This is what I get....

For asking a 2 year old to help me bake brownies :)
I believe at the precise moment I took this picture she said "A mess!" She was quite proud of herself that she dumped the cup of flour on the floor instead of in the mixing bowl. Thank goodness for the Dyson.

We've been watching a LOT of Baby Einstein Old MacDonald

Carrie loves, loves, loves the Baby MacDonald DVD from the Baby Einstein collection. This is the kid that refuses to sit still for anything these days, but everything stops whenever I pop in that particular DVD and for a full, glorious 30 minutes she will lay on the couch with me enjoying the cows, piggies and horsies. She's obviously learning something from this DVD, as can be seen in this video of me, my mother and my father bombarding her with questions like "What does the ____ say?!"

Please tell me I'm not the only one.

I will get back to blogging about China...I have to since it's my travel journal, and may actually do so this evening if I can't figure out how to watch what I've DVR'd on my satellite box on my laptop :) But I had to put this out there...

Please tell me that I am not the only mother out there that's had moments/days of complete and utter feelings of "I am sooooooooo bad at this, why did I ever reproduce?" Cause I've felt like my life has been made up of those moments WAY too often lately. Take tonight for example. Nothing I did for Carrie was right, and I mean NO-THING. Dinner apparently wasn't to her liking, she didn't like the fact that I had to pack up some stuff for us to bring over to Jerry & Izzy's house because it is going to be FREEZING tonight (the heater in the cottage has been acting flaky and the last thing I needed was to wake up at 3am to it snowing inside), she didn't want to take a bath, didn't want to get her pj's on....the list goes on. I have to admit I feel a little cheated. I mean, I only get to see her, on average, about 2 hours a day during the week, which apparently are her worst two hours. And I realize I bring that on myself by working outside of the home (a completely different guilt factor for another blog). All the teachers at school always say how sweet and pleasant she is....yeah, well, come on over to our house around 6:30 and let me know what you think. One of the teachers at school gave us her number and is wanting to babysit for Carrie. I'm afraid to have her come over for fear of ruining Carrie's reputation at school :)

To top it off, I feel like a wimp for feeling this way. I am lucky enough to have a MIL right here that takes her to school and picks her up 99.9% of the time so I don't have to worry with that aspect when trying to get to work and get home. My job is simply to come home and enjoy my child. This is hard to do when every single thing becomes a battle of wills. I know it could be worse, and I know I need to focus on that. But seriously....I keep telling Carrie that while Daddy's out of town we need to be on the same team and work together...not sure she quite gets that just yet. I'll keep trying, though.

We Interrupt the China journal for an Important Announcement...

Yeah, cause I know everyone's still sitting on the edge of their respective seats since I'm soooo good about updating about China on a regular basis :)

Anyways, the impossible has happened. We have a contract on our house in Gainesville. Not just an offer, but a real, honest to goodness contract. I just sent it back to our agent with the necessary signatures so, God willing, we close on 2/27. Please be sure to pray to the real estate gods that all goes well and we are able to close this chapter that has been open for a year! Ironically enough, the offer came in exactly one year to the day that we put it on the market.

I'm having such mixed feelings about this, which I never thought would happen. I mean, I am SO thankful that we have warm bodies that actually like our house and want to buy it! But it's really bringing a close to our Gainesville chapter. When I moved there in September 2001, I hated that place. I mean, within a week I was telling Jerry "this places SUCKS, it's too small, I want to go back to the big city!!" But little by little it really grew on me. I finally got a job there I liked with the university, and we met some of the best friends we've ever had there. To this day I sorely miss being able to walk down the street to Jenn & Radley's house and see Ansley running around outside, or go over to Amy & Nate's house for a SuperBowl party, or have everyone meet up at Ichiban for some of the best (and relatively cheap!) sushi you've ever put in your mouth. And the decision to move from Gainesville was made even harder by the fact that a dear friend of mine, and Carrie's godparents, Amy & Aaron Aponick, moved cross-country from California to live in Gainesville when Aaron got a professor position at UF (Amy - I still miss our Chick-fil-A lunches!).

I know we will still be friends with these people....but it won't be the same. And I know we'll find a house here that we love just as much, or more than, this particular house in Gainesville. We bought that house with visions of raising our family there for a long time. Guess life has a funny way of throwing you curve balls. This has been a looooong road getting here, but let's hope it closes on a positive note about 45 days from now.

China Day 5

Yes, I'm lazy and horrible about updating. Whatever. Christmas/studying has gotten in the way, so that's my excuse for now. So moving on to updating about China...



Day 5 was an experience. There's no other way to describe it. I know I keep saying that about everything we did in China, but really...this was the ultimate shopper's experience. The menfolk had to go to their first round of business visits, so the girls were left to their own devices. I had breakfast with Jerry around 7:30, and these women did not want to get their day started untill 10am. Huh??? Why wait so long people? I went back to the room after breakfast and I think it was that morning that I picked out Carrie's Santa present over Skype with Mom...gotta love technology :) I bopped downstairs to meet Dana, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Donna. We decided that today would be the day we'd try out the Pearl Market and the Silk Market. These places are not for the faint of heart. We hopped on the subway (much to Donna's dismay, I think - she wasn't a big fan of the Chinese subway system!) and made our way to the Hongqiao Pearl Market.



You walk into the Pearl Market and it immediately starts...."LADY! LADY! LADY! Want to buy a watch? Ipod? iPhone?" And those were the only things they were saying on this floor because you enter on the electronics floor. It reminded me of the casinos in Las Vegas. There was no good way to get to where you wanted to go without going through all the action. We wanted to go directly to the top floor where we'd been told they have the real pearls, but we had to snake through each floor and find the escalators (no elevators here...guess ADA isn't a big thing, or either they had them well hidden). One entire floor was designer handbags/shoes/etc. Another floor was Chinese knick-knacks. Another floor was costume jewelry. Finally we got to the top floor with the real pearls!



Dana and I attended the orientation for the trip to China with our husbands, and the program coordinator tried to warn us, but there's no amount of warning that can prepare you for the sport that is Negotiating in China. I swear it should be an Olympic sport. Basically you look around for what you might like, look at it, ask how much, and offer about 10%. We didn't think you could do that in the more upscale jewelry stores, but you could! If they actually let you walk away, you know you've gone below cost on the item. The trick is to not let them know you really want whatever it is you are negotiating about. Let's just say that I ended up with an anniversary present of a black pearl ring by the end of this shopping trip, and I paid about 25% of the original asking price :)

Next on the list was lunch - we broke down and found a pizza place and truly enjoyed our pepperoni/sausage pizza with our beers!

Next was the Silk Market. Oh. My. God. If I thought the Pearl Market was crazy, that was NOTHING compared to the Silk Market. Oddly enough there's very little silk in there (really only one floor our of about 4 or 5). This place was CRA-ZY. The aisles in between the stalls were very narrow, and all of the people working in them wanted to reach out and grab you to get your attention. Not okay to a bunch of American women who like their personal space, but I eventually got used to it. This was the place for all of the fake designer handbags, which really did look pretty darn real! We didn't last too long there, as it was pretty overwhelming and it was getting close to the time that the guys were coming back.

Jerry and I ended up back across the street for more Hot Pot :) We tried to go to another nearby restaurant, but they didn't accept credit cards and there wasn't an ATM nearby, so we went back to the known entity. Afterwards we wandered down Wanfunjing taking in all of the sites, then headed back to the hotel to rest up for another day!

China Day 4

So it got a little dicey uploading/catching up with blogging after we arrived in Shanghai. The internet was dicey at best, and honestly I was just having so much fun I didn't want to take time out to blog :) Since I've caught up on uploading pics to the Picasa site, I'm now updating the blog, so enjoy!

Today was AMAZING. There's really no other way to describe it, since I truly never thought I'd see the Great Wall with my own eyes, and yet I spent the better part of this morning hiking around on it.

We started out at 8:30 loading the bus and heading out to the wall. On the way, we passed by the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. The architecture is very impressive; it's odd to see something as modern as those two buildings adjacent to thousands year old architecture. We plan on heading out there on Thursday since Jerry has a free day.


We made it to the wall after about an hour, and it's an incredible sight. It's also largely straight up. The ancient Chinese apparently did not believe in switchbacks which makes climbing the wall quite a task. You can tell which side is "inside" the territory and which is outside quite easily - the side of the wall that is higher faces the outside. A large portion of the wall has been subsequently rebuilt in the last 100 years or so, but you still get a great sense of the history that you are experiencing while at the Wall. We spent about two hours out at the wall, which probably wasn't enough time. It takes so long to get up to the top (or, at least what we deemed the top). I do have to say that this trip so far has really inspired me to want to learn more about Chinese history and culture. It is so very different from what we as Americans have encountered, and it's so fascinating to me. Perhaps I'll have some free time to read about China while Jerry's in Portugal next year :)


After the Wall, we headed back to the hotel. We probably should have gotten some lunch, but we didn't have time - it was on to the Forbidden City. This was a short walk from our hotel, which was nice. The Forbidden City is officially known as the Palace Museum, and was homebase for the imperial court and dignitaries until the 20s. It was opened to the public in 1949. It was completed in 1420. That's hard to comprehend since America wasn't even America at that point in time. The US really is a baby in the grand scheme of things! We wandered around in the Forbidden City for well over an hour, just taking it in and snapping pictures.


After the Forbidden City we wandered through Tian'an Men Square. I was 13 when the whole Tian'an Men Square Massacre occured, so that's what I mostly associate this place with. We were told by Jerry's tour guide that about a thousand Chinese citizens can be seen at dawn each day as the PRC flag is raised at dawn. Had dawn not been at about 5am, I probably would have gone to see that myself :) Mao's mausoleum is also located here, but it's not open on Mondays so we couldn't go in. On other days his body is brought out of the tomb for viewing.

After Tian'an Men Square, we headed over to Qian Men. This was known as the most imposing of the 9 city gates to Beijing back in the day. This has been renovated into a shopping area (China = consumerism I've learned). We had so much fun wandering around this area. I even found a place where I could get a cashmere coat tailor made for me! I may go back tomorrow to get measured for it while Jerry's in class!

After such a full day we headed back to the hotel, had dinner, and hit the sack!

Editor's note

By the way, I think it's probably pretty obvious that these aren't always posted on the day I write them....sometimes I can get into the Blogger website, and sometimes I can't! Very interesting considering we're in China....So I'm basically just writing everything down in a word document and uploading when I can, just so you know!!