Who's a Big Girl?

Jiejie plugged in.

During a family Chinese lesson we learned that, technically, Jiejie will not be the jiejie when brother  TJ joins the family on Monday. His birthday, as determined by the officials at the Chinese orphanage where he was taken in at the estimated age of 3, is about 10 weeks earlier than hers. He will turn 8 the day after we get back from China. He is the gege, or oldest brother. And in the strict verbal hierarchy of Chinese, the oldest sister is relegated to "little sister" status. Can I really call this blog Meimei and Meimei? No way. I asked Ping, who was teaching us, what would happen if JieJie and TJ were twins? Gege and Jiejie? Nope. The older twin would be the one who burst into the world first.
So much for the social worker's suggestion on how to avoid one of the pitfalls of adopting out of birth order.  Still, I suspect TJ will be leaning on his "little sister" a great deal, for help at home and at school, and she will be a beacon for a little boy just about her age joining the family.

You've Got Mail

Jiejie has her own email address now. Today I sent a little note to the girls from work to see how their day was going.

"hi there. how was the movie? did you guys open any geodes?

love, mom : )"

and the answer was:


"i will inslave man kind."

hmm. should i correct the spelling? tell her humankind is a nice gender-neutral substitute?  or worry about her nascent dictatorial impulses?

none of the above, i guess. i found out when i got home that it was a line from the movie "Cats and Dogs."

Quote of the Day

Meimei:

"Mama, there's a shark in my cereal, and I'm gonna drink up that shark!"

Dreams of Teeth

Jiejie has made great strides in the sleeping department. She did best while we were on a trip. The two girls shared a sofa bed in the living room of our hotel. When we got home they continued their progress, although Jiejie requested that she be allowed to fall asleep in our room and then be carried to her room. Whatever it takes. This week she lost a tooth, and the tooth fairy was able to leave her fairy-dusted dollars under Jiejie's pillow in Jiejie' room where Jiejie woke up and found it.

This morning, Jiejie lost another of her three loose teeth. It's sitting on my dresser. Tonight, she proclaimed she would sleep in Mom and Dad's bed. The question is: where will the tooth fairy land, if she does land?

Sleepstakes

Meimei is sleeping in her own bed for the second night in a row. Her bed, I hasten to add, is parked in Mom and Dad's room.

Jiejie is sleeping in a big queen size bed tonight, alone except for Philbert the cat. With the door shut. She has only come to our room twice for hugs.

At stake are a dozen star shaped plastic trophies in a box from Oriental Trading Company. Meimei has two proudly displayed on her windowsill. Jiejie has some stickers for trying. By morning, Jiejie is determined to have a trophy too. She tried sleeping with Meimei in her toddler bed, but Meimei was adamant. For the first night, Jiejie stewed. By tonight, she had a plan. So far, with the digital clock about to strike 2 a.m., she's sticking with it.

And I? I feel cruel for manipulating them with 99-cent trophies and sibling rivalry. But brother TJ is coming home soon and we can't have three kids of mixed genders in this bed.

Co-sleeping seemed like the best thing for the girls when they came home as infants.  But no one has written the book about undoing co-sleeping. I can't imagine what it would be like to Ferberize a 7-year-old who has slept between Mom and Dad for 6 years, usually clinging to one or the other and nosing across the bed like a heat-seeking missile when a grown-up changes position. So for now, I guess we're going with the Oriental Trading Company incentive program.

Happy Fourth!

The girls wanted to  see the local fireworks tonight, and so we did.  Fireworks are not Jiejie's favorite entertainment. Well, actually, she loves fireworks, but only  from a distance of several miles. The auditory effects are the problem. She knew the crump of the fireworks would be painfully loud, but tantalized by some fireworks seen from the highway, she was game to try. This year the fireworks display was at a stadium. A pretty elaborate exhibition for our small town. Before the lights went out, Jiejie had her hands over her ears and her head buried in my chest. Well, one side anyway. I cupped my hand over her other ear and she watched in contented silence. Meimei, on her other side, was concerned and stroked her older sisters arm several times and even helped me cover her sister's ear.  Tomorrow is the banging, booming, tooting, rum-tum-tumming local parade, just about half a mile's walk. I think we'll skip it.

Headlines

New Blog Makes It's Debut
(And a Son. Talk About Burying the Lede!)
Visit WaitingforTJ.blogspot.com


Meimei Bursts Into Song:

Me and Avi sittin' in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g!
(spending too much time with Jiejie?)

Jiejie's Log
On the refrigerator is a list of "Bird Expiriances," including sightings of a downy woodpecker and male and female northern cardinals, finches and more. Jiejie has been spending hours logging visitors to the bird feeder. At least until the evil cabal of squirrels chewed through the feed container and wiped out about 10 lbs. of songbird seeds.

Meimei Makes Leaning Tower of Toilet Paper
(You would think the child had no blocks!)

Golden Girl

Jiejie has not been eager to embrace her ethnic identity or even talk about being Chinese. It simply is not on her radar.

But Meimei, meanwhile, is a little distressed. "Mom," she said one day, looking at her juicy little legs in shorts. "My skin is too dark. I want light skin like my family." (She named all the family members including Jiejie and the two Chinese students who live with us).

Meimei has lovely golden skin, and I told her so. It's soft and beautiful and a healthy, glowing hue. When she's in the sun, no matter how powerful the sunscreen, she becomes a little bronze beauty.

"Mom spends lot of time in the sun to get a healthy, golden look," I told her. "We all have different colors of eyes and hair and skin. No one is exactly the same as anyone else."

Still, she inspected her arm, not thrilled. Then she caught sigh of a vaccination scar and moved her fascination and her questions to another topic.

Happy Adoption Day, Jiejie, From Your Zombie

Today we celebrated the six-year anniversary of Jiejie's homecoming. It was thrown together at the last minute when we realized that once again her Adoption Day would fall on or near Mother's Day and that it would be hard to venerate Grandma and Jiejie in the same short weekend.

So, once more unprepared, we had a too-late, makeshift observance of the day that, more than any other so far, changed us all.

Sometimes I can't believe that this leggy little wiseacre was once that tiny, timid beauty. I remember walking down the stairs of the office building in Nanning carrying her, numb with fear that I would drop her or break her, worried about her cough, and knowing that my best efforts and all my love would never completely heal her grief.

She was 14 months old and a 17-pound featherweight endowed with amazing lungs. Her wails pierced the hotel walls. Ever watchful, she slept with her eyes partly open, when she slept.

We took a little field trip the second day. I had only slept a few hours. I carefully packed a bottle of hot formula mixed from bottled water, which Jiejie, of course, refused, but although we had three adults in our party, no one thought to put some diapers in the bag. When we stopped for lunch, all the other moms rushed to change their babies in a corner of the restaurant (no changing areas in Nanning). I was a zombie. I sat there holding Jiejie, feeling like a neglectful parent (not to mention an idiot), yet I did not ask to borrow a diaper.

That hypnotized state did not lift immediately.
For days I was afraid that I would fail this lovely, willful little being, and my fear overpowered me and exhausted me, but it must have been insignificant in magnitude compared to Jiejie's own.

Meimei and the Beasts

Meimei's nursery school class went on a field trip today, Meimei's first. She had little to say about the animals (beyond the reptiles) but much to say about the bus ride and her classmates. Her new friend is Rachel. She tells me Rachel's father has a big beak and sharp, scary claws and so she will not go to her new friend's house for a play date. Right now she is jumping on the bed pretending Rachel's beastly dad is chasing her and roaring.

Now, normally, I would say this is just her wild childish imagination, but Meimei tells me she met the sharp-clawed dad when he picked up his daughter after the field trip.

Meimei's Wish

I heard a whisper from somewhere in the sprawling bed.

"I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish."

It was Meimei, lying with her head pointing toward the foot of the bed.

"I wish, I wish, I wish, that my Mama would kiss me on the head."

If only all our wishes were so easily granted.

That Time of Year

Around Jiejie's birthday in March, she starts to have little periods of sadness, tears, maybe anger, frustration, sometimes creeping toward the borders of rage and fear. This continues on and off until May or June, the time of year we returned from China with her in 2004.

The other night, she started talking about wanting a kitten. It was bedtime, the lights were going out, and her insistent whining about a cat might have been one of the endless ploys to delay sleep. Her father told her it was out of the question because of his allergies, and she began to cry. "We'll never get a kitten. Never." Her tears and squeals of anger drove Daddy and Meimei downstairs to a sofa.

"I want a Siamese. Two. One named Milky and one named Way." I listened to her tearful pleas, interwoven with plans for caring for kittens and teaching them tricks and buying them some of that cat milk that comes in little juice box-type containers, and how do they get that milk out of the mother cats, anyway? Before bed she had been reading a book of children's poems about cats. Perhaps that was the inspiration.

Then she began to talk about the homeless cats, the ones who needed families. And perhaps it was just cats she was thinking of, but her words reminded me of ho she used to like to reenact the time we went to the animal shelter almost three years ago to get our youngest cat, Luna, presumably a Father's Day gift for allergic Daddy, and how for months afterward she had climbed behind the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, meowing for food and for a Mommy to take her home and pet her.

Long after her tears had dried, she kept wailing in my arms as the night disappeared and the school day loomed closer. I made all sorts of promises about going to the animal shelter to visit and pet some kittens who needed homes.

The morning dawned warm and sunny. I heard nothing more about the homeless cats.

Easter Bunny

For some reason, on Easter, Meimei found this old Halloween costume, chosen when she was 2 so she could be Max of Max and Ruby and not worn that year or the next because it was "scary." it's a perfect fit.

Tikki Tikki Tembo

Jiejie's class is putting on a play. A 20-minute adaptation of our old favorite bedtime story "Tikki Tikki Tembo." Everyone is the first grade has a part. Jiejie, who hardly speaks above a whisper in class, is playing the mother of the little boy with a long name and a propensity for falling into wells. Jiejie has one line.

She's a little nervous. Well, a lot nervous. She wants very much for me to come and see her, and I managed to arrange it, but I had to promise not to take any photos or video.

"I wish I was playing the well," she said wistfully. "All she has to do is stand there and look pretty."

A Girl's Life, Part II (Barbie, the Lifesaver)

Continued from post below...

Our solution was to delay the cupcakes a day, so I could come to school and help Jiejie present her life story. I frantically e-mailed a mom I had never met whose daughter had been the star of the classroom edition of "This Is Your Life" the day before. She kindly filled me in on the tradition, which had surprised her as well. I e-mailed the teacher for tips, too, thinking I could never be too prepared. The teacher explained that telling life stories was not a big deal; parents were not required to attend, and if they did not the teacher would interview the child, asking questions like how much hair did you have when you were born? How old where you when you learned to walk? These questions are potentially treacherous for an adopted child. I knew I had to be there.
When I got home that night, Jiejie and I made a plan that would appeal to my girl of few (public) words. A life in pictures. Jiejie went to her special photo album, in which she has preserved a collection of pictures of herself and others that were carefully selected and bound together by some logic that is beyond me. We flipped through and chose a few. Jiejie wanted baby pictures. I fetched the tiny album, a camo-covered Mickey Mouse knockoff that held a handful of pictures of Jiejie from the "babyhouse" in Laibin: the row of tiny metal cribs, the picture of her looking first bald, then Maolike, dressed in layer upon layer of puffy clothes and propped against a scruffy stuffed panda or slumping onto the tray of a wheeled walker seat.

"Is that all?" she said.
I bit my lip, wishing we had started that life book project long ago to give some shape and substance to the 14 months she lived without this family. I reached back into the drawer of keepsakes and pulled out that toy only found in families with children from China, Mattel's peculiar incarnation of a leggy Caucasian Barbie attached to a tiny Asian baby.
"We'll take 'Going Home Barbie.'" Since she rarely gets to see that boxed-up Barbie, she was delighted. Then her tummy began to hurt. And hurt. It kept hurting for hours, then rumbling.

"It hurts so much, Mama. Make it go away!"

"Oh, honey. If I could take the pain and put it in my tummy, I would."
"No, no you wouldn't because it would hurt you so much you would give it back to me."

***

By morning she was perky and hungry and decked out in a puffy pink plaid skirt and black lace-trimmed leggings,ready for school despite the downpour outside.

At 9:30 the phone rang. Jiejie had vomited in class. Could we come pick her up?

A Girl's Life

Jiejie turned 7 years old a few days ago. She started the morning by hiding. Breakfast was ready, and Jiejie was nowhere to be found. Daddy finally located her and brought her downstairs. It seems she was upset because, although the cupcakes I had labored long and late to produce were coming to school, I was not accompanying them.

"Why aren't you coming?"" she whined.
"Honey, I have to work.
""Take a day off!"
"Sweetie, it’s my deadline day, I can't."
"But who will tell my life story?"

What???? Life story???

Well, apparently that is the tradition in first grade. The teacher interviews you or your parent sitting beside you, about the highlights of your first seven years. That was the first I had heard of it.

To Be Continued...

Surprise, Surprise

Peace and quiet are rare events in families with small children, and maybe in families with not so small children, but the last few weeks have been full of those resonant moments that can be life-changing.

Submitted for your inspection, the curious case of Jiejie and her new pal from the after-school chess class. We invited the new pal for a play date and met her older sis, mom and dad. It turns out that Mom and Dad are from China, Sis was born in the U.S. and Jiejie's friend was adopted from China. When they had gone, I swept Jiejie up into my arms and gave her a hug. "Isn't it amazing that your friend is adopted, too?" I said.

Jiejie, veteran of many "little talks," guest of honor at five Happy Adoption Day parties and traveler to five China Sisters reunions of adoptive families looked up, wide-eyed.

"I'm adopted?"

Meimei the Dream-Catcher

Another conversation with Meimei. This morning, she was eating the second batch of turkey bacon Daddy made after Joyce the Cat managed to nab the first.

A native American dream-catcher, brought down from Clare's room, was on the table, and Davyn abd I were talking about dreams.

"Know what my good dream is, Mama?" she asked.

"Tell me," I said.

"About dogs!" she squealed.

"And when you have a bad dream what is that about?"

"Cats stealing bacon!"

Meimei's Latest Hit

Meimei is a singer, a sort of minstrel or roving librettist. But a few of her numbers have been codified lately. Presented for your delectation:

Don't Wake Up

Don't wake up if the dog bites.
I not worry.
Because I loooovvveee doooogggs.

(repeat until someone applauds).

Calling Cat Heaven

Meimei still misses Raptor, our longtime tabby who died many months ago. I overheard her talking on her pink plastic cell phone in a tearful voice.
"Raptor, come back. I miss you all the times." She cried into the phone a little.
"You are died. You come back. I love you."
The phone snapped shut and we had a nice snuggle and a little talk about Raptor.
Meimei feels connections intensely and shows a great deal of compassion and empathy toward humans, animals and even stuffed animals.
I hope I can protect that little heart from breaking.

Hit the Road, Jack

On the way home from a President's Weekend trip to Philadelphia! (The faux cheetah bags are Jiejie's. The floppy puppy is the newest dog in Meimei's stuffed animal family, Silly.

Skating Away

I took Jiejie to her ice-skating class today for the first time. It was her third class, and she bravely took to the ice with a large group of flailing fledglings. She was upright most of the time, going forward and backward, doing "snowplows" and giving a little hop between glides. The tentativeness of the baby we brought home, and the toddler who struggled against her sensory processing issues were hardly visible. At her instruction, I stayed in one place so she could see me, although she did not dare wave.
Nothing could have wiped that smile from my face; it gave way once to a bit of a wince when there was a five-kid pileup on the ice.

When we got home, Jiejie and Meimei discovered they could watch Meimei's "Max and Ruby" DVD in French, so they did. Jiejie had her French dictionary (with pictures) in hand and began constructing quiz questions with some of the words, while Meimei kept her eyes on her pal Max.
"Pourquoi?" said Meimei, imitating Max.

And I squeezed her a little tighter because she can't skate away quite so fast -- yet.

Faces From the Past

Jiejie was proud last week to be helping a student who is new to her school. The little girl, Elissa, "looks just like me!" Jiejie told us excitedly. I asked her what that meant. She took her long, shiny hair and folded it up around her shoulders. "Just look at me. Her hair is like mine only this short. Her face is like mine."

This was the first time Jiejie has made a visual observation aloud about being Asian, an important step in building a strong identity as a Chinese-American girl. I have worried a lot that this might be something she learns on the playground in a difficult moment instead of observing it on her own. After all, when we watched Martin Luther King on TV when she was 5, when we stayed up late on election night, when we sat raptly watching the inauguration, Jiejie spoke sympathetically of the inequality black Americans had endured at the hands of "white people" like us. She often put her arm up to mine to show how closely our skin colors "matched." But as she gazed at me with the news of her classmate it was clear that Jiejie identified with her so fully that by changing her own hair she became Elissa.

I think she is on her way to understanding, really understanding inside, where she comes from, the first step to becoming who she is.

Why We Have Brothers

Overheard while the girls were getting their bath tonight:

Jiejie to Meimei: I can't wait till T.J. comes. Then when we play house we can have a boy to be the father.

Poor kid. He doesn't know what he is in for.

Ready for the New Year

Meimei starts preschool, Jiejie is taking ice skating and chess. Our babies are growing up!