At my 37 week appointment, my doctor announced: “I think the baby is ready to come very soon, maybe next week!”

Oh crap.

There’s something in my doctor’s manner that’s a little obtuse to me. She doesn’t come out directly and say things, and there’s something culturally just a little bit different than what I’m expecting. This is probably the biggest difference between having a baby in the States and overseas — it’s not the level of care (actually my Mexican MD has done a fantastic job) it’s the sometimes sideways conversations that you end up happening.

“Any questions?”

Uh… Yes, like a million, so… the baby is coming next week, but how? C-section? Induction? Does this mean that things aren’t going well? Am I supposed to guess here?

Meanwhile Cole is bouncing around and Drew is trying to get him not to disassemble the model anatomy of the female reproductive organs.

She does explain. Two things are happening, first the baby’s heart rate dropped during today’s test, meaning she’s probably pinching her cord, which is wrapped around her neck. The heart rate should go up when she moves, but it’s going down. It’s likely this would get worse in labor. Second, it looks like I might be developing pre-eclampsia with this pregnancy too, my hands look swollen and despite my healthy diet I still gained 2 kg in 2 weeks, so I’m probably adding water weight, a sign I’m having problems with my kidneys, which circles back to the slowly creeping blood pressure and my prior history. Blah. So I don’t have any medical problems now, just red flags.

The baby is big enough, I’m full term, I have a prior c-section and while she’s going to continue to monitor me, I know she’s right, there’s really no reason to wait for my pre-e to explode, I’ll just be sick like last time, where I had to take blood pressure meds for two weeks after giving birth. Not fun.

Holy crap, the baby is coming early.

We had lunch with friends after our appointment and then slowly drove home, a little stunned. Drew kept saying “Woah,” and I went into some kind of fevered baby-prep mode, taking us to the store to get the rest of the baby stuff before we even got home, realizing even as I’m totally not mentally prepared for this, there will in fact be a baby here very soon.

Like, a baby. A real baby. It’s stupid how pregnant I am and how hard it is to wrap my brain around that.

And this is another quirk of being overseas, we couldn’t find an infant car seat that wasn’t part of a stroller-car-seat set, so we got this very fancy setup that will never leave Mexico because it’s too big to check on any aircraft. The instructions are in Spanish, and I think they just say, “Open the stroller and stick the car seat on top.” Because that’s all we did.

Our friend, Pam is coming in two weeks — to help us with Cole during the delivery — well, actually now she’ll be here about two weeks after the delivery, if my doctor’s prediction is right. Who will take care of Cole? We’re working on it. Meanwhile I bought him some art supplies for the two days I’ll be in the hospital (no children under 12 are allowed).

I indulged in one pink girly thing.

Another onesie for our little frog.

Receiving blankets and baby towels.

An outfit for coming home from the hospital.

Socks, she will no doubt kick off, but I bought one pair so the nurses won’t cluck at me for having a barefoot baby.

This is everything.  The Ergo wrap we bought used in the States (structured so it’s good for 4 months and older), the bamboo wrap from Etsy (soft, so it’s perfect for newborns), newborn diapers, wet wipes, four swaddling/receiving blankets, baby shampoo, two newborn outfits and two 0-3 month outfits, size 1 diapers, spit up cloths, a swaddling blanket and a pair of socks.

I’m quite proud that all of this could conceivably fit into a single backpack. That’s pretty much all you need. Well that and boobs. Check.

I really love the Ergo wrap.

And this woman makes these bamboo fabric wraps that are so silky soft and fit perfectly for newborns. We used her last time and loved it.

Now we’re just waiting for the baby to come. I go back to the doctor on Monday for more monitoring, then we’ll see…

We’re actually closer to Sayulita, Mexico, the surfing mecca north of us, than we are to Puerto Vallarta, to the south of us, but we hadn’t made it up there yet.

Sayulita is a really cute little town, with lots of restaurants, surf shops, guest houses — touristy but in a good way. There’s a healthy mix of Mexican families and foreign vacationers on the beach, so it’s one of those places that is popular for a good reason. The waves.

There are surfers, but there are also tons of stand up paddle boards (SUP) for rent on the beach (about $8/hour).

We had lunch on the beach (Drew’s beer, not mine — he’s feeling better, by the way, thank you to everyone for their well wishes!)

I paid way too much for this salad but it was pretty good (lunch for the three of us cost $30, which seems like a lot to me, but I’m acclimated to Thai prices for everything, so it’s probably pretty cheap).

I took all those pics with my iPhone, by the way, because we forgot the camera battery at home (oops!) so I couldn’t get many shots of Drew standing out on the paddle board (it was too far away for the iphone’s zoom) but I did convince him to come closer so I could get a pic.

“Come here Drew!”

“LOOK OUT THERE’S A WAVE, QUICK GET ON!”

Hahaha.

Almost there!

Ahhh….

Oh, no! I love that the little kid is like, “what are you doing, dude?”

If you’re wondering, yes, this is pretty much what your first day of SUP will look like: Stand up, paddle around, a wave comes, fall right off. Repeat. There are some people surfing into the waves and they make it look SO EASY.

Drew on the other hand, was wrecked.

(On the ride home ALL he talked about was his big plans for paddle boarding: “I wonder how much a used board costs?” and so it begins…)

I’m in love with the little house we found just north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in the sleepy town of Bucerias.  It’s a simple Mexican style compound with three bedrooms, a walled and gated yard (as is customary here) and two little extra houses on the property, which our landlord Pablo calls the “bodegas”.  One is used for laundry, the other storage.  Overall it’s an over 5,000 square foot property (the house is just about 1500 square feet or so) with fruit trees and flowering bushes.

I love the flowers.  They spill over the brick walls and add a fuchsia wall of color to that side of the house.  An older couple lived here before us and they took extremely good care of the garden.

These orange flowers open for a few hours a day, but mostly they are closed, waiting for the right conditions.

Some of the walls are hand-painted and there’s plenty of space for an outdoor room if we get organized enough to buy some furniture for it.

I need to write an entire love letter to the produce of Mexico, which I’ve devoured in bulk since arriving.  One of my first purchases was this fruit bowl, which I fill every 3-4 days with mangos, three different kinds of oranges, avocados, limes, apples, pears, kiwi, guava, and whatever else I can find.  There’s one variety of apple that tastes like candy.  We also eat a full watermelon every week (Cole polishes off most of it) and I’ve had 2 fruit smoothies everyday since arriving.  I have a massive sweet tooth right now, but smoothies with milk and fat-free yogurt has been my compromise.

There’s Jack!  He has his doggie bed from home, but usually he moves from room to room with the family, sleeping wherever we happen to be hanging out.

This area is all within the walled gates, so there’s lots of room for the dogs and Cole.  I’m planning on turning that patio into a second living space for us, maybe with some comfy chairs I find on Craigslist.

I think this is jackfruit.  The landlord didn’t know the name of it, and they are smaller than what we would see in Asia, but most of the fruit trees on this property (including the cherry tree and the now removed mango trees) have struggled to actually produce fruit, so we’ll see if they get big enough.  They smell amazing though, it fills the air with this light sticky-sweet aroma that takes me right back to Thailand.

We dry our clothes on the line.  That’s the cherry tree in the background, and it should bloom in May.

The house is called Casa de Ollas de Frijoles, or The Beanpot House.  That’s because of these little beanpots placed at intervals around the gate.

Everyday I go visit the flowers.

The weather is in the high seventies, which feels just a little cool to me in the morning, and we’re in the middle of winter here, so it’ll just get warmer.

The view from my backyard.

Here is one of the bodegas, it has a laundry room and it’s own full bath.

The owner’s wife loves doves.  This was their first house together.  They now live in a larger house just across town.

It’s old school Mexico.  If you go to Puerto Vallarta, you get this very modern, cool, and slightly touristy edge, then you come up north, cross over into our neighborhood and from one side of the highway to the other, it all completely changes.  All of our neighbors are Mexican, there’s music always playing (which I love, super sappy Mexican ballads playing all day, it’s atmospheric and sweet) and someone is always driving by trying to sell you gas, water, frijoles, tortillas, or whatever — and if you are out of gas you have to run outside and flag down the guy to buy some.  The prices are written on the side of his truck and he swaps out your old tank (we have several, one for the kitchen, two for the water heaters) and off he goes.

This is our street (our house is on the right, that’s our wall with the flowers).  On the other side there are two horses which are usually “parked” on the side of the road, munching on hay.  There’s about two dozen dogs, and they get all yippy if you walk past, but mostly they’re quiet.  It’s a dusty, sleepy part of town.

The old man across the street puts out a chair everyday and just sits there until dark.  His daughter has been coming over to help us clean three times a week.  The house is ours for the year, and because someone always asks, it’s $460/mo and we just had a phone line and internet put in, so that’s it, it’s feels official.  This is our Beanpot House for this year, maybe next, and when we visit Asia later in the year, the dogs will stay behind and keep our beds warm.

This is our third year in Thailand for Loi Krathong.  We’ve celebrated this Thai holiday more regularly than Thanksgiving (we skipped this year) or Christmas (we haven’t exchanged gifts since we started traveling) — that’s not entirely intentional, but perhaps it does say something about us.

I love the lantern releases, but what keeps me coming back are those evenings when we drive around on the motorbike, with Cole on my lap, and head over to the Ping River to watch everyone celebrate.  The Thais head down to the river bank, light the candle in the center of their Krathong, press their hands together in a “wai” as they make a wish.  It’s simple and beautiful and by the end of the night, the dark river is lit with hundreds of points of light, as the woven bamboo and orchids slowly drift away.

I guess it’s something of a westerner’s culture to be impressed by Buddhism, it seems so solemn and spiritual, we glom onto it like moths to a flame.  I know that being a Buddhist involves a lot more than an annual celebration and pretty lanterns, but I still like watching it every year.  It makes me feel like there’s a little bit magical in the world.

My new favorite part of the celebration is to light a lantern and watch Cole’s reaction as it fills with hot air and slowly floats away.  This year we lit four, one for each of us (including the baby who is coming this winter).

Cole is talking enough now that we discussed the lanterns for two days afterwards, he was so impressed.  We reenacted them floating away and saying good-bye.  He pointed them out everywhere we went.

It took us a bit to convince him that his job wasn’t to blow out the flame, although to be honest, he was total crap at it, and if this was his birthday he’s get exactly zero wishes.

Impressing your kids is hands down the best feeling.  I wish I could be half as excited as he is on any given day.

And then they float away.

Of course, that’s a lie, we’ve already left Koh Lipe, Thailand but for two glorious weeks we pretended like it was true.  We rented a little bungalow at Bundhaya, set up our laptops to work and fell into a pattern of early morning swims in the ocean, a walk down the beach, breakfast at our favorite restaurant, a walk back to the room where Cole would fall asleep again and take a four-hour nap, while Drew and I worked.  It was glorious (tip: if you have a toddler, beach access is a miracle worker).

There was hardly anyone else at the resort, we saw at most two other couples at any given time.

The island is only about a mile across but outside of the developed main stretch, it gets kind of wild in parts.

This was our favorite new Thai dish: Kau Kling topped with threads of kaffir lime leaves.  I tried to google the recipe but couldn’t find it.  Then again, it was originally listed on the menu as “Kau Klingon” which we can only assume is a little auto-correct magic.  Or we’re eating Klingons.  I think Occam’s Razor applies here.

If you get lost on the island, don’t worry there are signs everywhere.  Of course they all point to the same restaurant, but they have free wifi, so who can complain?

And everyday while at breakfast someone comes and cleans our room.  Then Cole spends the first five minutes after breakfast methodically dismantling it.

We kayaked around a few times, and Cole and I snorkeled out on the reef.  On our last kayak trip, we nearly sank the boat (it had a hole in the bottom) which makes me thankful that A) Cole has this cool life vest swimsuit and B) I’m super buoyant pregnant lady because that was a looong swim back to shore (our friend Jason was with us and I demonstrated my cork-like ability to pop back up to the surface while attempting to dive down in the water and I think he peed his pants laughing).  Pregnant ladies can not sink.

Cole hanging out with the shop owner’s daughter while we eat breakfast.  He’s helping them sort rocks.  He kind of loves it.

The monks visited our hotel one day, chanted for a while, then left.

I want that sailboat.  We kayaked out to it and pretended like we were going to steal it.

And here’s me, with my baby bump.  If there was a way, I would have easily stayed on Koh Lipe to have this baby (well aside from the lack of medical facilities, the distance from a good NICU and the fact that I’m not that crazy) but our Thai visas were expiring so we had to hot foot it over to Malaysia.  Seeing as it took us 10 years to finally get here, I really hope it doesn’t take that long to come back.

Next mission: need to rethink ever living away from the beach again.

We gave up on getting any work done yesterday. The electricity went out all morning and there was a scheduled outage from 3-6 in the afternoon (part of the daily three-hour power-outage in Beirut).  I’m guessing this will be part of our summer experience as AC starts to crank and the already stretched infrastructure shuts down more and more.

So we did our part.  We shut everything off and went to the beach.

And by beach I mean one of the many resorts in town that have infinity pools, a view of the Mediterranean and food/drink service.  This resort is one of the rare ones that has real beach access.  (Lazy B resort in Jiyeh, about 30 km outside of Beirut).  There’s a public beach, and we visited it, but it wasn’t great.  In Beirut, “going to the beach” almost always means visiting a resort or hotel on the coast.

The grounds at this particular resort are gorgeous.  There are flowers planted everywhere, plus tons of different hang out spots, from very private lounge chairs hidden under thatch houses on the far end of the beach, to more beds, to spots on the grassy lawn, to tables and chairs for lunch to full bungalows.  Whatever kind of experience you want to have, you can do it.  It’s kind of brilliant.

Chill-out zone.

Flowers.

Another little chill-out spot.

We had taouk and hummus for lunch.

After four hours of playing in the ocean, Cole fell asleep!  Joy!  We immediately ordered two beers.

The local beer (the only one we like so far) is called almaza.  It’s a light pilsner.

Considering everyone is running around dripping wet from swimming, they make great efforts to keep everything looking stylish and cool.

There’s even full-sized beds, if you want to take a serious nap out of the sun.

I didn’t get to use these, or the hammocks, or about 90% of the resort because there are so many options.  We were thrilled to actually swim in the ocean, so we spent the entire time on the beach, soaking in the cold and refreshing Mediterranean.

Waking Cole up from his nap!  It’s time to go, Bubba!

By sunset everyone has left.  A fantastic and wildly too expensive day. When we got home at 7 PM the power was still out and we watched movies on my laptop, watching the battery dwindle.  We went out and bought candles and made make-shift candle holders.  At about 11 PM it turned back on. Best power outage ever.

We’re renting a little house in the Ashrafieh neighborhood of Beirut.  The main draw for us was the big private garden in the back, with a full gate so Cole can go in and out without on his own, without us having to worry about him wandering off.

The roses started blooming this week.

These are OUR BANANAS.  From our banana tree.  Drew says he’s going to climb something (and I assume fall and break his neck) in order to cut them down, so we can eat bananas and be like, “Oh these, yeah, we grew these in our backyard. In our banana tree.”

We bought Cole a bouncy house so he can practice his routine safely in the backyard before taking it to the big show — in our bed and on my head — at night.

After months of Cole drooling over other kids’ bikes in Thailand, we are now able to get him his own tricycle.  He’s ridden it twice.  It’s just not as much fun if you’re not chasing a 16-month old around and trying to steal their bike from them.

This is what Cole does instead.  Everyday.  It’s so much part of my childhood — playing in the dirt — that it’s bringing back all these memories for me.  He plays out here for at least two hours a day.

The view out my kitchen window.  Roses are growing up into the  house.  They smell lovely.

Decorative vase we inherited with the house.

Pillows that were here too.  They’re kind of beat up, but still cute.

My Arabic textbook.  It’s IN ARABIC.  I really didn’t think I’d learn how to read and write in Arabic before speaking it, but now that I understand the script, it is making it much easier.

Notes from my class.  Nothing feels more bad ass than writing a bunch of stuff in Arabic.  I am like, “I am the smartest person in the world!” but actually it only took us three days of class to cover the whole alphabet.  Still, it looks impressive, no?

Cole gets to play.  Outside.  And strew his toys everywhere.  It’s the little things, but this is why we wanted to stay put for six months, so he could do all that kid stuff that everyone else takes for granted.  I don’t have to pack these into a suitcase in a few days.  He can leave them outside over night.  He’s freaking loving it.

Our neighbors.  Everyone has a little terrace.  Despite Beirut being in a state of ill-repair, people take really good care of their personal spaces.  They are growing things. They create little outdoor spaces.

This is our roof.  You can see the Armenian church next door and the tops of the trees from our garden.  It’s huge.  I’d like to do something out here this summer, maybe bring up some chairs and pillows and make-shift sunshade for Sunday brunch with friends.  Maybe a potted herb garden.  Or a BBQ.

The neighbors on the other side.  You can’t really see in this picture, but they’ve planted flowers and have this furnished little terrace.

I am loving it here.  It’s so perfect for some many reasons.  By the way, if you’re visiting Beirut and want to rent a flat there were two resources that I found helpful.  This Facebook group (more for shared apartments, if you just need a room) and this Facebook page (which is who we used to find this house).

I’ve been meaning to do a post on the supermarkets here in Beijing but I haven’t been brave enough to haul my big-ass camera around the teeming multi-level thunderdome of shopping known as my local Lotte’s.  There’s a lot of foreign brands in Beijing, like Walmart (same as the states except completely different products/brands) and Carrefour (a French supermarket chain) and Lotte’s (South Korean – Japanese conglomerate) and from the inside all three of them look almost exactly the same to me — but totally wild — I’ve never seen anything like it outside of China.

Starbucks on the other hand, is deceptively similar.  It serves it’s lattes ‘grande’ and everything down to the furniture seems like direct imports (doesn’t the checkerboard table below look familiar?).

The sugar comes in the same white or raw choices, but it’s from a different company and the packets have some delightful English translation work: “golden coffee sugar crystals”.  Mmm, just like mom used to make.

I haven’t been in the states for a while, so I’m not sure if this is standard, but I’m assuming it’s like simple syrup they use in iced coffees.  Or as known in China, “invert syrup sachet” which if I said that out of context, you’d probably have no idea what I was talking about.  ”Yeah, make mine a grande and be sure to get some invert syrup sachets!”

The branding though, absolutely consistent.  Green plastic cutlery.  The identical label with just a little Chinese added.  Of course, what you get isn’t quite the same — it’s heavy on the corn and red beans (sweet to the Asian palette) and there’s a mystery mayo-crab-something salad in the corner.  The dressing was vaguely asian-y like a little sesame oil was added in.  Overall, just fine for a salad from Starbucks.

The table advertising is the same, but note the blueberry cheesecake.  Blueberry is like THE fruit in Beijing, it seems to me.  If you want to make something fancy, just add blueberries.

This kid could be bored in a Starbucks anywhere in the world, but nope, he’s right here in Beijing.  (By the way, this place was packed.  Starbucks is crazy popular with expats and locals.)

Even the hardwood floors look the same.  It’s like someone picked up a Starbucks from Seattle and plopped it down in China.  Cole was kind enough to inspect the floor very closely and he says, “Yes, it’s practically the same.  I think I recognize this wood grain.”

The cashier spoke with perfect English, she practically had an American accent, and then everyone fell into Mandarin as they called the order back and forth to each other.  I asked my tutor if people like Starbucks here and she said, “I think if you work in the CBD  in one of the tall buildings [note: she means a corporate job, probably] then you’d like very much to bring your cup of Starbucks to work with you.”  Does she drink it? “No, it has too many calories! I’d have to run around all day…”

We had peking duck at Da Dong restaurant, which is recommended by Timeout Beijing and my friend Jodi (from legalnomads.com) as the quintessential Beijing Peking Duck experience.  When Jodi says, “Go here and eat this,” you listen.

The restaurant is beautiful.

We ordered sweet potato salad for Cole and they brought out this (Cole loved it):

After bringing us the appetizer and drinks, the duck is brought out to a cutting table in the back of the restaurant.  I’m not sure why they set it up under such harsh lighting, but it’s pretty dramatic.

Slice by slice your duck is carefully dismantled.

Each person gets their own condiment tray with cucumber, radish, soy bean paste, garlic paste, sugar and what I’m calling “some other stuff”.

The duck is brought out.  You get two of these:

There’s also some paper thin pancakes for the table.

You create your own duck-condiment-pancake design…

Fold it up, and eat it.  Yum.  The duck is leaner than other places (a good thing) and the duck fat and skin is rendered into this crispy counterpart to the soft duck flesh.

You can make it savory or sweet…

Garlicky or salty…

Om.

Nom.

Nom.

Afterwards, they bring you oranges kept chilled over ice with… of course… dry ice for effect.  The effect being, ‘oh god these oranges taste good’ and your almost two-year-old trying to catch dry ice smoke with a chopstick.

By the time we left, the place was nearly cleared out, but the place is huge.

I love all the little details.

Lovely.  I’m not really doing it justice, but here it is (there’s also an entire bar area with a chic lounge).

So good.  If you make it to Beijing, it’s such a cliche, but you have to get Peking duck, and if you want something exceptional, then it’s Da Dong (they also have a huge ala carte menu that looks absolutely amazing and terrifying — I have to go back for the braised sea cucumber).  It’s a little pricy, running in the $30-$40 pp range (or more if you order drinks) but well worth it.

Da Dong Roast Duck 北京大董烤鸭店

5th floor, Jinbao Dasha, Jinbao Jie, Dongcheng District

东城区金宝街金宝大厦5层

Daily 11am-10pm