It is very hard to believe, but our little baby girl is five months old today! I find it amazing to look back at all that has happened since March and to see how much she has grown. We had some very difficult months with her early on (mostly sleep related) and now sleep is the least of our worries most nights. Last night we put her in her crib awake at about 7:15 and she was asleep about 5 minutes later without a single tear. She woke up about 4:30am and nursed for 15 minutes and then went back down until 9am!! When she was only a few months old and was screaming all night long, I never would have imagined things being this easy at night! We have started to think about introducing solids (mostly just rice cereal) but are probably going to wait a few more weeks. The pediatrician told me that we could start anywhere between four and six months, but from what I read a breastfed baby doesn't really need to be started until six months. I have also started to think about how long I will breastfeed her for but for now am taking it a day at a time. We did try to introduce a bottle of formula a few weeks ago and she took it without a problem. Unfortunately she had a bad reaction to the formula and ended up getting very sick. So we will stick to breast milk for now!!
Nothing but mommy's milk for this little girl!We spent the past few days doing a lot of sightseeing and realized that our baby girl is a little star! He skin color and cute smile attracts a lot of attention and people are constantly trying to take her picture and touch her hands or feet. We quickly learned that people tend to go for her hands first (and not many people actually ask if they can touch her) so we find that we tend to keep her hands covered in our hands whenever we are in crowded areas (she is almost always strapped to me or Rich in the Baby Bjorn). Everywhere we go people stop and stare and giggle or talk to her. It is entertaining to see but I can see how this may become annoying very quickly.
Our little star!Colleen has been visiting the past few weeks which has been really great. Rich had a business trip to New York a few weeks ago so she arrived while he was away to keep Ang and I company. Rich and I were able to enjoy a very nice dinner out on Friday night and got all dressed up to go to Jade on 36 (on top of the Shangri-La hotel with an amazing view). 
All dressed up for a great night out!
All dressed up for a great night out!We were able to fit in quite a bit of sightseeing this weekend and have had so much fun exploring new areas of the city. Friday afternoon we went to the fake markets where you can find knock-off purses, watches, movies, etc. The market was not very busy so we attracted a lot of attention as foreigners (especially with the cute little baby that everybody wanted to check out). We took the subway there and back - it was my first time on the Shanghai metro system and I was impressed. It was very easy to navigate and was so much cleaner and quieter than the NYC subway I'm accustomed to! The market was interesting but was a little too overwhelming for me. You definitely need energy to deal with all of the sales people that are constantly trying to get you into their shops and patience to keep going back and forth on price.
We decided that Saturday would be our big tour day so we hired a driver and asked Rich's assistant to help map out a few nice places to stop. Although taxi's are very easy to use in Shanghai, they do not always have seat belts in the back seat so it is not an easy way to get around with a baby. There is no law requiring car seats in China (which I find amazing) and the locals are very lax about safety on the roads. On many occasions I have seen multiple people, children included, crammed onto an electric scooter with no helmets. We have decided that we do not have the need for a full time driver but have found a few drivers that we can hire by the hour if needed. All of them are very safe and speak enough English that we can get by. They all have vans and we are able to buckle the car seat in. On Saturday we picked out four spots to visit but only made it to three of them. We started out at Yu Yuan Garden which is an old market area where you can find all things Asian inspired (chopsticks, fans, clothing, etc). There are also more of the fake handbag and watch shops but not as many as the area we visited on Friday. There is a park area that you can pay an entrance fee to walk through. It started raining while we were there so we decided to skip the park (it was also very crowded). A few photo's from Yu Yuan:
Our next stop was Xin Tian Di which is a very popular area for ex-pats. There is one main walkway that runs through this area and there are bars, restaurants and a few shops along with a decent sized park. When walking through Xin Tian Di it feels more like you are in a European city than in China. We visited a few of the shops (high-end, non knock off and expensive) and had lunch at an outdoor cafe.
We were then on our way to Tai Kang Lu. This is the one area that I knew nothing about - one of Rich's co-workers had highly recommended it and I really had no idea what to expect. All I knew was that people described it as an "art street". This ended up being my favorite stop of the day. There are multiple alley's off of one main little street full of art galleries, clothing shops (and designers), and cafes. It was so much fun exploring the little alley ways and looking at the galleries full of photography and art. I think we will definitely spend a fair amount of time in this area while we are in Shanghai. By the time we finished walking around here we were all pretty exhausted and Ang seemed to be at the end of her rope (but she was a champ the entire day). We decided to skip the fourth stop we had planned (the Bund) and head home.
This morning we all slept in (yes, even Ang) and then headed out for brunch at the
Shangri-La hotel. Many of the nice hotels in Shanghai offer an elaborate brunch on Sunday afternoon. The Shangri-La brunch is one of the top-rated ones and we were very excited to check it out. The menu is very Asian inspired (dim sum, noodles, Chinese food, Indian food, sushi, etc) but there was a huge variety and everything was incredible.
After brunch we walked over to the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC) to check out the observatory. We refer to this building as the bottle opener because there is a rectangle
section cut out at the top of the building which gives it the appearance of a bottle opener (see picture on left - the 'bottle opener' is the tall building on the right, in the fog. The SWFC was opened in 2008 and is one of two giant towers on the Pudong side of Shanghai. The other tower is Jin Mao (where Rich works). There is a third tower that is currently under construction and is planned to be taller than the SWFC. It is very strange that we live only two blocks away from these massive buildings. The observatory at the SWFC is on the 100th floor and consists of a glass walkway that spreads across the span of the upper part of the 'bottle opener' on top of the building. The pictures we took don't do it justice, it was an incredible view.
Looking down over Jin Mao
The glass floor
We have definitely been having fun exploring the city and are really looking forward to all the fun we can have here. We are almost all settled into our apartment - there are still a few things that I think would help make it feel a bit more 'home-y' here, but I'll find those things over time. I have met a few more neighbors (one with a 3 month old daughter) and have found a few areas of the city that are a bit more residential and have some great shopping and restaurants without the hustle and bustle of the city traffic.
Before I forget, a few people have asked for email notification when I post updates here. I'm going to set up an email list so if you want to be added just drop me an email and I will add you. I'm really going to try to start posting updates more regularly, so hopefully future updates aren't as long as this one :)
Love
Meg
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