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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Dylan's Halloween

Finally all clear on the health. Still a bit grumpy because a tooth is coming through..which means not much sleep for any of us these days.
Halloween is celebrated here in Taiwan and after managing to get through all the school activities okay, we went through to a party in Changhua on the weekend. Had Dylan dressed up as a dinosaur...well the hat spent the evening off his head so he was dinosaur boy. He had a great time playing with all the kids and even went through the ghost house (on baby mode). Here is a pic..one of the only good ones I got..he was running around like crazy.



The little artist at work ...style of choice at the moment: pointilism

Sandy has uploaded some videos of the boys on youtube. Click here to check them out.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Been a while

Well after a bout of tonsilitis followed by bronchiolitis..Dylan is back and functioning almost on all cylinders. Still a bit of a cough and the grumpies!! Not too much to report ..had a bit of a scare on the weekend when the doc was concerned about pneumonia so he had to go in for a chest x-ray...(not pleasant)she warned me he might have to stay the night. been a bit hospital-phobic that did not sit well. Luckily though the xray ruled out pneumonia and we could stay home with the ventilator and meds. He is doing fine now.
Here are some pics from our last visit to the science museum...we have the dinosaur cards (which means for a nominal fee you can go there as often as you like over a year ) Dylan loves the dinosaurs so frequent visits will be on the cards.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Dylan and Ivo



What a weird week. We had to work Saturday to make up for the Monday we had off (confusing yes!) So we treated it as a normal week day and headed off to gym to meet Sandy and Ivo. Ivo was not too happy so we decided to go and have fun elsewhere instead of exercising and leaving the boys with the sitter. We headed over to their house and played with some water!! The boys love the water...difficult to explain to Dylan that he cannot drink that water though!!

Today was a really non-day. We just kind of chilled out at home. Dylan had every toy in the house out. He loves jumping at the moment and throwing things-trying to encourage only ball throwing. The babysitter was very excited on friday, he say "ni kan" -you see "wo de" mine and a few other chinese words ;the other night he handed Ciro his bottle and said "eang" same. His english vocab is also growing..."cool" three" "there""this" "good""juice" "shoes" and a whole bunch of animal sounds.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Dylan pics



These pics wouldn't upload earlier ...so here they are:
With the monkeys and running at the zoo

Dylan the explorer

A long (5 day ) weekend was declared by the government here as the Friday was moon festival and the Tuesday a public holiday. They gave the Monday off; although declared the following Saturday a working day...so a mixed bag. We decided to take advantage of the long break and head up to Taipei with Dylan, our purpose: to visit the Zoo! A teacher at school recommended the astronomical museum too, so when we got there on Friday we checked it out. Dylan enjoyed it , plenty of buttons to push and then there was a cosmic ride which involved getting in a pod and travelling through space for twelve minutes. Complete with the planets, milky way and a short accidental visit through a dimension portal to an alien planet..no fear we got back safe.













Here he is looking into the concave mirror, Reaching out to the spaceman and hmm...not sure what this had to do with space (rabbit in the moon maybe) anyhow thought he looked cute!






Saturday it was off to the zoo. Last time we were there we realised it can be a long day, so only focused on a few areas: children's petting zoo, african animals and penguin house (we gave up on the walk last time) It was a real ohhhh time at the zoo. He loved seeing the animals and was pointing and growling(the way he does when he plays with his animal toys). Loads of fun. After a good morning at the zoo we went up to the tea plantation area in the mountains above Taipei, planning on chilling out at a tea shop up there . This did happen but only after confusion with the taxi driver who ripped us off (i didn't even need to rely on my chinese , I had a printout from the net. ) still "around the corner there" does not necessarily mean that and after about a 20 minute walk (no more taxis in sight) we arrived at our destination!!! Lovely place with friendly people. A fantastic view of the city with 101 (the tallest building in the world) standing out miles above the rest of the city. Dylan spent most of our time there feeding the fish.

The rest of our time was spent browsing and picking up some books at the bookstore. Needless to say the little guy slept well after all the excitement.
Now for a little gripe:
It is always nice travelling in Taipei and using the MRT, very "stroller friendly", with elevators available at most stations as an alternative to the escalators. Sometimes I do look at the abundance of able-bodied people without children or elderly people accompanying them and wonder "why?" The escalators are often much quicker to take and yet people will walk further to get to the elevator and then ride it ahead of those it is intended for. Don't get me wrong i am not on my hobby horse for my own purpose entirely. As there were two of us we could pick up the stroller and Dylan and take the escalator. At one of the stops however there was a group of people waiting to get into the elevator , just after we approached a woman on an electric wheelchair car approached. The elevator arrived and this group pushed and shoved to get into the elevator leaving only the woman, her partner and us. These elevators take a long time to close and throughout the closing Dylan was calling "Bye bye"..."bye" and waving. Once the doors closed the woman burst out laughing and said "Did you see their faces...embarrassed!!! Good little boy, they must know it is not for them it is for us." This is a frustration we deal with occasionaly and we have an alternative. It must be so frustrating for her.