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.