More pictures and update!

We are currently still on the job hunt. Mike just recently finished a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and has been working part time at his old company until he finds something new. We have been seeing a lot of blessings. An old contact randomly called mike up and has been offering him temporary jobs teaching corporate English for some hotels. Those are cash cows, big bucks! 30 plus dollars an hour. And the TEFL qualifies him for some of the highest competing English Schools. He also put in an application for an entry level position at the Canadian embassy, cross your fingers, which would be really great for getting a foot in the door and making some contacts. He is seriously thinking of working for the government as his long term career. Other than that this month he has had more time to spend with his family, smile, and a much needed break from the hectic hours he was working the last month or so of his contract at Pattison English. He taught 144 classes in May. They have this stupid policy that if the student doesn't give 24 hours notice and are a no show then the students are not refunded the money, company pockets it, but it counts as a class to be made up by the teacher. And also for a while there they had a policy that if there was only one student signed up for a group class they canceled it and again the teacher was still required to meet their teaching quota for the month. So Mike ended up being short 50 classes at the end of the year to make up even though he had never missed a day. Stupid eh. So they worked him like a dog for the last month and a half with no overtime pay, teaching 7 and 8 classes a day plus prepare time, and he still had 11 to make up at the end of his contract. So he had to teach those 11 classes without pay! dumb. Sorry I use the words dumb and stupid a lot when talking about this but that is how I feel. That is what motivated him to get the TEFL so he could sign on with a better company. One company he has interviewed with already told him that the teacher only would have to make up classes he missed (ie he gets sick) not the students cancelling or no shows. Much better!

Enough ranting now on to Jada!

There are fountains on the grounds of our apartment complex and Jada's new favourite thing is to kick her feet in the water. She goes for them with gusto. It is so cute, she always gets several passersby stopping to watch and take pictures. Chinese people are constantly telling me she's too hot or too cold, you should do this, you shouldn't do that. Don't let her put that in her mouth, she needs to wear socks, you can't feed her that, ect. ect. So I was really surprised when nobody said anything about me letting her kick her feet in the water. I got a few, is the water cool? questions. Will she be cold? But no scoldings. I have noticed that people in this complex are more understanding towards foreigners and the things they do different, I guess because there are several foreigners living in this complex. I have here tell me that the way I raise my child is good, that Chinese children get sick easily because there parent don't let them put anything in their mouth, are really concerned about them being too hot or too cold and so really protect them in that respects. I just think there is no one right way to raise a child. No matter where you go in the world people have different opinions about these things and the kids are fine for the most part. I think every parent should follow there instinct about what is best for their child. In fact, some of the things that parents do here would make parents in Canada feel VERY uncomfortable. Such as babies and young children walking about in open crotch pants, mothers exposing their breast to feed in public (not being discreet at all), parents letting there kids pee anywhere, including in front of a restaurant ( I saw this once).

Anyways back to what I was talking about. When Jada starts kicking in the water the other kids want to too because she looks so happy. And so a few parents have let their kids kick in the water as well. We are thinking of talking her to a kiddy pool somewhere soon, she would love that.

For the first time yesterday Jada told us when she had to go pee. She didn't make the que sound I have been teaching her but she started whining, looked at us and put her hand there. We are still a long way away from that being a constant thing but it is a start. She got lots of claps for that one.

She has also started to wave. She is picking up new things at a rapid pace. We are working on saving the money to hopefully be able to make it back to Canada for Christmas, we miss family and would love to see Jada with her cousins, grandparents and aunts and uncles.

Jada 10 month photos

Jada at 10 Months

Jada is getting so smart and has started doing several new things recently. One big one that we have been looking for and anticipating for some time now is crawling. We thought she might end up being one of those babies that walks before they crawl and she was close. She started walking around furniture long before she started crawling and she is still way more efficient at that. Her first time crawling was only about 5 minutes before Mike got home from work which was sad but she crawled to him when he got home. She can really get herself around now. She walks around funiture, walls, door frames,ect., can go from laying down to sitting to standing and standing to sitting and can crawl. She is quite vocal with lots of new sounds. Every time I sing she starts "singing" and whenever mike growls at her she growls back. She also has recently started throwing miny temper tantrums nothing like when she gets a little older but she throws her body back and screams high piched but it only ever lasts a second or two and then she decides she is fine. She LOVES spashing water. I was trying to show her how to blow bubbles with a straw the other day and she didn`t pick that up but had a grand old time making a big puddle and splashing around in it. She also LOVES to empty things out. She doesn`t put them back in yet, I keep showing her so she will get there. Today she crawled over to the table and was walking around the chairs and got under the tables. There are cross beams on the underside of the table and she is just short enough to stand up under the table inbetween the cross beams. But she couldn`t figure out that she needed to duck to get passed the cross beams and so got really upset because everytime she moved she hit her head. That was quite difficult getting a scared, stiff baby that wouldn`t bend her knees out from under the table. That really hit home to me just how much a baby has to learn. I totally take ducking for granted. Just recenly when we go to greet her in the morning or after a nap we find her standing up in her bed and it is a favourite game of her for us to kiss her hands through the mesh sides of her pack and play. She absolutly loves pick a boo type games. That gets lots of giggles and and screams of delight and she will try to find us or the object that we have moved out of sight. She GAUCKS at babies and other little kids, it is so funny. She still eats just about anything that we put infront of her which is huge blessing as parents. She uses her pinchers to pick up small chunks of food and she always seems very pleased as she looks around the table at us as we eat together. We recently got a high chair. We were feeding her in her walker before because it has a tray but it was harder to keep her in one place which ment more clean-up. She has 6 teeth now, I almost forgot to mention that. She is a little cutie, her hair is getting blonder and her skin is getting darker with Bejing`s hot summer days. We love her lots. She is a huge joy and blessing in our lives. Mike is a great dad to her, they are good pals. It is fun to watch him play with her. You can see how much they love each other.

housewarming party extraordinaire

When you move having a housewarming party really makes you feel settled in and that you have a warm house. We invited 30 people, and probably 25 showed up so it was a full house with a mix of friends from work and church.

We made pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce, coleslaw (Thanks Mom Innes for the recipe! People loved it and asked for the recipe) and a plethora of smoothies. As one flavour ran out, we would make another one.

We started with Lime-razzy, then strawberry-mango, then orange-pineapple-banana, ending up with dad Innes' special: chocolate-marshmallow-grape!

With the chocolate-marshmallow-grape, we made it into a game: We gave everyone a taste, and they had to write down what they thought that the flavours were. 4 people got 2/3 right but no one got all three - 3 of them said chocolate and grape, only 1 said chocolate and marshmallow. So we drew the winner (who got a tolberbone bar) out of those 4 people and gave everyone else a small chocolate bar (someone brought them as housewarming gifts, so why not) as a prize for trying. People where guessing everything from Chocolate covered cherries (quite common guess) to Tootsie rolls (very common) to my favorite "deliciousness, mmmm and chocolate"! Someone else said chocolate and magic. But everyone agreed that this flavour combo is quite good.

All the Innes' know the story behind it, but for those who don't this is the story behind it: A number of years ago he went to Peter's Drive In in Calgary, with a bunch of friends who dared each other to come up with the weirdest flavour combination (Peter's something like 30 flavour options). Dad Innes said Chocolate Marshmallow grape. He won the dare, and the milkshake was surprisingly good, so has became a favorite ever since.

BTW, the ratio that we came up with is: 4 cups ice cream, 1-2 cups milk (depending on how thick you like it), 3 tablespoons grape concentrate (we found one that is almost a jam, just not as thick), 5 tablespoons sweetened chocolate powder (ie Nestle Quick) and 5 tablespoons marshmallow cream (we made our own, really simple to do). Adjust ratios as needed. Of course, some of the ingredients in Canada will be different then in China, so the ratios could be a little different. You'll have to play around with it until it tastes right - Chocolate with grape with a hint of marshmallow - no flavour should overpower any other, but if you were to order the flavours it would be Chocolate, Grape, than Marshmallow. This is definitely going in our family memories cookbook.

Everyone had a good time which made us happy!