We just celebrated the Lantern Festival at the end of last week. This is a time where families get together, go to the beach with lanterns (some with real candles & some light bulbs) and spend time together.  We got Peter an airplane lantern & I got a Hello Kitty one which he seemed to like more than his own!  The pictures didn't really turn out well of his lanterns but we did manage to get some with his glow ears on. He was so tired at this point, he didn't even try to take them off.

We also watched people bring lanterns that they had painted messages & pictures on to be lit and allowed to go a short distance in the sky.

These girls are waiting for it to heat up and then sending it into the sky.

When it goes very wrong....

You have a lantern in flames over the heads of onlookers.

It comes crashing down in a ball of flames to be put out by a nervous security guard with a fire extinguisher.

We took Peter on a drive up a mountain last week. He was grumpy the whole way. We think it may have something to do with the 5+ teeth that he has coming in at the same time! So, when we finally parked, we wanted to buy him a Popsicle to suck on. Sadly they only had ice cream drumsticks.

Oh the pure joy he had eating the drumstick....

The only problem is when you eat a cone tip first it gets a bit unstable.

The ice cream starts to fall out and it gets taken off you before it is dropped on the ground.

Oh the sad despair of a baby losing his ice cream!

We have been offline for a while with some blog issues but are back and trying to play catch up. In the past month, Peter has become very steady on his feet although not yet walking without holding on to something. Sometimes the things he does hold don’t actually provide any stability for him so we know he can do it!

Mr Serious...

We upgraded Peter to a forward facing big boy car seat as he was no longer fitting in the other one and desperately wanted to be in the sitting position. Here is a cute one of a recent car outing.

Peter with his many local girlfriends =)

We celebrated my birthday at the end of September. Tom made a great chocolate cake for me and we had a great breakfast at the beach with our friends. This is a tube of glue - he said I am the glue that holds things together. =)

Peter started to stand on his own today. That is stand without holding on to anyone or anything! He is VERY pleased with himself. We'll try to get a photo of him doing it soon.

Our wonderful little guy turned 13 months today! He continues to gain more skills and abilities that he is happily showing them each day. Some of his favourites are climbing over a triangle cushion repeatedly, waving "bye bye" and then tearing around a corner and waving his head back and forth crazily to say "no."

He is becoming more independent and has learned how to push things out of his way if he doesn't want them. He has also decided he doesn't want to be spoon fed and will only eat things he can pick up on his own.

Not quite walking yet but a speedy crawler and he can walk when holding on to something.

Here is a wonderful picture our friend Georgie took of Peter a few days ago.

As we have mentioned several times, Peter gets a lot of attention from the locals. They often are offering him food to which we have to say "no" too. We are often surprised at this in a place where people often wear masks being afraid of germs but seem to have no issue feeding a random foreign boy!  Must be different people.

In the past week we have stopped a woman feeding him ice cream and then yesterday a man gave him the coke he had just bought from a machine and said he wanted Peter to have it! Tom politely explained that Peter does not yet drink coke but thanked him for his gift.  It's got to be something to do with those blue eyes! =)

Parents & families often surround us when we go to the supermarket and want their children to shake his hand. Again another thing in a germ phobia world we don't understand! In the end, we carry they wipes to clean his hand after the wellwishers, hand shakers and head patters have moved on.

Peter has a great personality. He makes friends everywhere we go and has realised how to get attention by waving and chatting to people.  Here he is posing for the camera.

He loves playing and pulling things off of shelves. You can see the Petey tornado has hit here....

Working from home has become increasingly difficult as Peter is very interested in lap tops, remote controls, mobile phones and cables.  He will casually come up next to you and try to look at the screen. A few moments later, a tiny finger will slowly creep towards the computer as shown below.  He knows he shouldn't touch it but it is so tempting to him!

Peter now has 2 donkeys that he has in his cot. He loves them both and we often find him holding one in each arm or using one as a pillow and holding the other one. It is so cute! Here are a couple photos we captured last week of him.

I write this as Peter holds my phone to his ear and babbles away into it.

Peter has started to say a few words in the past few weeks. His first recognizable, consistent one is "Hello."  He generally only says it while holding something up to his ear like he is talking on the phone. We hear it pretty frequently coming from him.  This is probably due to the crowds of people that daily say hello to him both those he knows and those he doesn't. When we go out to the shops, we constantly hear "Hellooooo bebe" followed by the Cantonese phrase pronounced "Ho Dakeeee" which means "very cute."

Peter's second favourite thing to say is "hi dad." Again this is usually done while holding a phone or some object up to the ear. He loves his daddy very much and is sad when he has to go to work or even just leave the room.

He understands both hello and goodbye but chooses to wave goodbye rather than say anything.

In the past couple days he has started to say "yes."  This is pretty exciting that I guess he has heard "yes" more than "no" in his year of life.  Such a perfect child!

He is very good at pointing at an object of interest and making a darth vader breathing noise to indicate his interest. It is  funny to hear.

These are a bit late in putting up but we wanted to post some photos of Peter's birthday cake and his enjoyment in eating it. Tom & I spent about 6 hours making this cake for him. Why Eeyore? Somehow Peter has become a big fan of Eeyore/donkeys and sleeps with one in his cot and is generally happier with one around. We thought it fitting to make him a cake of the same.  We really enjoyed making it for him although we know he will only know it from looking at these photos one day. =0)

Petey Update

It has been a while since we've done a full update on the family. Over the last couple of weeks Petey has crawled, been to hospital, fallen in love with bananas and started to take his first semi-assisted steps.

Crawling

Petey has developed his own crawling style. It's a bit of a two limbed commando crawl. He reserves one arm and leg for pushing himself along on his tummy, one hand for carrying and the remaining leg is stuck straight up in the air!

Hospital

A couple of weeks ago Petey got very sick with a viral infection and eventually ended up in hospital. Sadly it turned into quite a traumatic experience for both Peter and parents, but he has since recovered and developed a...

Banana Obsession!

A couple of weeks ago we introduced Petey to a variety of fruit, including bananas. He is now up to eating three to five a day! We were even able to find special bananas called "Little Petey's"! (Read the bag carefully)

Walking

We gave Petey a walker for his first birthday, he has been busily doing laps of the lounge room. It is truly amazing how fast he had developed!

Busy Lives

Thought we'd give a few pictures of what we are up to most days of the week.

Christy manages the fair trade cafe on site. The Fair Trade movement has been set up throughout the world to ensure that every person along the supply chain is paid a fair wage for their products and work. Companies that meet the criteria for this have a little symbol on their products that say "fair trade certified." Our cafe aims to support this process through fair trade coffee, chocolate, sugars, juices & other items. Christy's main jobs are ordering all the supplies, training new staff and helping with any issues that arise. It is a great place for young mothers to meet and the babies love coming to play.

Here are a few photos of the cafe:

She also helps out in the accounts department doing a variety of behind the scenes paperwork & reconciliation. Most of this work can be done from home while Peter sleeps.

Tom spends his week looking after everything IT related on the site; the computers, phones and most importantly Facebook! Below is a photo of his lair, amazingly almost everything in here has been donated or bought as the result of a specific donation:

Our Server Room

One of the nice things that Tom gets to do is to make the old new. Most of our site was built in the 1960's and so it starting to show its' age. Recently we had a fire in one of our buildings which was caused by, of all things, a rat jumping into one of our main switchboards. Whilst tragic, it was a fantastic opportunity to take what was on the edge of collapse and make it suitable for many years of use to come.

Before	After (the walls are still a bit scorched)

Tom is also the manager of the computer department which is truly a fantastic job. He has two great interns working for him who run the day to day of the department.

The view down the computer department.	A shipment ready to go to Angola

So that is a quick overview of our lives in a few pictures; computers, children, rats and coffee!

9 years ago I (Christy) moved to Hong Kong with every intention of moving back to the US after 2 years. Obviously that hasn't happened and we don't have a plan to live the US (or Australia) in the foreseeable future.

It has been a great but challenging 9 years with wonderful things learned and achieved. I am so thankful I made the step to move here and to be involved in the work we are doing.

July was a busy month full of Peter learning new skills up to his 1st birthday.  In the past few weeks, he has fully learned to crawl, stand up, cruise around furniture, wave hello and bye bye, say hello, pretend to talk on the phone and a variety of other things.

We celebrated his 1st birthday yesterday with a special pancake treat at Mcdonalds and then a trip to our onsite cafe for a babyccino (little cup of milk foam).  We also had his baby friends over for a swim in his pool & a little cake.  We are having a bigger party on Monday with all of his older friends. I am planning on making a cake tomorrow for him.

We have been so thankful for our "family" here in HK that have taken such an important role in looking after him and being his adopted aunts, uncles and cousins.  The lead by great example and bring him great joy.

Peter Day #1

Peter Day #365 (1year)

Enjoying his pancake

and babyccino...

Enjoying my newest donkey from Grandma

We gave Peter this walker and he has been loving it walking back and forth across the room.

Peter enjoying a swim with his friends. It has been very hot here the past few days so was a perfect day for the pool.

Time for some birthday cake. Actually it is a bear shaped muffin with less sugar than cake. The babies loved it!

Our dear little (& big) friends. They all love playing together.

Our cute little family...

Leaving hospital:

On July 9, 4 years ago we got married in Sydney. Every year we are determined to celebrate and remind ourselves of the importance of marriage and committing to it. Time has flown. It has been a great 4 years!

Peter continues to amaze us as he grows and aquires new skills. A few days ago he started to properly crawl up on hands & knees. He can now pull himself to standing on pretty much anything. This means we have to watch him more closely as he can reach things higher than he used to.  Some of his favourite things this week have been:

1. Emptying a tissue box one piece at a time and then eating half a tissue before getting caught.
2. Figuring out that if you are handed a banana, you can squeeze it to make a good sound and a nice slimy mess all over yourself.
3. It is a lot of fun to make cheesey smiles to a captive adult audience.
4. Talking on the phone is  a lot of fun especially when it's daddy on the other end!
5. Swimming pools are also very fun on a hot day.

After some very rough nights of recovery after the visit to the hospital, Peter finally seems to be back to his normal happy self. He has regained the weight he lost and is not afraid of people anymore. He doesn't seem to have much stranger anxiety which makes it easier in a place where he is stared at and talked to a lot.

Peter has not said any defined words that we can recognise yet but he does well to communicate a variety of things. He makes one sound when he is trying to say hello to someone, one when he is hungry, not happy/hungry anymore and others.  Have been trying to teach him some baby signs but I don't think we are consistent enough for him to remember.

We are getting ready for his 1st birthday in just a few weeks. Time has gone so fast.  We are looking forward to celebrating with him.  We are so thankful for our healthy little boy and want him to have a good time.

Petey enjoying his new little pool. The little whale in front of him spouts water and swims around which is so much fun.

We have had some amazing, clear days here recently. Not sure why but we all take the chance to take photos when there is blue sky!

This is Lantau island which at times we cannot even see!

Fancy apartments & the shopping centre close to where we live.

Our normal walk to the dolphins.

With ever earlier mornings we have begun watching Madagascar... repeatedly. Over and over again we watch the adventures of these four animals. Luckily there is a sequel which does add variety. For those who have seen it you will know about the "sad little head" which Petey is demonstrating below. He has also taken to liking donkeys and he looks just like Eeyore.

Tom & I often take Peter on a walk to these big gold dolphins. He really enjoys walks and usually makes at least 1 friend along the way.

I love this photo of Peter.

The big dolphins....

Peter has 2 little friends here that he loves to spend time with. They all get excited to see eachother and play.

Here are Peter & Finlay sporting their mohawks.

Peter loves the shopping trolley at the supermarket. He is so happy to sit in it and chatters away to anyone who passes by, often waving at them as well. Our little market has an elevator in it (different I know) which he also loves going up and down in.

Here are Hannah and Peter enjoying their time together at the store.

We took Peter for a picnic on the beach. He loved touching the sand.  We often go on walks along here as he wakes up really early and wants to be on the move. This is just a few minute's walk from where we live.

Christy has continued to make cakes this year. Thought it was time to post a few more pictures of them. Each cake generally takes 5-6 hours to complete. They are fun to do although about half way through we wonder "why are we doing this again?" Tom is also involved in the process. Often doing the needed measurements and structural placement of the cakes as some require several layers to be stacked.

This is supposed to be a camera lens. We tried using melted chocolate to make the entire lens as well as the film strips around the outside. Learned a valuable lesson that in such a hot & humid climate it doesn't work very well. So in the end the lens was made out of foil:

This is a Tiramisu Gateaux made for a birthday celebration.

This is the most recent cake for our friend's baby shower. This was made from chocolate & yellow cakes cut down & stacked to make the right block shape. We coloured the fondant and cut out the shapes to let dry a day ahead. All edible.