Hannah is 37 Weeks and Sitting Up Herself

This post will be a short one because I simply don't have the time to write a full report of our events of the week. Hannah has been sleeping through the night, but also is enduring the tail end of a case of Roseola. She can now push herself up to a sitting position from her tummy. She is crawling backwards too and very giggly (when she's not feeling sick). Luckily Nathan already had this, so we won't have 2 sick kids.

I finally got a gist of what it is like to be a single parent. Man it is tough! Nap times are no lining up as perfectly as they did before (sometimes Nathan doesn't take one) so there really isn't any "me" time during the day. My day starts at around 4:30. Hannah wakes up and wants to nurse and play. Sometimes she will go back down to sleep until 6:00, but usually I am up for the day at around 5:30. By the time Hannah is ready to go down for her first nap, Nathan wakes up. At night, I first give Hannah a bath, nurse her, and lay her down in her pack and play. I then take a shower while Nathan is playing or watching TV and then I give Nathan a bath. When he is finished, we read a few stories and we both go to bed at around 9-9:30. Nathan is definitely not sleeping as much as he did when we were in America, and I can see it through his general attitude. He is a bit more defiant and whiney.

Since Hannah has been sick, I've relied on the TV more than I would like. The upside is that he is getting exposed to more chinese since all of the cartoons (in addition to new ones) that he likes are shown here, but dubbed in Mandarin. Nathan is still mostly speaking English, even to random people that he sees, but he is starting to mix in a little more Mandarin as well. I continue to speak to him in Mandarin, which he understands, and I hope that he will start to be more comfortable speaking it.

Taipei is developing quickly and buildings are flying up here and there. Therefore we see a lot of "Cranky Cranes" around. Nathan loves seeing and riding all of the different modes of  transportation, but he really dislikes all of the different smells that he experiences as we walk around the city.

We've been to the zoo and Nathan's favorite animals that he saw were the Pandas. He also like the elephants and giraffes. I think this is because we don't get to see them at the Austin zoo.

We met up with Ama at the MRT station and we rode to the zoo together.

 We rented another stroller for the day.

 Hannah was pretty indifferent about the Pandas.

 I didn't know tapirs were so large!

 I really like Taipei's zoo. They don't use any cages.

 Of course we had to ride the train...

 We almost missed the koalas, which were by the potty on the way out.

After the zoo, we rode these cable cars, which are kind of like ski lifts up to a mountain peak. Nathan called them sky trains before I told them the official name.

The kids are really great conversation starters. Everywhere we go, people comment on how beautiful the kids are (and how outgoing Nathan is). We have met and talked to many interesting people and have met many people who happen to speak English as well.

One evening, we went to keelong visit the famous night market there. We traveled via train.

 When we got there, it was drizzling, so we just took a short walk to the docks to see the ships.

 I didn't take any pictures of the night market but we got a bunch of super fresh seafood dishes that were super delicious.

The next day Nathan got to ride the scooter with Gong gong to the park.

 Nathan really likes riding the "duck" at the park. The others are just not the same.

 A few times we braved walking to the market in the morning. This is a typical alleyway that we would walk through to get to it. In Taipei, people live really close together like this, or in high rise buildings.

 We have also taken our fair share of bus rides. To get to the MRT station, we either have to ride a bus across a bridge, or walk about 20 minutes. The route we take depends on the colored line that we need to take.

Well, this wraps up the events of this week. Relief Daddy comes in a few days!
Love,
Mommy