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.