Tag Archives: WMAF

This and that

November 5, 2017 CrazyChineseFamily 27 Comments

Once again more than two weeks have passed since my last blog post. No I did not lose motivation when it comes to blogging nor do I have a writer’s block. It is just that way too much is happening in our everyday life that I find only very limited time to invest into my blog/ following other blogs on a regular basis. In my last blog post I talked about our Life with two kids and how hard it can be to balance raising them and running a company besides trying to find some spare time in the end of the day.

Back then I did not imagine that things could get much harder for us but I was so wrong. Just two days after that article was published I got a call from the local tax office that they want to check out our company tax paper. Even though we always did all of the tax work properly we had to double-check everything. I think I might have nightmares about those two weeks of double checking for the rest of my life. We finished with everything at 4.30 am last thursday and the person from the tax office came at 9am! For the last few days I have been trying to just recover from this madness as there was nothing else each day than working, taking care of the kids and going through the tax papers till very late night. Now that this is mostly taken care of (still one small visit next week but nothing we can prepare anymore) I can finally start doing other things in life again such as going to do some sports in the morning before work, reading and thinking about my blog again.

So what has happened to us in the past months besides tax office madness, too much work and being all the time ill due to Nathan bringing all possible diseases from kindergarten? Not too much as that is already enough but we also won’t be able to go to Poland this year even though we still had plans for that this summer. Reason for this is a surgery my father had recently and he needs to recover from it so the trip will hopefully happen next spring or latest next autumn. Apparently we are also buying an apartment in Xi’an but that is not 100% certain as of now. No we won’t be buying it for living there ourselves but it will be for my in-laws. There is this new apartment block and it is on the property of the old factory the whole family used to work. Because of this (I actually don’t understand why) they get some discount on the price so the apartments are roughly 25% cheaper for them. In fact the whole crazy family is getting apartments there so they can live together.

I am myself not convinced about that area as it is first of all more in the outskirts of Xi’an and then there is also nothing really close by. No supermarkets or anything so my in-laws would need to take bus everywhere compared to their current prime location right in the historical old town of Xi’an where everything is just a short walking distance away. Another problem is that they renovated their current apartment few years ago entirely so in case they want to rent it out it will be trashed within short time. Personally I just hope they decide to stay in their old apartment. Not only because I have zero interest in living in that new area when visiting them and needing to go everywhere by bus but also because it would be probably better for them to stay there. I mean they are also not the youngest people around any longer and then moving from a place they have lived for over 25 years to another area where nothing is close by and they don’t know any of the neighbours?

What is your opinion about my in-laws moving to a new apartment?

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. Furthermore there is also my Instagram account in which from time to time some pictures and short videos might pop up.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.instagram.com/Crazychinesefamily

Crazy Family, Our cute daughter, Our cute son

Life with two kids

October 15, 2017 CrazyChineseFamily 28 Comments

It has been now nearly five months since little Nathalie joined our family. Our everyday life changed a lot ever since then when it comes to organizing daily tasks. We knew from the beginning that life would certainly not get any easier with a second child and many friends even “warned us”. The thing is that each child is different and needs a different approach when growing up. In our case Nathalie proved to be the exact opposite of our first-born Nathan.

When Nathan was born we still lived in Finland in our tiny 40 sqm apartment (~430ft²). Our neighbours were surprised how quiet Nathan was as they never heard him cry. Sure he was crying sometimes but that was very rare. Friends of us with children were always wondering how calm Nathan was and how easy it seemed to take care of him. I am not saying that everything was golden with him but we were blessed with a pretty easy-going child. Later we moved to Germany and even had my parents to help taking care of him. First because I was working and my wife was going to a six month integration course and later because we both started our own business so my parents where taking care of Nathan in between.

We always wanted two children and in the case of my wife she always wanted a boy and a girl. Even though we were very busy starting our own business we decided to have a second child. The timing seemed perfect for us as Nathan would be by the time Nathalie is born over three years old and starting kindergarten, giving us more time to raise the baby girl. Though the timing was indeed perfect everything developed a bit different than hoped for. First of all Nathan started kindergarten half-year later than planned as the city had messed up some paperwork in between for his registration. Then our business suddenly developed a bit too well and gave us (especially my wife) extreme work load which had to be dealt with until Nathalie was born. In fact my wife worked until a few hours before Nathalie’s birth and starting again three days later to finish some leftover orders.

Having help from the family is always wonderful (even with MIL)

Now I come again to the beginning when I mentioned that every child is different when growing up and needs a different approach. For us Nathalie was so very unlike her brother. Sure she looked very similar to him when born, to be precise she was more like copy paste of Nathan except of having more hair. Her temperament however was very different. By now she is going by the names “Demon”, “Gewitterziege” (German for “Thunderstorm Goat” and according to dict.cc means sour old hag…) and “Devil”. These are certainly not the nicest names to give to a baby but they are kind of accurate. Little Nathalie pretty much controls the family, not only us but also her grandparents. This all took time to get used to, especially when trying to combine taking care of her and starting work again.

Now five months after her birth we developed a more or less working daily schedule. Despite the many hardships when trying to balance raising two kids and running your own business we do not regret anything. We love our two kids, no matter what trouble our demon girl brings because in the end she brings us more happiness each day than exhausting crying time. We also love to have our own business as it allows us to work from home and gives us much more time with our kids. The downside of being your own boss are the unregulated working hours, no paid holidays, no maternity allowance (my wife still got 80% of her income when Nathan was born in Finland) and higher health insurance costs.

My parents who have helped us so much since we moved to Germany

Life with two kids is very different to having just one child. It is nothing like “Oh I know by now how to take care of a baby and raising a kid, so it will be very easy”. My cousin who has four children told me once “Having one child is very easy but when the second one comes the real challenge starts, it is a huge difference. After that it is not such a big difference anymore when you have a third or even a fourth child”. I did not really believe her back then but now I agree at least with the part about the challenges when having a second child. I am also really thankful to my parents as they are tremendous help for us as they live so close by. Without them everything would have been much harder and I believe we would have never managed it without them past the initial stage when starting our business as they helped to take care of Nathan.

What is your take on having one child compared to have two (or even more!)?

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.instagram.com/Crazychinesefamily

Crazy Family, Our cute daughter, Our cute son

Our Daughter’s Baptism

October 1, 2017 CrazyChineseFamily 19 Comments

Today our little girl was baptized in the very same church as her brother back in 2014. It is also the same church were I was baptized all those year ago in 1987. As I have written in the article “Our Son’s Baptism” the church is called the Finnish Seamen’s Church and was founded 1966 in Hamburg. We decided to have Nathalie’s baptism in the same church as it just seems to be already a tradition in our family by now.

Unlike at our son’s baptism the church was rather empty this time as we were to only people there. The only guests besides my parents were my brother and his girlfriend. Back in 2014 another family had their child’s baptism and they were a big big family. This time it was for us much more relaxed and obviously much shorter. Only when it came to the singing part is sounded a bit weak as all of us are suffering under the common cold thanks to Nathan who brings back home all kind of craziness from kindergarten.

We expected the worst behaviour of our daughter as she just loves to complain and cry whenever she gets bored with something. However we were blessed with a little angel for this day as she smiled during the whole ceremony and was watching the reverend with big eyes when she was playing the piano and singing. Apparently our little Nathalie loves church songs as she never cared at all about my or my wife’s music! After the ceremony we had just like three years ago some bread, coffee, Karelian Pirogs and Pulla. Nothing fancy but enough for us and in Finland everything is usually pretty low-key.

Nathalie not being sceptical about her Uncle (see Nathan’s Baptism Article)

So what is now the complete name of our daughter? Her official name is Nathalie 逸诗 (Yishi) Amalia. The first name here again is something English and German speakers shouldn’t have any problems with, the second name is obviously her Chinese name and the third one is her Finnish name which we took from her great-grandmother from my mother’s side. In comparison our son’s full name is Nathan 逸然(Yiran) Antti. You can see they are very similar and Antti was actually the name of my mother’s Uncle.