Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Today, the girls are trying to kill me, one tiny complaint at a time. 

If it is possible to actually be whined to death, I am knocking on death’s door.  Or wait, maybe I am already dead and this is a particularly sadistic version of Hell?

I am barricaded in the office right now and I am actually contemplating putting in ear plugs so I can’t hear them whining to Mr. A. 

Bedtime can not come soon enough.

*Actually, I was going to title this Chinese Water Torture, but then I realized I don’t have the energy to argue with someone who may be offended by it.  But, yo.  For the record, they are both Chinese and they are torturing me.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

In no particular order, things that have been happening around here lately:

-We gave L the boot from our bedroom.  Yesterday morning, she woke me up 57 too many times after I had gone to bed very, very late.  I had begun to suspect that my proximity to her (her twin bed pushed up against my side of our bed) was actually encouraging her to wake up rather than sleep through the night.  Actually, it may have been more than my personal proximity.  It may have been that our bed is much much more comfortable because it has a tempurpedic mattress pad and her bed is hecka uncomfortable.  As a result, she was constantly stealing my spot and leaving me to sleep in the twin.  As of yesterday, we moved her twin into M’s room (now known as M’s old room, L and M’s new room, or as I said repeatedly yesterday and today: the room with TWO! BIG! GIRL! BEDS! YAY!!! CLAP!! CLAP!!)  So far, so good.  Who knows, maybe one of these days I will even get to get lucky on my tempurpedic mattress instead of the fold-out couch.  A girl can dream, cant’ she?

-I have concocted a new scheme that requires us to sell our house and live in a much crappier house for several years.  On some level, I think I can not bear to live in this house now that it is all fixed up and ready to sell.  My theory is we should sell, buy a new crappy house in the neighborhood (3 blocks over) we want to live in FOREVER, then when we have enough dough in 4-5 years, do a full-gut renovation and add an addition to double the size of the imaginary house.  I have already had my hopes dashed on two different houses: one was already in contract, the other is apparently full of exposed asbestos.  It would actually make the most sense to wait until spring to move forward with this plan, but I can’t stop obsessively searching browsing the MLS listing.  I am aware this scheme is a bit wacky.   I lived through my parents building a house when I was in high school.  That was when I witnessed the biggest argument in the history of their entire relationship, which was about bathroom fixures.  And seriously, do you think that my dad gave a rat’s ass about bathroom fixtures?  Building/remodeling can make people crazy.  You would think I would know better.

-Did I mention that we are going on vacation with my parents, sister and niece in a few weeks?  Given the recent tensions over the church thing, this may be the perfect setting for a lovely knock-down drag out argument.  It might end up being like high school all over again.

-Mr. A just walked in the door from work at 11:42 pm, so I am going to go visit with him for a few minutes before bed.  They seriously do not pay him enough to work such insane hours. 

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

It is very interesting, watching L get bigger.  I don’t have any point of reference for the whys and whens that are a part of every baby’s development and personality.  With M, it didn’t take much to refer back to Mr. A or my own childhoods/personalities to understand what was making her tick.  With L, we find new surprises every day.

Examples:

-The incredible shrinking girl.   Actually, L isn’t shrinking, but she is dropping consistantly lower on the height-weight chart.  She came home at about the 50th percentile for height and weight.  In the past year, she has dropped to the 15th percentile for both height and weight.  I keep mentioning it to people to see if anyone thinks I should be alarmed, but my friends and family are decidedly unimpressed.  She eats all day long, so at least I don’t have to be afraid she is malnourished.  She may just have a slightly delayed growth spurt.  Or maybe she just comes from slightly smaller people.

-The lump on her head.  L has a lump right above her forehead, at the front of where her softspot was.  I suspect she has a mild version of metopic synostosis, but so far any medical professional I have mentioned it to (several when we first came home) just shrug and are unimpressed by her lump.  Fortunately, her hair is beginning to grow low enough to hide the lump, but it is doubtful she will want to part her hair in the middle when she is older. 

-Teeth.  L *still* doesn’t have all her baby teeth.  She is 26 and a half months old and she is still missing her bottom incisors.  A teething 2 year +2 month old is no fun at all.   No sign of any 2 year molars coming in either.  And also all her teeth came in backwards order: tops first, then bottoms.  And they bottom middle two are at a 90 degree angle from each other.  They popped through the gums that way.  At this rate, L will be lucky if she can get braces on by the time she is 20. 

-L loves shoes.  Anyones shoes are good, but plastic princess high heels are preferred.  M never had the slightest interest in dress up or high heels and I mostly wear tennis shoes or flip flops, so we don’t own any.  When we go to other people’s houses, L can usually be found prancing around in sparkly cinderella shoes. 

-L loves purses and bags.  And makeup too.  I don’t even carry a bag, but L turns every single bag she finds into a purse.  I don’t even know where she has seen a purse.  Ditto for makeup.  I wear lipstick like 2x per year.  A friend’s kid had some play makeup the other day and L was a girl obsessed.  (As was M, but she is at least old enough to know what it is.)

-The color pink.  It seems to be L’s favorite color despite the effort I have made to make sure very few of our toys are pink.  When asked to identify a color, pink is the one she says correctly most often.  If asked to select one item out of several different colors, she usually picks pink.

I am refusing to acknowlege the three directly above may indict that L is headed toward girly-girldom.  I admit it does make me a tad nervous though.  This may be a huge sign that nature is trumping nurture. Yipes. 

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

The children, they are beating me down.

I am realizing the $350 we spent to send M to preschool 5 days a week was the most important thing we have ever done for my sanity.  She is on summer break now and I am exhausted.

Apparently, since M is not in school, she needs to get her socializing/talking out anyway.  Since I am the only person around, I am the lucky one who gets to listen to 9 hours of a 5 year-old’s stream-of-consciousness each day.  OMG, is she never silent?  Is there not ONE SINGLE THOUGHT she can keep to herself?   

Apparently, the answer is no.  There is not.

Who knew she was thinking so many things?  So many incredibly BORING and REPETITIVE things!

And L, my darling baby two year old, has decided that now is the time to fight to the death for every single whim that enters her pretty little head.  If it occurs to her that XYZ might be a good idea, she must have XYZ.  NOW.  NO, she really means it NOW! NOW! NOW!  And god forbid I should try to tell her no.  Or ask her to wait for a few minutes.  Oh, she will rain down her wrath on anyone who even dares to suggest she shouldn’t have what she wants when she wants it.  The flailing and screaming and crying is rarely worth the effort.  Do I really care that much if she eats an extra snack?  No, it turns out I don’t care enough.  I just give it to her.  I am wondering if this kind of behavior with tired parents is why my little sister got away murder.

And just when you think I might get a break at bedtime, then the real joy of summer strikes.  They don’t sleep if it isn’t dark.  Even with blackout curtains.  The big one stays up until well after 9:00 pm wiggling and thumping around in her bed.  The little one wakes up at 5:00 a.m. and then again at 6:00 a.m..  She can not be convinced to go back to sleep.

I am scheduling as many playdates and activities as I can stand.  I am making them play and swim to wear them out so they will sleep well.  I am clinging to my sanity by the skin of my teeth.  And counting down the days until school starts.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Last week was hard.

The week before, Mr. A had to travel a bit for work.  He wasn’t home three nights and mornings in a row.  This is pretty unusual for us.  Mr. A generally gets the girls dressed and feeds them breakfast each morning.  He is usually home for dinner, plays with the girls, then puts them to bed each night.  Three days of a different routine was not a huge problem that week.  Do to some crazy lawsuit or something, Mr. A had to work a lot over the weekend.  Then last week, he was away for three more nights.

It didn’t happen overnight, but it became clear that something was going on with L by the second week.  She has been exerting her two-year-old will more and more over the last month, but she started to insist that she do EVERYTHING herself.  “I DO IT!” was all I heard all day long.  And when it was clear that she couldn’t do what she wanted, she started throwing tantrums.   I blamed the tantrums on the fact that L is two.  And I blamed them and her crankiness on L’s eternal teething (finally, she is cutting three incisors).

The tantrums got worse.  We had to leave the library because L wouldn’t stay near us and pitched a fit when I tried to hold her hand.  We went shopping with my mom and L planted her feet and screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of Ann Taylor.  Over and over.   We had to leave there too. 

The worst, though, happened at home.  L woke up at around 10pm and screamed for over an hour.  She would not calm down or go back to sleep.  Mr. A came home from his trip in the middle of that doozy and that only seemed to upset her more.  The next morning, with no apparent cause or catalyst, she raged again for over an hour.  I finally had to put her in the Ergo carrier because I couldn’t hold her while she was thrashing around.  She screamed her voice hoarse until I put her in the car and she fell asleep.  These were not your typical two-year-old tantrums.

If I were reading this description on someone else’s blog, I would be thinking “attachment issues! attachment issues!”  I think that is probaby a fair assumption.  We have been dealing with L’s attachment and trauma issues since she first came into our family.  This isn’t even the first time that a change in the family routine or someone traveling led to acting out.  It just caught me off guard because L seems so much like a “normal” kid (i.e. kid who hasn’t been traumatized) so much of the time, I forget that sometimes she will react more intensely.

Despite my fears when everything was going south last week, I don’t think L has an attachment disorder.  At the same time, L hasn’t survived the trauma in her life unscarred.  I think some part of her subconscious remembers losing her cargivers and her first home.  Thinking about it now, I am pretty sure that this recent episode shows just how very attached to Mr. A she is now.  Even though I told her that daddy was a work, wasn’t coming home for dinner, etc., she isn’t old enough to understand.  She didn’t get why he was talking to her on the phone instead of coming home when he normally does. 

I also think this travel happened at an incredibly inopportune time: right when L is trying to figure out exactly what she can and can not control in her world.  A time when she wants to control everything.  She couldn’t make Mr. A’s come home, nor could she rely on the safety net of our routine.  To a kid who has lost people before without warning, that is probably a pretty scary feeling.  I think Mr. A’s sudden and prolonged disappearance triggered those old feelings  for her.

While last week was tough, in the long run, I think getting through the experience will be good for L.  Daddy went away for what seemed like a long time, but he came back.  She got to act out her feelings, but I’m is still right here with her.  When she is out of control, we (I) will give her the boundaries she needs.  

Mr. A and I will just keep doing what we do to let her know that she is safe in our family.  Already, after a long weekend of family time together, L seems more relaxed and mostly back to her old self.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Memorial day weekend is always the best weather.  It is also the annual Asian festival.  What a lovely day we had on saturday. 

M falls prey to insurance marketing.

L loves the tiny southeast Asian house.

 Mr. A, BIL, and double-decker cousins.

 New-to-me car with hopefully better gas mileage, no leaking oil and 120,000 less miles than my old car.

M is learning to ride a two-wheeler.

The most beautiful smile in the world. 

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

This morning, I sang happy birthday to L.

As soon as I started singing it, she got very excited and started looking all around.

Then she yelled

“CAKE!? CAKE!? CAKE!!!!!”

She’s a girl after my own heart.

(We had already celebrated her birthday with cake on Saturday at a family party and I wasn’t planning to make another.  Her excitement actually meant that I had to go buy some brownie mix so she wouldn’t be disappointed.  Not that it is hard to convince me to make sweets.)

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Last weekend, Mr. A swore he heard a mouse in our kitchen. 

Because we live on a kind of wooded lot, this is not that surprising.  We usually get a few mice each fall, but every once in a while one of the greedy little bastards will sneak in during other parts of the year.

I still wasn’t convinced we had a mouse, but I told Mr. A to set up the traps anyway.  Then yesterday, the trap was sprung with no dead mouse in sight.  By that point, I was a believer.  Last night we set the trap again.

This morning, as I was lying in bed, I heard Mr. A scream “NOooooooooooooooo!”  followed by a terrified cry from L.  

I grabbed my glasses and ran downstairs.

By the time I got there, Mr. A was frantically scrubbing L’s hands in the bathroom sink.

“What the heck is going on?” I asked.

“She…was……..holding the mouse!!!” Mr. A said with a shudder.

Apparently, the mouse had dragged the trap out from under the counter before it died.  Then L found it and walked up to Mr. A.  She was squeezing the actual dead mouse in her hand. 

Both Mr. A and I were thoroughly grossed out. 

I hope that was the only one.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I know this probably isn’t interesting to anyone but me, especially for those people who get lots of snow all the time.  But!  This is the most snow we have had in the last decade! 

L is not too sure about the snow.  We really should take M skiing someday, since she owns all the gear.

 Today’s big accomplishment.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

And on with the questions….

7) You have posted about not wanting to have a lot of toys in the house. What are the main ways your girls entertain themselves? Sports? Dramatic play? Fun with household items? We have a lot of toys and we still run out of things to do. I am curious.

I sincerely believe the more toys my kids have, the less they play with.  I suspect this is because they survey they playroom and only see piles of things and can’t see the individual toys.

When I force M to stop following me around saying she is bored, she is most likely to go draw, write letters or color.  This makes her art box one of the most used toys in the house.  She has also been spending a lot of time playing imaginary games with these toy horses which she received at her birthday party.  She also received a webkinz horse or donkey and she plays with it and her pegasus toy from Disneyland a lot too.  (She doesn’t know that there is any webkinz connection with the internet). 

M likes to push her animals/dolls around in a toy umbrella stroller while pretending things like they are all astronauts etc.  M also likes board games, though she usually plays with Mr. A because I dislike board games and I am mean like that.  Her current favorite is Caliboo.  M will occasionally play House with her little friends, but she has never once played dress up, despite owning several princess outfits. 

Now that she can read, M spends at least an hour or two every day reading to herself.  We try to go  to the library every week or two.  Right now, she is devouring the Bearenstain Bears.  (BTW, who the heck knew that the Bearenstain Bears often have a religious message to them?  M is now praying every night after reading it in one of those dumb books.)

L likes to try to play with whatever M is playing with and whatever M doesn’t want her to touch, especially the dolls stroller.  L also likes any toys that play music or make noise, particularly early in the morning while I am still sleeping.   L is much more interested in baby dolls than M ever was.  She likes to carry them around and feed them toy bottles.  She really likes stuffed animals and has a habit of biting them right on the face.  The tupperware drawer is also huge favorite too.

8)  I know you had a post a while back around Ashley’s question where you were looking for quick, easy and tasty dinner ideas. What ideas did you end up trying, and what worked well for you, Mr. A and the girls?

This is similar to the answer on the other question, but when I was originally looking for suggestions I think it was because L was a total wreck every time I tried to make dinner.  Now she is much less interested in hanging on me when it is time to cook.  She is also more easily distracted by the Wiggles when I really need her to give me a break.  

Another easy and relatively quick recipe I make is this Banana Bread.  I found it by googling “world’s best banana bread recipe” and it really, really is.  It looks more complicated than it is.  I only use the first set of ingredients.   God, I might need to make some tomorrow now that I am thinking about it.  I get compliments every time I take it to potlucky things.

9)  How do you answer (if it comes up) the “what do you do?” type questions. I hate them but I’m curious as to how other people answer them.   Also, what kind of work (paid kind) would you like to do in the future…nonprofit again….any specific field of interest.

I think I usually just say “I am not working right now, I am home with my girls.”  I don’t actually get that question very often because I am usually only found in places where other people are during the day with their kids.  When I do respond though, I say it with a bit of an attitude, like, “What? You don’t think that is a job?”

If I ever do go back to work (I imagine sooner or later I will do SOMETHING to help pass time), I would almost certainly do nonprofit work.  All my professional experience is in nonprofit fundraising, grant management and project management.  I can’t really imagine what kind of professional job I would have if it wasn’t in a nonprofit.

Most of my experience has also been in adolescent reproductive health and teen pregnancy prevention.  This is one of my very favorite charitable causes and I would work in that field forever if I can find a job doing it.  I also really loved the volunteer work I have done in the past with refugees, though I haven’t ever done that work for pay.  Our city has a very large and growing refugee population, so that is a viable option.  In a pinch, I would be willing to work for most liberal kinds of causes (environment, women’s issues, human rights, etc.).

I think I have only two more questions left, but I have a lot to say about them.  I will try to do that tomorrow or over the weekend.  

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

February 26th is exactly one year from the day we met L. 

 It seems impossible that we have only known her for a year.  I feel like L has been with me my entire life.  At the same time, this year has slipped by so fast, it feels like the blink of an eye.

Adopting L isn’t what I expected it to be, back in those days when I was a wet-behind-the-ears wannabe adoptive parent. 

Maybe it is luck (or maybe my surly expression), but it is very very rare that anyone comments on the fact that L and I don’t match racially.  I can probably count the instances at less than 20 (and at least 4 of those were from the same checkout woman at the grocery store…the next time that stupid woman opens her mouth I am requesting a manager if I can manage to restrain myself enough to avoid bashing her with a baguette).  I don’t worry about the cultural stuff so much either.  I feel like we have a good start on that before and there isn’t any reason for drastic changes just because L is here.  I expected problems with Mr. A’s family, but after a slightly bumpy beginning, things have gone quite smoothly. 

The most defining feature of our beginning together was trauma.  I did a lot of reading about attachment before we traveled, but most of those books and articles only touched on trauma and trauma-related stress.  I was secretly convinced I could prevent problems by focusing so heavily on attachment.  I don’t regret that work, but in retrospect, I don’t think attachment was the L’s core problem.   Now, I can see that L was extremely hypervigalent and terrified for most of those first months.  Even though her attachment progressed pretty well, the after-effects of trauma colored much of our days.  There is no quick fix for trauma.  Only time, consistancy and security seemed to make a difference for L.

One of the truly amazing things about L is that even though she was in an orphanage with lots of other babies, she is a girl who knows how to get her needs met.  One of the things her nannies told us was “L cries more than any other baby in the orphanage.”  And when we met her, it was pretty clear that she was used to having those cries answered…QUICKLY. 

At the beginning, those screams were the bane of my formerly peaceful existence, but now I am so grateful that L was clear about what she needed and would not accept anything less from us.  Without that clear communication, it might have been easier to slack, to cut corners on attachment stuff, to write off her demands as those of a ‘normal’ baby when she wasn’t. 

L survived the trauma of losing her whole life in China.  She lost her ayis, the babies she grew up with, the beds she slept in and even the food she ate every day.  While she is a mellow kid in many ways, I could tell she knew what she had lost.  And this new gig with us wasn’t so bad, but she was going to hedge her bets and stick like superglue to at least one person (me) until she knew that she was safe.  As healthy and happy and strong as L is now, I am so thankful I was able to stay home with her this year.  I know many babies do find in daycare after adoption, but those first months with us, L was undeniably fragile.   

While I knew it in my head that L would experience loss when she joined our family, the burden on my heart is more than I expected.  I think of L’s nannies and the girls who were in the orphanage with her often.  We have visited with two of the three girls adopted with L recently.  These girls knew each other before we knew L and I hope we can keep some kind of relationship alive as they grow older, even though our families are very different and live far apart.

We have pictures of a woman we believe was one of L’s closest ayi.  Earlier this year, when I would try to show L the picture, she would look away or close the book.  Her rejection was completely different from the way she looked at other photos in the album.  But just this week, L brought the book to me and as we were looking through the pages she said “Ayi” on that page.  She said it quietly and very clearly (usually her words are hard to understand).  I had never heard her say Ayi before.  She took the book and touched her forehead to the Ayi’s picture.  It was similar to the way she placed her forehead affectionately against mine in those first weeks after we met.  It broke my heart a little and I wonder if she remembers on some level.  I wonder if she feels safe enough with us now to acknowledge her life before we met.

It goes without saying, I think of L’s parents (especially her mother) all the time.  While we don’t know who or where they are, I feel their presence.   

Though I don’t know their personal circumstances, we are caring for the child whose very existence may have endangered their family.  A child who they almost certainly brought into this world at great personal risk and emotional cost.   I feel the weight of their hopes and dreams for their future and their family.   These hopes may have both brought L into this world and may have caused them to turn away from her.

In my heart of hearts, I hope they are at peace and their lives are good.  At the same time, I hope they feel a void without L, because she is just the most amazing and wonderful girl.  I hope they know that L is a girl worth knowing and loving; that life without her just isn’t the same.

I still have hopes we will be able to locate them one day.  With our China trip indefinitely on hold, I have distanced myself a little from actively trying to find more information for now.  It takes a lot of emotional energy to search for a needle in a haystack, all the while knowing that finding it could be the key to L’s history.  Our chances of finding them may decrease each day. 

Sometimes I dream about being in China with L’s parents just around the corner, but I can’t find them.  Some days, I am convinced we should just get on a plane now and go look for them so L will never remember a time when she didn’t know who her parents are.  Other times, I wonder how can I live with myself knowing that L’s mother is out there not knowing what happened to L.  Finding L’s parents is totally not about me, but I may be the only person in the position to make anything happen.  I didn’t expect to feel so strongly before I met L.

This year hasn’t been what I expected at all:  It has been better and harder and different.  My life more complicated and more exhausting, but I wouldn’t go back to my old life for anything.   I can’t imagine my life or my family without L.  It is a privilege and a joy to be able to know and love her.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I have been sick since last monday or tuesday with a cough/cold/influzenza that has totally kicked my ass.  M has been sick that whole time too, with a fun double ear infection thrown in for kicks.  Mr. A has the cough now too, but he is about 3 or 4 days behind M and me.

Then today, L had a fever.  She doesn’t seem to have the cough and her other symptoms are random and make no sense (crabby, fever, diahrrea, crabby, runny nose, crabby), so I was not sure what her problem is.  If I were a betting woman, I would say that her two damn molars are finally close to the surface and may pop through sometime in March (I should be so lucky!)

I was afraid that L had an ear infection too, because she has been asking for an earstick over the last few days.  (If we ever needed proof that L was a good fit as my daughter, it is her love of ear cleaning…who would think a 22 month old could lay perfectly still while I scrape her ears with a stick?  We are a match made in heaven, I tell you…)

Anyway, I took L to the doctor today, just to rule out an ear infection.  A quick look with an otoscope produced no ear problems, but the doctor did suggest that we run a flu test since the rest of our family was so sick for the past week.    The flu test involves sticking a LOOOOOONG Qtip way, way far into L’s sinuses. 

She was not thrilled.

The funniest part, though, is that L has been processing the appointment all night. 

She still isn’t much of a talker, but every so often she will say “Doctor……  EARS(pointing)……….Doctor……..Nose!(pointing)”  Each time, she shakes her head and looks properly appalled by the entire experience.

God, I hope we are all healthy by the weekend.  This sucks.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

This week, Mr. A and I have had a few conversations about the traditions and rituals we want to create for our family.  We both believe creating rituals will help connect us as a family, as well as reinforcing the values and traditions we want to pass on to the girls.  My family did a good job at creating family traditions as we were growing up.   Mr. A’s not so much.

When we were talking about how we want to celebrate Chinese New Year, Mr. A only had some vague memories to draw on.  That means we are pretty much making it up as we go along.   This is the first year we are taking it a little more seriously than we have in the past, because M is probably old enough to start forming memories.  Now is as good a time as any, I guess.  That being said, obviously we aren’t experts on CNY traditions.

This is a picture of the good luck (I think) banner things we hung on the door.  When my MIL saw them last weekend, she said “OH! Now people will know a Chinese person lives here!”  I am not sure if she meant that as a good thing or a bad thing.  Usually, we prefer the banners with the chubby babies, but we got to the store too late and they were sold out.

(Our door is actually more red than pink.  the flash just makes it look very mauve.)

Despite all my smart-assed comments about white people dressing their kids in Chinese traditional clothing, this is what the girls were wearing today.  It was totally by coincidence that I realized we had new outfits for both of them and Mr. A thought it would be fun if they dressed up.  M’s is from her dance recital last year, which she didn’t attend because we were in China.  L’s outfit was originally given to M by Mr. A’s aunt, I think, but she never wore it.   Both girls liked wearing the outfits, though L slid off her chair at dinner due to the silky pants and bumped herself pretty hard.

Mr. A took off from work early to come home and make dinner.  His Chinese cooking skills are usually far superior to mine.  We didn’t have a real feast because it was just the four of us, but he made long life noodles, bean sprouts and baby bok choy.  L scarfed up the noodles like a girl who hasn’t been fed in a week.  She seriously loves Chinese food.  I forgot to take a picture of dinner, but for dessert we had mochi instead of nian gao (basically because it is a little bit yummier).  L loved the mochi and kept stealing them off the table when we weren’t looking.

After dinner, we all read this book together.  M liked it.  L was not at all interested and used our distractedness to try to swipe more mochi.

Then, M got to work making some ghost money.  The ancestors will be living large now, because she drew two thousand-dollar bills featuring Blue and Magenta from Blue’s Clues.  We each lit three sticks of incense, I think because three is a lucky number.  But also, because we have ancestors in three families: mine, Mr. A’s, and L’s family.  We each sent our prayers/wishes to heaven with the incense and burned the spirit money. 

Then, Mr. A and I gave the girls their hongbao.  We asked M say Gong Xi Fa Cai! and bow, which she did.  That was basically how we celebrated Chinese New Year tonight.  We wanted firecrackers, but apparently they are illegal and thus unavailable in our state at this time of  year.  Next year, we will have to pick some up around the forth of july and hoard them until CNY.

 (This photo and the reading one were reinacted for your blog-reading pleasure.)

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

A couple people have asked me to post about how we celebrate Chinese New Year.   This year, CNY coincides with the insanity that is M’s 5th birthday (including not one, but two birthday parties).  I thought it might be easier to do a small series of photo posts instead of just typing out what we have been up to.

Saturday night, we had an impromptu Chinese New Year dinner at Mr. A’s sister’s house.  MIL brought a feast of foods that she bought at a Chinese grocery store and they were delicious.  It didn’t occur to me to take photos of the food, so you will have to imagine it.

Then, after dinner. M did a little performance of a couple Chinese songs.  She tried to enlist L and her cousin S.  This photo is of all of them playing Ba Luo Bo .  Mr. A joined in too.

Then, M did her own lion dance with a play costume we brought home from China.

MIL gave the girls hongbao and asked them to bow to their parents.  They did (L was the best, most compliant bower.)  Then they also bowed to MIL, I think.    It was not thing too formal.  A fun time was had by everyone.

 Sunday

Today we had M’s family birthday party.  It was just cake and ice cream, then she opened some presents.  I can not believe she is almost 5.

L loved the cake and the hats.

Then we headed over to the new and improved, Midwestern city, Chinese New Year EXTRAVAGANZA ™.  This year, our Chinese schools partnered with the Chinese schools from 5(!) cities in our region to put on a huge CNY performance.   It was a very Chinese event, with many formal speeches and gifts being traded among the principals of the different schools. 

M with two of her good friends while they were waiting to enter the auditorium.

We were surprised and pleased that CNY Extravaganza ™ was fairly well organized and not running too far behind schedule.  (Just as an aside, it must be the new administration.  Last year, pretty much everything at Chinese School was late, chaotic and organized very poorly.)  The kind schedulers had M’s dance class very close to the beginning of the second performance session. 

The first act was a lion dance.

 M and friends watching the lion dance.

Not long after that, M’s class danced.  They are the youngest class, ranging from 3 year olds to 5  year olds.   They are enthusiastic, but most of them have very short attention spans.   One little girl got distracted and just played with her tutu for about 1/3 of the dance.

When the dance was over, MIL was heard proudly saying “OH! M was the best dancer of all!”  While it is sweet to know that MIL was proud, for the record, M is NOT one of the best dancers.  She doesn’t really get the graceful details like straight fingers and pointed toes.  Actually, her hands tend to look a little more like claws.  But she loves it and she has friends in the class, so I am thrilled.   (And amused by the claw hands, but that is just the kind of mom I am.)

That was all for this weekend.   It was a LOT.

M performing her dance.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

When M and I walked in the door from Chinese school, we were greeted by a somewhat guilty-looking L.  She was also coughing and her mouth and shirt was smeared with what looked like melted chocolate. 

The scene was somewhat suspect, in no small part because if we had chocolate in the house, I would almost certainly have eaten it already.  So if it wasn’t chocolate, what the heck was all over her mouth?

As L continued to cough and gag, I looked closer.  I also glanced at the kitchen table where a small bottle of soy sauce was sitting on the edge, within the reach of a newly-taller L.

I picked L up and the overwelming smell of soy sauce gave her away.  It seems she had grabbed the bottle and taken a rather generous swig or two.  No wonder she was coughing and gagging.  

I wonder if she is trying to tell us that she wants us to feed her more Chinese food.  Maybe she is so deprived she is going straight for the sauce?

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Today was a hugely exciting day for me.  A day I have looked forward to for the past nine and a half months.  

Today was the day L took her last dose of Isoniazid (aka INH), the antibiotic she has been on since she had a 10mm Tuberculosis skin test.

In the end, the daily dose of medicine wasn’t horrible.  At the beginning, though, it was nightmarish.   I originally tried crushing it up into various kinds of foods.  L would isolate the tiny bits of pill and spit them right back out.  This went on for a very stressful month until I discovered I could dissolve the pill in a little water, mix it with her infant vitamins and she would suck it right down.

Despite the relative ease of getting L to swallow the meds, nine months is a damn long time to be on any medication.  I need to go look into some kind of probiotic that a baby can safely take to help her digestive system get the right normal, healthy bacteria back.

So YAY us for being done with it.

In other news, Mr. A’s car got broken into in broad daylight in his work parking lot yesterday.  Someone threw a big rock through the window, spreading glass all over the carseat and the whole back seat. 

The reason they bothered to break into his beater of a car? 

He left some CDs laying out on the passenger seat.  The very CDs that I have asked him to hide or put away about 2,000 times in the last year because I was afraid that someone would break into his car.

Yeah, so that was a fun $250 dollar deductible lesson.  Actually, I think that having to drive home in 20 degree weather without a window made more of an impression.

P.S.: While Mr. A acknowledges that I was right, he would also like to say the reason no one breaks into my car is because it is so full of junk that it looks like a homeless person might live in it.  That, and it would be too much trouble to sort through the piles of old preschool papers, cracker crumbs, and random toys to try to find anything valuable.   I concede that this is probably entirely true.  It doesn’t mean I wasn’t right about HIS car though.

Edited to add:  One more P.S.  I don’t think I have mentioned how Mr. A and I are a house divided on Democratic politics this time around.  His chips are in with Hillary, while I am a hard core Obama Mama.  I just saw that Obama cleaned up in Iowa.   I am pretty excited.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Today was one of those days. 

L woke up sweet as could be.  Who knew that the devil was lurking deep inside those chubby little cheeks.

I have been trying (and failing miserably) to keep the house clean today because we have houseguests arriving tonight.   As I was distracted with mess-management, L saw her golden opportunity to make new and bigger messes.

So far today L has contributed to distroying the house in the following ways:

• Scribbling on a 2 foot by 2 foot portion of the playroom wall with pencil.
• Breaking a christmas tree ornament that was hung way above her head.  Apparently she scaled the couch to grab it.
• Dumping a 5 lb bag of spagetti on the floor.
• Removing all boxes of tuna helper and mac n cheese from the cupboard and hiding them around the house.
• Replacing the pasta boxes with a chewed apple core which may or may not have come out of the trashcan.
• Pulling out a huge chunk of a new box of tissues.
• Grabbing a coffee filter and grounds from the trash and strewing them around the kitchen.
• Hiding a piece of string cheese in the office drawer (I *think* that was today).
• Grabbing a handful of rice (as I tried to pour from the 20 lb bag) and throwing it up in the air in the kitchen.

I don’t know what has gotten into her, but I hope it is a one day phase.

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

 One blissful evening when M was spending the night with my parents, Mr. A, L and I went out for dinner.  We were minding our own business when a very gushy (presumably drunk) man swooped in to our table.

“OH MY GOD!” he yelled so loudly everyone in the restaurant turned to look, “What a BEAUTIFUL baby!”

After some brief discussion of how old L was, the gushing began again.

“Oh my God, sweetie! You look JUST LIKE YOUR DADDY…Oh, there is a little of your mama in there, too, but you are the spitting image of your daddy!”

Mr. A and I just laughed and sighed in relief when the guy went on his merry way.

From time to time we get similar comments about how much L looks like Mr. A.  If I feel like bothering with it, I will explain that L is adopted.  Other times, I just let it slide.

But for the record, L does not look like Mr. A at all.  She looks Asian, but to me she looks more southern Chinese than northern Chinese.  Mr. A just looks pretty standard Han, I think.  Nothing too regional about his face that I can see.

Lately, I have been doing some research on the area where L was found.  One of the most interesting things about it is how very much L resembles people in her town and the nearby area.  Seriously, I think it wouldn’t be difficult to convince me that any of the women in photos are her mother.   I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but maybe it has something to do with the round faces or close-together facial features…or something.  I don’t know what it is.  But there is a quality that is familiar in their faces.

I shouldn’t have been too surprised when even the Chinese emo hipster kids in this town resemble L.  If I didn’t know better (actually, I dont’!), I might think she was their love child. 

Maybe it is just the hair.   Heh.

(Seriously, though. That photo of the emo kids is from a teenager’s blog in small-town rural China. Isn’t that crazy?)

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

I have been doing this parenting gig long enough to know that kids go through rough patches.  You know, periods of weeks or even months when they seem determined to drive their parents up the fucking wall.  They can’t help it, this is just part of growing up.

The past few weeks, we seem to have entered my most dreaded part of having more than one kid:  when both girls seem to be channeling a demon at the same time.

M is a kid who has always been easy to feed.  Food was never an issue for her.  We sit some food in front of her and she eats an appropriate amount of the choices provided.  Viola!   For four and half years that system worked perfectly. 

Until this month.

All the sudden, M has decided she doesn’t want to eat what we give her.  She is trying to make food a battleground.  I do my best not to engage in those shenanagins.  If she doesn’t want to eat, I am ok with that being her choice. 

Or I was until she hit what appears to be a growth spurt.  Currently, low blood sugar turns her into Linda Blair’s even eviler twin.  This happens about three times every day.   I have tried several different strategies, each seemed to work for a few days.  But then M seems to catch on and find a loophole so she can make eating, snacks and meals as painful as possible.*  Fun times!  

Intuitive girl that she is, L does not want to be left out of the fun.  She has decided that this month is going to be No Sleep Month.  YAY!  Every parent’s favorite. 

For the past 9 months, we have been rocking L to sleep every night with a bottle.  Some nights the rocking could take over an hour before she drifted off.  A few weeks ago, we accidentally discovered that if we rock for a few minutes then lay L in bed, she just goes to sleep.  WTF???  We have literally spent WEEKS of our lives rocking her to sleep.  This was like the jackpot.  We felt we finally had made it over the sleep hump.

Now that she falls right to sleep, she is mixing things up by randomly waking up at about 11:00 pm.  She yells, plays, talks, sings, cries all while demanding my unceasing attention until about 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning.  And she wakes up at somewhere between 5:15 and 6:15.   This is unneccessarily early to say the very least.

The only thing that makes a dent in the sleep disaster is Motrin before bedtime and a second dose around 1:00am.  I keep thinking it MUST BE TEETHING.  L has proven to have the SLOWEST teeth I have ever heard of.  When her second tooth broke through the skin, it moved so slowly the gums kept healing over it and re-cutting for about two weeks before it got high enough for the gums to let it be.  All the while, she screamed and slept poorly.

The screwy sleep at night causes a wacky nap schedule, with L slumping into her cheerios if I don’t give her the opportunity to actually lay down.  She spends a lot of her day cranky because she is overly tired.

Together, L and M are quite the pair the past few weeks. 

“This will pass.  This will pass.  This will pass.” I keep chanting in my head. 

It has to or else I might run away and join the circus. 

P.S.  This post is not a request for solutions to these problems.  With L, we just have to wait it out, hope she cuts the damn tooth already and let her get her body organized again.  As for M, she is clearly feeling her oats and seeing just how far she can use this food thing to control and manipulate her parents.  She is figuring out that it isn’t getting her the attention or response she wants, but she keeps upping the ante to make sure. 

Originally published at American Family. Please leave any comments there.

Something M said yesterday, with no prompting.

M: L!  NO! Don’t touch that!

Me: M, please don’t yell at L.  You are not L’s boss.

M:  I am ONE of her bosses!

 The funniest thing L says:

L: Knock knock!!

Me: Who’s there?

L:  ME!!!

(As a bit of a confession, we trained her to tell that joke, but her timing is impeccable.  We think it is a very sophisticated joke for an 18 month old)