Once upon a hurricane. . .

Hurricane Sandy.  I'm not a believer yet.  I don't think the impact is going to be significant this far inland.

The impact on the weekend was significant:

On Saturday we found out that the GoalFest 3v3 Tournament schedule for Sunday was cancelled due to the weather.

What weather?  It was grey all day and a little chillier than usual.

And there have been no "D" cell batteries at Target since Thursday.

Sunday Micah's Tiger Cub Pack was scheduled to go on the 3:00 pm tour of Rockingham, George Washington's headquarters in NJ.

But all the state parks in New Jersey closed at noon today.  Because of the weather.

Seriously?  Not a raindrop has fallen at this point, and the wind was barely above a breeze.

So once home from our failed Rockingham adventure  I felt compelled to check out the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district web site and found all schools would be closed on Monday AND Tuesday.

And then, Steve called to say that he got a auto-dial message from Princeton University telling him that it would be closed tomorrow.  The university that almost never, ever closes, that has made him drive to work in heavy snow and ice. 

What the hell?  Is the world coming to an end?  Really?

To ice the cake, there was an email from my office telling us that it would also be closed on Monday AND Tuesday.

And still rather than feeling a sense of impending doom, I am still not fully convinced that it will amount to anything signficant around here.  The patio chairs and grill are in the garage, the trash can is inside.  We have enough food for a few days that doesn't require significant preparation if we lose power.

I'll amend this tomorrow, in my mind at least, if  and when the power goes out. 

Let it the rain come, let the wind blow.  My panties remain un-bunched.

Surviving the Birthday Weekend

It was a weekend dominated by the calendar telling me where I should be.

Friday:  Cancelled a class, "Fundamentals of Musculoskeletal Imaging" because being in Parsippany by 7:30 am and staying there until 4 pm would put me at odds with being back in Plainsboro in time for Girl Scouts at 3:15 pm.  There was also the question of where during the day would I have time to make samples of the crafts for the Girl Scouts' Crafting for the Community event so the girls could pick which three they wanted to do.  This year is our troop's first as Juniors, meaning they will be teaching the crafts to the Daisies and the Brownies.  So my morning involved hot-gluing popsicle sticks into triangles and then the triangles into Stars of David.  The first degree burns on my third finger are healing nicely.

All the while I am thinking, I did not get to Pennington Quilt Works for the Saturday Sampler on Thursday night as I had planned. A patient's appointment ran later than what was allotted in the schedule, and it was important that I not rush things along.  And there were plenty of Saturday Sampler slots on Friday and Saturday.  No problem.

The Girl Scouts meeting was fun - we're lucky, we have really nice girls who seem to approach all of the things we're doing with enthusiasm.

After Girl Scouts, Thea had to put on her shin guards, socks, shorts and cleats and head to soccer practice.

Saturday's schedule included soccer at 9 am, with both children playing on opposite sides of town.  The photo day for the soccer league was held at Thea's school, with both teams times (fortunately) within fifteen minutes of each other.  So all of us connected at the photo event so I could get Micah and Steve could go to see his mother.   Meanwhile Steve talked with Micah's friend Jeff's father and planned a play date - and it's now Saturday, and I still haven't been to PQW to collect the quilt fabric for my next square.

So after the team photos were done, talking with Jeff's father to finalize the time for the play date, I hauled Thea and Micah with me to PQW for the noon session.  Fortunately they were heavily armed with their electronic devices (Nintendos, iPods and my iPad), so sitting in the car for 20 minutes would not be torture.

And meanwhile, Saturday is Thea's 9th birthday - and the only thing I had really done to prepare is send out emails to the parents of four of her friends inviting them to join us for dinner on Friday and purchase the new versions of Pokemon Black and White.  No party bags, no cake, nothing.

At 2 pm we dropped Micah off at Jeff's and went on a mission to pick out a cake, buy stuff for the party bags and get ready.

Thea chose four boys that she has known since second grade to come along with us for dinner at the Olive Garden: Adam, Tommy, Amol and Jeffrey.  Her preference would have been to have two tables, one for parents and annoying sibling and one for herself and her boy posse.  But the Olive Garden gave us a long table in a semi-private area, which was worth the 45 minute wait.

After dinner we came home and the boys and Thea adjourned to the living room to play games on the Wii.  Tidbits overhead include:  "We can have cake after we kill off Thea," and  "You won't always be able to fight like a boy. . . ."

What I learned from this was, we could've skipped dinner, thrown a few snacks at them and let them play Wii for five hours and they would've been just as happy.  But they did seem to like the party favors - Pokemon cards, yo-yos and a super ball.

Sunday was Mandarin school for Thea and a playdate with Leland for Micah.  I got to sew a little bit, but eventually I had two little boys who wanted to sew.  So, I made a pattern and cut out four pieces that could be sewn into a person-ish shape. I then got out the fabric pens and they drew on faces.  And fangs.  And blood dripping off of the fangs.  Not quite how I envisioned the little project turning out.

Then we had to get Micah dressed up in his Tiger Cubs uniform for his first den meeting.  We made a scrapbooks and learned a few things about being a scout.  I had put a chicken in the oven so dinner was done by the time we got home.

Kick-Offs

Today soccer started.  Nothing like walking across an enormous field to the farthest DT (double tiny) where the kindergarteners and first-graders play to make my knees even more balky than they usually are.  Micah's team is the Red Bulls and the team is very lucky to have a coach; a few of the fourth grade girls teams are being coached by a different parent each week, including Thea's team, the Tigers.  Steve's taking the second week's practice and game next Friday.  Smart planning on his part:  the weather is still warm and expectations are still low since it's still early in the season.

Fourth grade soccer was a bit of a shock to the system because the girls are no longer practicing immediately before games, they have a week-day practice so it's one more thing to put on the calendar and they play for 55 minutes straight with a referee instead of coach-referees.  The Tigers' game ended in a tie score today; first-graders don't keep score.

And most of our games are at 9:00 am Saturdays, so we're kissing sleeping in for the next ten weeks, if one counts sleeping until 8:30 to 9 as sleeping in.

Girl Scouts got going last Sunday, as did Ying Hua Language School.  Still to come:  Boy Scouts/Tiger Cubs, and Back-to-School nights for both first- and fourth-grades and the fourth-grade music program orientation.  Thea has chosen the viola.  We shall see how this goes as she has deviated from my plan of her taking chorus for fourth grade and then starting flute or clarinet and we'll have one more thing to add lists of things she will need to be nagged about.

Sheepish

Today Micah, Thea and I went to the Sheep and Fiber Festival at the Hunterdon County Fairgrounds.  As I sit writing, I am wondering if the smell of sheep, alpacas and llamas is stuck in my nostrils or if it's actually clinging to my clothes, or if I'm just imagining it.

We wandered around looking at the animals in their pens, the vendors.  There is an alpaca farm near my office and the owner had a booth so we stopped by to say hello:  Micah picked out a toy alpaca, Thea selected a pair of gorgeous fingerless gloves and we bought a knitted teddy bear for a gift. 

We went to the sheep shearing demonstration.  Sheep are amazing, get them on their back and they are like blobs of woolly Silly Putty.  The gentleman conducting the demonstration actually wrestled a feisty ewe onto her back propped something behind her neck or shoulder and walked away and the ewe just surrendered, lay on its back and made no effort whatsoever to escape.  Micah tried his hand at shearing, which was rather cool and both kids went up to feel the lanolin on the skin after the shearing.

For lunch we went to Panera's and while waiting for our food, we ran into the father of two of Thea's Mandarin school classmates.  (Mandarin school starts tomorrow.)  He was coming in for coffee and was next door at Chuck E. Cheese with his wife and their boys.  So after eating we went to say 'hello'.  I give both parents credit, they can actually read books while sitting at a table in the middle of background noise that almost defies description.  I am not that sort of person, I invested in the minimum amount of tokens that my sanity could tolerate.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of Thea's Junior troop, then Mandarin school - she still has a few pages of the summer homework to do.  Sigh.  At least this summer she didn't give much grief over doing the 20+ pages she completed.

School started Thursday, so after two days it's too early to tell, but so far so good. 

Religious school starts Tuesday for Thea; Micah doesn't start until next year.  Soccer is gearing up - Thea's team will be the Tigers, so she is thrilled.  The team doesn't have a coach, so the parents will need to take turns with practice and games, so I am NOT thrilled.

Last Friday

A week ago Micah had an appointment with Dr. Choe to check his ears and clean out the debris of summer from Micah's ear canal to get him ready for school.  He is an old pro at this, I just sit in the chair and watch the bits of stuff accumulate on the 4" x 4" gauze while Micah chats with Dr. Choe.  It's pretty much like going to the dentist - other than we do this about three times per year.  Micah's ear canals are looking good, everything is where it should be.

  The office staff recognize Micah the minute he comes out of the elevator and are always charmed by him.  All in all, totally worth getting up at the near crack of dawn to make it up to Englewood for an 8:10 am appointment.  We're so lucky to be this close to Dr. Choe's office, I can't image living far away from our atresia surgeon.

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.

Friday at Home

Some days with nothing on the schedule turn out to be the best days of all.

Beds made.

Laundry put away.

Laundry room floor swept up.

A little tidying up and dusting upstairs.

Finished an on-line survey that will eventually result in a check in the mailbox.

Much pondering of what to sew next - something from the modern quilt book or a paper-piece pattern ordered from an etsy.com vendor.

A Greek salad made with Jersey tomatoes and seedless cucumber and a heap of feta cheese.

Happy stuff.

Unfortunately, the back to school to-do list is lurking around somewhere:

Haircuts for both kids at Snip-Its with Ms. Flo

New shoes for school

New cleats for soccer

Check-ups for both kids

School supplies lists, including mass quantities of Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencils

Going through two closets to pull the clothes the kids have outgrown.

Fall and back-to-school is looming large on the horizon.  Ugh.