A Special Taxi Moment

Today, I get in a taxi, outside of our apartment to go to the closest subway station. We drive about 5 minutes, if that, and the taxi drivers tells me in Chinese "wait a moment" as he pulls the car over to the side of the road and hops out. I am wondering "what in the world?!" at first thinking he got pulled over by a cop (which has also happened to me in a taxi here) - then as I whip my head around following him - he goes to the side of the street and zips down his pants - at that point I figure out what he's doing and go back to checking messages on my phone. He quickly hops back in the car and off we go. The things that make me go...hmmm...

Kids and Rock Band

Anthony brought this game home at Christmas - Rock Band. I thought it silly that we had to check a box to bring back that was just a game - we wrapped it up in garbage bags, made handles out of tape and checked it in as luggage (Anthony tried to claim it was a family heirloom!). It has turned out to be really fun though and we have friends who enjoy playing it too. We've had more than a few band gigs complete with 5 sleeping kids in the house! Somehow our kids are able to sleep through the guitar, the drums and the singing with no problems. They also enjoying playing on it too! The guitar is a bit too big for Ryken, but he loves strumming on it and Ashley is able to play the drums.

Our first Shanghai Concert

Last Sunday, we went to see Harry Connick Jr, live in Shanghai! It's the first concert we've been to here and we weren't sure what to expect. We ended up with the best seats in the house - front row, right in front of Harry and his piano. The concert was held in an international gymnastics competition gymnasium. We roughly figured that it could seat about 5000 and maybe half of it was full - so we think about 2500 people came to the concert. And it was almost ALL foreigners. There were quite a few surly looking "security guards" standing around who seemed to not have one musical bone in their bodies! The concert was ok - I will admit that I was a bit disappointed. Not all the instruments were used and there were relatively few solos played by band members. The concert almost seemed to have been cut short. There have been some rumblings that due to Bjorks outspokenness the week before, Harry and his band were censored quite a bit - what a downer!

Big Boy BED!

I put up the toddler bed yesterday - just to see how Ryken would do. He LOVES it. So far, he's taken 2 days of naps in it and one night. Last night, putting him to bed, he kept coming out of his room and getting up and playing with his toys in the dark. Everytime he came out of his room, I would tell him to go back to bed. This went on for about 30 minutes and I thought for sure he would need to go back in his crib to go to sleep. He didn't come out again and I went to check on him and he was lying in bed with his cars, almost asleep. He stayed in his bed with his cars and feel asleep - and slept all night! We'll see if it was just a fluke or if he is done with the crib! What a big boy!