Meimei's Knock-Knock Joke

Meimei: Knock knock.

Mom: Who's there?

Meimei: Why the chicken chase the road?

Mom: I don't know. Why?

Meimei, collapsing in laughter: Because he eat WORMS!

I think she's getting the idea.

It Beats Resting

Meimei was up to her usual tricks tonight. As soon as we were comfortably settled in bed, she said, "Pee, pee."
I took her to the toilet. Nothing.
Back in bed, she said, "Mama, want dress." Lately she has been into wearing dresses to bed. With leggings. Sometimes she has more than one costume change, signaled with the command, "New dress"; later it's "new pants," and so on into the night. Since Daddy was working late and I was feeling less than perky, I said no. Meimei"s face crumpled as the wail rose. As she eyed me to gauge my reaction, she poked out her tongue to catch the cascading tears.
"Want dress NOW."
"Not tonight," I told her. Your sister needs to sleep. She has school in the morning, and you have gym class."
"Want DRESS!"
I tried to ignore the tears and tell the story. Meimei turned up her personal volume. She drowned me out. I knew she was manipulating me, but it still broke my heart to see her in tears.

"O.K., sweetie," I told her." What if I got you a dress."
The noise stopped. She thought.
"I be happy?"
"And then would you want something else?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Blue pants."
"And after that?"
"I be happy?" She was smiling now.
"And then you would want what?"
"Snack!"
"And after the snack?"
She thought again.
"Brush teeth!" Now she was really enjoying the game.
"And what would you want after that?"
"Get Bipedal!" (Bipedal is a beanbag dog, companion to her favored stuffed dog, Blackear.
"And where would we go to get Bipedal?"
"Downstairs!"
"And then what would we do?"
"Watch 'Oobi'."
"We can do all those things, but we'll do them all at the same time, later, when I say so. Can you be patient and wait a little while?"
Her antics continued, but she waited. Soon Jiejie was asleep and Meimei and I headed to her room for the perfect dress, new undies and a little jacket with ballet shoes embroidered on it. Then down we went to find Bipedal, have a snack and watch the Radio City Music Hall "Christmas Spectacular."

Talking in Her Sleep

Jiejie said:

"boo! Boo! Excellent!" with a smile.

And later, "I paused it in my head."

In the Footsteps of the Dinosaurs

We started watching "Dinosaur Train" after I read about it on an adoption list-serv. It is indeed an adoption story. Mrs. Pteranodon breezily welcomes a strange egg to the family nest. Three pteranodons hatch -- Tiny, Shiny and Don -- then all eyes turn to the adopted egg, and out pops Buddy, who looks nothing like the other nestlings. What species is he? No one knows yet, but no matter, Mrs. Pteranodon carries him in her beak while the winged siblings fly with her to the train depot.

Jiejie and Meimei love this. Meimei likes to be Buddy. Jiejie alternates between pretending she is Tiny and Don. Jiejie is enraptured with the conductor, a Troodon, and now he is the subject of our nighttime story and a list of nagging questions starting the minute she opens her eyes, asking about every possible detail of the story while trying to control its direction.

Between stories and the show, the girls have learned a surprising number of dinosaur species and their characteristics, and Buddy has learned he is a T rex. He doesn't look like his family or eat like his family of fly or dive to catch fish, and although he meets a roaring, snorting, carrion-chomping Tyrannosaurus family and is delighted to learn more about what he will grow into, he also knows he belongs with his forever family and intends to stay there (although he is a wee bit concerned about carrion-breath)

Tiny Dancer

Meimei has a creative movement class starting today, about 12 minutes ago, to be exact, although she just got out the door. She was excited for weeks, twirling and spinning and posing before the mirror with arms curved in an arch over her head. "I'm a princess," she says. "Really a princess."
But when the moment came today, this little veteran of swim class and art class and scribble and stretch class would not go out the door. Then she only wanted to go wearing the mismatched clothes (two competing patterns of stripes) she had insisted on for bed and her silver princess shoes without socks.. These days she goes through several bedtime costume changes and instead of pajamas, she wants to wear dresses and pants.So, she got sweat pants over her striped bottoms, hello kitty socks under the princess shoes and a two-babysitter escort (at her insistence). I guess she is a princess.

The Next Exciting Episode

A few weeks ago Jiejie wrote a book. That's no surprise. She has been "writing" books since before she could actually write. But this is her first serial. This is Part II, entitled "Sugar the Mystery Cat: Book 2: "Hurry, Find the Shaver!" Here is her synopsis: "There is a cat, and it has no ears, and it is bald, and she spells it like B-A-L-D-I."
Q. How did she lose her ears?
A. She shaved with her owner's shaver. In Book 1 she broke the shaver.
Q. How?
A. In Book 1 she did not know what to do with it and she played with it and broke it.
Q. And what about the ears?
A. She used cat ear disposal.
Q. How is her hearing since she shaved her ears off?
A. She saved a bit of her ears so she can hear when people are calling her for food.
Q. Who is her owner?
A. David Weinaberg.
Q. That's an interesting name. Where did you get your inspiration for it?
A. I just had it in my head.
Q. In Book 1, Dave was upset because the shaver was missing. He said, "I spent $300 on that. Can't Someone have a shave." What is the mystery in the new book?
A. UMMM. He bought another one, but he lost it.
Q. Will you share any more details with your readers?
A.Don't type. Let me think. ... His wife dropped his shaver in the toilet.

I'm holding my breath as the author gets to work with her pencil.

P.S. Sugar becomes Baldi once she shaves off her hair - and ears.

Hear Her Roar

If someone had told me a week ago that Jiejie would be standing atop an ottoman belting out a song from "The Lion King," I would have scoffed. But it's true. My shy one, who has always been able to carry a tune exceptionally well and always afraid to sing out, was so inspired by her after-school music class that she hummed a song in my ear Friday night. Then she found it on YouTube (that mixed blessing) and tried to copy the lyrics as she heard them on the music video, refusing to allow me to find them on the Internet for her. Ultimately, she asked me to help. When I showed her the lyrics, she picked up her battered hand-me-down laptop, holding it like a heavy hymnal, and began to sing with no accompaniment. She sang and sang. I introduced her. She sang again. I asked her where she wanted her audience to sit. She placed Meimei and me on a sofa and stood in at the far end of the family room. "Sing so the audience in the back row can hear you!"

She did.

And then she wanted a stage, so she climbed onto the ottoman and sang from her little heart, "Can you feel the love tonight?" "Love' came out as "wuv" almost. She sang to Meimei and me, she sang on the phone to Daddy working late. She hasn't
sung it again since that night, but I can't get that tune out of my head.

Tears for Fears

Jiejie had a grueling week this week. That all-important teaching tool, the two-pocket folder, was at the center of the drama. In first grade, the teacher hands out laminated color coded folders, one to a customer. The folders can last all year and the kid are to do their best to preserve and protect them. We ran out of juice boxes and milk boxes and sent her lunchtime drink to school in a "leakproof" water bottle, It leaked over everything. Dad tried to patch the folder with tape, and mom, at Jiejie's insistence, wrote a note to express her desire for another chance with a new folder. The powers-that-be in first grade decided the folder was still usable.

The next day, a Friday, we tried another leakproof water bottle because in our busy, slacker household no one had had time to run out for the juice boxes that are such a convenience to the kids, yet such a waste of money and packaging. It leaked. Everywhere. It destroyed the school picture form, the homework, the seams of the folder.

By the beginning of the next week, we had juice boxes. Ewe also had an inconsolable Jiejie who huddled on my lap at breakfast (OK, the lap at breakfast is not unusual; It's our special time.) in tears. She would not eat, take her vitamins or brush her teeth. She would not go out the door to the school bus. She cried barrels of mournful tears. At last the problem came to light; the folder was an impossible problem, the teacher had said no to a new one, how would Jiejie ever carry her schoolwork? Now this is a child who has a lot of anxiety about scrutiny at school. Folders and backpacks have always been a problem. Where to put them, how to unload them, what if she did something wrong. Jiejie had no qualms about carrying Silky in her backpack, Silky is the name given to several pieces of silk around the house: some pillowcases we bought in Hong Kong, the accompanying sheet, too tissuey-thin to really sleep under but great to ball up and cuddle, and most recently an old magenta sheath from my party-girl days.
Sometimes the assignments never come out of the backpack. Two weeks ago the kids were asked to bring in an example of a pattern. We strove to find something that would fit in the backpack The best we could do was a lovely pillowcase with a border crocheted by my grandmother. It never got to the teacher.

Her tears appealed to my inner anxious first grader. I hurried to shower and dress and drive her to school, late of course, and show the folder to the teacher to obtain a new one. The tears stopped. I missed my bus and was late to work. She got a new folder, color-coded blue, unlaminated.

I wonder how long it will last?

Birds, Bees and Naughty Bits

Not long ago, apropos of nothing, Jiejie asked me how babies get into ladies' tummies.
These questions are always a good gateway to talking about adoption, but Jiejie kept steering the conversation back to the topic I was not really prepared for.

"Babies grow from a sort of seed," I told her. "The seed is planted by the daddy and when it's in the mommy it begins to grow."
A horrified look crossed her face, but was quickly replaced by the scrunchy-faced curiosity of a junior scientist.

"Does she EAT the seed?"
"Oh, no. She doesn't eat it."
"Well, how does it get in her tummy then?"
"Ummmm," I said.
"How, Mom?"
I paused, hoping that the doorbell or phone would ring or that a small kitchen fire might break out to command our attention.
"It gets there by another road."
"What road, Mom?" She was getting a little impatient.
"It goes in through her vagina," I said with a gulp. This is a word Jiejie has known since she was 2 and it was information she eagerly disseminated to everyone she knew. When she was 3, I knew she had taught the babysitter's 5-year-old the word because both girls pronounced it the same way, as if it started with the letter "p," as in, "I can almost do the splits but I can't get my pagina to touch the floor."
"Mom, how does the daddy get the seed into her vagina?" she asked, her pronunciation crisp and correct at 6 and a half.
"This is really going to sound silly, honey," I said. "The seed comes out of the daddy's penis."
"Really??" she said, wide-eyed. "Then when it comes out he pouts it in her vagina?"
"Not exactly," I said. "And this is the part that is going to sound funny. He puts his penis in her vagina and the seed comes out."
"Oohhhh," said Jiejie. "He sorta shoots it in?"
"Sort of," I said.
"That's really funny," she said, and moved on to another topic.

Photo Booth Fun With Cousin Celia

Jiejie in Love

"What's a crush, Mama?" Jiejie asked on Sunday night.
"It's kind of like being in love," I said.
"Then I think I have a crush on Richard," she announced.
"I see," I said. "Have you kissed him?" (Oh silly Mom. Of all the stupid things to say!)
"No," she said. "I make chicken noises at him,and then Richard says, 'Oh no, not again!'"

On Monday night she called him "my boyfriend Richard."
"He was born in California," she told us in bed.

"Me born from China," chimed in Meimei.

"Isn't it interesting," I said, that so many of our friends were born in different places."

"I made more chicken noises on the playground," said Jiejie, demonstrating her clucking and bawking. "My boyfriend, Richard, said, 'Oh no!'"

Meimei and "Mad Men"

OK, we know our favorite show is not for kids, but Meimei likes to stay up with mom and dad after Jiejie is asleep, so she has seen a little of Mom's favorite show.

Her comments so far:

On the opening of the falling Don Draper in silhouette: "Why man have only ear and no face?"

And on Betts: "Her not nice mommy. My mommy nice!"

Happy Adoption Day to Meimei!

On Saturday we celebrated two years since Meimei joined our family. We gathered at the home of friends who also traveled to Nanning at the same time to bring home a little one two months younger than our Meimei from Yulin. How lucky we were that they also had a 4-year-old daughter traveling with them. She and Jiejie became travleing companions and fast friends from their first moment together at the Forbidden City. Now how many American girls can say they made a friend at the Forbidden City?

Q & A

Quotes from the last few weeks...



Jiejie, looking over my shoulder at the headlines on the computer screen:
"What happened to the Oxyclean man? Why did he die? Who will do the commercials now?"

***
Jiejie, when girls were asked to clean up their toys and Meimei refused:.

"Does my sister want to turn us all into what Abraham Lincoln got rid of?"


Meimei, when the girls, following directions for a practical life exercise from Jiejie's first grade class, made the front window literally "squeaky clean":

"Why is guinea pig in window?"

***
And Meimei, when Mom was the first to cave in the "quiet contest":

"Mama, you a loser."

MeiMei Turns 3

... but if you ask, she'll say she is 13!

Teaser

What do these two images have in common?

On the Beach

The beach is endlessly fascinating to the girls. They love digging and building in the sand and have collected about 20 pounds of seashells. Jiejie has met a playmate from North Carolina and they have become such fast friends in three days that she has turned down a game of mini-golf with her dad in favor of playing with her friend.

Meimei has had her naps in the open air by the pool, wrapped in a towel on my lap, or on the beach.

Both girls are paddling away in the pools, practicing jumping in and studiously avoiding the giant stick bugs that are mating everywhere, including in the ladies room by the pool.

Tonight, perhaps we won’t be too worn out to buy a pile of shrimp and boil them with corn and potatoes. Now that Jiejie has taken the plunge and tried corn, she is an addict and can eat two eats at one sitting. Last night, both girls devoured my salad, dipping the lettuce and cucumbers in the blue cheese dressing. (I confess, I lied and said it was ranch, but owned up later).After dinner tonight, perhaps we’ll make a side trip to Dr. Root Beer’s Hall of Foam.

What a shame that summer has to end.

Is Your Family Complete?

Visit this link to learn about some amazing children in China who are waiting for a home.

http://www.asiahope.blogspot.com/

A Visit to the Healthworks Museum

This was not the world's best maintained museum, but Jiejie and Meimei had a blast learning about their bodies, from climbing a wall of epidermis as dust mite wannabes to playing the giant came of Operation with heavy rubber organs and kitchen tongs. And where else would you find an acrylic chair stuffed with cigarette butts?

At Play in the Fields of Mr. Ranger Man

This has been the summer of travel - not too far or too fast or terribly exotic, unless you count the dinosaur bones at the mall restaurant in Kansas, but it has been rare and wonderful savoring so much of the season in the company of the girls. I'd like to post some photos of our travels, from the famous fat duck of Lake of the Ozarks to the fireside at Jellystone Park at the reunion of the "China Sisters," the girls who came home from Laibin Xingbin Social Welfare Institute in the group with Jiejie, but the photo link from the sometimes aptly named Picasa seems troubled right now until it receives more money to buy more space. It matters not that the photos are in the computer.

Oh, and the very amateurish slide show at the bottom of the page, created a couple of years ago, before Meimei, seems to be turned on its side. Wordpress this is not.

Stay tuned for the China Sisters slideshow. Maybe.

Talking in Her Sleep

Jiejie screamed out in her sleep the other night, rather angrily: "Brown head!"
It took a while to figure out that she was talking about Meimei, whose hair is definitely a toastier hue than Jiejie's inky curtain of hair.
Now Meimei has a new nickname, but finds it hard to believe her hair and eyes are not black like her big sister's.
And as long as Jiejie continues to talk in her sleep every time you poke her with a fingertip or kiss her on top of her head, we might have a clue to what's going on in there.

The Loney Ranger

Meimei has coined a versatile word: "loney."
When she wants to be alone, she says, "I is loney."
When she wants someone to join her, she says, "I is loney."
And when I went back to work today after being with the girls almost nonstop for a long vacation/furlough combination, Meimei was loney again.

Jiejie was just grumpy, but on Sunday night she had the perfect solution. When she grows up, she will work next to me, and do the same job I do. I suggested she might want to be a ballerina or a brain surgeon or perhaps do something more interesting (and lucrative, and secure) than editing, given the endless possibilities available to her, but she was resolute.

"Do you think after a while I could ask for a desk right next to yours?"

"Of course, " I told her. "Why do you want us to have the same career?"

Jiejie said, "It's so nice when you bring home new books. New books are a good thing, right?'

I couldn't disagree with that.

On the Road

Analyze This

Tonight in the dark Meimei whispered in my ear, "I love hot dogs and I love you."

Very Local Briefs

Daddy has been working late these days, and half the night after he gets home, which means I get the girls to myself a bit more. Tonight I played with Meimei, who wanted to turn somersaults on a pillow while Jiejie read an Olivia book. Then we played limbo with a tape measure, and used it to reel each other in. We ripped brown paper off a table that had been in storage but kept it for another use "so we can save the earth," Jiejie said. We took Meimei to the potty about 23 times. (She's a natural.) Then we played "new babysitter," Jiejie's idea. She was Sydney, the new babysitter, and Meimei was her charge. "What will you do with my daughter today, Sydney?" I asked her. "Oh, whatever she wants," Sydney assured me. "I always do whatever the kid wants. All day." She nodded knowingly. And what will you feed her? "Bananas and apples. They have fiber."
Oh, and protein. "Some... chicken?" she said in a questioning tone. And vegetables? "I think carrots." We're going to have to try that microgreen salad again ... Even having Jiejie's lettuce patch out back is not enough to persuade them to do more than dip something green into ranch dressing and lick the dressing off.

* * *

What does it mean that I keep stumbling over photos of orphans on the Internet and seeing posts about older kids who need homes desperately, kids in China who will be on their own at age 14 if they have not been adopted, kids who are never even on any agency's list for adoption because they are cursed not only with having attained the advanced age of 12 but also were born blind?

It means, I guess, that I hug my kids closer and wonder about carving out that extra bedroom.

Fretwork

Jiejie has been very whiny since school let out a week ago. She wants to sit on my lap constantly and be my baby, which is fine. I love to baby her. But the baby behavior has extended to refusing to take her vitamins and allergy medicine. Jiejie has even been whining in her sleep. Well, one night, anyway. She wanted a round bandaid and we had no round bandaids in our huge assortment. Could she seriously have been whimpering about a bandaid in her sleep? It was the first thing she asked for in the morning. Should she have more perspective at age 6? I don't think I did. Magnitude was directly related to how badly I wanted something. I guess she is a lot like me. Too much like me, perhaps. But I have grown out of my willfulness. I am no match for her. But what do you do when a child her age refuses to do something? I won't physically force her. What is a disciplinary measure appropriate to the infraction? One that would be instructive and constructive?
These are the little worries that have been nagging at me this week as I wondered if Jiejie was just tired, if her allergies were making her grumpy, if a few days of missing her Omega 3s had had a behavioral effect, if it was simply a case of missing the routine of full-day Kindergarten, or if she was mourning her birth parents or having some kind of attachment crisis or appendicitis or swine flu or west nile virus or ...

More on Meimei and Love

Meimei loves to just hug your whole head, and does it often. "I love you, Mama," she said this week. Then patting the side of my head, she said, "I love your BIG ears."
Well, they are. I'm glad somebody loves them.

Sharing

The first several months of school we never got the notices for sharing day until the day after. They disappeared temporarily in some recess of Jiejie's backpack and reappeared when it was too late. Then, gradually, she started showing us the notices but saying she did not want to take part. Later, she took in a few books, but was careful not to take anything that required speech or interaction. Today was the first show-and-tell Jiejie attended willingly and prepared for enthusiastically. Today, she wore a bright, crisp summer dress in white, pink and black and took a stuffed cat wearing the identical dress in stuffed-cat size.

Kindergarten is almost over. It took along time for Jiejie to take part in snack time, a long time to actually eat her lunch at school rather than on the way home, a long time to use the classroom toilet, but she told me recently --well, she didn't tell me; I was sitting in for Uma. You know Uma, the bare-hand puppet, Oobi's sister -- Uma likes to visit us and especially to go to Manhattan, but more on Uma later. Jiejie told us these things became easy because she had a best friend to do them with her, the amazing Anya. Jiejie told Uma that once you have a partner to do scary things with, they become easy, great advice for Uma who encounters a lot of scary challenges in hand-puppet life. Jiejie and Anya became best friends the day before school started at the ice cream social and have been inseparable despite gentle teacherly suggestions that the girls broaden their social circles. Well, that didn't happen, so the school will be exposing them to other friends for us when first grade comes.

Uma will be sad.

Those Toes

Tonight, after traipsing up and down stairs in search of band-aids, new pajama tops, better books and one more milk box before tooth-brushing, Daddy came home and the kids decided not to make the trip back to bed but to indulge their favorite Friday night activity: falling asleep on our laps on the sofa. And so they did. Directly in my sightlines to the TV, where "Hannah and her Sisters" was playing, with those quick shots of some of Mia Farrow's kids, were Jiejie's toes, delicate and small, even for her age, and a bit paddle-shaped. I wondered where she had gotten those toes, just as earlier in the evening I marveled at a little yoga show she put on, complete with a full lotus, based on the pages of yoga-wear in a New-agey catalog. Such incredible flexibility and willingness to throw herself into imitating the pictures. Whose genes are these; whose grandmother turned cartwheels and arched over into a back bend; who could bear to give up this amazing creature? Did she think of Jiejie today? Calculate her age? Sketch a portrait in her head?

Meimei Gone Wild

Meimei is a little discomfited by the new babysitter who comes while Ping takes summer classes. While the new sitter is sweet as pie and has spent endless hours playing hide and seek, she has, according to Meimei, a fatal flaw. "Her head too big!" Meimei insists.
Meimei is a little sensitive about heads. She doesn't like the head of one of her favorite sitters, Ashley. Ashley has a curtain of dark curls -- a theatre curtain -- and when her long hair was let down for Meimei, she went to the computer room, sat on the floor and cried, "Ashley not my friend!" Ashley keeps her hair up now.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor

When the economy crashed and we were fighting the battle of two mortgages, I stopped sponsoring a child in China. When we had a signed contract on our former home, it was time to start again. Amazingly, a beautiful child appeared on the Yahoo group for the orphanage where Jiejie lived for the first 14 months of her life. The sponsorship will allow the child to be taken care of by a foster family rather than orphanage workers. But what struck me about her is her stunning resemblance to Jiejie when she was an infant.
Who knows?
Here she is.

Tough Love

Jiejie may be able to read anything you put in front of her, but when it comes to emotions, she struggles. In fact, it must drive her crazy listening to the sweet declarations of love that accompany her little sister's every exhalation. It's no surprise then that I nearly fell out of my chair today when Jiejie skipped past her little sister and quickly and quietly whispered to her, "I love you."
She finished her skipping circuit and after Meimei had left the room, Jiejie came over and whispered to me, "Did you hear what I said?"
I told her I had. "Was it hard for you?" I asked, remembering all the red-crayoned notes she slipped under the door after her sister came home bearing subtle messages like "NO!!!! BABY!!!!" She admitted it had been hard.
I said, "Well, now that you've said it to your sister, will you say it to me?"
And she did.
I told her I was very proud, and I am.
She doesn't realize Mommy had a tough time with those words too.

Jiejie Rocks

I came to my home computer this morning and found iTunes on the screen. In the Search panel someone had typed "rock and roll." Jiejie strikes again!

Mommy, That Raincoat Makes Me Look Fat

That's the second time Jiejie, barely 6, has said something makes her look fat. I am stunned and not sure how to respond to these comments from my 40-lb. beanpole. Kindergartners are getting older every day.

MeiMei's in Love -- With Everyone

Meimei has a boyfriend, Harry next door. They met on Saturday, but he was her boyfriend long before that. She has been besotted for at least a week, and started calling him boyfriend not long after. She is not stinting with her love. She lavishes it on all of us and tells us she loves us at least 50 times a day.

She also loves Buddy, who did most of the work on our new house. She calls him "my Buddy," emphasis on the "my." There were days when she had to talk to Buddy on the phone. If his carpenter was around, he would dutifully punch up Buddy's number.

Tonight, she sang a song about him: "I love Buddy! I love Buddy! In new house! Love Buddy!" You get the idea. It ended with "I love my FAMMY" on a long high note with a big finish.

More From Meimei

And the vocabulary-building continues....

Meimei did say "high-fructose corn syrup" the other day, but she was mimicking her sister reading food labels to determine which fruit snacks (an extremely euphemistic name for chewy, stick-to-the-teeth candies) actually had fruit in them.

She knows the letters D, A, C and M on sight and can find them on the computer keyboard. Nothing makes her happier than to type D, D, D, over and over.

Meimei wants so much to be like her sister and take the school bus and have someone meet her at the corner. "Not fair!" she tells me. She wants a "packpack" like Jiejie's. Although there are half a dozen toy backpacks in the house, Meimei chose to thread her arms through a string of Mardi Gras beads instead of a backpack, a much lighter choice, even though she can't carry much. But aren't packpacks all about fashion anyway?

MeiMei's No Baby

Daddy brought Meimei down from bed, sleepy and warm as toast.
"Did you just pop out of the toaster?" I asked her.
"Mama, me not toast!"
"No, my baby, you just popped out of a warm bed.
Mama, me no baby. Me big girl."
"Yes, my little big girl."
"NO MAMA! Me HUGE!"
OK. The 23-pound peanut is HUGE, and her vocabulary's not bad either.

The First Mother's Day

Five years ago today we were in China, in the midst of our first adoption. Jiejie was new to us, and I was numb with fear. What a gorgeous, mysterious creature she was. When the other babies were asleep and quiet, she was disconsolate. When I kissed her tummy, she would giggle. When we tried to give her a bath in the hotel sink in Nanning, she was petrified. Jiejie would not or could not drink from a bottle. We spoonfed her formula, other liquids, congee, the rice porridge she loved, and some baby cereal, but at 14 months she was not terribly interested in other foods. We had been told she weighed 23 lbs. and came armed with size 2 clothes. Her weight was actually about 17 lbs. and she was a petite, reticent child. The clothes and diapers we had packed so carefully, in suitcases stuffed with supplies that we would never use but which had been recommended by others on the BTDT China adoption lists, were huge in comparison to the tiny baby. She was not walking yet, and would not walk for more than four months and after several sessions of physical therapy. She would not pick up a cheerio and bring it to her mouth, most likely the effect of fear of punishment for picking something up and putting it in her mouth at the orphanage, the kind of "safety measure" used in places where too few people care for too many children. Given a chance, she liked to bump her head, hard, against any she could find, including my head. She was quick to learn, when we made gentle head bumping an intimacy game, smiling into each other's eyes. She was also quick with the TV remote. And cell phone. The bright stacking cups we had brought along. And anything else hard or plastic. But the soft toys we had brought along for her to snuggle were ignored. It was likely she had never seen anything like them. It took her months to like a stuffed animal or soft doll and even longer to learn to cuddle them -- and us. She loved being close to us and being held, but learning to hug back took her months and months and learning to kiss more than the air around us took years.

This bright, beautiful girl was not weak in any way. She was a willful child, suffused with the instinct to survive. The head-bumping, I learned later, was a way of stimulating herself, the response of a child whose brain needs stimulation to develop. Other children rub their hands on orphanage walls until their fingers are thickly blistered. Although Jiejie was the "senior baby" of the bunch at 14 months - the others were 10-12 months old -- she was the tiniest and, when we gathered the group by the hotel elevator for a "play date," the one who let toys be taken from her, another survival strategy perhaps?

She had bronchitis, and on one of our first nights together, she vomited in my hair. Then the antibiotics kicked in, as did the herbal broth the first of the chinese doctors we consulted had prescribed. We gave her a pinch from a little tin of ginger medicine suggested to settle her tummy, and the tiniest amount of Benadryl. Soon, she was feeling better, eating better -- her favorite baby food, from Beech-nut -- was pork and pork liver -- something we would not have sought ought had the orphanage not passed on a list of favorites.

On the plane trip from Nanning to Guangzhou, Jiejie cried almost the entire time. Her father could not soothe her, nor could I. Auntie Ann ended up bouncing the baby on her knee for the entire trip. She had the magic touch. Finally Jiejie slept. By the time we got to Guangzhou, she was feeling better.
.... to be continued

Sibling Harmony

When I got home from work today, Jiejie wanted to play with tape, scissors and wrapping paper. At least she didn't try the paint-a-poncho craft on the wood floor again. I was about to say no, but she said she wanted to wrap a gift for Meimei, and she did what she had promised. It took a lot of wrapping paper and yards of tape to wrap the book from Jiejie's collection. She attached a sticky note with the To: and From: and put the package in a gift bag, then pretended to deliver the package. Meimei was on her toddler roller skates, which are slow, so it took her awhile to roll across the house to see her delivery. Jiejie kindly went to pull her over by the hands, presented her with the gift, helped her open it, then started over wrapping it again.

Jiejie's adjustment to Meimei was rough for a long time, and moments like these are hard-won. It's worth it to hear big sister sweeten her little-girl voice to a helpful coo, and watch the wide-eyed Meimei, thrilled to be the object of her sister's gift, open the same pre-owned book. Twice.

A Line a Day

Anyone can write one line a day. Right?
Meimei is finally understanding the idea that she does not belong only to one parent at a time and that she can love lots of people and that lots of people love her. She lists them any time she has a chance. But she still thinks she is the only person who gets to like the color blue. And the only person who likes dogs. Or perhaps the only person who likes blue AND dogs. But for a child just over 2.5 years old, she has an amazing grasp of her feelings, and last night she started naming herself among the people who love her. It was a lovely discovery for her, and a big step considering how many people manage to love themselves little if at all.

Happy Adoption Day!

Today we celebrated the 5th anniversary of Jiejie's adoption. We watched the video of her being placed in our arms, spurning the Good Night Moon bunny I kept inanely waggling at her, checking us out with her inky phoenix eyes. Meimei fell asleep on my shoulder while we were watching endless footage of bus rides in China and listening to the inexhaustible guide talk about the country's minority groups, which in all likelihood figure in the past of at least one if not both of our girls. Perhaps some day DNA tests will be refined enough to place a child in an ethnic minority and we can help Jiejie discover her history.
Jiejie decided we would save the Adoption Day cake she decorated for tomorrow. Meimei didn't mind. She was too busy trying to build the world's tallest sandwich out of wooden slices of ham, cheese, tomato, lettuce and onion that stack up and stick with velcro. Jiejie is having the usual night terrors that plague her this time of year, reflecting the trauma of leaving China and her familiar surroundings to come to her new home. She had a spell of night terrors around her 6th birthday too, as she always does. They don't last as long now, or happen nearly as often. I can tell she is growing up. But I can't tell if she is experiencing her grief or working through her sadness at the losses in her life.