Welcome!

My niece joined the family on July 12th, 2010. This special young lady's mother is my younger sister, which in classic Chinese culture makes me her Jiu Jiu (舅舅) -- thus the title of this blog. Here I intend to semi-regularly post reflections, thoughts, stories, and assorted whathaveyous pertaining to our trip to China, adoption in general, and (mostly) watching my niece grow up. Since the web is a very public place, I will attempt to maintain my family's privacy while telling the story... but I invite you to follow the blog and come along for the adventure!

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Another IKEA Adventure, Part Deux

 All twenty of the boxes & bags of parts & slabs sat in AJ's garage for almost another week, and then -- miracle of miracles -- AJ got a day off.  (I think this was the first time she didn't work on Christmas day in at least 20 years.)  We tried to coordinate a little via telephone late in the morning and I reassured lil' sis that I'd be there by 3:00, probably sooner.

Well, me being me and my to-do list being my to-do list, I finally got to AJ & Miri's house around 3:40... only to find my sister deep in the throes of an argument with the Costco website, trying to create a "Happy New Year" card with some of her photos.  I'll keep the story short by quoting my sister: "I do this every year, you'd think by now I'd remember how to do this!" -- although in her defense, I have a lot more experience cropping & adjusting photos digitally, so after about half an hour of tweaking, clicking, cussing, and "wutifudothats" she & Miri liked the results, the cards were ordered, and we were finally able to get down to the business of building the Småstad loft bed.

The first order of business was to make sure the old bed -- a beautifully hand-carved, solid wood piece of workmanship gifted to AJ when she was little by a family friend who owned a furniture factory in Chile in he mid-1960s -- was safely disassembled & moved out of harm's way. This led to several cases of, "Oh, so that's where the other shoe went!" as well as our discovering a number of long-forgotten creations of the Pipsqueak's from years gone by... including a "smart phone" she made for herself when she was five or six years old:

After moving a shelf unit back & forth a couple of times (we weren't sure where it would be out of our way while working), taking pictures off the wall, sweeping, and all that good stuff, the room (or at least that side of the room) was emptier than it had been since we took down the Pipsqueak's crib about nine years ago...

The final step before actual construction began was to move the old box spring from the bed (which we would not be using in the loft bed) from the hall where we'd dropped it to... well, it wasn't too obvious to where it should be moved until AJ decided she could live with it up against the back of the living room sofa until she had a chance to take it to her storage unit sometime in the (hopefully very near) future.  Several minutes of huffing and puffing and impolite phrases later, the box spring was safely wedged behind the sofa, held in place by a cat tree to prevent it from falling over (or being accidentally knocked over) onto one of the cats.  Of course, Xuan took one look at all the activity and bolted for a hiding place elsewhere in the house, but Licorice just couldn't contain her curiosity and quickly found her way onto the living room's newest high spot.

Ever since hearing about AJ's plan to purchase a large piece of assemble-it-yourself furniture, I'd been a little worried about whether or not we'd have enough space in the Pipsqueak's bedroom to actually open up all the boxes, sort all the pieces, and assemble it there... and halfway up the steps from the basement to the first floor (curse you, townhouse stairs!) AJ and I came to the simultaneous realization that we would not be struggling up any more stairs than were absotively posilutely necessary with those heavy, bulky, unyielding boxes and elected to open them on the first floor and carry individual pieces up to the second floor.  Even all the additional trips up and down (and up and down and up and down and up) the stairs resulting from that decision were easier to deal with than attempting to get those meshuggah boxes up another flight and then around the three immediate adjacent corners necessary to get them into the bedroom! 

Despite the box box's refusal to actually be opened -- it took a lot of tearing and then sawing with my pocketknife -- we finally exposed the contents and began carting everything upstairs piecemeal a couple of panels at a time until we had several slippery shiny white panels leaning against the wall... at which point we discovered that the first step would require the contents of at least two of the oversize boxes, leading to us both being very happy with our decision about How To Do It.  Eventually we had all the necessary components upstairs and we prepared to actually assemble something.



At this point we had one more major decision to make.  The ladder up to the actual bed is on the side of the unit, and the entire piece can be assembled with the ladder (and shelves and closet) closet to either end -- but which end had to be fixed at the very beginning of assembly because it would determine how almost all the parts of the frames would be put together.  Several months earlier, AJ & Miri had decided it would be most convenient to have the closet section of the bed facing the room's built-in closet, which would put the ladder on the end of the bed closest to the door of the room... and closer to the ceiling fan hanging above.  Mom had quickly begun to worry out loud that this arrangement would put her granddaughter's head much too close to the fan than was prudent, and I'd done some rough measuring of things to reassure her that there would be no such problem.

Standing alone in the room while AJ & Miri went back downstairs for a last few components, it occurred to me that the proportions of this bed were a little different from the original model, and I swear I could hear Mom once again worrying out loud about the ceiling fan.  I also had the thought (for the first time) that my measurements had located the edge of the bed in relation to the ceiling fan... but that the Pipsqueak would be climbing up and down on the outside of that imaginary box.  With a sudden sense of foreboding, I grabbed my tape measure, figured out where the ladder would be, stood immediately next to that spot on the floor, looked straight up... and saw this directly overhead:


(Oopsie.) As soon as AJ walked back in the room I told her we were building the bed with the ladder on the other end, and when she asked why I told her I was standing exactly where the Pipsqueak would be while climbing up & down the ladder and then silently pointed up.  I think my sister's entire response was, "Yep!"

Now that we knew which part of the bed was supposed to go where, it was time to begin the actual assembly. Flipping back & forth in the instruction book a few times -- and it really was a book, since there were over 30 steps and they all had to be shown four times due to all the optional ways the bed could be assembled -- we slowly figured out what each of the infamous pictograms was trying to tell us and began inserting pegs, banging in dowels, twisting cams, and trying to line up edges for the next couple of hours.  (I periodically stopped to photograph our progress with my phone and sent the pictures to Mom, complete with silly captions, so she could see how things were going.).

At one point, I noticed that we had started one step backwards because neither of us had realized that two otherwise identical panels differed only in their thickness and that this very, very important difference was only shown by an extremely understated difference in the images in the instruction book. Another time, AJ realized that we had one peg for a cam lock sticking out into the otherwise totally vacant closet space for no reason whatsoever despite it being clearly shown as needed in the instructions. Then there was the piece we realized had been put in backwards just seconds before fastening an entire assembly into place on top of it... 

Slowly, sometimes painfully, the various components began to come together and after some time we had a big white box on the floor, taking up almost all the available space in the room.  After a short dinner break we wrestled it upright, rearranged the mess we'd created (we had realized early in the build that it was helpful to keep some of the cardboard "bars" from inside the original shipping boxes under the sections as we built them but now they were underfoot everywhere), and began to figure out how to attach a shelf section to the almost-complete closet section.

Actually putting the shelves into place added some more colorful language to the build -- by this time Miri had simply planted herself on the living room sofa and was watching videos on her iPad, coming to our rescue periodically when called but otherwise just trying to stay safely out of the way -- and then we had to figure out a whole new way of doing things to assemble the single drawer that went into the bottom of the closet.  (Apparently, IKEA has added a few tricks since my days working there, so it took a little experimentation to figure things out.).  Amazingly, the drawer slid effortlessly into place with a satisfying thunk, all the panels were (mostly) parallel or perpendicular as they were supposed to be, and there was no sign of pending collapse when AJ & I stepped back to admire our work.  Since it was now well after 10:00pm, I sent one more celebratory photo to Mom, said goodnight, and headed home to take a couple of Aleve capsules and catch some shuteye so I'd be ready to finish the job the next day.




I'll continue the story of my latest IKEA assembly misadventure in my next post, but just wanted to take a moment now, at the end of my final post of 2020, to thank everyone who's read and/or subscribed, and to wish everyone a happy, healthy new year.  As Governor Hogan says in a current radio commercial, "Wear the damn mask!" and stay safe in these uncertain and unsettling times.  I'll see y'all early in 2021!  Happy new year!








Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Another IKEA Adventure Begins...(Yikes!)

 Hello again!  It's been a while since I posted, but not due to lack of things happening -- quite the opposite, in fact.  Some things aren't for the blog but I've been more than kinda busy, so apologies for the long silence and let's get caught up a little!

Happily, despite our county having to roll things back to Phase 1 COVID-19 precautions (masks pretty much all the time, no indoor dining at restaurants, serious limitations on occupancy in all businesses, etc.), we have all remained generally healthy. There's been an occasional sniffle here and there -- how can there not be when we jump repeatedly back & forth between mid-winter and early spring temperatures? -- but so far the family is remaining about as healthy as we could hope for.

We also managed to dodge the weather bullet a few times (although we seemed to have solid cloud cover every night that there was supposed to be an interesting celestial event to see, darn it) but finally got our first real snow of the winter...

The holidays crept up on us and were suddenly here... and then Hanukkah was suddenly past.  The five of us lit the candles together for the first couple of nights, and then everyone's schedule got a little too crazy for us to get together and the holiday came to a close.  We figured "what the heck," and got together for a virtual 8th night (hey, we've done 3 seders some years for Passover, so why not 9 or 10 nights of Hanukkah?).  It was good to spend the time, and Miri finally got the answer as to why her mother kept insisting no, she would not buy the full boxed set of Harry Potter movies on DVD when they found it on sale at Target a couple of weeks back. :-)

 
 AJ & Miri got a little creative in the kitchen this year, and (despite Yours Truly not being able to find a couple of ingredients for them the last time I went shopping) cobbled together their first-ever gingerbread cookies.  There are still a few left, primarily because I think we're all hoarding them, but we now know what they will be baking at home a lot more often!  They also tried their hand at sufganiot (a type of homemade jelly donut commonly made for Hanukkah, especially in Israel) but, well... it wasn't anything a bit of chocolate frosting couldn't fix, but we're probably not going to be doing that again.

Gingerbread men, dinosaurs, chais, mogen Davids, and menorahs, all yummy!


Now, some of you may remember my (mis)adventures with an IKEA toy chest waaay back in 2015 (detailed here, here, and here).  Believe it or not, that didn't totally cure me of my addiction to ogling oddly-named build-it-yourself furniture (hey, I helped open the College Park store!) and have made several visits to the place since then, even buying a few items. I've even passed my addiction interest on to my sister.

As fate would have it, some time back the Pipsqueak began to periodically mention there wasn't a whole lot of room in her room... so of course an IKEA loft bed quickly came to mind. (That was even the department I worked in, so... yeah, no influence there, nope... LOL.)  After going through the catalog, the website, and (eventually) the actual store, a choice and a promise were made: Miri's 11th birthday present was going to be a new loft bed/desk combination that would nearly double the available living space in her room.

I just had to include this sign; Miri made it back when she was 8 and having a bad day. It's kind of a family joke now, but a reminder that the teen years are not that far away...!
Fast-forward to June, and despite warnings about the pandemic potentially affecting IKEA's supply chain the chosen pieces (Stuva/Fritids combo with 4 drawers and 2 doors along with an adult size Örfjäll chair in purple) are still listed as being in stock.  AJ checks her credit card balances, surfs over to the IKEA website, begins to place her order...

...and the freakin' bed goes out of stock while she is filling in the order sheet.

The chair, too.

Needless to say, everyone was thoroughly bummed out by this, but the Pipsqueak understood that Mommy was really trying, and that she would still get the bed she wanted for her birthday... just not on her birthday.  Cue the daily (and then later on, weekly) checks of the website.  Out of stock in College Park... in Baltimore... in every store within a 150-mile radius... eventually out of stock pretty much everywhere on the planet.  Miri never gave up hope but we were all getting a bit concerned. 

Then, very suddenly, my phone rang around 10:45pm a couple of weeks back.  Fearing the worst as I picked up the call, I was surprised to hear my sister with a big, happy, "The bed is back in stock! At least it looks like the same bed..." Well, it's not quite the same -- the new loft bed & desk combo is the Småstad but it's aaaalmost the same thing (the stupid chair, meanwhile, is still out of stock) so we spend some time trying to place an order only to figure out it's a) available in very limited supply, and b) only available for in-store purchase, no online payments allowed.  In other words, we've got to hope they don't sell out again over the next three days until we can physically get to the store on Saturday.  (Note: If you've never shopped at an IKEA store, do not -- repeat, NOT -- go on a Saturday. Sundays aren't exactly great, either, but unless you like sharing your space with whatever the absolute maximum occupancy allowable by law is for that space, don't go on Saturday!)

The one (rather weird) silver lining was that with all the COVID-19 precautions in place, we had a better than fighting chance to actually get our paws on the bed. On all TWENTY packages comprising the version we wanted, ranging from small 14-ounce plastic bags with hinges in them to 62-pound boxes more than 6 feet long and a couple of feet across.... some of them "pick it yourself" in the warehouse and some of them requiring a special "pick order" for the guys driving forklifts in the "no public allowed" regions of the building.

Saturday rolls around and the entire family gets to the store.  There's a bit of confusion as we try to enter through the entrance because it had been closed as a pandemic precaution (but not labeled as such), leaving other customers exiting to point us to the correct spot through which we could actually enter the building. With me as navigator, we went straight to the Kids department to see the bed in the flesh, only to discover there were none out for display... but there was still an example of the now-extinct Stuva model with almost identical measurements and Miri decided it was tall enough for the desk to work for her, so (me navigating again) we went straight to the service desk in the warehouse.  Several nervous minutes of waiting in a socially-distanced line later, we snagged the absolute last one in stock. 

Holding onto the order confirmation printout like our lives depended on it, we headed back upstairs to the restaurant for lunch -- Swedish meatballs, of course! -- and then checked out a few other things we'd been interested in.  First, Mom was interested in replacing an old couch with a couple of recliners, but when she sat in the chair on display that we liked she fit in it like a toddler on a sofa so it was back to the drawing board for that.  Then AJ began looking for a small cabinet she could store all her scrubs in to keep them separate from the rest of her clothes, and eventually found one among the living room furniture. (Note: The still-unassembled piece is stacked with all the stuff for Miri's bed.)  I needed to replace my old dishes (the set I'm using was a housewarming gift back in 1988 and it shows), so AJ turned the set I chose into my Hanukkah gift and then I got the text message saying our "pick" items were ready and we returned to the warehouse.

At the entrance, I went to grab a flatbed cart only to discover the cart conveyor had jammed. Having had an appreciable amount of practice un-jamming it years earlier as an employee, I stretched the "no public access" rule as far as I dared and managed to get several carts free for us and the small group of other waiting customers, and we began hunting down the smaller components we needed.  We had already asked one of the IKEA workers on the display floor about the "kit" (since I had forgotten to print out the list I'd oh-so-carefully downloaded the night before) and he had me use my phone to take pictures of the parts list on his phone, so we knew exactly where to go to find each needed piece.

Except that several key items were not in the aisle & bin they were supposed to be in.

I went back to the service desk -- now three-quarters of the way across the warehouse -- and used one of the public terminals to look up possible alternate locations for what we needed, but everything matched the original information so it was back on line, and then back to the same (friendly & helpful) young woman who's put our order into the system a short while earlier.  She was as baffled as me (and did the exact same searches I did!), finally coming out from behind the desk and walking with me back to where the boxes were supposed to be located... and then found them, one shelf down from their official location, with no signage. (The boxes were very narrow so the printed-on labels were nearly illegible.)

With everything now copacetic and flatbed cart fully loaded, we checked out, found the big stack of heavy boxes we needed to pick up, figured out who had to do what (due to the weight of the boxes, we were not allowed to load them into AJ's van ourselves but had to let one of the staff do it for us), retrieved AJ's van and my SUV from the parking garage, and figured out how to fit everything into one or another vehicle.  Forty-odd minutes later, AJ and I somehow managed to get everything out of the vehicles and into her garage and stacked it all by the back wall, hoping the weather would remain good enough for a few days for AJ to not need to fit her van into the garage.  I "borrowed" a couple of Advil caplets, we all said goodnight, and I took Mom & Dad back to their house before heading back to mine & collapsing into bed.

Next: The build begins!






Friday, November 27, 2020

Thanks! (And A Quick General Update)

 Happy (slightly belated) Thanksgiving to all my American readers!

We had a nice, simple family celebration this year... noticeably smaller than previous years, but at least we were all able to get together.  We had a nice, long Zoom session with the Long Island branch of the family (who, for obvious reasons, were unable to visit us in July as they have for the past 20+ years), and a nice FaceTime session with the Virginia branch (with whom we've spent the last 15-16 Thanksgivings), so it wasn't quite as isolating as it may have been for other families.

The Pipsqueak made sure we all knew that she had made the "bread thing" (a sweet, layered dish she learned the recipe for in the online Weekend Cooking Club she's joined, courtesy one of her teachers at school) and made pumpkin pie and did a lot of the work on the pecan pie and helped out a lot with the from-scratch mashed potatoes... So we were all thankful for her steadily growing prowess in the kitchen.  (She also did agree to try both light & dark meat turkey -- both pronounced '"meh" at best -- and the green bean casserole, which she thought was good enough to finish off a large dollop of.  She's still a picky eater...)

We've never made a big deal about November being National Adoption Month, and this year was no exception.  The issues surrounding adoption in general, and Miri's specific issues & questions, are something we openly talk about whenever it seems the appropriate time, no special commemorative declarations needed.  The Pipsqueak definitely has questions (we'd be worried if she didn't) and sometimes things pop up in unexpected ways due to her background, but aside from the occasional "did you hear about..." we let her determine the right time & place for discussions and so far she's more than OK with that (I've asked).  In fact, a couple of weeks ago, she was shoulder-surfing while I had my newsfeed onscreen and was surprised to see it was National Adoption Month -- and then responded with a characteristic "Meh! Okay." when I concurred. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic numbers (as I'm sure you know) are all going in the wrong direction, so the county's slowly been backing off from their plan to switch from virtual-only schooling to "hybrid" or in-person schooling in January... and an increasingly common answer to the question, "How's school?" is a thoroughly annoyed "BORING."  Despite that -- and despite some odd glitches in grading thanks to the intervention of the county's c computer systems -- Miri is again maintaining a straight-A report card and is feeling pretty good about it.  She can get upset if she drops below a certain percentage on quizzes & tests, but we keep telling her she's in school to learn, and as long as she's really trying to do her best than a B (or even a C in certain circumstances) is just as good as an A; what's important is that she's really applying herself and really learning, not what letter shows up on her report card.

Luckily, the dance studio has been able to keep operating even with the county's more stringent COVID rules, so Miri is still dancing more hours per week than I can count.  She says, "It's my therapy!" and enjoys the escape from worries about school and everything else -- plus she just plain ol' loves to dance.  She has no plans to make it her profession (for over a year she's been saying she wants to be a vet) but takes it seriously and has adjusted to dancing within carefully-marked areas on the floor while wearing a surgical mask.

Miri and I have a lot of serious conversations about how to deal with the stresses of virtual online school (e.g., the phone call a few minutes ago about trying to recover an assignment where she'd completed 9 of the 10 questions only to have the county system fail to save any of her work) and some family medical issues that weigh heavily on her -- and even if I step back from my role of loving uncle I have to say I really am impressed by her maturity.  She's a silly, occasionally clumsy, goofy, fun-loving 11-½ year old (with a wicked sense of humor) who sometimes gets caught up in all the politics of pre-teen cliques and such -- but she is also capable of amazingly deep insight into the causes of behavior, differences in points of view, the workings of the world, and much more.

In any case, I just wanted to put out a quick update as we move into what looks like an increasingly complicated holiday season.  I hope this finds all of you healthy and able to deal with the increasing volume of rocks and "stuff" that life is throwing at us all during this dumpster fire of a year.  I have an assortment of posts in draft form, both Pipsqueak-specific and not, which I hope to be able to bring out into the light of day in the next few months, so stay tuned...

Until then, stay healthy, keep your spirits up, wear your damn masks like you're supposed to, and I'll see y'all again soon...! 




Monday, November 2, 2020

An Unusual but Fun Halloween

 Ours is one of those families where Halloween can be A Big Deal.  Some of my fondest memories  are of being escorted around the old neighborhood trick-or-treating with my legs, arms, and head sticking out of a cardboard box decorated to make me look like (or think I looked like) Astro Boy.

As one might expect from a child surrounded by adults who insist on reliving their childhoods every October 31st (and no, I never again wore a box as a costume), the Pipsqueak also enjoys the holiday -- although to her credit, as she's gotten older she gains at least as much enjoyment from giving out candy to the younger kids in her neighborhood as she does from making the costumed rounds to collect some herself.  She has also always enjoyed the family jack o'lantern carving sessions, which are usually creative and chaotic and noisy and messy, somehow resulting in at least 2 or 3 carved pumpkins and a nice supply of oven-roasted, salted pumpkin seeds.

In fact. she has apparently enjoyed this latter activity more than we realized, since we've missed it a couple of times in recent years without too much in the way of obvious comments... but after looking through a bunch of photos from her 3rd birthday onward to more recent times, she INSISTED that we should try to recreate one of the oldest Halloween-related family photos that she'd come across.  (There are other factors at play here, things I've not included in the blog -- but which I may begin writing about because it's all very much part of the family story. No promises... but stay tuned... I think.)

In any case, we had all pretty much spoken about this year's Halloween being pretty much a wash-out due to everyone's fave virus, especially since the national and local numbers have once again been trending strongly in the wrong direction.  I was therefore surprised when, about a week ago, AJ turned up at my house to pick up the Pipsqueak (one of those all-too-rare occasions when she could get off work early enough to get Miri to one of her late dance classes instead of my having to take her) and lugged in a not-huge-but-still-big pumpkin for me and announced that she'd bought one for each household and we were all going to get together the upcoming Saturday to carve our pumpkins.

This being 2020 (and things being the way they are with all our schedules anyway), that didn't work out -- so we ended up waiting another week and made plans to get together for a family carving session early in the afternoon on Halloween itself, since Miri was abostively posilutely not gonna let us not.

As tired and stressed and pressed for time as we all were, all immediate family members (and all immediate family member pumpkins) were at Mom & Dad's within about 45 minutes of the planned meeting time (Dude, that's pretty good timing for this family!) and after a late lunch -- and a visit from a young buck we recognized from the previous year by his lopsided antlers -- we cleared a kitchen counter, laid out a bunch of paper, and the design phase began.

Despite my commenting on how difficult some of the shapes that Miri drew might be to actually carve into the side of a pumpkin, it wasn't long before everyone was (sometimes literally) elbow-deep into their usual jobs... Mom & Dad working on their pumpkin near the stove (for various reasons, they were using stick-on shapes & Sharpie pens instead of carving), AJ at the sink to separate pumpkin seeds from pumpkin guts & prepare them for roasting, and Yours Truly at the other kitchen counter happily stabbing, jabbing, sawing, slicing, and scraping with an assortment of knives and spoons.  Miri had been planning to do some carving herself, but it took all of about 15 seconds of watching her attempt to take a knife to her pumpkin for us to decide she could hollow it out but that Uncle Brian would be wielding any and all sharp and/or pointy implements that day, so (with an occasional Tween iPhone break) she was delegated to scooping out the pumpkin goop as work progressed.

Those gloves aren't for the virus; Miri just doesn't like what pumpking goop feels like!

Despite my beginning to move progressively more slowly as time passed (I woke up this morning and immediately took two Aleve... and then again just before typing this at 11:00pm!), we all powered through the usual variety of unplanned oopses, hidden rotten spots, dropped pumpkin goop, extra-hard or extra-soft spots, and shapes that proved waaaay harder to carve than expected and soon had some pretty decent jack o'lanterns, if I say so myself!  (The "S nose" was entirely Miri's design, the jagged grin was what I came up with.)

Then came the photo... or should I say, "THE PHOTO!"...?  Despite some pessimistic comments along the lines of, "...but you take up a lot more space than you did back then, " and "...you're a lot bigger now," and "...I'm not sure you're actually gonna fit there, kiddo," we found a way to make it work.  (It truly did not help that I had forgotten to bring my camera & tripod as planned, and thus had to build a wobbly pyramid of assorted things upon which I could raise & prop up my iPhone to take the photo... Believe me, there are plenty more versions of the pic than what you see here!)

We were all a little concerned about leaving our various abodes unsupervised on Halloween evening -- especially with all the joyous events brought to us by the year 2020CE thus far! -- so AJ & Miri headed to their house and I returned to mine sometime around 6:00pm, the former to "probably" sit out front as usual with candy just in case any trick-or-treaters showed up, the latter to simply leave all the lights out to discourage any crowds at the front door (I've been averaging well over 150 kids at the door on Halloween every year since before Miri came home).  This morning's reports were pretty much what I'd worried would happen -- zero kids at Mom & Dad's, zero kids at AJ & Miri's, and zero kids at my place. (Some of Mom & Dad's neighbors reported a scattering of costumed kids, but the totals were only around a dozen.)  It was a kind of sad and odd Halloween, but the five of us had fun both with the creative process and with our being able to recreate one of the Pipsqueak's favorite family photographs.

Thus, in closing, I present for your viewing pleasure both the 2020 Family Pumpkin Carving Photo, followed by its inspiring predecessor from 2011.  I dunno... a few things have changed, but all in all I think we done good with the recreation!



So there you have it, an old family tradition interrupted & almost forgotten over the years, brought back to life at the insistence of the Pipsqueak (who is very obviously quite a bit less pipsqueakish since that older photo was taken almost a decade ago).  

I hope youse guys all had a safe & fun & healthy holiday, and that none of the viral numbers are affecting you directly... I'll post again soon (strangely enough, Miri's virtual schooling is a good story generator) but until then stay healthy and make sure you vote on November 3rd if you haven't already!











Monday, October 26, 2020

Just A Quick Update on the Craziness...

 Ya know, I gotta stop saying, "okay, problem's done, it's back to normal now" because every time I so much as think that... well, there's a new problem. Or three.

As I mentioned in my last post, Miri had a bit of an "oops" while attempting to push the envelope a little on a turn in dance.  The result was her clomping around in a surprisingly heavy boot that made it both comical and worrying to watch her attempt things like stairs, or getting in & out of a minivan, and other sundry ADLs (Activities of Daily Living).

Well, the good news is that she doesn't need the boot any more (effective today!) and -- as long as she's careful, pays attention to pain & soreness, and doesn't start out at too high a level of activity -- she can start dancing again. (A good thing, since she was apparently awake most of last night worrying she wouldn't be able to.)

Of course, the universe had to have some reason to laugh, so during the couple of weeks that the Pipsqueak was clomping around like a bargain basement Frankenstein, I ended up with a  $1,300 repair bill on my car, the pharmacy messed up some of our folks' prescriptions again, AJ's and Dad's old iPhone batteries began to intermittently refuse to charge, and Dad ended up with a double root canal (I didn't even know that was a thing, but... yeah).

To keep a long sob story short, "normal" for the past couple of weeks can best be summed up by this actual screenshot of an error message from one of my favorite ways to waste time games on my phone:

Even my error messages are errors...!

That said, things could be a whole lot worse, and life goes on, complete with the occasional reminder -- right here in my own backyard -- to stop, take a few deep breaths, and appreciate all the nice things that are very much still a part of daily life.  (Like, f'rinstance, everyone in the family testing negative for everyone's favorite virus last week. Yay!)

And on that hopeful note... it's early afternoon so the Pipsqueak is sitting on my living room couch waiting for me to come and help with her math homework, so I gotta run... I'll post more soon, but in the meantime y'all stay healthy out there, 'K?

Oh, and Happy Halloween!





Friday, October 9, 2020

Terpsichore

Sorry for the lack of posts -- there's been a lot going on (there continues to be a lot going on) that's not for this blog, and it's also kinda hard to write blog posts whilst struggling (and frequently failing) to keep one's eyes open.

It also don't help a heckuvalot when you have to replace your computer... which is why I'm typing this on a spiffy new 16" MacBook Pro while what's left of my old one is sitting on the floor in a corner of my room just in case I find something I forgot to transfer off it... assuming it will still work, since it's in pretty doggone bad shape. Rest In Peace, my old mid-2015 15" MacBook Pro with Retina display; you helped me do a lot of good work and explored many a nook and cranny of the Internet with me.  I hope your battery nearly exploding & catching fire, your speakers blowing out, half your USB ports failing, your keyboard selectively failing one key at a time, your shell expanding & becoming misshapen, your keyboard print wearing and turning several characters into large blotches, your screen becoming badly scratched, your cooling fan failing intermittently, and all the other fun stuff from the past three months didn't hurt too much...!

That said (or typed), I figured I'd just do a really fast post (at least in part to see if I can get this version of MacOS to remember all my logins).  Miri's fear of middle school has turned into an occasional embarrassed laugh when we remind her of that emotion, since she's actually enjoying it. (As much as someone pining for time in an actual school building where she can spend actual face-to-face time with her friends can enjoy remote learning via Zoom.). Glitches have been pretty much what one should expect from a conscientious student who also happens to be entering her "tween" years, so all is pretty good in that arena.

The dance studio is now fully open again -- with proper precautions! -- and I have to say the Pipsqueak is spending a near-ridiculous amount of time dancing... as in, Dance Team practice on Mondays, with Leaps & Turns, Jazz Fusion, Musical Theater, Modern, Ballet/Pointe Technique, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Tap, Lyrical, and Ballet spread out over the rest of the week. Oh, and not to forget Chinese dance on weekends.  The thing is, while her grownups range from bemused to truly worried over how many hours she's dancing per week, the Pipqueak is enjoying nearly every minute of it.

She did hit a bit of a speed bump this week, though -- something didn't go quite right while trying to push a single turn into a double.  The result is that now she's going to the studio but sitting & watching with a painful swollen foot that AJ wraps at night before bed.  It can still bear weight (and she can hobble around even while wearing her nine-ton backpack filled with schoolbooks), but the foot is swollen and quite painful and she walks with a very pronounced limp.  (Not to fear, the first of several scheduled doctor appointments is early this coming Monday.)

Since Miri isn't able to dance right now, I thought I'd take the WABAC Machine about two weeks into September to a photo session at the studio.  Apparently the photographer is a semi-pro who earns her living otherwise... but based on what we've seen of her work (I'm only posting a fraction of her photos of Miri, and she shot similar images of all the kids) she's destined for a career change very soon!   These shots were taken in the studio parking lot; the polkadot dress is one of the team performance costumes.

My niece can fly!

A classic carefree pose...

A lack of attitude is NOT a problem!

With just a little luck, the Pipsqueak will soon be reprising these moves (and lots more like them)... until then, she just complains about the soreness a little bit and is keeping her brave face on.

That's all for tonight... Now that I have a working computer again, I'll see y'all soon! 



Saturday, September 12, 2020

Not Exactly an Emergency...

The Pipsqueak is, if nothing else, consistent. Her likes, her dislikes, her sense of self, her empathy, her willingness to help... the list goes on, and much of it is positives.

Then there's the issue of her teeth. Y'see, they don't like leaving.  She didn't even start losing her baby teeth until nearly all her classmates had lost at least 2-3 of theirs, and when she loses them... well, it takes a while. They get wiggly, they get bothersome, they hang on by a thread of tissue here, a bit of gum there... until (eventually) either they come loose while she's eating, or she worries at them until they finally let go.

Well, one tooth decided to make itself a bit more memorable.  It got a little loose, then it got a little looser, and then it got wiggly (over the course of 3-4 weeks).  Miri worried at it with her tongue, wiggled it with her fingers... and it just continued hangin' in there...

...until a part of it came out.  Yep, you read that, part of the tooth came out while the remainder stuck resolutely to its spot in her mouth. There was no pain, no blood... just part of a tooth.

And then it did it again... still leaving a chunk of itself in place (still wiggly but definitely not showing any propensity toward actually leaving).

So, after a couple of phone calls, Miri left her math class 15 minutes early this past morning and we drove to the dentist. (AJ couldn't take still more time out of an especially busy time of day for what was a concern but truly not an emergency.)  AJ told me the process: park the car, then call the dental office and they would either clear us to come up (it's a very small waiting room) or give us a round figure on how long we'd have to wait & then call us when it was OK for us to come in.

There was a minor glitch when AJ called me (just as I was tying my shoes) to let me know the dentist's office had just called her to say they were running about 15 minutes late, but that just made it easier or Miri to pack up all her school stuff -- necessary because she was going to complete the day at Grandma & Grandpa's while Yours Truly did a shopping safari before taking her to dance in the afternoon. Ironically, her dentist is in the same building as her dance studio.... but she still had PE and Digital Literacy and at least one more class to complete in the afternoon for school, so I'd have to drive her back & forth.

We got there in plenty of time, since I've finally begun to remember to turn off on the road that leads almost directly to the  building instead of driving aaaallll the way up to the main road and then taking that back down toward the correct area... and despite the horrible Bluetooth connection between my phone and my car were able to hear the receptionist tell us it would be a few more minutes.

We sat in the car (A/C running because it was so warm & humid) only to see the director o the dance studio drive by. She waved, then parked & walked back to the car and greeted us with a cheerful, "Did I miss a memo or something?"  I explained we were waiting for the dentist to call us up, and were invitied to come inside & wait in the comfort of the air-conditioned studio's couch.  Of course, the moment we crossed the threshold of the building, my phone rang -- the dentist was ready to see Miri.

I sat & futzed around on my phone (after one of the techs checked both our temperatures) while Miri answered a bunch of health questions & then bravely went back into the next room on her own.  She had said (several times) that her only concern was having to gargle with some kind of disinfecting solution that she said tasted really, really bad, but it was obvious she was nervous about the whole idea of possibly needing a tooth extraction or more. (Runs in the family; I'm one of those people who holds death and dentistry in near-equal status on the fear scale.)

Less than 15 minutes later, she was back out, puffy cheeked and a little red-faced, with the dentist exclaiming, "She's a champ!"  Apparently Miri had turned down a Novocaine injection and the dentist had simply done the extraction with a topical anesthetic... which, of course, didn't quite stop all the pain but had the unpleasant side effect of having the poor kid drooling into her mask.

I was a little concerned on the way back to the car because Miri communicated (barely -- it's hard to talk when you have a mouthful of gauze and cannot feel your lips or tongue) that she was beginning to feel increasingly sore, and I tried to keep an eye on her during the drive to Mom & Dad's (she's still too short to sit in the front seat).  After a few abortive attempts at talking -- and a quick "I NEED TO SPIT!" that had me hand her a plastic bag followed by a muffled, "thnkyoo" -- she just sat quietly, just giving me a silent thumbs-up when I asked how she was doing.

That said, my concern vanished just before we reached Mom & Dad's neighborhood; MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" came on the radio and my niece began loudly singing along and dancing to the music. (Both very admirable feats when one has a numb mouth full of gauze and is wearing a seat belt while seated in a moving vehicle.)

By the time the school day was over, Miri was back to her usual self, speaking clearly and more worried about homework or what the plans were for the weekend than about her tooth.


And the tooth...?  The dentist put it in a little plastic box so Miri can collect from the Tooth Fairy. :-)



PS -- I did it again. Nineteen years later, I again told myself, "You'll be okay watching" and brought up a few of the 9/11 videos on YouTube.  Did not go well.  (Thus the 4:20am publication of this post.)  Do not let your anger & anguish turn to fear or hatred -- but never forget.


Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Waitaminit -- MIDDLE SCHOOL Already?!?

 Holy cow, she's growing up fast...!

I (obviously) took a little time off from blogging after completing my "ten years ago today" retrospective, and have been working on just plain ol' catching up... You know, trying to figure out what's taken up residence under the bed, tossing out all those AT&T long distance bills from 1988, and helping AJ & Miri figure out what school supplies were needed vs. already on hand but not really wanted vs. already here and OK to use... while trying to figure out if/how/when/where Miri would actually be attending school.

But not just any school -- he's in middle school now (grades 6-7-8), with her career as an elementary school "little kid" behind her.  That fact has been boggling the minds of the entire family for about a month now, but as for the Pipsqueak... Well...

My niece has always been one to worry about change, and about doing well, and about not making a mistake in her schoolwork.  (Witness one of the math practice sessions with Yours Truly over the summer, when we were going over some equations: I asked, "What operation do you need here?" and after a long, pregnant silence, Miri replied with a long, drawn-out, whispered, "muuuultiplicaaaaation...?" in a steadily rising tone. When I laughed and said it was okay to say it out loud and that if she got it wrong it was all just part of the learning process, she started laughing and admitted that she just was worried about giving me the wrong answer and proceeded to solve the problem correctly. And then did the same kind of thing with the next problem... and the one after that... and the one after that... and... <sigh>)

Well, if ya puts all that into a jar an' screws the lid on tight and shakes it to see if they'll fight... They does.

Miri mentioned middle school once or twice during the third quarter of 5th grade, and then moved on to mentioning it once or twice a week, and then to mentioning it on (at least) a daily basis.  I place part of this squarely at the feet of one of her teachers who seemed to really enjoy psyching out his students when it came to information about moving forward through the school system, but the majority was just the Pipsqueak's concerns bubbling to the top.  The mentions became questions, and then the questions became discussions, and soon we all lost count of how many times we'd had to tell the poor kid that...

1) She had been in school most of her life by this point, and middle school was just that: school; 

2) She already knew a big chunk of the kids who were going to the new school, and that meeting new people there was no different than meeting new people at the beginning of each season at the dance studio; 

3) Her concerns about not being any good in math didn't jive with her getting STRAIGHT A's last year (yes, I'm kvelling again);

4) We had her back and would be more than happy to help her out, and that everything we'd heard about the faculty at the middle school was positive; and

5) School was going to be virtual at least through the end of the year so she was going to be at home for classes anyway.

What we were saying (and there's plenty more where the above came from!) seemed to slowly seep into Miri's head, but she was still obviously worried as the first day of school got closer... and closer... and then omigoshschoolstartsTODAY!


For a variety of reasons (mostly concerns about technical "what ifs" and Yours Truly being the family's User Support Department for anything tech-related), Miri spent her first day of school working at my dining room table.  AJ took the classic "first day of school" photo (to the left) in their driveway, then brought her over to my house.  Bleary-eyed, I opened the door only to have Miri come flying in because she was sure that all the bugs in my neighborhood were about to attack her (she is frequently chomped on by an amazing variety of flying insects; they seem to find her tastier than average).  There was the usual "Good morning can I have an English muffin with cheese for breakfast thank you I love you where do I put my Chromebook thanks" and she began plugging in the assorted devices that she was lugging around in her backpack. (When full, that backpack actually weighs almost as much as she does; none of us are looking forward to the local kids' physical return to school because they've already been told "no lockers" so they'll have to lug the full loads around school with them.)


I sat nearby, just doing some of my own work on my laptop while keeping half an ear tuned to what was happening in each class.  (I wasn't eavesdropping or spying; Miri herself had asked that I listen in to make sure she didn't miss anything important and to help ASAP if any technical problems cropped up.)  The first day was a modified schedule with all classes meeting for a short time -- normally there would only be 4 of the 8 classes on a single day -- and by lunchtime the Pipsqueak had to admit that it looked like all her worrying had been for nothing.  The trend continued through the rest of the day, with Miri paying close attention (and discovering too late she'd forgotten to charge the cordless headphones I'd gotten her so she had to plug everything in), becoming happier and more relaxed by the minute.

Finally, school was done for the day and my niece teleported herself to the living room sofa and began a Zoom session with a bunch of her friends on her iPad.  (On & off during school, the iPad had lit up repeatedly with other kids texting in the middle of class. Miri was a champ, ignoring all the texts until the lunch break -- she even complained that it was "rude" for some of the kids to "spam" her with multiple texts while they were all supposed to be in class.)  I admit that I laughed out loud -- and got a dirty look that quickly turned to laughter -- when I heard her tell her friends, "I was scared of middle school for nothing! School is fun!"

So here we go, with that scrawny little toddler you all saw in my ten-year retrospective now attending middle school and asking for help with homework that's pushing the limits of my own memory & education. Wow, that decade went by fast...!

Oh, and a little bonus... Despite all the drawbacks to having an entire county's worth of kids staying at home for school, there are still some "learning moments" well worth the disruption. Sometimes they involve school, sometimes they involve personal habits...

...and sometimes they're just a way cool close view of the world around us.  (These are actually from a couple of days before school started, but Miri was here reading on my couch when I sensed motion out of the corner of my eye.)


The little fella on the left actually spent almost a minute just watching us watch him, then happily chowed down on the saplings in those pots (OK by me, they kinda planted themselves in pots I wasn't using and there are already trees aplenty back there). He wandered back & forth in the yard, daintily sampling various green things, then was joined by Mama and a sibling(?) in the shade about 20 feet away.  Sure beats looking at photos in a book during science class!

So now we're settling into a new routine, with Miri here a couple of days a week and at our folks' a couple of days a week (AJ's work schedule is an absolute killer & none of us were happy with the idea of Miri being home alone all day). Today marks the beginning of a new season at the dance studio as well, so I'll be running here back & forth 4 nights a week for the rest of the year.  She's already earned a spot in a quad (4 dancers together) with some of her BFFs -- they call themselves the Soggy Potatoes! -- and was even chosen to do a solo dance in the holiday show & has begun working on the choreography... 

...so keep your eyes open for plenty of new adventures over the next few months! 




Saturday, July 25, 2020

Looking Back at My "Ten Years Ago Today" Retrospective

Perhaps to make up for the 23rd lasting so long, July 24th, 2010, was a short day... mainly because I didn't even wake up until shortly after noon.  There were a few moments of disorientation as my mind tried to wrap itself around actually being back in my own room and a few pangs of loneliness when I didn't have to worry about who used the bathroom first while the day's first bottle was being prepared... but then things sort of settled into place and I could deal with things like the astonishing volume of dirty (smelly) laundry I'd jammed into my suitcase during the rush to get packed...

With some concerns about overwhelming the Pipsqueak (plus a few lingering concerns about bonding, based upon what a lot of smart & experienced people had been telling us about it for years), we kept the day to "just us" and I rejoined AJ & Miri at their house with Mom & Dad -- but we had asked friends & family to give us a day or two to settle back in and everyone understood.  It was fun regaling our folks with all the stories that didn't share well over Skype and to watch them start to build a real relationship with their new granddaughter. (Who, by the way, seemed to think they were a pretty good catch as grandparents.)

The next few weeks were filled with meetings and baby gates and introductions and all that goes into establsihing a new "normal" that had been under construction for half a decade.  Everyone was thrilled to meet the Pipsqueak -- the first time AJ walked down the block where she lives, she ended up with almost a dozen neighbors congregating around her to meet Miri -- and everything began to fall into place.

I dd have an unexpected but important lesson taught to me shortly after I returned to work.  A number of the residents at the nursing home knew about the adoption and were asking me for updates and photos, and those who didn't know about it were curious about where I'd disappeared to for almost a month.  I was explaining to one older woman that I had gone to China to meet my new adopted niece, and the GNA who was taking care of her stopped what she was doing, stood with her hands on her hips, and addressed me loudly and firmly the way a mother might lecture a wayward child.

"She is not your adopted niece -- she is your niece, and she is loved, and that is all that matters!"

It stopped me in my tracks, and I thanked her for the mini-lecture because she was dead center on-target... and from that moment forward Miri lost the title "adopted" any time I spoke about her.  I never felt any kind of separation from her (from Day One I honestly felt she was as much my little girl as she was my sister's), the lack of direct genetic link meant nothing to me, and if anyone wanted to make an issue out of it they would encounter that part of my personality I refer to as The Beast In The Basement... but somehow I had been unaware of how often I was saying "adopted" while speaking about her even though it had such little meaning in the relationship.

(For anyone thinking, "But she's gonna know somehow, dufus!" my polite response is "DUH!" -- but that does not mean she needs to be addressed with a title that emphasizes the difference between our genomes and minimizes all the other very real links between us.)

Which, in an odd roundabout way, brings me back to the present day.  My body includes several added creaks & groans that were absent in China, and I definitely move a little more slowly than back in 2010; AJ's hair is a lot grayer, and the less pleasant of daily life's realities long ago rubbed off the sense of euphoria that lasted from Gotcha Day well into 2011.  Dad just turned 90, and Mom 86; for their ages, they're doing well -- but life at that age (and with parents that age) is decidedly different from what it was back when they picked us up that night at Dulles.

And the Pipsqueak... well, she really hasn't been a pipsqueak for a while, now (but still likes it when I use that pet name for her).  Once easily identified as the smallest kid in any photo, she has grown like a weed, is an honors student and accomplished dancer (who is talking about becoming a veterinarian), plays the flute and wants to learn to play the guitar, is an artist with a good eye for design & color, retains all the lung power she first demonstrated in China, is learning to keep her very highly-developed sense of justice and right/wrong in check, and is very much a Tween -- and she has retained every bit of the empathy, desire to help, loving, and kindness that she demonstrated in her first couple of years home.

I expected this ten-year retrospective to be a pleasant stroll down memory lane, a nice way to strengthen the echoes of experience that may have faded over time while sharing them with my readers.  What I did not expect was the combination of nostalgia, wonder, and melancholy that began with the first installment and kept growing with each subsequent post.  

The nostalgia is rooted in the sense of hope for the future and euphoria at the succesful conclusion of a years-long adoption journey that I felt back in 2010.  Nearly five years of anxious waiting, concerns over bad news out of China, of repeated expenditures for repeated renewals, of fear of something going wrong, and a sense of my family never being in control over our own futures all began to rapidly fade the morning of that last "just the four of us" breakfast in the main terminal at Dulles, and totally vanished when we walked out of that same terminal as a family with five "immediate" members.  Between those two moments, I got to add thousands of miles to my travel logs, ticked off several items on my bucket list, and experienced a series of adventures unlike any before (or since)... a truly amazing time in my life.

The wonder comes from the almost immediate effect the Pipsqueak had on how I perceive the world, life, family, and my role in all three.  Anyone who knows me well is likely to have heard me say, I may only be her uncle, but she's my little girl -- and the shared, mutual connection and sense of love between Miri and myself that has grown continuously since those hot, sweaty days of tyring to keep her stroller in motion is a constant sense of happiness and awe.

The melancholy... Well, some of what's causing that is probably obvious.  I just spent hours typing essays about a time of almost limitless hope for a newly dawning future while having to worry about unemployment, pandemic, my parents' advancing age (and my own), societal upheaval, and a steady drumbeat of news about steadily deteriorating relations between the US and Chinese governments. I have an intimate sense of the desperatoin and sorrow the many families still trapped in The Wait are now feeling,.  I've had to have in-depth discussions with Miri about how her feelings of isolation due to pandemic precautions are linked to her feelings of isolation due to abandonment a decade ago... along with conversations about how to deal with people who now want to avoid her (if not hate her outright) purely because of her genetics.  AJ and I are both a lot grayer (and I'm a lot creakier) than we were, and our folks are in many ways much older than "just ten years" might sound like.  It truly feels like I am living in an entirely different world from that of  July 2010, one with far less hope for the future, far less sense of wonder, and very little chance of ever being the subject of nostalgia.

But all is not bleak, all is not dark, all is not lost.  In viewing the events of July 2010 through the lens of the events of July 2020, it is easy to forget the difficulties, the challenges, the fears.  The "shadow child" of unknown health and potential turned out to be a little girl full of empathy and caring and talent and intelligence, with a solid and realistic sense of her own self-worth and an awareness of the effect she can choose to have on others, all with an innate drive to Make Things Better.  My father passed his love of history on to me (and to his granddaughter!), so I know the pendulum of time often swings outside the zone of comfort... but it then swings back again, and with a little care & patience I, AJ, and Miri will see that happen.

The little girl who once just looked at me quizically in a Chinese hotel room because she didn't know how to react to being tickled has grown into a young lady who makes me proud to be her uncle on a daily basis -- not because it is asked or demanded of her, but simply because that is who she is.

Ten years later, the adventure has changed... and the adventure continues.  










Friday, July 24, 2020

Ten Years Ago Today (July 23): A Long Day's Journey Home

I've never been good at getting up very early in the morning, but on the 23rd I popped WIDE AWAKE the moment the phone rang with the usual trilingual wake-up call at 5:00am.  We had to figure out how to cram the Pipsqueak's usual morning routine, our morning routine, all the last-minute arrangements and repacking, AND breakfast into far too small a number of minutes.

The schedule for the day was a bus ride to the airport, a three-hour flight to Beijing, a little over four hours' layover in that airport, and then another 13-1/2 hour flight back to the U.S. (which our itinerary showed lasting only 1-1/2 hours due to the International Date Line and time zones involved).  All three families had all luggage ready for pickuip by 6:00am and I even managed to squeeze in two platefuls of food at the breakfast buffet before time remaining ran down to zero.

Someone (perhaps Lucy) had mentioned in conversation the idea of mailing a letter to the baby being adopted for them to read in the future.  I wanted to do this as soon as I heard about it but hadn't had the time -- but the way we had split the morning's to-do list gave me a few precious minutes alone in the room while AJ took care of the last checkout details so I took advantage of the free hotel letterhead & envelopes and quickly wrote a note for my niece to read when she was older. (I know the envelope has not yet been opened -- but you'll have to ask Miri what the note says, it's entirely up to her.)  I did one last sweep of the room (finding two of Miri's outfits hidden between bathrobes in the closet), then zoomed back downstairs with sealed letter & toddler clothing in hand to rejoin the group. Lucy gladly took the letter to mail for me, refusing my offer to pay postage; it showed up Stateside just a few days after we did.

Our final departure from the White Swan (past the red couch from the previous evening's photo session) was akin to a salmon's swim upstream; there was a solid flow of American families with young Chinese girls coming in the same door we were tryint to exit through. I noticed the kids were all grade school oage or older, so during the traffic jam I asked one of the parents and learned it was a group on a heritage tour -- they'd all been at the White Swan years earlier to adopt their daughters (no boys in that group) and now that the kids were older they were bringing them back to retrace their adoption trips and let the kids experience a little of their birth culture firsthand.  AJ & I were hoping (still hope) to do the same in the future... but right then all we wanted to do was get to the airport on time!

Ironically, the bus for this trip was the largest & most luxurious of the entire trip, but the ride to the airport was quieter than usual. We would be saying goodbye to Lucy at the airport, another final farewell to someone ho'd very quickly become a firend and who had played a major role in making each family's adoption dream become a reality.  The Pipsqueak dozed off... we reached the airport... our goodbyes were said... and we were boarding our plane for the flight to Beijing.


The only moment of note aboard the plane came when the pilot switched from ground power to internal power during our (late as expected) push back from the gate.  The air conditioning dumped all its excess moisture into the cabin in the form of thick, white clouds that obscured the ceiling (and scared the dickens out of Yours Truly) for a few moments.  Once airborne, we watched the landscape below change from a deep, rich subtropical green to a browner, more heavily populated appearance and it didn't feel like much time had passed before we were descending into beijing.  Of course, once Miri woke from her nap, she had energy to spare -- so Mommy and Uncle Brian had to take turns distracting her (Cheerios helped!) and convincing her she really did want to say in her seat.

Once in Beijing, we all had to figure out how to get from Terminal 2 (domestic flights only) to the distant Terminal 3 (international flights only). We found it required using an airport shuttle bus that ran on a strict schedule, with no bilingual help in sight.  We quickly hoofed it en masse across the several lanes of traffic between the terminal exit and the bus stop only to discover there was no way we could all fit onto the already-crowded bus.  An empty bus pulled up next to us just before despair set in and the menfolk quickly began slinging suitcases aboard. By the time all our stuff was aboard the bus had almost completely filled with other passengers -- but the mommies found seats and the guys just hung hopefully onto the overhead rails as the bus pulled out into traffic.

We were surprised to discover the route between terminals required leaving the airport entirely but after a quick tour of a nearby office park we passed through another security gate and arrived at Terminal 3.  Offloading was rushed but easier and then it was time to locate the check-in counters.  The three of us were flying home to Dulles airport while the S and B families were on an earlier flight (on a different airline) to Chicago, but we all decided to hang out together as long as possible...thus AJ & I were able to watch their travel plans evaporate at the last minute.  Just 45 minutes before their scheduled departure, Papas S and B were still what looked like miles from the check-in counter, with a massive crowd still ahead of them. They were eventually told that the flight had been cancelled and the airline staff was scrambling (with amazingly little organization) to find people a way home.  Well after their originally scheduled departure time, both famillies learned they would be leaving late that night to fly into New Jersey for a weekend stay in a hotel before each boarded a different connecting flight to their respective homes.  Aside from a few things said quietly out of earshot of the youngest in our group, this gave rise to jokes along the lines of, "At least you'll understand the language... oh, wait, it's New Jersey, maybe not!"

Now thoroughly paranoid about our own travel arrangements, AJ & I excused ourselves and jogged to the United counter several hours early -- and not only checked in without a htich, we even got the desired upgrade for extra legroom on the long flight home.  We actually felt a little guilty telling the other families, but they were genuinely glad for us. (At this point I decided the "wishing vessel" in the temple only worked for the wisher's immediate family.)  All travel arrangements finalized, the group headed through security for one last time... nope, two last times... oops, make that three times...  (Dude, you better not complain about buffing the floor at U.S. airports with your stocking feet after all these security checks!)

And then came the point we'd all expected but weren't really ready for: AJ, the Pipsqueak and I had to go left, and the other two families had to go right.  We had all been together nearly 24x7 since arriving in China; each had watched the others meet their new daughter for the first time; and had shared many personal moments, family differences, dirty diapers, and new adventures. Now we had to separate, no knowing if or when we'd be able to see each other again.  There was a last round of hugs, hopeful mentions of possible reunion times, and after one more look over our shoulders (and Papa S calling out to general agreement that we were all family for each other now) we went our way and they went theirs.  It actually felt strange for just the three of us to be wheeling through the airport knowing that we weren't all getting together again for dinner that evening.

I remember thinking that our new family life had really begun at that moment, with faint glimmerings of our new "normal" on the horizon... 

....and our China trip was now truly over.

Once again in liminal space, we walked -- and walked, and walked! -- through the departure areas as I mulled over our situation.  The last time we had been moving through an airport like this, there were just two of us starting "The China Trip" we had been working toward for years.  Once that trip began, we were always with two other families and at least one guide, with each family participating to some degree in the other two families' addition of a new member. There was always one more hotel breakfast buffet, on more day sharing the sights or worrying over paperwork, one more day of wondering how the little ones would do once we were all back Stateside... And now, with an unexpected suddeness, the trip was done & over with, there were three of us instead of two, and each subsequent day would be a new version of mundane without the daily flow of new sights, sounds, scents, and flavors.  (I knew better than to think there would be no more adventures; they would just be occurring in more familiar surroundings.)

I tried writing in my journal -- sadly neglected throughout the trip, due partly to exhaustion and partly to the Pipsqueak wanting to play with the pen whenever it was within reach -- but found myself more involved with people-watching.  It took me a few minutes to realize why the scene seemed so strange... (Dude, all these adults... where are the kids?!?)

We needed water to mix a bottle of formula, so I found a vending machine and bought three bottles. I used a Yuan note for the first bottle, and the machine gave me back the first Chinese coins I'd had for the whole trip -- which I really wanted to keep, but the only other Yuan notes I had left were denominations the machine didn't take so I used the coins to buy two more bottles (that way AJ and I could have a drink and still have water for more formula later.) As usual, the Pipsqueak attracted some attention, and there were a few short but pleasant conversations with other people waiting to board the plane. (One woman noted that the last time she'd used the same airline as the S and B families, she had a similar problem that chewed a couple of days off her itinerary!) The call to line up for boarding finally came, and we were bumped us to a shorter, earlier-boarding line because of the Pipsqueak. Finally, we started filing through the doorway, boarding passes scanned as we did the Baggage Dance one last time, and...

Yet another security checkpoint was being set up at the base of the jetway.  I had no idea what they could be looking for, since everyone there had already gone through at least three permanent checkpoints where their luggage & papers were repeatedly examined, but right there -- at most 15 feet from the door of the plane! -- was a set of folding tables with two armed guards at each.  Everyone scrambled to unlock and re-open bags, carry-ons, etc. for yet another examination by the Chinese authorities. Even more annoying was the confiscation of our unopened water bottle; had I known I woudln't have bought it and thus would still ahve some interesting coins to add to my souvenirs.

A young woman in miitary uniform motioned me toward the closest table, then patiently(?) waited while I dug out all the necessary keys and unlocked my carry-on.  She quickly rummaged through everything, oddly not bothering to check any small compartments or look in my laptop's carry sleeve but carefully looking inside all the folded clothing, then gave me a polite "Okey!"  A quick reorganizing, rezipping, and relocking later, I was waiting for AJ to be allowed to catch up and a few minutes later we finally boarded the 777 for our flight home.  (Note: Back home, AJ told me that she & Miri had been checked for explosive & chemical residues with an electronic "sniffer" -- not just this time, but at every security checkpoint throughout the trip!)

For the first time since arriving in-country, we pushed back from the gate on schedule and it wasn't long before we again felt the familiar pussshhhh and lift and (albeit with mixed feelings) were leaving China behind.  The seating was arranged 2-5-2 across and we had seats 3 through 5 with Miri between us; I missed having a window but was glad to lea be able to lean back, catch a movie or two, and maybe catch up on some sleep.

Wait... sleep? On a plane? Moi?  I've never been good at it, and this flight was no exception.  The young Chinese girl on my right (in her young teens) and her mother had a tendency to lean away from each other, which meant she was usually leaning into me.  Meanwhile I was helping keep an eye on the Pipsqueak, who was traveling like a pro but would periodically either get too close to the edge of her seat or conk her head on the seat belt buckle when she laid down (the latter bothering her much less than it bothered AJ or I).  To our left, one row up, was a mother (accompanied by an older woman) traveling with a little girl in a "lap seat" -- meaning the child was in her lap for the entire flight -- and while I understood the likely desire to save money it wasn't too long before I caught myself wishing the kid would just pass out or something. (I actually didn't blame the poor girl for being loudly crochety; her mother unintelligently failed bring along anything to keep her entertained.)

Counterpoint to the young girl's occasional crying & whining (and, once again, the infotainment system being glitchy) was provided by the polite & happy attentiveness of the cabin crew.  The three ladies working in our section were a good team -- and they seemed to take a shine to Miri, quickly learning the timing to bring water for her formula & frequently checking to make sure she and her Mommy were OK.  The flight was relatively uneventful, and the Pipsqueak only got smelly a couple of times (which is how we learnged the B777 only as fold-down changing tables in some of its bathrooms).  It was cool to see our wingtip just brushing the North Pole on the seatback monitor before watching another rerun of "Ratatouille" or "Date Night" or "Clash of the Titans" (hey, I like variety).

There was one scare just after we began fina descent into Dulles.  We had all 3 tray down to discourage Miri from exploring that big open area under the seat in front of her and AJ & I were talking about nothing in particular... when all of a sudden my niece disappeared headfirst through the tiny opening between her seat and the tray table with a loud THUNK! as her head hit the floor.  Of course we had all kinds of stuff on the tables, so there was a mad scramble to get one folded up out of the way so we could reach the Pipsqueak.  I don't know how AJ did it so fast but she was scooping her daughter up off the floor and checking her head (not even a bump!) and cooing calming noises in her ear in about 2.7 seconds.  Heart rates slowly returning to normal, we were soon stowing everything away for the last time...

...and then came the experience of getting into the terminal.

As I mentioned in my post about our flight to China, Washington Dulles International Airport[1] at that time still used a 1960s system that falls into the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" category. To avoid the then-common walk across an open tarmac followed by a climb up a portable stairway into the plane, passengers would be carried between terminal & aircraft in a "mobile lounge" -- the entire body of which would rise to the height of the aircraft/terminal door for everyone to get on, then drop down onto its chassis for the drive between doorways, then rise back up to door level to let everyone back off.  ("Jetways? We don' need no steenkin' jetways!")  This means you have to endure the usual crush & rush to get off the plane only to get crammed into a crowded bus, wait for it to fill, wait for it to drop down, wait for it to make its way to the terminal, wait for it to rise back up, and then endure that lovely rush & crush again before actually stepping inside the terminal.

So we pushed & pulled our way off the 777 onto the crowded, stuffy mobile lounge... and didn't go anywhere. And then didn't go anywhere some more... and then for a while longer.  The flow of the crowd had pushed AJ & Miri far forward of where I stood, but I was right next to the cabin crew and overheard the last one to leave the plane tell the rest that there was a confused elderly Chinese gentleman on the plane who thought he had lost something. Problem was, he didn't remember what he had lost, where he had sat on the plane, or if he'd lost the something on the plane or back home in Beijing; he just knew he'd lost something and didn't want to get off the plane without it.

Flight schedules eventually overrode the needs of one confused passenger and we finally dropped down, dodged around a few planes & trucks, then rose back up to match doors with the terminal and everybody piled off. Then we walked down a corridor... and walked down a corridor... and walked down a corridor some more because the delay had forced us to be dropped off at the far end of the terminal from where we were originally supposed to pull in.  We finally reached the Customs area and stepped to one side to catch our breath.  AJ needed to make a pit stop so I gladly held onto the Pipsqueak.  I realized it might be the last "alone time" I had with her for a while, so we had a quiet little talk, just the two of us, and I think she understood my tone if not my actual words.  It was a nice private moment between me and my niece, and I'm glad I had those moments before having to start sharing her with the rest of the family.

Consular staff back in Guangzhou had told us we didn't need to stand in the Foreign Arrivals line when we returned Stateside; since ours was just one of five planeloads of international passengers arriving at the same time, the U.S. Citizens line was happily much shorter. Even so, we had to zig-zag through the line for at least 20 minutes before reaching the line of kiosks where an officer would open that all-important Brown Envelope (it really was a capitalized proper noun in our minds) and stamp a couple of pages that would magically turn the Pipsqueak into a U.S. citizen.  While standing in line, I marveled at the variety of people around us: a rainbow of skin tones, dressed in everything from African tribal designs to business attire to plain ol' cutoffs and tees... an amazing variety that we did not see in China.

We finally reached the front of the line and one of the guards motioned for us to come to his kiosk. He took a quick look at the papers and did what he had to (although the SSN application we were told was in the envelope was not)... and then we were on the other side of Customs and the Pipsqueak's Chinese passport was no longer valid.  (I think that was the first time in five years that my sister dared to breathe normally.)

We got to Baggage Claim to find all the carousels shut down and several planeloads of luggage simply spread out on the floor.  By this time we could have probably recognized our luggage with our eyes closed so in less than five minutes it was all on a baggage cart.  We pushed through the double doors...

...and found ourselves on yet another line.  (Dude, there's a theme here...)  This time there were two guys in uniform -- just two!-  in the middle of the hallway collecting all those little Immigration cards that everyone on every flight had been required to fill out.  (AJ had needed a second card because Miri got hold of the first one.)  I handed our cards to the guy on the left, he smiled and said, "Welcome home," and we pushed through another set of double doors to the Arrivals area.  I was concentrating so much on navigating our baggage cart through the crowd that I missed Dad standing on one side, waving his arms in the air and snapping his first photos of his new granddaughter.  I eventually realized that AJ was yelling for me to stop and wait, and then we all found each other and jumbled together in a big happy family "HI!" for a couple of minutes.  (We all enjoyed the little in-joke of the pink "Made in China" tee AJ had put on the Pipsqueak just before our flight landed -- and were amazed when Miri showed signs of recognizing her grandparents as the people she saw in all our Skype sessions in China.)

A few more photos and a pit stop later, we slowly made our way to the exit and out into the parking lot. It was a beautiful night, and after two weeks in subtropical southern China the heat and humidity of a late July Washington summer felt cool and comfy.  Our folks had picked us up in AJ's SUV because it had the most room, so there was a bit of comedy as everyone tried to remember which button did what (or even how to open the doors).  All that practice on the tip paid off because AJ & I waved Dad off and had everything stowed in three minutes flat.  Dad & I both took photos of the moon rising above the main terminal building...


...and then the peace was shattered by the Pipsqueak's discovery that she was going to have to ride strapped into a baby seat instead of sitting in Mommy's lap.  She might actually have been heard all the way back in Guangzhou, and we were all wondering how we'd manage the long ride home with that sound, but by the time we reached the Dulles Toll Road Miri had mercifully fallen asleep.

We got to AJ's house in good order, and discovered that a neighbor had decorated the front as a surprise to welcome her home with the neighborhood's newest addition. We unloaded everything and transferred my suitcase & carry-on into our folks' car before hauling everything else up the steps and into the house. It felt weird to leave my stuff in a vehicle instead of bringing it through the door with me, but the idea of "home" was (very slowly) beginning to settle in. We spent some happy time just hanging out, watching Miri explore her new home with a little help from Mommy and Grandma. Everyone enjoyed watching Grandma feed Miri for the first time ("Is she always this messy?" "No, sometimes she's worse...") while Grandpa taught her how to play pattycakes and give high-fives. 


Miri was beginning to doze off again and AJ & I had pretty much exhausted our adrenaline reserves, so the newly-minted grandparents forced us to say goodnight and drove me home.  I had thought it felt stranged to be traveling without the other families, but there was no comparison to how weird (and kinda lonely) it felt to be going somewhere without AJ and the Pipsqueak nearby.  I thought I would be too wound up to sleep, but I simply dropped my suitcase inside the door, hauled my carry-on up to my room, and managed (barely) to stay awake long enough to wash up before collapsing into bed... a bed that I had long complained was too firm to be comfortable, but which now felt like a cloud when compared to the beds I'd been sleeping in during the trip.

I did manage to stay awake long enough to check the clock and do a little basic math.  We had flown "backwards" across so many time zones that it was officially still the same day as when we'd woken up in Guangzhou... so for the three of us, "Friday" had lasted almost 32 hours!

I'd like to say I closed out this landmark day with some pithy thoughts or meaningful insights, but what I actually did was turn off the light and pass out while wondering how long it would take me to catch up on all the laundry in my suitcase.

We'd gotten the Pipsqueak home.[2]





[1]  Most locals just call the airport "Dulles" (and its three-letter code is IAD for "International Airport Dulles") but its actual name is "Washington Dulles International Airport" -- with the "Washington" added sometime in the 1980s when someone realized that an awful lot of foreign tourists were accidentally flying to the Washington, DC metro area instead of their intended destination of Dallas, Texas.  (No, I did not make that up!)

[2]  I've written about it before, and I'm sure I'll write about it again, but just for the record: 1st I-8 adoption forms filed, August 2005; 1st home study completed, November 2005; LID (log in date of adoption paperwork by the CCAA), May 2006; 2nd home study completed, June 2007; 1st I-8 renewal, July 2007; Hague Convention goes into effect for all US adoptions, April 2008; 3rd home study completed, November 2008; Hague Convention goes into effect in China, January 2009; Miri is abandoned at the Health Center in Wushizhen, June 2009; 4th home study completed, April 2010; AJ & Miri are matched by the CCAA, May 2010; Miri joins the family, July 2010.  Elapsed time: four years, eleven months.