Today We Celebrate This Guy!

Happy birthday to Baba!  (Baba is the Mandarin word for dad.)  

Today Jamie turns thirty...{cough, cough}, well, thirty-something.

We celebrated Baba today with the appropriate amount of Star Wars, Legos, construction equipment and Calvin & Hobbs that a house with 4 females could muster.  I think we did quite well.

Jamie's Lego inspired cake.

The girls appropriately spoiled their daddy with love and birthday cards.  

Happy birthday to an amazing man, a terrific husband and a loving father!  Here's to many more.

Celebrations

It seems that our family partied a bit this summer.  We celebrated a birthday, or a half birthday, every month from May to September.  I'm partied out!

LBean turned 7 in May.  She asked for a camping birthday (she's saving her tooth fairy money to buy an RV).  I attempted to make a "campfire" birthday cake with Twix, gummy bears as the logs and hot embers, and a fruit roll-up for the flame.  I don't know how impressed she was with it.

This was our attempt at a family picture.  Jamie was already back in China and my mom took the picture.  It's almost complete!

I love, love the pictures of  Jamie's grandparents talking to Jamie on FaceTime. Technology is an amazing thing!

"Camping Cousins"

This girl ate more than her weight in hotdogs this summer.  It's one of her favorite words (and foods).

Jamie's grandparents with a few of their great-grandchildren!

Happy Birthday to my 7-year-old!

As we were planning LBean's birthday, EBean started asking about her birthday.  I assured her that when December rolled around we would also have a party for her.  What she was really asking was if she could have her Grandmas at her birthday party just like her big sister.  Well, that was enough to break this mama's heart.  EBean's cousin graciously agreed to share her June birthday party with EBean and so we planned a 1/2 birthday! And, it literally was 6 months until her birthday.

This girl girl is getting a hang of all these parties.

Two birthday girls!

It's a 1/2 cake for a 1/2 birthday for a 4 1/2-year-old!  EBean requested a chocolate cake and we piled on as much as we could.

You really can order anything online,
even a 1/2 candle.

She's not a fan of being sung to.

Watch out, this girl is serious!

The last birthday we celebrated in the US, was ChinaBean's 2nd birthday.  We feasted on popcorn, peanuts and pizza, some of ChinaBean's favorite foods!

This girl is ready to party!

Uncle Mike knows how to party too!

I love all my crazy girls, even when they stick out their tongues.  

ChinaBean had a few "helpers" opening her presents.  

ChinaBean's favorite birthday card came from Uncle Matt.  It burped the Happy Birthday Song. She's played the card so much that the battery has run out.

Happy birthday to our miracle!

"Popcorn" cupcakes.

The end of August brought us ChinaBean's actual birth date, so we celebrated, again.  ChinaBean is giggling, but it's hard to tell in the picture.

We celebrated ChinaBean's birthday with a family  that has a special place in their hearts for  ChinaBean.  They saw her through her first surgery and have loved our little girl for a long time.

ChinaBean was so excited to get some new Signing Time videos.  She literally threw her hands up in the air!

Whew, last birthday of the season, Jamie turned 30-something-ish at the beginning of September.  It's a good thing that Caterpillar makes a full range of machines, because I will be systematically going through each machine for Jamie's birthday cakes.

I have an expat confession to make...the cake was cute, but it didn't taste so great.  The cake mix was one I had brought back from the US a while back (ahem).  I can get cake mixes here, but they are expensive, so if I have room, I'll bring enough mixes back for birthdays.  I knew the mix had expired, but I also knew it wasn't "bad" just that the leavening was probably old.  Sure enough, the cake didn't rise like it should have, and even my girls noticed the cake was flat.  I cut the cake in half, doubled it up, and slathered on a lot of chocolate.  We ate it, because it's imported cake mix that crossed the ocean, and as an expat we don't waste precious things like that.  (Even if it's yuck!)

No more parties until December.  Maybe by then I'll be ready for another one! (And maybe a cake mix that hasn't expired.)

Birthday Recap

A little over a month ago we celebrated LBean's 6th birthday.  I read a quote once that I think sums up the experience a parent has with young children, "The days go by so slowly, but the years go by quickly."  I shouldn't have a six-year-old, she was just born, right?!

It seems that we gravitate towards Disney show themes.  Last year LBean celebrated with a Jake and the Neverland Pirates party and this year we had just discovered a new show Doc McStuffins.  Through the magic of the internet and Apple TV we have been downloading Doc McStuffins episodes and enjoying some new TV at our house.  LBean agreed that this would be a pretty neat birthday party, especially if we transformed our apartment into a doctor's office and let her friends bring dolls to play with.

Her entire Girl Scout troop and some siblings were able to come and enjoy a day of playing, watching an episode of Doc McStuffins, and munching on some yummy treats.  Instead of traditional gift bags, I decided that each girl should take home their own "doctor kit".  I assembled kits (with a little help from Papa Joe & and an incoming expat family importing a few things) that had real bandaids, felt bandaids, medicine droppers, ACE bandages, cotton balls and all of the kid medical exam sheets I discovered on the internet.  The medical checklists were a great excuse to run to the local printer and to the neighborhood center to buy a laminator, too!

My girls are still playing doctor with their kits.  I just posted on Facebook a conversation I heard this week during playtime.  "LBean you have to take care of your animals, they are waiting for you." "Yes, this one was in an E-bike (electric bike) accident."  And, "I don't have time to see patients, I need to go to the copy market".  The copy market just happens to be where I go to buy knock-off purses and sunglasses, inexpensive scarves and other Chinese trinkets!

Here are some pictures from LBean's special day:

Checking in at the "front desk"

The "exam room".  Each girl had their own
doctor's badge too.

Time to check the patient's eye sight!

Going over the checklists.

Taking care of the babies.

Mesmerized by the television!

Playing medical BINGO.

LBean's cake was heart-shaped with a
stethoscope on it.  She asked that her friends not sing
Happy Birthday to her (which is on par with her personality).
So, they stood behind her and just said "Happy Birthday"
and posed for a picture.

LBean opened her presents in the "waiting room".

At the Suzhou fabric market I had
a dress-up veterinarian's jacket copied in white
so LBean and EBean could have their own doctor's
jackets to wear to the party.  Mine was a left-over from
my hospital clinical rotation in graduate school!

Babies, Birthdays and Rock Bands

Two weeks ago Monday was my first day volunteering at the orphanage.  The volunteers are there five days a week for two hours a day and each day has approximately six volunteers.  The job of the volunteers is to assist the Ayis (pronounced "i-e") by taking the children out of their cribs, helping with feeding and diaper changes, playing with the children in the activity room and giving them as much love as possible.

While I was there, the overwhelming feeling that I had was the same one I had when I was working as a speech-language pathologist...not enough time, resources and hands.  I think that it's a good feeling; the drive to do better and help more.  I'm looking forward to my Mondays at the orphanage and doing a little better each time.  It also struck me as such an incredible honor to care for these children until they are matched and united with their forever families.  I hope and pray that someone might be doing the same for our future McClintock.

The rest of the week was really busy for our family.  Jamie had some co-workers visiting from the States and he had several dinners, which meant late nights for everyone.  By Friday we were all pretty tired, but we couldn't let the day pass without a little celebration.  It was Jamie's birthday, his first one in China.  I got  an unexpected text a few hours before dinner from a friend.  She graciously invited us over for dinner if we didn't have plans.  I told her I had run out of energy to cook dinner about an hour into my fight with EBean about her lack of nap time. I was happy to take her up on her dinner offer and I could even bring some birthday cake for dessert!

Happy 34th Birthday!

The rest of the weekend was recovery from the busy week.  On Monday we celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival at home (see last week's What's That? Wednesday post).  Tuesday morning Jamie and I had a big question to ponder, "to rock or not?"  One of the bands that Jamie really enjoys was playing in Shanghai and we weren't sure if we would be able to go.  It is unusual for music groups like this to be allowed to perform in China.  In fact, it has become our personal joke that you have to go to Malaysia to see a good concert.  While watching our cable (which comes from Australia) an advertisement for a good concert will pop up and of course it's not local for us...it's in Malaysia.

We are starting to show our age because on Tuesday morning we looked at each other and Jamie said, "I kind of hope we can't get tickets, I'm so tired."  I laughed and said that I was too.  But, in the early afternoon Jamie spoke to someone at the concert venue and although the pre-sale tickets were gone, she felt like that if we got there early we would be okay.  Our driver was prepared to take us to Shanghai and our Ayi was coming to watch the girls, so when Jamie texted and asked if I wanted to go, I had to say yes, it seemed too perfect not to go.  That's what life is about, right...saying yes to opportunities?!

At 6:30 we hopped into the van, did a quick run into KFC for dinner (I need to learn some better fast-food options when we're in a pinch) and trekked the 90 minutes east to Shanghai.  Now, I have to explain the name of the concert venue, it's acronym is MAO, which I think stands for "music-art-oasis", but it also happens to be the name of a very famous Chinese man, Chairman Mao.

Recognize the outline of the hair on the cup?

I'm not sure if this cup is considered sacrilegious or a nice nod to Mao, but I found it very amusing.  The concert itself was awesome!  It was only one act, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club for a 2 1/2 hours in a very small venue.  We were about 6 people back (until the mosh pit started).  Girls, your mom & dad can still rock.  

Jamie loves music and it's been an important part of his life.  I surprised Jamie with tickets to see Oasis when I was pregnant with LBean (with some help from a good friend), I surprised him again for his 30th birthday & M.B.A. graduation with tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, so it seemed fitting that we would again be celebrating his birthday with music.  (Do you see a pattern developing?)  We got home shortly before 1 a.m.  Even though we felt good the next day, I think it eventually caught up with us, but the concert was so worth it!