Views from my deck

So I discovered a bit ago that my phone has this cool panoramic feature.  I wish our big camera had it too because it is really cool, but I know that the quality of the photos is really low on the phone.  Regardless, it at least lets me remember the moment.

Here are a few from the last few weeks.  I leave a ladder out on the deck so that I can get a better view of the sunset (the point where the sun goes down is actually hidden behind the neighbors trees).

Ahh, I already know that I will cry the day we have to leave this place!

Wenderholm Park

Clarke had the good idea to start exploring some of the many Regional Parks (I think there are something like 25 in the surrounding areas).  This last weekend we went to Wenderholm Park, about 25 minutes away.  It was lovely.  We took some great pictures on the big camera, but here are the ones from my phone.

I love these frames, they had one at Shakespeare Park too.  New Zealand is so picturesque, we LOVE it here!

Cheek on a shelf

With Oliver on the go so much and with his amazing ability to wake up at such unlovely hours of the morning (5:40 am this morning) and no official naps on the schedule, he will fall asleep in the car a few times a week.

This was last week when we went to the zoo after Playcentre.  He fell asleep on our way there and I just had to smile at that little squishy cheek.  Oliver has had the most lovely, chubby, kissable cheeks since he was a tiny baby (he came out with chubby cheeks).  They have gotten less chubby as he has gotten older, but I thought it was hilarious how his cheek looked like he was serving it up on a platter!

Love that sweet sleeping face!

Glue Gunning

One of the great things available for the children at Playcentre is the "Junk Construction" corner.  It is basically a corner stocked with all sorts of rubbish, cereal and shoe boxes, cleaned out yogurt pots, etc.  The kids can create anything they like.  They have cool glue guns that the kids can handle pretty much themselves and Oliver LOVES using them.

He just loads the glue on even if it isn't for anything in particular.

And don't forget the glitter!

I made a gun!  (shocking)

The glue guns do make me a little nervous I must admit, and Oli did get the glue on his finger a little bit and we had to put it under cold water, but I think it is good for him to learn to be careful (and they are not really not that hot in the first place).

Hooray for junk construction!

Busy Body

Today Oliver was on the go the ENTIRE day.  That kid has so much energy, I can barely keep up with him.  I have even had other Mothers at the park comment on how much energy he has.

We started the day off by walking Daddy to the Ferry.  We usually aren’t ready early enough to do this, but since Oli was up early and I had the lunches packed we had the time.  It was so amazingly pleasant.  The homes on our street are all really unique and interesting, and then of course we have amazing views of the bay, the harbor bridge and the city.    

Clarke's ferry at the dock.

Bye Daddy!

Off he goes.

 Clarke is a lucky guy to have such a fabulous commute, and we were lucky enough to share it with him, including the stunning sunrise.

The beginning of a beautiful morning.

 

Oli blew kisses and yelled loves to Daddy as we watched his ferry get smaller and smaller.

And we even managed to see the remnants of a rainbow on our way home.  So lucky!

You can barely see the rainbow in the middle of the cloud.

  Tuesday is a busy day because we have Playcentre from 9:00-11:45, but then we have to stay until about 12:45 because it is my duty day and we stay after to clean up and have a meeting to talk about how the session went and ideas for next week.  It is so cute, Oliver says that the kids have their own meeting while we have ours.  It pretty just much means that they eat their lunches and keep playing, but he feels important having a “meeting.

We use fishing tackle boxes for "morning tea."

 

We have to kind of rush off from Playcentre because technically Kindy (pre-school) starts at 12:15, but he just goes late.  Oli just stared going to Kindy in addition to Playcentre about 3 weeks ago.  It is three afternoons a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 12:15-2:45.  It is usually between 12:45 and 1:00 when he gets to Kindy.

 Oli requested to bike home so I walked his bike up to Kindy, but instead he decided he wanted to go to the “Spiderman Park” as he calls it.  It is a fabulous park maybe a 20-25 minute walk from our house (depending on how slow the Man is going).  He hasn’t had too much practice on his balance bike, but he did a great job.  

The walk to the park goes through a lovely old cemetery, then over a wooden bridge over the marshy area of the bay.  It has stunning views of the bay.  Oliver was funny asking questions about the cemetery.  I think it was his first real curiosity about it and he was asking who was there and why.  When I told him that is where they bury bodies of people who are no longer living I said they put them in a box, and then put dirt on it and then a stone on top, and he said, “But that stone will hurt them!”  

Our house is kind of in the middle of the houses, and that is the Sky Tower in the background.

I made him come down this huge long hill on his bike, he kept telling me he couldn’t do it, but in the end he ended up doing this whole thing by himself.

Side note, I HATE people who have their dogs off leash!  Oliver and I are both pretty much terrified of dogs, he is even worse than me.  I can’t stand it because I have to seem all brave and calm and tell Oli, “Oh Oli, it’s not a big deal they will just walk past us.  No need to be afraid.  They are nice doggies”  While inside I am thinking, “Oh please big doggie!  Don’t bite us, don’t smell us, leave us alone!!!!”   But the thing that I hate even more is when the owners see his fear and say stupid things like “Oh, my dog is nice.”  This one lady said it so rudely as if Oliver had no right to be afraid of her GIANT dog that was sniffing him up.  Well guess what?  Your dog may be nice to you, but he may not be nice to me!  And annoyingly, and I am not kidding, we probably passed 8 or 10 off-leash dogs on this walk and 75% of them where HUGE dogs.

I love doing this walk at that time of day, 3:00ish.  The sun is just radiant and warming and it sparkles and dances on the water.

Note the Harbor Bridge in the background

  The Spiderman park is seriously so cool.  That is one thing, of many, that I LOVE about Auckland, a plethora of really fun and interesting parks.  It has a long tube slide, a super fast flying fox (i.e. zip line), a huge tall climbing rope system, a really cool swing that looks like a spider web (so does that climbing area, hence the Spiderman park title), some fun sand diggers and pulley systems, and a basketball court with a cool area of riding a skateboard or bike down little hills.

I was really impressed with Oliver’s boldness at wanting to ride his bike down the little hills.  I think even I would have been scared but he LOVED it and kept doing it over and over again.  He called it “Zipping.”  

 

After a while a few kids showed up and so we migrated up to the playground area.  We  had a great time because a girl from Playcentre showed up with her sister and babysitter.  Oliver has played with her frequently at Playcentre so he was super excited.

Climbing friends!

Spiderman on the spider gym

 

Oli ended up playing with another little girl that we didn’t know so I started chatting with her Mom and she was a really interesting lady and we had a lot in common.

We stayed until it was getting chilly and looking like it might rain, but then we had the long journey back home.  Oli was not excited to ride his bike back home.  After a little while he just quit, so I had to push the bike for a while, and then ended up pushing him on the bike the rest of the way home.

On our way out of the park there was one of the most fabulous rainbows I have ever seen!  I was so sad to only have my phone camera because it was stunning, and even became a double rainbow for a bit.  It was the longest rainbow that I have seen, it was very vibrant for about 10 minutes or so.  It made my heart happy.

Two rainbow sightings in one day!

Not a great shot from my camera, but at least you can tell how big is was.

We didn’t get home until 5:15, so we hurried and heated up leftovers, eat dinner, and got ready for bed.  He was seriously so tired he wanted to go to bed, and was asleep by 6:50 pm!  But it is no wonder because he pretty much played hardcore ALL day long.  That is my Buddy for sure.  Every day he hopes it is Playcentre day, and Kindy day, and gymnastics day, and Polkadots day, and playdate date with all of his friends, and I am serious that I think he would love to have all of them everyday!

Our Apartment in China Continued

Our Apartment in Shanghai continued...

Our apartment looked out over Luo Shan Road (big, nasty dirty road, bad mistake!), and had a terrible view over towards Jin Qiao (the main expat hub for the area, and where Clarke’s school was, and where most of my teaching gigs were also).  Sadly our bedroom window had a perfect way to see just how bad the air was everyday.  The often brown and hazy skies of Shanghai were really taxing on my spirit, especially coming from Florida where the sky is just stunning.  

Here is Oli hanging out in the said window.  This always made me super nervous because what you can't see in this picture is  the window, with no screen or bars, that opens straight down 9 stories on to the road!  So, glad not to have that feeling anymore.

Oli in the window that gave me my lovely view everyday

This is actually a fairly good day for Shanghai, see how it is blue at the top.  This is good!

Here is a little tour of our apartment.   They called it a 3 bedroom, but it was more like a 2.5, because Oliver’s room was so tiny it was really just more like an office.  I don’t really remember how big it was, but I would guess around 900-1000 square feet.  Typical China-style, no central heat, just those little wall units, and no insulation, i.e. feels like an icebox in winter!!!!  Ugg, just thinking about winter in Shanghai makes me feel cold. 

The front room.  Again, this patio had no real way to lock Oliver out of it, and it dropped straight down 9 floors into a fountain.  I was always very careful to know where Oliver was and what he was doing.

Front room/Living Space

 

Here is Oliver’s room.  Nice and tiny, just enough room for the crib, which was kindly lent to us by my awesome visiting teacher, and which I miss because it was like a cage and Oliver NEVER climbed out of it once!  The glider was a great splurge that I was so glad I found.  In Florida I had a lovely big glider rocker, and Oli loved getting rocked before bed.  He still needed that snuggle time once we moved to China (he was 21 months when we moved there, and a little over two when I bought this), so I would seriously stand and hold him (and man was he getting big!) or sit on the ground and rock back and forth.  Both of those became ridiculous as he got bigger.

Oliver's room

 

The kitchen.  Oh the kitchen.  This thing was so narrow and tiny, I was not a fan of spending much time in here!  And thankfully having an Ayi (Chinese word for Aunt, which basically means domestic help) to cook much of the time I didn’t have to spend much time in there!  No oven of course, so we bought a counter-top oven, which was nice, but tiny, and nerve wracking because the outside of it got super hot and I was always paranoid that Oli would burn himself.   No dishwasher, blah, but again, thankfully we employed a dish washer named Ayi.  We were terrible, we would cook and bake and make huge messes on the weekend and then just leave them in the sink for her!  So sad, I am sure she hated Mondays for that reason.  But hey, if you are going to pay someone, they may as well have something to do.

Our kitchen

 

The toy room.  I love having a toy room.  I tried my best to make Oli’s play room like something I would have if we were living in the US.  I felt like even if most of my life was not what I wanted, that at least I would try and keep Oli’s life like I wanted.  We brought a lot of the toys with us, and then of course acquired more a long the way.

Toy room

Toy room, and yes, that goes out to another balcony.

The bathrooms.  This was our main bathroom, again, the theme is very narrow.  Freezing in the winter, ahh, thinking about getting out of the shower gives me the chills.  No storage space built in, not even one drawer or cupboard, so annoying.  The window was nice though, I did like getting a little peak to the business below, but I didn't like wondering if someone was peaking at me :)

The main bathroom

 

Technically we had two bathrooms, but on our move-in day we discovered that our bathroom had a major problem, water and mold.  One of the drawers was completely filled with water that had clearly been sitting there for a long time.  We told the landlord, but he didn’t really seem to care, and wasn’t really interested in fixing it, so we pretty much never used it.  It smelled like mold to me and it was freezing cold, so I pretty much never went in there.

Funny thing though, Oliver went through a phase our first Fall/Winter there where he wanted to take COLD baths!  I mean seriously, the kid was crazy.  If you even made the water a little bit warm he would go nuts and cry, "I want it COLDY MOLDY Mom!"

The "moldy" bathroom.  Also note the much needed seat cover.  Without that your bum FROZE!

Our bedroom.  Again, the theme is small and narrow.  There was not a lot of room beyond the bed, so it always felt like you were shuffling around things, and the edge of the bed was like an evil death trap for your poor pinky toe!  I can’t tell you how many times both of us stubbed our toes and fell on to the bed cursing.   

We did splurge on an awesome SlumberMaxxmattress (our good friends own the company, check out our famous review) which saved us.  We seriously slept on particle board covered in fabric when we lived in Nanjing, and vowed never to repeat that again.  And I also splurged on fabulous sateen sheets from IKEA.   They were not cheap, but I just needed to not feel completely deprived.  Also, side note, let’s just say how much we love IKEA, I can’t imagine doing this move without it.  We had to buy soooooo many household goods when we arrived and IKEA certainly made it easy.

Our bedroom

 Our bed was also a favorite site for wrestling and pillow fights for Oliver.  That kid just loves flinging himself about.  He even invented a game called "Fall Oli" where he would literally just fall straight forward on to his without trying break his fall.  He and Daddy used to play that game a lot and laugh and laugh.

The closet space.  The only built in space in the apartment, we had to ask the Landlord to buy a wardrobe for the playroom other wise we would have had no where to put anything.

The closet

 

And don’t forget the washer/dryer.  So China-style.  First, let’s just note that it was out on the balcony, which meant a few things:

1) China is polluted, which means that the  balcony gets a nice black film on it, which means that when you accidentally drop your clothes while taking them out of the dryer they get dirty.  Kind of defeating the purpose.   

2) Since it was outside that means needing to wear a coat just to move the laundry along in the winter.  Awesome.   

3)  The washer pretty much just stretches all of your clothes out in this really ugly way.   

4)  I should be stoaked I had a dryer (never had one in Nanjing in 2005), but this one seriously took 2 hours or more to dry a load of laundry.  What a joke!  Now I could have air dried them outside to save on the annoyance of 2 hour+ drying times, but every time I did I just hated how crunchy everything was, and even worse, they just had this yucky smell, which again, kind of defeats the purpose.

Now all that said, I have to confess that Ayi did laundry much of the time :)   I just laugh every time I go home to my parent's house in the USA because their washer and dryer are SO HUGE!!!  I could fit probably 3 of my China-style loads into 1 load at my Mom's house.  Funny enough though, our washer and dryer here in New Zealand are not much of an upgrade from these.  Ha! 

The laundry

 So that is it for the inside of the apartment.  More to come later on the grounds of Yanlord, i.e. What kept us sane.  Meaning, since our apartment was rather small we needed places to get out and keep us from going stir-crazy.

Blog Catch Up: Our Apartment in China

Blog catch up:

It is May 17, 2012 and I am looking at photos from a year ago.  I can’t believe how different life is now than it was a year ago.  I really want to catch up on blogging and keeping track of our lives.  

I didn’t document much of our life in China (well, nearly nothing!) for a few reasons, the internet was excruciating (blogs are blocked in China and you have to go through a proxy to use them), and I think subconsciously the slow internet was a convenient out because I was so overwhelmed by our time in China that I kind of didn’t want to make a record of it.  But now that I can look back on it, and just see the pictures, and think of the fun things, it will be much easier, plus I won’t sound so much like a whiner and complainer!

I figured that I would just sort of summarize our life in Shanghai in chunks.  So, first up, how we lived.

Our house in China:

It was really traumatic packing up my life in Florida and tucking it all away in the basement at my parent’s house.   After 6 years of marriage we had finally done the “grown up” thing about bought real furniture.  Prior to this we never even owned a couch, our mattress still just sat on box springs on the floor, our dining room table was a hand me down from an elderly neighbor friend at my parent’s, our chairs were scavenged from the side of the road near Kirk and Heather’s house in Chino Hills, and much of the smaller stuff was from IKEA. 

There was nothing really wrong with our old furniture, but we kind of wanted an upgrade.  So we splurged and bought really great quality stuff, bed, rocker, couch, and chair all from Room and Board (such a cool store!) and then fabulous Stresslesschairs (ahhh, tooo comfortable!!!  Once your bum gets in it, you never want to get out), and a dining table and chairs from a Scandinavian design store.  So we pretty much went from the D.I version of a house, to our dream furniture all in the two years we were in Florida.

Not that “things” are that important, but it just made our transition to life in China that much more difficult.  We took A LOT of suitcases to China (that is a whole other post in and of it’s self), because I had done the China-student thing in the past without a child, and had no desire to do it THAT skimpy again!   But even at that, I really only took the basics, and most of it was Oli’s toys and books.  I think psychologically as a Mother I needed to feel like I wasn’t “depriving” Oli of the lovely life had had before our move.

We lived in Yanlord Town in Pudong, about a 12-minute door-to-seat scooter ride from Clarke’s school CEIBS (China Europe International Business School).  In terms of where we could have lived, or how we lived in China the first time (Ghetto!  Ask my Dad.  After seeing our first apartment in Nanjing in 2005 he half-joked that if Clarke were to be providing such a lifestyle for his daughter in the States he would come and get me and I could return when weren’t “camping” indoors anymore!), but again, compared to my life in Florida, this was a definite downgrade.

We lived in Phase 1, building 19, apartment 901.  

Here is a cute video of Oli in our elevator going up to our place:

Just to give you some scope, Yanlord Town isn’t called a Town for nothing, it is HUGE!  If I remember correctly there are either 40 or 50, 26-story buildings in the complex, with roughly 2-4 apartments per floor.  I laugh now living in little old New Zealand at the scale and scope of our place.  There were literally thousands of people living there.

Our building

 

You came in the main entrance and then took an elevator up to our floor.  Clarke and I stored our scooters down below (it was a nice hairpin turn trek to get down there!). 

Oliver and I would often come and wait on the front step for Daddy to watch him roll up on his scooter from school.   

Entrance to building 19

Waiting for Daddy to get home from school.

Daddy rolling up to our building

 

After Daddy rolled up Oli usually wanted a little zip around the complex on the scooty-scoot, which Daddy happily obliged.

Off for a scooty-scoot ride!

Stay tuned for the inside of our apartment.....