Ten years ago, we were still cleaning up the mess left by Snowmageddon. Despite the last snowfall being weeks earlier, sidewalks and alleyways were frequently still blocked by snow, ice, and/or debris. Aside from that everything looked normal -- but upon closer inspection, "normal" usually included trees, bushes (and occasional fences & other structures) that were bent, broken, or even absolutely shattered by the weight of snow and ice that had piled up on them either due to weather or due to people running out of places to pile snow every time they tried to dig out from another storm. (For example, by the time things began to melt "for real," I had built a small mountain of snow on the little bit of ground next to my parking spot that was noticeably longer, wider, and higher than my full-size SUV.) People walking around their houses with cameras & insurance checklists were a relatively common sight.
Meanwhile, as the snow & ice melted, the adoption logjam seemed to be even more solidly frozen than before Snowmageddon had begun. AJ's agency was trying to make reassuring noises but that was almost all they could do, since the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs, since renamed "China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption" or CCCWA) was processing at most a small handful of applications each month. As I noted in the video I made of AJ & Miri's adoption story a few years later, China seemed very, very far away...
One nice (albeit ever-so-slightly bittersweet) event that March was the 3rd birthday party for the daughter of one of our MIT group. It gave everyone a chance to ooh and aah over some very cute little girls, and in a sense provided tangible proof that someday all the waiting would be over and my sister would indeed become someone's Mommy. I also think the birthday cake was one of the nicest examples of baked art that I've ever seen...
Looking Around (present day)...
The weather's been a little crazy 'round these parts of late -- as in, "if you don't like the season, wait a couple of hours and it'll change... again." The result is that everyone keeps coming down with little sniffles and such. However, it seems that my sister has a bit of a competitive streak because instead of just sniffles, she got really sick, as in "really bad ear infection (complete with ruptured eardrum)" that required a full week at home... just in time for one of Miri's dance competitions. Of course, Miri was unhappy over the idea of missing a competition that she & the rest of the team had put a lot of work into preparing for (plus she didn't like the idea of letting down her teammates for the numbers she was dancing in), but she was also torn between dancing and staying home to help Mommy get better. Eventually AJ was forced to admit there was no way she could go to the competition (just sitting upright was a problem) so she worked out a deal with one of the moms on the team with similar Mommy-ing style to her own.
The result was a brand-new milestone: Miri went to a dance competition without a single member of her family on hand. AJ & I tried to watch the livestream of the competition, but the connection was abysmally bad so we didn't actually get to see too much. I took a few screenshots, but both the stream quality and the on-site camerawork left a lot to be desired. The two numbers that Miri danced in were tap ("Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious") and jazz ("It Don't Mean A Thing").
My niece's semi-solo trip to the competition also got me thinking about how grown up she seems to be these days (even though she's officially just a "tween"). For example, compare the photos below; the one on the left is her in costume for "Supercali" (above) and the one on the right is from her first-ever "dance recital" back in March of 2013...
Or, for a bit of a height comparison, the photo on the left (with Mommy) is from July of 2013 and the photo on the right (with Grandma) is from earlier this week:
As amazing as it's been to think of Miri being home for a full decade, it's even more amazing to see the development that's happened just since she graduated from toddlerhood to now.
On the other hand, some things really haven't changed at all. For example, there are about 8 years' worth of selfies on various family members' iPhones (here's one from about three weeks ago)...
...and the Pipsqueak still has the same almost magical ability (that she first demonstrated on Gotcha Day) to fall asleep at a moment's notice, in any location, in any position, no matter what she may have been doing seconds earlier. Witness this pic from earlier this week taken moments after the complaints about Mommy taking too long to get ready to go home because "I'm tired, Grandma!" very suddenly cut off...
Oh, yeah, almost forgot... This also happened this month (Dude, you are getting old!):
Of the gifts received, the one I liked the best was the little wooden sign that Miri made sure to let me know was specifically just from her that says, "Uncles are like dads... ONLY COOLER!" :-)
Looking Forward (what's coming)...
The weather is still volatile, but it tends to be nicer (and warmer) for longer, so I've been able to get out for some walks. Everywhere we look, Spring is indeed finally springing forth...
...but we're keeping an eye and an ear on the news as COVID-19 makes life a whole heckuvalot more interesting than it ever needed to be. The stupid "She's Chinese, she has the virus!" bullying that was beginning to surface among a thankfully small group of Miri's classmates has been cut short by the state closing the entire school system for the next two weeks, but we're all waiting to see what kind of fallout there is afterwards (while my lil' sis and I gear up to do battle if the stupidity continues without the school addressing it a lot more directly and immediately than they have to date).
Miri's actually been taking it well, sometimes reporting it to a teacher and sometimes hitting back with some zingers of her own that have kept the bullying to a very low level (but we still want it stopped by the school, period). Of course, she's also reached the point where she is getting very quietly scared by the news; when Mom walked into the after-school care to pick her up the other day, instead of a "hello" she was greeted with a bit of a lecture from her granddaughter about how she and Grandpa needed to be careful because they were in the main at-risk group, and they have to be careful who they're around and need to stay home and keep washing their hands so they can stay healthy. We all have our fingers crossed that we all do stay healthy and are taking precautions -- but knowing my niece (remember the phrase, "still waters run deep"?), we'll be hearing about both her health concerns and anger over being bullied as the supposed source of the coronavirus for a long time to come. ("Uncle Brian, it's not fair, and it's just so, so... RUDE!")
Meanwhile, the next couple of dance competitions have been cancelled, the dance studio will be closing down for the same two-week period as the public schools, and the Pipsqueak will be spending a lot more time with Grandma & Grandpa for the next couple of weeks than over the last several months. It's gonna be interesting... even Miri is trying to figure out why only certain types of food are running low in supermarkets but toilet paper and paper towels have apparently gone extinct. (Not to mention that anything even vaguely resembling alcohol seems to never have existed in the first place.)
I hope you all "out there" and your friends & loved ones are all healthy and taking the proper precautions during the largest global medical emergency since the Spanish Flu pandemic[1] of 1918... and that I'll see everyone here again with my next post. :-)
[1] A quick, and topical, side trip into medical history... The "Spanish" Flu got its name mainly because Spain was neutral during the war, and thus did not impose the same news blackout on the rapidly-growing number of deaths due to the disease as combatant nations, leading many people to believe the disease originated there simply because it was the first (and for a while the only) nation reporting the problem. The Spanish, in turn, called it the "French Flu" because they assumed that's where it came from -- but there is only anecdotal evidence of that strain of influenza originating in France. Another possible source is England, but the waters are again muddied by a combination of mass troop movements (many American troops who had been exposed to the virus in Continental Europe passed through England on the way home) and secrecy assigned to reports. However, more recent studies have added another possible location as the source of that pandemic. Based on the movement of large numbers of laborers brought into England & France by those governments to make up for so many of their own citizens being involved in the military, it is now thought that the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 could have originated in... <sigh> China. :-(
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