35 years old

I turned 35 years old yesterday. Waking up in the morning, I got a birthday card from Terry written 'You still look young and sexy, definitely a yummy mummy for Daniel and a yummy wife for me...' I'm not to meant to put this here, as it makes me feel a bit like exhibitionist, which is against my nature. Nevertheless, the point is that a good dose of compliment from husband swept away my sentiment of being a thirty-five and the prospect of being in the late-thirties looking forward to the forty,...

We went to Manchester for Thai lunch as a celebration. Terry bought a sexy top for me at Zara as present. It was a raining and cloudy morning and was so unexpectedly cold. When we got out the car in Manchester, we rushed into Debenham cafe to warm up as the first thing to do before we started shopping considering it was summer a few days ago.

In the evening, with delight I received a friend's phone call from Sweden unexpectedly, we attended the same MBA course in Portsmouth 7 years ago, we lost contact since the graduation, as she moved to Sweden and got married afterwards. Yesterday was the first time we catching up since so many years ago. We talked hours over the phone until Daniel woke up crying I had to hang up. She had 2 children now , aged 3 and 1 and running her own small business in Sweden... we talked about that life changed so much over the years... she got my phone number from another friend from Portsmouth Uni, who is now 38 year old and just had her first baby (20 days older than Daniel) as well. We laughed over the phone when we talked about an episode we both remembered vividly: back in 1999 we both were under 30 and were both resentful towards some stupid Uk's tax policy which give students above 30 doing vocational training 1000 pound tax return, we both didn't get it as we were 27 then we were so jealous of other friend who got that as she was just turned 30 that year...

7 months old

I've been having a lot of fun playing with Daniel since he turned 6 months old. They say baby is the mirror of the parents as they copy what we do. I am not a massive funny person but I determined to make Daniel laugh often. I talked to him (in both English and Chinese), sing nursery songs (both English and Chinese again) to him. I would sing the English one when I sit him on my lap: 'row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily merrily, life is but a dream...' or Chinese one when we are playing toys: '两只老虎,两只老虎,跑得快,跑得快, 一只没有眼睛,一只没有尾巴,真奇怪...' Nine out of ten these 2 rhythms will make Daniel laugh. The other thing would tickle Daniel's funny bone is when I talk to him in Kunmingness, especially when I say 小狗狗, he would laugh his head off. He has gained a lot of awareness about his body now, so sometimes I blow raspberry on his tummy after nappy changing , he would made laugh by this, and tickle him under his arms, play ' this piggy go to the market...' on his toes, all make him laugh. Since he was 5 month, he likes to blow raspberry himself. Sometime he makes really loud noise and Terry would tell him off saying it's rude, but he looks so cute when he's doing this...

Daniel is of a very inquisitive of nature, he likes exploring all the time ( maybe all babes are like this), which make me very tired as i need to hold him up down the house. Whenever he saw something new, be it a piece of paper or an ornament that he never seen before, he would kick his legs straight, spark his eyes, reach out his arms and hands trying to grab it. These days the thing which excited him is the door ring outside the house. Couple weeks ago were the lights hanging from the ceiling. Back then each time when I said 'deng deng' (light in Chinese) and pointed one, he would kicked his leg straight getting really excited and raised his whole body trying to grab one. Sometimes an empty yogurt container can keep him interested for quite a while.

Daniel is quite co-ordinated now comparing to couple months ago, the time when he struggled to put the rattle accurately into his mouth and it ended hitting himself on his forehead. Look now he can hold one ( a little globe) with one hand and spin it with the other hand. He can bang two toys together and clasp his hands.

He is so restless all the time. Each time when i sit down on the settee trying to relax with him on my lap, he would knock off everything on the coffee table to the floor. I pick them up then he would knock them off again, it's like a sport we doing together. Remote controls (we got so many on the coffee table) are his favourite chewing objects alongside his teething toys...

Daniel is 7 month old today and he weigh 10.3kg.

First time on Swing

Terry wants to get a swing in our garden for Daniel to play in the summer and we decided to let Daniel try out the one in the children playground in our neighbourhood first in case he doesn't like it.

It was quite sunny and nice Sunday morning and we all woke up by Daniel quite early. After breakfast, we knew Daniel wouldn't go to nap in the bed as he used to do, so we decided to take him to try that swing in the park which is just 5 minutes walk from our house. The park was quiet in the early morning and the playground was empty, we put Daniel on the swing. He got very excited immediately. When Terry started to swing him, he laughed his head off... I forgot to take camera with me again, so have to use my phone to take couple of pictures and here they are!

Daniel's Updates

Daniel is fast approaching 7-month old. Sometimes I just can't believe how time fly and how struggling I am to remember what he looked when he was little (he is still little, but baby is such a growing machine...). only those old clothes ( got 2 big charity bag of these) which no longer fit, those music mobile which no longer interested him can bring back the memory.

Daniel started to utter 'Da, da,da....' one morning when I was changing his nappy. Since then he started to bubble out 'da,da, da' non-stop whenever he gets happy, sometimes it sounds like 'Da...di'.

I had always co-slept with Daniel since he was 4 month old. He slept quite well in the past few months, especially when we were in Kunming. But now his sleeping is not a bliss anymore since I contracted the mastitis. I know it's not a good habit to breastfeed baby to sleep but it just felt the natural things to do and I was comfortable with that. Now my breast milk production has gone up and down during the day, it does not always come when Daniel want to go nap. Daniel would get really upset as he thought I am weaning him off boobies, but I'm not... so now I have to take him for a drive to get him sleep. Sometimes twice a day....

Nursery Route

Just read a interesting piece of news on Times last week that a quarter of all nursery places (160,000 ) were empty in Britain last year despite the best effort of Labour government trying to get mums return to work, Only 7% of kids in nurseries are under one, and these make up only 2% of all British babies. And only one in 10 families use nursery school full time. Apparently, British mothers with young babes (under one) are shunning away the nurseries. The article claims it has seen the decline of have-it-all generation.(then there was some comment saying it's not have-it-all, it's more do-it-all with the high cost living, people need 2 income to survive).

This week I came across this article ,which made me rethink about my intention to put Daniel in a nursery when he is about 8 months old. The Britain-born, Australia-based parenting guru Steve Biddulph, who has recently stirred a lot of debates in Australia regarding childcare options on his website , has explained why it is right to keep young children's (under 3) care at home in his newly-published book Raising babes. He warned that 'babes growing up in nurseries are at risk of turning into antisocial, depressed and aggressive adults, incapable of creative work or of forming close relationships in later life. '; Also “one in five children put into nursery too early develops mental health problems”. His arguments lie in:

"Babies need to be loved, and one or two or three close adults are best. When researchers study this using videoed interaction over many hours, mothers and grandmothers, fathers and so on, have hundreds of little exchanges a day, where the baby seeks and gets a smile, a bit of chat, is noticed and responded to. Paid carers in even the best nurseries miss these interactions more than two-thirds of the time. The empathy region of the growing brain of a one-year-old baby doesn’t grow well if it isn’t being cuddled, chatted to, and finely responded to. Even the chaotic, muddled and messy family situation does this interaction better than the Ofsted supervised nurseries with their 140 goals and “curriculum”.

Copycat

Green Finger Day

three of us
I want to sit on the grass too
finished lawn

Gardening is definitely the British pastime. Every year around April garden centers will become the busiest places to go at the weekends in this country. The garden in our current house is virtually an empty canvas with a big lawn and couple of plants. Though I had lots of aspiration for this garden, like planting hedges, cherry trees, put trellis on the front wall for climbing plants to give the house a touch of cottage etc,etc... we haven't gotten around to do anything. And Terry always say maybe we shouldn't bother garden this time in this house as each time when we have done a garden we moved. We did a garden together 5 years ago when we live in the south with wooden patio, rockery, small lawn and pebbled path, But before we had the time to enjoy that garden we moved.
First weekend post-hospital, Terry finally got time to sort out the garden, which looked a bit like juggle with grass inches long. He a bit worried about the lawn mowers we got are not up to the job, also worried about us getting hay fever, first thing in the morning he phoned a gardener from yellow page to get the price for the job. Unfortunately the gardener he phoned was still asleep when he phoned. Then Terry asked me how much I would like to pay to get someone to do the lawn, I said 20, he laughed 'nobody will come for this sort of money'. He reckoned it would be 60 pound. With Terry's 3-weeks hospital leave (the downside of freelancing, no pay for sick days) and my maternity pay coming to the end, we do need curb our spending. In the end we decided to do it ourselves.

Terry got out all the garden tools, He pushed the lawn mower and I raked together the garden rubbish and dump them into the bin, Daniel sat in pushchair watching us. He was quite happy to start with, after a while he started to whinge a bit and I had to stop raking the grass and push Daniel around in the garden until he settled then raking again. we finished the whole lawn towards lunch time. Saved 60 pound and we had a good work-out!! A healthy day.

Char Siu (BBQ Pork)

Being served

Just out of oven

meal for one

To compare note with my friend Li, I cooked my version of Char Siu Pork yesterday. Here is how:

I marinated 500g pork fillet strips with soy source, handful of spring onions and ginger, one 草果, 1tsp brown sugar and 1tsp gin (meant to be rum or cooking wine but there is none of them in the house) for overnight. Last night after fed Daniel I put the pork strips on a rack over a backing tray in the pre-heated oven and poured in a bit boiling water in the tray. The pork was roasted on 220 C for 20 minutes and then I lowered the temperature down to 180C and roasted for a further 10 minutes. To serve I cut the pork strips into thin slices and arranged them on a bed of spinach salad. As it looks a bit dry ( Daniel started to whinge while I am cooking after his dinner, so I have to put him in bed and make him sleep before I can serve the pork therefore the pork was left in the oven a bit long), so I drizzled a bit BBQ source over the cut slices and here we go!

Terry was finally discharged from hospital yesterday after a whopping 3 weeks there considering he didn't felt that ill in the end. (No wonder the NHS waiting is so long. Never mind for us though, Terry got full rang of health MOT while his staying there!). As he had been awaiting the discharging notes in the hospital until quite late, the BBQ pork became the meal for one. I made 扬州炒饭 and stir-fried spinach to go with it. The taste was superb.

A gentle stroll in the park

Weather is continuously glorious, the sky is blue, the sun is shinning and the grass is so green and flowers blossoming. It's hard not to enjoy the Early-arrived summer in England. So yesterday I invited my Chinese friend Yan and her daughter Linda to join me and Daniel for a park trip to Cannon Hall. With two daughters aged 6 and 4 now, Yan and her Estonian husband moved from Estonia 3 yesrs ago. She hasn't held a driving license yet. The park is not far from where we live, only 15 minutes drive away. So i picked them up at her house.

Cannon Hall is a country house covering over 70 aces parkland which is landscaped in 1760 with a formal garden, the park is an ideal place for a relaxing stroll or picnics. We spent a morning strolling on the historical parkland. The hall itself was turned into a local history museum but was shut yesterday. Yan's 6 yes old daughter was so keen to push Daniel around on the grass... we talked about kid's language teaching. I still remember when I first met them Linda speak Estonian, a bit Russian and a bit Chinese but now she only speak English. She can understand a bit Chinese but answered me in English. Her mum wasn't happy about this as she was forced to speak English to her daughters while her English was limited. The coupe speak Russian between themselves. But it seemed that the children are forgetting Russian, Chinese, Estonian... Lunch time she invited me to have tea in her house... I picked up some some shoppings on the way home. The rest of day Daniel had his afternoon nap and I watched some DVDs....