Chutes and Ladders.

SS received a Chutes and Ladders game for Christmas. I am not very good with kiddie games, and C&L is one of those games that can go on way too long. But we sucked it up and broke out the board game. SS won fair and square, it wasn't a win, she wiped the floor with our aging behinds. Like her parents, she is a sore loser and an insufferable winner.

Not a surprise that SS chose the boy pawn.

First time playing and she got lucky with the longest ladder. I chose the girl pawn with beautiful, black straight hair. We were wondering why SS did not give it a second look. P was the African American boy since SS took the ginger dude.

The moment of the win.

Celebrating the shellacking of her parents.

Happy 2011!

Driving Ms. S.

Once again JJ managed to impart wisdom during his visit. This is funny to me because, well, he's my kid. Back in September we were annoyed at him because he failed to make us aware of something very important. At the time I took full responsibility for dropping him on his head so often. I did not recall doing it, but it was the only logical explanation for his behavior. But even then he managed to leave us slack jawed with some of his observations.

The thing is that he is perhaps the only person who really gets us. Of course that comes from our little island of three (now of 4). It is sobering to listen to your child give sound, logical advice. And as much as I know I have screwed up as a parent, sometimes I think I probably got a thing or two right when we have those talks. And one thing JJ is sure about is that we must remain true to our commitment to SS, to protecting her story, to be as truthful as possible when we write to her about how she came to us, and how we deal with not only the big things, but the daily minutia. It is about us as a family, and as we have written ad naseum what started as a letter to SS has evolved into a letter to SS and JJ. They are the only thing on our minds when we spill our guts. JJ is confident that SS will enjoy reading through our twisted thoughts in the future as much as he enjoys it now. That is good enough for us, because of JJ the blog will survive the stroke of midnight.

SS's hair is getting so long, it looks like we need to start considering a trim again. As labor intensive as those morning knots are we are not ready to let go of her beautiful hair. SS also claims to like her hair long, once she changes her mind we will of course reconsider.

A (post) Christmas miracle.

SS returned to school this morning, because no way was she going to leave home while JJ was here. She had a really rough morning because she was already having JJ withdrawals, and those are not pretty. But by the time we arrived at school SS reverted to her mute persona. When we entered the free play area SS reached for a truck that was on the floor. A little girl shouted "NO! It's mine, I was playing with it." Undeterred SS picked up the truck and I asked her to put it down. Big mistake on my part because the teachers should be the ones handling discipline once she crosses their threshold. At the same time the little girl shouted at SS again. Honestly, if SS had throttled her, it was well deserved.

That's when it happened. I am an expert at predicting a Mount SS eruption even when there are no outward signs to others. The selfish mother in me was silently urging SS to go ahead and react. I then saw it, not the famous C scowl (that leads to anger and petulance), but the quivering lip, the scrunching of the button nose, and then the tear dam burst. SS let out a wail, a loud plaintive wail. At that moment SS managed to bring the place to a complete halt, everyone just stopped, including the children. It was obvious that they were not exaggerating about SS never crying or making any type of noise. The shouter just stared at SS like she had seen her for the first time. Ms. Cookie (she is the cook, but plays with the kids in the morning and just adores SS) dropped what she was doing and rushed to SS's side. But my girl did not want to have anything to do with them, she wanted her Mama.

I did not pick her up, but knelt down and held SS, who quickly buried her face on my neck, while she cried and shook. The teachers were just in shock, even the teachers from the baby room came out to witness the meltdown. When SS calmed down some I allowed Ms. L to comfort her. Ms. L remembered the rules and patted SS's back while soothingly talking to her. Ms. L turned to me and said that they had never seen SS cry, really wanted me to know that. Yeah, that was quite obvious. I asked Ms. L to call me if SS did not calm down. It really tore me apart to leave, but SS was in good hands and I felt it was a good learning experience for SS and those around her.

As horrible as it sounds I am glad it happened. It was good for them to see that SS is a real girl, with real feelings, and real needs. My daughter is not Pinocchio people, she is a real child. I called P as soon as I left and to my relief he said "Good, about time they see that she is a real child." Like me, P was worried about the picture of a mute, emotionless SS. Because that is not who she is, there is so much more to our child. She is a delightfully complex creature, she is a joy to have around.

When I returned four hours later Ms. L informed me that SS calmed down about 10 minutes after I left. Upon enrollment we had agreed that 15 minutes was the max before they called first P, and then me. Ms. L reiterated how surprised everyone was that morning. Welcome to our world, because that is how we felt upon finding out how SS behaves at school. We also hope that maybe this incident served as an ice breaker and that SS's true personality slowly emerges. We hope that SS little by little learns to let go and be her fabulous self. We hope that SS becomes secure enough to realize that she does not have to be perfect to be cared for and appreciated. That is a lot of hoping but when it comes to our kids we are eternal optimists.

The kids are alright.

A week ago we finally got around to watch The Kids are Alright. It was a movie we wanted to see because of the topic, and because we read that it was handled in an intelligent manner. The kids are indeed alright, but the poor souls have really whacked out bio parents. The premise of the movie is a lesbian couple who each have a child by the same sperm donor, whom they had not met. When the daughter is 18, her 15 year old brother talks her into contacting their bio father. Initially the sister is not interested but relents. What started as a situation that was seemingly headed in the right direction turned into a horrible mess for the people involved.

The movie was surprisingly funny, even though I could have done without the whole messy are you now straight part, or the cheating. We agreed that the movie should have a subtitle The Kids are Alright (but the parents are REALLY f*cked up). The women are so messed up they named their son Laser. Who the heck names their child Laser? We are always interested in how non traditional families handle sensitive topics. We both grew up in non traditional ways, then decided to top our upbringing by creating an even more complicated family dynamic. And that is quite an accomplishment when you combine our backgrounds. :)

We have heard on many occasions people spouting how they could not have a child unless it is "their own." That deep need to have a biological tie to a child. YAWN. One thing the movie drove home to us is how neither one of us could ever considered such a setup. When there is a bio parent out there that is known, the probability of your life being upended increases exponentially. In a particularly (to us) funny part Nic, the uptight, control freak, snob, highly intelligent, physician mother almost chokes on her food when she realizes the guy who was studying International Relations in college dropped out. Uh, uh, her kids had half stupid genes. Worse, he works "in the food service industry." Actually he owned a seemingly successful restaurant. Like I said, she is a snob. That is the lesson on putting so much emphasis on DNA and what you seem to think you know about your artificially inseminated offspring's parent. Our fly by the seat of our pants parenting is clearly influenced by our complete lack of interest about SS's genetic makeup.

What we do know is more important, there is a very minimal likelihood of a bio parent gate crashing our lives and blindsiding us. We are in control of when and how our daughter seeks her roots. That is so much more important than boasting what we think we know. And although the daughter, Joni, was eighteen, legally an adult and able to search for her donor, she was clearly unprepared emotionally. I should know, I had a child at that age, but I would not consider myself mature then. So there on our screen was one of our biggest fears, an interloper screwing with our family. It was quite sobering.*

Another interesting aspect was how these accomplished, intelligent and obviously very caring women had obviously not talked to their kids about the donor. Something along the lines of... "how about a heads up when you feel the need to know about the other half of your genetic makeup?" Like many parents they frequently repeated the "you know you can tell me anything" mantra. But like many parents what it really meant was "you know you can tell me anything as long as it is what I want to hear." And while many people think it is overkill, it is why we talk about China, about the SWI and how we waited to bring SS home, in age appropriate language. As SS gets older we will discuss with her more details about her story. Because at 15 or 18 years old it is not the time to figure out how we feel about her birth parents, or the circumstances that brought us the greatest gift we have ever received.

A poignant scene between Nic and Jules resulted in a late night talk. Nic is being a condescending b*tch insinuating that she must carry the financial load alone, while her wife, Jules, stayed home. Jules challenges Nic's history revision and points out that the nannies were never good enough, the jobs she had were not good enough. She did an amazing job of holding a mirror up to her wife by telling her that she used the stay at home with my kids excuse as a form of control. That led to a 3:00 a.m. talk for us. One thing I will always give P is that he is able to talk about the dark parts of his soul (at least with me) most of us would never share . Whether it is his now freakishly humorous dislike for infants and bratty children in general, to admitting that he has been selfish at times.

P felt ashamed that he saw himself in Nic, he expressed his guilt about "pushing" me to stay home. Anyone that knows me is aware that I pretty much do what I feel I need to do, even when it is to my own detriment. I made up my mind at age 7 that I was going to have a Chinese daughter and I made it happen. OK, P and the Chinese government helped me a heck of a lot. But no one was going to get in the way of my dream (other than the abrupt halt in International adoption). Another instance where my utter lack of interest in DNA has been a blessing. I was very surprised that P felt such guilt. He expressed that he might have sabotaged my efforts to return to work. Nah, unless he was responsible for my diverticulatis, surgery and G0d awful recovery, nope, don't think so.

But he is right about the control, and not control over me. When we decided to adopt we knew that we would be giving up a lot of control. To this day P does not know how I survived the process, because unlike him, I am openly a control freak. My view of the situation is that P's surprising needs and decisions regarding SS began on Family Day. When he saw SS, when he realized how much was out of his control and the consequences, he decided to take control. P could not do a darn thing about those almost 16 months, but he sure as hell was going to be in control from that day on. Somehow that need to protect SS manifested itself into his lack of trust of anyone else as a caretaker.

And that is where his guilt comes from, misguided guilt, but such a sweet gesture. I do not deny that if I could return to my former job and salary tomorrow I would jump at the opportunity, dump SS at school full time and never look back. I am also grateful for each and every moment I have spent with SS. So what if she can't pronounce properly because she is imitating my speech? At least we have fun being unintelligible together.

It was both sweet and funny to hear P describe himself as a shrew. But I am glad he was able to open up and discuss how he felt. By the time he left for work two hours later we had both cleared the air. Guilt weights a heck of a lot, and this time, it was an unnecessary burden. I think we should stick to comedies from now on.

*On the other hand, if we determine that SS has the emotional maturity to seek her biological parents before age 18, we would do everything we can to make it happen.

Pictures and videos.

Tracking Santa on NORAD on Christmas eve.

We do not think JJ ever envisioned spending Christmas at his age playing Toy Story Memory.

This is what a Christmas hang over looks like.

Proof that we have viciously maligned our daughter. SS is not lazy, she takes her responsibilities seriously, like playing with her Christmas toys, even if she has to lay down to complete her duties.







When the authorities come to place SS in protective custody this blog is going to be their best evidence.

We Buzz Lightyeared her out.

Christmas morning caught us uncharacteristically with our Santa pants down. SS was up and ready to roll, but one gift was still boxed in the garage (same box where we brought it home 5 years ago) and one gift was half way assembled. Once again JJ got busy and finished the assembly in record time, anything for his little sister. The boxed gift was thankfully fully assembled, but it took some work to get it out and to dispose of the protective foam around it.

The plan was to Buzz Lightyear SS out and I think we succeeded. While we cut down significantly, there was still more than she needed. We decided to leave a few gifts for Dia de Reyes. It looks like SS received more than JJ, but balancing them out (JJ could not care less) is tricky. JJ gets less gifts but they are more expensive. We just do not want him to feel left out, since we have a hell of a lot of experience in that department. SS is now a pro at opening gifts and it was a lot of fun watching her rip gift wrap away. She seemed pleased with her loot and we are sure she does not even remember about Dia de Reyes. I recently read something neat in a blog about a family's philosophy of Christmas gift giving and might give it a try next year. The kids receive four gifts, something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. SS received some money from relatives and we are going to use that for her wardrobe.

We had a lazy day and had our traditional prime rib dinner, this year with arroz con gandules and fresh green beans. Having three ethnicities under one roof makes for interesting traditions. The best gift for P, SS and I is that we have JJ until Monday. On one of his visits we are going to kidnap him and stuff him in SS's closet. Shhhh, don't tell him or he won't return. We are just not a complete freak show without him, not many people get us.

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas filled with loot, merriment, love and peace.

This Buzz fleece blanket is huge, longer than P and very warm. I see SS dumping her home made Snoopy blanket tonight.

Yeah, Toy Story 3 from Grandpa.

A book of stories of the Toy Story trilogy for bedtime reading.

A Diego and Dora cooking book from the grandmothers. But in SS's world that translates into a Diego cooking book.

One of the three remaining gifts bought years before she came home. SS has so many phones that we decided to wait one more year for this one.

Three TS books with a mini projector with slides from the stories.

SS already had a fancy Memory game, but we could not resist indulging her TS obsession.

JJ is a fan of the Back to the Future trilogy. P once gave him an awesome replica of the Delorean in the movie, JJ's dream car. Oh wait, that is the blu ray version and JJ dos not have a blu ray player. OOPS.

JJ does a lot of heavy duty things in his desktop and netbook and had been looking into a 1 terabyte portable drive. I do not know how much that is but probably more space than our desktop and netbooks combined. JJ is planning to dump his desktop hard drive into this one.

We think he liked his blu ray DVD player.

Best gift ever.

A little girl and her Buzz, such a beautiful thing.

Noche Buena y comida Mejicana.

For a while now I had been thinking about making piñon. SS loves plantains and her love for crunchy tacos has provided a way to get protein into her skinny frame. A piñon is basically a plantain lasagna and it has green beans, one of SS's favorites. Why I decided that yesterday was the day to cook a Puerto Rican dish (something I suck at) is beyond me. We had gifts to wrap, a toy to assemble and were eagerly awaiting JJ's arrival. While we were searching for the right platanos, P asked me an obvious question. He wanted to know if I had made the dish before, because it never made it into our menu in fifteen years. Maybe yesterday was not the right time to try a new recipe. As I was distractedly choosing produce I said of course, I made it when I was pregnant with JJ.

During the drive home the ridiculous nature of my statement hit me hard. Have faith in me, I made this dish 28 years ago, piece of cake, what can go wrong? I sometimes wonder what keeps P from having me committed to a psych ward. But Sunshine was supportive and I am sure he was going over backup plans for dinner in his mind. But it went well, everyone enjoyed it, and the Puerto Rican in SS came through for us. She is a plantain eating machine, and was upset that she could not swipe more while we assembled the dish.

In Spanish speaking countries Christmas Eve is called Noche Buena. It literally translates into Good Night, my people are not exactly the most creative. I fully blame them for my lack of creativity. To keep up with the Hispanic food theme we made carnitas for dinner tonight. I found an easy recipe on a blog where the author cooks almost everyday with her slow cooker. P loves carnitas and we had yet to introduce JJ to his new food obsession. So we had a Noche Buena con comida Mejicana.

Since we did not have a tree last year we decided to allow SS to decorate her tree. Her first year home she did not know what was going on, but now she is getting Christmas a bit more. P was bummed because he could not find the monstrous tree stand or the fancy LED lights he bought two years ago. JJ came to the rescue and found the stand in a corner of our garage. It really pays off to have the kid around. No luck with the lights, but I reminded P that SS does not care about fancy lights, the old ones would do just fine. What really matters is that we are home together. When SS looks at the pictures in this post years from now, she is not going to bemoan the fact that LED lights did not grace her tree, she won't worry about the things we fret about. What SS is going to focus on is that we gave her free rein with the tree, that yesterday her Mama cooked to please her palate, and that JJ was home.

Turns out that SS is her mother's daughter, lazy as hell. She played with the ornaments, she placed some at the bottom of the tree, then decided that was good enough. Just like with the gingerbread house she lost steam and walked away. We are hoping this is not going to be a life long pattern. Then again we could argue that SS is a minimalist.







I had forgotten how much this stand weights. My brilliant plan to maximize space was to place the tree on top of SS's train table and cleared it for that purpose. The stand weights almost 20 pounds, no way was I going to risk destroying SS beloved metropolis.

Gingerbread house fun.

Last night I coaxed P to go to bed early, dude was beyond exhausted. I think the only reason he went along is that JJ was home. When it was just the three of us SS climbed on my lap, straddled me and laid her head against my chest. As I thought she was going to fall asleep, he eyes became wide open and she said "I want to be your baby." SS then changed position, laid on my lap and snuggled up to me. Sure, your sleep, you choose how to go into that sleep. But SS repeated that she wanted to be my baby three times. Then I had a silly thought and went with it. I told SS that she would always be my baby, just like her brother is my baby. I told her that when she starts using the potty she will still be my baby, when she moves to the 4 year old class she will still be my baby, no matter how old she is she will be my baby, even when she is as tall as Baba (SS has a sudden fascination with growing tall). SS smiled, kissed me and five seconds later she was out. When I told P later that night he said that it was just what SS wanted to hear. I hope he is right.

This morning we finally got around to introduce SS to the magical world of gingerbread house decorating. I grew up in a different culture and this was a foreign concept for me. Never did one and neither did JJ. P then informed me that he never did one either. Great, who is going to be chief decorator? P simply told me that he did not care so the onus was on artistically handicapped me. But P did have plenty of "technical advise", I am not the only control freak here.

Icing the house was a pain in the rear end. After watching me fail miserably JJ took over. Like P, he could not have cared less about the darn thing, but he wanted to do it for SS. I am just not an artsy mom. SS then got down to decorating her house. I opened the candy, laid them out in front of her and told her to decorate away. SS used the picture on the box as a guideline and did a decent job for a first timer. But she ran out of creative steam before she finished the front of the house. SS was not invested in finishing the house and decided why put all the candy up just to eat it, total waste of her valuable time. SS just started eating the candy, then moved on to licking the icing out of the candy already on the house. As long as she was having fun we did not care. SS also surprised us by eating breakfast, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and a biscuit. She would have had more bacon but P cooked the second batch and he likes his bacon almost uncooked. SS needs her crispy fix.

Later in the afternoon we watched Salt. Not the best movie out there, but I am a sucker for chicks kicking ass. Like Jodi Foster in Panic Room (loved the mother-daughter dynamic) and The Brave One. SS was almost falling asleep and had her head on my chest, totally oblivious to the movie. Just our luck than SS turned around just in time to see the beginning of a blood bath. I asked P to pause the movie and there was a funny scramble to get the remote. While we are scrambling to make sure SS did not witness more, JJ turns to her and says "and that is what happens when you do not eat your vegetables." I could have decked him, but must admit the guy is witty. One of those moments when being smart a$$ parents bites you in the rear end. SS went on to watch Nick Jr. upstairs while we finished our movie.

A few hours ago P noted that it was already Christmas in China. That led to one of those moments when SS's birth parents came to mind. I hope they are at peace and wish they knew that she is happy, healthy, loved beyond measure and warm. Have no idea why the warm part invaded my thoughts, but there it is. Merry Christmas China.