The Many Moods of Silas

What a difference a day makes.  Silas woke up Friday morning all coos and giggles.  He was a completely different baby from Thursday!  Amazing what some sleep and baby tylenol can do (thanks, Tiffani!).  He hasn't had much interest in breakfast the last two days, though.  Perhaps because he prefers crunchy foods on his tender gums.   In any event, he only wants to eat Cheerios.  The restaurant chefs in our hotel are so nice.  Every morning they make a special steamed egg (which is something like an egg custard) for Silas, which he usually loves, but the last two days, he isn't having any of it.

After breakfast on Friday, we headed out for some more sightseeing to see the Yangtze River Bridge.  Of course, once we got into the van, Silas was starving.  Good thing mom and dad loaded up the diaper bag with juice and snacks.  But, by the time we got to the bridge (about a 40 minute drive), he had eaten everything we packed!  Thankfully, Susan, our guide, jumped out at a grocery store and ran in to buy us some bananas and crackers.

We are sure glad Silas is feeling better.  Wish I was.  Not sure if it's the air quality or whether the allergies have morphed into an infection.  Unfortunately, none of us are sleeping very well with me hacking all night long.  When our guide heard my cough Friday morning, she insisted on stopping at a pharmacy so I could get something.  At that point, I was willing to try just about anything.  So we went into the pharmacy and she spoke to the clerk who took us to the cough medicine section.  They didn't carry any western medicines, but a lot of the packaging looked derivative of American medicines.  I asked about a package that looked like the famous green and black Robitussen package.  She said, "That's for cough."  I said, "Great!  That's what I need!"  Then, Susan pointed to a different package, and said, "This one is better."  I asked what was in it, and she said it was herbal and worked great.  I was skeptical, but bought it anyway.

We got back into the van, and Susan suggested I take some medicine right away.  Brian concurred (poor guy is so sick of hearing me cough every 5 seconds).  So I opened the bottle and took a swig.  (The outside of the bottle was marked so I knew how much to take.)  It tasted disgusting--like a liquified Ricola--but it was amazing and worked almost immediately.

Once I started feeling better, Susan started telling me what was in this magic elixer.  "It's got ginko, some orange peel, and a little bit of opium."  What!?!?!  Opium!?!?!  Apparently, small doses of opium are considered "herbal" in China.  Unfortunately, the last two times I have tried to use codiene (derived from opium) cough medicine, I have had an adverse reaction.  Sure enough, as soon as we got to the Yangtze River Bridge, I started experiencing similar side effects:  sweating, back spasms and crushing chest pain.  Unfortunately, the effects don't subside until the drug wears off--about 3-4 hours.  As we were leaving the bridge, it became apparent that there was no way I was going to be able to continue our tour to the brocade museum.   The good thing was, having experienced this side effect before, I knew I just needed to go back to the hotel and lay down until the drug wore off.  We all went back to the room and took a 2-hour nap, which we all desperately needed.

Today, we awoke to that same happy baby.  We're very relieved that seems to be his default setting. :)  He woke up a little early so we brought him in our bed with us.  He rolled around and made faces and eyes at us and cuddled.  It was just adorable.  After breakfast, we went to the Nanjing History Museum and to the Nanjing Brocade Museum.  Both of which were very interesting from a cultural perspective.  Nap time brought another brief melt down.  This one only lasted 8 minutes, as opposed to the 45 minute one from a few days back.  That's progress!

We're all getting a little antsy in this small hotel room.  Looking forward to moving on to Guangzhou on Monday morning, with hopefully a bigger room!