Uncle Robert's Visit & Spring Festival Celebrations!: Feb 3-Feb 13

Spring Festival (also called Chinese New Year) was Feb. 10th this year. Many people in China have several days off work surrounding the holiday and many people travel to visit family. This year for Spring Festival, we had family visit too.

Kim's brother, Robert, is working in Henan province this year and was able to visit us in Anhui! It's a 12 hour trip by train (and bus) between his city and ours - and Robert's first time riding the trains by himself in China. The train arrived late in the evening, just enough time to welcome Robert, eat some late dinner and go to bed!

Uncle Robert and Connor meet. Feb 3

Christian cooked  dinner for everyone... a new dish he invented mixing some Chinese style and Western style cooking skills and tastes.

Peppery potato and beef si. Feb 3

It's fun to have good food with Robert mainly because we like a lot of the same things... like pizza. Somehow though, we always seem to forget that Robert doesn't like spicy food... So another awesome dinner Christian prepared didn't get rave reviews.

Another of Christian's Western/Chinese fusion creations.
We call this one Southwestern Chicken Ding or Southwestern Ji Ding.
"Ding" refers to the cut of the chicken. (boneless cubes) Feb 10

 Also, our city has access to more Western food than the city Robert lives in so he was able to eat a lot yummy things he'd been missing.

The best lunch out was at Habitat Coffee which we'd discovered a few weeks before during Clancy's visit. With Robert, we ordered a huge amount of food and ice cream. Feb 6

A big lunch!

Just two guys, having a good time.

The page of the menu that listed these icecream desserts
was titled "The Ice is Happy Sundae." I don't know if the ice
was happy, but we were after eating so much good food!

We don't have photos of it, but we also ate at Pizza Hut one night with Robert which is a nice treat. We also didn't get photos of the chocolate chip cookies we made while Robert was here... mainly because Robert was here so the cookies literally disappeared as they came out of the oven.

Hanging out & general time at home
We spent a lot of time at home hanging out and playing with Connor. This was super great because it was cold outside and Kim was still sick with a terrible cough. It was really cool catching up with Robert and getting his impressions on his first year living in China.

Connor shows off his new hat.  A gift from our old
friend, Shirley, in Henan province.

 Christian and Robert relaxing on a lazy day...

Showing off toe touching expertise. 

Christian and Connor play together. Feb 6

We'd been doing a lot of play time with Connor propped up in his boppy pillow while he works on building muscles to support himself sitting up on his own.

Connor loves his "mommy loves me" onesie!
Okay, so maybe he's really oblivious, but
Mommy likes to see him wear it!

Feb 6th marked Connor's 5 month "birthday"! We weren't required to, but we took him to the doctor's to have him weighed, measured and checked out (not "checked out" like a book at the library, but "checked out" like looked over for general health) just to make sure he was okay. 

We were given the new stats:

65 cm long --- 25.5 inches -&- 7.5 kg --- 16.5 lbs
which is between 25-50th percentile.
(But he's okay - posting this far behind schedule makes this kind of news not scary)

Connor is going to get you! Feb 7

It was a lot of fun playing and hanging out. We had a blast showing Connor off to Uncle Robert and Connor did a great job of looking super adorable. 

Robert and Connor being hilarious. Feb 10

Something new happened while Robert was here... Connor got TEETH!

Connor teething. Feb 8

Poor Connor cried and cried from the pain of teething. We'd never heard him cry that much and that loudly before. Three days of Robert's visit were full of tears from baby Connor.

This tearful photo was snapped in an awkward instant just as he started crying. It is still surprising how quickly a baby can go from happy to crying to happy again.

Connor gets relief from his Haba ring. Feb 8

Connor kindly lets us photograph his new teeth.
Feb 13

In some parts of China, and this is true for the city we live in, there is a custom about a baby's first tooth/teeth. When a baby gets their first tooth, and it is only one tooth, the sister of the baby's father should buy the baby his first pairs of shoes. If the babies first teeth come in and it is two teeth at the same time, the sister of the baby's mother should buy the baby his first pair of shoes. This makes Connor super lucky since his mom has four sisters! (We are still waiting for the shoes though... maybe they don't know about this custom?)

And now for something completely different

Spring Festival -- Chinese New Year -- Year of the Snake

February 10th was Chinese New Year - Connor's first... and the first time Robert would be in China for the celebration. We spent time in the evening setting off fireworks with the a yi's (aunties / the people who care for our building) that we've made friends with. Some fireworks we set off on the evening of Feb 10 and we set off more with them on Feb 12th. Robert went back to Henan on Feb 11th.

Xiao Song with Connor who is clutching
his first red envelope.  Feb 10

Kim with a sparkler. Xiao Song is holding
Connor in the background. Feb 10

 So many fireworks!!

During Spring Festival we were very pleased to be able to visit a friend of ours. You may remember Angie from one of our first posts - She drove us home from the hospital after Connor was born. It's difficult to tell in this photo, but here she is 5 months pregnant! 

Angie, Connor and Kim Feb 12

Cultural note about red envelopes. During Spring Festival, it's traditional for Chinese people to give children red envelopes with money inside. Spring Festival is often compared with Christmas - but typically there aren't presents on Spring Festival for children aside from the red envelopes. The money in the envelopes is meant to buy new clothes for the new year (most commonly a new coat). Of course, the envelopes are red because red is the traditional color for celebration in Chinese culture. Here's a wiki link for more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_envelopes

Some Cute Shots from Feb 13

Connor's newest fixation - grabbing his socks and eating them!

Asleep with his pacifier. He uses pacifiers as teethers...

Happy baby!

After Feb 13, we gave up on trying to get him accustomed to the stroller by having him use it inside. It just wasn't working and it sucked lugging the stroller up to the third floor each time we came home. Sadly though, this meant we had to give up our game of Spaceshuttle Endeavor! (Because we're writing this four months "in the future" we can say he still cries every time we put him in the stroller....)