Installing air conditioning

Yes, he is hanging out the window with a rope around his waist!

We moved into an empty apartment so there were no air conditioners. Until now we haven’t needed them, but it has really gotten to the unbearable point. So we finally had them installed this week. I’ve seen this process before, but it never fails to amaze me when these men tie a rope around their waists and then climb out the window (10 floors up) and are lowered by their colleague to the little ledge where the air conditioner gets placed. Really, you could not pay me enough money to do this. And I highly doubt this job comes with a nice life insurance policy.

Puppet Show

This is one of my favorite gifts from this past Christmas. Endless hours of entertainment. Michaela just loves making up her own show or watching one of ours. David’s shows are the funniest of course.

The T issue

The T issue/News in China

News has been blocked over the Tibet incident. We haven’t had the English news for over a month. I can get articles in English about Tibet on the internet sometimes (I guess they don’t regulate the English internet news as much). Things are tense though. When we came through the border after going to Disneyland, the border security was increased and they scrutinized everything about us. So we do have limits to our information flow, but so far not much else has changed for us.

We asked out Chinese helper about the incident and she knew nothing about it. She said, well it must not have been very big or I would have heard something. Ha! A week later or so we asked if she still hadn’t heard anything and she said, yes, she looked into it and she discovered that Tibetans were killing all Han Chinese people. So that is the news that the Chinese people get – either nothing or very extreme versions of the story.

Foreigners just do not realize the news that the Chinese read is so vastly different. For a sense of what is being said check out our city's English newspaper The Shenzhen Daily or China's English newspaper The China Daily.

Shenzhen Daily: http://paper.sznews.com/szdaily/

China Daily: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/

Here is a great article written by a "foreign expert" on the subject of Tibet and America's relationship with the DL:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/16/content_6622346.htm

Helper

I take back every bad thing I said about my helper, Zhou Jie. Now that I have a baby and a three year old, I feel like she is my life saver. So she doesn’t clean that well and so her food is a bit oily and repetitive. Every woman will agree that when you are tired and need a break and there is someone who will let you rest or hold the baby for you that person is an angel to you. I love you Zhou Jie!

Western Easter

Chinese Catholic Church -- Easter Mass

Chinese Catholic Church -- Easter Mass

My mom was here so we celebrated Western Easter this year. One of the five star hotels has a huge brunch. It is about 40 US dollars per person, but the buffet is huge and the kids are free. They also have a kids section for painting Easter eggs and an egg hunt with a bunny. Very secular, but also fun and since this is not our Easter and not a religious holiday for us, it really is just like a fun outing. We did go to the Catholic Church for Easter mass which was really nice. It was held outdoors and there was a baptism. There was some drama also. Some guy came up and hit the child-who-was-getting-baptized’s father in the middle of the baptism. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I suppose he objected somehow. Then at the end a huge rat ran under my chair. Upon seeing this David said something un-churchworthy. I had no idea what was happening since David wouldn’t tell me why his eyes were popping out of his head or why he suddenly shouted. I knew it was something crazy because David’s face was so revealing.

Great buffet!

Michaela with the Easter Bunny.

Lots of friends

Visit from teachers

Michaela with her teachers

I have been quite happy with Michaela’s pre-school. They seem very professional there. They take the schooling-at-three a bit too seriously (giving homework and grades), but overall everything has been quite nice. One cool thing they do is the teachers (four of them for a class of 25) go to visit all their student’s homes in the beginning of each semester. It really is a great ice-breaker and a way for younger kids to feel more comfortable with their teachers. Michaela was thrilled.

Michaela's Birthday Party

Birthday Girl

LJ celebrates

Michaela turned three! We were planning on having a birthday party at the school. I really did not want a big party since we already went to Disneyland and I just didn’t have time for a huge party (the party last year was amazing). However, on Wed. (we were going to have the party on Friday) the school told us that they changed their minds about the party and would allow it, but no food could be brought in - so no cake. Well, all I had was 10 minutes at the end of class anyway and what is a birthday party like without a cake? So after going over some ideas, we decided to invite the whole class (25 kids!) over to our house that evening instead. I spent the day alternating between fretting over no one coming and everyone coming (our apartment is pretty small). In the end most, but not all students came and although it was a bit cramped, it seemed that everyone had a good time. Since Chinese kids do not generally have kid/group birthday parties I think it was a fun and different experience for everyone. We told people no gifts, but most brought one anyway.

Michaela with her pengyous (friends in Chinese)

David entertaining the crowd with a song in Chinese

Disneyland

All of us at the entrance

March 22^nd is Michaela’s birthday. This year we wanted to go to Disneyland. So it worked out that the best time to go was the weekend before her birthday. LJ was only three weeks old. All the Chinese people thought we were crazy bringing a baby of that age out of the house. It seemed pretty easy to me. He pretty much just sleeps and eats, so traveling was quite stress free.

So we stayed the night at the Hollywood Hotel which is the four star hotel on the grounds. There is a five star one also, but I didn’t see the big advantage to staying at that one since we would be spending most of the time at the park. We got two day passes and the first day it was just Michaela, my mom and myself. David was on a business trip and joined us the following day.

Hollywood Hotel

Hong Kong Disneyland is really small and can be seen in its entirety in a day or two. There are really only four parts and most of the rides are small rides. It really seems more geared toward younger children. It also didn’t seem that busy and we were there on a weekend. The average wait time for a ride was one to five minutes.

Michaela in front of the castle

Michaela’s favorite parts were: Fantasyland: Teacup ride and Dumbo ride, Meeting the characters (especially the princesses) and going anywhere near the castle. My feelings: It was fun. I never felt so happy to spend so much money in my life. I could go into some rant about the damage that Disney has done to our culture and the negative aspects of the commercialism it developed (you could very well put “Disney” down for a definition of commercialism among other things of course). However, whose fault is it: those who buy into it or those who see the opportunity? If too much is not made out of Disney, the park, the movies the products, it really is a fun activity to enjoy with the family and since most of us can only afford to go to the park once maybe twice, it isn’t worth too much analysis regarding its impact on society.

Meeting Winnie the Pooh

Dumbo ride

Teacup ride

Disappointing: the food! This was definitely an Asian park and the food demonstrated it. The cute main street that looked like America had almost nothing that smelled or tasted Western. I remember when the park opened they had a lot more Western food and the people complained that there was not enough Chinese food. Chinese, Asians in general love almost all Western imports except Western food. Most Chinese won't even so much as sample "Western" food.

Yucky snacks!

Just plain weird: the crowd which was mostly adults. The only thing weirder than realizing you want to go on the tea cup ride again because you had more fun than your kid is realizing that almost everyone else on the ride is an adult without any accompanying children. Even weirder: waiting in line to see Winnie the Pooh and realizing that your child is the only one under the age of 10 waiting in line made up of 40 people. My conclusion: these people did not get to grow up with Disney and are making up for their cheated childhood as adults.

Meeting Cinderella

Group picture with Snow White and Cinderella

The train to Disneyland -- very cool

Man Yue

If you lived in China and had a baby, there are some key Chinese phrases you would undoubtedly learn in about a day. Two basic ones are nan har hai shi nu har? Or Is it a boy or a girl? The other is Duo da le? Or How old? You would also learn the term Man Yue since after you told people the baby’s age, they would mention something about not having completed you Man Yue or 30 day home rest (or confinement as I see it). They do believe in it strongly though. I’ve had old ladies get into my face and yell at me about going out during Man Yue. This is when I pretend I do not speak any Chinese as this makes the situation easier. At the end of Man Yue you are supposed to have a big party. Sometimes people shave their boys head and make paint brushes out of the boy’s hair.

There are lots of goofy ideas in China about pregnancy and childbirth. I could devote an entire page to Chinese old wives tales. We have these in America also the only difference is most Chinese still believe them. Some have good cause, but most are totally ridiculous (no bathing for a month after birth, no air conditioning, no cold things, etc). I would have put Man Yue in the ridiculous category, but after speaking with a multitude of women, I think American culture is in the minority on this one. The idea behind Man Yue is that the newborn should be protected from the harsh world and possible infections and the woman’s body needs time to recover from the birthing process. They believe if the woman does not rest after birth, she will have ailments later in life. I still think the idea of having ailments later in life is silly, but in general it seems that many cultures observe some form of this tradition. The Korean women I spoke with spend 3 months inside. Thai women do about a month. Japanese women also observe some form of this home confinement. Even a Bulgarian woman said they spend a month inside also. I suppose even my own Orthodox faith observes some form of this in the Forty day churching blessing in which women are reintroduced to church after forty days with the assumption that they haven’t been there since the baby was born i.e. they have been at home in isolation.

I don’t like it. I’m not good at doing nothing. My idea of bed-rest is sitting down for an extra hour or two a day and even that is pretty hard for me. So I intrinsically do not like the idea. However, it is interesting how important it seems to some cultures and how unimportant and unnecessary it seems to most Americans. I think it is the difference in the family unit. In many cultures (Chinese, Korean, even Eastern European), a woman’s mother or mother-in-law is expected to come and take care of a woman after she gives birth. In many Asian cultures, this care-taking lasts for a year or even a lifetime in which the child is often reared by the grandparents. In America, we do often have some family help, but it usually only last a couple of days and is not extensive. I’ve often heard American women groan at the mention of their mother’s coming to help for even a couple of days. I’ve heard women color it as obtrusive. But in general shouldn’t it be nice to have someone help you for a month. In the Chinese tradition, the family cooks, cleans and takes care of other children for you. What is so weird about that? That’s just plain nice. It seems our cultures are just so different and, in my opinion, the American culture is the one that is strange.

Orthodox Blessings

There are several blessings traditionally offered in the Orthodox church when a woman has a baby.

There is the Blessing on the first day which is usually done in the hospital (or home for those crazy home birth people). Here the priest offers prayers for the recovery of the mother and the protection of the child. Father Dionisy was kind enough to come to the hospital to perform this blessing. All the nurses there thought we were Jewish and just performed a circumcision. What would give them that idea?

There is the Blessing on the eighth day. This blessing inolves the naming of the child (in the tradition that Jesus was given his name on the 8th day, Luke 2:21). This blessing was given by Father Dionisy in Shenzhen at the small Russian parish. Sorry, no pictures.

Fourty day blessing: This is often the first visit that the mother and child make to the church. This is a continuation of an old testament tradition (see Luke 2:22-24). Women usually wait until this ceremony is performed before they partake in the Eucharist. However, this tradition is not strictly observed at my former parish All Saints Orthodox Church and although I celebrated this ceremony on the 40th day, I was allowed to participate in the Eucharist before the ceremony was performed. I also took the baby to church and I myself attended church before this time. We attend a Russian parish here and I was not allowed to take Eucharist until this ceremony was performed. Since the church only meets occasionally, we haven't done this ceremony yet.

Naming rights

So David won a dumb bet and has long gloated over the right to name the first boy, Leonard. I would elaborate on the specifics, but it makes me look really stupid so I'll spare the details. Anyway, I have never been fond of the name and have long tried to find ways to de-legitimize the agreement. David himself is named Leonard which many people do not know. David’s parents wanted to keep the family name alive, but Claudia, his mother was not fond of the name either so they named him Leonard David and called him David. It seems we have followed in this pattern. Just a couple of weeks before the baby was born we were both playing around with other names but nothing stuck. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I would rather name my son after people I know and admire rather than finding a cool and interesting name that I like the sound of. I guess I am traditional. David is VERY traditional. So for us it does make more sense this way.

David and I are both blessed to have wonderful fathers. I think we can safely say that both our fathers are amazing people -- not only to us but to a multitude of people. So it wasn’t that hard in the end to settle on naming him Leonard Jonathan and calling him Jon or whatever names happen to develop over the years (Anyone who knows the Kruse family knows that there will be many). We chose his saint name (baptismal name) to be Jonathan rather than John because of the wonderful relationship between King David and Jonathan. So in this way, our son’s name has a connection to the three most important men in his life.

I made a plaque for his name (Claudia designed it). The bottom script says:

You have been given the name Leonard after your grandfather, Leonard Lawrence Kruse because of his faithfulness to the Lord, never-ending patience and his kind and helpful nature.

You have been given the name Jonathan after your grandfather, John Patrick Howe because of his hardworking character, unceasing ability to listen ad his generous and self-sacrificial nature.

Baby Jonathan

Baby LJ, Jonathan aka Peanut

Well my tension-filled pregnancy all came to a wonderful end when we had baby LJ in Hong Kong on Feb. 27, 2008. We got accepted to have the baby at the hospital (Matilda) about three days prior to having him. Pretty much as soon as we got the acceptance letter, my HK doctor wanted to induce me. It all worked out well. My BP was getting pretty high so it really was necessary. My induction only took about 8 hours. They made me have an epidural, but they allowed the medicine to run out so I could feel the contractions. I just wanted to know what they felt like. This experiment took place at the very end when the contractions were on each other’s heels and very strong. I think about thirty minutes or so into it I was asking for the whole experience to be over with. It took a while for the medicine to kick in and never really felt like it did before they took the epidural away. Overall assessment: stupid experiment. I’ve changed my mind completely over my long held dream of an all natural water birth.

It's a boy, 7 lbs 12 oz

The whole experience was so different from when I had Michaela. First off, I had no idea people pushed for a long time to get the baby out or that this stage was difficult and exhausting. Michaela was 3 lbs and crowning when I started pushing so I only pushed twice. In the end pushing out LJ only lasted 25 minutes or so, but I was completely taken by surprise by the difficulty and length of this stage. I also wanted to get all emotional and angry in labor and yell and scream like women do on TV, but it just wasn’t that way even when the pain was the worst and I guess this is just not a part of my personality. I do remember when the contractions were really bad Michaela was in the room watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and they were singing that song “Whistle while you work.” It was really annoying to hear that song during the contractions. I was so happy when the China-bought copy suddenly seized up. I think it was truly an answer to prayer. It was also so nice to hold LJ right away. With Michaela they let me see her for a brief second (I couldn’t see anyway because of the magnesium sulfate and all the swelling) and then whisked her off the NICU. And then to get to go back to the room with him right away, it felt amazing. And he was (and still is) a really good baby. Even the nurses remarked about how rarely they see a baby keep their eyes open and look around so much without fussing.