Two months, really?

Tomorrow marks two months. I'm too tired to say anything much more profound about it than "wow."

-- Our shipment arrived, and everyone is very happy to have the "Weed" here. John and Tommy have been playing lots of golf and Rock Band. In fact, when it first got here, John was very concerned about the placement of the drum set -- he said he wanted to make sure that the TV could "see me rock." He then asked, "Daddy, are you ready to rock?" My most favorite, though, was when he was playing along to "We Got the Beat" by The Bangles and asked me, "Mom, who has the beat? Do you have the beat, or do I have the beat?"

-- I'm not sure how I forgot to mention this, but two weeks ago John fell into our coffee table and chipped a front tooth. I actually think that "chipped" is putting it lightly, since the tooth jammed up into his gum and when he finally stopped screaming enough for us to look at it, we saw that about 1/4 of the tooth was in pieces in his mouth. This little incident took us back to the doctor for the third time in 6 weeks. The dentist was very kind and reassuring, and the X-rays didn't show any fractures or other internal damage. She sealed over the jagged edges and told me that the biggest thing we'd have to worry about is gradual nerve damage, but since it was a baby tooth it wasn't that much of a problem. John recovered quickly and only mentions his "hurt tooth" every so often.

-- Even more about John. He started full time school this week. It was a hard decision to make but it's not permanent -- we'll revisit it over the summer and may even put him in a "local" (non-international) school, but for now the important thing is that he LOVES school and is doing very well. He takes the bus to and from school, which is WAY safer than me taking him (and sometimes Betsy) in a taxi. And he can count to 4 in Chinese! (We had to ask him how to say "Two" the other day. -))

-- Betsy is talking more and more and learning her animal sounds. She has also started answering when we ask her questions ("uh-huh" for yes, enthusiastic head shaking for no).

-- I feel like I'm getting braver about going around town. I've taken taxis and subways and with the exception of getting lost on the way to our expat dinner last weekend, it has all gone very smoothly. Today my friend Helene and I packed up the little kids (her son Jackson is two months younger than B) and took a taxi to the subway, then took the subway to Puxi to shop at the foreign bookstore. For a variety of reasons I ended up carrying Betsy for most of the two hour trip, and bless her tired little heart, she fell sound asleep as soon as we were finally back in the taxi on the way home. She was so tired that she didn't even wake up when we stopped for lunch -- the waitress helped me put two chairs together to make a bed for her, and brought out extra tablecloths for a blanket and pillow. She slept through the whole meal!

-- We're starting to plan our first trip, which will likely be to Hainan, an island near Hong Kong. We are really anxious to have some warm weather and a chance to relax after the last few crazy months. We'll probably go in early April. We're also going to try to take a trip to Hangzhou in the weeks ahead (that's just a day trip), and I'm excited to plan trips to Chengdu and Xi'an, plus Bejing this summer!

So, that's about it. Two whole months. Wow.