The stickers have managed to survive. They’re all over the couch and the coffee table, some times they “star” for a day or two on tv, and doing a “sticker check” of my daily outfits has become a habit. Thankfully, though, Nico has also managed to get past the initial sticker addiction in which he was whining every half hour for another sticker hit. Consider it all a sticker truce.

This is perhaps part of why when Nico bounded up to the door proudly waving around one of his sand toys that cradled the corpse of a dead goldfish, I may have shrieked and jumped a little more than necessary. Well, that and we don’t even have a goldfish.

Or rather, we didn’t have a goldfish until we left the house this morning.

One of the troubles with living as a foreigner in China is people like to give your child things. Especially if your child is Nico. This has become a particular headache in the past two weeks when I began the “culling” phase of our move and Nico proceeded onto the “let’s collect goldfish” phase.

The first two fish Nico acquired were from one of the compound fountains. Apparently, it had to be cleaned out and Nico being cute and charming and in adoration of all things “fish” managed to weasle the apartment managers out of a pair of goldfish. I dealt with the situation by convincing him the goldfish would be happier in a different fountain.

The second pair of fish were a gift from Ayi and her husband when they  greeted Nico with what I like to call a “fish death ball” as we dropped him off for an overnight at their place. Basically, this contraption is a little ball on a key ring that some enterprising person fills with water, gravel, and fish. These are then given to children who run around with them as children will, shaking them all up until I presume the fish die. Nico’s guppies survived the night and so I rewarded them with a transfer into a proper fish bowl for the time being.

Today, however, somehow brought yet another pair of goldfish. I’m not too sure how Nico acquired them as I was busy being horrified by the story of how he had killed the dead one (the second one remains alive for the time being and is hanging out with the guppies). Apparently the fish-killer reached into the bowl and squeezed it to death. Ayi related this story to me with the same mildly giddy excitement that she tells me about all of Nico’s morning escapades, leading me to believe that she didn’t find the goldfish corpse nearly as traumatizing as I did. Indeed as far as I can tell, after Nico killed the fish, she proceeded to fish it out of the bowl and placed it in the sand toy which Nico was gleefully carting around when he greeted me at the door at noon.

As the last murder Nico committed involved impaling a fly on the edge of a coin, I wasn’t sure what to do with the remains of the present kill. Both Gaudi and 狐猴 the cat were tossing carnal glances at the body, but I just couldn’t handle the prospect of little golden fish guts around the apartment. So I opted for the preferred fish burial of my youth.

“Come, Nico. We need to bury the fish,” I said as I picked up the body and walked off to the bathroom, Nico trailing along, insistently pointing back at the fish bowl where presumably he thought the fish would begin swimming once again if I just dropped it in.

“No, no, Nico. The fish is dead. We need to let it go.” And let it go I did. As its body glided down the toilet, Nico finally realized the seriousness of the situation.

You see, things that go down the toilet never come back up.

Three hours later, the boy was still tearfully pointing at the bathroom calling out, “Fish! Fish!”

And if I never get him potty-trained, this will be why.

“Have you uploaded the puppy pictures yet?”

You see, life was not challenging enough. I’m on a forced vacation for an indefinite period of time because the fate of the English language tv show I host is in limbo. Actually, this is sort of convenient, since it means I’m presently unemployed which in turn means I don’t need proof of employment and also have loads of time to track down Chinese police clearances and make sure the cat’s up to date on his vaccines. It also means even after tracking down those police clearances, running the cat to the vet, and tackling the usual grocery shopping, I have still been able to get home early every day this week to take Nico outside so Ayi could do some extra special things like wash our huge windows with a toothbrush. What’s more, all this free time–when I’m not double and triple checking lists of documents I didn’t even really know existed once upon a time or organizing said documents so that they’re easily retrievable at a moment’s notice or rearranging the piles of things Ayi’s not supposed to touch so that we don’t look like complete slobby packrats–allows me the leisure to run our new golden retriever puppy, Gaudi, outside every fifteen minutes just in case she has to go.

Because nothing says “upright, responsible parents” like buying a two month old puppy a week before your adoption homestudy…

…And if I ever get a free moment, you won’t believe how cute these puppy pictures are…

What drove the matter home for us ultimately was a period of two weeks wherein our usual system for getting Nico settled down during middle-of-the-night wake ups broke down (we suspected he would sleep better if someone was able to lay down next to him for a few minutes until he calmed down). Plus we now had a local Ikea at which we’d been very, very good about not spending money. Thus 14 month old Nico has been awarded with his very own “big boy” bed.

The bed itself is a toddler mattress tossed on the tatami platform in Nico’s room. Christian blocked off most of the platform with a board so Nico can’t accidentally roll off the platform while asleep or groggy (normally Nico has amazing spatial awareness, especially when it concerns steps and drop offs) then he built a step at the far end of the platform so that Nico could easily get down (the platform is just a tad too high for the little guy). Since Nico like to move around and wedge himself into corners during the night, we’ve padded the walls with stuffed animals.

In general, Nico is sleeping much better in his new bed than he ever did in his crib (or during the first few months when he co-slept with us). I think a lot of it has to do with the new mattress being considerably more comfortable than the pitiful excuse that was the pad that belonged to the crib. Having more freedom may play into it, too, though. For naps, his bedroom door stays shut, but during the night, we leave all doors open, so that the little monster can come padding into our room in the morning.

In the past week, Christian has only threatened to go back to using the crib twice (during a 6:00am and 6:30am wake up respectively), so I’m think the new bed is a general success.

Considering that Christian and I are presently sitting on opposite ends of the couch, fiddling away on separate computers rather than interact with each other, it does make one wonder how on earth we’ve managed to raise such a social butterfly.

Christian: Uhh… What is he doing?

(Nico is performing a series of squats while perched next to TK on the couch. He usually goes down for a couple of seconds, looks around mischievously then pops suddenly up.)

TK: I don’t know…

(Nico squats down.)

TK: Nico? Nico, where are you?

(Nico pops up and laughs maniacally before squatting down again.)

TK: Nico? Where is Nico?

(Wash. Rinse. Repeat.)

Christian: You’re joking, right? He’s hiding?!

• We went to America. Saw Seattle and Bellingham in Washington, Portland and Corvallis in Oregon, Victoria in British Columbia (okay, so that’s Canada and not America), Denver (and surrounding cities) in Colorado, and Norfolk, VA. Nico fulfilled Christian’s goal for him to make it to ten countries before his first birthday.
• Nico started walking. This occurred the day after we arrived in America, at my mom’s house. My mom missed it as she was ordering Chinese food. At first Nico was pretty set on not repeating the performance, but over the past month, he’s gotten more and more comfortable and now lurches about like a drunken sailor.
• I turned 27. As was the case last year and the year before, I was sick for it. We did, however, eat some awesome Ethiopian food.
• My tv career began as my first episode aired. So far as I can tell, only Chinese people have seen it. Comments have run along the lines of, “You were drinking tea!”
• Negotiations have resumed over Nico’s lack of a sibling and rectifying that situation.
• Nico turned one with a giant birthday party, loads of presents, and three cakes.
• We became the proud owners of an espresso machine.

We packed together the usual entourage–Christian to drive, me to be obnoxious, an innocent and unsuspecting Chinese friend to translate, and of course Nico to be sick–and high-tailed it down to the premiere children’s hospital in the city, conveniently named Dalian Children’s Hospital. Once there, we performed the usual circus stunts of paying a registration fee before immediately entering utter shock at the number of people in line before us. Then came my persistent attempts to pull the “foreigner card” by goading our poor Chinese friend into harassing the nursing staff for ideas of how we might be able to cut the line. Finally, the nurses suggest we go ahead and show Nico to the doctor so that she could decide if his condition was serious enough to deal with him immediately. Surprisingly enough, the doctor had absolutely spectacular English, was not the least bit judgmental, and was perfectly at home with our foreign eccentricities.

Blood tests and an x-ray were ordered. As is usual in China, we had to cart our sick child over to the cashier to foot the bill before any of these things could be performed. An hour of blood work and x-rays followed after which we were back to the doctor for a diagnosis before our queue number had even been reached. The results: bronchitis caused by a bacterial infection (instead of the usual viral kind). Our options for treatment included three kinds of antibiotics: a shot, an IV, or by mouth. I was all gung-ho for a shot as Nico had been throwing up all morning, and despite the local popularity of IVs, I still have my reservations. Upon returning from a penicillin allergy test, though, Christian uttered the word “IV” instead of “shot,” and suddenly we were signed up for another kind of torture: trying to distract a baby from the needle poking out of his forehead.

Total elapsed time for the whole hospital adventure: 5 hours.

Nico’s now looking much better, though, and we officially have a pediatrician (who’s willing to make appointments with us so we don’t have to go through the entire fiasco again).