June 29 - a very good day!

Why is it a good day?? Here are all the reasons (in order of occurrence or my discovery):

1. We had unbelievably beautiful weather. 80 degrees, sunny and only 29% humidity. Doesn't get much better than that!
2. I went out to lunch with co-workers - my choice, the local malt shop. The boss paid.
3. The Rumor Queen had GOOD RUMORS!! If this 10 days/month is real and continues, we could have a referral in January or February - wouldn't that be great?!
4. My Mom and Dad sent us a Grand Traverse Mission Cherry Pie, possibly the best tasting thing ever.
5. Rob and I realized that everyone either of us had seen all day was in a fantastic mood (must have been the weather)
6. We had a very nice after-work walk to the beach with Maddie.
7. Maddie swam (retrieving thrown sticks), without a floatation device, in water over her head. She wasn't even scared (much). My girl's finally a swimmer!!
8. We went to our neighborhood wine bar for dinner - sat on the patio, had the cheese plate, a salad with gorgonzola, pear and fig and a terrific pinot.
9. We agreed that all chores can wait until tomorrow, tonight is a night off.
10. There's going to be a full moon tonight*, so we're going to take Maddie on another walk before bed.

* technically, the full moon isn't until tomorrow. but tonight it'll be close.

Jia Baoyu and the lock of jade

Something else I learned about from Rob's friend Jasper:

Another tradition in China is to put a necklace with a traditional Chineselock on the baby, and bracelets are also popular in the same way. Thistradition can also be rooted from a long time ago. The locks are usuallymade by silver, gold or jade, and silver prefered, with words on them. It'ssaid that these materials have special rays that can scare monsters away,and the words can bless the baby with best luck and happiness. Jia Baoyu,the main character in one of the most famous Chinese literature novel, wasborn with such a lock of jade in his mouth.

Attached are some pictures of such locks and bracelets. The patterns on thelocks could be the the Chinese Zodiac of the baby, and the text could be"长命百岁" (live as long as a hundred years if translated directly) orother good wishes for the baby.

If you're interested in learning more about Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, here's a link.

Nora's quilt - update

I don't think that I've mentioned before my apprehension about the quilt project (at least not on this blog, if you know me you've probably heard it!). When we first started this process, I threw myself whole-heartedly into the experience. Anything that I heard we should do, I did because I didn't want Nora to miss out on anything. After a while though, I came to suspect that some of these supposed Chinese traditions were less rooted in Chinese culture and more a creation of the adoption community.

The quilt I regard a little bit differently - I think it's a great idea and I love having a little reminder of all the friends and family who care about Nora and are wishing her well. Some of them, like my Uncle Buck and Rob's Grandma Violet, have already passed on, so those are extra-special mementos of people that Nora will never know. I always intended to complete this project, but I didn't want to tell Nora that it was Chinese custom unless it really was. So, I braced myself for the cold, hard truth about the quilt and sent the question to a friend of Rob's who is Chinese by both birth and residence. Guess what? It's REAL! Here's his response:

I have consulted some classmates and some aged people in China, "Bai jiabei" (百家被 in Chinese) is something used to be popular in some areas in China, and maybe still popular in some places. The word "Bai jia" (百家)means a hundred families, "bei" means quilt, it was usually made by every family in the village when a baby was given to birth, and later it's simplified to be just several women in the village to make such thing.Another saying about this is that this thing was made by pieces of cloth that come from every family in the village. Whatever, people can express their love in this kind of ways to the baby...

And, more good quilt news ... tonight I finished my last block! I still need to assemble the squares, finish the last partial rows on the bottom and side and add my borders, but you can get a really good feel for how it's going to look. This will be a twin size quilt. I've decided to have it quilted at the shop we visited up at the North Shore, so I need to have it ready to go before our Fall vacation.

Next post I'll tell you more about another Chinese tradition that Jasper told me about.

Define success...

True to our word, we did rent a canoe yesterday. We put Maddie in her doggy life vest, had her jump in the canoe and pushed off. She absolutely refused to sit down for me, so Rob did what any good father would do - threatened to pull over the canoe. Maddie spent the rest of the paddle sitting in the back with Rob. She was ok. She didn't love it and she really didn't understand why she couldn't stand up, walk around or get a drink from the lake while we were moving, but she didn't hate it either. She loved the part where we pulled up on an island and she got to go swimming. Canoe camping is probably not going to happen any time soon, there's just too much of a risk of her dumping us out. We'll keep trying though and eventually we'll get there.


Other parts of our trip did go well - camping and cooking were both good, including the walleye and carrots cooked in foil on the campfire (yay!). It was very nice to eat real food and not rely on pb & j all weekend! We also had several very nice long walks and spotted some interesting wildlife including a doe and her fawn this morning. Deer aren't unusual where we live, but we don't often catch a glimpse of a fawn. It was a great weekend and will be very do-able with Nora (all except the canoeing). In fact, I saw a couple of families tent camping with toddlers so it can't be all that crazy of an idea.

Even though canoeing with Miss Madness didn't go as well as I'd hoped, I'm still rating the weekend a success.

Here's a moment of camping zen:

Happy Father's Day!

I'm sure it will come as a surprise to no one that Rob's Father's Day gift was a book. Believe it or not, I'd actually never heard of this book before; I just stumbled on it by accident at Borders last week, but I think it was a great choice.

"Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it."—from "Last Child in the Woods," Algonquin Books

You can read more about it here.


We love being outside and hope to that Nora will come to love the outdoors as much as we do.

Next weekend we will be trying out a canoe. We currently have kayaks, but can't take either dog or kids in those. One option that we considered was a double kayak with a center (third) cockpit, which would work for one child but not much else. I think it's time for a canoe. Rob is bummed; this will slow him down considerably.

Happy Father's Day also to our Dads! We love you!

I want to be the fun mom

My mom was (and still is) the fun mom and I want to be able to give our kids that kind of experience as they grow up. Life is quite nice when your mom is a happy, fun-loving person.

Anyway, we are expecting a young house guest, j, in a couple of weeks. j told her mom that she wants to host a birthday party while they're here, so I've been thinking about how we can do that. The one thing that I always wanted at my birthday party as a kid (and never got - there's a lesson, even the kid of the fun mom doesn't get everything she wants*) was a piñata. So, I decided that we would make a piñata.

I don't think that I've done papier-mâché since the 3rd grade, so I went to the internet looking for a recipe and perhaps some instructions for a piñata. If you haven't already discovered it, Family Fun magazine has a terrific website with all kinds of great ideas, including instructions for a hot air balloon piñata. I decided to do the papier-mâché part before j gets here and then hand it over to her for decoration, which turned out to be a good idea since it needs three coats of papier-mâché and needs to dry for a full day between coats. I also had a little mishap with the first balloon and needed to start over.

Here's a photo of the work in progress. Pretty cool, huh?

The paste recipe is also way better than what I remember using in grade school and it's super-easy.

Papier-Mâché Paste (from Family Fun magazine)

1. Combine 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 2 cups cold water in a bowl.
2. Add this mixture to a saucepan of 2 cups boiling water and bring it to a boil again.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar.
4. Let it cool; it will thicken as it cools. Once it does, it's ready to use.

My learning: be sure to let the paste cool all the way before you use it, otherwise it causes the air in the balloon to expand when the papier-mâché is applied and contract as it cools. It will mess up your project. What I do now is cook up the paste in the evening, let it cool uncovered until bedtime then cover with plastic wrap and let it sit on the counter until morning. If I get an early enough start I can get a coat on before work. It seems to take about 45-60 minutes per coat and I'm using a fairly large punch ball instead of a regular balloon.

I think I might have to subscribe to Family Fun.

* I also did not get a dog, imo a mistake on the part of my parents. Every kid should have a dog. Obviously I am making up for that in adulthood.

Our big backyard

You'd think that the rambunctious pooch would be a deterrent to wildlife, but NO! Our backyard is chock full!

I glanced out the window as I was letting Maddie in from the back porch and saw this:
Then about two feet away from the butterfly, I saw THIS:
This bunny was sitting in our yard, eating clover (we have clover in the back because I don't want herbicides where the pets - and someday Nora - play), completely oblivious to Maddie. Or maybe not, she may have experience with Maddie and already think she's safe.

I hope that's not the case. Maddie has caught squirrels twice, who knows what might happen if she were to get the jump on a bunny!

152 insights into my soul

Do you remember that quote from You've Got Mail? It popped into my head this afternoon as I was opening the fabulous July gift from our Jan DTC Secret Pal. SP, I have no idea who you are, but I do know that you "get" me.

Our SP chose "Father's Day" as her theme for the month and sent two books (one an adorable board book by Garrison Keillor (NPR - Rob's favorite!)) a photo paperweight and a so-sweet "I Love Daddy" bib for Rob.

She also, as usual, remembered our furkids with treats for both Abby and Maddie. Maddie's were "Fortune Snookies" by the makers of the tasty Snausages (no, I've never tried a Snausage, but every dog we've ever known is wild about them). Anyway, "Fortune Snookies" are like fortune cookies, or conversation hearts, for dogs. Maddie is still checking around the table where she got her first snookie, which said "The Bark Stops Here" (inset in the photo of Maddie lurking by the table).

Thank you so much SP. It was a wonderful, thoughtful gift. I bought Rob "Daddy" books last year for Father's Day also, thinking for sure that would be our last Father's Day without a baby (shows what I know, right?) - but the ones you've found are new to us! Who knew that there were so many great books for Daddies to read with their little ones!

P.S. SP, I didn't think your clip art was cheesy at all. It's a fine line between cheesy and sweet isn't it? I dance along that line all the time, frequently falling over into cheesy!

So many books, so little time...

I've been making good use of my van pool time the past couple of weeks (not that my previous van pool activity - sleeping - was a poor use of time, but this is even better!). First I read our July book club* book, Beyond Good Intentions by Cherie Register. It was a quick, easy, POSITIVE read, which was so good for me. So many of the adoption books focus on what can go wrong, that it is really refreshing to read something that makes you feel that, despite some challenges and mistakes along the way, in the end it might turn out all right.

Then I read Learning the Dance of Attachment by Holly VanGulden and Charlotte Vick. Holly was the speaker we heard back in April. We really learned a lot from that seminar, so I ordered her book from Crossroads. This book did more than just make me feel better, it made me feel empowered to make a positive difference in our child's life. I've reread several parts of the book already and made Rob promise me that he would read it. I consider this a must-read for all adoptive parents. I know that I will keep mine on hand for reference for years to come.

Next up is my library book, Talking with Young Children About Adoption by Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher. I checked this out on the recommendation of C at work and think that I will probably buy a copy to keep, but since they had it at the library I figured I'd go ahead and take it out for a test read.

And if that wasn't enough, in today's mail:

I think I need to take some time off and spend a couple of days reading at the beach. I've got the beach on my brain - this topic comes up at least 2-3 times every day. By the way, I don't only read about adoption. I'm also reading Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, which coincidentally does include an adoption :)

* This is the adoption book club at work.

Feeling...CRABBY!

6 days matched. That wouldn't be bad if there were a lot of dossiers logged in on those days - we *know* that November is a big month, right? But ... the big U.S. China-only agencies do not seem to have received many referrals. I'm now hoping that there were a lot of referrals for families in Canada and Europe. Otherwise, they just did not match very many this month and we still have lots and lots of November dossiers waiting. Unfortunately, I'm thinking that it is probably the latter.

Be the change

Do you remember my lamenting the lack of Mandarin Chinese in our school district? Well I did email the district learning services director asking about foreign language programming at the elementary level. She responded and said that currently our district offers Spanish and German for grade 7 and above, but that their Long Range and Strategic Planning committee was looking into the need for language and cultural awareness at a much earlier age. She said that she would mention my interest at their next meeting and suggested that I share my thoughts with some of the school board members.

That message came last week on the day that we left for the North Shore, so I hadn't responded to it yet, although I've been thinking about it a lot. First I had a big reaction to German being one of the two selected languages, but then decided that it was probably a regional thing. Refocusing on my main objective of getting foreign language in the elementary schools, the next thing to do seemed to be get a list of the school board members and start calling them.

Then today I got a phone call, a voice mail message really, from the learning services director. She said that she has applied for a state grant to investigate offering Mandarin Chinese in the elementary schools and was wondering if I would like to be on the exploratory committee with her. Hmm, let me think about that.... YES!!!!