ChongQing 2004 Reunion

Thea and Jennifer

It's been almost nine years since a small band of  adoptive parents boarded planes that took them to San Francisco where they boarded an Air China flight to Beijing.  Some of the group knew others from the travel workshop given by the adoption agency, but since everyone was scattered throughout the jumbo jet,  once everyone made it off the plane and into passport control at the airport, the group began to form for the first time.  At baggage claim, we met our guides and the adventure of getting to know one another began.

We went on a jetlag-fueled blitzkrieg tour of Beijing: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, lunch at a Friendship Store a visit to the Great Wall at Baodaling and as darkness fell, a trip back to the Beijing airport and a flight to ChongQing.

And on what was Labor Day back in the States, we gathered in the dining room of the Holiday Inn to fill out paperwork with our guides.

What made us a group came later that afternoon.  We boarded a large tour bus and went to an office building on the other side of ChongQing.  Rather nondescript, an elevator capable of holding at most four or five people and a ride up to the office where we met our kids. Thirteen babies from three different social welfare institutions, they were the glue that made us a group.

Trips to the grocery store to buy formula and baby food, pacing the hallways, hanging out in the playroom at the hotel, sight-seeing trips to the ChongQing Zoo, sharing stacking cups, toys, Tylenol for infants, the plane to GuangZhou, shopping and bargaining made us a very large, slightly strange family.  Two weeks together until we boarded a plane that took us to Shanghai and from there to San Francisco, and at SFO, we scattered - to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Colorado.

We are fortunate to be in New Jersey, which puts us in an area were a large number of our travel group live, and we have been doubly fortunate that we've stayed in touch - and that we get together every year.  The group changes a bit every year - especially since the kids are getting older and have activities and social lives of their own.  But the gathering happens - and the shared experiences of having people ask if our children are 'really' siblings (with 'really' being a synonym for 'biological'), what about their 'real' mothers, how much did you pay for them. All the annoying questions that you can share the answers that you would have liked to have given if we did not feel compelled to be the polite ambassadors for international adoptions.  And a thousand other topics, shared memories and whatnot.  Yesterday was that day, and it was wonderful - and I say this even after having to work in the morning and being on call for the weekend.

Meanwhile, our kids have grown, siblings have been added to the families and even though they don't see each other, they all seem to know that their shared history is important - and most of them have iPods, Nintendos, Wiis; the universal language of the electronic childhood becomes their common thread just as the shared experience of the trip to China binds the adults - and hanging out with other kids is more entertaining than hanging out with a bunch of parents.  The kids do pop over to the parents table every now and then, to check in, to eat and for that they will receive the pat on the head, the "look at how much you've grown" from the friends of their parents, so far they are not rolling their eyes at this, but that day may come.

Jennifer, Micah, Thea and Juliana

Next year will be the 10th anniversary of that trip that made us a group, and we've started talking about how to celebrate, could we get those members who don't live as close to come?, where to have it?  Our kids will be 10 to 11 or so, with younger and older siblings.  Suggestions welcome.

China 2004 kids, plus siblings, plus high school exchange students

September 6, 2004

Once upon a time, eight years ago when my knees felt much younger, a bus loaded with thirteen families left the Holiday Inn in ChongQing and drove across the Yangtze River to a rather unimpressive office building with an elevator about the size of a large phone booth; it took multiple trips for our entire group and the two facilitators to arrive at our destination.  The adoption office was much swankier than the building or its elevator.  This is the email that I wrote on September 6, 2004, back in the days before I was a sometimes blogger and a full-time Mom:

Dear Everyone,

I started a nice, long email to all of you, which was just eaten by Juno or the

hotel's internet connection.  And I'm not even going ballastic.

Greetings from the Holiday Inn-Yangtze in Chongqing ("chun ching", if you

happen to care about pronounciation).

We survived the two long flights from Newark to San Francisco, and then on to

Beijing.  Our 24 hours in Beijing went by very fast: one Peking duck restaurant on

arrival, Tianmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall on Sunday, then by

5 pm we were on our way to the airport for Chongqing.  Our travel group and the 

facilitators are phenomenal.

Today was Gotcha Day, the day we've prepared, overpacked and angst-ed over for

months. It went so, so well.  We all met in the hotel's restaurant at 9:30 to do

the paperwork, which was spirited away by the facilitators, after lunch the bus 

came at 1:20 pm to take us to the local adoption office.  We arrived at a rather

non-descript corner, somewhere in CQ, went into a rather decrepit looking building

and arrived on the fourth floor to a rather new looking office with more than the

13 babies our group was there to claim.  Rolling scooters with babies (including 

one that was rocketing from one corner of the room to another), sofas with babies,

orphanage staff with babies, all in various states of happiness, apprehension, or

outright crying.

Steve and I failed to pick out Thea from the multitudes, but no sooner did we

really start focusing, someone called out "Liang Zhen" and a squalling Thea was 

placed in Steve's arms.  She calmed down pretty quickly and just stared at us

trying to figure things out; she like the toy we brought and seem to focus on 

faces.  For our paperwork we were photographed as a family (one hellacious picture

of me, don't expect to see it), then we met with the orphanage director and staff 

that accompanied the babies to ask any questions.  The LiangPing babies seemed 

very well cared for.  We managed to take a picture with them for Thea's scrapbook.

I have never said Xie Xie (shay shay: thank you) so many times on this whole trip

as I did today.

Thea had her first bottle (eats like a champ, liked whatever bottle she was given,

prefers silicon nipples) and diaper change at the adoption office.  That's what, 

I think, won her over:  we might be funny looking and unfamiliar, but we cater and

keep butts dry.

She fell asleep on the ride back to the hotel, so Steve did a diaper run to a local

department store.  I watched the nap and then played stacking cups with Thea.  We

had dinner with the group and the new additions, and then the doctor came to the

hotel room to check over the babies.  She's now 8.6 kg and passed her physical. 

The 9-12 month clothes with feet are a little tight, twelves are a little hefty in

the torso - we'll manage.

Chongqing had rain last night - the sky crying tears for the babies that we're

taking away, and still today it was a little damp.  It's foggy and smoggy - we're

on the 19th floor of the hotel and can barely see the other side of the Yangtze

for a few hours during the day.  There are beautiful lights along the river at

night.

Anyway, between the first effort and getting this email off, I've left Steve for

an hour and a half.  Thea's probably flayed the flesh off his arms with those nails of

hers, and he's so smitten, he's probably letting her.

Next update, if possible, either later in the week or after the 12th when we're in

Guangzhou

Hope all is well with you.  Thank you for all the good thoughts - they have

obviously worked.  Thea is fantastic, beyond our wildest hopes and dreams and we

can't wait to bring her home.


Lydia

And eight years later,  that little baby is still beyond my wildest dreams, the best daughter in the whole world and my fabulous girl.

Little Brat in EDP

In Thea's years at Ying Hua International School, I think all of friends and all of the teachers knew she was adopted.  I don't think anyone, child or adult, every really commented on it, questioned either Thea or us.  There were several children who were adopted internationally and a couple who were adopted in the US.  Adoption just wasn't all that much of a big deal.

Friday I went to pick up Thea at Wicoff School's EDP (extended-day program), and she was sitting at a table with a bunch of girls (somewhat of a shock because she usually seems to hang around boys more), and as I snuck up behind her, I hear one of the the EDP ladies addressing the child sitting across from Thea, saying "You don't know the reasons for Thea's adoption."  It seems this beast told Thea that she was adopted because her birth parents didn't want her.

None of this seemed to faze Thea in the least, she was busy making hand-drawn Pokemon cards, but I wanted to shred that little future social misfit into a million tiny pieces.  Thea knows all about the day of her adoption, and what few details about her finding that we know.  We talk about it on and off at home, if it comes up, but we've never really had any conversations about what to say to people outside of our family. (And there will be those readers who say give the little cherub the benefit of the doubt, forgive, blah blah blah.  I saw her face, her expression was prissy, supercilious and mean.)

So while Thea got her lunch box, backpack and coat, I told the little beast, in as calm a tone as I could muster, that she could not presume to know the story of Thea's adoption because there are details that even we don't know and that what for me was the happiest event in my life was in all likelihood preceded by the saddest days for her birth family.  But of course the little girl didn't seem to be paying attention, but since I'd already turned to leave, I heard the EDP lady say to her, "Kayla, did you hear what Thea's mother said to you?" and began to repeat what I said, but by then we were out of the room.

Little Miss Kayla, you have a lot to learn, and if you don't get a little more sensitivity in your soul (if you even have one), the next mother whose children are adopted may not be as Gandhi-esque as me.  For now, you live and I'm glad that I only pick Thea up from EDP a few times per month.  And so much for wishing she had a few more female friends, she has her friends in Brownies and can hang with the boys for now.  All they seem to care about is video games, Pokemon, Bakugan and soccer, which is just fine.

The Year of the Rabbit

What a bunch of gorgeous kids.  The older ones, Thea in aqua, Ava in silver, Lucas in red, Kyra in white, Sorcha next to Kyra in red/white and Kitty in red, sandwiched between her little sisters, all met their families in September 2004.  At least once a year since then we've gotten together, starting in December 2004.  The kids have grown, siblings have joined families and now thanks to Wii and other toys and games, the parents can actually sit down and talk to each other.

If I ever had to spend a two week road trip in a foreign country again, I would do it with these people without a moment's hesitation.  We're lucky that about half of the thirteen families live close enough to be able to get together.

Sixth Anniversary

Six years ago today, which was also Labor Day, we met Thea in person- and even though everyone on our travel group thought that they had been given the best baby, we truly know we were given the best one for us.

Right now the object of my affection is more into Phineas & Ferb than her adoption anniversary, so I have to get sentimental with the keyboard rather than the kid herself.

The Cure for the Common Snow

. . . would be a Saturday afternoon/evening with families from our first China travel group.  The snow kept a couple of families away, but five families got together.  Lucas, the oldest baby from our 2004 trip, is now seven years old and he was a good pal for Micah to hang out with - especially since the boys were greatly outnumbered by a pack of very strong-minded six-year old.

Tomorrow, rollerskating!  Thea and Micah have been invited to a birthday party that will be at a roller rink in Kendall Park.  Let's hope that we all come home with no sprained ankles or bruised egos. . . .

Whoops

Missed a sort of big one: Micah's 2nd Adoption Anniversary. July 9th or 10th, depending on whether one bases it on physical custody (the 9th) or the actual signing of papers (the 10th), the anniversary completely blew by us. Ooops. He is clueless at present, about adoption that is. Hard to believe that two years ago we were just getting home from our post-China beach week and we had a baby in the house whose only word was "Up!" Now, two years, three trips to the Emergency Room, one toilet later, quite a few people have asked us, 'Does he ever shut up?' And there are times I wish he could be a little quieter, he probably never will shut up - too many people have invested too much time and effort to get him this chatty. So chatty, he even talks in his sleep, which amazes me.


Got his pre-op clearance appointment made for next week, got to get him to the lab for a blood draw. Sigh, that will not be fun. His doctor is lucky because I've completed a good bit of the paperwork.

I'll have to circle September 6th on the calendar, it will be the 5th anniversary of Thea's adoption - and she does understand quite a bit more than Micah about being adopted, and I don't want to forget it in the hoopla and preparation of schools' starting (on the 8th (Micah, I think) and 9th (Thea, again not sure), I just want to make it through August and Scarlett O'Hara the rest for now.

Saturday

Today was the get-together for our first adoption travel group: five families from the original 13 who went to ChongQing together, plus two more families in the area who arrived in Guangzhou to start the in-province portion the night we arrived for our US Consulate processing week.

(I should did out the email I sent to friends and family about that night in September 2004: our adopton agency in its selfish desires to minimize trips to the airport, scheduled both groups to arrive at approximately the same time - the late-ish hour wasn't a big deal for the group arriving from Beijing and who would be in Guangzhou for their entire trip, but we had 13 babies in our group. Thea had screamed and howled for almost the entire flight from ChongQing to Guangzhou. Steve was in nervous parent mode so he wanted her safely confined to the car seat, I wanted her in my lap to see if that would settle her down. Whether it was the cabin pressure's effect on her ears, confinement to the car seat that could be used in an airline seat or just general irritation at her lot in life. Everyone on that flight knew us by the time we got off the plane. By the time we got our luggage, were bussed to the White Swan Hotel, got in to our rooms, it was really, really late, and we had to be up and ready to go for visa photos at 8 am.)

The girls are all five years old, three are in kindergarten. They all have changed so much since September 2004. Micah was the sole boy as the one family with a son wasn't able to make it. It didn't seem to phase him much, and he was in the mix and enjoying himself - and he didn't color on the walls or make any other horrific messes. Bonus.

We see these families once or twice a year, yet each time we all do get together we seem to just pick up where we left off. Photos to follow at some point.

Micah is repeating after the GPS, on those increasingly rare occaisons when I have the mute off. The GPS says, "Turn right," then the voice comes from the back seat, "Turn right." So far he hasn't managed to say, "Arriving at destination," though.

The Sunday NYT Magazine

Irritation du jour:

From the New York Times Magazine's Sunday, November 30, 2008 cover story Her Body, My Baby on her experience with gestational surrogacy Alex Kuczynski wrote:

"Of all the possible mothering paradigms I could count - birth mother, biological mother, child-raising mother, legally recognized mother - I would fit three of the roles. I had to settle for three-quarters his mother. That seemed like more than enough."

Way to slap the faces of thousands upon thousands of families formed by adoption, Alex. You may be a good writer, but as a compassionate, thoughtful person you suck. Some thoughts should be kept to yourself and your mental mathematical equations of motherhood top my list.

And (as if there needed to be an 'and') what was really glaring was the photo of Alex and her infant son with the baby nurse standing in the background. So obviously she didn't go through multiple miscarriages, twelve rounds of in vitro fertilizations, tens of thousands of dollars and surrogacy (I'm paraphrasing from the article) to actually do the dirty work involved in motherhood. Don't chip your nails or get any drool on your designer dress, dahling.

I hope Santa puts a bit fat lump of coal in her stocking.

Interesting Article

I hope this will be my kids in 10 or so years:

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2008/08/30/the_point_of_return/?page=1

In case the link doesn't last, it's an article about three teenagers who were adopted from a SWI in Wuhan (Micah's province) who went back this summer to volunteer there. I'm just amazed that they got cleared to do it by the authorities.

Labor Day Weekend and Nosy Problems

It finally happened, one of those annoying encounters with a person who actually was so out of touch with the social norms of this world that she asked how much my children cost - and did so right in front of my children and my mother. This is a rather long-winded post, so cut to the bottom if you want to know exactly how I feel about the above.

Thea, Micah and I joined the rather limited throngs of Labor Day travelers on Friday, driving down to Southern Maryland to see Oma. We hadn't been to visit since the end of June/beginning of July, giving Oma almost seven weeks to recover from babysitting both kids while I attended the AANP conference. Oma called and warned us off of our usual back roads route that brings us over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge so we came down I-95 onto the Baltimore Beltway and over the Key Bridge to I-97. Other than the usual glitch where the Delaware Memorial Bridge route merges with I-95, it was smooth sailing. Thea slept most of the way and Micah chattered on about how his balloon blew away (three weeks ago).

Saturday we went with my brother, sister-in-law and nephew to an Amish Market in Upper Marlboro, followed by a trip to Watkins Regional Park which has a train, a carousel and a miniature golf course. I managed to snap the cutest picture of all three kids (youngest to oldest, Micah, Willi, Thea) hanging on the gate waiting and watching for the train to pull in. Micah and Willi were just about beside themselves over the train. Thea actually screwed up her courage and went for a carousel ride, though both of them rode on the benches and not on the up-and-down or even the stationary animals. (This earned us the comment from the carousel operator, "You did not pay $1.25 each just to sit on some benches. . . ")

Thea and I played a round of miniature golf while my brother folded himself back into the train with the two boys for a third trip around the track. Thea and I played by four-year old rules: no scoring, do-overs allowed, no worrying about stance, etc. - so we were done in about the same time it took for the boys to ride the train. Eighteen holes. (When Thea and Steve played this course on Fathers' Day, it took them forever because Steve actually felt compelled to teach Thea how to stand, line up her shot, and all that nonsense. For that, he deserved to roast in the hot sun.)

While Micah napped, all the train-riding and carousel-riding having taken a toll on him, Thea and I went to Target for school supplies. Yes, Kindergartners have school supply lists. It was a short list: one box of 24 crayons, one box of colored pencils, two erasers, one pencil sharpener with cover, a package of #2 pencils, three glue sticks and a box to put it in, 5"x 8" x 2". Charles County schools were back in session last week, so we had a major search for Pink Pearl erasers.

Later that evening Aunt Shannon and Willi came over and we went to Rita's for ice cream. Willi and Micah were just too cute, chasing each other around on the patio at the ice cream place. They both love to laugh and run, and it's just so neat to see how a like two-year olds are despite being born two months and thousands of miles apart.

Sunday we decided to "go and see the goats" - which means a trip to Westmoreland Berry Farm in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It's a farm store, berry-picking place that happens to have goats and has built a long ramp so that the goats can ascend, cross over the road that leads down to the berry fields and arrive at a platform where they wait in joyous anticipation (as joyous as a goat gets) of fools who put a quarter in a gumball machine that now cranks out feed corn. The corn is placed in a little cup and a pulley system is used to raise it up to the goat. All of this is endlessly fascinating if you are five and under. If you are forty and over, you just spend time praying that goats do not move their bowels while they are 25 feet in the air. The farm store has a large open-air pavilion with a snack shop, so we had ice cream and snacks (my mother was appalled that I followed my dish of butter pecan with a side of sauerkraut - I just love sauerkraut; she always has to make extra on holidays because I'll start eating it from the pot at breakfast._ The kids got to run around on the playground equipment and we made a trip through the petting zoo section. Thea was brave and got into having the goats eat from her hand, though she thought that the goat spit was nasty; Micah was right there watching but he kept saying "NO GOAT, NO GOAT, Mommeeeeee" so something about them, the smell, the vacuous eyes with those weird slit-like irises, skeeved him.

So on the way home, we decided to go to Mom's local Chinese restaurant. It's straight out of the 1960s and its decor is only slightly different from the Sampan, which was the Chinese place in Hyattsville that I used to go to while I lived in N.E. Washington. The staff is friendly, they are very tolerant of children and the messes that follow in their wakes, and the food is typical American-style Chinese food. We were seated at a booth in the back, they were either being kind to my mother who would not have to walk far on her bad knees to the buffet or were putting us in Siberia because they remember when we last patronized them.

Mom wanted the buffet, but I decided to order off the menu - the buffet leaves too much opportunity for Micah Man to run around and cause chaos. About the time the kids were occupied with their egg-drop soup and dumplings, a woman stops by our table and asks, "Where are they from?" Since I was hungry and about to get my mouth around a dumpling, I didn't have the wherewithal to say Princeton, New Jersey, but I don't think that would have done much to shut this person down.

Her next query was, "How much did they cost?" At this point my idiot-radar did start to function, and I said something to the effect of "Not as much as we love them" which was sort of a nonsequitar, but anyone able to read social nuances would get the idea to BUGGER OFF, BUTTHEAD. I should have asked her if she had children, and if so, were they conceived in the conventional manner or with the assist of a petri dish, were they delivered vaginally or by C-section? But I digress, she followed this with, "Sooo, you weren't able to have children of your own?" What the HECK to these two little people look like? They are my own children, you moron. At that point I decided to just go back to eating in hopes she would find that she needed to return to her table before her plate of food from the buffet got cold. And if she made any further trips to the buffet, she thankfully left us alone.

In all the Yahoo! groups I've belonged to related to adoption from China, I've read about this stuff, and I've always figured that having read about it, I would handle it so much better, but I didn't. Fortunately the children were oblivious to the whole encounter, dumplings trump nosy strangers.

This is right up there with a question posed to me last year by one of the after-care teachers at Thea's school: What do you know about their real mothers? I AM THEIR 'REAL' MOTHER. I wrote that one off to language (the person's first language was not English) and cultural differences, but in many ways it still was irksome. And considering that there are a few Chinese-born adopted children in the school, they'd better learn the lingo quick, cultural differences or not.

Thea's been thinking about adoption: she knows that she was born in China and that we came to China to bring her home. And she knows that the same is true for her brother. While we were at my mother's, she made the observation that, "Micah's first mommy recycled him so we got him." Which is an interesting interpretation, and proof that Bob the Builder's "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" message has made an impression on her.

Monday we went to Miss Gertrude's to feed starlight mints to her neighbor's horses. Gertrude and Micah clicked so Thea and I walked to the barn and Micah held fast to Gertrude and regaled her with his best conversational tidbits, most of which I don't think she understood, but she did an excellent job of faking it. Thea again got into feeding the animals and allowed Ethel and the other horses to eat out of her hand; Micah at first wouldn't even go in the barn. But he got scooped up and brought in so he could help me feed some peppermints to the horse. Such a soft nose this one had, and they were nice because they were eager, but not greedy so they kept their teeth in check.

After horses came a trip for school shoes for the kids - with a stop to look at a desk Mom saw and thought would be neat for Thea. It was like a little secretary desk with a fold out table-top and lots of cubbies at Everything Amish (If It Ain't Dutch, It Ain't Much is the store's sign's subtext). I took pictures of it, but I think it's a little out of our price range.

The best day of the weekend - for me - was yesterday morning. My mother made an appointment with Lindsey, the stylist who had been cutting and coloring my hair until around the time we went to China last year. I went back to a salon around here that I had gone to once upon a time and the stylist was ok, but she wasn't Lindsey. So yesterday I got to catch up with Lindsey and I let her lop off and thin out a ton of hair. When I saw the floor, it looked like a poodle and a pitbull went at it, and it wasn't pretty for the poodle. (The haircut turned out fine, it was just more hair on the floor than I've seen in awhile.)

I think Thea was having a little pre-first day of school anxiety because I told her that we were going to home she wanted to stay with Oma and she was very sad to be packing up. By staying the extra day, we avoided holiday weekend/beach traffic. Everyone was in a good mood for the four-hour drive.

Anyway, the bottom line to the encounter with the nosy wench in the Chinese restaurant is: It is totally unacceptable to ask adoptive parents how much their children cost, and the sin is doubled if it is asked in front of the child(ren) in question. Ditto with the use of 'real' as an adjective in front of mother when the real mother is the one being asked. Birthparent. Biological mother. Whatever. Pick one, use it.

And don't get me started on people who ask about how my children were abandoned or found (not a subject for casual conversation) or those who say that "Baby girls aren't wanted in China" because it's so much more complicated than that.

Happy Anniversary, Micah!

Wednesday was the one year anniversary of when we met Micah in person and were granted 24 hour custody by Hubei Province, followed the next day by the one-year anniversary of his actual adoption. Fesitivities were rather sparse Chez Us - Nancy came for two hours to work with Micah. She's replacing Ela whose due date is Monday, so we'll be waiting for word on when Elzby makes her entrance into the world. Thursday Micah was back at Lisa's while I was at work.

Micah's sitter, Lisa, has another child in her care who has a smaller version of Micah's Buh-Buh (bunny bear, given to Thea by Lori and Jamie but never loved by Thea as much as her white tigers). I have been wanting to find a back-up Buh-Buh for awhile, and Lisa called the other mom to find out where she bought it. And there is was on Amazon, just sitting there waiting for me to buy it . In pink and in blue. Bunny Bear is a bear wearing a hooded track suit with rabbit ears. Obviously designed by someone having some sort of cross-dressing animal fetish. Micah has since discovered that the manufacturer has cut costs by not having the track suit come off - and he was sorely disappointed at this and still can't figure out why the blue bunny bear can't get nekkid.

Thea marked the occasion - or some day right around the anniversary - by telling me that it was time for Micah to find a new family. Sorry, dear daughter, but despite his occasional naughtiness, I've sort of gotten used to having the little pest around.

The Ecstasy and the Agony, and the Miscellany

The Ecstasy: My Brilliant Child

Today Thea and I went out to run errands because Micah was down for a nap, and Steve wanted to follow suit. We went to Princeton Market Fair to do a little shopping and have ice cream, then to Staples to pick up another box of Kodak paper and printer cartridges. On a whim, and since we were parked right in front, I decided to go into Marshall's. We've been on the hunt for size 13 summer shoes for Thea and sandals for Micah.

We were scoping out the selection of girls' shoes when Thea looks at a box that has a large, red Chinese character on the lid and says, "That's Ai Li's name." (Sarah/Ai Li and Thea share a birthday, Thea's a year older. The name is pronounced Eye Lee in English.) Since what little Chinese I know, I know that "Ai" is "love" ('wo ai ni' is I love you) - and the brand name for the shoes was Like Love printed right there on the box. I was a little freaked out that after ten months of language immersion school (and zero reinforcement at home), Thea's teacher says that she can make and understand jokes with them in Mandarin. Now she recognizes a character in a completely random context just blew me away. My daughter is near brilliant, at least in my mind.

The Agony: Despite her numerous flashes of brilliance, she's an airhead.

Sometimes brilliant people have disorganized little brains. . . .this afternoon on our errands, Thea took one of her white tigers along, and wanted to schlep him into the stores. This was common up until last year or so, but now she rarely takes them along in the car and even more infrequently does one or the other actually leave the car to go into a store. And I brought the curse down upon her by saying to her as we were traversing the parking lot to enter Barnes & Noble, "Don't be a Micah and have me hunting that thing down after you've left him somewhere." Micah constantly is leaving his smelly old Bunny Bear everywhere: he has filed Bunny Bear amongst the 15,000+ charts at my office, nearly tossed him out the window of the car, when Bunny Bear goes for the permanent Buh-Bye, I won't be terribly surprised. In Micah's hands, BB's day are numbered. But Thea is usually the more responsible of the two, especially where the tigers are concerned.

And our excursion proceeded as detailed above.

Until bedtime tonight. One tiger on her pallet on the floor, one tiger allegedly in my car. Until I go out to the car and turn on the interior light. About that instant that the back seat was illuminated, my brain received the thought that I don't remember tiger coming back into the car. I don't remember the tiger being with us since we were at our first stop, the Gymboree store or perhaps our second stop, Barnes & Noble. Damn, damn and double damn. That tiger has made innumerable trips to Maryland, to Indiana/Illinois, to Florida, to South Carolina/Georgia, to the beach in Delaware and has never been lost. Those tigers went to CHINA and back.

So I grab the phone and call Barnes & Noble - we found a Spy Case with a periscope in it, a cause of much excitement since she's been bugging me to build one just like Curious George did in the Spy Monkey episode (damn simian) and I haven't a clue. There it was right in front of me ready to go, if I'd had to I would have auctioned one of Steve's kidneys on eBay to get it. So perhaps in our mutual excitement over the periscope, Tiger got left behind. No dice. Not in the Lost and Found, not in the Children's section. (And might I add that calling Directory Assistance and asking for the telephone number of the local Barnes & Noble only to be given a toll-free number is not what I wanted at 9:50 pm when I was under the assumption that the store closed at 10 pm. (My bad on that one, it closes at 11 pm on weekends.) I had to run downstairs to the computer to look up the phone number.

So I called Gymboree, which was closed, though one of its staff is still there. As is Tiger. He'll be partying overnight at the Gymboree and I'll be darkening its door at 11 am when they open. I could have kissed the girl who answered the phone, and she was nice enough to put Thea's name on the tiger.

And when I went upstairs to tell her, the brilliant airhead was already 95% asleep.

I'm sure my headache and palpitations will eventually subside.

Other miscellany: We got our one-year post-placement packet from our adoption agency. In about 75 days it will be one year since we returned from China - and that's when the report is due. So I've already emailed our social worker to get the ball rolling. One that report is in, then we are DONE, DONE, DONE with our adoption agency. I think even if we were to consider adding another child, I don't think we could bring ourselves to use this agency in spite of a 'discount' it gives to returning adoptive families. I'll tell all once the final paperwork is submitted, approved and there are no further ties - but it's nothing more than what has been written about the agency on a number of adoption-related web discussion groups many, many times before.

Today marks ten months since Micah's adoption, yesterday was ten months since we actually signed a 24-hour custody agreement and brought him back to the Cruella DaVille room at the White Rose Hotel.

Yesterday we went to the Duke Farms Indoor Gardens for a tour with Thea's school. Micah and I have driven past this estate every week that we go to Summit School and I've always wondered about it, so this was the first chance to see at least a small part of the grounds. The indoor gardens are going to close for renovations at the end of this month, and won't reopen until 2010. The greenhouses were beautiful; orginally they were used by J.B. Duke to grow foods for the estate - both the family and the workers. After his death in the 1920s the greenhouses were unused until his daughter, Doris Duke renovated them in the 1950s. There is an Italian garden, an Edwardian garden, an English garden, a French garden, a Chinese garden, a Japanese garden, a Persian garden, a desert - and probably something else. Our guide was very good at bringing it down to school-age level. She also claimed to have an accent because she was born in England. I heard nothing vaguely English about her speech whatsoever - what came out her mouth sounded pure northern New Jersey/metro New York to me. Micah loved the fish in the Chinese garden's ponds. Fish-EEEEEE, fish-EEEEE he kept warbling as he was being dragged to the next display. Despite the day being cold and grey, there were a few frogs in the ponds as well.

Since we were just joining the field trip because Fridays aren't a regular school day for Thea, we went home to have lunch and hang out. The weather was dismal and rainy, so there weren't too many options for the afternoon other than going back to school for Spencer's birthday celebration, which featured an appearance from Silly Billy, the Lizard Guy (see http://www.thelizardguys.com/ if you doubt me). It was all pretty cool stuff: a Dumpy Tree Frog from Australia, a blue-tongued skink, a snake from the Everglades, an African tortoise, an albino Burmese python and a giant millipede (which only had 700 legs, the liar - and it would have been a candidate for a can of Raid, IMHO). My kids were willing to touch everything that was offered up for a one-finger inspection. I was delighted in a very secretive, evil sort of way that the boy who was part of a twosome who called Thea a baby enough that it bothered her and became an 'issue' was a total wimp about touching the animals. Insert evil demented laugh here.

Silly Billy himself was quite a sight. Think late 1970s/early 1980s. Think Styx, Journey or any other band with long hair. Except that with his rather slight frame, all that hair made this dude look like a pale yeti. Again, if you doubt me, check out the web site. I got nostalgic for music from my high school and college years and am that much closer to getting myself an iPod.

Valentine's Day, Adoption Group Get-Together, etc.

I sucked at Valentine's Day this year. Basically my mother and Steve's mother got cards with photo of Micah washing dishes in the kitchen sink, while sitting nekkid in the sink (will post that later) and my friend Janet got a Barack Obama Valentine that was just too perfect, also with the gratuitous nekkid baby photo, and that was it.

On Friday Thea and I also made twelve gift buckets for the kids at the mini-reunion of our first adoption travel group - she wimped out after about bucket number six or seven. They had a semi-Valentine-sy/Easter-ishy theme. Her Valentine's present from us was two sets of swim goggles, since last summer's pair popped a lens and it doesn't seem to stay there when put back in. Cards came from Christine, Oma, Aunt Shannon (who did a photo card of Willi that was adorable and makes me feel guilty that I haven't done anything like that with the kids since Micah's been home.) In my defense, Micah has also sported a number of bruises, his stitches and a scratch next to his right eye so having him looking like something other than a posterchild for some anti-child abuse agency hasn't been the easiest thing in the world) and my mother's neighbor, Miss Cora. Oma also sent a small box of chocolates for each of them that I've been doling out slowly.

The ChongQing adoption group reunion was great, ten little girls and Micah, who seemed to do pretty well with the attention (and he also managed not to whack or hit anyone or anything, not to break anything and not to flush any foreign objects down our friends' commode. Big sigh of relief.) The nice thing is that most everyone who has used the adoption agency again hates them almost as much if not more than we do, the bad thing was that one of the mom's from another travel group is friends with someone who works at the adoption agency. Wish I knew that before shooting off my mouth, but a big part of me is saying, "So what?" Nothing I said was untrue: Other than the whole miserliness with information and unreturned phone calls, which seems to be standard treatment across the board, finding out that there would be another family traveling with us to Wuhan from Marleen, one of the mom's from our ChongQing group, and not from the agency itself, is totally illustrative of how poorly the agency staff communicates with its families.

I only wish that I had the courage that another mom in our group did in filling out the questionnaire after their second adoption trip. She told them exactly what she thought; I just tossed the form, thinking that I was not going to waste my time providing the agency with feedback that would probably be ignored anyway. One more post-placement assessment in July and we're done with them forever and ever.

Thea's over at Emily's for a playdate - which is a really Yippy-Skippy moment since she usually prefers to do playdates here, in her comfort zone. Micah is napping, and I need to get him up or he'll be up forever tonight. The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle and I aren't getting along at the moment, and the mouse on our computer seems to have something along the lines of Parkinson's or a seizure disorder. Janet's crockpot ginger beef recipe is in the crockpot, and with any luck will be done by dinner time. There will be a memorial service for our oven, which has taken brief and none-to-brief sabbaticals before, but now seems to be just a little more dead than usual.

Socially Secure. . . .

Three days before the one month mark, Micah's Social Security card arrived, and it was correct - it didn't have the horrible "Valid for Employment Only with DHS Approval" printed on it (as Thea's first card did). So the score is tied, two trips to SSA for Thea, two for Micah. And now I can move on to his NJ birth certificate and U.S. passport.

We also got the medical clearance slip for the hearing aid, which should be the final piece of that puzzle, which puts us at the beginning of a two to three month wait to see what the state produces in the way of funding for Micah's hearing aid. (A bone-conduction soft-band hearing aid runs about $3,000 to $4,000.)

Tonight Thea and I have a date to assemble her party favors for Saturday's party - I'm hoping her excitement level doesn't burn itself out by the actual time of the party. Our oven is officially dead, so the cupcakes will be catered by ShopRite or Whole Foods - for both her party and for the school field trip to the Von Thun Farm. Micah is going to be doing time in the pre-toddlers room at Lawrence Day School so Thea and I can have a real Mommy-Thea morning.

Audiogram & 3rd Anniversary of Thea's Adoption

I'm adding another post keep those of you who have no cable TV, hobbies or social life, or those who have an extremely low threshold for entertainment, updated. Micah had his audiogram at JFK Rehabilitation Institute in Edison (what a miserable drive, everything I hate about roads in NJ and then some).

The test itself turned out pretty well, after being kept in a sound proof room that was about as warm as Hell's antechamber. He got so warm, I had him stripped down to a t-shirt and diaper by the time the appointment was over. As expected the decibel range covered by air conduction was nil (no ear canals, duh), but once they bypassed the structural abnormality, the bone conduction ranges were fine - so a bone-conduction hearing-aid for starters. I'm inclined to do the least invasive for now, the hearing aid, pending hearing from whatever surgeon is going to deal with the surgery later on - sometimes doing the pins for a BAHA (bone-anchored hearing aid) or cochlear implant will preclude future work on the reconstruction of the auricle. I don't much care for the cosmetic part, but Micah may care about this some day so I don't want to make any decisions that will override what he may want to do in the future.

The downside is we go back again in a week for a repeat audiogram, to make sure their assessment was correct and to see if they can distinguish between the left and right ear in terms of ability. I liked both of the audiologists who worked with him, one of whom has a doctorate. She was very much on the same page as me as far as getting Micah communication skills as opposed to solely focusing on his acquiring speech. The one school that Somerset County's EIP works with is more focused on oral/speech and once upon a time had a director who was opposed to sign language. This kid needs sign language as a temporary measure to express his basic needs: thirst, hunger, tiredness, etc. so anyone who is going to look down their noses at me will eventually be also butting heads. The second audiogram may also be able to put off further testing that would require Micah to go under anesthesia, so there is a plus to it.

Thea is doing ok at YingHua Day School, a Mandarin Chinese-immersion program. She taught one of my mom's neighbors "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" in Chinese a few days ago, but then was mortified when I told her teacher about it. She sort of keeps her Chinese school stuff separate from us, which is so adolescent it's almost scary. Today is the third anniversary of her adoption, so we're celebrating Family Day with dinner and a dessert of her choice (blueberries and strawberries (with whip cream, we're not saints)).

Labor Day weekend I took my little mutants down to visit my mother over Labor Day, proving I could travel solo with two of them. I highly recommend The Who's CD, Who's Next for drowning out any whining or asking are we there yet, Mommy? Mom got Micah to eat yellow squash, pineapple and a few other things that he was spitting out at home. Mom bought Micah a little pinafore/bib thing at the farmers' market. I put it on him and it looks more like a sundress than a bib/coverall, but if one is going to cross-dress, let it be John Deere fabric and Mennonite-made. Fortunately he wasn't into accessorizing with his sister's shoes (loves the sandals with the pink flowers) or one of the purses that she has no use for.

I'm now trying to get invitations out for Thea's birthday party. She turns four on Saturday, October 13th, and this year we're finally doing a children's party instead of just the family parties of the previous two years. She actually walked into My Gym and said, "This is a cool place for a birthday party." Coming from the child who hates to be the center of attention in a lot of ways, I had my checkbook out in about two seconds flat. I've been scouring the dollar section of Target since Spring so I already have most of the stuff for the party favors, if I can find all the places I've squirreled it away.

Jillian's Christening, etc.

We went on a trip to Hackettstown today for Micah's birthday-and-orphanage mate's baptism. It's been about five weeks since we got back from China, but I still can recognize her voice when she cries (and she only fussed while she was having water poured on her.) Micah and Thea were remarkably well-behaved even though we took seats at the back of the group gathered for the baptism, just in case a quick escape for a screaming heathen child (or two) was needed.

Thea did her usual slow to warm up, but not ready to leave when it was time to go home shtick at the party afterward, and Micah chowed down, walked around, and otherwise was Micah. He pretty much goes with the flow unless he's really tired.

Making the trip up there was good practice for going up to the Summit Speech School for Micah's evaluation in mid-September.

My mother got an upgraded computer on Sunday, and my internet connection was used (with my permission) and in the process all the emails in my in-box got downloaded to the hard drive of her new computer. So if you're reading this and you sent an email over the weekend and are wondering why I haven't responded, it will be waiting for me when we get to my mother's house on Friday.

We're home!

Our Continental flight had great tailwinds (70+ miles per hour) so we were slightly more than an hour early. Steve was in the center section and had an empty seat next to him, so we had five seats to use, which was very, very nice. Even with being the last in line at immigration, things moved quickly - and even the car service was at the airport waiting for us. The children won't be riding in a limo again until they go to their proms.

The flight was long, but uneventful. The same three episodes of CSI, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY were playing on the video - all total they ran about 150 minutes, so after two thirteen to fifteen hour flights, I could almost recite dialogue.

Micah's immigration officer was Charles Olah - I picked his station because the one next to him with a short line had an officer who looked about twelve years old. I thought the officer we met at the San Francisco airport actually went through the sealed brown enveloped we brought home for Thea in 2004, but this guy just took the packet and said Micah's Certificate of Citizenship should arrived in about six weeks. (The brown envelope is given to each family the same day the child's visa is issued and the Chinese passport is returned to parents; the instructions are to hand carry it, don't open it on pain of death and hand it to the immigration officer at whatever port of entry into the US families return to.)

Last night we were in Hong Kong, but way out on Lantau Island at the Regal Hotel at the airport. We could walk from customs to hotel, and could take the baggage cart with us. The hotel was something out of a neo-, techno-, disco-ain't-dead decor. Dieter from the old SNL skit "Sprockets" would be quite at home there. A nice clerk with the unlikely name of Angus (he's Chinese) at the check-in desk upgraded our room, so we were down the hall from the Cash family instead of in the other tower. On our way back from dinner I was pushing the double stroller and oblivious to the world, but a classmate of Thea's from YingHua was calling out "Thea, Thea..." She and her mother and grandmother had just arrived and were leaving the following day for Wuhan on an Our Chinese Daughters Foundation tour. Small world. Thea was also sort of oblivious due to tiredness.

Micah's first act as a newly-minted American citizen was to poop and stink up the limo. Fifteen hours on a plane, and he chose this particular moment. Thea and Micah were wonderful on the plane; both slept well - Micah with three naps and Thea with one long one. She missed the plane landing at Newark because she was fast asleep.

Pictures will be uploaded soon - Steve ran off to Princeton to register Micah on his health insurance. Micah is discovering the toybox with Thea's old baby toys, but until we get the play pit up, this kid needs to be watched like a hawk. I've got to get to the store to stock up on baby food and diapers; I didn't buy much ahead of time because I wasn't sure of his size and what he'd be eating.

We survived, no illnesses, no glitches. Everyone's starting to crash (it's 6:30 am according to their internal clocks). It's going to be a few days of being out of sync with real time.

My most pressing question right now is: where in the world did all the dirty laundry come from? We sent out laundry once in Wuhan and once in Guangzhou and I still have a mountain of stuff to be washed.

Micah has his visa!

He's street-legal for entry into the US! Micah must have known it was a big day because he gave us a six a.m. wake-up call. For all those who know Steve and his utter dislike of getting up early in the morning, he was at breakfast at 7:30 a.m. today, which occurs on the same timetable as Haley's comet at best and virgin births at worst.

We went to the American consulate visa unit in the TianHe section of GuangZhou, about 30+ minutes from the hotel in traffic. It's in a non-descript office building, a five-floor escalator ride from street level. It is the only immigration visa unit in all of Asia according to the consular officer who did the swearing in, so this is the gateway through which everyone passes. It is about as dull and butt-ugly looking as any US government office space in Washington, DC - though there was a bunch of toys and things for children to play with in the waiting area.

The consular officer who did the oath actually had a personality, quite the opposite of the American ex-pat toad/drone who did the oath for Thea's visa - somewhere in the emails I've saved from our 2004 trip I have a bit of a rant about him that I'll throw in after I'm home and can edit the blog a little. Her name is Kathleen Yu, and although the last name seems Chinese, she's Caucasian. Since we were in the first row, I went to thank her after everything was finished, and she spoke to Micah in Mandarin - which was probably a refreshing change for him from Steve and I yelling "Bu yao" to him ten thousand times a day.

During her little speech prior to the oath, she said that she personally reviewed and signed off on all the children's applications - and there were enough families from the White Swan alone to fill one large motor coach and a minibus, she had her work cut out for her. The 'interview' at the visa window was only a review of our faces and photographs, no words were exchanged so the word used to describe what transpired was a complete misnomer.

After we all got back to the White Swan, we did the usual red coach photos - Thea and Jillian were about equally grouchy about having pictures taken. Then we all met at Lucy's for dinner. Today was Jim Cash's birthday - so Mary wanted a candle in a slice of apple pie a la mode so we could sing "Happy Birthday" to him. No way this could have been a surprise, the waitresses kept coming and asking if we wanted the apple pie with candle. No subtlety there whatsoever.

One interesting thing we saw on the way to and from the Consulate was guys swimming in the Pearl River. On the way there it was just a few, and they were pretty close to the riverbank. Once were were back in our room, looking down from the 10th floor we could see three or four men out in the middle of the main channel, right in the middle of the ferries that are constantly running back and forth and the shipping lanes. I question their sanity on several fronts: getting whacked by the hull a boat might smart a bit and the pollution level in the river has to be ridiculously high. Wednesday must be the day for this activity because it hasn't happened before. I tried to get a picture, but the zoom on my camera wasn't getting a good lock on them.

Tomorrow Ashleah's family is leaving to return to Des Moines. They are going to the airport at seven a.m. so we said good-byes and got their email address tonight. Micah and I took off a little early from the restaurant because I had to go pick up his chop. I got it at the same store where I bought Thea's chop in 2004. It has his name, MICAH and the two Chinese characters for his former name, Zhong Ji carved into it.

I'm toast, there's nothing more to write about. Our luggage has to be out in the hall at 11:20 am Thursday, the minibus will pick us up at noon. One night at the airport hotel in HK and we're on our way back.

Since this will probably be our last trip to China for a long, long while, I am going to miss it in many ways. I want to get back to our room to watch the light show on the Pearl River before the blue lights on the bridge get turned off at ten pm - though I hope that they turn the music down from wherever, we were treated to everything from Chinese songs to Roll Out the Barrel while trying to get Thea and Micah to sleep, which must come from a CD of the background music in Hell.

Good night all, good night GuangZhou, hello jet lag.

Just another day in GuangZhou

No obligations today, other than one of us being in our hotel room between 10:30 and 11:30 for a call from Lucy to let us know everything as ok (or not) with our visa paperwork. It wasn't much past 10:45 when the phone rang and we had the 'all clear'. Steve and children already were at the pool - Thea is now extremely enthusiastic about going to the pool and since her one suit was still damp, she even agreed to wear her two piece tankini suit, oh miracle of miracles. We puttered around the baby pool and the steps of the bigger section of the pool for about an hour before heading in to get showered and dressed to go out shopping.

I'm not into the high pressure sales and bargaining scene, it is just not my thing, so we headed to A Gift from China. We were the only people in the shop, which is a charity-run store that benefits orphans and disabled children in China, and there was a corner with toys for the the children to play with - which kept Steve distracted as well so I could shop in relative peace. We then went to the small park down the street, where Thea was undeterred by the heat and the fact her parents were turning into puddles. She tried out some of the exercise equipment and the slides, then we went to Lucy's Cafe for a late lunch.

Before sitting down to lunch we had to make a bathroom stop for Thea - the bathrooms in the park adjacent to Lucy's are all squat potties. I usually take Thea's shorts and underwear off and let her have at it - this time she planted her feet on either side of the hole and looked up at me and said, "How do I use this thing?" even though she's a veteran of at least three previous visits to bathrooms with no toilets.

After lunch we went back to the hotel, and since naps were not part of anyone's game plan, anyone under 48" tall, that is, Steve and Thea headed back to the pool. Micah and I hung out playing for a bit. He got his poop face on, but the phone rang and it was one of our group checking in about dinner plans. This gave me enough time to forget about changing Micah's diaper, so he let me know by going over to the table where the wipes, changing mat and diapers were, pulling them one by one on the floor and then sitting on the changing pad. At first it just seemed like he was in his usual investigate and destroy mode, but then it started looking like he was deliberately doing something, and he was. I told you he was a gastrointestinal genius.

After changing the diaper, Micah and I went for a walk to see if there were postcards available in the hotel shops. I went in for a couple postcards, and came out with two books of Chinese fairy tales and five postcards. The saleslady was still following me after I paid trying to see if I was interested in books about Hubei or ChongQing, postcards of Hubei. . .fortunately Micah was squirming and wanted to keep moving so we said thank you, but now thanks and moved on to the pool.

Thea and Steve were in the big pool, and she'd been brave enough to go with him to the waterfall - I got that advance report from the Cash family as we passed in the hall leading to the pool area. She is so proud of herself - and Steve was so happy to be out of the baby pool. Micah and I hung out for a few minutes and then went back into the hotel. He was doing a lot of walking - I walk backwards, encourage him to come forward and then keep moving out of reach. He'll take it up with his therapist later if this is somehow damaging to his little psyche. On the way back, right near the fish pond, he just plopped down and wouldn't budge. By the time I had him picked up and on the elevator, he was asleep so Steve and Thea went to Lucy's Cafe to see our group, but Thea fell asleep at dinner so Steve had it packed up and brought it back to the room. Micah shared her spaghetti and then Steve and Thea went out to retrieve our laundry. Dirty clothes for four people, accumulated over about a week, returned clean for under $18. I don't know what I am going to do when I have to cook, do laundry, and grocery shop again.

Tomorrow I've got to get a few more things done before starting to get organized for the trip home. I don't know if we get the passports and adoption certificates back tomorrow - since the Consulate appointment is late in the day, I'm hoping the stuff isn't returned on Thursday or I'll be shopping at the 7-11 for Tums.