As I write this, I’m sipping on my first glass of wine for a week. Not because I haven’t wanted wine for a week, just because firstly I would have barfed it up, and then there was no decent wine to be found. But our intrepid friend Norma (who is the traveling buddy to Catherine – single mom and Russ’s friend from work (weird) who is also here adopting her daughter Hannah) found me a bottle of Australian Chardonnay in the midst of a Chinese supermarket. She is a good woman. But I digress. Here’s the story(s) du jour…
So aside from the interlude on what we know about Beckett, when last we met, fair reader, I was recovering from a nasty bout of tummy yuck, Beckett was recovering from some sort of weird rash and Russ was just, well, Russ. Up to this point, his greatest challenge had seemingly been the sinking in of the baby reality. “She’s such a…a BABY” he kept repeating. “I mean, its not like I didn’t think she’d be a baby, but she’s SUCH a baby.” I think he may have been in shock. But other than that, he was largely unscathed.
Yeah. Until Friday afternoon, almost 24 hours to the minute after my stomach had begun to rumble, we were out at Martyr Park, enjoying the sites and sounds and he very quietly asked “Ummm, how exactly did your stomach thing start” and then he burped. “With a burp” I replied, trying to remain calm. Russ may be the Zen Buddha and all, but he doesn’t have the constitution to match. “Hmmm’ he replied. “I think I might….”. Those were pretty much the last intelligible words I heard out of him. (And we were due to fly out of Changsha to Beijing the next morning).
We rushed Russ back to the hotel and I took Beckett and headed for the hills for the afternoon, terrified that she too would befall the barf bug. We hung out down the hall in Norma and Catherine’s room where Beckett proved that every day she was literally blossoming. The once implacable kid was now laughing up a storm and playing dumb games with me. She also was going from floppy to almost sturdy and was killing herself laughing as she pulled herself into a sitting position and then let herself fall back onto the pillow with a solid ‘plop’.
When I returned, Russ was huddled under the covers in a major state. “How may barfs did you do?” he asked. “Five good ones” I replied. “Two to go” he moaned. And so he barfed, and slept, while I packed up the room and organized us for travel the following day. By 8am, he was barely out of the woods and feeling like he’d been hit by a garbage truck. I was trying to keep it all together, Beckett under one arm, shelpping suitcases with the other, and Russ trailing behind half stoned on Gravol.
Somehow, the travel gods were smiling down upon us and the usually treacherous Air China was running smoothly that day. We got on the plane, Russ collapsed into his seat and tried to sleep and I played with the Beckster who seemed totally unperturbed by the whole flying in a giant tin can thing. (This hopefully bodes well for the 16 hour flight home but you never know). She had a few melt down moments but I dealt pretty well, all things considered. But by the time we were on the bus from the Beiing airport to the hotel (about 1.5 hours in traffic), I could feel my last nerve being stretched to breaking. (Let’s face it, I’m amazed that I hadn’t had my own melt down by this point. I was exhausted, barely recovered from my own bug and now taking care of not one, but two babies. Oy.)
When we finally got into our room, Beckett was tucked into one bed and Russ in the other, I finally let myself cry…just a little. And then I unpacked, washed bottles and collapsed into bed. It was 8:30pm. And we had to get up the next morning for our trip to the Great Wall of China. But that’s for another post…
My revelations from the above experience are that a) I’m SO glad I’m not a single parent anymore. It’s way too hard b) I miss Russ when he’s not with me – even in spirit c) my kid’s pretty easy to deal with and d) I am SO all over it when I am needed. I like that about myself. It makes me feel like a pioneer. And I like that I can take care of my family. It makes me happy.
Here’s some pix of us our playing at Martyr Park (such a quaint name for the People’s park – no?) and of the subsequent travel experience.
More soon!
PS: Fear not – Russ has since recovered and ate his first solid meal today.
