Made it!

Yep, this one is all about makin' it. I just put the boys down for the night, came back into the living room here where I set up command central throughout the end of the week to work from and also maximize my ability to monitor the kids, only to find the following on my screen...

So the good news is that Jessica made it back 'home'! As for me, I managed to make it through the week with no major catastrophes past Saturday. There was that little blip with Maddox escaping the perimeter that I had set up here to break into our bathroom and spread the soap around the floor. However, I managed to get that one taken care of and that was pretty much it. The floors are clean, the bathrooms are clean, the sheets are all washed, the clothes are all washed...all thanks to Chen. But hey, I'm the one payin' for it! I only managed to lose two fish out of the boys fish tanks...with no signs of any remains I might add. Plus, I managed to solve a pretty major issue at work that had one of our assembly lines completely stopped, so I pretty much think that the week was a success.

By the way (and though I readily admit that my domestication abilities are somewhat limited), I just wanted to offer up that even in the face of having to deal with an oven that is somewhat complicated and confusing; that if you put good directions on the box that you can get a pretty good meal. For instance, breakfast on Friday...

That is right folks. Notice the nice golden brown color on the tops of those babies. The nice clean and non-burned edges. And just to offer up some proof that the demanding little pain in the neck critics that I had to put up with on Saturday at McDonald's found these completely appealing...

Yep, I'm shameless. I even made them beg me for more. Couldn't help myself really. Don't have a picture of it, but I figured out the chicken nugget things too. That's right, Friday night was me, the boys, and 12 crispy, golden brown dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, some Chinese BBQ sauce, applesauce and chocolate pudding. Food Network doesn't have anything on me...as long as it comes out of a bag or box that has decent instructions on them.

Anyway, this is all pretty much pointless rambling and nothing more than an attempt for me to kill some time and try and dull out the excitement and anticipation of just waiting for Jessica to get home from the airport; while at the same time try and redeem myself from one of my lower point days as a parent. I guess that I should take some time to thank all of those of you that made it possible. To Bill and Judy, thanks for watching the boys for me on Monday and Tuesday while I was slaving away at work. Chen of course is an invaluable member of our family over here...whether we pay her or not. I got to see first hand this week that she genuinely cares about the boys more than I understand. Jen G. for making fun of me as a parent and inspiring me to do better. Buster and Amy for checkin' in on me throughout the week and inviting us for an afternoon out at one of the bust burger joints in town. And I guess Jessica...though she sets the bar pretty high...

All in all, it was a lot of fun! But man am I lookin' forward to going back to man-to-man defense against the boys!

And folks...that was just Saturday...

I realize that pictures speak thousands of words and all of that, but in all of the excitement this past Saturday, capturing these fun moments on film (or file so to speak) were hardly on my mind at the time.

Saturday was the day that Jessica went back to Alabama to be with her family since her grandfather has passed away. Luckily, the boys woke up in time to say goodbye before James came to pick her up and take her to the airport. The boys and I had some breakfast...basically just picking from the stuff that Jessica made for us. Waffles were the meal of choice. After that, and a little bit of time just playin' around the apartment and all was fine. Pretty much was appearing to be a pretty easy day with the low point being Jessica leaving. Then came the shower...

After doing the normal trip to the bathroom for Gabe and changing Maddox's diaper, I figured then was as good a time as any to dump the boys in a shower. Just after I got them both into the shower, the phone rang so I ran into the bedroom to answer it. Jessica was just calling to let me know that she got checked in and was at the gate. She also needed me to get her some stuff that she forgot to write down before she left. The call couldn't have been any more than five minutes. When we got done, I walked back into the bathroom to check on the boys. As I walked through the door, all that I could hear other than the running water was constant giggling. One thing that the boys like to do is to wait until I wash my hair or rinse off soap and run their cars through the 'bubbles' that make it to the floor. Apparently, they didn't think that I would make it to the shower, so they got the body wash down and managed to get it open. Maddox was standing with one foot on top of the bottle trying to get some of the soap out while Gabe was flinging the soap that had already come out all over the shower floor and walls. Not all that big a deal though really. I mean, we had soap everywhere in the shower, and there were certainly a lot of bubbles, but it was all contained in the shower.

So I hop in the shower, get the boys clean and let them play in the bubbles for a little while longer. Gabe decided that it would be fun to play with the drain cover, which is not secured into place with anything other than gravity. Maddox subsequently assumed that it would be fun to drive one of his toy cars down into the drain pipes. Luckily, I was pretty much done with the shower so I got the boys out, dried them off, and then took them to our bedroom and sat them on the bed. I turned on the Chinese cartoon network as I knew that it would keep them entertained while I went back into the shower with a wire coat hanger to dig the car out of the drain pipe. Thanks to an annoying bend in the pipe, it took longer than expected, but alas I was able to get the car out of the drain...only to hear Maddox whimpering back in our bedroom.

I walk in the bedroom to see Maddox standing there with a shocked look on his face and standing in a puddle of...just imagine having two cups of milk for breakfast, having just gotten out of the shower and still being damp, and standing in a room right under the air conditioning vent with the air conditioner still on. Luckily though, he had at least climbed out of our bed before performing that act. All that I could think of to do to console the poor kid was to hand him the same car that he had dumped down the drain. Then I picked him up, took him back in the bathroom and cleaned him off. Luckily, the rest of the morning was pretty low key. We went over to the fitness complex that we live close to which has a pretty big play area for kids. There was a birthday party going on there for a girl and all of her friends. They were a little bit older than Gabe, but both he and Maddox certainly enjoyed the attention. Anyway, about an hour there, a short trek back to the apartment and 20 or so minutes to cook some chicken nuggets for the boys and we should be good to go.

There is a weird thing about our oven though. Instead of specifying an actual temperature on the knob, it just gives numbers: 1 through 8. Luckily though, Jessica left me a guide on how to correlate the numbers to a temperature. Next problem though, the only instructions on the side of the bag that showed how to cook the chicken were instructions on how to fry them in a wok. A lot of good that did. I figured that it would be easy to figure out though. I will just pick a medium temperature...say 5, and put the chicken in there and see what we get. After about 10 minutes, all that we had were pretty much just soggy pieces of chicken. I figure that I'll just flip them over and bump the temp up to number 6. Still no problem. 10 minutes later and we still have some soggy pieces of chicken sitting there...and no sign of that wonderful golden brown color that we are supposed to get on these little modern marvels. I figure that I will just bump up the temperature even more and give then a few more minutes. After about 30 minutes of sitting in the oven, we still didn't manage to obtain that golden color, and it was about the most rubbery creation I had ever eaten. Luckily, the boys didn't seem to have such picky pallets as I. So now off to take a nap...only almost an hour late.

So then comes the afternoon. Neither one of them really slept all that well. Normally, they wake up around 4:30 or so. By 3:30, I had given up fighting with them. Gabe just shot up out of bed and ran into the living room asking to watch a movie or some TV. After I got him settled, I went back in to get Maddox. Now recently, when coming home in the afternoon, I noticed that Maddox was always wearing a pair of underwear over his diaper. I had just assumed that he wanted to be like Gabe or something and Jessica was just helping the kid out. Yeah, it dawns on me that maybe the move to put the underwear over the diaper was more out of necessity than anything else. As I walked into the room, there was Maddox standing in his bed, bare bottomed, pointing to the floor where he had thrown his diaper that he had taken off. The diaper was as dry as a bone...but not the bed. Perfect...here we go again! As least this time, it didn't appear that Maddox needed to go back to the bath.

So anyway, I strip down the sheets and blankets and head off to the utility room, where we have this really nice eco-friendly washing machine and dryer set. Easy enough I figure as I load all the sheets and blanket into the washing machine and grab the bag of laundry detergent. Next, I open the little drawer thing that you are supposed to put the detergent in for the washing machine and low and behold there are four different compartments in the stinkin' thing. After a minute of looking at the thing, I noticed that there was a little trap door type of thing in the back and a water line that runs into one of the compartments. It almost looks like you just load this one compartment up with soap, that water runs through the one next to it and they mix on the compartment with the trap door to ultimately dump into the washing machine. So, I just load up the middle container and go on my happy way. Next problem...the whole stinkin' setting knob is in Chinese. Just thinking back to how easy things are back home, I remembered that on our washing machine that the simple wash cycle had the least number of characters. Assuming that the logic was the same in China (silly me) I just picked the cycle that had the least number of Chinese characters. When that narrowed it down to three selections, I just picked the least complicated selection from those three. Some lights and numbers started flashing on the thing, so I started to feel much better about myself. Luckily, the On-Off symbol of the interupted circle with a line is an international symbol so we are good to go.

Anyway, can't figure out what else there is to do and the weather was pretty nice so I just dressed the boys and got them ready to head out to the playground in the apartment complex. Stroke of luck happens again and one of the boys that Gabe and Maddox apparently know pretty well is having a birthday party and they are just wrapping up and heading to the playground themselves. That was a piece of cake (no pun intended). The kids practically baby sat themselves. Really, the only bad thing about it was that it was all moms sitting out there, so I looked a little out of place. This is where the person that invented the Sudoku puzzles deserves a big thank you. Yep, I just drag out my Sudoku book that I do on the train and car rides around China and start working a few puzzles.

After about an hour there, we come back inside fully expecting the laundry to be done so that I can throw it in the dryer (which is also a Whirlpool appliance just like the washing machine, but is all in English) before the boys have to go to bed. Not sure where I went wrong on this one, but I either picked the wrong setting, or picked the wrong bin for the soap, but the washing machine was still going strong, one hour later, and all that you could see in the washing machine was a tub full of bubbles with some of them 'escaping' around the door seam on the front of the washing machine.

At this point I was pretty much just ready to give in and give up. I looked at the boys, asked them what they wanted for dinner, and just got two blank stares. So, being the perfectly good dad that I am, I just say "how about a surprise for dinner?" This just seemed to be the trick as looks of shear excitement dawned both of their faces. It was simply enough...all that I did was throw their shoes back on, head down to the street in front of our apartment grab a taxi and proudly proclaim: Ja-Le-Foo, Fang Dian Loo (don't get too caught up in this), it just gets us to a Carrefour (like a Wal-Mart) that is about six our eight blocks away from our apartment. Handy little thing about this Carrefour though is that it has a McDonald's in it. Two kids meals, a Big Mac meal and $6 later, I was well back on track.

It was now well past the boys bed time. But hey, I was a hero. We walked in the door to the apartment, only to hear the washing machine still running (now over three hours in its cycle). Needless to say, Maddox wasn't sleeping on his normal sheets that night. I just pulled the comforter up, grabbed a couple of extra top sheets and he was good to go. And folks...that was just Saturday...

NOTES: You can pretty much accept this as my public affirmation for all that Jessica does for us. Secondly, Maddox didn't stop there with the soap. On Wednesday, my first day back alone with the boys (we had some help on Monday and Tuesday...thanks Bill and Judy!) I noticed that I hadn't heard from Maddox in several minutes. When I called his name, he came running out into the hallway from our bedroom with that just been caught look on his face. I went into the bathroom to find that he had gotten into the shower and grabbed the soap and was spreading it out on the bathroom floor...looking for more bubbles. It has taken me three days to get it clean and I still haven't gotten it all. The sheets, yeah they were in the washing machine for just over four hours. I have no idea what I did there. The the suds kept spewing out of the thing too. Made it down to the floor. Managed to get that one cleaned up right away though and nobody will ever know...except the billions of people that have access to this blog. And finally, after all that I went through on Saturday, and spoiling the boys by taking them to McDonald's, Gabe has the audacity to tell me that McDonald's McNuggets are better than the chicken that I made. What a little punk! Oh well, I still wouldn't trade this experience. I have had a lot of laughs this week!