归心似箭

有了宝宝后 才真正了解什么叫做归心似箭

肚子出来的一块肉 却同时也分走了我的一颗心 去到哪里 都被遥控 操作

一到天黑 就不由自主的想早点下班回家

出差时 一颗心净想着他

开会时 总想偷偷地看他的照片

搭车时 只要看到别人的小孩嘴角就扬起微笑

做个上班妈妈真的很难

超乎我自己的想象

鱼与熊掌不可兼得

The Week in Chamu

A short update on what little Joaquin has been able to figure out recently (Mommy & Daddy are exhausted after a Sunday with him, nonstop, no nap since 12pm, wondering if this will be their life for 8 months):

- He's figured out how to throw balls far. And plastic broccoli toys, bopping a subsequently angry little boy at the playground, in the head, off of a ricochet shot.

- He knows his way around the house: after being naughty in the studio Daddy banished him to the living room, and he immediately turned around and made a beeline back to the studio.

- He knows how to bin things. Given two tubs of plastic toys at the library playground he'll start transferring toys from one to the other back and forth. He held on to one toy up and down the playhouse and after 10 minutes crawled back and returned it back to the bin. Still very much enjoys throwing things on the floor, tho.

- He points and calls birds "coo coo" and dogs "gou gou".

- He can now use his own stroller as a walker without any assistance or holding.

- He can kiss his Mommy on command.

- He does a closed-eye smile on command (video to come).

- He can draw lines with a pen on a tablet (video to come).

- He can ride the motorcycle at the playground by himself while making 'vroom-vroom' noises.

- He understands the meaning of "No!" (as in "don't touch that"), but often pretends not to.

- He not only does peekaboo on himself with is own hands but grabs and pulls open and closed Daddy's hands from in front of Daddy's eyes.

- He asks for 'bao bao' (to hold/hug in Chinese).

Quite a few busy weeks!

Busy as a Bee

Mamu has been very busy.  In addition to her day job, she now moonlights as a travel agent.  She has been staying up late a few nights in a row now just to try to figure out their traveling schedule for the next six months.  Finally she and Dadu agreed to do the following 'preliminary' plan:

• Book Round-the-World tickets (and we will reserve no seat for Chamu since we need to save $$)
  
• May: Taiwan (10 days) 
• June: Macau (2 days), Beijing and Inner Mongolia (7 days), Tokyo and Hokkaido (15 days)
• July: LA (7 to 10 days), Galapagos Islands (if not, then Brazil; 10 to 14 days), Panama (7 to 10 days)
• August/September: kicking off our Grand Tour with Paris (where it all began); we will work our way through Belgium, Holland, Germany, and the Eastern Europe
• October/November: Greece (avoid the summer heat and the party crowd) and then the Iberian Peninsula
• December: London (briefly to visit some friends) and then to Australia (we will welcome our 2010 before most our F&Fs)
• January: New Zealand and Fiji.  

We will complete our circle by the end of January and be back in HK/Taiwan

Mamu has also been busy trying to sign up for public classes offered by the HK govt (very cheap but hard to get).  She wants to do aerobic dance, gym (already registered; only HK$75 for 12 classes!), sailing and swimming in May and June!  Pretty aggressive, isn't it?  Maybe she is just afraid that she may be bored...

Can this really be it?

I took 3 days off the weekend before (for our 5-day Phuket vacation) and this week is another 4-day weekend given the Easter holidays. I'm thinking that I can really get used to not having to work! Even when there is no work, my days goes by so fast. Instead of hours, it's now measured by which meal Joaquin has finished. This morning, he woke up at quarter to 10am (since party boy didn't want to go to sleep until 10pm last night). He played for 2 hours, napped for an hour, woke up and ate his lunch. By the time we left the apartment, it was already 3pm. We managed to go to the park when it started to rain so we rushed to the library for 4pm play room session. Mamu rushed to her 4pm facial session. By the time, we are both done, we will need to rush home for his bath and dinner. So with this kind of schedule, I can see that it will take us at least one week to explore each city when we are doing our global travel!

Figuring things out

Joaquin is doing lots of things these days to make his Daddy & Mommy proud:

• Today he crawled over to his potty and though he didn't sit on it, he crouched next to it and started going (albeit with his pants still on)! so hopefully it won't be too long before we can say bye bye to diapers. He hasn't quite read enough Economist to figure out a solution to the Financial Crisis, but let's hope it's soon.


• At the park he kept pointing at the birds and pigeons and saying "coo coo", which I guess to him means 'bird'. Maybe it was all that playing "Cucurrucucu, Paloma" (from the Habla Con Ella Soundtrack) to him while he was in the womb?


• Dense Daddy didn't know that it was time to give him milk and kept reading him his bedtime story, so Joaquin looked at the bottle in the bottle warmer and said "Nai!" (milk in Chinese).

Darling of the Crowd

Chamu won the popularity contest this weekend. We had spent last 5 days in Phuket with Jon and Kinty. A lot of sunshine, fun and rain (luckily mostly in the evenings)!
Chamu likes looking at people and, in turn, he was attracting smiles or waves everywhere we brought him. Mary Anne calls him Darling of the crowd!
He was also extremely active and probably scared his uncle and auntie into waiting a couple more years before having a baby of their own (after witnessing how Chamu tears up the living room--and every restaurant we went to!).
Chamu became comfortable with pool again but he is still somewhat afraid of grass and sand (still a city boy). After 5 days of blazing sun in Phuket, he has added some color to his white skin (and a few mosquito bites).
On the flight back to Hong Kong today, he managed to tire out all three of his caretakers. We now feel like we need another vacation to recover from the last 6 hours...
Pictures to come soon.