Tag Archives: chinese family

Lost Treasures: Old Family Pictures

Recently I went through my picture collection on my computer again and found some family pictures of my wife. We originally used them for our wedding in Finland to screen in the beginning in the background but ever since then I had forgotten about them. I must say there are certainly some old treasures, especially when looking and MIL: She always had this special evil in her eyes!

 

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In this picture you can see forcing her daughter on a picture just to pose as she always does.

 

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This is from the wedding day of my in-laws, note the impressive hairstyle of FIL!

 

LostTreasures2Yup, sometimes there is actually snow in Xi’an

 

LostTreasures1Not even my wife knows where to find giraffes in Xi’an, furthermore it is doubtful that MIL knew what animal it was. Most likely she thought it is a mouse with a very long neck and spots.

 

Before I forget it, the featured picture on top is the infamous group picture where MIL doesn’t know who her own daughter is…

 

Have you recently found again some old family pictures?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts.

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Nathan’s World

It is now already over seven months ago that our baby boy was born. These seven months have been pretty eventful for him and for us. He also managed to travel a bit around as he has been already to several countries. In his age I barely managed to travel with my parents to Finland  as I was apparently not the easiest backseat driver available.

 

WP_20140725_003His young traveling career started in April with a journey to Germany where he met for the first time his German grandparents and Uncle. There he also tamed wild Elephants and Tigers at Hagenbeck Zoo and got baptized in Hamburg. During the trip to Hagenbeck Zoo he really tried his best to blend in with the animals but in the end the Penguins discovered the fake one in their midst and kicked him out. Few months later Nathan went on a dangerous tour to Estonia to discover hidden secrets in the Old Town of Tallinn and realized it is so much cooler there than at home.

 

Back in Finland the wild swamps and forests of Western Finland were awaiting him asTwitter7ec2da3_jpg[1] well as fishing for monstrous pikes in a huge lake. It took a while to build up enough patience but in the end he succeeded by hauling in a pike longer than himself! Sadly the fishing rod could not withstand these forces and this was it for his fishing career in 2014.

In late summer the Island of Rhodes was welcoming him with adventurous days at the beach, diving trips on his father’s back for hidden treasures in the baby pool and relaxation at the fish spa. Just a bit over a month ago he turned his back to Finland and began a new life in Germany but not before saying farewell to his Finnish great grandparents . Not bad for a little baby but that is not all. Right now he is getting used to his new career as an architect by designing and supervising his own baby room in the new apartment.

 

WP_20140318_002But such a little monster is not easily satisfied with only a few career choices so he also decided to pick up modelling. This was at first rather hard as he looked like a mini version of Winston Churchill. To make it even worse for him this Churchill face will haunt him still for a while as it is used in both his Finnish and German passport for the next five years, poor baby. However Nathan is able to use this for his own career boost as his pictures as Mini Winston Churchill are great for “Before and After” slideshows.

 

Nowadays he resembles more a tiny human being and is rather popular with the ladies! Each day his crazy MTXX_20140726_190314Chinese grandma wants a video chat as well as his aunty from Japan. The interesting thing is that especially the Japanese aunty had only every few months contact with us  but now our little boy is dragged in front of the phone nearly every single day to look cute and stuff. By now he also has his own fan club on Chinese forums and on Weibo, good job Nathan, I never thought you would pick up Social Media Marketing this quick….well, the youth these days seem to get used to all this tech stuff much faster than us. Thankfullly he is still far away from his Chinese stalkers but as soon as he decides to advance his travels to China he might has to hire his own bodyguard (probably me).

(Un)helpful Advice

Sometimes you get advice from others which is really useless or just stupid. The amount of this unuseful advice you get might vary from person to person but everyone has received some BS suggestions already in their life at least once.

For us the amount increased drastically during the pregnancy of my wife and reached record-breaking numbers ever since our little boy was born. As you might guess, most of the unhelpful advice is coming from MIL and other Chinese relatives (granny, you are crazy!).

 

To spare you from a near endless list of crap (sorry) I decided to put up my favorites from the past months.

 

  • MIL to my wife: “You really don’t have enough milk, see, he is hungry, let me make you a great soup to increase milk production.” This coming after Nathan had once again too much milk which resulted in a milk fountain AND after my wife had once again a breast infection due to too much milk and baby not able to use it up each time….

 

 

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Just enough for a hot summer day
  • MIL during a video chat: “Why is he wearing so less? He gets cold, put on something warm.” During a day in which we had 29°C/ ~84°F in the apartment. Now it is even warmer and we have to figure out ways to keep him cooled down (yay for apartments without AC!)

 

  • MIL after she got a video from us in which we tickle Nathan so much that he laughs non-stop: “Don’t do that, granny says that he will stay stupid if he laughs too much. Laughing babies will be stupid later!” – Really? Wow.

 

  • After Nathan was already nearly a week overdue Aunty had some great advice: “Go out, put a bucket full of snow and do squats holding the bucket in you hands. This will push the baby out.” – Needless to say my wife didn’t do it, could this be the reason that little fat Nathan was two weeks overdue in the end? Who knows…
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What, me fat? 我不 approve!
  • During my wife’s pregnancy some friends advised “Don’t put chilly in your food, the baby will get birth poisoning 胎毒” – She ended up eating the same as before and everything turned out fine.

 

  • My mom, yes my mother, about Nathan being fat. “Feed him less milk, instead give him baby tea to drink.” – Though I must admit that he is pretty damn round his weight is still below the average weight line for babies his age and size.

 

 

 

I could continue this list till my fingers would start bleeding typing more weirdness but I think you get the idea of useless advice we received.

 

What are your experiences with useless advice? There just must be something a great MIL advised you!