what you've all been waiting for: french braids

Welcome to the world of emma's lovely french braids. I've taken a few pictures over the past few days, so you can get the idea from a variety of angles and in a variety of situations. It really keeps the hair out of emma's face, which is great for both of us. My deepest apologies go to samantha for the "huh?" look on her face as I snapped the picture. Now samantha can reach the piano keys all by herself - something that is a favorite new activity now - so we often find ourselves listening to her recitals. Emma, on the other hand, is much more formal, crawling up on the bench, positioning herself just right, and then after every few notes, turning around at her audience, wondering where her applause is.
Here's a recap of emma's morning yesterday:

First, we went outside during mantha's naptime for mommy-emma time. Emma was so excited to see that one of our security guards had brought his brand new kitty to work. Emma sat and watched him pounce and bounce for a while...
...then was tickled to see him pawing at the chain of keys they were jiggling around in front of him.then we went down to the first floor of our building where one of the store owners has a large collection of exotic birds. emma's favorite are shao-shao and lili, who are parrots, and say "hello" to emma in annoyingly screeching asianese every time she comes in. The guy in the picture is the store owner, who is so kind to emma each time she comes in. He even gives emma peanuts to give to the birds, who open the peanuts with their beaks and chip away at the nut inside. We both are fascinated by them sometimes!Then on our way back up to our house, emma was captured by the fresh blooms of these flowers, right in front of our complex. she got in as close as she could and took a big whiff, then exclaimed,"oooh, that smells SO good!" :) But even after trying to be as gentle as she could, she still told me that "the flower was broken" after she touched it. So she took home a souviner to show daddy!Ok, so these pictures don't have much to do with french braids but hang with me. Yesterday was my clean-like-crazy day. A big springtime holiday is upon us here, and so I somehow subconsciously switched into spring cleaning mode. Specifically, my energies were directed to my daughters obscenely full closets. Out with the winter, in with the summer; out with 6-9 months, on to 12 months. Emma thougth that me bringing out all the clothes was an open invitation for dress-up, so she happily destroyed all my organized and well-folded piles of clothes about to be stored. In desperation, I was searching for something to keep her occupied, when I remembered...we bought her a princess dress-up outfit while we were in thailand that I had tucked away for a special time. The special time was now upon us. And boy, oh boy, did emma love to dress up. She loved her pretty princess dress, the accompanying high heels and her fairy wand. She clopped around all morning in her new outfit, waving her wand at all her toys and other dear items. Here she is, in all her princess glory (excuse the messy closet behind her):
And later, I caught her hanging out on her bean bag chair, opting for the casual, fisherman look...which, of course, every true princess must have. She was a little irritated that I ruined her private play moments with my obnoxious flash, but posterity calls...
And, mommy and emma's newest self-portrait...

a shout out to single moms

Blogger has kindly informed me that I may now blog in Hindi, and I feel so relieved. I've been dying to get out some of my thoughts to you all in hindi, and now finally I am able to. It's about time, blogger. :)

But, for the sake of my readers, I will blog in english tonight. And I'd like to give a shout out to my friends who have been holding down their respective forts solo - to Rachel, who has the unenviable position of being on the 'staying home end' of john's 10-day road trip, and to Alicia O, who may also be in the same position. I was feeling a little down this evening, because josh had his first evening meeting tonight that he's had in a very long time. And, poor me, I had to put the girls to bed by myself. Then I remembered my friends rachel and alicia, and decided to quit feeling sorry for myself.

plus, I get uninterrupted computer time all to myself if josh is gone. :)

I can't believe that it's almost friday here. It just seems like we had a weekend, and now it's time for another one. The crazy thing is, I can't exactly remember what I got done during the weekends. Was there any one single productive thing? Actually, we did have to go to the police station this morning at the cock-a-doodle-doo hour of 8am to renew our visas. So, not counting that, what exactly have I been doing this week?? that's a good question.

Maybe I'll try to answer that next week.

In other random thoughts, my brilliant husband took a big language test to gauge his fluency last weekend. I'm sure he did really good, as I think he is very much the language stud around here. But he has to wait until next month to know how he did.

I've decided that emma's french braids are here to stay. I've actually started doing two french braids, as if she needed to be any cuter, but she is. She's so cute.

since I've resumed my no-chocolate or other dairy products business, I seem to have transitioned to eating marshmallows, graham crackers and skittles to help soothe my sweet tooth. but it's just not the same, I tell you. It's not the same.

we went to mcdonalds for dinner tonight, and emma had to go potty in the middle of dinner. Taking a toddler to the potty in asia is definetly not something that can be accomplished with one hand, or with divided attention (ie, while holding a baby). I was by myself with both girls...and then I just handed off mantha to these two innocent-looking college girls that were perfect strangers while I took emma to the bathroom. Wow, second-child syndrome is taking over - I never would have imagined doing that with emma.

I have absolutely nothing else interesting to say. What are you guys up to?

lots of random stuff

I think my life has lots of bonuses that come with living over here - and two of them are 1) we save a lot of time because we don't watch too much TV, and 2) there are so few foreigners here that you usually just focus on what you are doing and not everyone else. ah yes, but oh how my life is changing!

In regards to the first bonus: we have this friend - who shall remain nameless - who bought this little contraption called a slingbox. So he sets it up on his tv, and then we downloaded this program on our computer, and we can watch live tv from america. Anytime. And anything he has tivoed (which includes Amazing Race episodes) are fair game too. So where we used to spend our evenings doing loads of productive things - like studying, scrapbooking, reading, talking, whatever - now, we are starting to say those famous American words: "hey, let's see what's on tv..."

Fortunately, we can only watch live tv, so usually when we say those famous last words, it's like 8am in america and you get reruns, dora the explorer, or the morning news. So, our tv viewing times don't last so long, but the nasty american habit is threating to return. Yikes!! But it has been fun watching the amazing race real-time (or at least the day after). We still swear to ourselves that if we ever had the opportunity to do it, we would, but...

In regard to bonus #2 - a new family has moved into our city, and after a busy week of working (ok, mostly josh working) they are starting to make some progress on getting settled in a place here. It's been interesting to have a new perspective, because after living here for over three years, you sort of forget what it's like to be new, to enjoy people saying hi and taking your picture, to have things happen for the first time, to need help (though you never seem to forget jet-lag!). Anyway, I've noticed about myself that if I lived in america, I would totally have a tendency to "keep up with the joneses", so I guess it's good that I have relatively few opportunities to compare myself to other people. For example, our new freinds just bought a fab refrigerator. Ok, yeah, so you think a fridge is not such a big deal...but it's not that simple. 99.99975% of everyone who lives in this country has a fridge the size of, hmmm...I can't even think of anything that is that size. [Just take your fridge/freezer thing and divide by 3 or 4, and that's probably close.] So when they bought their normal american-sized, side-by-side, two-door fridge, my eyes got a little green (ok, well they're green already, but this green had a tiny bit of envy in them...) No matter that a fridge that size wouldn't fit in my kitchen. No matter that I wouldn't have enough stuff to put in a fridge that size. No matter that I don't actually need a fridge that size...but it just seemed cool. Like, you know, if I somehow needed to feed the entire city block that I live on, or if there was a famine in the land, or something. Surely I could find some use for it. I could even use it as extra storage! And if they had one, I should have one too, right? :) Sheesh, sometimes I feel so immature! So, like I said, with all my friends in america buying houses and doing cool things, it's a good thing I can tuck myself away over here and bury my nose in my own life.

in other news, in a tribute to my sisters, today I french-braided emma's hair. The background of the story is that when my sisters were young, I subjected them to all sorts of beauty-shop games wherein they must sit very still and not move a muscle while I outfitted them with all manner of hot rollers, pony tails, ribbons, braids and whatever else I might be able to come up with. I have very clear memories of taking this role very seriously - and the fact that my glasses at that time were so think only added to the seriousness and importance of my job. I have no idea if my sisters willingly allowed this to happen, but they were always very kind to me while I pretended to make them beautiful -as if they somehow needed my help, the little beauties. Anyway, so tonight I gave it a whirl, and for taking a 15-year absence on french braiding, I'm surprised it came back to me so quickly. Of course, emma looks cute no matter what I do, but I thought she looked especially cute with her little braids. maybe it's because she reminded me of holly and katie, who are supposed to agree to come out and visit me pretty soon...

Moving along to last weekend, which I totally meant to blog about before the weekend vibe had passed me...We had a totally fun saturday. We checked out this new bird-and-flower market (you can guess what they sell there...) that's near our house, and then walked down to another area of the city that had this cool basket store I'd been wanting to check out. THEN...we stumbled upon this great place that had a fab playground (where you had to pay to enter...the BEST kind here because that drastically reduces the number of children who play there!) and a children's activity center next door. We weren't on a time crunch, so we went in to check it out and found that they had weekly play-and-song classes for kids that are two to three years old. Where the mom attends. Once a week. Where they all speak asianese. Where emma can make friends. And have fun. Yippee! Just what we'd been looking for. We even got to sit in on a class since there was one going on at that time. They sang little songs and did motions for all sorts of little animals. The setting was fun, clean, and orderly. The class was not too big, not too small.

I felt so jazzed that we just happened upon this place and it turned out to be exactly the kind of thing we'd been wanting for emma and me. So because of a big holiday coming up, we'll start the first week in may! Woo-hoo!

Then, after naps, we went back outside and down to pick up some butter at the store, where we just happened to come across avacadoes! Our avacado drought has officially ended! We had been giving avacado to samantha almost every day to help out her weight gain, but about three weeks or a month ago, we ran out and couldn't find them anywhere. So saturday, we bought like, $30 worth of avacadoes, which was actually only like 16 avacadoes. We came home and chopped and mashed them, and then froze them, so as long as samantha can ration herself, she should be ok.

Another great thing that happened on saturday was that we took samantha to get weighed. [I am, of course, assuming that all of you want to read about the amazingly boring details of my life. Feel free to move away from this exceedingly mundane post at any time.] Three weeks ago, her weight was 7.65 kilos, and had been that way for a very long time. After a pumped up diet, adding formula (sigh), and lots of carbs and proteins, we saw her weight go up to 7.88 kilos! yay mantha! I wish you all could see her. One of the bonuses to her being so small is that she's really cute. A sort of lanky, snuggly, still-fits-in-the-cradle-of-your-arms kind of cute. Maybe you all should come see her. She's great. Anyway, we were really happy that she gained some weight.

Is there anything else I could possibly ramble on and on about? Yes. Since I have a sort-of captive audience, here's my thoughts/picks for the finish of the amazing race:

dustin/kandice - ok, first of all I couldn't believe they lied to eric and danielle at the pit stop. Apart from that, I thought they have played fairly and honestly - yield included, because their yields were done out of healthy respect for the competition. They've been positive, kind to each other and locals, and have played with a lot of energy. Why can't more teams be like them? Perhaps one of my all-time favorite teams now, except of course, for the lie. Sheesh. I'd love to see them win it all.

Charla/mirna - can someone please, please drive them off the road? Their wild mood swing make me think they must have hormone imbalances or are bi-polar. They freak out at the slightest difficulty and start moaning about how awful their life is and how they can't believe it and on and on. they make me want to destroy my computer. and also, never watch the amazing race. and also throw up. Bug-a-boo. end of story.

eric and danielle - I hope if they win she buys more clothes. obviously her current wardrobe needs, um, more. If he wasn't so rude to her all the time, I just might like them more, but as it stands, I think he is nasty to her and I get tired of hearing them complain about what awful luck they had. Did anyone hear rob and amber complain that some of the reasons they were the last team to arrive was because their cameraman got stuck going through customs? or that their boat to the detour was loaded with extra equipment and slowed it down? no. and yet, all eric seems to do is complain.

oswald/danny - so, I don't dislike them as much as I thought I would at the beginning. they seem to generally have a good time, and that's a good thing. Sheesh, though, some of the gay comments get old.

ok, really...i've got to go to bed. More later. happpy monday everyone.

because she's so cute...

Some of my recent favorite things about mantha are:

- every time I get her up from her nap, no matter how hard she is crying, she always greets me with a breathy "Hi!"

- her belly laugh that delights us each time emma does something funny or if we tickle her on the ribs.

- her willingness to snuggle when she gets really tired. She likes to lay her head down on our shoulder and just collapse. Fun times, I tell you.

Yesterday I was playing with her and, even though I have resigned myself to the fact that she will never say my name, I asked her to say "mama". Hallelujah! She said "mama, mama, mama!" She said it with such enthusiasm that I felt justified in waiting so long to hear it. i dont' want to publicly admit that my feelings were hurt because she'd say hi to every sort of stranger on the street, but wouldn't utter the name of her mother, but now, "mama" fills the air around her a lot.

And, in other fun samantha-news, she mustered up all her courage and took her first two steps on the 17th! She's not crazy about doing it - she much prefers clumsily pushing her slide or her activity table as a makeshift walker - but she loved the attention and applause that comes with it!

Recently, mantha's not been sleeping so well; she's been doing like two-45 minute naps a day. I've just got to go on the record and say that sleeping for 45 minutes does not cut it for me. :) Our house is not exactly quiet, so I've looked around a little for a white-noise machine to help mask some of the clanging dishes or whiny children (read: emma), but haven't found anything. But as it turns out, mantha is destined to become an ipod girl, as I decided to hook up our ipod to some speakers in her room and play some light music in the background. She has loved it and has slept longer than ever before - the three naps since I started her ipod have all been two hours plus! She's happy, sleeping, and (so far, at least) has clear skin after one day of me eating milk products, but not directly drinking milk. Is it possible that I could welcome my dear friend chocolate back into my life? It just may be possible.

Anyway, here are some new pictures of samantha:

last week, our water was unexpectedly turned off for a couple of days, so samantha got a bath in filtered water in a basin. She was open to the new experience, but didn't enjoy it quite as much as her usual bath time extravaganza with emma. (Emma also tried bathing in the basin, but found it much more cramped than she thought!)

and, clapping, clapping...she loves to clap!

one of mantha's most-favorite activities...pushing the slide up to the window so she can look out at the traffic below (remember, a few months ago that was the only thing that could stop her crying? it seems the effect still lingers!)so while I am distracted in the kitchen or busy doing something else, samantha will sneakily go over to her slide and climb up. When she gets to the top step, she has no idea what to do or how to get down, so some adult assistance is required. Sometimes it gets a little old going over to help her slide down every three minutes, but she truly loves it and the slide really wasn't so expensive at all! I'm really glad we brought it back with us from thailand.

But she had LOADS of fun on this slide!ok, maybe she's not the cleanest eater in the world, but hey, at least she's finally eating! We take her to get weighed again this weekend, and we're hoping that after putting her on a pretty loaded-up diet and starting some hypoallergenic formula to supplement, that she might have gained a bit of weight. I'll be sure to keep you updated!

birthday wishes

A big happy birthday goes out today to my nana, who turns thirtysomething today. My celebratory phone call to her today went unanswered because, as any young thing would do on her birthday, she was at the beauty shop...as my papa would say, "going in for maintenance". :) Not that she needs maintenance! Nana has to be one of the coolest people on the planet. Happy birthday nana - we love you!

And also sharing the birthday with nana is probably my oldest (not in years lived, but years shared in friendship) and dearest friend, alicia. The lovely alicia, who has shared many a coke date with me, is turning twentysomething. Come on, alicia...take a study break and have fun today!

And now I go to bed and officially end the birthday-day on this side of the planet...

what are you thinking about?

What follows is a random collection of thoughts that have been passing through my mind recently, but are not significant enough to devote an entire post to...


Two items I never imagined myself using are now two items I can never imagine not being in my life: my rice cooker and my wok. Considering where I live, it may seem weird that I didn't think I would use them very often. But if there's a day that goes by where both of those items have not been used, it was because I either slept the entire day and therefore did not use them, or I was kidnapped and away from my home.

Have you ever heard of Entenmann's baked goods? Wal-mart in Oklahoma used to carry them, and sometimes they carry little brownies or other things like that. But in the past, they used to have these chocolate devils food dougnuts that stole my heart away. I remember in particular, one or two christmas eve's my parents stopped at Pratt's on the way home from my nana and papa's house and bought them for us to eat on christmas morning -and I've been hooked since. For some unthinkable reason, they can no longer be located in the oklahoma city area. Every time we travel out of Oklahoma, I go to a grocery store and try to find them. Fortunately, the last three times we went to virginia, I bought like, six boxes. Anyway, the whole point was that I've been wanting some in a bad way. Thanks to the fact that I live halfway across the world from the nearest distributor (and at least two weeks away by mail, thereby missing out on the great freshness of them) and to samantha's ultra-sensitive skin, I'll have to summon all my willpower to make it through the next few years without these fab litle donuts. Honestly, take a look and tell me that doesn't make you want to buy some at this exact moment: http://entenmanns.gwbakeries.com/product.cfm/upc/7203001201

I like rob-and-amber. You know, rob-and-amber from every reality tv show that ever aired on tv? Maybe some of you will make an official end to our friendship upon hearing this admission, because it seems that people either really like them or really don't. I fall on the "really like them" side. I found myself rooting for them as they were falling for each other on survivor, and then officially decided I like them when rob proposed during the survivor finale. Then, my decision was confirmed when they did amazing race - and I tell you, teams on amazing race are awful to each other! They tell you in those little voiceovers how much they appreciate their spouse/sister/mother/brother/insert parter's name here...but then during the race they snap and bicker and are embarrasingly ugly to each other. Except rob and amber (and uchenna and joyce, who ended up winning that season). I thought they really seemed to like each other (definitely a bonus if you're married), got along well, and (gasp!) communicated well with each other. All this is to say that we recently watched the first four episodes of amazing race all-stars (courtesy of tom and rikki) and I was so bummed that rob-and-amber were eliminated. I later read an interview they did after the race where they told that the reason they were the last ones shown coming out of the airport on the leg they were eliminated was because their cameraman got held up and searched going through customs. I've always wondered if things like that happened. Anyway, I'm over it already, but I just thought I'd get it off my chest that I'm a rob-and-amber fan.

Our McDonalds has pancakes for breakfast now! We've previously only been privileged to have hashbrowns and a sausage and egg hamburger - yeah, that's right...sausage and egg (oh, and ketchup, too) on a hamburger bun! What's that about?? Anyway, we got pancakes last week, and josh took emma for a special daddy-daughter breakfast on friday morning. She had been looking forward to it all week and still talks about going to McD's with daddy. Fun times!

I'm procrastinating painting the rest of my house. I'm really trying to muster the enthusiasm to do it...but it's just not coming to me. My plan was to do it after I finish my blog entry...that's like, in five minutes...so we'll see what happens.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

peace like a river

My husband kindly told me today that I have been an irresponsible blogger. I honestly haven't meant to, it just seems like the last few days have had stuff come up during my usual blogging hours. So anyway, I hope I haven't been making you all worry about me; not that I think you don't have anything better to do. Well, here's an update on the kindergarten situation...

We decided to go back, as we had planned, on thursday. I wanted to spend the same amount of time there with emma that we would have her spend there by herself. We got up early, got dressed, and were both out of the house on the way to the bus stop before 8am. (I felt like I was back in 8th grade, walking down the street to the bus stop) We got to the kindergarten, and emma and a few other kids started eating breakfast while the others were arriving. We played a color game during class time, went back outside to play the bunny game (this time emma did a little better!), and then got to play on the playground for a while. We went back inside for inside play and lunch, and then after lunch (when the other kids get ready for their nap) our day there was done.

Emma had a fun time, I had a good time. No major issues came up. Josh and I laid in bed that thursday night and talked about our goals. With the kindergarten, the goals were simple: learn language and make friends. We both realized there are many more lower-stress ways to meet this goal. The truth is, as my wise father pointed out, I am not ready to send emma to kindergarten yet. The original purpose of this (many months ago when we first started thinking about it) was so that I could have a break one or two mornings a week; but in actuality, last week was so unbelievably stressful, I couldn't imagine those days ever feeling a break at this point.

We decided together that as long as I am making the effort to make sure our two goals are getting met, then whether or not she goes to the kindergarten right now is not such a big deal. I've enlisted my house helper to help - and now she will be trading some of her household duties to devote to emma three mornings a week, for an hour-and-a-half each time. I will be planning weekly emphasises (not really like lessons, because again, emma is just barely two...much too young for much formal education!) each week with activities and a goal of words and concepts we'd like her to be familiar with. We're not talking math and science, here...just basic things like, one week have fun activities and songs (in asianese) centered around shapes, the next colors, the next fruits and veggies, etc. Basically, just fun things that I do in english with her just in asianese. So that accomplishes (or at least helps accomplish) our language goal for the time being.

And then when it comes to friends...there's a few options there too. I'm working on setting up playdates with different friends of mine, that can be held at our house or theirs, once a week. There's also a place in town where you can take your child for weekly classes in music and art that we are considering. And I feel that if I am more active in planning times to take the girls out to do stuff, we will naturally meet friends and start relationships that emma can benefit from.

So...that's what we decided. Find other ways to meet the same goals as kindergarten, while still giving us the amount of supervision and guidance we want at this age. We're not going back to the kindergarten right now. Not because there was anything wrong with that kindergarten, but just because I hadn't dealt with the implications of that decision yet. And, with blessed happiness, I feel very at peace with the decision. I feel like it's the right decision for us at this time.

In six months or a year, when emma is older and more able to communicate her questions and concerns to us, we're going to revisit the issue. Eventually, we want emma to be a part of kindergarten here. I think she'd have a great time. Even tonight, she wanted to sing "Jesus loves the little children" but wanted to make sure that I sang "Jesus loves all the children at the kindergarten". I just want to make sure that I am ready - to help her process the experiences she will have - and that she is ready, that she'll be at a level to communicate those experiences to me.

I really want to thank all of you for your prayers and words of wisdom. I read and re-read them all over and over again, trying to imagine each of you saying them! It was such an encouragement to hear your thoughts and stories about the issue. And truly, I'm sorry to keep you hanging for so many days! My most heartfelt love goes to all of you tonight - and hey, isn't my little clock thing great? I know it's hard to remember what time it is here, so I thought that might help!

issues that are deeper than pee

It's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm sitting here on the couch wishing my can of American coke was about seventeen times bigger. I'm exhausted, mentally and physically.

Last night, we stayed up until after 1am, doing an unexpected favor for a friend in town who needed some help. But that's not even the reason I'm so tired. I'm so tired because we took emma to kindergarten today, and it was one of the most stressful days I've had since moving back here.

I guess I was expecting it to be easier on me. After all, I've lived in this country for about three years, so culture-shockish things don't usually bug me. I'd already seen the kindergarten and although it would likely never pass in the states, it was pretty good for places here. Plus, the principal and lots of the teachers are believers, so I felt like even if we had lots of differences, at least our major thoughts about life and such things were the same.

And then we went.

When we got there (we is me, the girls and my house helper), the principal seemed to try to back out of some of the things she had earlier assured me about - that it was ok if I only wanted to bring emma twice a week, that it was ok if I stayed with her for the first several times to help her get accustomed to the place. It was like she was trying to convince me that doing things that way was somehow going to negatively influence the other children, or whatever.

In my most polite voice (which doesn't sound so polite since I'm getting over a cold that has likened my voice to that of a bullfrog), I told her that I understood her concerns, but that my thoughts were that I would stay with emma until I felt comfortable leaving her alone, and that I would not send her more than two or three times a week. In my mind, these are non-negotiable. The truth is that if I lived in America, I wouldn't send emma to a daycare two or three times a week. Maybe like a mother's day out thing, ok. And she would get to play with her grandparents and aunts and uncles, of course. But even preschool or daycare at this age is something we just wouldn't do - just because I like being with her, I like the fun activities we do together, and for our life situation it's just unnecessary. Plus, I personally feel responsible for the things that influence her at this age, and even more so since we live in asia.

[All this does not imply that if you ever considered, have in the past, or currently send your children to preschool or mother's day out then you are the low rung on the totem pole or some other very negative metaphor. These views are purely the views of the author and are not intended to be generalized over a population segment!]

So for me to even consider letting her go kindergarten in the first place was a big step. I'm home all day, I have the time to be with her. I'm only sending her for language, new situations, and little friends. So when mrs. principal starts trying to convince me that she needed to come every day, well, I just had to convey that, regardless of their customs, twice or three times a week was my max.

Then, she wanted to tell me that I just needed to drop her off and leave, and let them handle it. "Don't worry!" she told me. "You can rest easy, relax, we can take care of it." Hmmmm. Yeah. Since all of you can speak english and are used to western culture, I bet you can! My insides were screaming that she has no idea what this must be like for emma, that she has no idea what might happen if I just dropped emma off at the door and bid them all a happy farewell.

AAAH, THEN...after half an hour of activities in a little room, the kids all went outside to play and sing songs. As soon as all the kids are outside, they do just like all the other little asian kids, and start squatting in the grass and over the drains and in the bushes and pee everywhere. I'm not kidding, there were like three or four kids peeing in the grass at any given time, with all varieties of modesty being displayed. One girl - who won the modesty award - hid behind a bush and didn't expose herself for the world to see...but most of the girls and all of the boys just went whenever and whereever. Emma, like her friend Clara (who recently had this experience) was so unbelieveably curious, and wanted to know why everyone was just peeing at their pleasure whenever they felt like it. I coudln't ask her to give them privacy because we're stinking outside on the playground! Who can have privacy on the playground? Bathrooms were created for just that purpose, you know!

I start cringing inside. My mind is racing, wondering how I can reconcile these ideas in my mind - I want emma to go to local school and have friends, and learn asianese...but I also want her to retain certain cultural norms that are important to our family and culture, like when you have to use the restroom, you GO to the restroom. It is unacceptable to pee in the grass or in the bushes. I want her to know that she is safe and won't be punished for something she doesn't understand. I dont' want teachers to shame her into behaving properly like they do other children. My mind is swirling, my emotions start flaring up. Of course, emma comes to me and pulls my hand toward the bushes and tells me she has to go peepee. "Sorry, emma," I tell her. "You have to go inside to peepee." I take her inside, we do her business, then we come back outside.

The kids play outside, and eventually form a line behind one of the teachers. She starts singing a little song about a rabbit who hops from one end of the field to another. She hops across the paved area, and then hops back. All the children happily sing along and hop with her, and then stop when they reach the end of the paved area.....all except emma, who understands not a single word of the little bunny song and after hopping to the end of the paved area just keeps meandering off into the grass toward the slide that is a few yards away, because she didn't catch the part that the little bunny hopped back to where he came from.

Mrs.Principal approaches me a few moments later and says, "you know, all the other children have started wanting their mommies because you are here with emma." I looked at my house helper and I said, "What should I say? Should I say, 'Oh, I'm sorry', or 'I'm so embarrassed,' ? I don't know what to say because I'm not leaving." Then Mrs. Principal tells me, "It's ok! You really can leave her. The kids dont' have a problem being left, it's just the adults that have a hard time leaving the kids. She'll be fine."

And then I lost it. I got tired of feeling like the plan was being changed on me, was tired of dealing with the conflict in my mind about if this was really worth it, and I was struggling in my mind with the cultural implications of everything. I want her to learn asianese, I want her to have asian friends, but I don't want her to BE asian! I don't want her to think she has to stuff her emotions, i don't want her to pee in bushes. But I want her to love the place where she grew up. I want her to have happy memories of her childhood, I want her to remember fun times and fun friends. I don't want her to look back and only remember a mother who had nothing but contempt for the ways people did things.

The tears welled up, and with every question someone asked me or statement someone made, they threatened to come out. When I could no longer hold them back, all the teachers, my house helper, the principal and all manner of curious onlookers had no idea why the foreigner was crying. I think the principal thought it was her fault (which, partly due to her frequent nagging, it was) but the truth was that I was facing issues that none of them could understand. Their attempts to make me feel like they could understand - ie, all parents deal with this, it will be ok - just made me more upset. My nose turned red and blotchy like it always does when I cry, and my best efforts at damage control were in vain. I politely said my goodbyes and we left.

By the time we got home and had just slipped our shoes off, josh called and wanted to know how everything went. Poor guy. As soon as I opened my mouth, the tears that I had tried to hold back at the kindergarten spilled out. Through my weepy blathering, I tried to explain to josh about the pee and how that was just a picture of the huge cultural differences that I hadn't thought about, and were we doing the right thing, and was emma really ready for this or was I just being an overprotective parent who just doesn't want to send her kid to kindergarten and and on and on and boo hoo hoo. Josh answered excellently: "Whatever you want to do, honey. We can take her out, we can keep going. Whatever you need to do." He's a good man.

The girls are sleeping, lunch is cleaned up, my coke is gone, but my emotional fatigue remains.
Maybe I'm trying to bear the burden of culture shock that emma has yet to experience. Maybe I'm just trying to protect her from things that I see that would bother me. Maybe I just need to loosen up and just see what happens. I really didn't think that I would be one of those moms that stands outside the door on the first day of school when their kid goes to first grade - and I still don't think it's that. It's not that I'm unwilling to let her go. I guess I just thought it would be simpler than this.

But I guess the truth is that emma's life won't be simple. She'll never be 100% American, she'll never have the same experience as her friends in America...and yet she will never be fully Asian either. I always knew that in theory, but now I'm experiencing it in the flesh. If she pees in the bushes in china, they'll think she's weird because the foreigner is peeing in the bushes. If she pees in the bushes in america, they'll think she's weird because she's peeing in the bushes. Bottom line: when it comes to peeing in the bushes, she can't win.

Before I laid emma down for her nap, I asked emma to tell me about going to kindergarten. She told me that she played with blocks and played with friends and took her shoes off. When I asked her if she wanted to go back tomorrow, she opened her eyes wide and whispered "Yeah!"

So, episode 2 airs tomorrow, if I can pull myself back together.

bits and peices

Well, tomorrow we take the plunge. Emma starts her asian "kindergarten" program two mornings a week. I keep comforting myself by saying that she really needs to do it to learn language (which she does) and that it will be good for her to meet little friends (which it will), but I still envision myself spending every moment wondering if she's ok, wondering if she'll understand what the teacher is telling her, wondering if she'll end up hating it and never wanting to play with another asian person again...or wondering if she'll have the time of her life learning songs and playing balls and swinging and wonder why she ever liked staying home with mommy so much.

Being the over-protective mother that I am, I plan on spending the entire morning with her for at least the first four or five mornings. I want to convince myself that she will be able to get around without me having to translate for her (but, really...I think she'll get it when the other kids start eating that it's time for her to eat). We read a book about going to kindergarten today, and she loved it. All day, she kept saying, "That'll be fun for emma to go to kindergarten." I know she's super excited.

I think one layer of the excitement comes from hugging daddy every morning before he goes to school. She runs her little feet over to the door and gives josh a huge hug each day, and then she reverently exclaims, "Daddy's going to school now! Bye, daddy! Have fun!" Josh even found a Dora backpack here that she can take with her to her school, and she's been having quite the time testing it out around the house. You know, since they load up two-year olds with so much stuff, she wanted to be sure her new dora backpack was up to the task. She went over to her bookshelf and loaded every single book into her backpack, one by one. Then she turned her puzzles upside down and put all the puzzle peices inside...because, you know, you just never know when a puzzle peice might come in handy. I think mommy will probably pack her blanket, a dora doll, and an extra change of clothes, but I sure appreciated emma's suggestions of books and puzzles.

She's excited, but I already miss her. :(

Another fun thing happened last night...at about 5pm the doorbell rang, which was odd because it was sunday evening. When I opened it, I was so excited to see the delivery man who had a huge package for us! Josh's sister, kristen, sent us a great package with presents and clothes for the girls - a fun singing dora doll, lots of food for emma's kitchen, and clothes, clothes, clothes! It was such an unexpected surprise, and for it to fall right on easter was doubly fun. We all opened the package together and had such a blast!

Anyway, here's some new pictures:

Is she not just the prettiest girl you've ever seen?

This was taken last tuesday on the campus of one of the universities here. Emma had lots of fun playing in the grass and playing hide and seek in the little grove of trees behind us.Enjoying a toddler smorgasbord of food that was sent to fill up her kitchen, courtesy of aunt kristen. Some of the foods we had to sit down and tell emma about because she had never seen them before (or if she had it was a long time ago): hot dogs, jelly beans, doughnuts.

Tonight, samantha said "ball" when josh tossed her a green squeaky ball, officially cementing the fact that she is growing up and up and up. She's so funny and has such a little personality; I guess I subconsiously thought she'd just be like emma, but she's not! She plays little tricks us at dinner - like, she'll shoot us a daring look as she's dangling her drink from the perch of her high chair, and then a grin will spread across her face as she brings it back and sits it on her tray. She chased emma down the couch today in hot pursuit of a new toy from aunt kristen. She loves being held upside down and tickled on the belly, and if you hold her...oh, if you will just hold her she will be your best friend for life. Oh yeah, and she's a daredevil. This is her newest feat: climbing up all the steps of the slide, unassisted and without the slightest look of fear on her little face. Doing my best to be the picture of utter calmness, I nonetheless frantically ran across the room to her side the first time I saw her perched up there. She'll even slide down on her belly if she can't get down any other way. The picture itself is not so great because the wall was behind me and I couldn't back up any more, but you get the general idea.

And I really like this picture of mantha, except I just now noticed that a few bites of her dinner somehow evaded my wipe-job. So if you blow this picture up, just ignore those little things under her nose... :)And maybe hillaryclinton says that it takes a village to raise a child, but in samantha's experience, it takes a village just to help her walk! Our house helper was walking with mantha the other day, and emma decided that she should not be left out of such activities, so she barged right in between the two of them and helped out too. I wonder if mantha thought it was hard with so many hands around? She seems to be doing ok, though...she can stand now for 8-10 seconds at a time!And then, here's the cute girls together, watching some guys playing soccer last saturday. The weather has been nice and warm, beckoning me through my walls of windows to step out in the sun. And we have not been disappointed!

a wake-up call

So josh and I were thinking tonight about when tom and rikki were over here. Even though all of us have relatively well-behaved children, there certainly was a lot of activity going on at any given time. The thing that struck is that that could totally be our lives in just three years. We still want to have a couple more kids, so that would have put us having a house full of kids like ashley, abigail, emma and samantha, at almost exactly those ages as we imagine it in our minds. Wow. that's crazy times.

And in other news...samantha is getting her first tooth! Woo hoo! She is on the cusp of being truly human. Also in recent samantha news, I added back in dairy foods during the weekend while tom and rikki were here (mostly to challenge the dairy intolerance in mantha's skin, but partly because I wanted to get to eat quesadillas, broccoli cream casserole, and hello dollies too!) and the results were pretty obvious to us: she itched and reddened overnight, from being completely clear the day before. Sigh. But as least we know, so that will help.

Samantha also has started saying "eat", "all done", and "more" quasi-verbally. I was really surprised because I expected her to be a late talker, what with all the talkers who compete for listeners in our home. But she's fitting in nicely, and when she feels like her voice isnt' being heard, she lets out an impatient shriek to let us know that she's still there. :)

More funny things from emma:
- yesterday, she said "momma, come here and snuggle with emma." You can bet that request wasn't refused!

-at the dinner table, emma looked at my banana and asked, "Momma, what's that?"
"It's an apple," I told her with a smile.
"Actually, momma," emma corrected me, "it's a banana."
"Ok, emma, you're right, it's a banana."

a weekend full of fun

What a fun weekend we had with tom and rikki!

The morning couldn't have greeted me in any better way. the haze that has enveloped our city of late was hiding from the gleaming sun that was peeking behind the mountains to our east. The sky was clear, highlighting every pine tree on the mountain. a blue sky topped off a beautiful scene. Emma came bounding out of her room, arms outstretched proudly singing in a monotone voice, "I'm in the Lord's Army, I'm in the Lord's army!" over and over again. I had popped in a batch of blueberry muffins so tom and rikki could get something in their tummies before their 6am departure, and there were still some leftover, beckoning to me with their warm, berry scents.

And yet, something felt a little unsettled in my heart.

Maybe one reason is that emma was so sad to see them leave. Last night we had a talk with emma and told her that ashley and abigail had to go back to america. Emma's eyes widened, as if approaching some hideously scary something, and then a flicker of resolution crossed her face. "No momma. Abigail and ashley no america. Abigail and ashley stay at emma's house."

And so began one of many talks we will likely have wihth her about friendship and moving on. She had so much fun playing with the girls while they were here. Ashley and abigail (5 and 3, respectively) were so kind to emma, playing so sweetly and including her in all their big girl activities. Emma watched them with adoration, copying every word they said. Her vocabulary and mannerisms changed quite a bit while they here. Her sentences became longer, more thought out. She tried some brave activities involving her slide that she didn't know were possible unless a five year old showed you how! She acted like a big girl with the big girls, and loved every minute of it. I was so happy she had a friend, and an older friend, too.

thankfully, the new family about to move here also has an almost five year old, I think. Maybe emma and savannah will become fast friends, too...but my heart cried when she was so sad to see her new friends leave. Now ashley and abigail aren't second-hand stories, or two-dimensional pictures on our computer. They are friends that love to laugh and slide and drink juice and hold hands and sing songs. They are real to emma.

Maybe another reason I felt a little unsettled after they left this morning was because they were leaving. In the past when we hosted people, we always left with them because we lived far out in the countryside. We always had to take them to the big city, or help them to the airport or whatever, so when we returned, it felt like, "Aaaah, we're coming home." But we didnt' leave anywhere this morning, we just arranged a taxi and gave long goodbye hugs. And then from my 10th floor window, I watched them drive off in the quiet morning clearness.

But maybe the real reason is that I enjoyed their company so much. Living overseas actually makes it easier to make friends because you have so few foreigners who live out here, it just doesn't seem worthwhile to have superficial relationships. but we have only a small handful of friends like tom and rikki. They have given us guidance and wisdom as we grew up, and then at some point decided that we had grown up and were a peer. They have seen us at our worst and still thought we were worthwhile enough to endure with...they have seen us at our best and rejoiced with us at where we were. They have let us into their lives and because of that have become a force for speaking truth into our lives. Shared history, shared relationships, common experiences...factors that make you feel comfortable enough to not worry if your breath stinks or if you wore your pajamas all day, or if they overheard you ask someone if they have a nervous disorder because of the way they drive their car. :)

It felt a little weird to know that they were going back to a life that we used to have, where they eat chocolate donuts and drive to the park, and go to starbucks with friends. But, it made me really happy that they shared my life with me - eating homemade cinnamon rolls and asianese food, taking the bus to the overcrowded parks, relishing a special dinner at pizza hut, moseying down the endless promenade of the city square.

It was a fast weekend, but it was fun.

the sun is shining through the windows, gradually bringing its warmth to our cool floors. emma is happily moving her arms to dora's request to move like a jaguar. mantha is sleeping peacefully for her morning nap. I'm slowly devouring the rubbermaid tub of chocolate doughnuts that were bestowed on me by rikki. My house helper is busily cleaning up the fun from the weekend - dirty sheets, loads of trash, dishes I was too tired to finish, burnt crusty things that fell inside the oven. This is my life now, and I'm thankful for it.