Silvermine Bay

 Ever since we got back to Hong Kong, we've been itching for a Beach Day. Instead, it's been rainy and grey. There's been a few hot, sunny, blue-skied days, but they've all been during the week. By the time the weekend arrives, it's back to rain. 
So this last Saturday, when it was cloudy, but not actually WET, we decided to just take a day trip to the beach regardless, and we would just stay as long as we could. 

 We like Silvermine Bay Beach because it's a fairly nice beach, but it also has a great Turkish restaurant (where we went for my birthday), and an English used-bookstore, which is a rarity in Hong Kong. So even though it's a bit of a journey to get out there, we think it's a worth-while destination. The bus ride is scenic too. 

 The clouds were crazy to watch. It was obviously pouring rain in other parts of Hong Kong, but since it still was very warm and hadn't hit us yet, Mike and Annika went and swam in the shallow water, while Leila and I relaxed. 

 The this point, the lifeguard kept making announcements over the loudspeaker that a thunderstorm warning was in place, but since it wasn't in this vicinity there would still be lifeguard services. But finally, even though the rain hadn't come, they announced over the loudspeaker that a storm was approaching and everyone needed to leave the beach. 

 The rain started off slowly, but by the time we got to the ferry terminal it was a downpour. That's ok. We had time for a nice lunch, a browse through the bookstore, and a decent amount of time on the beach. We were glad we hadn't let the forecast keep us home. 

We took the train/bus to get there, and the ferry/train to get home, which essentially took us on a big circle. It was a good day, but we're still holding out hope that we'll get some actual beach weather that happens to fall on a weekend sometime soon! 

First day of Preparatory!

 Today (day 2), Leila woke up, put on her PE uniform and exclaimed "I LOVE kindergarten!". Wow, this is already better than last year. We weren't expecting it to start out this well, so we are praying that it will continue to be a smooth adjustment for her. I have to admit, it's been hard for me to send Leila off to school. I really loved having her at home with me. I felt a bit spoiled actually because one child is much easier to care for than two, and a four year old is in many ways easier (in my experience) than a baby. Plus, Leila is still small and cuddly, so it felt like win-win! We have had a great time together, and now the house seems so quiet.  Next week I start training to be a supply playgroup teacher, so if it all goes well it could end up being a really perfect situation for me (flexible!). But I don't want to say too much yet since I haven't started.  

 She looks like she's headed off to a sleepover or something, but she's carrying her blanket and pillow that they use for nap time. It's funny what things she's been worried about leading up to kindergarten. She's been worried about what will happen if she has a bad dream during nap time. I don't actually think there's a very big chance that she will even sleep during nap time. Most kids don't... it's just a rest time and probably just a big pain for the teacher to police (although in Annika's class there were a few who did take daily naps, which made me wonder what their bedtime was! I think Annika slept once during her entire year of Prep). Anyway, Leila's final thoughts were that if she DID have a bad dream, she would just approach Mrs. Yap and say "I had a bad dream. Can I have a hug?". 

No changing leaves and fall colors at the start of school in Hong Kong! Just palm trees and humidity...

 Leila waiting apprehensively during the opening chapel. I was sooo thankful I decided to go to school with her, because I hadn't been told that they would do anything official to start the year. It was lucky I came- I think it helped to go more smoothly. 

 Checking out her new name tag as her class lined up. Only half the class goes for the first two days (Leila was in the second group) and then they all go on Friday. BTW there's an "Arthur" and a "Walter" in Leila's class. Is that funny? cute.

AND... she's off! And Mommy isn't even crying! It turns out the lady taking a picture in the background also lives in our estate, so Leila will easily be able to play with little Harriet in the playground or the pool. 

Mike showed up at the very end of the opening chapel after dropping his students off at PE, and we peeked into Leila's classroom window. This was an extremely comforting sight. They were singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and she looked so happy. It was extremely comforting to me that Mike could check on her a few times throughout the day, and all of his reports were positive. I probably sound ridiculous and over-protective, but somehow this whole "sending-your-kid-to-school-in-another-country" thing seems a bit more scary and unknown than it would if we were in Canada. 

In case anyone is wondering, Mike's year of grade three has started off well, but he has been VERY busy and has so far been coming home later than he ever did last year, and this is even with his shorter commute to the closer campus. His class is good, but maybe he has a new respect for grade three teachers now? It's keeping him very busy. He also seems to have a lot of meetings. 

We're all looking forward to our first week off in October (a reward for starting school in mid-August?!), and nothing gets me more giddy than planning/booking trips! Chiang Mai, Thailand here we come!!! Elephants and good food. A winning combo.

The first day of Grade 2

Last Thursday was the first day of Grade Two for Annika. I dug up some pictures of the first day of kindergarten and the first day of Grade One to see how much Annie has grown. It's hard to believe that she was four for the first five or six weeks of kindergarten!  

It's been a few days of school now, and it seems like it has started well. This year she has a female teacher from Seattle. One of her friends, Jessica, who she knows from church and from last year's Mandarin class is in her class this year. That was good news! And there is a handful of kids that she knows in her class that were from kindergarten and grade one. Her classroom is actually right next door to Mike so they will see quite a bit of each other this year. 

(This was a free printable that was in my inbox. Not quite the same as the chalkboard craze... oh well!) 

Grade TWO!

This is what our walk to the bus stop now looks like...

Apparently Planes is playing at the movie theatre in our mall. "Leila, if we were boys we would want to go see this movie!" 

Annika, her "bus mother" Lily, and Caleb who is in her class this year AND lives in our estate.

Making faces to Leila before she's off!

A few summer highlights

Today was Annika's first day of grade 2 and Mike's first day of teaching grade 3! But before I post pictures of that, I feel like I should do a bit of a summer recap. Only there are many gaps. I didn't do a very good job of documenting the many fun times we had this summer. Ah well... here are some:

Hanging out with Linc before he headed to Guitar Building School

Mom's fancy zoom lens works on our new camera.:)

Good times with family

Annie and sweet Baby Sam. xo

Another successful round of swimming lessons! What a great way to spend time with cousins and get over jet lag!

Such a great day celebrating a wonderful couple!

Sweet cousins and a photo-bomb... haha!

A fantastic day spent tubing at Wizard Lake!

Mom's cute neighbors joined us a for a walk to the library. 

Camping + farmer sausage burgers = amazing

Writing-on-stone Provincial Park

A great lunch and visit with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Anne in Rosemary. 

Heritage Park 

Farm girls at Heritage Park

It was so great to spend a day with the Poettckers! 

Celebrating Uncle Bill's birthday

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Alberta scenery's not too bad...

Baby Aubrey is so fun! 

Having such a great summer doesn't make it easy to return to Hong Kong- especially with jet lag and rainy weather, but now we are settling back into life here.  Thanks everyone for all the special times! 

L's Birth Story

When I see other birth stories, I always regret that I have never written mine down. But as I reflected today on Leila's birth, I realized that it isn't too late! I still remember it quite clearly, and I think I will do Annika's on her birthday in September too. Warning- this is long-winded. I don't *think* it's graphic...but *spoiler alert*...a baby gets born in the end.... haha!

About two weeks before my due date (June 25) with Leila, Mike and I were talking, and decided that June 10 would be our ideal date for our baby to be born. Mike only got three days off of school, and so that date being a Tuesday would be perfect because he could have Wednesday to Friday off and then the weekend before returning for the last couple of weeks before summer holidays. He also had a few things coming up at school that he thought would be really convenient to *have* to miss.:) I was very ready to be done being pregnant, and thought that June 10 would be a great day to have a birthday. So we prayed that our baby would come, and Mike also bent down and talked to my tummy, telling that baby inside that we would sure appreciate it if they would come out.

When Mike got home from school that afternoon, he asked if I had any inklings that anything was happening, and I told him no. And that this was pretty crazy that we were getting our hopes up when we still had two full weeks until the due date (who knows, maybe I would go late, and then this really was a dangerous game we were playing!). I would be exactly 38 weeks on Wednesday, June 11, so it was pretty idealistic and far-fetched for us to think that the baby would come when we wanted it to.

We went to bed that night, and sometime just after midnight I woke up and realized that I might be having contractions. I got up, tried not to wake up Mike, and went down to the kitchen for a bit and it really did seem as though I really and truly was having contractions. For some reason, I had it in my head that our second baby could come really fast. The only basis I had for this was knowing that had been the case when my mom had her second, so I just sort of thought that might be the same for me. So I decided to wake up Mike (it was probably around one or one-thirty). He believed me that I was in labour, so he got up and sat at the table making some sub plans. Because I was so convinced that this labour would go fast, we decided to call his mom to come over to watch Annika because we figured at any moment we would need to go to the hospital. 

When she arrived, I think it was around 3:00 am. The only problem was that although I was having contractions, they weren't regular or particularly strong, so I knew that I wasn't really supposed to be going to the hospital yet. If I did, they would likely just turn me away. I felt terrible that we had woken her and gotten her to come over so prematurely. We decided to go back to bed, and she decided to sleep on our couch for a bit.

I tried to rest, and I still was having contractions, but they still weren't that strong or that frequent. But finally I think I had a few in a row that were close to the five minute mark, and felt a bit stronger so we decided to go to the hospital. Mostly I wanted to convince myself that it had been worth it to wake Mom up and get her to come out, and I also wanted to get out of the house before Annika woke up because I thought it might be confusing for her if she woke up and then we had to rush out shortly after. (So THANK-YOU, Mom for coming out to take care of Annika, and I'm sorry that we woke you up un-necessarily early!)

So it was around 5:30 or 6:00 am and we were driving to the hospital, but I had a really bad feeling that we had left way too early. I remembered the drive to the hospital when I had been in labor with Annika- I had been gripping the door handle for dear life, and had two painful contractions on the short ten-minute drive there. I hadn't known how I would walk from the car to the hospital because I was in a lot of pain. This time, I was still feeling great! I don't think I even had a single contraction on the whole drive, so I was pretty sure they were going to send me home. 

As I suspected, they looked at me with suspicion at the nursing station when I told them that I was exactly 38 weeks and thought I was in labour. They put the strip (what's that thing called again?) on my stomach to measure the contractions, and I could tell that they weren't coming fast and furious the way they had with Annika. But eventually the nurse checked me, and she was as shocked to find that I was actually 5cm dilated! But again, as I suspected, after consulting with the midwife, she thought I should probably go home and come back when I was really in labor. She said that if I had driven all the way from Edmonton they would admit me, but since I lived so close there was no point in staying. If I did, I would just feel pressure to speed things up, and they would also be more likely to intervene when there was no reason to not just let things happen naturally. Even though this was always the worst-case scenario that was discussed in my prenatal classes, I was actually fine with it. I already thought that might be the case, and I wanted to go home and see Annika and take care of a few things, since we weren't REALLY thinking we would have a baby two weeks early!

I'm pretty sure Mike and I high-5ed each other as we headed out the door that we really WERE going to have a baby that day! We both felt pretty hungry, which is weird because I don't think you're typically hungry during labor, so we took a trip through the McDonalds drive-thru and got ourselves some Bacon and Egg McMuffins. We ate them in the parking lot as Mike made some calls to the school and to potential subs. He thought that they didn't really believe him, but that was fine. We had confidence it was going to happen! It was Miriam who subbed for him that afternoon, so it was fun to tell her that I was in labor, and she was really sweet to help him out.

We got back home and Annika was up. Of course we felt silly that we were coming back home, but at least we had some news to report that I was indeed in labour. I played with Annika and it this time it didn't take long for contractions to start picking up. I remember calling Melissa because she had been supposed to babysit Annie for my midwife appointment that was to have been that morning, and I had a contraction right in the middle of my conversation with her. We headed back to the hospital around 9:00 am, and this time the drive was much more like I had remembered it being with Annika. 

They got us settled in a birthing room and I remember not liking it that Mike had to go back to the car to get our stuff because I didn't want to be alone. I think there were a few other births taking place because for the most part we were being left alone and I definitely was in la-la-laborland at that point. I started feeling panicky because it was pretty painful and I was second-guessing whether I could do this!
A different nurse than the one we'd had early that morning finally came and checked and she said that I could probably get into the birthing tub if I liked. And then she left. 
So we were a bit confused, but Mike started running the water, while I rocked back and forth in the chair that I had liked when I had been there with Annika. Eventually the tub was filled, so I got in. But as soon as I did, I was confused. Had she meant that I was ready to start pushing? Because if she hadn't meant that, I didn't want to be in the tub! I tentatively gave a little push and could tell that my water broke. And then it got a bit intense. I could not help but start pushing like crazy, and Mike had to run out and call the nurse/midwife/whoever that maybe they should come quickly. 

So in they came, and that was the first time I had seen the midwife that morning.  She actually didn't even do anything- the nurse monitored the baby's heartbeat and the midwife said some stereotypically midwife-y things like "ride the wave", so I just squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on what she was saying. She then told Mike to put his arms in the tub and catch his baby, and after some excruciating moments, a little baby girl with a head of dark hair was placed on my chest! We think it's pretty special that the first hands that greeted her were her dad's. 
(I had thought that the pushing part of my labor had been pretty quick- probably only 15 minutes- but at my first follow-up appointment, the midwife looking at the notes said that it had actually been FIVE minutes! No wonder it seemed crazy!)
It's bad that I remember all of this, but can't remember what exact time it was that Leila was born. I know it's written down somewhere in our stuff in Canada. I think either 11:05 or 11:23 am? Or maybe somewhere in between. In any case, it might not have been the FAST labour I was expecting, but it still had it's moment of being quick! And Mike got to be home on the Wednesday/Thursday/Friday like he wanted, and I got to have my baby at 38 weeks. 
We definitely were incredibly blessed to have things go so smoothly and have a beautiful, healthy girl join our family. We loved our experience at Westview and really have too many things to be thankful for when we remember when Leila Rain joined our family.