Aquarium and such

Ni Hao from super-soaked, cold, rainy Shanghai. Nothing like a ton of rain when it's 40 degrees out. Really lifts the spirits, ya know!

We've been busy and hectic again which always raises the stress level and blood pressure. There is a fine line between seeing all the amazing things Shanghai has to offer and doing too much so that our lives suffer a bit.

Friday night we had another great pizza night hanging out with friends, talking about planning holidays together and relaxing. It was a fun night but a late one for the kiddos again.

Saturday we went to the Shanghai Aquarium in Pudong. It's on the other side of the Huang Pu River which splits Shanghai into the Puxi side (west, older, our side) and the Pudong side (east, very new-1990's). The aquarium is right under the Pearl Tower.

The aquarium was mostly underground. Each escalator down would be through a huge tank and there was a moving walkway through tanks and tanks of fish and stingrays and turtles. It was really amazing! A bit small and a bit expensive but I'm really glad we went.
Soph's favorite part was the mantarays (huh???), mine was the jellyfish, Ben's was the seahorses (huh?? again) and Coop really liked the gigantic tanks of multicolored fish.

You should have seen the group of people gathered to take these kids' pictures. They were, by far, the bigger attraction...

jellyfish! They would change color when the lights changed. Really neat but hard to capture on film...

Sophie was having a moment here...

There were many more amazing and beautiful things but the fireworks outside are driving me nuts so I want to continue so I can go to sleep soon. See, tonight is officially the last day of the Chinese New Year celebrations- woo hoo!!! I am SO OVER fireworks!!!

After the aquarium we hit up McD's for some hometown goodness then headed home.

Coop was a no-go on nap yet again that day and Ben had taken Sophie for a bike ride to the video store (we now own more Barbie movies than I care to mention). Saturday night was very low key. Yay!

Sunday we headed back to SWIF- Shanghai West International Fellowship. There was nursery for Cooper and Soph did well in Sunday school. It was great to be back at church!

Afterwards we went out and loaded ourselves up with tennis racquets, squash racquets, badmitton racquets and all the accessories for them. Soph even has her own racquets! Then to lunch at Pizza Hut and More (a really nice, kinda fancy restaurant here- seriously) then to the B&Q (like Lowe's)for a fan to try and give Cooper white noise (cause maybe then he'll sleep)then finally home.

Shocker, fan didn't work and he didn't nap again and was a wreck the rest of the day. Way overtired and crazy with movement. If he wasn't in constant motion he was crying. It's exhausting...

This brings me to what we're struggling with right now. Cooper won't nap for at least a week now. I'd be fine with that if he was sleeping at night. However, he's not doing well at that either.

He goes down fine (with his melatonin, like usual) at 730-8 but then wakes up bt 5 & 6 every morning and doesn't go back to sleep. He's then exhausted all day, struggling more at school, complaining a lot, not consolable, won't sit to eat bc he craves constant motion. It's not fun at all anymore and I'm out of ideas on how to get his little brain to rest. We can't give more melatonin for naps or at the early morning time either.
Music doesn't work, fans don't work, weighted blanket's not working...ugh.

Back to the grind today. Today was the first day of Coop going by car without me to his school. The driver and ayi were very kind and he did really well. There are a few glitches we're still working out but I think this is good. I was able to actually eat some breakfast, get our produce from the farmer's market, get it all cleaned and work out! Sweet!

No nap again today but he did eat really well. So, that's something. :)

Prayer requests:
-Cooper, Cooper, Cooper!!! That his mind can rest so he can learn and that I may know how to help him.
-That Sophie continues to enjoy school and life in general (things have been much better with her lately!)
-I start attending a weekly Bible Study on Wednesday and I'm really looking forward to meeting more women from our church and getting more involved. Pray we are all blessed through this gathering.
-Our house did not sell- the buyers picked the other house. :( We were very bummed to get this news but can now move forward. It's really really hard to wait for God's timing, sometimes... pray we are patient.

Ok, I HAVE to go to bed. The fireworks are at a lull right now so now is the time to get to sleep before they start again!

God bless you all- we miss you all dearly but are hanging in there ok over here. :)