More on Siew's final days in Xiamen

Since this last weekend was Siew's final one in Xiamen, she needed to make sure that she fully used up all of the value she had on her discount cards. So that meant that Tina and Siew went to the nail salon for the full treatment - hands and feet.

Of course that mean that I was stuck with watching over Ben and Daniel. This was a nice and easy one - we met Siew over at a coffee bar and when Tina and Siew went off I took the kids for a nice long walk. The weather was surprisingly warm, so we took a nice leisurely stroll around the lake and then headed back to our place to watch some of the BBC Wild China DVDs that we had recently bought.

After a quick 4 hours I took the kids over to Temptations so that Daniel could say goodbye to his teacher. Then Tina and Siew returned and we went with sister Siew Yih to a nice seafood goodbye meal....

Fun with Ben and Daniel

Saturday afternoon we once again were helping our friend Siew Hong out by watching her kids Ben and Daniel. Siew needed to spend the day at the shop getting ready for Siew Yih's Arabian themed birthday party.

Another fun day as Tina and I took them back through the market so that they could have fun taking photos...
We also had fun on some small little kiddie rides in the local park. By we I mean Daniel, Ben, and myself - Tina's only fun was taking photos...
Tomorrow we'll share all the fun that we had at Siew Yih's birthday party.

Amusement Park

We had yet another opportunity to babysit our little friends, Ben and Daniel on Saturday.

As usual, we met at Temptations, had lunch with mom, and off we went to have a fun day at the amusement park. We arrived at our destination, Ben smiling, and Daniel hopping up and down like a kangaroo. We decided to check it out first before attacking any rides or games.

It's not a large place, but it did provide quite a few rides, including rollercoasters, bumpercars, swing ride, pirate ship and a host of other rides for younger children.
After our quick tour, we decided to go on the bumper cars. Mark and Ben in one car, and Daniel and I in another. They both enjoyed that ride, so off to the next ride. Daniel wanted to play in the play room which provided a host of small tunnels, balls that shoot out from guns, and all sort of other things to climb on or in. While I watched him, Mark thought it was a good opportunity to take Ben, the bigger of the two, to the rides that Daniel wouldn't be able to take part in.

After 30 minute or so, Daniel decided he was bored, since big brother Ben had no desire to go and play with him, so off to the next ride. We decided the Merry Go Round would be good for both. Daniel thought otherwise. He thought the ride was too fast, but Uncle Mark persuaded him to go. I took a Giraffe, Ben a unicorn, Mark stayed next to Daniel who opted for a horse. Daniel ended up enjoying the ride, though cautious at first.



Following this ride, Daniel wanted to go on to the Pirate Ship ride. We explained that this ride would be much quicker, and you don't have the option of getting out, once it starts going. He decided it was better not to go on it.

Then it was off to the Haunted House. I took Daniel and Mark took Ben. It took a mere 3 seconds if that for Daniel to decide, this wasn't going to be fun, and as quickly as we went in, we came right back out. Meanwhile, Mark and Ben went into the Haunted house, only to get stuck and couldn't find there way out, so they backtracked to find there way out of the Haunted House. Okay, that was pretty much a bust, so we decided to play some games.

Ben wanted to do shoot, so he tried his luck with a gun, and some balloons. He did very well, so much so Mark and I figured we couldn't hit as many balloons as Ben had. He won a prize, a watergun, which of course Daniel wanted.

Ben, the sharpshooter

Then it was off to the next game where Daniel and Ben could try their luck. It was a small version of Whac-A-Mole, only with tiny mice to hit on the head with a mallot. They were both good enough to win a prize.

Later, we went to the small children's ride similiar to a roller coaster, without the rolls. Ben wanted to go on the Pirates Ship, so Mark offered to look after Daniel and I would take Ben. Okay, that didn't bode well for Daniel. While Ben and I enjoyed the ride, Daniel cried, and pouted. Well, you knew it wouldn't be the same without Daniel crying at least once while we are looking after him.

The ride that started it all!

After the ride, Daniel continued crying and pouting. We gave him a couple of options, but chose not to say anything, so we decided to go home. We're starting to get good at this. We knew he was tired and needed sleep more than anything. As soon as Mark carried him into the taxi, he was asleep. When we got to Temptations, Mark put him upstairs for his afternoon nap.

The image of Daniel we have come to know and love

We on the other hand opened a bottle of wine.

It's tough being 4

Well the nice break is over, and now it's time for us to continue with the blog. Mmmm, when is Em coming to visit?

Okay, so Saturday, our dear sister, Hong, or Big Red as Mark calls her, was preparing for a small gathering that evening,for a friend of ours, Lilita and asked if it would be possible to look after her two sons.

Of course we would, though she did warn us that Daniel got up early and would most likely be tired.

We had lunch, and then off we went to Gu Lang Yu. We weren't out the door but 3 minutes, and Daniel started walking slower and slower. Finally, he asked Uncle Mark if he would pick him up. For the next three and half hours Mark carried Daniel around Gu Lang Yu. Not sure how much he enjoyed it, but Ben sure had a good time.



As for Uncle Mark, well, let's just say he doesn't need to lift weights for awhile.

Saturday afternoon with the kids..

Saturday morning we were up bright and early, fully rested after a relaxing Friday night of doing pretty much nothing, so we were fully ready for a full day of running around with Siew's kids Ben and Daniel.

We were worried that it was going to rain all day and that we would have to find ways to entertain them at home, but luckily it looked like the rain was going to hold off for a while. This was nice, and it gave us a chance to let them run around and get good and tired. We had purchased some tennis racquets and a little ball on a return bungee cord that we thought would be easy to play and would keep them occupied for a while.

It didn't. Ben played with it for about 5 minutes, and both Tina and I also tried and had problems in getting this system to work properly, so we packed that up and Ben and I moved on to playing frisbee while Tina took Daniel over to play on the slides.


After a little more than an hour of running around Daniel decided that he needed a nap so we packed up and went inside. Ben and I pulled out a backgammon set to play, but we decided that it would take too much work to play properly, and for me to really remember the rules, so we put that away and just played a game of Rummicube.
Apparently the three of us were making too much noise for Daniel to sleep, so he came out and convinced us to switch to playing Scrabble. After a quick game we put in Shrek for them to watch, everything was good.

The only problem would be the fact that Daniel didn't get a chance to nap - we really learnt how bad that was when we finished watching Shrek and told them that, since is was after 17:00, it was time to head back over to meet up with their mom. Daniel decided that he wanted to watch Lilo & Stich next, and since he wasn't going to it was time for him to move into full temper-tantrum mode. This child is going to make a great actor at some point, for when he wants to scream, cry, pout and stomp around he makes sure that everyone knows exactly how unhappy he is...

This made for some fun, but within 20 minutes he had quickly fallen asleep and we simply packed up all of their belongings and carried him back over to Siew's. Once we got in he quickly woke up and remembered that he was upset, and especially since he had a new audience, the screaming and crying started up all over again... We aren't quite sure how long he managed to keep this second tantrum going, as Siew handed him over to their ayi and she took him home to put him to bed.

A sound I would rather not hear..

On Saturday while we were entertaining Ben and Daniel at lunch, we heard this noise that sounded like the old air raid siren used to hear when we were children. Mark and I both had this puzzled look on our faces while the kids stopped eating and covered their ears.

Now, we knew we weren't going to war or so we believed, but for the life of us couldn't figure out why the Chinese were trying to make us deaf. Is it practice? Was someone invading? Where we suppose to go to the shelters? Are the Chinese practicing for future engagement? If this was a warning, the Chinese didn't seem to care so we figure we didn't need to worry either. Everyone would occasionally look out to see if they could determine why this was happening, but most pedestrians kept walking without a care.


I remember as a child we would periodically hear this and we were told to hide under our desks when we heard this sound. Now that I look back, it doesn't appear to be the best advice I have ever received.


It was loud enough that I could barely hear Ben asking questions sitting next to me.


We heard later it was to commemorate 70 years since the Japanese invasion of Xiamen. The Japanese actually occupied Xiamen from 1938 until the end of WWII in 1945.

What's with the Asian kids?

Yesterday we took Ben and Daniel for most part of the day as Siew needed to prepare for Daniel's birthday party on Sunday. It started raining, so we decided that we would go to the apartment and watch some videos. The only cartoons that I had were the Flintstones and they had never seen them so that entertained them for awhile. Once the rain stopped we went to the park, played, walked, then grabbed some food as Ben was quite hungry and felt he needed to remind us how hungry he was every 3 minutes.

After lunch we went to the market. We gave Ben and Daniel our small camera's while Mark and I had the bigger cameras. This was the first time for Daniel and Ben, I think. They loved it as we knew they would. We just didn't realize how much they would like it. They loved the snakes, the eels, frogs, chickens, ducks, birds, sharks, and prawns. They took pictures of everything and everyone.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the boys. In fact, they would see Mark and then Ben, looking for the Chinese mom and then Daniel and I would catch up with them. Okay, the look on their faces were priceless. The people were totally confused. We had seen this before but not to this degree. People would follow us, call their friends over and have discussions about the fact that two white people have two Asian children, and they would hug the boys or pat them on their heads. In fact, even the ladies of the evening, did a double take. Naturally, I had to take pictures to illustrate.

The women on the right had to call the other lady to discuss how this could have happened or perhaps to see if we would adopt their children?

The boys had fun and want to go back again.

Babysitting?

It seems like this last week we've been even busier then we normally are, and we have spent most of our time running around doing a lot of little nonsense errands...

But, back on Tuesday night, April 1st, Siew invited us to a wine tasting dinner which of course we attended. The food was good and they has some good wines for us to sample, and maybe we just enjoyed that wine too much because somewhere in the course of the night we offered to take Siew's two kids, Ben and Daniel, out on Friday afternoon...

Friday, or course, being one of the holidays that the Chinese now get off instead of having a full week off in May. So, along with I'd say about 90% of the people in Xiamen we decided that we would go to the park... We did manage to find an open spot in the park and spent some time trying to help them get a kite into the air, but since the weather finally decided to warm up to an agreeable 18C it also decided to dispense with the wind. That said it was a good way to just let the kids run around for a while...

From there we wandered around the park towards the swings, which were all booked up with a line, so then we climbed up one of the little hills in the park and took a few photos. On the way down Ben decided that he would race to the bottom and managed to run straight into a biker coming up the hill... The crowd gathered instantaneously, but despite Ben's screaming and their looks of concern he was unharmed other then a small scrape on his chin and ear. He cheered right up and forgot about the scrape when we agreed that we could blame it on his younger brother. Tina was watching Daniel, so the failure in babysitting falls squarely on me...