Stuff.......

On Friday I headed to HongKong for the last check up before the move there. Haiwen was supposed to join me but he was running out of free days as he is in HK a lot already to arrange stuff for our new house. I asked my friend Nicole to join me and she had time, hurrah!! We took the first through train and off we were!

The lady at customs asked if I was a diplomat, since I was in the fast lane. Nope, pregnant, was my answer. The same happened in HK but there they have a person checking BEFORE the desk. OK, I get that you don't see my huge belly when it is hidden behind a desk but when I'm walking up and standing right next to you..... Nicole says it is because I don't waddle and walk too fast, hahaha.

Apres photo shoot make up

I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the hospital. The appointment slip was written in typical doctor scribble so I couldn't figure it out. Last time the doctor warned me that it could take a while. This time I reported to a different section in the hospital. I got my shot of Rhogum and a small examination. All in all we waited for a bit over an hour. Not bad at all, since last time we waited over 2 hours!! That's what always happens, isn't it? When you are hurried there are major delays and when you are prepared for stuff to take forever it is over before you know it! 

I was done by 12.30, perfect timing for lunch! We went to a small Japanese place nearby.

Nicole was in the mood for some shopping and since she was carrying my bag that was fine by me :) I'm still walking well but any extra added weight locks up my lower back immediately.

We came across a nice store on Nathan Road and hit M&S a bit later. We wanted to buy a little something to go with coffee at Ans and Chiels place. We bought some apple cake slices and headed to McDonalds for a little rest and some wifi. Then we continued our walk to Ans' house.

We had a nice chat and also saw Chiel. Then it was time for some dinner and Nicole and I headed to the Thai place on the square where Ans lives. I didn't eat very much as the food hit my throat the wrong way, stirring up unwanted reflexes..... Ugh! Nicole had a salad that turned out to be mega spicy. She has now decided to believe the little pepper pictogram on menu's ;)

We walked back to HungHum station and boarded the train back to GZ. Nicole never has a delay going back to GZ so it's great to travel with her, hihi. We got lucky as we got out of the train right next to the stairs. We were number one and two at customs, hurrah! All in all a very smooth and pleasant day!

On Saturday morning I had a photo shoot. I'm curious to see the results. I'm afraid that some pics will be too tacky but I have my fingers crossed for a few nice ones as well. I'm going in on Friday to see the results. Then I also get to choose which ones can be magnified. That is part of the package deal Haiwen got me. We also made plans to do a complete family shoot once Isabelle is born.

It's storm week!

Isabelle

Oops........

Last Sunday I finally had some time to get my nails done. I found this scene in front of the shop!! The water kept going for at least an hour, oops! Apparently it is OK to have some polish on your feet these days because I wasn't buried by negative comments on how bad that would be for the baby. What was bad however was the fan to make the polish dry faster. I also wasn't allowed to put my feet on the ground. The reason? 'Cold' feet are bad for the baby. Uhm, yes. It is about 32 C outside so I think I'll be OK. I was enjoying the coolness of the marble floor!!

May 27th, 32,5 weeks

On Tuesday I went to teach in HuangPu for the last time in a while. The journey over there is too tiring now. Haiwen brings me to a metro stop about 20 minutes away and then I take the metro for half an hour more. A short walk takes me to the school. The first thing I did there was turning the AC full on! I was happy and so were the students. Poor things. They came in all red faced and sweaty. The classes were OK but the group 16 year olds can be a bit annoying. Since it was so hot the head teacher told me to keep the lessons a bit short. So all through the class they were being teenagers (a few sweet ones aside) but when I said the class was over they were all like 'oh noooo, we can't stop yet'. Pfffff. Happy I'm not a confused teenager anymore!

Citic Plaza with clouds

So now for the main news in this blog! The name of little one no.2........

Isabelle

We've had many brainstorm sessions to come up with a nice name after Lexie and that works in 4 languages (Dutch, English, Cantonese and Mandarin). We had a few other ones but they were dismissed quickly.

New preggy dress!

The inlaws have some trouble pronouncing it but Lexie wasn't easy for them at first either.

We came up with a Chinese name as well:

冯晓兰

Feng XiaoLan

The 'Xiao' is the same one as in Lexie's Chinese name (冯晓茜). It is tradition that siblings share the first character of their name. 'Lan' comes from 'Helan' which means Holland. We tried to find a nice character with the compound of west (西) in it but there are no nice ones left. So 'Lan' represents the western part of Isabelle. 'Lan' also means Orchid so that's pretty too!

Miss Lexie Feng

Lexie is doing great. Some minor tantrums but luckily they are rare. It is amazing how big she is already! Only when she's sleeping does she look like the baby she was just a moment ago.

Playing at 'didi's' house

Her best friend is 'didi' (younger brother). He lives in the next building from grandma's and he's about 13 months old now. Grandma and didi's grandma are friends. Lexie laughs her head off when I'm 'talking' with didi because he only makes little screams. I don't always join the play dates because Lexie is busy with didi and grandma is busy with her friend. I feel kinda weird hanging around then.

@ school

What is the opposite of hibernation? By opposite I mean change winter into summer.....That is what I feel like doing. Sleeeeeeeeeeep!!! Just now I slept until 10.20 and I would have slept more if Haiwen hadn't called. His call was very welcome though because he had great news: our house in HK will be done on time!! Hurrah :) :)

Lunch with the inlaws

Yesterday morning grandma called me to ask if I'd like to join them for lunch. Why not? Better get out of the house at times. We went to a Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood. They are into online deals now so they bought a 'salmon package deal'. I had some other stuff. Back to sashimi in about 2 months, yihaa!

Having fun in preparation for Children's day on June 1st

It is Children's day tomorrow and the kindergarten prepared a fun week for the kids. On Wednesday they had a puppet show and yesterday they practiced for a performance. Lexie is a bit too young for that but she had a blast anyway.

Rock attitude!!

Today they are serving a buffet for lunch. Lexie seems to have my good taste :P

She refused to drink soy milk (yuck!) and also won't eat different kinds of gourds (double yuck!!).

Smart girl! :)

No HongKong this week!

It's Friday morning and I'm celebrating NOT being on a train to HK right now. Last check up was 2 weeks ago and the doc wanted to set up a new check up for today. I already knew that I didn't want to go since everything is fine. It is a lot more taxing on me to drag my preggo a*s over there these days....

32 weeks

I can do it of course but it is a waste of energy to travel for 5 hours total, wait for ? hours just to have my belly touched for 2 minutes and get told that everything is fine (since I already know that!)

The rhesus factor issue (I'm - Lexie is +) is under control as well so I'll be going in in another two weeks time. I have a whole day of hospital fun planned then: Rhogum shot (to make sure I don't make anti bodies), check up and another check up. It's hard to say how long I'll have to wait between all those fun activities so I'm taking a late train back to GZ that day.

On Wednesday I went out with Dima and Moni. Dima (Sitkovetsky) is the conductor this week and Moni started working at the orchestra when I left. We took a black cab to a nice Japanese restaurant and had a lot of fun. For Moni and me it was the first time in a black cab since it is not smart to take one by yourself. With the 3 of us it was no problem at all. After dinner we couldn't get a cab either; we were very close to a sports stadium and the match had just ended, oops. We got on the metro and that was fine. Back at the hotel there was a queue for the cabs but Moni went to talk to a hotel guy about getting me a cab quickly. I was ushered inside to wait sitting down and in the AC. Haha, I'd better enjoy these 2 last months! Hotel guy came by after a little while and walked me to the cab, as the other people in line were still waiting. Aaaah, the power of the belly :) It was quite late by then so I was happy to be on my way home.

When I got home I got struck by a typical 3rd trimester mafan: insomnia!!! The second my exhausted head hot the pillow I was mega awake. 'Let's go camping and hiking' awake. Grrrrrr...... I played some games on my phone and waited for drowsiness to set in. Around 2 AM I finally fell asleep, only to be bright awake again at 5.30...... Lexie and Haiwen were sleeping away happily.

I lasted the whole day (couldn't get in a nap either) but around 19.30 I started to fade. I went to bed on time and slept allllll the way to 6.30. Not bad. I'm still a bit sleepy now so I think I'll head back for a bit ;) Just catching zzzzz's when I can!!

I'm looking forward to the concert tonight. Dima's good friend Mischa Maisky is the soloist. I haven't heard him play live yet but I'm expecting it to be very good :)

GZ today.....

AC cleaning day

I finally convinced Haiwen that our AC's needed some cleaning. Since I'm no expert in that field and don't have any equipment he set out to find 'a guy'. Turned out that 'the guy' has been here before together with grandpa on non-cleaning AC business.

We had four units done because HW wasn't sure that the cleaning would do any good *le sigh*.

Well to convince him I took some pictures of the gore that came out and he was quickly convinced.

Yuck, so gross!! I'll spare you guys the details. He cleaned both the inside and outside parts of the AC's.

Playing at grandma's

We scheduled the AC cleaning on the same afternoon as ayi works. That turned out to be a very good plan, given the state our white marble floors where in after mixing outside grime and water on them....

Foot prints, slipper prints and less definable spots where all over the house in no time. Ayi attacked them all with gusto and they disappeared quickly.

Strike a pose

My computer has a trackpad problem so now I'm trying to work it with an old mouse. It is not going well as it keeps jumping through the screen. Very annoying! Just now it tried to close this screen....

Mother's day dinner

All together :)

Hug!

Yay!

Sweetie
 

Ladiez