Hannah´s world (April)

April was another eventful month for us. It is so amazing watching Hannah grow. Nearly every day she is surprising us with a new skill. She also loves to brabble along and is even starting to sing  in her own way to music with the aircondition beeing the happy audience Hannah has chosen.

It was fun watching her discovering her finally her hands and feet. Now that she knows she has such usefull tools she is grabbing everything with her little fingers.

 
With her feet she loves to bang like a maniac on the wooden floor rocking the entire baby gym.

"Clever girl!" I keep thinking!  Why moving one object with one hand when you can shake all of them at once by kicking it!.. Thankfully Mr. and Mrs. Jing downstairs love children and don´t seem to mind the banging on their roof too much.

They really like Hannah. The can´t stop commenting how cute and "pang = fat" she has become.. It is meant as a compliment! I can only assume that if you have a "fat" baby in China is associated with wealth and health..?.. Well if anything my milk department seems to be  doing a good job :-)

Last month Hannah and I were also able to established a bit of a daily routine. I figured out when she gets tired and needs to sleep which gives me a bit freedom during the day and also an evening because by 7pm she is totally worn out from her day.
 

According to one of my clever parenting books I had also reason to hope that once Hannah hit the 3 month mark she would start sleeping longer through the night.. hmmm.. we are still working on that.

I can barely remember how a good 8 hour sleep feels... Since 4 months 4 hours are the maximum and if that happens (very very rarely) I wake up myself wondering if our baby is still alive. But thanks to hormon overload and Paul taking over as much has he can my body is coping quite well with the sleep deficit. 

Unfortuantely Paul had to start travelling again in April. But luckily his first trip took him for a couple of days to Germany which meant that he came back with a suitcase full of goodies and presents from home :-)

 

Hannah didn´t care too much about what he brought back.. she was just happy to have her daddy back home. 4 days in such a short life can seem a very looong time!

 

 

 

 

Three months after delivery it was also time for me to do something to get back into shape. So I went to Lisa´s  post-natal class every wednesday and got to meet some fun mommies..

 

and their little babies:

 

The best thing about this class was the getting together afterwards in "Whisk" which

is a the most dangerous place in Shanghai because it is a cafe specializing in Chocolate dishes :-)..

 

But we decided that with 90 minutes of sport upfront and the need of additional 500kcal per day to keep the milk supply flowing the weekly visit was more than justified!!

And they do serve the best chocolate soufle in the world there :-)

 

We enjoyed getting together, gossiping and watching the little ones playing with each other so much that we now, despite the course is over, keep on meeting up every wednesday ... and continue eating chocolate cakes without 90 minutes of excercising upfront which is still justified because we all agree that the babies wriggle round much more these days, making us using up easily another 500kcal...

I would never have thought I would enjoy this but it is really great to share the whole  mommy "Shanghai-experience" with others and to watch the babies "communicating" with each other, too. Hannah seems to be fond of little Mahlo in particular. But instead of brabbling to him, she is pretty straight forward and is grabbing right under his T-shirt.. hmmmm....??

With the weather improving in April it was also time to catch up with old and new friends. And to meet the new babies of pregancy-fellows who we met during various pre-natal courses.
The great thing about Shanghai is that you easily make new (baby)-friends from all over the world.

For example:

Mira and little Max (Croatian/French)

 

Hannah and Lei Lei (Shanghainese/Swiss)

 

Hannah and Daniel (Shanghainese/German, born the same day)

 

Hannah and Melissa (Peru)

Hannah and little Ranga (Indian/German) and Diego (Mexican)

Sometimes I feel a bit like a "relation ship manager" for our daughter. But I guess that is part of the mommy "job description"...

Well the setting in Shanghai is definately the right "playground" for mothers who do enjoy a good cafe latte and like exploring the coffe shop scene in the city :-)!