It’s been a while since I’ve had enough time to just sit down and write something. This week, though, we seem to have no students, so I’ve given myself the task of updating the course handouts – not a particularly challenging task, and one that I can accomplish with a few half-hour breaks to do other things. So I’ll take the chance to talk about the last month’s happenings and come back later in the week to write less me-based blogs.
After a series of little holidays I’m back on a full work schedule – 9am-6pm Monday-Friday plus evening classes each day and daytime teaching on Saturdays, and a 90 minute commute – and therefore am not seeing that much of M or V or V’s parents – just Sundays and an hour in the evenings really. This is clearly not sustainable, etc etc, but I’ve whined about it enough already and I quite enjoy my jobs, even if I am a bit tired.
Milan / 梅书雷 is doing well. Getting on for two months old he’s focusing on objects and occasionally smiling, and that’s about all you can expect from a baby of that age. He’s got a huge variety of facial expressions, though – and I’m still uploading photos here every now and again if you feel like taking a look at them. The triad boss is my current favourite look. He’s still not sleeping more than a few hours at a time, so V’s sleep pattern is pretty strange now – thankfully we’ve got her parents to help out, even if she doesn’t get on particularly well with them some of the time. We’re considering getting our own place again in September and are reasonably confident that we’ll be able to manage on our own by then. It’ll be a bit of a struggle at first, I’m sure, but everyone’s got to learn these things sometime.
In short, life is pretty routine right now, and not that interesting to write about. The only break we had was when my mum came to visit from England a couple of weeks ago. This time we didn’t really go out anywhere apart from the shops and a nearby pagoda, but it wasn’t really a travel thing this time – more a chance for her to get to know M and V. She had lots of useful tips on baby care for V and put her mind to rest on all the usual worries.

Yes, I think it’s a girls hat too, but the colour-coding babies thing hasn’t really got to China yet.