I prodded Nico gently, only to be met with the irritated screams of an overly tired preschooler and the mumbled insistence that his legs no longer worked. This was the nightmare I’d been dreading. The one I’d half known was inevitably but had still hoped wouldn’t come to pass. After seventeen hours of traveling how could I expect Nico to be in any state other that completely worn out.

Yet I was lucky that this was the first truly horrible moment of our trip–wait scratch that; perhaps it wasn’t. Getting through emigration in Munich had been pretty horrendous as well. After helping us through check-in and holding our place in the security line while I fed Serafina, Christian sped off to make a massage appointment rather than see us off at the passport-check counter. Nico, who was well-prepared to bravely bid his father farewell, freaked upon realizing that Daddy would be taking his jacket with him. A parent he could do without, but his jacket? That would not stand. That was an injustice crueler than any one might be expected to suffer. And Nico decided he would let the entire airport know this for the next twenty minutes as we inched ever so slowly closer to the front of the line.

It didn’t help that Nico also decided that every stranger who try to cheer him up with a smile or a joke was the epitome of evil or worse yet some how partially responsible in the theft of his jacket. No, that didn’t help one bit.

Upon finally arriving at the counter, I deposited our heap of passports and my residence card before the immigration officer, explaining which ones we were using for our travels (and thus matched our tickets), and which ones were for informational purposes (as dual citizens, the kids don’t possess residence cards, and Nico was traveling on his US passport as we didn’t have the Austrian one before the plane tickets had been purchased). The officer cheerfully accepted everything, commenting upon how well-prepared I was, and then paused a moment before adding, “And where’s the father?”

And that’s when Serafina started screaming.

Now burdened with two screaming kids, I tried explaining that the father had just dropped us off and then left, but that I could call him. The officer agreed that this would be a good idea and further explained that I’m technically not allowed to take my own children out of the European Union without the permission of their father. And so I dug through my bag for my phone while bouncing the shrieking baby and shushing the shrieking toddler, and part of me really didn’t blame the guy for suggesting that I might be kidnapping my own children because really, did I ever want to set foot in the EU ever again at that moment? Would anyone?

Phone found and husband dialed, a swiftly worded conversation took place between Christian and the officer. I only caught the points where Christian was being asked to verify his children’s birthdays, and really I’m probably lucky Christian got that right. On normal days, he suffers from the delusion that Serafina was born in November when she’s actually an October baby. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d slipped up in that moment, but fortunately for the sake of my sanity, he didn’t. Satisfied, the officer hung up, stamped our passports, returned the pile, apologized for the inconvenience while eyeing the screaming children and wished us a safe trip. And then it was on to the security check.

Serafina didn’t stop crying until the gate and Nico stopped a couple minutes later when he found a German boy to play with. The boy’s parents offered to carry our luggage onto the plane, and just like that our luck began to turn.

Nico flies pretty well, but he’s never been one of those perfect children you sometimes see who do everything their parents ask, sit quietly, eat all their food, and kid around politely with the flight attendants. On our Munich-Dubai flight, though, he pulled it all out and then some. Who knew that a boy in possession of my genes, who’d just an hour before had been lamenting the loss of his jacket with such passion you’d have thought someone had died, could turn into the angel of the airplane so quickly? Serafina, meanwhile, didn’t conk out when the plane took off as I’d hoped, but she did lie quietly in her bassinet, offering cherubic smiles to any and all passersby and generally acted as charming as a squishy little baby can.

By the time our plane landed six hours later in Dubai, I was glowing. For the first time ever, I was the woman with the perfect children. It turns out this is a high like no other.

In the middle of the night, Dubai airport is a bustling shopping mecca. We loitered in every store–after hunting in vain for a playground–until exhaustion finally took Nico and we made the most of one of the complimentary airport strollers.

There was a small tantrum from Nico when we had to give up our stroller to board our plane to Kuala Lumpur, but he was soon appeased by yet another bag of toys, compliments of the airline, and the promise of more TV. To the boy’s credit, he made it through two whole movies and the in-flight meal before finally succumbing to sleep again. Alas for me, this meant he was still in sleep-mode when the plane landed and my troubles resumed.

Up to this point, I’d been carrying Serafina, during our non-airborne segments, in a wrap, a sturdy, heavily hyped, pretty piece of extremely long cloth favored by “traditional” mothers and the middle class women who emulate them. I had had just enough foresight of the “sleeping Nico” scenario, however, to learn the basics of tying a larger child onto my back with the uber-scarf, but I’d not yet actually practiced it with Nico. Thus the incredulous looks of some of my fellow passengers were probably warranted as I clumsily wrapped and tied my groggy first born to my back before scooping up the wide-eyed Serafina. Thankfully at about this point a flight attendant did offer to carry some of our bags as far as the plane door.

We made it up the plank, into the airport and were just shy of the terminal doors when my poorly tied knot gave out and the kids and I ended up on the floor in a pile of cloth, Nico insisting once again that he couldn’t walk and Serafina beginning her characteristic pre-crying-fit whining. Disembarking passengers passed us by with looks of pity and someone offered to carry my bags, but what to do with the kids. I had not one, but two insisting on being carried. Left with little recourse, I tied Serafina as far to one side as possible, picked Nico up on the other, and slowly we made it far enough into the terminal to locate a luggage cart, which eased the situation until we had to give it up at immigration. I bribed Nico through the line with promises of another cart on the other side–some fawning over the kids by the female Malaysian immigration officer didn’t hurt either–and soon our future was beginning to look bright and sunny once again…until we had to locate a taxi.

If you are ever in Kuala Lumpur airport and you know you will be requiring the services of a taxi upon your exit, stop at the taxi booth in luggage claim, no matter how long the line. Figuring I needed to keep the kids moving as quickly as possible I bypassed the taxi booth and headed out through the baggage claim exit. Fortunately, I did meet an unnecessarily nice illegal taxi driver who, when I declared that I wanted a “real” taxi, pointed me toward the airport taxi pickup where the attendants pointed me in turn back to the airport to go hunt down another taxi booth where I could pay for my taxi ticket, as it appears taxis really don’t meter from the airport. If there were more taxi booths, I’d find this to be an ingenious idea for cracking down on visitors getting overcharged on taxis. However, with a cart full of luggage, two small children, and far too little sleep, having to walk back and forth across an airport in search of a place to pay for a piece of paper to entitle one to a way to escape the airport is more than just a nuisance. We were eventually successful, however, and found ourselves in a pleasantly air-conditioned car with a driver who spoke fine enough English to debate my Malaysia itinerary and interrogate me about the whereabouts of my husband.

I had booked our place in Kuala Lumpur, a small boutique hotel in the midst of the city’s Chinatown pedestrian market, based on online reviews, its proximity to street food, and what would likely be widespread use of Chinese, without even giving a thought to the issue of transportation. It turns out, though, that staying in a pedestrian area means taxis aren’t going to be able to get you to the door of your hotel, which in turn isn’t so much fun with pounds upon pounds of luggage and two kids in tow. It also turns out that staying in a small hotel means few drivers know exactly where it is, and thus may very well deposit you at the opposite end of the Chinatown Market from where you are actually staying, leaving you to shove through the cheery, teasing weekend masses, gleefully reaching out to twirl the curls of the more accessible child.

Everyone survived, though. The hotel was located, as was a busy, car-friendly street directly at the corner next to its entrance. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.

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.