Paternity leave

As a result of a national holiday and paternity leave, three weeks off is coming to and end. I've gotten into a real "fatherly" routine and it feels like its been months! Waking Hannah up in the morning to get her ready for kindergarten, dropping her off, going to the new, local, market to pick up fruit, taking Leah downstairs for a "walk", helping Andrea out with work or catching up on reading whilst Leah sleeps, hanging out near Andrea's office the rest of the day (so she can provide the feeding when necessary) and then dashing back to collect Hannah again from kindergarten. It's a weird experience "playing" with a baby that can't really see or hear properly, can't really move around or grip anything, and can't acknowledge anything. Quite different to life with a 2.10 year old who is always talking (and certainly not afraid to tell us what is wrong with her if something is wrong rather than guessing with a baby), always having an opinion and quite demanding to keep satisfied (though also happy doing quite a lot on her own).

In fact we definitely do have a school "run" of sorts. We're always running to get to kindergarten in time since Hannah always needs waking up and then it takes a while to get her past the grumpy stage, address the twice-daily fight to brush her teeth, and then get downstairs. The plus side is that the kindergarten is literally a very short run away. Out the gate, and then a 100m dash to the kindergarten. In fact when we pick Hannah up (we're normally the ones doing the running to make sure we are there in time), and Hannah comes out with her best friend, they promptly and unprompted, begin running back home heading through the gate to the playground. So much for being exhausted from kindergarten!

Anyway, she's settled in fine; obviously having her best friend in the same class helps. I'm sure she's a bit behind as she's one of the youngest in the class and her Chinese is not quite as good as the others (presumably) but then we did just save 40 pounds on not needing to buy an English CD set that all the other kids are buying to use at home! She still gets an English lesson at kindergarten I believe (they have one foreign teacher) but I'm not sure what it covers. I'm sure it will be tough when she has to move to the new kindergarten next year.

Leah's also doing fine - we only have one other child to compare with, but as expected the first few weeks are easy with her mostly sleeping and feeding at 2-3 hr intervals. I forgot how much they defecate - though when she does it is much more pleasant than when Hannah does! She continues to get daily conversations/arguments going with the locals over us taking her outside before she's a month old. Thankfully they all just accept its a "cultural difference" and i don't bother with any actual reasoning (i.e. "maybe historically if you lived in an unsanitary and hold/cold environment, it made sense to keep a vulnerable baby and mother inside for a while, but in a well-off modern society with clean showers, clean clothes, heating (or a/c), vaccinations and concrete rather than mud outside, I don't believe you need to do that any more"). Andrea would go crazy if she couldn't shower for a month (and to be honest most of my Chinese friends don't stick to that cultural norm despite pressure from their grandparents).

We strongly believe kids need air (and its actually been quite fresh in the last week), sunshine (it's a nice 20 degrees in the daytime at the moment and lovely in the autumn sun), and exposure to nature (though Leah's eyes and ears still aren't really aware of much she is so young). For those outside China you really have no idea how much of an issue this is. We literally have had gangs of disproving elderly surrounding Leah telling her she needs to go inside and even trying to force more clothes on her (she was already way too hot). Funny that feelings run so high on that yet most of the time they'll happily smoke at home and few people in China have worked out what a chlid-seat is in a car yet, let alone think of actually having two hands on a steering wheel rather than one on a mobile phone. We've seen signs, thankfully, that those safety considerations are beginning to enter young people's understandings of Chinese culture more and more even if not the elderly.

So, two more weeks of work at BSR and then a new job in a new city.  More excitement, but i can leave you with the thought of how lucky we are that because we wanted a couple weeks alone with the kids we gave our nanny a couple weeks off (she returns on monday once i go back to work) and so last week was the first time I've had to mop the floor in about six years. The benefit of having a small one-bedroom apartment is that it doesn't take long :)

10 days old and time for first beer festival

So we've made it to 10 days. The baby is true to form: lots of sleeping, lots of feeding and lots of bowel movements. Not hugely responsive, but not a lot of work really. Andrea is getting on with work with the baby next to her at home (her team are basing themselves out of our apartment whilst Andrea still recovers - she's mostly recovered now). I'm on paternity leave without a lot to do.

Hannah has now had 3 days at kindergarten. Its going ok, made easier by being in the same class as her best friend, but she's still shy around all the others in the class and the other teachers. I'm sure she'll be fine in due course. In a sign of the times we get regular photos and updates from the teacher during the day on WeChat and there is a WeChat group for the parents to be kept informed of developments by the school.

She's loving Leah - always wanting to watch her, touch her and play with her. She's almost forgotten about Lei Lei (her doll), though this evening she played at another friend's house and spent a while having tea with her doll. Everything about Hannah is incredibly adorable at this age - what she says, what she does, how she dances, her desires (to wash hands). I'm sure Leah will be just the same in a couple of years too.

For those who don't know a lot about Chinese culture, we break all the rules. The mother is not supposed to go out the house for a month (or have a shower); the baby is supposed to be kept in for a month or more and you should get a special nanny in for the first month to look after both the mother and the baby. We've not been taking the baby out a lot, since the air pollution has spiked this week, but she's been out and about and we get some strange comments and stares from the neighbors (even though she's so big she looks like she's already a month old). We also gave our nanny a couple weeks off since there is so little for her to do! When we take Leah to her first beer festival tomorrow we'll probably get away with it as it will mostly be foreigners there! The craft beer scene in China only began 3 years ago but has really taken off, and not only amongst foreigners. Many local restaurants now serve craft beers on tap from some of the local breweries. I have to hope Shenzhen, where I'll move in a month or so, will be the same.

Meanwhile we've reached an interesting time in the HK issue - I guess we'll know shortly if the protests will die out or be reignited; my new running watch finally arrived from amazon (it was weird having to take a mobile phone out of my pocket all the time just to know the time); and Andrea and I both got fed up with our broken phones and got new ones: OnePlus Ones, which are 4G and fantastic so far.

Baby number 2

It's been a long 10 months for Andrea; and it's also been somewhat strange. This time you kind of know what's going to happen, yet at the same time there was always the unpredictability of what will actually happen. And so we tried not to just think we can do it all in our sleep just because we had done it once before. And yet, we sort of did... we didn't need to buy much, we didn't stress out much, we just desperately hoped she'd come early and put Andrea out of her misery, which she'd been in for ages.

And when we went to the doctor yesterday, about 3 days after the due date, the ultrasound showed Hannah was about 5kg give or take 0.9kg (ultrasounds aren't very accurate at extremes apparently). So we presumed she'd probably be around 4.5kg. The doctor didn't want to advise for a C-section, but with the size of the baby, the large amount of fluid, the fact the baby was still not even close to coming out, and so on.. she really had to advise for it. Deliveries 1 week or more late start to become risky, let alone large babies. So we scheduled one for the next day, 3.30pm.

Just like that. Such a strange feeling. For weeks we'd been wondering... everytime Andrea groaned i asked if it was contractions (it wasn't - just pain). And panicking a little (lots of fluid could lead to early water breaking without the baby being ready to come out which is dangerous). And then just like arranging to have a coffee with a friend, we scheduled (the exact word the doctor used) to have a c-section. We took our leisurely time to pack, arranged everything with Hannah and our nanny, and at lunchtime hopped in a cab to the hospital.

After a couple hours preparation I had to stand outside the Operating Room for ages whilst the anesthetist worked his magic, then jumped in some robes and went in. The line was drawn, the cuts made, the fluid sucked out, the baby pushed and pulled out, the cord cut, and the cleaning up begun. It was not a pretty site and i had a very queezy stomach myself from watching, so i focused instead on the baby, trying not to worry about Andrea and hoping that was all fine.

Just like last time the baby was cleaned a bit, measured, footprinted,  vaccinated and photographed. After a while we took her upstairs for a bath and weigh. At 5.45kg, she might be the heaviest baby ever born in the hospital (the hospital has about 200 births a month) and she looked humungous compared to the normal size baby also in the cleaning room. Anyway Leah Rachel Lane is doing well, breastfeeding fine, sleeping fine. Andrea is recovering and may finally sleep tonight for a few hours which is more than she has for months, due to the discomfort of being so big.

And I'm remembering how amazing it is to be a father again, whilst trying not to throw the baby upside down and around my head like i was doing with Hannah this morning. In fact we even forgot we had to change her diaper, and just remembered in time before things began leaking out (Hannah has been potty trained for several months). So now it will be back to the feeding, burping, sleeping routine for a while; Hannah will come tomorrow to see her little sister (she's well prepared and very excited, though how she will balance Leah and her doll (Lei Lei) I'm not sure - and it's a bit confusing that their names are so similar!) - of course little Leah won't understand anything we say, can't do anything herself, and well, we just have to turn back time a bit and re-learn things. And try to make sure Hannah is not neglected; is happy to share her things etc.

Anyway, a few more days in the hospital, several friends to come visit, and millions of cute pictures of the two girls will follow I am sure, and I can enjoy a couple weeks of paternity leave.

Hong Kong

So finally, after a decade of living in China, there is a half-decent attempt to question the government's approach to, well, government. There's been attempts in the Mainland before - either individual activists, or signing of certain documents like Charter 08 - but the government has blown them out the water quickly and unfortunately severely punished those involved. In most of those cases, actually, what has been asked of the government is to respect the Chinese constitution (unfortunately the government prefers to make up its laws as it goes along as well as its punishments, and doesn't bother to pretend there is an independent judiciary, let alone any interest in implementing the constitution which is supposed to guarantee certain freedoms).

Now, Hong Kong has caused some problems for China. To be honest few ever thought those in Hong Kong (who protest regularly, such as on the anniversary of the Tiananmen protests) would ever do anything serious or sincere. The theory has been that most of those in Hong Kong are doing quite well so don't really have much to complain about, and their progress is highly dependent on Mainland China so they need to stay close. But all of a sudden some broken promises and some minor violence has made people remember that they do actually belong to Beijing (I think they forgot and just liked the benefits of being part of China without the costs), and it is a Beijing that does not listen to what people want.

So a few interesting questions - the most prominent being about how will the protests end? well, thankfully Beijing realized that using force tends to backfire, at least in a small, well connected, well educated, and highly outspoken city (force has worked in Xinjiang, Tibet and other areas). So they are just going to wait, say nothing and hope that eventually the protestors will get bored or tired or give up. Beijing doesn't compromise and doesn't want to be seen to compromise to those who protest (what a precedent that would set...)

So what will the protestors do? This is really the litmus test. As we've seen with previous protests (including the Occupy protests around the world a few years ago), things do just peter out unless they are stepped up. But stepping up requires more commitment from protestors - do they really want to do something serious here? Are they willing to take the risks? What can they do? The protestors talk about occupying government buildings - this would be interesting since it would need some use of force. And it's going to test the government's ability to just stand-off and do nothing. I'm intrigued to see what will happen...

Meanwhile of course no-one in the Mainland knows what is really happening as the government's censorship is so incredibly effective (and most Mainlanders are so patriotic they'd see this less as about democracy and more about separatism which they certainly don't support); but at some point, eventually, might word spread (depending on how things end in HK) - and will people in the Mainland start to get certain expectations? And this comes as over the last 2 years the government has cracked down harder than it has for decades on those who it disagrees with, has moved to really enforce its autocratic rule, and is acting incredibly draconian.

Of course the government has done a great job bringing economic and social progress in the last few decades and now seems serious about addressing the environmental issues too. The question is about the lack of progress in improving governance. Can one stamp out corruption without an independent media, independent judiciary or any form of democracy? one would think not, but maybe this government can do it. Or maybe it won't.. and the endless anti-corruption campaign will just show the people how corrupt those in power are, and encourage them to seek some real change to address it. So what happens in HK might have bigger consequences for what happens across the border in the future.

Personally I've always hoped the government would give a little, slowly, in a measured way which i see as the only option for a safe evolution towards whatever the future looks like (and it doesn't have to be a full democracy in the Mainland, but some form of independence of the judiciary, some form of empowerment for the people, and some form of choice is likely - there are other Asian examples of these). Unfortunately it seems the government is going the opposite route. I hope it knows what it is doing and where this is going...