Chinese New Year Lanterns

Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in China and an exciting time. Almost everyone gets a holiday, go back home and spend quality time with family and friends. This was my 8th New Year in China and I could write two very different posts about it, but instead I decided to compare the both sides in one post.

Worshipping gods and ancestors

Lovely Chinese New Year With Family

Spring Festival is an important time to spend with family and honor the ancestors as well. Offerings will be given to ancestors and then burned so they can enjoy them, dinner and special dishes are made for the family members to enjoy together. During this week-long holiday we have had many lunches and dinners with my husband’s family, relatives and family friends.

Speaking of family, this week was the first time after our daughter was born that me and my husband had a week-long holiday together at home. We took Anna out to parks, met with friends and even to a new horse stable that have opened near our home. It’s been a valuable time to spend with our daughter.

This holiday I’ve really enjoyed spending time with our family, going out to meet friends, eating good food and getting to relax with a movie.

Chinese New Year Firecrackers

Spring Festival of Obligations and Noise Pollution

One of the reasons my husband isn’t a big fan of Spring Festival are the countless obligations that come with it. You need to meet with lots of distant relatives and family friends you might not enjoy spending time with. You need to prepare lots of red envelopes with cash which creates a financial burden. And if you want to escape it all and go traveling, prices go up to double or triple during the Chinese New Year.

For us with a toddler at home, the fireworks and firecrackers brought up another set of problems. Getting our 1-year-old daughter to sleep was challenging with the loud noises all over the village. During the day she was also easily scared of the loud sudden noises. The firecrackers also severely affects the quality of air during the holiday.

Next year is going to be a new tradition for us as we are planning to travel out of China during the Spring Festival!

Sometimes photo instructions are needed

Having an ayi or a housekeeper is really common in China, solving the big issue of childcare in many families. After finding our ayi, I wrote a few words about training her, but now after few months it’s time for a new post. This time I’m listing not so funny things my ayi has done and that have made me to reconsider having her.

I won’t even mention how hard it is to train someone to clean the house by your standards, but what made me see red was how she broke my mixer and almost broke our rice cooker the same week! Luckily we don’t have too many fancy electrical appliances in our kitchen, but I hope nothing else gets broken.

Then she lost our daughter’s fork which wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it was bought by my mother. A nice gift from grandmother probably got thrown away in the trash as she still haven’t found it to this day.

What almost got me to fire her was when she was wiping the bookshelf and a needle fell into our daughter’s toy box. Luckily I found it first! I was forced to give her a stern lecture on how she must be careful with things, especially around Anna. I also shared this in our family WeChat group so my husband would see what happened too.

I don’t know if it’s with all ayis, but at least with ours have to keep a constant eye on her on how she does things. Sometimes I remind her, sometimes just quietly fix things after her like closing rice and spice containers to keep them clean.

So why haven’t I changed to a new ayi then?

She is doing a great job with our daughter and their bond is very good. Anna  trusts her and she mostly takes care of her the way we want. Besides taking care of Anna, she also cooks and cleans, sometimes with long hours. My friend said that many women train their ayis for a year and then enjoy a very good relationship with them for years. That’s what I’m aiming for.

Do you have any funny or not-so-funny stories of your ayi? Any tips for me?

Taking care of a baby surely is a fulltime job

Last time I wrote how we found a new ayi to take care our daughter while we work, little did I know that inviting a nanny to your home would mean a lot of extra work for you too!

I started with a list of things to keep in mind when taking care of our baby, even my husband thought it was a very detailed list, but actually I left out a lot of little things that might scare the new nanny away before starting! I don’t wish to be a parent who micro-manages everything, but it’s hard to relax and let someone else to care for your child.

Luckily our ayi seems to be great with Anna and after two weeks of getting to know each other I don’t worry at all while I work almost full time as a private teacher. Coming home to my smiling daughter reassures me, that we made the right decision.

But like in a marriage, in a employer-ayi relationship nothing is perfect of course. In our case she has been doing some sloppy job cleaning our house and I’m not sure if she doesn’t know how to or just would prefer not cleaning at all. My husband has always been complaining that he can’t get used to the food she cooks.

For me as Finn it’s quite awkward to tell our ayi what to do and to point out things she has done poorly. My husband Alan says that I was way too nice in the beginning and it ended up our ayi being a lazy cleaner. Now that I think of it, I probably should have been more direct and clear with cleaning instructions in the beginning.

Tips I’m trying to follow with our ayi now:

• Make a list of daily and weekly tasks
• First week clean together with her and show how you prefer things to be done
• Observe her cleaning or taking care of your children, see how she is used to doing things
• Be friendly but strict from the beginning so the ayi will respect your rules

Even with these hiccups, I hope that she will work with us for the next few years so we can all get used to each other and our daughter would have a constant good caretaker while me and her dad are working. I’ll keep you posted how things go!