Tag Archives: German-Chinese mixed child.

Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son

First Contact

January 17, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 42 Comments

Last autumn we visited China for the first time together with Nathan. I stayed only for a few days however Nathan and his mother haunted Xi’an for nearly a whole month. During that time Nathan made his first contact with the other members of the Crazy Chinese Family.

For me as a grown up it was already much to get used to when I met them for the first time several years ago. Not that they are as crazy as my mother-in-law but they still are related to her so what can you expect! There is Granny who spawned crazy MIL and seems more often than not to be even more stubborn than her daughter, there is Aunty who always does everything wrong according to MIL, there is Uncle who lives with his family together with Granny, my wife’s little sister (cousin, daughter of aunty) who is still trying to find some rich guy but in Japan (but he shouldn’t be Japanese of course), and the little little sister (youngest cousin of my wife, daughter of uncle) who needs two hours to eat a soup but can finish a burger in seconds. Alright,nothing really crazy about this all but imagine them all bunched up in one room with their whole attention on little Nathan. Yep, all attention on that tiny little Nathan who just wants to run away from them all.

I guess you can imagine how Nathan reacted when seeing them all, crying and trying to get as far away as possible from them/ into mommy’s arms. Of course they all mean no harm but when all of them try to squeeze and feed him snacks at the same time it just can be too much for such a little human being. I mean I could barely survive each encounter when we went eating with the family and every person just piles up more food on my plate. I have the strong believe that they tried to create a new Jabba the Hutt out of me. Nathan is usually the kind of baby who is too trusting and not afraid of strangers at all but with his own Chinese family he turned into a crying mess.

Though all craziness poured into him in one go he managed to survive. He even calmed down and played with the crazy Chinese relatives but this was only achieved with a lot of bribing via fruits and snacks. Guess how many people it takes to get in China a baby to sleep? Nearly the whole family!! I am not joking but it seems that every female of the family has to be present when trying to get Nathan to sleep. As they all are pretty noisy when being together it takes a long time for him to fall asleep, long enough that they get hungry and need to make some food in between…but that is again a story for another time.

The first contact with his Chinese Family went rather well despite him being afraid like hell in the beginning. I wonder how it will turn out next time when going to China. I have no idea yet when there will be a next trip but I hope it will be soon and that I will be there as well. Not because I am so eager to meet the family once again but the food, the food!

Do you have people on the family with the ability to scare children away?

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Our little Christmas celebration

December 27, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 48 Comments

The Christmas festivities are survived and now the preparation for New Year celebrations are starting. For this Christmas we had for the first time a Christmas tree. All the previous years we had either no space in our tiny apartment in Finland or like last year just no time and decoration as we just had moved in the new place. However once Christmas was over last year we went straight to the next decoration store and bought tons of stuff for our future Christmas tree with a 50% discount (yay for intelligent shopping).

So what did we do this Christmas? First of all we got the last decorations done for our tree and placed all of the Christmas presents under it. Both of us had never done it before so it was a rather nice feeling once it was all done and Nathan saw the whole thing for the first time. For lunch we had nothing special, as we visited in the late afternoon an old lady to eat some food there together with my parents. The whole day was very uneventful, just a nice peaceful day with much sunshine. As the entire week was just rainy and dark we decided to start the day with some nice breakfast at my parents place and go after that together with Nathan to the nearby playground so he could burn some energy for the day. After that we visited this old lady I mentioned before. She is a friend of my mother from back in time when my mother first arrived in Germany to work here in the 1960s. My mother also lived at her place for several years and ever since I can remember Christmas we went to her place to have a simple dish “Potato Salad with Wiener Sausages”. Doesn’t sound like a fancy Christmas dinner does it? Well it is simple and pretty much tradition in my family to eat this every single Christmas. Usually we have some more German traditional food the following days such as turkey with red cabbage, potatoes and savory dark sauce but on Christmas itself we always keep it very simple.

WH2 — At the playground with a very happy Nathan

After we arrived back home the exciting part came when it was time to exchange the Christmas presents. I won’t go too much into detail but Nathan got some Lego Duplo with which he is playing non-stop currently and I got from my wife a quadcopter which I successfully crash-landed already. I think my wife got a pretty awesome gift for me as she can just cart me to the nearby park with the quadcopter and I can just sit there and let this monstrosity fly around/ crash around plus scare other people. As you can see our Christmas has been very uneventful but something like this is nice as it allows you to relax a bit and enjoy the whole day more. For my wife the most exciting part besides receiving her gift was to decorate the Christmas tree. At this point I have to thank the old man to help getting this tree into our apartment as I wouldn’t have been able to do so on my own. For next year I need to remember to buy only what I also can carry!

Yep, we still got green plants this year due to having no frost at all thus far

How was your Christmas?

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Chinese Wife, Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son

Nathan’s Crazy Photoshoot

October 4, 2015 CrazyChineseFamily 45 Comments

Indeed, our little Nathan had also a crazy photoshoot same as his parents had several years ago in China. Okay it was not only one photoshoot but actually two different ones but that was due to my crazy Chinese mother-in-law. Why? Oh well, she messed up as usual but more about that later on. You might remember that the photoshoot we had back in 2011 is not one of my fondest memories as it was pretty much a day of torture for me. Now just imagine how to make a 1 1/2 year old kid pose for the camera for several hours…yeah it won’t really work.

Enough of the introduction and lets talk a bit about the first session Nathan had to endure. Appearently the first company they went to with Nathan was not the perfect one. MIL won from some kind of prize competition a photoshoot for children worth 500RMB. This was pretty great at first until they went to that place as everything was kind of run down and broken plus some of the items the children are supposed to pose with were empty German beer kegs. Each and every single thing was broken there and dusty enough that you might think that the place was a movie setting from Tatooine. The next problem were the clothes for Nathan. My wife brought some clothes she had ordered beforehand from Taobao and it was a good decision to do so as barely any clothes they had at the photoshoot were fitting or any good-looking for our little one. Needless to say my wife was not pleased at all about where her mother had taken them but MIL had already excuses as nothing is ever her fault. In the end she blamed her friend whom she had asked about the location and this friend said it was okay. So no way on earth it was MIL’s fault by not checking out this company beforehand!

Apparently it was also not Nathan’s best day as he was very grumpy but I guess it was also due to the jet lag as it was just few days after the arrival in China. I don’t know how but through some dark magic the photographer managed in those two hours of demon baby running around to get few decent shots. You know when you pose for some pictures you know where to stand as the photographer will give you basic commands what to do, how to smile etc. This does not work with a little kid. Everything and really everything is just pure luck. Little Nathan the Satan won’t just stand there holding a toy airplane and smile into the camera, no…he will take that airplane, throw it in some corner, turn around and crawl somewhere as crawling on a dusty ground is so much cooler than walking. In the end some pictures ended up pretty well and my in-laws even got a huge picture for their wall (the monk picture above).

The second photoshoot company was a total different matter. My wife spent several days researching all about this topic until she settled on one company. Everything also went well except two things which somehow happens every single time we have to be somewhere at a certain time. First of all MIL never wants to “book” a taxi as according to her it is no problem to get a taxi on the street. Yes, usually it is not a problem but when your appointment is around the time the taxi drivers have their shift change it is a huge problem. This always results that the heavily crowded busses are the main mean of transportation. The next problem is that it is impossible for my in-laws and my wife to find the right location. I don’t know if it is normal in China but it happens all the time with them. They roughly know where to go and it pretty much stops there already. Going around buildings and asking people where to go for at least one hour is nothing special. Now you can see why for this photoshoot Nathan was nearly two hours late resulting that a long waiting time was needed as the photo appointments of other children which were supposed to be after Nathan were suddenly before him (thank you MIL).

This second place was the exact opposite of the first company. Everything was clean, only few things were broken and the staff was pretty good in cheering up the kids to make them smile. Furthermore they did not push with one child through the whole session but gave after 5-10 min the kids (and the family) some rest and took pictures with another child. Though Nathan was still very great in avoiding in front of the camera what he was supposed to do the photographer adapted always quickly to the new situations and was able to take many great pictures in the end. Also the whole family left less exhausted and annoyed than after the first photoshoot as everything (except the arrival) went very smooth.