Going Out With Two

People have a tendancy to look at us when we are out. Who can blame them. Frankly, we are a good looking family and the kids are, well....gorgeous (boggery noses and all). They're also funny and, now that there are two of them, things get a little louder than they did before.

This morning I took the kiddies grocery shopping at Superstore. Daddy stayed home to get ready for our company that's coming tomorrow (His sister and her family are coming. Yeah. Love them). Anyway, I digress. Picture this: Two little kids sitting side-by-side in the front of the grocery cart wearing the same kind of ski coat (just different colours). They have on rubber boots. Each of them has one pink rubber boot and one red rubber boot. Why? Because before they left the house they had a big fight about who would wear the red ones (the favorite pair) and who would wear the pink ones (the less favored pair). Now, while Eva's coat is in fact red and the boots would in fact look much better with her coat.....Babba is not having his son shopping in Superstore wearing pink boots. So, the kiddies came up with a compromise solution-yep, one colour each. Was Babba thrilled? Not so much. Yet since it was the kids who had decided and he was about to get a whole hour + to himself while we got groceries so he let the matter drop....

Now, imagine those two, little, lovely, well behaved, matching clothes and funny boot wearing kids who don't look much like their mother, pointing at and exclaiming loudly over everything they see.

-'Oh, boots Mama', says Eva.

-'Boo, boo, bootas Mama', exclaims Jie-Jie.

-'Mama, Mama look at dat. Cinderella. Look atit, look atit' (from Eva). 'Look atit, look atit', actually means, 'get your butt over there Mama so I can touch whatever it is'.

-(From Jie-Jie) 'Xia-Xia (thank-you), Mama. Mei-Mei dit (says) Xia-Xia Mama' (if I bought her a certain sweater that he is now grabbing at and about to pull off the hanger).

We then leave the clothing department and move into the food section. I pick up a package of cheese. Of course Jie-Jie NEEDS to hold it. If Jie-Jie is holding cheese....well....(they both agree) then Mei-Mei NEEDS to hold some cheese too. She waits patiently while Mama moves down the aisle and finds another type of cheese to buy. As we move through the store Jie-Jie begins to 'eat' the cheese he is holding. This involves chewing a hole in the plastic wrapping. Hmm...yum. Shopping now involves constant reminders to Jie-Jie not to eat the cheese just yet. Why constant reminders rather than just taking the cheese away from him? Hmmm....Is Mei-Mei not still holding cheese? Yes. Refer to the NEEDS section of the paragraph.

We finally meander our way all the way through and out of the grocery store, get our groceries into the car and are on our way back home when I start to laugh. Why? Because I think about a bizarre little conversation we all had as I was loading the groceries into the trunk. It was the type of conversation we're used to having these days, but at that moment, sitting in the car I really asked myself what the hell we were doing. You see, I had bought a container of strawberries and they were sitting at the top of the basket that we use to transport groceries home (yes, very environmentally friendly). Anyway, Jie-Jie sees them and

he says, 'Cao-Mei, Mama.'

I say, 'Yes that's right, cao-mei, Jie-Jie.'

Eva pipes in with, 'Strawberries Mom?'

and I say, 'Yes, baby, those are strawberries. Papa dit, 'les fraises'.

The two kids make a kind of 'hmm' sound, I load up the groceries, put my babies in their carseats and away we go. I'm not sure if we know what we're doing to these kids, but there is one thing I do know for sure, we're slowly developing a family language all our own.

ARRRR Matey!

As of yesterday our son has become a 'Half-Day Pirate'. The most amazing thing about it though is that he still looks absolutely gorgeous even when he's in his new pirate dud (can't says 'duds' because he only has to wear one part of the pirate outfit). Have you guessed what is going on yet? Here's another clue:

Yesterday we went to see an opthomologist. Get it yet?

We have started 'Vision Therapy' with Jie-Jie. Although it sounds like we are now forcing him to watch religious programing, that's not in fact what it's all about. The eye without the cyst (the left) now has to be patched for half of his waking hours everyday to make sure that his brain doesn't turn off the slightly blurred vision that is produced by his right eye (cyst eye). We tried a patch out yesterday and he is totally (I'm talking t.o.t.a.l.l.y) into it! Yeah!!! Jean-Pierre laughs at me, but I think they were patching Jie-Jie's eye at the orphanage. Come on: we pull out an eye patch box, the kid takes the eye patch, peels off the back layer to expose the sticky part and then helps me stick it onto his eye (of course I put it on totally upside down - didn't have time to read the directions as the kid was already at work as soon as the patch came out of the box). Anyway, once we got the right size on the right way, he wore it all evening without comment. This morning at breakfast he asked why we weren't putting it on. O.K., he didn't really 'ask' why we weren't putting it on. He pointed to his left eye and went, 'ahh, ahh'. We took that to mean he wanted the patch. We had to apologetically tell him that he'd have to wait until after his nap to get it on. In his usual Jie-Jie style, he was fine with that.

Eva kept asking if Jie-Jie had a 'bo-bo' on his eye. She still doesn't really get it. A little friend was over yesterday and she asked Jean-Pierre the same thing. Jean-Pierre just said, 'Jie-Jie's a pirate' and left it at that.

Jie-Jie was so incredibly co-operative at the doctor appointment yesterday. He sat on Babba's knee (where else) in the big chair and was game to try anything asked of him. He really didn't like it at the very beginning of the appointment when the doc. put drops in his eyes. We figured that after that Jie-Jie wouldn't want to have anything to do with the doctor, but when we told him that there wouldn't be anymore drops ('Jie-Jie, c'est fini, fini' - with wild hand guestures), he got it and let the doctor do his thing.

Diagnosis - can't spell it, but non-cancerous cyst on the cornea makes the cornea irregularily shaped and therefore makes Jie-Jie nearsighted with astigmatism (is that one word or two?) in that eye. The doctor said that Jie-Jie's vision is extremely good for a child with this congenital type growth, but that we would need to do some intervention to keep it that way. Since the brain forms most of it's important connections between birth and 7 years old, the 'danger' is that Jie-Jie's brain will discount input coming into the 'bad' eye and, eventually, 'turn that eye off'. Patching the good eye will force the brain to use the stimuli coming into the other eye to create neuropathways for it. While we assumed that some kind of surgery would definately be in the cards, Dr. Drummond advised against that until Jie-Jie is older. He said that some people opt for surgery after 7 years old for cosmetic reasons, but that surgery does not improve vision. In fact the surgery can make the vision worse because it plays around with the shape of the cornea.

There is a second part to the vision therapy as well. We need to improve the vision in the eye with the cyst. That means.....you guessed it.....glasses. As a former wearer of glasses, I was disappointed for Jie-Jie on this point. I hated wearing glasses even though I was totally blind without them. The challenge for us here will be that Jie-Jie's glasses will not make a huge difference to his vision because his eyes are not too bad. That may make it harder for us to get him to keep them on. If he was 'totally blind' without the glasses, the ability to see would be enough incentive to get him to wear them, but this is not his case. Anyway, we'll see what happens when we get the glasses next week. We chose the trendiest pair we could find that suited his face and were functional. I think he looks adorable in them and he sure enjoyed trying them on.

So, there you go Samuel Jie-Jie. When you're twelve or twenty or fifty and you want to know why you wore an eye patch as a kid or how you ended up with glasses, you can just go back and read this post. Oh, by the way, we love, love, love you.

Being Siblings, Becoming Friends

Jie-Jie came to our family knowing how to play, share and love other children. I'm not talking just about a child who would tolerate having another child share his space and his things. Watching him interact with the little girl (the child in her mother's arms) on our trip who came from the same orphanage as him was a beautiful thing. I'd never seen a three year old child be so gentle, so caring and so loving towards another child. Whenever they saw each other they would run together, hug and give each other whatever they had. He'd give her his last piece of watermelon, she'd give him a toy she was playing with..... They'd give spontaneously, happily, without feeling that they were losing something by giving it up. How did the orphanage do that? Seeing how Jie-Jie interacted with people totally changed the expectations I have for my children. I went to China thinking that we would label things in the house as 'his', 'hers' and 'ours', but I came back from China with only one of those labels - 'ours'.

So, because Jie-Jie was used to living full time with other children, he was (in a way) used to having siblings. His adaptation has been one of learning to live with Eva. Eva's learning curve has been much steeper and her progress has been interesting to watch.

For the first week in China, Eva was either jealous of or indifferent to Jie-Jie. If I held or helped him, she cried (sometimes screamed). Sometimes she would try to hit him to get him away from me. He would be playing with things and she would rip them out of his hands. Since she is bigger, there wasn't much he could do and he was very confused about why she was acting like this.

By the second week in China, she was much, much better about Mama doing things with Jie-Jie. Jie-Jie and Mama could sit together on the bus while she sat with Daddy, I could hold him, push his stroller a bit and even play with him without Eva having a total cow. Since Jie-Jie was so into Babba we were actually transitioning both kids over to the opposite parent at the same time. So, when Eva did make a fuss about sitting with me it was usually just as well that they switch because chances are that Jie-Jie was wanting to go to Babba anyway. Eva had a few full scale, full out tantrums in Beijing the first few days we were there, in large part because Mama and Babba were so done with the copious amounts of whining and crying that had been going on and because we were forcing her to treat her brother fairly.

By the third week that Jie-Jie was with us (our first week home) Eva was completely fine with Mama doing anything with Jie-Jie. I saw her focussing coming off of us and on to him. Things started to get intense and physical. We literally could not let them out of our sight. The second (even nanosecond) that they were alone, she was at him. You see, Eva discovered that being 10 pounds heavier than the person holding something you consider yours is a slight advantage, so she began to use it. At first we tried to be kind and gentle about it, but when she accidently pushed him down the stairs our attitude changed. Three time-outs later (Eva had never had a time-out in her life before that) the pushing stopped (his biting her may have helped stop the pushing too....you think?). Poor Jie-Jie was at his witts end, just slightly stressed out, but we were so tired that it was all we could do to get the daily things done and keep some peace between them.

The next week our 'normal' routine started. Eva and I went to Mom's Morning Out and the kids got a little break from each other. It was like a turning point. For the rest of that week, we made sure that they were apart for a little bit each day. Dad took Eva to a different playgroup or swimming while Jie-Jie and mom played or went for a quiet walk. You could see Jie-Jie's stress level drop and Eva's willingness to interact with him (in a positive manner) increase. They still didn't interact that much and they certainly weren't playing together, but the constant negativity began to decrease.

So how is it now? When I think back to how their relationship was a month ago - two stangers thrown together - I can see strong, positive progress. It's not just that the fighting has diminished. Each day they have more positive than negative interactions, Eva is earning back Jie-Jie's trust, they have begun to have jokes that only they think are funny (putting cheese in your soup and then waving it around is apparently hysterical to almost-three year olds) and they are starting to copy what the other is saying (Eva says 'yoopee' when she drops things and Jie-Jie said, 'lait' today rather than 'nioo-nie' because Eva had just said it). They do 'play' together a little and sometimes, just sometimes, they'll kiss each other goodnight.

I see that one day soon they will be more than just siblings. The potential is there. They are both kind, loving people and I think they have made some very small steps to becoming friends. What surprises me the most though is the way my heart swells and tears come to my eyes when I witness those tiny sparks of possible love pass between them.

Some Clarification

Nicki's questions in the comments section of the last post have been echoed by people in the 'real world', so I thought I'd do a clarification post.

We're calling Samuel by his Chinese name Jie-Jie. We pronounce it as 'Jay-Jay' even though the correct pronounciation is more like 'Jeeay-Jeeay'. We're not sure if and/or when we're going to switch over to calling him Samuel. We decided that his offical name will be 'Samuel Jay-Jay Lesperance' rather than our original thought of 'Samuel Liu Lesperance'. That gives us the option of calling him by his middle name, leaving 'Samuel' as his 'offical' name. In a few months, when he understands about both names, he can choose which name he wants other people to use. A few people suggested that we just register his name as 'Jay-Jay'. I like it as a kiddie name or a nickname, but I think it's too childish once he is an adult. If he works in pediatrics, 'Dr. Jay-Jay' would be great, but I'm not sure I'd take a heart surgeon or a lawyer very seriously if they had that name..... :-)

We called Eva by her Canadian name right from the very beginning mostly because she didn't respond to her Chinese name (we got the guide to try it too, so it wasn't due just to our terrible Chinese pronounciation). My guess is that her foster parents didn't address her as 'YiLin' very often. On Gotcha day we asked about Eva's nickname and the orphanage directress said that she was called 'Lin-Lin', but she didn't respond to that either. Since she wasn't living at the orphanage, I imagine that the directress wouldn't have really known what Eva's foster mom called her on a daily basis. On a more philosophical note, I think that because Eva was our first child we felt more of a need to claim her by giving her 'our' name. It hasn't seemed important with Jie-Jie. He's ours and we are entitled to raise him no matter what his name is.

Thanks for the questions. Keep 'em coming.

And by the way.....LURKERS! I know you're out there. I've spoken with some of you recently. 'I don't know how to post a comment' isn't flying with me!

Our Little Man - Part II

Many people who have adopted from China say that the child you travel with in the country is not the same child you have once you are home for a little while. Jie-Jie seems to be an exception to this rule. I think I’ve been expecting him to change as he settles to his new life, but he just hasn’t. So, (people have been asking me) who is he?

Jie-Jie is a bright, joyous little man who loves a good laugh. He loves to make jokes and he has a wicked little twinkle in his eye when he does it. Some of his favourite jokes at the moment are
1. to say, ‘This is Mama’ (while pointing at Baba) and then ‘This is Baba’ (while pointing at Mama). That totally cracks him up. Another one he likes on the same theme is to say, ‘Jie-Jie de’ (Jie-Jie’s thing) while pointing to something that belongs to someone else. Then the person it really belongs to needs to get all upset and say that the thing is theirs. He loves that.

2. to say, ‘Mama/Baba dit, ‘non, non, non’ (Mama says, ‘no, no, no’). Then Mama/Baba is supposed to say, ‘Jie-Jie dit, ‘non, non, no’. Cracks him up to. He has other variations of this too: ‘Jie-Jie dit, boa-yao’ (Jie-Jie says, ‘no want’). Then we say, ‘No, no. Mama/Baba/Mei-Mei dit ‘boa-yao’. Gets him every time.

3. saying that his cup of milk is a cup of water. He says, ‘nioo-nia’ (milk) when it’s actually ‘sway’ water. Cracks him up every time.

Jie-Jie is loving and affectionate. He often takes our faces in his hands, looks into our eyes and then gives us a double cheek kiss (like a French greeting) or a kiss on the lips. He’s very ticklish, likes to cuddle and he loves to be carried especially by Baba (we may have encouraged that one). He’s so good to his sister that it makes my heart ache sometimes. He'll go all the way upstairs to bring her her milk or her toy phone, but he’s no push over. She’s learning to respect him.

There have been very few really negative behaviours. I have to say that I had braced myself for a whole lot of discipline issues. A three year old, from an orphanage…..I had all kinds of assumptions about how things were going to be and not one of them has been a reality. While Jie-Jie does love to ‘investigate’ the world around him and is especially curious about how things work, he usually understand that no means no. Now that we've got a good routine going so he's getting enough sleep and isn't pushed beyond his limits, the most discipline we’ve had to do so far is to remove him from a situation and most inappropriate behaviour ends. I mean the kid took to the stroller, the car seat and his booster seat at the table without batting an eye. He’s had 3 nights of nasty tantrums concerning falling asleep and there has been some sibling violence (not instigated by him) and that has really been it. Can we all say a Hallelujah?! Hallelujah.

O.K., what else? The kid loves to eat (very common in the first few months). He is definitely a carnivore with a very, very slight leaning toward omnivorism. Jie-Jie’s dream meal at this point would be a plate packed with: meat (the kid would eat just meat for each and every meal. Any kind of meat. Roast beef, chicken, deli turkey meat, you name it); bananas (we have to limit him to one or two a day or he would eat one at every meal and or snack) and he loves cherry tomatoes. He’ll eat spinach if it comes from my plate (I was getting desperate to get some kind of vegetable into him so I tried it and he ate it), but not a lot of other vegetables. He loves yogurt, yogurt covered raisons and yogurt covered pretzels as well as candy of all kinds. He also loves milk, which he calls ‘niu-nia’ (usually at the top of his lungs).

Jie-Jie loves music and he loves to dance. He makes a punching motion in the air as he dances and he sure can shake his bootie. He is game to try anything, but he's not foolhearty. For example he saw Eva jumping off the third step of our stairs, but he wasn't too sure about that height so he jumped off the second step and he made sure one of us was there to hold his hand. He loves the waterslide at the pool (maybe because we hold him all the way down), but he doesn't want to go down the slides at the park.

Jie-Jie says, 'Yipee' when he drops or spills something. We're assuming he means 'whoopsie', but he's got Eva saying it now too.

So, the truth is, the kid's adorable, he's great fun and he's easy to be with. Incredible.

The Snowy Day

We all have fantasies about things we want to do with our children when we finally get them home. One of Jean-Pierre’s fantasies was having the entire family joyfully romping outside in the snow. Not just any romping however. Oh no. Sliding down hills kind of romping. So, on Tuesday, away we went. Ever done this with two almost-three year olds and a wife who is a little afraid of sliding down hills? …..

First of all, we decide to do this late in the afternoon. We must have started around 3:00. It takes us at least 20 minutes to get the kids and ourselves all bundled up. 20 minutes that is if we have put all the mittens, toques and boots away in the right place. If not, then we spend even more time searching for one or the other of these things. Oh yeah, and 20 minutes is a vast improvement over the first couple of times we got ready.

So we're out the door and have made it as far as the garage. Jean-Pierre shoves the sled into the trunk of the car, but realizes that we can't get it all the way in because we can no longer lay one side of the back seat down (uhmmm, second car seat). Hmm. He hunts around for a bungee cord. Good luck. We still have 7 bags of recycling from Christmas time stuffed at the front of the garage because we missed recycling pick up before we left for China. Anyway, he finds a telephone cord, ties the trunk down and away we go!

Eva wants to be carried before we even get out of the parking lot. Sam is in a little purple sled and seems O.K. with it (not thrilled, but O.K.). Jean-Pierre somehow convinces Eva to walk to the top of the hill and they go for the first slide. She loves sliding, but hates walking, never mind walking in deep snow. Did I mention that this is just a hill in the middle of our town. Not groomed or anything.....Yep.

Jie-Jie and I still haven't made it up to the top of the hill yet as Eva comes walking up behind us. Somehow (I really don't remember how because I was so loving the freezing cold and lots of climbing), I end up with trying to get both kids and two sleds up the hill while Jean-Pierre stands at the top taking pictures. Yeah.... Jie-Jie looses his mitt and starts screaming his head off. Eva is in the other sled, which I drop as I try to put Jie-Jie's mitt on, and it starts sliding back down the hill. At this point the whole event is so *#& romantic that I can hardly stand it and I haven't even gone down the hill yet. You'll notice there's no picture of Eva heading backwards down the hill in the sled...

Alright, so we all make it up and pile onto the sled. Jean-Pierre pushes us off and I, being the excellent role model for my children that I am, yell all the way down, 'I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't like this'. Yep, I'm pretty sure I had the chance to say it at least three times before we came to a stop at the bottom. We haul, beg and plead with Eva to get her back to the top and we all go down two more times. Finally, Jean-Pierre takes matters into his own hands and I wait at the bottom (much less screaming that way). This is how it went:

By this time it's started to snow and the 'kids' 'indicate' that they'd rather just play on the path and in the trees beside the hill. I'm into that and we go for a walk on the path. As we turn around to go back to the car, Jie-Jie starts screaming again. Why? Because the falling snow is blowing in his face and he can't handle it.

All in all, although the outing likely didn't fulfill Jean-Pierre's fantasy sliding day......We did actually have a good time and the kids fell asleep beautifully that night! Can you say, 'Bonus'!

Our Little Guy

There are lots of funny little quirky things about our little man. For example, he wears size two tops but can barely keep up size 18-24 month pants. Yet pants with a smaller waist size are much too short in the legs. On the other hand, he has huge feet. He wears a size seven shoe which is the same size Eva.

He's been picking up a little language since his second day with us. He's got a word for all the things he finds most important in his life and he learnt them in order of importance. His first Canadian word was 'pee-pee'. When he needs to go he says, 'pee-pee da'. Next was ' fait doe-doe' (that is French childspeak for 'faire dormir' which means 'to go to sleep'). Then came 'manger' (French for 'to eat'). Today he added 'c'est bon' (it's good) of course talking about food. Within probably the first few minutes of having him we learned the mandarin phrase 'Hao shi ma?' (Is it good?) and he always responds right away with 'Hao shi yo' (It's good). Now he says it in French. So cute.

Today Jie-Jie taught me why there are child safety locks on backseat car doors. As we rounded the corner to the house in my OLD Jetta and were pulling up to the mailbox to get the mail I heard a car door open. It took me a second to figure out what was going on, but I soon realized that Jie-Jie was flipping the black door handle beside his seat and he had opened up the door a bit. The latch was still half connected so the door didn't swing wide open, but still. He was seemingly totally oblivious to what he had done. Just hanging out, looking out the side window and fiddling around with this 'thing' on his door.... (Just to let you know, Eva and I have been driving mostly that car for the past year and a half and the back door has never opened).

So, tomorrow is Mom's Morning Out again and I've decided not to take Jie-Jie. While he didn't panic or show a lot of fear with the large groups of people in the events we attended over the weekend, he stuck to either Jean-Pierre or me like glue. I don't see that he's ready to be left in a strange room on his own yet even if mom is just one room over from him. Instead we'll go to the playgroups where the kids and parents stay in the same room the entire time.

Chinese New Year Celebrations - By Accident

Thursday afternoon I started to have 'inadequate parent' pains about the Chinese Spring Festival and our lack of any type of celebration concerning it. Being the wonderful parents that we are we decided to take our children to celebrate CNY at.....wait for it......West Edmonton Mall. Yep, we're great aren't we? Really celebrating our children's racial heritage :-).

Well, actually, West Edmonton Mall has a huge Chinese grocery store and they usually have Spring Festival activities such as Lion Dancing, etc. Unfortunately for us the celebrations are taking place on the weekend rather than on the actual 'day' of the new moon.

So we went on some of the rides instead. Jie-Jie loved the carousel. Before it got going he kept rocking back and forth saying, 'ma, ma' (Mandarin for horse). By the way, he says all big, four legged animals are 'ma'. Tonight we were looking at a picture book and he identified a sheep and a cow as 'ma'. Anyway, then we went on the train (Eva's totally fav. ride). He loved that too. Finally we went on the hot air balloons. Loved it too.

After the rides, we went to our favorite Chinese food restaurant 'Noodle-Noodle' for supper (yes, we actually left the mall). Super yummy. To make it all very Spring Festivally, we had sesame balls for dessert. Like I said, we're great parents, but we were about to get really lucky. Around nine o'clock that night, we got a phone call from Mrs. Yan. Mrs. Yan has been trying to cram Mandarin into my teeny tiny brain over the past month or so. She is also the teacher of the Mandarin playgroup Eva and I have been going to. Anyway, she was calling to let us know that there was a Spring Festival party at the Assist Center (where we went to the playgroup) on Saturday and we were signed up for it. Yeehaw. Celebrating our children's racial heritage just fell into our laps!!!!! Does it get any better? Yes! Eva's most favorite person in the world NINA WAS ALSO THERE!

Not only that, get this, while at the party we were invited to Dim Sum tomorrow with a group of parents who have also adopted from China (and maybe some Ethiopia too). Anyway, we got it ALL in one weekend. I love, love, love it. We'll get to spend more time with, and get to know the families of, some of the women I have already met plus maybe meet some new people. I have so missed face time with other adoptive moms.

So, we've gone from doing absolutely nothing about the lunar new year to having a weekend jammed packed with activity. Happy New Year everyone.

They Slept Through the Night!

Wow! wow! wow! I just can't believe it. Both kiddies slept completely through the night last night. My god, Jie-Jie has only been home for 4 days (I'm not counting Friday) and HE SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT. Not only that, he sleeps on his back with his arms flung open wide. I guess he feels secure. A few more nights like last night and I may get out of this fog.

Today Eva and I went to Mom's Morning Out. I was in a total daze the entire time. I know the presenter was telling us something about what to do if your child gets lost, but truly all I got out of it was: 1. call 911 before you start looking for the child; 2. don't contaminate the scene by calling your friends and family over to look for the child; 3. I'm to bring snacks on April 7th.

The whole morning was such a strange experience. People talked to me and I answered (half intelligently - I think), but it was like I was floating outside my body.

O.K., so question to my fellow adopters. I didn't take Jie-Jie with me today to the group because I didn't feel right about leaving him alone in a room full of strangers - even if they are fun strangers. He stayed home with Baba. Think I'm being too overprotective? Think I should try him and see how he does before making that decision? He's doing so well adjusting that I sometimes forget that he hasn't even been with us for 3 weeks yet.

Also, to update my last post: As we lay awake in bed the night before last, I finally remembered to ask Jean-Pierre for details of Jie-Jie's international flight. Everything was the same as Eva except that Jie-Jie cried and screamed before he fell asleep. Once Jean-Pierre said that, I vaguely remember getting up at one point to try and help settle Jie-Jie. I was promptly sent back to my seat and told that 'he' (Jean-Pierre) was handling it. I think I suggested that he might want to stand up and walk a bit just before I fell back into my stupor. Jean-Pierre says that he did that and Jie-Jie fell asleep right away. He slept through the rest of the flight until Jean-Pierre woke him up for breakfast. After breakfast he watched cartoons until we landed. BTW, Jean-Pierre watched 3 or 4 movies during the flight and still got off the plane as fresh as a daisy (Hate that!). Yes, and he also gets up in the morning all happy - singing, teasing the kids, etc - even though he is totally jetlagged (Double hate that!).

3 AM and I'm still awake....

Yep, jetlag has offically hit us. It is 3:12 am and both Jean-Pierre and I are awake. The kids both woke up at 12:30 (very thoughtful of them to wake up at the same time don't you think?) and neither parent was able to fall back asleep afterwards. We've actually gotten a lot done while we've been up. Paid some bills, applied for EI, put some stuff away, started another load of laundry :-).

I realized (as I lay in bed thinking about everything and nothing) that I didn't put any details on the blog about the flight home. We left Beijing around 5:30. Since it was super time, the kids were grumpy waiting to board the plane, but once we were fed they were both ready to go to sleep. They both slept the vast majority of the international flight. I woke Eva up about 2 hours before the plane landed so she could eat some breakfast. She then watched TV for the rest of the ride. She laughed her head off watching a new show by the creaters of the Teletubies. The truth is, I'm not too sure what Jie-Jie did during the flight. Jean-Pierre and Jie-Jie were sitting off to the side and two rows up from us so I didn't see my son for the entire international flight. Since this is Jie-Jie's blog I'll have to get the details from Jean-Pierre and record Jie-Jie's first long flying adventure. We had four hours in Vancouver before our domestic flight.

It took us forever to get through immigration. We didn't hurry off the plane (huge, huge mistake) and by the time we got to immigration it was lunch time so they had 3 (maybe 4) counters open. Painful. Added to that, I had a bad reaction to the eggs on the plane. I won't gross you out with the details, let's just say I wasn't feeling good. After we had waited for about an hour, one of the agents called us up to the front of the line. I'm not sure why we were allowed to jump ahead since everyone else had been waiting too, but we didn't ask any questions. I think the agent was actually going on a break or finishing for the day because he put closed on his sign before he called us over.

The kids stayed awake while we waited to board our flight out of Vancouver. Once on the plane, Jie-Jie screamed and cried, but both kids were dead alseep the moment the wheels came off the tarmack (sorry Teri). It was like magic. The wheels come up on the plane and boom the kids fall asleep. Can you say, 'Lovely'?

So, we'll have to force ourselves onto a schedule starting tomorrow so we can start to feel better sooner. Up at 7:30, breakfast by 8:00, lunch at noon, naps at 12:30, supper......ahhh, I'm exhausted just thinking about it :-)).

So Much Laundry....

Oh, the laundry, the laundry. Two days and I'm still not done. I should have taken a picture of it piled up in the dining room. Oh, the cooking and the grocery shopping and the cleaning up of the kitchen. I'm tired. I'm going to sit and watch the TV shows that we missed while we were away even though I should be.....doing laundry or tidying up. Thank god I have a husband who is involved. He slept till 10:00 this morning. I slept till 11:30. The kids slept till 10:30. Believe it or not, we feel 200% better than we did the first time we did this. Tomorrow is another day.....We'll get it together then.

We're Home

Yes, we made it home WITHOUT INCIDENT! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! Everything went as smoothly as two days of non-stop traveling could go and tonight we sleep in our own little beds. Jean-Pierre and the kiddies are actually already in their little beds, but since I slept so much on the plane on the way home, I'm still up. My goodness, it is such a treat to be in a room (the office) all by myself. I have to say though, it is a little strange not to have my mom under the same roof.
Both my sisters and their families were at the airport to meet us. Dad was also there as were some good friends of ours. Jie-Jie was happy to meet everyone and he love, love, loved the balloons.

After we got our bags and made it home, the family dropped by our place with pizza and corn chips. It was so nice to let someone else figure out what we were going to eat tonight for a change and to end up with something we totally recognized! :-).