Beijing Baby Mama: Thanksgiving and Christmas Trees

I can't even count how many times I have started an entry saying something like, "It's been way too long. I've been meaning to start writing regular blog entries and I'm starting now!" Well, no promises but I'm going to try. I've been bad about posting pictures of my son online so my family in the US and the UAE can see how he is growing. And boy is he growing! He's more and more independent and can play in his room while I type around the corner on my laptop so that's another reason I can do this. I CAN do this. My sister has an awesome blog where she posts recipes and gorgeous pictures of her daughter and I've enjoyed it so much over the past year and am inspired to try to do the same.

Before I talk about Thanksgiving, let me just update you on Ollie. His favorite breakfast food is eggs. He can easily finish two or three scrambled eggs and since I've begun to wean him 2 weeks ago, he's enjoying a cold glass of milk more as well. He also loves crackers and bread and after talking to others with kids his age, this is the norm. He loves ice cream so every time we go to the grocery store across the street and pass the Coldstone Creamery, he has to go inside and look through the glass at the different colored ice creams and make a little whining sound. Don't worry, Mom, we're not feeding him ice cream all the time but on occasion let him share some with us when it's time for a treat. If we had good ice cream over here, I'd be eating by the gallon for all of my meals which is a good reason that I don't live in the States right now. He loves "The Wheels on the Bus" and "My God is So Big" and he loves it when I pray for him before he goes to bed. We aren't quite sleeping through the night regularly although last week there was one night where he slept through the night. I think I can count on one hand the number of times he has done that and I would only use 2 or 3 of my fingers. I left a pot boiling the bones of a chicken to make some chicken broth and when I got up at 5am this morning to get Ollie some milk, saw that the pot was black and the burner was still on. Amazingly enough, since the fan was on, there was little smoke and the smell of burnt pot stayed confined to the tiny kitchen. Unfortunately the pollution was so bad int he night that that was all I could smell in any of our rooms. Obviously it is time to buy some serious air purifiers. Stat.

So last week was Thanksgiving and our good friends Wes and Kasha invited us over for a vegetarian meal. Wes is a master when it comes to making fake meat and he came through again with a tofurkey. Yes, that's right. He made a "turkey" out of tofu and it was good. Oh so good and healthy! Everything was delicious and I was so full I couldn't even fit any wine although I certainly tried! I ended up just feeling disgusting but I kind of expected that would happen. My contributions to the meal were some sickly sweet sweet potatoes, dry stuffing (I later realized I had used two bottles of sage and no thyme to season it which explains why it was off this year), a pumpkin cream cheesecake with a ginger cookie crust and salted caramel and pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese and maple frosting. Yes, I know. They were good. I will try to find the recipes and post them soon but in the mean time here are some photos. I didn't get a chance to get a photo of the cheesecake once it was cut on plates but it wasn't very pretty anyway as it was too soft, but it tasted good! I swear!

Caramel and Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Anyway, as soon as we had celebrated Thanksgiving, my plan was to put up the Christmas decorations. The decorations are tacky in the Chinese malls and obviously we all live in apartment downtown so there are no houses covered in lights so decorating our apartment is the only way to really feel like it's Christmas sad as that sounds. We had a fake tree from my parents which we used last year but as soon as we had it decorated, I knocked it over and then broke the top of it off. It's a long story, well not really, and it doesn't need to be told here. The main poibnt is that I ruined the tree so we had to throw it out and get a new one. The new one that my husband bought the next day was pricey but it's bigger and nicer although much harder to set up than the last one. Anyway, it's done now. It's beautiful at night and Ollie loves it (probably). So far our cat has been entirely uninterested which is obviously great.

Now for the photos.