New Pipsqueakisms and Some Caveats

Hi, all -- I began working on the draft of what I hoped would be an intelligent, erudite, and thought-provoking post about some of the ongoing changes in the world of international adoption, but haven't been able to give it the time it needs... so of course that also delayed my making any other posts here as well.

Before I get into a more "normal" post, I have some important caveats to present. Google -- the organization that owns & runs Blogger -- is undertaking a "spring cleaning" that involves a number of changes to Blogger's functionality.  I won't go into the technical details but want to warn everyone about possible weirdness in how this blog does or doesn't function in the coming months. Y'know, just in case.  <8-o

First, the comments system is being folded very strongly into the Google+ world and OpenID is no longer supported; you'll still be able to leave comments, but how it's done, and your ability to post a comment as anything other than "Anonymous," will depend upon whether or not you have a G+ profile. Also, something that was done behind the scenes a while back seems to have broken parts of the "comment via email" system, and it remains at least partially broken. The problem's allegedly being worked on, but if you've tried to comment on this blog by sending an email and have seen zero results please don't take it personally! I've found a potential workarounds in the Blogger user forums that I'll be trying, but some of them feel a bit Rube Goldberg-esque so I'm not holding my breath. The other thing that's happening is that 3rd party widgets may or may not keep working (or possibly vanish altogether), so if you see anything weird in the sidebars, header, or footer of the blog please let me know (assuming you can figure out how <sigh>).

Okay, all the tech stuff is out of the way, here's some of what I've been saving up to post....!

New Pipsqueakisms:

 Although I sorely miss things like it being "blitch dark" when the lights are out or using a "bang" and a "screwter" to build furniture, my niece continues to come up with phrases & behaviors that make us laugh out loud (or at least shaking our heads with a grin).  Some more recent examples:

On why she wants to start playing the flute in 4th grade:
"I decided to try the flute because I like blowing air in things!"
(Note to self: Make damn sure she doesn't say this to a boy until she's 18... or maybe 21... 30?)

Called out angrily over her shoulder whilst stomping upstairs after being told to turn off a light she'd left on:
"Fine!  I'll do it!  But only because I'm not doing it!"
(Yes, you read that correctly.  No, we haven't quite figured out exactly what she was saying. But it was funny, anyway.)

After Grandma quietly sneaked up behind her and gave her a good scare:
"Grandma!  I thought you were some stranger attacking an innocent child -- and I was that innocent child!"

After making it her business to keep Grandpa company on a bench while Grandma & Mommy shopped:
"Yep!  I'm a responsible kid!  You can call me R-I-K for 'responsible innocent kid,' but don't call me 'Rick!'"
(I swear I am not, and could not be, making this up!)

Oh, and don't get me started on how many times we've heard how her upcoming 9th birthday is extra-special because, "It's my last birthday with just one digit!"

And, to close out, a little more kvelling by Yours Truly. To make a long, complicated story short, after AJ recently changed jobs I now pick Miri up every afternoon -- most frequently to get her to dance class (she's in five right now, and will be auditioning for the studio's dance team in a couple of weeks). One day each week, she has to get to the studio a little early and then has three hour-long classes in a row. It wasn't a problem when Mommy's job was five minutes down the road, but since the change she's gotten a lot more anxious about being left "alone" for so long. (Dude, never mind all day at school, the hours of after-school care, the times with her friends, or the fact that literally every teacher & parent, along with most of the kids, at the studio know her very well.)  She knows this prevents me from doing any of my coursework for a long time (travel time + prep time + class time can equal a five-hour block of my afternoon & evening), and has been very apologetic,  but still really, really, really wants me to stay.

Well, Miri knows I'm making an extra effort to be there for her (she checks on me at every break and between classes <grin>), so when I picked her up after school earlier this week she presented me with the following:

Gotta say I'm kinda fond of the kid. :-)

Anyway, that's all for today.  I'm still dealing with "interesting" issues with my laptop (including the recent loss of trusty ol' Photoshop CS3 when Adobe shut down the last authentication server and their "special" authentication-free version steadfastly refused to install... while I still have insufficient storage space to install any newer software) so I can't really post the way I want to, but I'm working toward a goal of at least one post every 5-7 days.  (Vamos a ver.)

Here's hoping all's well at your end of the wire, and I'll see y'all in June!

PS - Yeah, I "outed" the Pipsqueak's full first name with that photo... She still has several others so we're OK. :-)

"...I'm Chinese?!?"

Whoa, how did we end up in a new month already?

<sigh>

Okay, let me see if I can fill in a little bit of the blank space (Dude, you wanna get a copyright hit from Taylor Swift or something?) and dive back into all the weird stuff that's been happening to my laptop.

The Pipsqueak has been on a roll lately. Not only did she get straight A's on her latest report card, she also got an A+(!) for her Hebrew reading & writing skills in Sunday school -- yet another in a long list of academic achievements that far surpass those of her mother and uncle. Which is good!  The school system is currently involved with PARCC testing so she's been coming home with statements like, "I have a test tomorrow so I need to get a good night's sleep and Mommy has to give me a good, solid breakfast in the morning," and, "I need to do all my homework AND go to dance to practice for the show AND practice on my recorder AND read at least 20 minutes AND get to bed early enough for a good night's sleep AND prepare for the PARCC test tomorrow... I'm getting stressed!"  (This from someone still six weeks shy of her 9th birthday.)

There's still some very real concern under all the bluster and instructions. Math has never been Miri's strong point (and we've made sure she knows how proud we are of how hard she worked to improve over the course of this school year), and the next PARCC test includes math. I know this because she's made a point of telling me that it worries her, and she's "kind of scared" by it, and hopes she does okay on the math test, and so on...  We're all trying to reassure her but even though she'll say she knows that what really matters is that she just does the best she can, the worry keeps popping up to the surface.  (And it's helping Yours Truly remember even more of the things he detested about being in school. Ugh.)

Anyway, aside from testing worries, the Pipsqueak's doing fine.  Due to Mommy's recent job change, I now pick her up from after-school care and either take her home or deliver her to the dance studio, where she's busy practicing (with a small herd of other kids) for the upcoming semester-end recital. She's in FIVE different numbers this year -- it's gotten to where AJ's list of dance classes her daughter attends is almost twice as long as the list of classes she doesn't!

But on to the rather odd title of this post... (Dude, it's about time!)

I may have mentioned in an earlier post(?) that I bought a 23andMe DNA test kit for the Pipsqueak a few months back.  I'd intended to do that much earlier, but Maryland has some odd consumer protection laws that used to make consumer DNA tests illegal (or semi-legal at best); it's only in the last few years that 23andMe, and then Ancestry, and then a couple of other consumer-level DNA test kits became 100% legal here.[1]

Anyway, the kit sat on a shelf in AJ's kitchen for a while until her brother's slowly-increasing needling reminded her it couldn't sit for too much longer.  Miri was grossed out by having to fill a test tube with saliva but managed anyway, and -- despite forgetting to write down an important ID number before sealing the return envelope -- AJ got the Pipsqueak's DNA results less than two weeks after sending the sample to 23andMe.

According to AJ, the title of this post was the Pipsqueak's first reaction to the test results. (It was followed by AJ explaining to her daughter why, even though she's an American, she's also Chinese -- an explanation interrupted by her daughter bursting out laughing over her successful pranking of Mommy.)  She called me to let me know what the test results were and I'm glad to say that, at least genetically, my niece is by far the healthiest member of the family.

Not unexpectedly, she's slightly less than 3/4 "Mainland Chinese" (while still in China with her back in 2010, we were repeatedly told by locals, "She's not Han!").  Around 1/4 of her genome is "Generalized Southeast Asian," which includes a slew of countries in the region up to & including the Philippines. There's a scattering of tiny bits of other ethnic markers rounding out the mix; the only really common one not on the list was Ashkenazi Jewish, which I know (from watching lots of YouTube videos) is astonishingly common in non-Asian populations.

One of the more outstanding points in Miri's DNA report was how "unique" she is -- based entirely on the fact that 23andMe's Asia database is a fraction of the size of the American/European database. (I think it's less than 800 individuals en toto.) Not only does this exaggerate the uniqueness of her genome, it also means they can't narrow down her ethnic heritage beyond "3/4 Han, 1/4 other Asian." This is not an "issue" per se, but Miri is becoming increasingly aware of what being "Chinese" means and is also increasingly interested in that part of her personal identity. We know she's not Han (or at least not pure Han), but she could be Zhuang... or maybe Miao, or even Shui... or perhaps another even less-represented ethnic minority... or maybe even just a mix (likely with Vietnamese genes)... We just don't know, but we'd like her to be able to know, so we needed to figure out how to drill down through the DNA data to at least (hopefully) narrow down the possibilities.

I remembered a discussion thread in the Rumor Queen Facebook group[2] a while back about a Chinese company that would accept DNA test data from 23andMe, Ancestry, et al. and do a more thorough ethnicity analysis based upon their (much!) larger database.  A quick check with that group resulted in a bunch of answers (thanks again, y'all!), all pointing to a company called WeGene.  (Note: Their website can be a little slow, but the company's legit.)  I've spoken about it with AJ and we've decided that I'll contact them and upload or link Miri's data.  The results can be months in the coming, but Miri was so thrilled to get even this very generic listing of her genetic identity that we're sure it will be well worth the wait.

Oh, and about that genetic identity...

One small surprise in the Pipsqueak's genome is that she is 0.01% English. Yes, that's one one-hundredth of one percent -- but for some reason known only inside her complicated little head, she latched onto that like a magnet to iron filings. The result is that now she insists on periodically saying things like, "Mum, can we go to the pool now?" or "Mum, is it time for tea?" in her best Peppa Pig accent. It's even funnier to watch the reactions when she tells other kids she's part English.[3]

Anyway, there's a bit of a stop-gap catch-up on recent goings-on (and other hyphenated things).  I know that I still have close to half of last year's events to catch up on here, and I haven't given up... it's just that having my schedule unilaterally change itself on a daily basis has now been complicated by a series of problems with my laptop (including one late-night panic call to Apple Support that had the tech guy repeating, "It's not supposed to do that... I didn't expect that... You shouldn't be seeing that... That's really odd..." before finally reaching a happy ending). The result is that I will indeed catch up on all the events I took photos of with the intent to post them here, but it's probably gonna take the rest of this year to complete the task.  You have been warned -- and I really DO appreciate everyone's patience!

I hope all's well at your end of the wire, and I'll be back soon with another post!

[1]  I know there are many schools of thought on DNA testing, including privacy concerns. We all felt it was far too important to make sure there wasn't anything in Miri's genome going, "tick... tick... tick" to just sit back and wait to find out. (Coming from the IT world, including Internet security, I can guarantee that most of the "privacy" being "violated" is already, sadly, mythological in any case.)

[2] The Rumor Queen's old ChinaAdoptTalk site is long gone -- and still sorely missed! -- but there is a slowly-growing Facebook group comprised of former members of the RQ forums. It's a closed group, so if you're interested in joining you have to navigate to its home on Facebook (look for "Rumor Queen") and ask to be included. There's a lot of really good things going on in there, so if you're part of the old guard or still paperchasing, I recommend you give it a try!

[3] Miri never got to meet Uncle Max -- we lost him in the 1980s -- but he immigrated to the U.S. from his birthplace of Liverpool, so technically (in an odd, roundabout way) she's right.  I chalked it up to genetics via osmosis.