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.

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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.