Wow, time really flies. It doesn't seem that long ago when Grandma
first came to the U.S. But sure enough, almost six months has passed since she first came to help take care of Cherry after giving birth to Baby Fifi!
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| Grandma's First Italian Restaurant |
The experience, like any real-world experience, had its ups and downs. I learned a lot about my wife's family. Cherry's mom learned a lot about us, life in the U.S., and hopefully how to control her diabetes (eat less white rice!!!). Perhaps more importantly, we also learned a lot about ourselves!
The second half of Grandma's stay coincided with Baby Fifi's third month of life. We recently learned from our neighbor Aunt Sarah that month 3 is often the most stressful of the early months of parenthood. At least, the stats on our street certainly seem to indicate that - Aunt Sarah had a seizure, Aunt Megan had to get her heart checked, and Cherry was burned out, thanks largely in part to Sofia's eczema problems.
Thankfully, Grandma was here to help out. For the first couple of months, Cherry and I had done most of the cooking as Grandma got used to being away from home, and China, for the first time for any significant period. With me being at work and Cherry burning out, Grandma helped keep Fifi from scratching her face during the day and took over making dinner in the evenings. This eased our workload a bit, but on the downside, Grandma isn't a very good cook, and we ended up having the same Nappa and Chicken dish almost every day for a little over two months...
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| This was pretty good... the first dozen times or so in a row... |
We certainly had our differences in
baby care approaches - as many grandparents are, Cherry's mom really pampers her grandkids (my parents are curiously excluded from this stereotype...), and I really thought she doted too much on little Fifi. Not that I don't want her to express love and care for her, but Fifi has really gotten quite dependent on having constant adult attention, which makes it pretty hard for us to do, well, anything, especially now that Grandma has gone home...
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| Fifi when you ignore her for about 10 seconds or more... |
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| No real reason for having this photo here other than the fact that it is insanely cute... |
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| Grandma grandma-ing Fifi |
Regardless, there is no doubt that Grandma is incredibly fond of Fifi and has been a monumental help, especially through the latter three months of her stay. So, on her last weekend in the U.S.A, we invited Aunt Sarah, Uncle Adam, and their daughter Izzy over for some dumplings and to let them also say goodbye to Grandma (they'd often seen her on her morning walks over the past several months, so they are among the only Americans Grandma regularly had contact with). It was great fun to see the walking edition of Izzy, and even more fun to see Fifi play with her and the other guests. Of particular note was a funny scene where Izzy got jealous when Fifi reached out and touched Aunt Sarah and knocked Fifi's hand away!
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| Fifi reaches out to the White Man... er baby girl... |
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| The White Man is not amused... |
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| Let's try and be friends? |
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| Grandma cutting the Friendship cake. Seriously, the cake said "Friendship" in Chinese before she cut through the words... |
On her last morning in Melbourne, we made a special breakfast of frozen pizza just for Grandma (she really loves those Totinos! In fact, Grandma's favorite experiences in America revolve around snack foods...).
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| Pizza for breakfast |
Before long, it was time to go to the airport. Since Grandma doesn't speak any English and Delta botched up their "meet and assist" service on her trip here, I took extra measures to ensure she would have an escort to each of her departure gates this time by signing her up for wheelchair assistance service! For those of you who have family that might have language struggles while traveling to the states, this service is free from Delta and really works!
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| Getting Wheelchair Service makes it easy for non-English speakers to get around in American airports... |
You can see Grandma is starting to feel pretty broken up in the photo above. And for good reason - she'd lived with us and spent pretty much every waking hour with us for the last six months!
Now, Grandma's safely back in China, and Cherry, Sofia, and I are taking some time to get used to life with just the three of us, waiting for our next great adventures!
, I figured that so long as Ed had his 
, we would have enough DSLR goodness to capture the natural beauty of Lakeland. I would later regret this decision, but that it won't preclude a Photography Showdown for this post!
:
, equipped with the 
(total equipment MSRP of about $2500). Compare our shots below!
