Saturday, May 26, 2007
Jude's "Pirates of the China Strait"
Here are some snaps we took while he was ranting and raving: The best part was that he went off like that for about 15 minutes, and the fact that there were four people standing around watching him made no difference. When he actually stopped shouting for a moment and Thomas or Yuly started doing something silly to encourage him to continue, he gave them this look:
Apparently, he does not need encouragement.
Here are some randoms shots:
We hope this entry finds you happy, healthy and the rest. Big, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses from all of us!
mammafrog signing off....
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
satisfied?
This is definitely prunes....
More shouting at inanimate objects, like the camera....
I have to say, he is quite a sweetheart on some occasions...
Finally asleep. We both are....
Jude and his mate Rhys, previously known as The Giant. This was a lovely little lunch date for the two of them as this was the first time they acknowledged each other as fellow persons. Prior to this, Rhys went straight for the pacifier attatched to Jude's clothes, and Jude tried to eat Rhys' head. Every single time.
So that's all for now folks. As much as I like to show him off, I must say, you better appreciate this. Did I mention that I would probably be a bit more prompt if some of the family out there who are CONSTANTLY NAGGING ME to get the photos up would pay me??????????? Actually, I would guarantee it! ;)
Saturday, May 05, 2007
time delay
a) studying for my dive master course
b) doing research for a project that may actually send money my way
c) having a few moment (hours) of my own time...to myself!
d) actually getting some sleep
I hope you're happy.
Seriously, I do hope you enjoy them. They are all incorporated into the original blogs. It looks a bit wonky 'cause I can't read html any more than I can read Chinese. There are some sweet pics. And we have more, up-to-date ones as well, but you know what? You're just going to have to wait. Unless somehow he turns in to a fully automated baby (a dream too good...), I have my hands full at the moment. He has now figured out that if he crawls, he can actually get it himself. The double edged sword (from my perspective). Good thing that he is more interested in cookies and being right next to his people than exploring the three flights of staircase. This will probably change very soon. We'll keep you posted how that works out.
Anyway, my love and my thoughts - in the free blinks when I can have them - are with you.
mamafrog
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
a couple snaps
Next is a picture of our little drool imp, looking a bit demonic, but cute no less:
And finally one of the two of us and our long hair. You'll understand what I mean later.
The little punk is just about crawling and is adamant about standing up and being a part of everything. He remains to be the magnificent master of all social settings, a perfect picture of congeniality, and a demanding attention fiend when he is alone with his ma. He has even started moaning something that definitely sounds like "Maaaaaaaaa!" when he is tired or hungry or upset for whatever reasons babies at nearly 7 months do. He gave his ma his first kiss this evening - gently placing his hands on either side of her face and putting his open mouth up to her cheek. Adorable!
He has also shown himself to be a mango-lover. Huzzah! No problem keeping them in the house! I must be off now, belly to shake and all. But we will be back soon - must recount to shopping experience and show you his new fishy duds that he picked out himself!
love you all,
mamafrog
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Fingerprints in the Sand
Now, admittedly this has NOTHING to do with the wee dude directly but something that those of you who used to enjoy my lengthy emails about the nature of living in Taiwan as a foreigner. Here is a little anecdote about me trying to get fingerprints taken for my Canada criminal records check, something I need to get my permanent visa to Oz. I had already done this once, and finally, four months later, I got the result...which was that they couldn't process it due to the fact the the prints were of bad quality. So they (our wonderful R.C.M.P., who don't respond to emails I might add!) sent me the form so I could try again, which happened to be badly damaged in transit and thus probably impossible to use. But what can you do? Write back and wait for another to come all mashed in the mail again? Hell no!
So, a few weeks ago, I tried again.
I went to get my fingerprints done at the police station on Jungjeng road, as that's where I got them done the first time. This also used to have the Foreign Affairs bureau in the same building but early in 2007 the office moved a block away. The officer at the door sent me to the foreign affairs, now on Chenggong road, office on the 7th floor. The people at this office sent me to the 1st floor. The people on the first floor sent me to the 2nd floor. The people on the second floor sent me back to the police station. The people at the police station insisted that I go to the foreign affairs office but when I assured them that I had already been there and they sent me back, this officer sent me to another office. That officer sent me to the old office and the people at the old office gave me an address to another building on Liohe road.
So yesterday I went down to this office. They told me that they couldn't do it there, that I had to go back to foriegn affairs and get a computer scan done. As I was afraid that this would not suffice as the RCMP in Canada provided me with a sheet, I asked that both the computer scan and the physical fingerprinting could be done. After 10 minutes of conversation, and this guy telling me they couldn't get a police officer to take my fingerprints because they don't do it like that in Taiwan, and having a good laugh with me about all the fun I have been having trying to get this done, he called the foreign affairs office to see if they could do it. So I went back to the foreign affairs office and after 30 minutes of this particular customs officer talking to his supervisor they decided that I could actually do both. He took me down to the first floor again, to the third window where they did a computer scan. Unfortunately my hands are too dry and wrinkly so the scan was only 25% readable. (Which is why to first one didn't work). They did another scan to the same result, and then that customs officer took two sets of physical prints, so hopefully that and a detailed note explaining my "condition" will have a positive result. Otherwise I guess I will just have to wait until I go home in the summer. The whole ordeal only took up about three hours of my time. Should count myself lucky I guess.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The Auss-nuck's first trip down under - remarkable breakthroughs galore!
2. Long Car Rides
This is the very first long car ride (the only other one so far was a measly two hour and back to Kenting for the New Year, so it doesn't even BEGIN to compare with Sydney to Canberra to Melbourne back to Ulladulla back to Sydney.)
The contestant Jude and his parents changed houses 10 times, and while in most of the places there was an entire spare room at their disposal, they were often too small for three people. It doesn't matter that one of the people is a 9kg baby. (Can you believe the little punk is 9kg already?) We are not still in college. There was even an air mattress in a living room. A comfy air mattress, but an air mattress no less. Considering that he actually slept through the whole night AND developed more of a sleeping pattern than was ever arranged for him by his dozy mother, he scores a point and a half for every house - and then rounded up to 16 points.
4. Public Presentation
Now admittedly wee-ish Jude meets a lot of people on a weekly basis, and is much more interested in people than things, so this really wasn't a stretch.However, he met nearly four score and ten new lovely souls, not to mention strangers in parks, malls, pubs; on buses, boats and planes; in circumstances well out of his control or understanding, with hundreds of new variables to account for in every waking hour of the day AND remained a perfect picture of congeniality and baby charm. Score 1 point for every 5 people - 18 points.
5. General Achievements
a)Sitting up by himself at 4.5 months old - 5 points
e)Theatre appreciation - minus 5 points as he slept through them or bawled. (Give the guy a break, he's only five months old!)
f) Developing a fierce interest in what everyone else is eating - (Mamafrog says 50 points!) 5 points
88 points! HUZZAH FOR THE WEE DIVE NINJA!!!!!!!
Though, as we didn't set a pass mark, he wins and wins again! This is the result of modern approaches to assessment. A bit mamby-pamby I know, but don't worry, it won't all be praise and fanfare. All in all, the wee dude did very well and we look forward to our next major voyage. Here are some more photos of the wee ninja in action!
Stay tuned for our irregularly scheduled updates! Ta for now!
Mamafrog and Zendaddy
Monday, February 26, 2007
to the great southern land and back, madre rana's perspective
We just got back from our month long adventure Down Under. It was fantastic, exciting, informative, exhausting, and, for a few moments, relaxing (as I am sure all of you with small children can understand). I have to say that when I imagined traveling to Australia I never imagined doing it with an infant. Ai-O!
We arrived in Sydney on January 22nd and went straight to bed. The flight was not terrible at all; after all the trips back to Canada which include an hour to Hong Kong or Taipei, 11-12 hours to Vancouver, an hour and a half to Edmonton or Calgary and then several hours in a car back to the farm, Kaohsiung to Hong Kong and then 8 hours to Sydney was a dream. Jude fared pretty well for his first major flight I would say. The biggest problem was keeping him entertained, as the poor chap bores easily (where does he get that from you may ask? ;) ). In this regard, getting on the plane first is the WORST thing to do. That way he is already bored before we are anywhere near take off. And we left later in the day and that is usually when babes get cranky so it was a bit trying. But, it could have been waaayyyyy worse.
We spent a week and a bit in Sydney hanging with Tom's mom Billie and her guy Barry, and various other family and friends of Tom's from childhood, high school, uni, Kung Fu and other bits of his past.
I got to meet his Kung Fu sifu and I was admittedly a wee bit nervous. We went into the city for Australia Day, which was cool to see the Aussies in celebration.
Note the guy sitting in the fountain with the beer.I have to say I didn't personally get into it though, as trying to push a stroller through a more than packed Hyde Park was more than a bit like walking through a night market in Kaohsiung on any given day and we all know how much Dawnelle likes this. (If not - I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.) And a wee bit disappointed that I couldn't partake in the celebrations. I rest assured that one day I will get my chance.
Here are some hot cars on display downtown that day. In Australia, they don't put jaguars on their cars, they use kangaroos.
We also saw "Turandot" in the park and thus I experienced my first Opera complete with a picnic in the grass. A lovely time except for the fact that it was BLOODY COLD! (Funny thing - with the exception of the last few days in Sydney, it was rather chilly for most of the month we were there, UNLESS we were in the car on one of the 12 hour trips cross country and then it was 8 million degrees out). Tom and I also got to go to a performance (sans babe) at the Opera House called "Kaidan" - dance choreographed by Meryl Tankard combined with drumming by Taikoz - a group of Aussies who do Japanese Taiko drumming. It was wicked. I love drums. And we also saw a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. A lovely little bit but again, it was BLOODY COLD. Apparently if you are going to so theater in the park in Australia, bring a jacket. And blankets. And a stove.
We walked around downtown a fair bit, went on a hike along the Heads,
got up to the North Shore to see Granny,
and strolled through the Botanic Garden.
Here's one of us with our friend Pan:
We went for a dive at Shelly beach and saw Wobbegongs, lots of kelp, LOADS of sting rays (don't worry, we didn't pull a Steve and get too close) and some very cool fish. Unfortunately, I did NOT see any weedy sea dragons - ALAS! Next time I guess.
From Sydney we went up to the Blue Mountains to stay with family friends in a beautiful house built by Nikos himself in the bush. It was cool and misty and absolutely wonderful to be surrounded by gum trees and the cackling of Kookaburras, the pterodactyl-like squawking of cockatoos, the clicking of geckos. Didn't actually see any redbacks or funnelwebs (much to my relief), although Nikos assured me there were millions all around us. I think Australia is the land of the spider if nothing else. We went up to Echo Point to see the Three Sisters, but of course it was so foggy that we didn't see a bloody thing.
The Three Sisters are right above the sign.
Completely masked in the fog.
Chalk another up for next time.
From there we went down past Sydney to Otford to visit some more friends who also live in the bush, but this time right along the coast. We went for a little walk with the kiddies along the cliff and then got back in the car and headed further south to Ulladulla to visit Tom's dad Ron and his wife Romy.
Note: We stopped at the massive temple in Nowra and it was very cool but sort of weird going to a temple in Australia when they are all over the place here. But the coolest thing was that they had all these little buddha baby statues and they looked just like Jude! Headwise that is.
It was in Ulladulla that the wee bub had his first dip in the ocean. He took to it like a fish, as they say, to our great excitement.
After a mere day we got back in the car and went to Canberra, Australia's capital city to visit Tom's aunt Julie, her husband Peter and their children Matty and Niko. The next day we took a scenic drive up the mountain to take a look at the city. Canberra is very interesting because the location was chosen as a spot basically between Sydney and Melbourne and the city itself was designed in entirety before they built it. They even built a lake in the middle and on a map the streets have ramps that look like hearts and clover.From there we embarked on the second longest car ride of our travel (the only longer one was the way back) to Melbourne. Although most of my time I spent in the backseat entertaining the bub, it was very interesting to check out landscape. Unfortunately Australia (like much of the rest of the world) is experiencing a drought that has been running seven years, and is in our opinion not a drought, but the result of global warming. Lots of flat land turned to agriculture where the trees are often dead or dying, and what livestock there was to be seen was huddled under the surviving trees in the shade. This perspective was of course intensified by the fact that it was cloudless and sunny and 8 million degrees in the car with the a/c on. We saw the Dog on the Tuckerbox and stopped in Glenrowan, were the famous Ned Kelly, may he rest in peace, made his last stand.
After a few days we got back in the car and returned to Ulladulla for a night, and then Ron and Romy's holiday house was free so we moved in for the better part of the week the next day. We had planned to go diving the following morning, but alas - we got more rain that night than the country side had in the last seven years. Glad we could help, but it meant absolute shite for diving. (Always fancied myself as something of a rain goddess, though only on vacation!). We did go diving, although there was about 2-3 metres visibility (not so nice) but we did see some cool stuff and a 2 metre long bull ray, who kinda followed us for a bit. Tom's sister Chris showed up from London on Monday (his other sister Jo got back from Spain and his other sister Caro got back from Africa while we were there too - what a reunion!), and we lounged out mostly. Had a wicked time feeding the birds - rosellas,
lorikeets, king parrots and crested pigeons! Ah, to live in the land of rainbow coloured birds! Also got to see my first roo up close - a big daddy was lounging out on the lawn when we got back from the beach! Bloody cool! (Note: we had seen a couple in the ditch alive, and as roadkill on the highway as we drove back from Melbourne. Although it was not the same as it was watching them bound across the lawn, it was rather startling seeing their great, upright shapes loom out of darkness as we zinged past. We also saw a few wombats - I've finally seen them Dic - and they are nothing like Kumquats! ;) - but more dead ones than 'live ones).
After a few days we were back in Ulladulla, and then back in Sydney for more hanging out with the fam and friends. It was sunny for the most part and we took a dip or two at the beach. Tried to go boat diving, but for various reasons, it didn't happen. C'est la vie. AND my supersnazzy sis Amanda had arrived in Sydney where she is taking a massage therapy course and will be living for a year. So we had a wonderful little reunion. She got to hang out with our main little dude too (whom she things is wicked cute but a barrel of trouble already) and give her big sis a massage. Her idea of course, as she says she needs the practice. The first one was wicked, so I can't wait to visit her again to get a little more.
Jude was very lucky to have all his aunties together at the same time. As afore meantioned, my sister Amanda was there studying. Chris, who has been living in England for the past few years made it back from London. Jo, who was touring around Asia, Europe and Central America, made it back from Spain, and Caro who was on a brief trip to Kenya and Thailand, also made it back in time to say hello to the wee guy. Here's a pic of the guy with his beautiful aunties:
And then, finally on February 23rd we embarked on the voyage home. Jude was an angel on the long flight and there was a queue of people wanting to hold the little punk on the way back. He was a perfect terror on the flight from Hong Kong back to Kaohsiung though! Thank goodness it was only an hour long!
Here are the great adventurers in the Hong Kong airport, recalling their exploits with great amusement and candor:
Grace, Yuly and Daniel (our Taiwanese family) attacked the stroller when we arrived and Mama Frog and the wee guy went straight to bed. Well deserved I might add!
All in all, Mamafrog things the land down under is A-OK and is thinking that this may be a permanent base one day. Everyone received us with open arms and it was fabulous to finally meet all these people I had been hearing about for the past three years. Australia is a truly gorgeous country in all respects and I can't wait to go back. It is how I imagine Canada to be if it were a whole lot warmer.
Here are some random photos that I took, sort of fancing that Iknow what I am doing with a camera. As usual, more trees and flowers. Few rocks though...
I have to say though, that after over 30 hours in a car with an infant, looking out from the backseat, changing houses 10 times, all the packing and the washing and the missing out on the festivities that I may have over-enjoyed as a childless person, I was actually glad to be back in my own bed. Thank goodness Grace cleaned the house while we were gone! She's a ninja!
And thus, my dearest friends and fam, with that Mamafrog bids you adieu until she can get another few hours to herself. Next year perhaps. Until then, all my love from asian island.