Too Tired to Blog

The good news and the grumpy news, in headline form.

Cats Pee on Baby Sling
MeiMei Endures (Loudly) 4 Vaccinations, 2 Blood Draws; Pronounced Healthy (Yippee!)
Mom Jumps Curb As Roto Rooter Man Blocks Driveway
JieJie Says in Sleep:"Move That Baby Away!
Cats Pee on Mom's Purse
Dad Loses His Cell Phone
MeiMei Points at Buddha, Says "Mama"
Dad Leaves Mommy's Cell Phone at Store 10 Miles Away
Mei Mei Does First Somersault
(Unrelated Story) APB Posted for Missing Highchair Harness
MeiMei Grabs, Opens Stamp Pad
"Breakthrough: JieJie Writes "I Heart Baby"
Cats Pee on Dad's Messenger Bag
Mom Foresees Nap on Friday

Warming Up, Melting Down

MeiMei is crawling boldly into the heart of our family, with her camera-ready grin and her engaging squeals. Her hands are so fast she could be a pickpocket, and perhaps pay for her education. As I carried her in the garden the other day, she reached out and grabbed two cherry tomatoes and had them in her mouth before I even noticed.

She still loves Daddy best of all, and prefers if he puts her to bed and gives her her morning bottle, but she seems quite satisfied with her new Mom, and of course ecstatic over the cats.

JieJie, however, is breaking my heart. She is so unsettled by her sister, that on Thursday and Monday she refused to go to school. On Thursday she cried all the way there and clung to my ankles in the classroom. Her teacher hugged her and I left with MeiMei, quite shaken. JieJie adjusted to her nursery school beautifully last year and only cried the first day, so I'm sure this has more to do with MeiMei than anything else.

Being a horrible slacker mom, and not wanting to stray too far from the school in case they called me to come and get JieJie, I schlepped MeiMei into the nail salon across the street, thinking I could give her the bottle I had prepared, and she would fall asleep on my lap. But no sooner were my legs slathered with a seaweed smelling stuff that made me crave sushi, than MeiMei started to wail. My feet were wrapped in pointy white elf boots that cooked the seaweed. "Twenty minutes,'' I was told. MeiMei screamed. The only other customer was the mother of a 14-month-old, and she said she understood, but she didn't have her poor unhappy child slung over her lap, or even in the salon. The employees were kind and put up with the noise. i felt trapped and self-indulgent.

Eventually, MeiMei fell asleep and forgot all about the indignities of the salon. We went home in a thunderstorm, and played on the bed with a rubber duck and a rubber fish for more than an hour until she knew which was which in English.

JieJie has not bounced back so rapidly. At her request we sent her to the morning school session on Monday as a trial, although, when 8:15 a.m. rolled around she was back in meltdown mode. On Monday night she said she had been very brave at school. No details. She decided that she wanted to go mornings every day. My heart sunk as I realized that mornings may make JieJie happy, but when I return to work, and my night shift, I will have only a few hours with her until the weekend comes. Perhaps that is a selfish way of looking at it, but I thought afternoon school would put the children on my schedule for another year and maybe two, preventing any drastic decisions that might take me away from a job I enjoy. Mostly.

Although the school schedule seems settled, JieJie does not. She broke down a few more times during the evening over seemingly minor concerns. Of course she is mourning the days when she was the one and only. Work-weary Daddy took over MeiMei. I made JieJie a grilled cheese (or girl cheese, as she calls it) with crusts trimmed and fed it to her along with strawberries. We looked at Halloween costume ideas on the computer. She chose a dense, 30-page, Jenny the Cat book for her bedtime story.

i'm bracing for another storm in the morning.

What Would Super Mom Do?

MeiMei was sad to see Dad leave for work today, and was a little subdued all day. JieJie was totally cranked up. She did not want to go to school and said that once she got there,"I thought about you and huggles and home and Dad and Sister and all that." On her first day back at school, yesterday, she burst in the door all excited to say she had counted to 100, but today was different.

She tried everything to slow down the process, including eating two whole lunches and writing all over herself with a red body crayon. (Why did I give her the eye pencil sharpener to use on her fat colored pencils?) It seems she did not want to go for a few reasons, among them the fact that a teacher had mistaken her for a 3-year-old. Another was that as the only student who attended afternoons only, she always arrived at naptime and entered a dark classroom.

We got to school a few minutes late, hoping naptime would be over. Once again, the petite JieJie was mistaken by the woman at the door for a member of a younger class. (And MeiMei was told she was a handsome little boy). From what I could deduce, JieJie had actually attended the younger kids' class for at least one day and possibly more, and the teacher I had met and chatted with in the first week of school was the teacher of the younger kids. That explains why JieJie brought home two different lists of school supplies.

JieJie had been in the new school only a week before we left for China and she wasn't too sure about the place. I was starting to understand why, and tried to make her feel better. At the same time, I tried to engage her teacher while jogging MeiMei on my hip. The teacher backed away with JieJie, saying as she went back top her charges, "It would be so much easier if she was a morning student.'' (We had chose the private pre-K because it offered the option of afternoons only, perfect for a mom who works nights and wants to spend mornings with her kids.) JieJie, pulled along by the hand, disappeared into the classroom.

MeiMei and I went left for the grocery. That's when I realized my t-shirt was on inside out.

We went anyway. I wanted MeiMei to get her official initiation at the store that gives kids a free cookie and balloon. The floral counter was oddly bereft of balloons, however. A sign said that there would be no free balloons until further notice because of the "global shortage of helium." I must be even more out of touch than I thought.

She Called me Mama

She reached out to me and opened and closed her little starfish hands and said, "Mama!"

I was stunned. I thought it would take a very long time for MeiMei to know who was who and even to articulate the sounds, although her repertoire of gurgles and squeals has broadened as she has opened up to us. (Maybe it was just luck that she uttered those two syllables at that moment).

JieJie was very quick to say Mama, in a little babydoll voice, slapping my shoulder to wake me. She was nearly 15 months old when she came home. MeiMei will be 13 months tomorrow. Gradually, we are realizing just how much of a baby she is. For example, this weekend we had had to buy 2 infant car seats once we realized she does not hold up her head well enough to sit in the ones we used for JieJie.

MeiMei likes to experience life, including meals, with her whole body. She likes to pee as soon as her body is free of a diaper. She covered JieJie and me with a paste of sweet potatoes and carrots and tofu last night, occasionally, getting a handful somewhere near her mouth. So far, there seem to be no great skin benefits to root vegetables topically applied. Not the ideal way to feed kids, but we all were laughing and having so much fun it seemed a shame to clean up and consign the girls to the tub.

On Monday JieJie returns to afternoon pre-K and on Tuesday Daddy goes back to work, several days later than he had intended. The sense of being overwhelmed is rising. The house is knee-deep in toys and still-packed suitcases. It's not close to being completely child-proofed. I found a banana peel under the dining room table. The girls slept until nearly 7 today, which was great, but mom has a nasty post-China respiratory infection and Dad woke up with the same symptoms. The neighbors invited us to breakfast, and we never got around to responding properly.

Since we got home we have managed to get the kids out to the park or somewhere each day, but today, they are still not fully dressed. Neither are we, although I did spend a couple of hours wearing baby in a sling. I don't think that counts as dressed.

There is so much we need to do: Laundry, cooking a few things for the week, haircut for JieJie, install new car seats, pick up entire box of tissues MeiMei dismantled. (She likes to pretend to blow her nose). There are baby toys and boxesof books and signing videos to drag out of the attic, other toys to put into the attic so we can move around in the playroom, trash to empty, an ancient double stroller from a yard sale that needs repairing before I can take the two to the park on my own. The list seems endless.

I'm thrilled I will have 5 months at home with MeiMei before I return to work, but right now work seems much less daunting than being home. Moms have taken care of kids since time began. They have also kept their houses clean and cooked food. I know I can do it. I'm just not as organized or prepared as I would like to be. I miss seeing friends, I miss reading, I would love the time to do a crossword puzzle. But for now, I should be happy that adequate sleep is possible.

Last time I stayed home I was totally immersed in baby. I promised myself that this time I would get to the Y, and make time for some mental activity. But there are other things to tackle with 2 kids. JieJie has not been to the OT for a month to deal with her sensory issues, and we have not kept up with body brushing the way we should. We need to work that back into our schedule. We also need to find a way to approach potty training again with JieJie,who is now 4-and-a-half, and precocious in every other way but this one. We'll talk to the occupational therapist again about it and see if it's time to go to the counselor we discovered who has a daughter from China and has dealt with the potty aversion issue among other adjustments. JieJie needs her teeth cleaned, MeiMei needs her antibiotic dose for a skin infection, Daddy needs a shower, Mom needs to pick those tomatoes in the garden.

No wonder we have not gotten around to downloading and uploading photos!

Dragging

The girls slept through until about 4:30 a.m. today.

Lagging

Jet lag has a hold on us. We dragged the kiddies to the playground to try to keep them going until 7:30 p.m. Yesterday they started to fall asleep around 2 p.m. and woke at midnight or so, rarin' to go. MeiMei loved the slide and the baby swings and JieJie delighted in demonstrating the playground equipment. MeiMei has a much different personality than her older sister, but they have some of the same predilections, like an insatiable need to pull first editions off bookshelves and tug the tails of cats.

We're Home

Or, as JieJie put it to a screaming MeiMei trapped in her first car seat, "Ying ying, you're not in China any more."

More later.