Studying Day

Mummy, I want to study today! (Oops, bib still on, Not look smart!)

Looks a bit harder for me!

Never Mind!

Enough for today!

April is like June

This weekend is said to be the hottest days for April since the record began some 300 hundred years ago. Temperature in some part of the country was 28C on Saturday. It felt like in June. We got 25 C here in Yorkshire. Under a normal circumstance we would go out somewhere like Pungney Park(a country park with sailing facility) for a picnic or just sitting there watching kids windsurfing. But this weekend we felt too hot to go out. Besides Terry was finally allowed to go home from hospital for a weekend leave (maybe a holiday for recovering from holiday). So we thought we'd better spend this weekend enjoying our cosy home together. Apart from a trip to Toy R US and MotherCare, we virtually stayed in for all weekend. Daniel got a new toy called Lucky Cookie Jar today, it's such a fun and colourful machine for him to learn shape and colour but he seemed more interest in tearing off my glossy magazines than playing his funky toy at the moment. He could spend whole afternoon doing it!

Terry was still suspected for DVT from long-haul flight awaiting scans for next week. Good thing is he doesn't feel that ill now. Poor Daddy went back hospital tonight.

6 Month Old

Daniel turned 6 months yesterday and we spent another day on on visiting Terry.

6-month in my mind is a big milestone but I didn't feel much to write about yesterday. Partly because I wasn't in the mood with Terry still in hospital, and partly because there is nothing I want to moan about Daniel recenty. He is a happy baby these days, not giving me much trouble considering I am looking after him alone now. He eats 3 solids plus 450-500ml formula a day and breasts morning and evening. He's not fussy eater, everything go down well for him and he doesn't get too messy either. He likes fruits, vegs particularly, banana custard is his favorite. This morning I tried a bit boiled egg yolk on him, so far it seemed he hasn't developed any sort of allergy...

Daniel is now a whopping 9.8 kg.

He naps twice a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon and goes bed 7pm, wakes up once twice around mid-night and early morning then gets up 6.30am.

As he can sit up well he plays lots of toys now, he put everything in his mouth even his baby laptop, everyday he spends so much time trying to figure out how to put the machine into his mouth...

Daniel in Kunming

Chinese restaurant is nice, lots of golden fish for me to watch!
DaGuangLou, a hot day
Buggy was useless in China sometime! Comfy travelling like this!
I like stone lion
Second day, Golden Temple Park. Daddy paid 10 yuan to ring the Chinese bell on top of the bell tower, it is said for good luck...

First day in Kunming, I've been to YuanTongShang with Mummy , Daddy and WaiPo in my nice buggy. I was taken as LaoWai, bunch of 4 years old jumped in front of my buggy trying to say hello to me in English. I thought I was blended in...

Parking Horror - Hospital Runs Continued

Hospitals in Britain are not normally that well situated. They are normally cramped within a populated residential area. This hospital where Terry stayed in situated near Sheffield Children Hospital and Sheffield University and in an residential area. Its car park is so busy during the week. Thursday when I got there they put a FULL sign in front of its multi-storey car park. I know I wouldn't find any parking spot near hospital as they are either double yellow lined or permit holder only, so I had no choice but to circle around the hospital for nearly half an hour while Daniel was whinging at the back of the car. After half an hour, thank god, the guard finally took off the bollards and all the cars queued in...

However the parking horror, Thursday wasn't bad, we pushed Daniel to the Weston Park near hospital to sit on the grass and it was another sunny day...

Today I took Daniel to see Terry in hospital again. With the Thursday's experience I was so glad when I saw the car park was empty, However we hit the football traffic on the way back when we pass the Sheffield Wednesday Ground.

Hongkong - Daniel's first holiday

View from Peak
what I gonna to order today? dummy?
Had my first fruit puree at HK Convention Center
Nice Sunset
I want to some coffee too! Victoria Habour

Hospital Runs

Terry has been admitted to hospital for some sort of suspected tropical disease (God know how and why considering we haven't been to anywhere tropical. Kunming is certainly not tropical with altitude about 1900m above sea level and HK only should be consider as sub-tropical). It started on Friday when he complained he was not well. Initially we thought it was just the tiredness from 12-hours night flight followed by 4 hours driving to home. However it seemed he got a bit temperature that day, so I suggested he go to see the GP. He checked the availability for the GP slots online, there is no appointment available online that day. 'For same-day appointment you need to phone' I said and handed in my phone as it got the GP No. in it. He phoned straight away and got an appointment for next 20 minutes (it does not normally happen like this! we would consider us lucky if we got the next day appointment after phone on a normal circumstances). He went in to see the GP after hanging up the phone, the next thing we knew was that she referred him to Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield for suspected malaria. We were on our way to Newmillerdam for a pub lunch when she phoned saying she got a bed for him and he need to go to hospital right now. That's a bit shock for us! Normally GPs are the gatekeepers for hospital in Britain, it's not that easy to get them to refer you for a hospital check-ups (need to pester them many many times). We thought it might be just for a blood test in hospital to rule out the GP's suspicion. So Terry got out the Sheffield map and drove to the hospital on his own and I staying home looking after Daniel. He was kept in hospital since Friday afternoon, did various blood tests, ultrasound scans and they didn't confirm the malaria so far, then suspected he caught TB, but the X-ray didn't confirmed this.

His temperature is still up and down, I'm getting worried and started to do hospital runs since Sunday. It's not our local hospital, which is just 5 minutes drive away. This one is a long drive from home and the traffic arrangement in Sheffield is horrendous, with my terrible sense of directions I was surprised that I drove to hospital OK without stopping to ask directions once on Sunday. Today I've been to hospital again with Daniel. Three of us went to the nearby Weston Park and City Art Museum. It's such a fresh day with the Crystal blue sky and the fully blossomed cherry trees and daffodils, tulips everywhere, people dressed in shorts and t-shirts dotted in the lawn thinking summer is here... this is that sort of time when you really enjoy living in England... Daniel really enjoyed the exhibitions of weather in the Museaum and we had coffee in the Museum cafe. One the way home I hit the rush hour traffic in Sheffield, it took me an hour just to get on M1... anyway not a bad day! Tomorrow will go again to see Terry and maybe go to the park again to take some pics...

PS. I forget to take camera these days. Last Thursday when we went to Cannon Hall Park to enjoy the unusual summer temperature in April in this country, I forgot to take it...

Kunming - Changed and unchanged

Just like any cities in China, Kunming has been experiencing the fast expansion and modernizing. I can't hardly recognise lots of streets and places though I go back every year, It's just changing too fast. The most obvious, lots of high rises spring up. NanPing street has changed completely as a pedestrian street with western style street cafe dotted, they are not that busy like most street cafe at the downtown in the west cities as they are very expensive, a small cup of cappuccino costs 28yuan, about £1.9, virtually UK price.
Certainly there are plenty things still cheap, especially when we arrive from HK. After spent 48HK$ for a bowl of Yunnan Rice noodle in some street noodle bar in HK, I would consider the restaurants (decent ones) in Kunming are still quite cheap. Some of the restaurants along the Green Lake are really good with Chinese garden and courtyard.
Things unchanged like Blue Bird, a western restaurant and 老知青 are still there, it's just price might be gone up. We had our shoes polished by the street-shoe-polish-people while drinking tea at 老知青 near Green lake and he charged us 5yuan each (Labour is really cheap in China. 5yuan is less than 35p in sterling). In my distant memory it was one yuan/each. Later when I talked this to my families, they said it is still one yuan, he just charged me the foreigner price as I was with Terry that time.

We bumped into a Canadian lady while watching the tea show in a tea shop in Green lake Park and I got into chatting with her. It turned out she came over Kunming for 3 months in a rented apartment to escape the harsh winter in Canada. She rented a apartment near green lake for less than 2000 yuan/month,Hehe, not too bad! Terry said we could consider this as well, working half year in the UK to earn money and spend the rest of year (winter half) not working in Kunming...haha, good idea...

As for Daniel, after this holiday he has accomplished the long list of his first-times, first long-haul flight, first holiday to HK, first trip to Kunming, first time to see his ground parents in China...

Inbound journey

I would thought the early morning flight (1.30am) would be quiet, however I was amazed how busy the flight was when we arrived the check-in hall at HK International airport. Oasis HK's early flight to London was so over-booked. On borad I was amazed again to found out that 4 sky-cots were fully-booked. Wow! 4 babes on board! It won't be a quiet journey, I think. Daniel got a 15-month old baby as neighbour. Each time one of them started to cry, the other one would start to cry as well... so the inbound journey was a lot harder than the outbound one. We brought a one-off feeding bottle and 2 boxes of ready-made formula for Daniel but the one-off bottle leaked, we had to move the milk to the normal AVENT bottle, Daniel got really upset over it and screamed his head off. It took Terry a while to calm him down by singing song to him... the blond baby sat next to us proved to be even harder work for his parents as he would stand up in the bassinet and in the end his parents had to hold him on their laps,it was a waste to book the bassinet for him.

Back England

Jet lag
A-month-long holiday is over and we arrived back England the day before yesterday and so far we are still experiencing the jet lag. It's 4am in the morning and I am writing the blog because I can't sleep any longer!!! Terry, Daniel and me are all awake at the moment.It must be near the lunch time in the Far East and we are still operating on the HK time! Yesterday we were so tired that we went to bed 5pm falling asleep straight away without bothering any supper. I myself don't normally experience the jet lag much when I travel on my own (I'd just get on with things straight away to local time). but this time it's different, we travelled with a baby, it's hard for a baby to cope with the disrupted routine, we try to suite our schedule to Daniel's as possible as we can. Daniel coped better for the outbound journey as the outbound flight was 8pm in the evening, which is his routine time to go to sleep. He went to sleep quickly after he'd been put in the bassinet and slept quite well, the first night in Hongkong his jet lag wasn't that obvious though he went to sleep about 2am, as we've been out for dinner quite late that night it worked out not that bad! But the inbound journey wasn't that smoothly! To start with we nearly missed our flight on Wednesday night in Hongkong...

Nearly Miss Flight...
On our last day (Wednesday) in HK we were so relaxed that we lost track of date, we didn't realise it's our last day of holiday until an hour before the pre-booked airport shuttle bus picking time...
Our return flight from HK was due on 1.30am on 11th April. Upon arrival HK from Kunmimg, we booked the airport shuttle bus for 10th April 10pm to pick up us from the hotel. We also booked hotel room for the last day even we was not going to sleep that night, which probably caused the confusion. On the entire Wednesday the thought of packing and getting ready to go never occurred to us until we finished dinner in the hotel restaurant and got back to the room. Terry was sitting in front of the balcony window looking the night view of Vitoria Harbour, he suddenly asked me what day today is, I said it's Wednesday, Then he said he's due back to work on Thursday, how come we are still here? then he checked the date on his watch it was 10th of April and it was 8.30pm already, an hour and half before the bus, Dopey as we are!! but no panic, we started packing immediately, I packed Daniel's stuff and got him ready while Terry packing our main suitcase, we just managed to made it and three was still 15 minutes left after we checked out hotel before the bus. Poor Daniel, he expected to go to sleep after the dinner, got upset to find out being strapped in to the buggy again... We could have missed the flight as we were talking about going to the Pacific Coffee near HK Convention Center after dinner. Lucky we changed our mind in the end...