Category Archives: Beijing

The End

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The time has come my friends, the end has arrived.

You may have noticed that my blog posts have been increasingly lacking in quantity and quality over the past few months.

The truth is, not to sound harsh but I think I’m over this whole blogging thing. This blog was my lifesaver during my year as a single-parent, and has been a great way to share Charlotte stories with friends and families back home. But now I find I just don’t have the time or energy to put into this little blog anymore, and when I do there are other things that I’d rather do instead. And it doesn’t help that there is a whole other facet to my life that I don’t talk about here, including my work, and something else going on in my personal life (ooh, mystery….)

I truly appreciate all the support I’ve gotten from you guys, all the comments and likes and shares. And although I’m shutting this baby down, I do still hope to find time to keep up with my favourite bloggers, so the blogosphere wont totally be rid of me ;)

And for those of you who are wondering how exactly this story ends?

J. finally realized that taking Charlotte on a cruise was just crazy-talk; we instead agreed that, while I was on a business trip last week, J. and Charlotte would spend five days in Kobe, Japan. Everybody survived, and may have even had some fun. J., high on his success in keeping Charlotte alive all by himself for five days, now has all kinds of crazy ideas for the two of them.

We have some big travel plans in the future, which include a Singapore/Indonesia trip later this month, a potential New Zealand odyssey in February, and short trips to Mongolia, Korea, and Taiwan, as well as some travel in China. I’m also trying to see if I can squeeze in a solo trip to Bhutan at some point. And pretty soon we’ll be starting to think about our move back to Canada, which should happen sometime next summer.

Charlotte continue to grow like a weed. Her Chinese skills are truly amazing, she knows stuff I don’t even know! And she is maturing very quickly too: the other night when I squeezed her tight and called her my little girl she got very insulted and insisted that she was big now. Well, she is almost 3 years old, and she is over 3ft tall. But she will always always be my little baby girl.

And, just like that, we all lived happily ever after :)

The end.

Peace out!

This is what happens when you take a blonde toddler out and about in China

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Charlotte, with her pint-sized features, porcelain-white skin, and flowing blonde hair, is pretty much a super-star here in China.

Seriously, I now understand what it’s like to be a celebrity, or at least the mother of one.

Wherever we go, strangers gawk, point, giggle, smile, and wave like crazy. Some of them get a little too ambitious and try to touch Charlotte, and are promptly slapped away by her overprotective security detail mama-bear.

Most of the time though, they just want to take her photo. Or have their photo taken with her.

To prove I’m not exaggerating, we undertook a little experiment during a recent two-day trip to Shanghai: we photographed all of Charlotte’s adoring fans as they photographed her, dragged their kids into photos with her, or took their own photos with her. Here lies the results:

Bribing Charlotte with a weird flashy ball of plastic

Best friends? Maybe not…

Charlotte was trying really hard not to hit this guy

 

Distracted by bubbles!

Charlotte worried about how I’m about to rip this woman’s greasy hands off of my child

A panda-bear sighting at the park? Nope, just Charlotte sitting down long enough for a crowd to gather

 

 

Travel sans Mama

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Last night over dinner, J. proposed a crazy idea: he wants to take Charlotte on a 7-day cruise next week. Just the two of them.

J. has been talking about travelling just him and Charlotte for a long time. They both have the time to do it, while I’m stuck dutifully at work. Charlotte’s poor lungs need a break from the nasty Beijing pollution. And it gives the two of them some good quality time together.

I was totally supportive of this idea, when it was just an idea. But now that an actual trip is on the table… we’ll I’m kind of freaked out.

Seven days is a long time to be away. I’m not concerned about missing J., and Charlotte would have such a blast on a cruise ship (she loves boats) that she probably wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there. No, what worries me is me: I don’t know if I can handle seven days away from my baby girl. I’ve never spent so much time away from her- there was the five-day trip I took in the spring, but I was distracted by my awesomely beautiful surroundings. Seven days is a really long time.

I’ve also been worried about J., can he really handle single-parenting, outside of the normal routine, for an entire week?

Last night, I grilled him:

“What do you need to bring with you when you go out and about?”

“What do you do when Charlotte needs to pee and there’s not a toilet in sight?”

“Under what circumstances is it acceptable to not bring the stroller?”

And, for the final exam: “What if Charlotte gets sea-sick the first night on the boat, and you both wake up in a pool of her chunky vomit?”

I guess I need to give J. more credit, because he passed my little test with flying colours.

Relieved in knowing that the two of them would probably survive a week without me, I started thinking about what I would do with seven days to myself. At first, the idea of so much alone time made me panicky, but then ideas started to flow: a visit to the mall, finally finish my book, try the gym again, perhaps a visit to the spa, maybe even a daytrip to the Great Wall or a cooking class… And I suddenly found myself wondering how I would fit it all in to just seven days.

I still feel really uncomfortable with the idea of going so long without Charlotte, but I know her and J. will have a great time, and I will probably also enjoy myself. So I think I may grant permission…

What do you think? Can Dads survive travel without mom? Can Moms survive seven days away from their offspring? Should I give J. the go-ahead, and if so are you prepared to deal with “I miss my baby” blog whining?