Little Guy's 1st Birthday with US

Wooohooo! More cake.

Actually we didn't pick his cake out the ayi did. We have been sick and were at the hospital yesterday and the day before. I went thru with monks and my bill was quite low. Chris was charged 4 times as much as me. Usually our prior experience with illness in China is that the foreign affairs dept. comes holds our hand and escorts us through the maze of medical stuff. This time we used the cell phone.
I coughed in class and my supervisor translated thru my students that I should go home and make my husband come here, now. Your students translating for your boss is always a delicate balance. As a wife, ordering my husband to take over my classes is equally delicate. I refuse to be put in that spot. I just always say, "No, he can't"
So the foreign affairs office called him and told him to go to the hospital immediately after reviewing his symptoms. Now my supervisor told me to go home and wait for foreign affairs to call me (via my students translation). After Chris finished at the hospital it was too late for me to go, so I went the next morning.

Cake with new chopsticks

None of this would have happened had the hospital chosen to treat our kids last week. We took the ayi because foreign affairs said the previous time that she was fine to go with the kids. She speaks little English but knows in Chinese the situation with the kids. For some reason, it was Friday, the hospital refused to look at the kids. We had been 2 weeks ago so we were a little confused. The ayi got in a heated debate with the doctor. Apparently they would look at Princess but refused to look at Little Guy. The word deaf and no and he doesn't belong here were thrown around. After discussion, they let the ayi take the temps. The ayi read the thermo and it showed fever. I looked at it too. The thermometer were handed to the doctor who looked ayi and said a number a good 2 degrees different and said there was no problem here, good bye. So we left. The ayi went off on her bike and procured some chinese medicine that worked wonders for Little Guy. Everyone else continued on the downward spiral of sickness made a little worse by whatever germs we picked up in our attempt to treat the kids.
We faithfully filled out our temp forms and placed them in the box each day. 3 days went by, no one called.
But one coughing spell in class and there was immediate concern for our well being. Anyway, we are sick. No one translated a diagnosis other than the dates we can go to back to work. It is not the pig flu. And Chris is not as serious as me, so he can return to work on Friday. He said he wanted to go back today, but they said "No, you need to take care of her and your family" Awe, how sweet is that. No boss in America has ever said that to us before---your wife had her baby (on Sat), great see you Monday-- is what you get in America. I have really found that the Chinese guys are unfairly stereotyped as not being compassionate. They really seem to bend over backwards to care for their wives and kids.
It turns out the foreign affairs office is down to 2 healthy people and so they really couldn't afford to get sick walking us thru the hospital. The remembered that I was allergic to everything and took great measures to translate all the medications to us and to make sure there were no reactions. For months, we had been terrified of getting the pig flu and villianized for being evil Americans trying to sicken everyone. But we really found that getting sick of course sucks, but that our bosses were much kinder and understanding than we imagined. Course we don't have the pig flu, so that may be why.
So anyway, back to the big day. We used our way cool software and were able to view You Tube for the first time in a year or 2. We had heard that there were alot of sign language songs on there, so we looked up Happy Birthday and learned it. It was very sweet.

How you get the kid and cake to school at the same time

We started his celebration by biking the cake and kids to kindergarten. But the kids were going on a field trip and loading the bus "right now" and the not so good English teacher told us to take the cake home and bring it back tomorrow. Little Guy was not to happy about the parting of his cake. We were a little baffled about the field trip. Yesterday we had discussed bringing the cake and there was no mention of a trip. We still don't know where they went, something about a performance. It is almost better to be blindsided this way because there is no pre-field trip anxiety for the kids.
So after school we picked him up and had cake and song at home. He was happy. We thought the cake was quite pretty, we had hoped for dragons or tigers, but flowers are at least peaceful.

They have the best candles over here, light the bulb

Then fireworks

And it opens to a flower of many candles

For dinner we served his favorite food so far, pork roast and boiled potatoes.
He got a remote control car and it has provided hours of entertainment until the wheel was stuck in Princess's hair and Little Guy wouldn't give up the remote or stop pushing the go button.
When we are well again we will take him out for a birthday celebration at KFC or McD's.

Opening the car the tie was a gift too

Little Guy's 1st Birthday with US

Harbin, China