. We arrived in Sydney on the morning on the 17th. We stayed at a hotel in Darling Harbour. For the first day, we mainly just walked around, trying to find diapers and baby food and checking out Darling Harbour area. We found Sydney to be very expensive food wise and grocery wise, at least compared to the States.

On the 18th, we shopped most of the day. I was in heaven with all the stores! It was wonderful, although I must say, would have been much more wonderful had we not had kids who were completely bored and tired of walking and just wanting to play. To satisfy their appetite for fun, we stopped at a mall called Myer, where we saw that there was a Santaland train. The girls got to ride the train and look at all the Christmas decorations. Santa was also visiting Myer mall, but due to Liz’s complete fear of the man in red and white, we didn’t get to see him. After shopping, we went up the to Sydney Observation Tower and go to see Sydney from high up in the air. It was pretty cool and amazing how far you could see, along with how green and pretty everything is. Definitely a sight for sore eyes after being in polluted Beijing. After the observation tower, we took the kids to the Sydney Aquarium, where we got to see lots of fish, sharks, rays and even a croc.

On the 19th, our first stop was to the doctor, Liz had a UTI and needed to get some antibiotics. Fast, efficient and cheap, we were happily on our way after about an hour. We visited Taronga Zoo by taking a ferry from Darling Harbour over to the zoo and sightseeing along the way. It was windy and a bit chilly, so the sky ride (a gondola from the ferry dropoff up to the top of the zoo) was closed. The zoo was beautiful, with amazing views of Sydney from lots of places in the zoo. It started to cloud over and sprinkle a bit, so we headed back to Darling Harbour on the ferry. Once there, we went to a fancy seafood restaurant and had a good meal, while Ashley ran outside in the rain trying to scare people with her lion mask on. It was hilarious and I think she managed to scare a few people, along with make a few people laugh.

On the 20th, it was time to depart Sydney and fly to Lady Elliot Island via Hervey Bay. We had to get up early for our early flight, so we ate breakfast at the Sydney airport – we had Krispy Kreme donuts! YUM! What a treat. The flight to Hervey Bay was uneventful, although they wouldn’t let us take Ryken’s carseat as it hadn’t been preapproved and it wasn’t an Australian carseat brand (that was frustrating). Once in Hervey Bay, we waited for our flight to Lady Elliot. At boarding time, they came and got us and walked us past security and to the tiny 14 seater plane. Guess when you’re flying on something that small, no additional security measures are needed. The flight was about 45 minutes and the island was absolutely gorgeous from above. Amazing. I was so excited to get down and check it out.