New camera

 
 
 
 

Hmmm, new improved mega mega pixel but same old shutter bug. I guess I better actually read the manual. How cliche.

It's official, I think, China July 2009

 
Here is the babelfish translation from the email I received in response to my question about attending Huang Wei's graduation ceremony. I think that it says we are invited. Huang means yellow, but his name symbol is not the same as the yellow symbol, so, whatever, it's a free translation, can't complain, but you'd think it could sort out yellow from a name. Oh boy, Guangzhou/Guilin/Nanning/Chongqing in July, can't wait, it will be so comfortable and cool, the timing just couldn't have been better.

"Marji and treasure treasure; □□hello, on March 31 we received the mail carrier's bag which you mailed, the true feelings thank you the vitamin healthy product and the cashew which chose for us, we extremely liked. Huang Weidao in July, 2009 graduates. After we must come you Guangzhou to participate the yellow great study graduation ceremony the news to tell him, yellow great is extremely happy, he also very much thought of the treasure treasure in US'S content life, and was anticipating you come that one day."

Blue light special

Doesn't someone NEED these bed linens kukunest so I can get at least a contact high from shoppy shoppy? These sheets hit all my weaknesses: bold graphics in bright colors. Can I have this on my bed? what? too Suzy Zoo for a middle-aged lawyer? naw, I could so totally pull this off and it wouldn't be sad or strange at all, really, really, not in the least. Good thing it only comes in twin or there woulda been a big ol' lantern festival ahappenin' in my room as fast as UPS could put it on a truck.

But she hears good for free

So now we know that Nora can see fine and that she hears like a bat. And the hearing test was free thanks to the kind intake clerk at the state health department who winked at me as she waived the fee because Nora is a pre-schooler, wink, wink. I just love folks like that who can bend a rule once in awhile especially if the benefit of the bend falls my way.
So now we also know that Nora's struggles to learn and behave in school are not related to lack of hearing or poor eye sight, so we've got that going for us. Last fall when I enrolled Nora in kindergarten because she met the age cut-off even though I could see that she was still very emotionally immature, I went ahead anyway with what I now see as a very cavalier attitude that "oh well, I can always hold her back." I'm such a cock-eyed optimist and I really really believed that my obviously bright little girl would catch up, just like YuYu who entered kindergarten at the same age and after leaving China for exactly the same length of time. But Nora is not YuYu, for damn sure, they broke the mold after they made my sweet YuYu. Nora has not caught up and she struggles with both her behavior and the academic challenges presented by the kindergarten curriculum. Like hash marks. Oh lord, looking into her eyes is still like looking into an empty handbag when I try to help her learn four sticks and a stripe mean five.
Well, now the time has come to make the decision to "retain" her in kindergarten for one more year and I'm not feeling so damn cavalier. She needs to stay back, that is clear, but it is hurting her. Nora is FIERCELY competitive, what I would call a one-upper. The kind of person, who during the course of any conversation, has done, felt, accomplished, or lived through something just a little more extreme, harder, intense or funnier than the experience you are trying to relate, and we all know how annoying that is. So my little one-upper will need to repeat kindergarten while Mimi advances to first grade and it is really troubling her now and we're just in the discussion phase. When it is real and Mimi (who is now an inch shorter than Nora although 10 months older) trots off to first grade next fall and Nora stays behind, I anticipate big, sobbing angry grief. I try so hard to present the idea to her in the form that "hey bud, some kids just need more time to learn and you will be the leader in class next year while you have more time to learn." But she is too bright for that and knows that she can't read and can't count past 10 and that the other kids are capable of doing so many things that she can't figure out yet, and it hurts her and she gets frustrated and describes herself so negatively but so matter of factly, that it hurts me.
It is the best decision, and everyone seems to agree that if a child needs to be held back, repeating kindergarten is the least socially destructive year to do it, but, of course, I still have guilt. I'm beating myself up for not anticipating that it was more likely than not, considering her lack of progress leading up to kindergarten, that she would not do well this year. I'm second guessing my decision not to keep her in pre-school another year, but I really really believed that Nora would rise to the occasion and meet the challenge exactly because she is so bright and competitive. But instead, kindergarten whipped her ass this year and because of my Pollyanna tendencies, she is the one who will have her tender feelers hurt. Poor little PITA chip.

A vote of no confidence

Kind and guileless YuYu lost her first tooth yesterday, finally, since she will be seven years old in a little over two months. She was very pleased with herself and I was very pleased with myself because I had two crispy dollar bills saved for the occasion although it’s not like I didn’t have plenty of notice. That little pearl has been hanging on by a thread of flesh for days and days. No WAY would she even entertain the notion of helping it out of the socket a little faster with a little string and door knob action. Come one, don’t tell me that I’m the only one whose older brother convinced her to let him tie one end of a length of string to her tooth and the other end to a door knob and then, slam, tooth out? But when you don’t lose your first tooth until FOURTH GRADE, what the HELL was the matter with my mouth? I tend to think you might be justified to give into extreme measures. Well, thank god my kids are less gullible than I was in my deciduous years, she wouldn't go for the hardware assist.
So, to go along with my excellent preparation with the crispy ones and related smugness, I even remembered to do the deed before I went to bed. I slipped the crispies under YuYu’s pillow before my own head hit my pillow, because, that’s when I usually remember it, right when I’m on the verge of falling asleep and I have to sqeeze every extra ounce of shame on myself to roust my tired butt out of bed to finish my parental tooth duties. But not this time.
But, if anyone remembers this post, there is someone in our household who, through harsh experience, isn’t as sure of our household tooth fairy’s ability to honor her commitments and who, apparently, didn’t want our YuYu to also be disappointed by the slack-ass fairy who has been assigned to us on her collecting route. I really did actually LOL when I walked into my bedroom last night and saw this propped against my pillows:

Dave and Amy are in China!!!

When I announced to the girls that we were going to move to our current house back in the summer of 2005, Ellie's first reaction was, "but what about Jean?" Jean was our next door neighbor for seven years and she was such a good listener, and she let Mimi eat strawberries from her patch and she was a font of good gardening advice. Jean was one of the hardest things to leave behind when we left our old house (that and the MUCH lower mortgage payment, WHAT was I thinking?). Well, Jean's son Dave married a smart, talented, dynamo named Amy who was already blessed with Sarah, who Dave later legally adopted, and then they brought the wondrous Genevieve into the world to make Jean a happy grandma of two beauties. But feeling that their family was not yet complete, Dave and Amy started the adoption process and found a beautiful waiting older child who they will name Eleanor Zi Tao and they are only DAYS away from meeting their new daughter. You can follow their progress at Amy' Blog. Except for a regrettable moment of TA-waiting-induced-self-indulgence when she posted statistical analyses that burned my eyes on her blog, Amy writes beautifully and thoughtfully about their adoption experience and I can't wait to read her thoughts and observations in the next few weeks. I wish them all the best for an easy transition and evolution into a family of five.

And if we hadn't already moved away from Jean, I'd probably be pretty upset with Dave and Amy because they thought it was somehow acceptable to help Jean find a much better job in Colorado and then entice her to leave Utah with stuff like a higher salary and instant access to her grandchildren and junk like that.

$45 later

Nora came home from school with a report that she had flunked the mandatory vision screening and wouldn’t I please follow up with either (a) a professional eye exam, or (b) the DIY chart that came with the too-bad-your-kid-can’t-see report. I scheduled the eye exam, but put her through the DIY test just because it sounded fun. She didn’t miss a beat, her little hand moved up, down, left, right, with amazing speed, and even though I only play a doctor on TV, I concluded that she could see just fine.

But I took her to the optometrist anyway (who knew Costco had optometrists? Five pounds of frozen peas, a pint of roasted garlic hummus the consistency of mousse, so yummy, and vision testing, score). I took her to the eye technician because (a) I know she can see, and (b) I know Ellie’s ophthalmologist is booked 9 months out (and I always love that they test Ellie without her pop-bottles on and send her home with a flunked the vision test report every year too, d’ya think?). If the technician found a problem, the pediatric ophthalmologist would be the second stop on the vision train.

Nora is a quintessential class clown, and with her three sisters in the exam room for a captive audience (teacher ladder day? What the hell is teacher ladder day?), she was in her element and had them all snickering pretty good. I’d try to explain what was so funny, but a lot is lost in the effort to translate 5-year-old humor (a line drawing of a jeep was loosely interpreted as “a snake or stumfing”and got big yuks). When the lights were flipped on and the laughing subsided, the very patient and kind optometrist declared her vision to be sound, a smidge nearsighted, but certainly not anywhere near bad enough to need glasses to navigate her world each day. Hell, my younger brother Clark is navigating the interstates and driving his family (not my family, ever, forget that, blind boy) around town with myopic eyes and should wear glasses, thick glasses, but is proof that you can be very near-sighted and stupid and still get your car in and out of the garage every day.

So, after trying to keep Nora on task and stem her crazy nervous giggling long enough to finish the exam, the optometrist said, with laser-like perspicacity, “I think she probably didn’t co-operate with the eye testers at school.” D’ya think? And that’ll be $45, please pay at the desk.

It's good to have goals

Here is the text of a letter I'm sending off to YuYu's foster family in Nanning. It just occured to me that if I don't say this out loud, create an expectation, have some accountability, I'll never get it done and the opportunity will pass and I'll kick myself in the butt for years.

Dear Family;

Thank you for letting me know that you appreciated the vitamins and cashew nuts. My friend Xiao Hong (who is translating this message) gave me good advice about sending the vitamins and YuYu chose the cashew nuts because she loves them too.

If there is EVER anything that you need or that could make your life easier, please do not hesitate to ask and I will do my best to get it to you. You are YuYu’s parents just as much as I am. I think of you as part of our family. YuYu is a very special child and I know it must still give you pain that she had to leave your home. Her absence must be something you feel sharply because she is so loving and beautiful and unique. It is my hope that knowing that she is happy and thriving here with me and her sisters gives you some comfort.

I would like to plan a trip back to China within the next few years. I was wondering when Huang Wei will graduate from university? Would it be possible for us to attend the ceremonies in Guangzhou and to share his accomplishment with your family?

I know YuYu would be thrilled to share that special event with her brother.

With all our love and respect,

Marji and YuYu

I figure that should put us back in China in the spring of 2009. Don't you think I could get organized by then?

Passive Agressive Mom

So, YuYu has a birthday party invitation for Thursday at 3:30, WTF? So, trying very hard to keep the incredulity and disdain out of my voice because I'm calling her from the center of my universe that crams dinner (both preparation and consumption), homework, reading, bathing, errands, lessons and life into the 2.5 hours between after-work pick-up and 8:30 bedtime, I call back to RSVP with regrets because, "I work full-time and cannot transport her to the party." Good thing I got the recorder given my attitude at the very moment I made that call. But what I was hoping for was a call back from the party mom to say, "Oh don't worry, I'll take her with me when I pick up party girl from school,” or, "Hey, mutual friend is also invited and I'm sure her mom wouldn't mind picking YuYu up at school too." But no, I'm too pissy to make those suggestions because I expect someone who chooses a weekday afternoon for a party to have considered the possibility that some of their little guests may have working parents and that they may need to provide those sweet deserving little girls who had the horrible misfortune of getting stuck in a family with working parents an alternative method of transportation. And, yes, I could have called and been more direct and put party mom on notice that I have irrational expectations and want to know how she planned to get my child to her child's party, but then she would know that I'm a jackass.
And here's how even-tempered and accepting my little YuYu can be: When I told her that she couldn't go to V's birthday party because I couldn't leave work to drive her there, she said, "okay."
And if you noticed the ooze sliding off your computer screen and onto your desk, don’t be alarmed, that’s just my single parent guilt dripping out of every corner of this post, I don’t think it’s infectious.

Promise Keeper

In the beginning, there were no electronic transmissions from the Middle Kingdom. It was the rare adoptive family on the vanguard that could stay connected to the mother ship once they set down on the surface in China. Sending an email home proclaiming your joy and amazement from the White Swan business center was a technical super achievement. We could not have dreamed of a day when we would get more than one referral photo, or more remarkable, that we could get a digi-pic of our waiting child sent from a complimentary computer in the Chinese hotel room of a volunteer working at her orphanage or another adoptive family you "met" on your Yahoo orphanage egroup who traveled ahead of you and snapped pictures or your child when they visited the SWI. Making those kinds of predictions in 1996, when I started this process, would have been severe crazy talk, would have set you up for ridicule, would have marked you as a wing-nut: families allowed to visit an orphanage?!? that's crazy talk.

So, when I traveled to adopt Ellie, back in those early days of China adoption, one 2-inch by 2-inch fuzzy photo, of what may or may not be a Chinese infant or just a life-like replica, was all you were going to get before you took the big leap and flew to the other side of the earth to make your family grow and to bring your tiny photo home. And once you were handed your tiny photo, all you received to fill in the gaps of your child's first months or years was a completely and utterly fabricated immunization record (to comply with INS immigrant visa requirements, see, I'm talking way back in the day, it was still the INS). And yet, somehow, in the absence of advanced technology and reliable information, the face in the tiny photo with the fake shot record, turned out to be the right child. The child you longed for, dreamed about, and in whom you invested your whole heart before you met her all on the basis of a fuzzy 2x2 photo. She was the one, and you knew it without hesitation, only immense gratitude to the hands of fate that brought her to you. And it was everything you imagined it would be times a bajillion. And you loved her. You held that baby and had the world by the tail and the confidence that you could do this right, you could make this right, you could be the parent that she needed. You promised her that you could and you had no doubt that you would deliver. You have never in your life felt stronger or more determined; and it shows, it's written all over your face.

Nine years ago today, my own little fuzzy photo was placed in my arms and became love incarnate. I don't always keep the promises I made to her. Sometimes I fail, I'm too tired, distracted, or impatient, but she always shows me the way to do better, she leads by example. She keeps the silent promise she made to me from that fuzzy photo: she is my child. For now, she thinks that I am the best mother in the world, and that's more than I ever asked for.

What's not to love

I wasted a lot of time today, a lot of time, trying to make this video clip magically appear, as if without effort, on the blog. Well, I'm here to tell you that although it did take an embarassing amount of time, and my 16-yo 'phew could have had it up in a NY second, the computer did not, in the end, whip my middle-aged ass. I did it, so take that you piece of electronic evil. I won. Not you. Me. Feel the burn.

So, the point is that Ellie and I will share our ninth anniversary together on Wednesday, and as I was firing up the nostalgia machine in anticipation of that event, searching my files for something that sadly appears to be lost, I stumbled over this clip instead. I coerced my friends Steve and Kristen into helping me "learn" how to edit video one evening and all that I learned is that Steve and Kristen were very generous not to say no to me even though I am sure that they suspected that I was uneducable because I am only just now, six or seven years later, learning how to do anything more with the video tape than just throwing it in a someday shoebox, as in: someday I'll do something with the dozens and dozens and dozens of video tapes in this shoe box.

So here she is, my darling daughter Ellie, circa May 1999. She is 2.5 years old, eating a popsicle and dancing to Disney's Friends Forever CD in her bedroom. She is on the verge of being potty trained by the tried and true M&M bribery method, hence the repeated requests for "my canny." She is delectable.

Did I mention that I fell hard for this child, harder than two tons of honey covered bricks, but is there any doubt as to why one might fall in love so easily with this joyful, beautiful child? What's not to love.

Post script:

Maniacal embarassed laughter, if you clicked in this morning, you would have seen SIX YouTube screens as six separate posts. So much for feeling like the alpha dog. I kept telling YouTube to upload the clip to my blog, but when it didn't happen immediately, I interpreted that as an absolute refusal and gave up and copied and pasted the clip's URL in a post. So, as is turns out, it wasn't a refusal so much as a digestive issue: YouTube needed to mull over my multiple requests and then, seeing that I was very serious about uploading this clip, acquiesced and did it six times for me. Oh, damn, I'm so digitally inept, makes me chuckle.

Let's all go to the snack bar

A very happy new year for YuYu, a box chock FULL of Chinese snacks with labels we can't read from her foster parents arrived yesterday. Thank You so much Xiao Zhen. I just love these people. I figured the shipping alone was $47 (365 yuan stamped on the customs form) and it couldn’t have been cheap to fill the package with delectables like fruit food, diseased root vegetable sticks, wrinkled brown nuggets, low sugar dates (extolled as leisure and comfortable food on the package), little cakes that are really just little cubes of compressed sweetened flour, longan and osmanthus scented, that disintegrate into a crumbly pile with the slightest touch. YuYu is in snack food heaven. We can add this pile of treasure to the super huge bag of dried squid strips and rock salt plums she’s been working on this week. I am so glad that YuYu has retained her tastes for the food she grew up eating. I hope that doesn’t change.

The picture below is just SOME of the snacks Xiao Zhen loaded me down with when we met them at the orphanage in Nanning before leaving for Guangzhou back in November 2004 when, I want to say “brought YuYu home,” but at the time, felt like “stole YuYu from her.” Obviously, she was worried that I was going to starve our little YuYu pixie stick. Not to worry Xiao Zhen, with all these wonderfully odd snacks, dried squid strips and a freezer full of frozen dumplings, we’re good, she only just looks starved, ooh my that girl is thin, and oh boy is she loved around the world.

Winnah, Winnah, Winnah

No Way!
Way!
And, no one shed blood and/or contracted tetanus, bonus!
Ellie and the winners from the other two fourth grade classes will advance to the district level. You can cut the tension with a knife! Well, my tension anyway, Ellie is surprisingly non-plussed.

Edited to read:

I'm feeling guilt for Ellie's victory and need to add this explanation in our defense so I don't lose my slacker-mom certification: she poked every kernel with a push pin, operated all the machinery (air popper), measured the results, took the pictures, and wrote it all up, fourth grade style. But we've had such a bad/scary mommy-daughter big take-home project history with me yelling and gentle Ellie crying, that I didn't want our fun project to turn into tears this time. So when it looked like it was circling the drain, and I started to lose my patience with her, I broke out the piles of unused scrap book paper, Print Shop and my advanced English language skills and helped her with the layout. And she was so pleased with the result, she was beaming. So, compared to the other tri-folds on display, I'd say my involvment was about medium. Some were waaaaaaaaaay over the top and some were pure and good and touched only by student hands. Yes, I do feel badly that the butterfly project created by S and S, two of Ellie's best friends, was not chosen because it was clearly all their own work (and I KNOW it must have been hard for their very smart and accomplished parents to stand back). On the other hand, I feel great that Ellie and I completed a project together with no yelling and that she is proud of the outcome. I'll try to stand back a little farther next year.

news flash

I interrupt nothing to bring you the late breaking news from the fourth grade science fair:

I won, I won, ahem, I mean, she won, sort of. Ellie's project was one of the five best in her class and eligible to compete in the school fair. I left her this morning setting up her board in the lunch room and waiting for the judges to come talk to her about her experiments for eligibility to compete in the district fair. She's not nervous, she rehearsed her speech, but I don't think it will go very much farther from here. Our little project, while visually appealing, is not the class of the competition. It would be unfair if her project was selected to move up to the district level because those other parents did a much better job than I did.

And this whole project helped me remember my own fifth grade science fair experience where my mom's project, er, my project, went to the state level (UofU Olpin Union Building, I still get a huge nostalgic rush everytime I walk in there). I was a big winner, but measured by today's safety standards, oh good hell, a complete biohazard. Mom went to the local hospital and asked a lab technician for the outdated bottles of the stuff they used to type and test blood and, I kid you not, I used darning needles (straight from a little dish of rubbing alcohol, sterile, sure, but by the time I went to the district fair, the damn things were rusty) to poke people in the finger so I could squeeze out some blood on a glass slide and type it. I kid you not, people let me poke their fingers with rusty darning needles. Can you even imagine? And the sad thing, I cannot for the life of me ever remember my own blood type, B something, not the one that is rare, the common one. My dabble in the dark arts stuck with me great huh?

Stay tuned for more news from the fourth grade science fair exclusively on this blog station.

game over

Well, talk about taking the wind out of your sails. I thought the game was still on. I thought I still had a chance at the crown. What a cruel way to discover that you've been knocking your brains out but the winner had already been decided. Now what? second place mom? I don't think so.

Edited to add:
Well, so much for my attempt at humor, you have to click on the photo to enlarge it enough to get the joke, pretty feeble.

Friends with talent

By this point in my life, it is pretty much widely known that I was born without the "craft" gene or, as it is also known, the "art" gene. I admit that it was hard to grow up with this invisible special need, always carrying the shame of my artlessness and inadequacy, waiting to be found out, and living with the fear of discovery. I remember begging Susan Hurd, the class artist, to illustrate my fourth grade report on Utah's natural resources with a lump of coal. I stared at it for hours; I loved that picture of that piece of coal. I pretended that I drew it; it made me happy to have that illustration on my report, uncommonly happy, pathetically happy.

But, somehow, I managed to complete my education and hide my embarrassing lack of skill from the world for many, many years. I was fortunate in that there isn't much call for illustrations on legal memoranda, very fortunate. Then I became a mother, and I was challenged to create pretty, feminine rooms for my princesses and I punted and resorted to paint with a lot of pigment. It wasn't the same as clouds on the ceiling and a scenes from Grimm’s' fairy tales painted on the walls, but it was the best I could do and the occupants weren't complaining. But, recently, the fear and shame I had managed to repress for so many years came snapping back at me when scrapbook mania seized a world full of people who were longing for a "creative outlet" and creating mountains of guilt for the rest of us who neither had the time nor talent to create acid-free and lignin-free treasures for our loved ones. Talk about feelings of inadequacy, the shame, the shame.

I simply do not comprehend the need for a "creative outlet." I know how it feels to have a need, a desire, a longing to sleep in late or to eat a lot of cheese, these urges I understand and embrace. But I have never felt the need, the desire, the longing, to make things with my own hammy hands. I know that sets me apart from most of the world and I truly wish I could join the happy hordes as they make their way to knitting circle or scrapping parties or painting class. I still really wanted it to be my hand that drew the lump of coal.

So when my friend Suzanne DeCuir emailed a few days ago and mentioned that her talent and skill had been recognized for special distinction and that Artist's Magazine had awarded her first place for oils and will feature this painting in the summer edition, I wanted to share my excitement for her accomplishment, because to me, it is huge, just huge. Suzanne and her husband Patrick and I became first time parents together in February 1998 in a seedy hotel in Changsha, Hunan Province. They were the best of travel mates and I highly value their friendship. I am so amazed at what Suzanne has been able to accomplish with her painting while being a full-time mom to three little girls all because she had a need for a creative outlet. Look what she can pull out of her fingers. How would it be? One of those beautiful paintings is winging its way to me even as I type, my own personal lump of coal to treasure forever, I'm sure I will stare at it admiringly for hours.

Congratulations Suzanne, my friend with talent.

Why Does Popcorn Pop?

So we could finish the damn science fair project, that's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I laid down, I rolled over, I threw in the towel, and any other way you want to say I gave up and pretty much just did it for her. I mean, really, how was she supposed to do it herself? The heck, she's only in fourth grade and can't even do long division yet, so who really thinks this assignment was child centered? Fourth grade science fair my ass. Mom, Print Shop and Google centered science fair is more like it. She's happy with the way it turned out, we finished it TWO WEEKS AHEAD of the deadline, and she's going to keep a bowl filled with popcorn to attract lots of people over to read her board, so that spells success to me. Now if she just doesn't blink between now and the 19th or else she'll forget everything I tried to help her learn about the wonders of popped corn.

But I did learn something I wasn't expecting to learn while trying to desicate popcorn kernels in a quick oven so we could get the experiment completed. We learned that popcorn is a great source of fuel for a cozy kitchen fire. Nothing smells more like lovin' in the oven than popcorn popping wildly in a too hot oven and bursting into flames on the heating element. Yum, yum, yum.

Onolicious Wahines Talk Story

Heard around the dinner table:

Ellie: The tallest goes Mom, me, YuYu, Nora then Mimi.

Mimi: Awoh.

Ellie: The oldest goes Mom, me, YuYu, Mimi then Nora.

Nora: Awoh.

Ellie: The first adopted goes me, Mimi, YuYu then Nora.

Mimi: You forgot Mom.

Me: No bud, I grew in Grandma’s tummy, I wasn’t adopted.

Mimi: No, Grandma had to go pick you up in Hawaii.

I wish. And given my birth weight (I was a VERY healthy baby born with (BSG (big strapping gal) Syndrome, still have it), I bet Grandma wishes she could have skipped child birth for a nice Hawaiian vacay too.

PITA redeemed

Wednesday evening, Nora decided to tantrum, for a long time, a long, ear-splitting, nerve-shredding time, over picking her clothes off the ground. It had been a very stressful work day and I was simply out of emotional resources. I really lit into her. I was a monumental Yelling Mom. Shall we say that I definitely made her regret and rethink her decision to dump her clothes/shoes in a heap in the TV room and then to refuse to pick them up. Or to be more precise, my display of anger apparently scared the shit out of her.

So last night, I put Nora and YuYu in the tub before dinner and got their little brown selves all cleaned up and smelling like soap, yum, delicious pretty girls. After dinner, I ran the tub and dunked Mimi in for her much needed sudsing. She asked to play for a minute, so I retreated to my newspaper for awhile. Then, next thing I know, Mimi is standing next to me, wrapped in a towel, with her hair all wet and dripping. I started to get a little put out, because I could hear the water running out of the tub, but I know that Mimi can't handle her own hair ball head yet and needs help getting the shampoo sudsed in and rinsed out and I was going to need to run another tub. I started to lead her back to the bathroom, asking why she had forgotten to wash her hair. She told me, no, her hair was clean.

Me: How? how can your hair be clean?
Mimi: Nora helped me.

You could have pushed me over with a bottle of no more tears. I went into the bathroom and there was Nora, all business like, picking the toys out of the water and grabbing the great ghastly wads of Mimi's hair before it could go down the drain. I lifted her up, hugged her close and thanked and praised her for several minutes.

Me: Nora, thank you so much, I really really appreciate your help. I love you so much.
Nora: Yor welcome, I want you like me.

Agggh, knife wound.

Excited about Veronica

Many years ago, in a parallel universe that seems to be lifetime ago, I had the great good fortune to share the misery of being a "summer associate" after my first year of law school with the lovely Ms. Valerie Mangine, nee Brown. It was such a relief to share that first stab at law practice with someone with whom I could also share my insecurities and the "omg I can't do this I'm going to get fired before I ever get hired" fears. Not to mention our memorable trip through the desert outside of Vegas on Labor Day weekend with the heater ON in my miserable old Subaru. I did the complaining for both of us, she was so gracious about it.

Now the divine Ms. Val and her equally fabulous husband Buddy (who, although I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, must be fabulous or Val wouldn't have chosen him and since when they travel, their adult to kid ratio will be so much better than mine, I should think I'll get to meet him on my turf, yes?), is days away from winging her way to China to adopt the prettiest little petal who they will name Veronica Quinn. They've started a blog, Val's blog , and I can hardly WAIT to hear about and see the big day.

Their excitement, love and joy for this small beauty are wonderful to share.

The Pain in the Ass (PITA) Factor

The kids are with grandma for MLK day, and yes, all you single working parents who read this blog, I do know how lucky I am to have my mother, who is mostly still in control of her faculties, close enough to cover for me on school holidays, at least when she doesn’t have other plans, which she is perfectly entitled to have, don’t get me wrong, but I’m so grateful when she’s available to be the relief hitter.

And speaking of no heat, my office is located in a circa 1898 school building that was turned into office space in the 1980s. So its all exposed brick, original maple floors, very appealing visually, BUT with global HVAC problems (last winter was ridiculous and we were without heat for days and days) and localized HVAC problems for this suite only (something something, damper motor, something) and it’s damn cold in here, my gadget clock says 61 degrees and I’m practically sitting on my space heater, but still, my hands just want to quit typing and curl up inside my coat sleeves. It’s been bad for three weeks, on again, off again, and I’m kind of at wit’s end, but I digress.

So, yes, the PITA factor. Just called to check on the girls and mom says, yes, they’re fine, but Nora is just a pain in the ass. I say, yes, yes, I know. She says what can you do about it? I say, just keep my cool and hope she grows out of it. And really, what else can I do? She is either (a) complaining about something that seems to me to be insignificant, but to her is grossly unfair (victim mentality, oh my, so unattractive on a child), followed up with a harrumph, a stamp off in a huff and a pout with arms folded across chest for extra emphasis, or (b) indulging her hair-trigger negative reaction to everything regardless if the trigger is a good or bad thing (e.g. Nora, flush the toilet after yourself, neutral request, yes? No. That is very negative comment in her book and must be accompanied flopping and whining and moaning). She is “very reactive” as Miss Judy says, and oh my, it wears one down, or(c) giggling maniacally in any new situation or circumstance or when she alone finds something amusing (she has a pretty warped sense of humor) to the point you just want to crawl under the cone of silence until she quits.

When Suzanne, the social worker who has written all of my adoption home study reports, came to finish our last home study interview for Nora’s one year post placement report, Nora treated her to twenty minutes of the inappropriate giggling and/or back talk or sassiness in response to every question Suzanne asked of her. When we moved to a different room, away from the kids, to complete the interview, Suzanne noted that, yes, indeed, Nora is a PITA and it must wear me out to constructively redirect her every three minutes and was I concerned about her ability to ever make any friends because who would put up with that crap? And no, Nora has not made any friends at school and she has no idea how lucky she is that her sisters are tolerant of her crap. Even Ellie has run out of patience with her and that’s hard to do, that’s just very hard to do.

However, Nora does have flashes of cooperative behavior and I praise praise praise her for any positive impulse that she comes up with. She loves the attention for good behavior, but doesn’t seem to mind the negative attention for bad behavior. She plays so well with Lan Ellison who is one year younger than Nora. It is truly amazing how well they get along together. But Nora cannot maintain her composure when she plays with kids her own age and something ends up getting tossed or I have to end up separating Nora from the other kids so they can play in peace.

Mimi and Nora are in the same class and I’ve said no to a few invitations for Mimi to go on play dates when it did not include Nora, but most of the mom’s will extend the invitation to Nora when I mention that they are sisters. Last week Sarah’s mom called to invite Mimi to Jungle Jim’s after school on Friday and I did not want Mimi to miss out just because Nora wasn’t invited. When I called back to confirm the invitation, I mentioned that Nora and Mimi were sisters, and yes, I was trying to be ever so slightly manipulative, but hey, can you blame me, but this mom was very direct and didn’t let me manipulate her. The invitation was for Mimi only because she did not feel like she could handle 4 hours of Nora. I agreed, and reiterated that I wasn’t asking for her to take Nora too, just making sure the she would be prepared for Nora’s water works when she picked up Sarah and Mimi at school. Needless to say, this was a crushing blow to Nora, and to her credit, she did not fall completely apart, just one or two jags. I think we’re going to run into this more and more as Mimi and Nora get older. Nora is having a very difficult time learning to read and if she doesn’t start picking up on social cues and learn to get along with kids better, I will have to make the decision to hold her back. I don’t think Miss Judy wants her for another year, but I don’t want Nora to constantly be fighting to keep up academically and socially for her entire elementary school experience. Parent teacher conferences are next month. When I mentioned my concerns about Nora last time, Miss Judy thought she had plenty of time during the rest of the year to catch up. I’ll talk to Miss Judy again, see where she thinks Nora is heading, but holding her back sounds more and more appealing to me as each week that passes finds her unable to connect that letters are sounds and words are a series of sounds, she just can’t see it yet.

So here I am, one year later, with a few more insights into Nora’s personality, and the knowledge that yes, she’s a royal PITA and not easy to love. What I’m still finding difficult to overcome is that, even with these insights, I still let her push my buttons and play me like an ocarina. I have precious little more insight into why I can’t find the level of affection for her that I hold for my other girls. We will always be oil and water, okay, that’s a given, now how do I snap out of it and just learn to love the little PITA even though she is a little PITA? And I do love her, please don’t worry that I’m cold and remote or withholding, I’m too sappy and sentimental for that. But I still do not love her the same and I feel sorry for her and me because I haven’t found the code that will let her gain entry all the way into my heart where the other three not perfect either but so much easier to love children are latched on like burrs.

adoption day anniversary: one year with Nora

 

Overheard on Nora’s adoption day last Wednesday.

I’m at the kitchen sink and the three youngest were brushing their teeth around the corner in the bathroom.

YuYu: Nora, I’m glad you came to be our sister.
Nora: [tittering] Why?
YuYu: Because you are cute and funny and smart and brave.
Nora: [over the top tittering that’s her way of saying “I’m uncomfortable” and I’m not sure how I’m supposed to act]
Mimi: But when you giggle too much, that’s very ‘noying. I wish you could stop.
Nora: [more uncontrolled and uncontrollable tittering]

The room where my home computer is located was probably supposed to be a root cellar or some such because there’s no ductwork and I'm feeling a little rutabagish down here in the cold. It’s 15 degrees outside and doesn’t feel that much warmer in this terrible little room. I’m thinking a lot about my progress with Nora and want to get my thoughts on paper, but I just can’t work under these conditions. I’m thinking the blog might be a little weak until the spring thaw, yeowch.

But I think YuYu and Mimi distilled my feelings pretty succinctly: yes, I agree, Nora is beautiful and smart and funny, but damn, she’s “in your face annoying” a lot of the time and I wish she could stop.

My Cook

Nora’s one-year anniversary is coming up in three days. I’m dancing around the hard stuff. I try to express my feelings for her and can’t get the words or the tone right. I am not despairing, far from it, but it’s been a year and the number 365 has not had the magical effect I was hoping it might have. As I work through my scattered feelings about my little Guilin beauty, here’s a photo from today and a story about my 6-year-old Mimi from Chongqing.
Mimi came up the stairs with her hair stuffed in this knit cap that YuYu's foster grandma gave her last year, announced that she was hungry and started scarfing down my lean cuisine (you know, at least I'm trying, but results do vary). I grabbed the camera to capture her silliness and she piped up: "Can you do these to my fah . . . ....., my cook? The one that loved me.” She had started to say foster family, like Nora and YuYu. Seems I always have a package half started for their foster families and I try to include a lot of photos. Mimi is very aware that Nora and Mimi have something “more” than she has with regard to her beginnings.
Mimi came to me directly from the Fuling SWI in Chongqing. She was 11 months old. We had the tremendous good fortune to drive out and visit the SWI after we received our children in Chongqing. It was a two hour bus ride capped off by maybe an hour and a half, tops, of walking through the old facility (since replaced with a new building to house the children, check the link to Fuling Kids International on the side bar) with me clutching Mimi and trying to figure out how to smuggle as many babies as possible out the gate without getting caught. But that’s a different story.
While we were at the Fuling SWI, a nice looking man with a crew cut courteously showed interest in our Mimi. I asked about him and his connection to Mimi and was told, I think, it was hectic what with my open weeping over the conditions and what not, that he was the cook for the orphanage/old folks home combo and that Mimi was a favorite of his. It certainly appeared that he thought she was special and although she did not reach for him, she was comfortable in his arms. Since I’m a beauty school drop out with regard to scrapbook creating, we haven’t spent a lot of time looking at photos from her adoption trip together. And, really, saying not a lot is even misleading because that would imply any. We just don’t look at the photos, but on the few occasions that we have gone through them together, I have mentioned this man and let Mimi know that he had singled her out as a special baby. But I have not created a myth or dwelled on the story, just kind of mentioned it in passing. But she seems to need this story. She needs to know that she was loved from the beginning.

None of my kids are sophisticated enough in their emotional understanding of abandonment and adoption and what that says about their start in life to ask questions or show any concern, yet. In other families, these issues jump out early and need to be addressed and salved and lovingly handled and placed into perspective much earlier and often than we have experienced. Adoptive parents try to prepare themselves and provide their children with the tools to explore and embrace the early loss, but how each child reacts to their difference is impossible to predict. I know that when Mimi’s time comes to examine her life and how she came to live it, I just know that I will be grateful for two things: this cook who loved her and the opportunity to visit the orphanage to get picture proof that it was so.

He likes me, he likes me, he really likes me

Last year, "Santa not know where I am." This year, he got the address right, smart man.

Mom, can we borrow your camera?

Uh, sure, don't drop it.

Happy Ammon Day!

I met the Stephen, Stephani, Lan and Ammon at the airport this afternoon and here they are in all of their .3 megapixel glory because I left the real camera and the small, but thoughtful, token gift for the kids on the kitchen table this morning and had to resort to the camera phone.*

Edited to read STEFANI, yes, I have met the woman on more than a few prior occasions, but from reading this entry, you might think I went to the airport to ambush strangers with my camera phone, and it's REALLY bad because what's my pet peeve you may ask?, well I'll tell you because with the general tone of discontent running through this blog, you would be right to guess that I have more than one pet peeve, but this time the particular peeve that makes spelling Stefani's name wrong is how upset I get because my name is ALWAYS spelled incorrectly. And congradulations ?!?! please, for the love of Mike people, congradulations?!?!

Stephani said it was okay to post Ammon's picture because she and Stephen were going to crawl into bed and wouldn't be heard from until next week. They are exhausted with a capital Ammon. It's Stephani's story and she will tell it so much better than I can, so until she gathers her strength, these photos of tired Ellison's will have to do. They are well and healthy, just tired.

*And a big hand for the middle aged mom who didn't let technology whip her ass. this is the first time I've ever figured out how to get a picture off my phone, I'm hip, oh yeah I'm hip. Just don't text me, I couldn't receive and read a text message if there was gun pointed at my head, sad, sad, but true.

Treasures from the Orient

There was a package on the porch when we came home this evening and I assumed it was from Nanning, but NO! it was from Guilin and Nora's foster family. There was a sweet note, in English, thanking me for taking care of Xiao Ye and FIVE, count'em, FIVE hand knit sweaters, I'm all a flutter. I cannot craft, but I can appreciate hand made items and probably appreciate them more because I could never produce anything wearable or usable with my own two useless appendages. But will you look at these?!?!?!? they're gorgeous. I'm so pleased, these are expertly knitted garments, the stitches are uniform, the seams are incredibly neat and few, I'm just amazed by these sweaters.

When I developed the disposable cameras I sent ahead, I was disappointed on two counts: (a) all the pictures had been all shot in the morning at the Guilin train station and on the train to Nanning with the SWI staff member who escorted her, and (b) from the photos of Nora on the train, I could see that her family had sent her off in many layers including a beautiful lavender, hand knit sweater that the SWI minder had obviously relieved her of before she brought her to me at the Civils Affairs office in the Lottery Hotel in Nanning. I was sad that Nora lost that sweater, it was lovely and it also looked hand made and it would have been a tangible legacy from her foster mother.

Well, thanks to her foster mother's continuing generosity, Nora has another sweater almost just like the one they sent her off with last January and I am pleased for Nora. There were also two photos of Nora's foster sister, she looks to be about two-years-old now, such a sweetheart. I hope some day to hear that she has been placed with a permanent family, that would be welcome news.

Cinderella's Castle

Well, she could live there, if she had a temple recommend (wink wink, inside joke). Took in the lights at Temple Square on Sunday night with dutch uncle Stew after he fed us dinner WITH a dessert, my kids were stunned and all like dessert ?!?!?, dessert ?!?!? what's that? (I don't make dessert any more because they eat their two puny bites and leave the rest of the scrumptious stuff just staring at me and I start to hear the voices, eat me, Eat Me, EAT ME, so yeah, no dessert).

The weather was just right, still warmish, just starting a drizzle that didn't turn into snow fall until we were just pulling into our gararge as we returned home.

We popped into the little visitor center on the south side of the square to warm up a little and because it looked like a choir was getting ready to sing (a small, non-MoTab choir, but they had spammy matching outfits and it looked like it was going to be at least well-rehearsed) and it was a little surprising to the system to have the church's messages of ever-lasting bliss jumping off the walls at me. The last time I went inside a visitor's center in Temple Square was when I was a teen and I barely had the self-awareness to question my high school band leader's philosophies let alone a world religion. I had forgotten the hard sell. These folks really really want you to find happiness and a way to keep your family together forever and eternity. If any of the volunteer missionaries who were working the crowds last night knew my older brother, I think that it would not be hard to convince them that eternal family togetherness would be hellish and a reason to run, run fast, from any religion that would keep you hooked up to that jerk FOOOORRRRREEEEEVVVVVEEEERRRR. Families are Forever is a frightening proposition depending on the personalities of the constituent members. Shiver.

Anatomy of a holiday card

So, I had this idea, matching dresses (at a deep discount, because I just ordinarily wouldn’t go for purple tie-dye), and I’d get them into the kid pic studio, the kind that makes appointments, and they would have hair cuts and clean tights with no holes in the knees and they would be stunning and it would reflect so well on my organizational skills and, well, that flopped. The damn dresses hang like sacks, they didn’t shrink in the vast amounts of yardage necessary to make it look like the girls weren’t wearing tie-dyed cement bags, and no hair cuts because Miss Shanna (who could cut “strong” Asian hair and for whose skills I was willing to drive to her BFE hair salon (manyth East and manyth South, when you grow up in Davis County, anyth South past 33rd is the suburbs of BFE and this salon was in Sandy, two exits past BFE in my universe), she moved back to Wyoming and even though it’s tempting, I won’t take them 7 hours one way for a good hair cut. Conversely, I won't take them 10 minutes away for a bad hair cut either, so, no hair cuts, no fabulous matching dresses, no studio portrait.



















So, in a rush to get the cards out because I didn’t generally announce our move to this bigger but not better house 1.5 years ago and I was worried that too many cards that people planned to send us would go to the old house where the forwarding order expired long ago, and if I got our cards in the mail pronto, maybe the wasted postage could be avoided, I slammed some Santa hats on their heads, pushed them up against the fire place and snapped away, growing progressively more threatening as shot after shot came out with crazy eyes.
The last shot that was finally acceptable was taken just before they all started to cry because I was getting so frustrated with them and hissing at them to keep your eyes OPEN, NO ONE BLINKS, NO ONE!!!
Ah, perfection, kind of, almost, good enough, get those bad boys in the mail.

And yes, I HAVE always admired the works of William Faulkner, and I think that the use of periods is greatly over-rated, slows down the mind's eye, takes away from the conversational sounds of reading a great rush of words, dontcha think?

Screwing the pooch, single working mom style

Oh, man, it happened again. In my ethno-centric (or whatever the term is for filtering everything through your individual point of view and that term could be self-centered, me? never) view of the world, I had Nora and Mimi all cleaned up for a birthday party at a local pool on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. Yeah, I had them bathe first because it was the civically responsible thing to do, trust me.

When we arrived in the pool area, wahoo, double bonus points, there were Nile and Kim who were parked at the edge of the pool deck over-seeing their 5th grader’s birthday party. And as their guests were arriving, I got to see even more old friends and colleagues, so good day for mom. But it got to be 2:15 pm and I don’t see anyone who looks like they should be there for a 6-year-old b-day party. Finally, I get a little concerned and I ask Nora and Mimi for the b-day girl’s last name so we can check at the desk to see how I might have messed up. I’m starting to get that feeling that, once again, this single working mom has screwed the pooch and not in the way you may think (and, no, not literally screwing the pooch, that’s a literary reference, sort of, remember Gus Grissom in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff?, he “screwed the pooch” and that phrase has always stuck with me, but maybe I better find a different phrase if I feel compelled to explain that one to this extent, hmm?).
Mimi has no idea what the b-day girl’s last name might be (that is typical for Mimi, she still can’t tell me the names of the kids she plays with at school), but Nora, bright as a button comes up with the last name because “Hanson, then Green,” well close, but she did remember that the b-day girl’s name is always called close to her name in alphabetical order at school, she just got the before and after switched. Ellie ran back from the front desk with the information I already suspected to be true: the b-day party was FRIDAY at 2:00 pm.
Crap, I read the invitation and calendared the time/date on the BIG BOARD OF LIFE and in my handheld device, so I didn’t FORGET the party (although I have done that too), but I did ASSUME that it would be on a Saturday because who the hell can get their kids to a b-day party in the middle of the work day on a Friday? So why would I even think that the party would be on any day except Saturday, well, here’s the answer: I wouldn’t think it. And the really pathetic part?, I pulled this before two years ago. Standing on Laurel’s front porch with Ellie one Saturday afternoon, brightly wrapped present in hand, ringing and ringing the doorbell to no response because the damn party was a memory from the day before and Laurel’s whole family was somewhere else, going on with their lives, even though I was stuck living in an alternate working parent universe.

So, I took some time and visited some more with Nile and Kim, let the two littles swim, held YuYu as she silently cried (she didn’t have a swimming suit on and couldn’t get in the water), paid on the way out the door for 30 minutes X 2 of County Rectaculous swimming (didn’t want to miss a “values” moment, even though we got past the desk on the way in for free because we were going to a damn b-day party, I wanted them to know that we still needed to pay to swim) and vowed to never pull this stupid trick again.

Friday b-day parties, sheesh, have you ever?