grrlTravels

a hotel is only as nice as its bathroom

Dear Hotel Industry Executives and Architects:

I have neither the need nor the desire to view myself sitting on the toilet. Please make a note.

Kind regards,
grrlTravels

Perhaps the colors will distract them

I am obsessively devoted to other people's care packages. Mostly because I never have any idea of what to send. And I tend to overthink things a bit.

So I offer for your consideration the care package sent to HSM's SWI.

This SWI is at least 70% special needs children who are not eligible to be adopted. That means that they are older than the average child in an SWI in The People's Republic of China. What to send to older children who might be physically disabled? I decided on beach balls. Big ones. What kid doesn't love a good beach ball?

For the SWI workers:
Mixed nuts
Dried fruit
Chocolate covered fruit

For the children at the SWI:
Beach balls
Hair accessories
Chap sticks
Stickers
(The girls did better than the boys. I was stumped on the boys.

For HSM:
Photo album of family
Stuffed dog (chosen by E.)
Flannel blankie
Baby toys
Camera (you can call me greedy)
Video camera

And there you have it. The package. I hope that someone likes something in there, that they enjoy the food, that the glittery barrettes are worn and appreciated.

Sigh. Such a small gesture. Such a tiny drop in the bucket. But what else to do? Just keep saying thank you and keep looking for ways to help and to encourage.

Bits

1. E. had "fudge cookies, you know, the ones with the stripes" for snack on Friday and "cake" today. I said, "It couldn't have been cake. We aren't allowed to bring cake. Are you sure it was cake?" and he said, "I don't know. Some chocolate thing with chocolate crunchies." I am considering taking some sort of macrobiotic snack incorporating buckwheat, umbeoshi, or seaweed next time. I know E. would eat the seaweed.
2. I clearly wasn't clear so let me clarify. I will be taking the items that I gather for the China Care Foundation in our luggage to China. So if you would like to contribute, I'm asking you to send the items to me. I have had a few people request my address, and I will be getting it out to you. Any and all donations for the China Care Foundation will be appreciated.
3. It is almost time for the mid-Autumn Festival and that means mooncakes. If you are like me you have been procrastinating, but now is the time to get them sent. (Adele makes it easy.) And if I sound all like I think I'm more organized than you, well I'm not. I haven't sent a single thing to Z.'s CWI since we've been home and today marks the two year anniversary of her arrival in NJ. I'm simply trying harder this year.
4. The end of October (18-25) marks the annual auction to support Half the Sky (see the blue bar on the right of the home page). I have bid in previous years, but I have never gotten around to donating anything. This year I am going to make something to donate. Join me! If you want to participate by giving a "special treasure", now is the time to begin thinking about it. Shelba is helping out with this (I'm not sure exactly how but I think she is listing things on eBay for people who don't want to list them themselves?) so you can always ask her questions.
5. The Mama's Wish program through Half the Sky and Angel Covers is working to send young women from the Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in QingHai Province to high school and college. We sponsored a few young college women and their stories will break your heart. The young women are orphans or half orphans and are working hard to better their future through education.

Fall has gotten to me. I am always the most productive in the fall. I have no idea why. I have been sewing and thinking and planning and scheming. Lots of things to do, lots of organizations to support. I have some sort of half baked idea of getting a year's worth of stuff accomplished before HSM comes home. After Z. we are not taking any chances. The months following his arrival in the US will be cleared and if we need to we will all sit on the couch and stare at each other for as long as it takes. And it may take a while.

The birthday was celebrated

I'd have to recommend this charitable organization thing to anyone. One day after his birthday we got 15 birthday photos emailed to us out of the blue. It was a shock this morning, a good shock. I had myself a good cry looking at them.

They are a marvel of details, these photos. The birthday crown. The cake with the flower candle holder. The couch. The tiger shoes. (Yes! Tiger shoes!!) I have been studying them, and they do ease my mind a bit.

So I am completely in love with the China Care Foundation. They have been so lovely to us and I can't wait to get to China and see their facility in Inner Mongolia. When we go to China I will be taking a box of stuff for them. The list of what they need is on their site. I have requested a list specifically relating to their facility in IM to see if the needs there are any different. If you would like to donate an item or two, please drop me a line at amy @ grrltravels . com (remove spaces) and I'll give you an address. The first item [Baby bottles (new or used, any brand or size)] makes me sad. We have a bunch of Z.'s bottles I was just going to throw away when I get around to buying new ones for HSM. Suddenly I feel wasteful.

Cheese fails me.

There wasn't a precise moment when my parenting went from good enough to Completely Overcompensating with a Capital O For the Preschool Teachers. We were a few moments too early. E. was dressed a little too nicely for the church basement for the second time in a row. We smiled a lot. We signed up to bring in one box of gallon size ziploc baggies. Normal-ish stuff, all of it.

Well, there was the moment when the teacher's aid (who is dead to me now) looked me straight in the eye and said, "I'm always relieved when the parents bring in a box of cookies because I know that the kids will eat them." There was no way that I would ever, ever show up with a box of cookies. (Ok, we both know that is a lie, seeing how I am a lazy, tired, stressed out slacker mom. I can think of 20 situations that would warrant such an act off the top of my head. But at that moment, no.) I stood there simultaneously wishing for and hating oreos.

Just two days previous at the "Hi Parents!" meeting on the first day of preschool snacks were covered. "We are heading towards healthy snacks here at preschool. Many parents prefer that their children try to eat healthy, and to that end although we permit you to bring in clear juice we are perfectly fine when you bring in a healthy gallon of water to serve to the children. In the same vein, healthy snacks are encouraged, the healthier the better. We promote good HEALTH here at preschool. So, think healthy!" The repetition of the word healthy tipped me off that they might want the snacks to not be unhealthy.

On that same day I did something very uncharacteristic and volunteered to be the very first parent helper. No one else was signing up for the first day, and it seemed much easier to turn to K. and say, "What are you doing on Wednesday?" than try to sort out where we might be in the middle of October. Therefore by default I signed up to bring the first snack. I figured it had better be healthy.

I made fresh fruit kabobs (strawberry, orange, pineapple, grape, banana), cutting up the bananas at preschool and adding them just before serving so that they wouldn't get mushy. Fearing that some of the children might be like E., who just began eating fruit with relish this summer, I also brought cheese and crackers (Muenster and Monterey Jack). Cheese. Crackers. Bananas. How could this fail? K. told me that I was setting the bar high for snacks at preschool, but I pooh poohed him. So it was overcompensating just a bit. Overcompensating with fruit kabobs doesn't seem that bad in my world. Perhaps I am wrong about that.

Prior to snack time there wasn't much occasion to overcompensate because there wasn't much to do as the Designated Parent Helper. I wandered aimlessly around the room, grinning maniacally at random children. When we began the stations I got assigned to the worst one. "TEACHER LADY," I wanted to yell, "FOUR YEAR OLDS DON'T REALLY LIKE STRINGING COLORED SPOOLS ON YARN. THAT IS A COMMONLY HELD MISCONCEPTION ABOUT FOUR YEAR OLDS. WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST GIVE ME THE LINT PICKING STATION? HEY TEACHER LADY. YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU!" Not only did I have the yarn and spool station, but I was requested to talk about how the spools looked like circles. A lot. Meanwhile Teacher Lady was using sieves to dig up bottle caps in sparkly sand and the Ogre-ish Teacher's Aid was helping the children make pictures with those bingo paint stampers that teachers and occupational therapists so love these days. And I had spools.

It could only go uphill from there. We served the kabobs and the cheese and crackers. A few of the kids hated all of it. Most of them ate bits and pieces. E. ate every piece of fruit and all of the cheese and crackers. Take that, Ogre-ish Teacher's Aid. Healthy snacks RULE!

K. said he would do the duty in November. I'll be he goes with the oreos.

I miss you, boy, and I don't even know you

Tomorrow is HSM's birthday. (Future son, as yet without an American name. E. says we should keep the Chinese name, but near constant reminders of Mao Zedong might send me right over the edge. A new name must be chosen. Soon.)

I have been weepy since last week's celebration of meeting Z. It made me cry repeatedly for 2 or 3 days, and the weepiness has lingered into this week, causing me to sob quietly at beer commercials during football games and get teary over encapsulated book summary/reviews and sniff away infant rattles and teethers. Today E. fashioned a self-described baby toy for HSM out of pipe cleaners, a construction similar to a ring of keys. He requested that we wrap the gift for HSM and send it to China so that he could play with it right away. He mentioned that it would be sad if they sent it back with HSM when we met him, and I replied that I thought it would be kind of them to take such good care of it for us. Thankfully the impossibility of such actions precluded the bawling tempest brewing in my chest.

We sent a cake and a note through Adele. There is to be a tape player with some Chinese children's songs and two cameras. I am not holding out any hope for the cameras, although clearly one must make the effort because having ANY shot of his first birthday would be treasured. I am actually not even holding out hope that he will get a taste of the cake. I am not sure how it all works with the foster parents and the charitable foundation and the SWI. But what else to do? We sent the cake, and I hope whomever does eat it enjoys it and sends a happy birthday thought to my boy.

[I cannot complain in at all about photos. We got 30 more yesterday, updates from the 110 before, and we saw him growing before our eyes. He looks chubby and happy. We have an amazing abundance of photos. Occasionally I feel guilty about them all. So. Many. Photos. Still, I bought a disposable camera and a one-time use video camera for the care package. Does anyone think they will be able to figure out the video camera without any directions?]

I am distraught at the thought of missing the celebration of his birthday, and wonder how I will get through the day tomorrow. Fortunately Wednesdays are my busy days and I will be rushing to and fro, making fruit kabobs and changing diapers and doing who knows what as the parent helper at preschool tomorrow and having my brain shrunk just a tiny bit more.

But still. To get through the day. In a suitable fashion. With no travel dates anywhere on the horizon. (The dossier doesn't even get sent until FRIDAY.) With no tiger hat. No cake. No candles.

[Crap. Why did I even have to write out "tiger hat"? Now I want to buy him a tiger hat and send it to him. Although it will never get there in time, and we have a tiger hat already from Z.'s first birthday. I wonder why Adele doesn't have tiger hats as part of her package? I suppose because really, what's the point? TIGER HAT. I'm ordering one. China Sprout. You can't stop me. He will have his hat. He will.]

Tomorrow. His birthday.

Big chicken, little chicken

Picking the chicken tonight was an exercise in keeping the bile down. There are days where I don't mind that ripping sound that the flesh makes when it pulls away from the bone and I happily disembowel the bird with a song in my heart. And then there are days when even the thought of touching the greasy parts makes my stomach acids churn like a thousand motor boats racing through a hurricane-tossed sea. Tonight? Cigarette boat going 200 knots/hour in the middle of Floyd.

Part of the problem was that the chicken was abnormally large, clearly having had some emu forebearers on the father's side. Eight pounds of poultry goodness. Eight pounds. None of my recipe sites yielded roasting times for a chicken that large. I wondered idly what had overcome me at the grocery store. I think the ennui of buying milk, eggs, and bread had suddenly become too much. The XL chicken seemed glamorous sitting there between the pre-nuggeted nuggets and the flat, pinkish breasts, not to mention the 12 packs of thighs on sale.

Today was a day of dislocation, however, so the chicken fit right into the schedule, between take firstborn son to his first day of preschool and wipe vomit off the floor after 2 hours of sound sleep.

I got teary. I couldn't help it. He was so perky sitting there in his car seat passing the time by asking questions about his teacher. I think I was crying less at the eventual loss of E. and more about the crappy schedule that the eventual loss of E. occasions. But Mr. Chipper is going to win me over and make it all worthwhile with his constant chattering about friends and shapes and snacks and songs. It's hard to maintain the distance in the face of all that 4-year-old goodness. Preschool makes us both happy.

The chicken is another story. I am determined to face that greasy pile of flesh in the fridge and serve it to my family as leftovers, roiling tummy or not. If I can send E. into a church basement which smells exactly like a church basement 3 times per week to have his personality influenced by other random preschoolers I can certainly tame that chicken into submission and serve it to my loved ones.

You know that smell that chicken gets when it sits in a closed container in the fridge for a few days? Should be good for at least one more entry, and maybe two.

The Meeting

Today is the anniversary of the day we met Z.

The memories of that day sit in a box like fabulous truffles, and this afternoon I bite into one after another, savoring the surprise of the taste and the richness on my tongue. The nervous bus ride. The heat. The shock of seeing the babies as we walk into the waiting room. The careful searching for her. The chaos. The indescribable first moment. The too hot first bottle. Stripping her down. Lying on the bed. The fumbling schedule. Late lunch of congee. Pictures. Dinner. Internet cafe. Jammies. She is ours.

I savor them one after another today, gorging myself on the images and emotions. I stare at the photos over and over. I cry. I whisper thank you, thank you, thank you. I am humbled once again by this amazing gift.

September 2005: Making it official




March 2006: Playing with E.




June 2006: With the tube




October 2006: Signing "juice"




February 2007: Learning to walk




August 2007: A few words