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.

Thea's Birthday

I have only just started thinking about Thea's birthday - I think by this time last year we'd settled on a venue (My Gym) and made a few other critical decisions (Backyardigans theme), so all that left was the cupcakes and the party bags to round out the day. Now we're into two parties: a small one for school on her actual birthday and one for her friends.

When I was interrogating her as to any choices as to theme, she said, "People can just come as whatever they want. . ." So I had the idea, while out running errands yesterday, that we could do a Hallowe'en costume preview party: since all that effort goes into finding the right costume and the kids just where them at school and then that evening for trick-or-treating, why not give them one more chance to dress up.

Now the 'where' of the party-planning becomes an issue: if we do costumes, then a gym setting is out. God help me if some little cherub damages his or her costume two weeks before Hallowe'en. Ditto for the artsy-craftsy places, same reason. Pizza parlor party, third verse same as the first. For the number of people Thea wants, we could do it at the house, but the nice thing about doing it SOMEWHERE ELSE is you pay, and walk away.

Thea's going to be a knight for Hallowe'en, I think I'm going to stuff Micah into a puppy costume if I can find one cheap.

I'm off to cruise web sites of possible party places, and I'm reconsidering the whole costume idea. It seemed brilliant yesterday, but today upon re-examination, it's not as bright and shiny of an idea.

Happy Birthday Lucas!

Both of Thea's best school friends have turned five within the past ten days. Last weekend was Kalani's pizza parlor party (with his actual birthdate a few days prior to the party) and today we went to Lucas's party (actual birthday four days ago.) They will all be in Kindergarten together at YingHua this fall.

It was a great party because there was a huge playground to run around, and it was a semi-unstructured event. Run, play, make up your own adventures interspersed with time for pizza and juice boxes and another break for cake. And I just love Lucas because as he and his mother were putting together party bags, Lucas spoke up and said, "I don't think Thea will like the pink princess stuff." Here's a kid who pays attention to detail - and I've got to appreciate his mother as well because she had extra stuff set aside to swap out of the bag that Thea found on the treasure hunt. So my baby came running up to me happily exclaiming, "Look Mommy, a rake and a car!" This put her in such a good mood she actualy shared her party tooter-thingy with her brother.

So now the heat is on to plan Thea's 5th birthday party - both one for school, and one for her friends. Fortunately her birthday is a Monday, so we can have it in school on a day I'm not working. But it's the theme, the party favors, the cake, the ice cream, the where to have it that is all swirling through my mind. . . .

The camera and the connector is acting wonky again, so I haven't been able to upload to Kodak and put any new pictures on the blog. They're both growing like weeds, so I've got to solve my camera issues to show them off.

After Labor Day: The Return of Ela - Micah's speech instructor (I hate the title teacher of the deaf because he is NOT deaf) who is coming back from maternity leave that started around the beginning of July. We were very, very lucky to have Nancy take over for the past two months, and both Micah and I will miss her, but it will be nice to have Ela coming back to us, especially after Micah's summer speech explosion. She's going to be in for a shock, which will be kind of fun to see.

Update

Today would have been my Dad's 78th birthday, so Happy Birthday, Dad, hope you're celebrating.

The first week back from vacation is always tough, mostly for Micah. He who loves his babysitter, Lisa, almost as much as his family wailed piteously both Tuesday and Thursday when I dropped him off. So I got to go off to work cloaked in that mist of Mommy-guilt. Of course when I checked up on him, he snapped out of it once I was out of sight and got into playing with the other children. I don't know if it was truly traumatic for him, or if he was just being a bit of a Drama Queen, which he does seem to have a certain flair for.

Last Wednesday Thea and I had a wonderful afternoon on the beach and playing in the water -we had to stick pretty close to the water's edge or be eaten alive by green-head flies. I have never, ever had the experience of seeing a small dot of blood well up from a fly bite and if there was a system of voting on next species to be wiped off the planet, these pests would get my vote. We made sand castles, buried each other in the sand (to hide from the aforementioned blood-sucking pests) and collected shells. Thea started getting brave about letting the surf come up and wash over her legs. When Steve and Micah came down to the beach, Steve brought our bottle of Off!, but this brand of insect repellant seemed to be more of a marinade/condiment or aphrodisiac for the damn flies because there were more bites rather than fewer after applying the stuff.

Friday we were back at the beach, after going on a fruitless quest to both Seaside and Point Pleasant looking for miniature golf. Despite threatening skies, we had Kite-y with us, and I managed to get it airborne, though with the sky greying and a few drops of rain falling, Thea's vote was for reeling Kite-y in and going back to the beach house. Fortunately, even though we reeled Kite-y in, we stayed on the beach and the clouds and sprinkles passed and the kids had a blast terrorizing two abandoned sand heaps complete with moat and throwing shells back into the waves. And since most of the wind was coming off on the water, the green-heads were not out en masse.

Since I worked last week while commuting from the beach, getting back into the routine wasn't too hard - and the drive was cut in half even with two separate drop-offs for school/daycare. Tuesday I had a patient with a really angry sebaceous cyst between the shoulder blades. With just a little help from a #11 blade and despite being covered with two gauze 4x4s, it blew, spewing its contents three or more feet at which point it splatted on the wall. Then I covered it even better and reapplied a little pressure. And again it spewed a swath through the room. It was simply amazing. Unfortunately, our rather small exam room soon smelled like someone opened a Limburger cheese shop, and the aroma lingered even though we washed down the wall, the exam table and sprayed enough air freshener to asphixiate half the office. Even Micah knew something was up, because I got "Mommy stinky" when he put his head on my shoulder when I picked him up from the babysitter's.

And somehow word must've made it back to the Sebaceous Cyst Fairy, because Thursday I had another patient with a nice bump at the nape of the neck with a nice little puncta in the middle. This one emptied more like Silly String or Cheez Whiz, but that same tell-tale odor hung in the room afterwards. I wish the Ear Lavage Fairy would send a few people my way, that has the same delightful ookiness factor, but without the smell.

Thea is being a 'five-day' kid at school, practice for starting Kindergarten in the fall, so today was just me and Micah-man. He's going to be banned from grocery shopping soon, at least from going with me to the Lawrenceville ShopRite. Damn the grocery stores with their displays of balloons and Beanie Babies. Micah is currently in a Mylar balloon and puppy phase - and unlike Thea who is steadfastly loyal to her two white tigers, Micah is a stuffed animal polygamist. He has his #1 lovey, Bunny Bear, and then he has a small horde of sister and brother stuff animals that he also seems to be devoted to, and his philosophy is the more, the merrier. If all of his 'favorite' stuffed animals were put in his crib, there would be no room for Micah.

I was privilege to Micah's first in-mall sit-in outside of Pottery Barn Kids on Monday, protesting his mother's lack of sensitivity to his need for a life-size toy dog (and mind you, if this were the real deal, wagging its tail in front of him, he'd be quaking in his booties and clawing his way up my leg and into my arms.). I was scoping the sale items and he found two dogs, a Jack Russell and a Boston Terrier, both life-size and he was in love. He carried the Jack Russell around the store, playing with it in the PBK toy kitchen, babbling away to it, until we put it back ($34 for a stuff animal, I love my son, just not in that way). I put it back, picked Micah up and strolled out of the store and then put him down again. And he promptly sat his shapely little butt down on the pavement and pouted. So he got picked up, tucked under my arm like a football and carted back to the car. Mommy can be such an insensitive b*tch a times, all in a day's work - one more thing he can share with his future therapist if he ever gets through being adopted, the ears issue and whatever other trauma to his psyche we have inflicted on him.

Tool Time

A few weeks ago, my darling boy yanked the kitchen phone's cord, which connected to the wall via a plastic connection in a metal frame (made for a wall-mount phone) ; the plastic did not resist the boy tugging on it with all of his almost 30 pounds and a piece of plastic holding the cord in the socket snapped off. And the phone wouldn't stay plugged in without a small quantity of packing tape.

So...I went to ACE Hardware, home of the helpful hardware man, who must've been on a coffee break and was replaced by the idiot, pimply-faced adolescent hardware man wannabe who pointed me to a $5.98 replacement - not an exact copy the part (which I dutifully brought along in my Teutonic "I want one JUST LIKE THIS" mode). Once home, with screwdriver in hand, I found that the nitwit had steered me to a connector with SIX wires and in the wall was FOUR wires, so once all was said and done, screwed and connected, there was still no dial tone. May his face remain a festering topographical map of the Rocky Mountains well into his twenties.

So...a few more days go by, and Micah and I went to Home Depot on our Monday shopping rounds. I wanted the above-mentioned thing for the phone and a winder-up thingy for the garden hose, which had been sitting on our front walk like a trip-and-fall lawsuit waiting to happen. This time I found a phone wall receptacle, manufactured by GE, which definitely brings good things to life because the packaging was transparent so I could easily see that there was a red wire, a green wire, a yellow wire, and a black wire - all for the bargain price of $4.99. We went home and the screwdriver came back out and lo and behold, the phone works. I am so proud of myself, therefore I'll keep the story of how much I hate the Self-Checkout at Home Depot and the bad words that I said over what was an amazingly slow and time-consuming pain in the rear of a process to myself.

So...Micah's tab is now one toilet and one phone receptacle, so his first five years or so of allowance is basically a big IOU. His tab stands at about $500+. Plus time lost for two ER visits.

Photos to follow - I've go to put them on the computer first. Another day, I am done. I brought the kids' medical charts home tonight to put their immunization histories into their medical records - now I just need to find my immunization history and fill in all the dates and shots.

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.

Happenings and other miscellany

1. Thea lost her first tooth on Monday, June 30 while at Oma's. It had been loose for about six days. It was a slightly traumatic event, for both of us - for Thea because it bled a little bit and came out somewhat unexpectedly and for me because she's not even five yet. The tooth fairy had to be contacted so that she could delay her visit until we were back in Princeton the following night. (I was attending the AANP conference through the 1st.) She got the Tooth Fairy's 1st tooth bonus of $5. Future teeth will be compensate at the regular rate of $1 each (4x the quarter that Mommy used to receive. . . )

2. AANP - what a great conference! I have to thank my mother a thousand times since she made it possible for me to attend What a great birthday gift. And aside from the registration fee, my mother, who took on babysitting both children for the last two days of the event. Both kids were on their good behavior on day #1, but one who shall remain nameless acted up a bit on day #2. (And my money was on Micah giving her grief, and he actually was the better of the two. . . ) And I got lots of CME credits so things should go smoothly for renewal of my NP certification - smoothly other than coughing up $400 or so for the privilege of renewing for another five years in addition to paying for whatever classes I have to take for the CMEs. What a racket.

3. Micah's assessment from the speech therapist was that he has all the appropriate sounds for a two-year old and his expressive language is in the 21-month range, so he's made some amazing progress considering that his initial assessment last August put him in the six to nine month range.

4. After 45 minutes on the phone with a computer geek for our EMR software, my laptop for work finally works at home. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but it gives me access to medical records and the ability to send prescriptions electronically while on call. Of course I was on call from the 4th through this morning and the laptop was here all weekend waiting for me to have time without someone trying to interrupt. What a pain in the butt - and all this work so I can work at home on days that I am not in the office, oh rapture.

5. The box from the new stove has been refashioned into a house, a project started last Friday and continuing through the weekend. Yesterday Thea and I went to Michael's to buy paint, spray paint and tempera, to spruce up the drab brown. It's architectural style is more shack/out-house than Architectural Digest, but Thea is quite taken with it. This afternoon we made a paper fireplace to put inside, but I am getting attitude from the homeowner because the glue stick didn't do a great job in getting the project to adhere to the walls. If she can work this much attitude at four, I am dreading fourteen. This semi-artistic monstrosity, too large to fit through the front door or the door to the garage, is now sitting on the landing, listing to one side - I've got to come up with some way to shore up the one side with the door cut into it.