Baby Avery Photos and Videos!

Baby Avery Kaye Amundson was born April 9th at 6:33 am. She weighs 7 lb. 15 oz. and is 20.5 inches long. Mom and Baby are doing great (and dad and big sister, too)

Here's the whole story:
Wow! This is a lot harder when you're not in the hospital when your water breaks! Jill woke up with a start at 4:00 am on April 9th. I thought she was having a nightmare and tried to calm her down. She told me her water had just broke which caused us to jump out of bed. Once the lights came on we noticed the water was quite bloody - which caused quite a bit if concern... We got into the hospital as fast a Sharron could get here to stay with Keaton - she only ran 2 red lights :-) .

Once we got into Maternity triage, we were very comforted to here a strong heartbeat on the monitor. We got into surgery relatively quickly - Water broke at 4:00, in the hospital by 5:00 and into the or by 6:00. During the C-Section, they found the source of the bleeding - a slight placenta abrubtion. Thankfully, it was not too serious - but plenty scary. Baby Amundson (she wasn't named Avery yet) spent her 1st hour or so in the special care nursery, due to the amount of blood she gulped during the delivery. Avery stabilized right around the same time Jill was coming out of the OR into recovery, and was discharged from special care to go meet mom in the recovery room.

Everything from there on out has been pretty calm and routine (thankfully) except big sister Keaton choosing Friday morning (3:00 am) to throw-up for the 1st time...

Pictures (updated 4-11-08):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnamundson/sets/72157604459877646/

Here are a couple videos (updated 4-11-08):
Birth Montage:


Dr Appointment:


1st Bath:


Meet the sister:

From Tianjin to Beijing

The trip back to Beijing from TEDA was an interesting one. Our 1st clue that it was going to be an eventful journey was when we were cruising down the 3-lane expressway towards the toll gate and noticed a car coming at us in the left lane. Then a line of trucks stopped in the right lane, and finally a steady stream of traffic coming at us in the left lane. It turns out the freeway was closed for vehicles from Tianjin going into Beijing due to the upcoming political meetings due to occur the following week. The China People's Congress was due to hold meetings to select new political leaders as part of the 2008 Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (interestingly, that topic was deleted from Wikipedia). Our driver had not filed the correct paperwork - or even known that he was supposed to. At the next attempted expressway to Beijing, we were directed to a third route - and told we wouldn't be able to get any further than 6th ring road (our hotel was inside 3rd ring road). The alternate alternate route took us on the back roads into Beijing - which were also under construction. Other unexpected sights on the back roads included whole flocks of sheep crossing the road in front of us. At one point, we crossed a river on a bridge made of 4" pine logs! On the back roads, we were required to go through 2 security check points, but were able to drive into Beijing all the way to our hotel. The 2 hour trip took 4.5 hours, but was worth the experience!

Tianjin City - Sunday

Sunday was not quite as jam packed as Saturday. But as per usual in China - was full of delightful surprises. After riding the light rail into Tianjin city, we were picked up by a colleague in his new Citroen (1 week old) and taken to the Tianjn Radio and Television Tower (or Tianta). Tianta is a 415 meter space needle like tower with three observation areas - an enclosed lower level, a Chinese space themed revolving bar level, and the outdoor viewing deck. The most unexpected aspect of Tianta was the group of 6 guys playing hockey on the frozen lake surrounding the tower. The space themed revolving bar was Chinese kitsch at its best. The outdoor viewing deck had a glass bottomed viewing outcropping that I could not bring myself to step out on - but the entire Zenium team had a portrait taken out there!

After Tianta, we went off the agenda and toured the Tianjin Museum. The Tianjin museum is a beautiful modern building housing some ancient Chinese treasures (600 year old scrolls - relativly new for Chinese history) as well as an in depth exhibit on the history of Tianjin.

Following up our Museum tour, we took a late lunch at a very fancy Shanghai style The restaurant was housed in arestaurant. western style building constructed in the late 1800's. It was in a district full of Western style architecture (Tianjin is known for its many architectural styles). Of all the Chinese meals we have enjoyed on this trip, this one was the one where the food seemed less like a dare - it was the most like American Chinese food.

After our lunch, we took in Ancient Culture Street - an area dedicated to selling traditional Chinese souvenir's. Even though the area was fairly touristy, a couple of Westerners walking around still drew a large amount of stares. I was even invited to sit down in one of the shops we were shopping in - "Sit down, you big giant" the 4 foot 2 inch shop keeper instructed me with a smile.

Check out all the photos in the usual spot!

Saturday In Tinajin City

Wow - we did so much on our Saturday tour, it is difficult to remember it all:

1. Visited an active Buddhist temple
2. Toured a typical supermarket (like Chinese Target)
3. Visited a Bazaar (like a flea market)
4. Took a quick tour of Tianjin University
   
5. Enjoyed lunch at a Spicy food restaurant (Sichuan style)
6. Went to a Mall (5 stories of tiny shops)
7. Got to visit a co-worker's house (very cool)
8. Visited a typical Chinese produce market (like the farmer's market, only indoors)
9. Rode the Tianjin subway
10. Enjoyed a nice dinner at a Guangdong (Canton) style restaurant
11. Took in a lantern show at a Tianjin amusement park

The Buddhist temple was very nice. The most interesting fact is that most of the monks at the temple were female.
Much like the flea market, once you've seen about 10 booths, you've seen about 90% that the bazaar had to offer. Some of the best stuff was the bad translation of western words, and the brands that weren't actually western brands. Anyone ever heard of Jack Wolfskin?

At the spicy food restaurant I was able to cross a couple of things off the list of exotic foods I hadn't tried yet - such as sea cucumber (tasty), frog (CocaCola Chestnut Frog) (tasty despite containing bones), All kinds of beef parts (Lung, Stomach), and a fish stew with the whole fish carcas in it (also some spices that looked like black pepper but tasted like Novocaine - after I bit into one, I had to have Steve try one too)

I very much enjoyed the opportunity to visit Kevin's house in Crystal city (the sight of a former glass plant) and see how our co-workers over here live. I also enjoyed meeting his wife, baby son (7 months old), and in-laws.

The best part of the Guangdong restaurant was the dumplings that were hot and contained soap. We were supposed to let out some of the soap so we could eat them - Steve and I both were slightly confused about the soap in our food, but we drained some out and ate the dumplings. The confusion carried over to the next day when at a very fancy Shanghai style restaurant we got very big dumpling which came with a straw and again the warning that there was hot soap in the dumpling and to use the straw. Steve proceeded to the horror of our hosts to poke holes in his dumpling to let the soap out. You may have guessed by now we had soap confused with soup...

We wrapped up the evening with the visit to the "Light Show" in the park. Steve and I were both expecting some sort of laser light show similar to a Pink Floyd concert - and were pleasantly surprised to attend a lantern show - with scenes from Chinese fairy tales and stories represented in large internally lit fabric. Also - the Beijing 2008 Olympic mascots had a fair representation.
My favorite olympic mascot is "The Pistol Packing Panda". All the photos are available at the usual spot.

Chinese Food

Food has been mostly excellent – it is typically better not to ask what it is. Some of the more exotic things:

1. Sheep’s Stomach in a Spicy red pepper sauce (Very popular in Beijing)
2. Jelly fish with slivered cucumbers in a vinegar sauce
3. Donkey cold cuts with brown garlic sauce (actually quite good and flavorful) It has spawned the saying “That tastes like Donkey”
4. spicy peanuts with what looked like dried minnows
5. Squid (more chewy) and octopus (very tender and delicious)
6. Wild Rabbit – The meat tasted very good, but I didn’t prefer all of the bones. You typically pop a whole piece of meat into your mouth, chew it up then spit out the bones
7. Century Egg - cured egg - essentially controlled spoilage.

Some of the things we’ve seen, but not ordered (yet)

1. Frog
2. Turtle
3. Sea Cucumber
4. Fish Head (really big fish head with not much meat visible)
5. chicken with the head still on
6. Duck Tongue
   

Some standard things we’ve had that are really good:

1. Peking duck
2. whole crab – you kind of tear them apart with your hands and use the chopsticks to get the meat out
3. Shrimp/Prawns in red slightly hot sauce
4. whole fish – cooked whole with the skin – you kind of pull some meat off with your chopsticks
5. All kinds of mushrooms

We typically don't go to Chinese restaurants without a "Host" - as the ordering process is overwhelming. There seems to be a lot of negotiations that occur, all in Chinese. The typical ordering cycle takes 15-30 minutes.

We've also taken in some western (and south American) restaurants. The Wei Hai pub served very good fish and chips and currywurst with fries. I've had two chicken chimichangas at the Island bar that were outstanding. We ate at Pizza Hut in Beijing - the "American Special" plane pepperoni pizza tasted quite similar to a Pizza Hut pizza at home (not that that is a good thing :-) The Churrascaria we we ate at last night was mostly like a South American steak house back home - except the meat was served Chinese style - as soon as we sat down with our salads, they began piling all the different kinds of meat on our plate all at once. No red card/green card to control the flow of meat.

Globalization

Tonight in Tianjin, China we took a new Volkswagen Jetta taxi cab to the Holiday Inn to have dinner at a Brazilian steak house (Salsa Churrasco) and stopped at an Irish pub on our way back to the hotel. The Holiday Inn also has a Japanese Sushi and sake bar...

Chinese Lantern Festival

Today was the last day of the 15 day Chinese New Year Celebration. The fireworks started around 4:30 and just kept on going. It has been like a continuous 4th of July celebration for more than 6 hours.


The last day of Chinese New Year is also called Lantern Festival - so the Chinese Lanterns are everywhere. This is traditionally a time to spend with family, so a number of our single team members took us out to dinner tonight. We went to seafood restaurant, where you get to pick your fish from the live tanks. We had some very good scalops served on the half shell, as well as whole crabs. The most interesting thing at dinner tonight was the mutton stomach in chili oil. We also had some peanuts with dried small fish (they looked like minnows) and same very good octopus in black pepper sauce. Of course we had plenty of Chinese white wine - or as it is also known Chinese Gasoline...104 proof rice liquor!
The traditional food to eat on Lantern Day is sweet rice dumplings or rice balls. The team picked some up for us and the restaurant prepared them. They were quite tasty, like a pot sticker, only stuffed with chocolate. The dumplings are supposed to resemble lanterns and represent gathering around with friends and family.


It is hard to believe all of the spent fireworks. The paper is 1 foot deep in some locations. I'm glad we were able to experience some of the holiday here in Tianjin! Gotta call home and then get to bed now.