Best 3 Year Old Ever

From Lucas Carman

So after my 23 hours home in Qingdao, my very pregnant friend Jacquelyn, her daughter, and I headed up to Beijing to wait for their current baby to decide to enter this world. The "fast" train is still over six hours (plus taxis on both ends to actually connect you from house to house), so her Beijing doctor wanted her here in plenty of time in case little Carman baby decided to make an early appearance. Jacquelyn was due on August 13th, so we figured two and a half weeks was plenty of time! How surprised were we, after arriving at 11:00 PM, that her water would break a mere 2 1/2 hours later!

Lucas Raymond Morton Carman still took another 31 hours to be born, which gave his daddy plenty of time to high tail it up from Qingdao to assist the birth. If you are friends of Jacquelyn you can read about the birth story on her facebook account. But my story was a little different.

The whole point of me coming up was to keep Jacquelyn company and to help care for their daughter, Anna Mae, until Jeremy was able to join her later. We were fully not expecting little Lucas to come until I had returned to Qingdao and her sister had come from the States. I was planning on getting in plenty of Beijing shopping over the ten days I was able to be here, and a lot of good eats too! Well, though my plans have been vastly different, having the baby while I was here turned out to be great. I've had 24 hour a day Anna duty, giving Jeremy the ability to stay with Jacquelyn at the hospital the entire time, and Anna and I go up to visit every day.

While I am ecstatic to finally meet little Lucas, I just have to say, I love this little girl! She is amazing, and has the best parents who have raised her to be an awesome little girl.

I am so thankful that Anna and I have become such great friends over the last year, because this week has been great. While at times noticeably missing her parents a little, Anna has been wonderful about having me as nanny for the week. We've shopped together, played at the park together nearly every day, cooked lunch and breakfast together, even washed dishes together! Each afternoon we take a taxi and a subway to go see mommy and daddy and didi (chinese for little brother) at the hospital, and every evening we come home, get ready for bed together, read some stories, and say bedtime prayers for mommy and daddy and didi.

Yesterday we were talking about her new little brother, and I said, "Now you have two boys and two girls in your family! Two of each!" She scrunched up her face, thought for a second, and said, "no, three girls and two boys." I asked, "Who are the three girls?" She said, "um, Mommy, and Anna, and Mrs. Greene." Later I asked, "Do you have four people in your family or five?" and she replied four, so I'm not sure exactly where she thinks I fit in, but the sentiment was sweet non-the-less. So many hugs and kisses and snuggly book time makes parenting seem like a breeze! Though I have been amazingly surprised at how little "other" things I get done (like work, ha ha).

Well, as I love new babies, and this one in particular, I've put up a few pictures of the trip :-) Hope you enjoy them. Congrats Carmans! We are so excited for you!