When in Rome

Last nite I went to the grocery store. I took Carson, and went on my bike. I came home with:

A 5kg sack of flour in the front basket,

About 5kg-worth of groceries in a bag on each arm--including a 1/2 gallon of milk in each bag,

A small bag of potatoes on one handlebar and a similarily weighted bag of veggies on the other,

A 12 kg child in the seat on the back,

Oh yeah, and a dozen eggs in the purse slung over my shoulder.

Is that all? Yeah, I think that about covers it.

(I didn't get a picture of the actual event, but here's my ride.)

Cheaper than a Chinese Pie

Some things in China, it turns out, are decidedly NOT cheaper than they are in America. For example, many savored American foods. Specifically, the Chinese aren't big into dairy products.

For Thanksgiving dinner at Logan and Sarah's house, I volunteered to bring the apple pie, and Austin would make Sweet Potato Casserole. You need a lot of butter for these dishes. I went to the nearby choashi where I usually buy my bread and milk to look for butter. Bewteen our two recipes, I needed to buy 1.5 cups worth of butter. The cheapest I could find ended up costing me RMB60--or roughly $10. TEN DOLLARS for 3/4 a box of butter??! Good heavens! But we had decided that we would splurge because it was a holiday.

I returned home and made my pie crust dough. When I put the pie together the next day, it was quite a sight to behold. The crust looked perfect and was neatly crimped at the edges. The crumble topping (because why would you hide a perfectly good apple pie filling with a top crust?) was beautifully and delicately spread over the mound of cinnamon-y apples inside. I wish I had taken a picture. I've never made a pie crust before, and it looked to be a resounding success.

However, about 5 minutes into the bake time, I peeked into the oven to see that my once-lovely crust had melted into a bubbly drizzle around the edges of the pie, and the crumble had also melted and seeped into the apple filling. It was shortly thereafter that I realised that the 227g blocks of butter I had purchased were ONE CUP each, or ONE-HALF POUND each. Not the half CUP I had calculated. Cup? Pound? A box of butter at home is 1 pound or 2 cups. So the block I bought was equivalent to two American sized sticks. I confused myself. And man, that was one BUTTERY pie.

So I bought and used twice as much butter as I needed. And where there was usually apple juice drizzling out of the bottom of my pie, there was butter juice. It was not the best pie ever. (Although the crust--tho not as lovely as it once was--was the lightest, flakiest crust you could imagine.) And I have to concede that the price of butter is not quite as outrageous as I once thought it was--only $5 per cup and a half.

"Mommy! Daddy! Ayi!"

Last week, the landmark "FIRST WORDS" occurred for Carson. His first word was really "bobby", meaning "potty." (Yes, he says "potty", he knows what and where the potty is, and he knows what's supposed to go in there, but he has yet to get it in there. Give it time, give it time.) But I made sure that his second word was "Mommy." And in the days following, I helped Austin's feelings by focusing on "Daddy" next.

A couple days later, our ayi, or nanny, was here while we were getting ready to leave for school. Carson was by the couch playing with the buttons on her jacket while she was in the kitchen. I heard him babbling like he usually does, but suddenly realised that he was saying, "aaaaayi! ayiiii!" I asked her, "Is he saying 'ayi'?" and she smiled and nodded.

Now, when he's upset in general, he calls for "mommy!". But when I'm doing something that he doesn't like, he calls "daddy!" And sometimes, just for fun, he calls "ayi!" There's a totally new dynamic to my feelings now when he cries since he can throw a sad, blubbery "mommy" in from time to time. It's that much more cute and yet pathetic at the same time.

In the words of Austin, he is still mostly a "jabbering Ewok"--babbling constantly, making noises that sound an awful lot like real words. And very clearly and energetically at that! He also says "Wowwwwww!" and the common, "Wasat?" sound that toddlers learn so early on--presumably because mama is always saying, "Carson, what's that?" But at last he has some real, certified, repeatable words under his belt. 19 months ain't bad, eh? Where do I sign up for child prodigy status?