A Week of Solitude

 Last Sunday evening I picked up the rest of the family at Portland Airport.

The Bride and kiddos had been visiting the grands in Massachusetts, making the week-long "duty visit" that grandparents require every so often.

FWIW, it was reported to have been dreary but tolerable except for the weather, baking and humid the first part of the week, cold and raining the second.

Everyone was tired and bored and happy to be home.

Within a day everyone was also happily back in their respective ruts; The Bride on her paddleboard on the Willamette, the Boy in his headset in front of his gaming computer, the Girl with her trowel in the garden.

Me, looking over what had been a quiet house now full of not just them but all their stuff.

I missed them when they were gone. 

The house was desperately quiet and more than a little lonely without them. I got up alone, went to work, came home alone. Cooked a solitary dinner, read or watched the television, played with or was tolerated by the cats. 

Went to bed alone in the silent dark house.

I was like being a childless widower, and that wasn't a comforting thought. 

Now they're home, though...I remember all the things I liked about it.

The principal one being the tidiness.

I'm not obsessively cleanly, but I retain a pretty strong sense of military order. I like things to be clean and stowed neatly where they belong. During the previous week the kitchen was spotless, the bathroom clean, the floors swept, the counters and table empty.

Suddenly there was people's stuff everywhere. The Girl, who - although I'm the primary cook - likes to make her peculiar spicy versions of whatever food is in the house, has put the paprika on the over-the-stove shelf where it doesn't belong and has left dirty dishes in the sink (my particular button-pusher...). The Boy has dumped his laundry on his floor again and who the hell left the goddamn paper scraps on the bathroom floor?

At least my Bride is as neat as I am, so there's that.

I love them dearly.

I just wish that life with them wasn't so...messy.

Which is kind of a good metaphor for Life in general, isn't it.

Well. I've gotta go do the dishes, so here's a cat.

Aww. Isn't that...hey. Wait.

Okay. That's a good kitty. That's...hey, wait!

Ack!

Just Shoot Me

So my wife is recovering from surgery, my in-laws arrive tonight, my kids are boinging around in a crazy frenzy of Christmas greed...and we're supposed to get snow tomorrow SO THE SCHOOLS WILL BE CLOSED THE REST OF THE WEEK..!!!!Meaning that all six of us will be housebound. In a little house no more than 1,100 feet square. With nonstop Christmas specials on TV.Shoot me. Just make it quick and shoot me now.Sigh. Sorry I've been so bad about posting. I do have some thoughts to bring up. Maybe tonight.

Rrrrrrr.....

Every so often you get your nose rubbed in exactly how much you DON'T have a life when you are a parent.

We had planned today around having a sitter in the afternoon so we could work on Missy's bedroom together. In all the time we've been working on it we haven't ever actually worked together - it's always been Mojo doing the child care and me working on the remodel (mostly because it's been heavy work better suited for the one of us with the bigger body mass).

But now we're getting to the finish work and were looking forward to doing some teaming on the bedroom. Until the sitter called in sick around noon.

Well. Fucketty fuck. That shot any hope we might have of doing anything. Not that we didn't have a pleasant day and I got to cook a good meal (spinach ricotta ravioli in a mushroom sauce, definately a keeper) and we went for an idle walk around the neighborhood in the surprisingly mild evening.But it grates, when something like this happens and rips away the veneer of order and control we pretend to have over our lives and exposes their irretrievably kid-centric nature. We're Slaves to Genetic Inheritance and we need to somehow smile and be okay with that. It's not easy and it's not fun and I won't pretend otherwise.

Saving Private Missy

Y’know, I had no idea that 1 + 1 = so much extra stress. Honestly. No shit. Really. No clue.
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Mojo and I talked about how we thought that raising two kids would be different from one, about potential adoption issues ranging from emotional distance through food hoarding to medical problems. There’s an old Army saying: everything you do in war is simple, but in war the simplest things are fiendishly hard. We thought we had this child-rearing thing pretty well dealt with. We had a great little boy, a little high-maintenance but overall a super little guy; we’d done the baby-toddler-preschool route, balanced work and childcare, developed a logistical support plan, figured out how to move under direct kid-assault by using the traditional parent techniques of mutual support and covering fire. We saw ourselves as real old sweats, hardened veterans of the Kinderkrieg, in great shape to hit the beach and begin Operation Orphan Freedom.
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Christ on a pogo stick: were we wrong! The simple addition of one little person has us scrambling for cover, feeling like we’re caught in the open by counterparent fire heavier and more accurate than we feared in our worst pre-adoption moments. As advertised, even the simplest task – mealtime, grocery shopping, playtime, bedtime - is fiendishly hard.
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And hardest of all, we don’t get much time to just stop and feel simple, undemanding love for our little peeps. We’re so busy feeding, clothing, playing with and caring for them that they are often just, well, just another job to be done. A job that undoes itself every night and has to be re-done all over the next day. It’s the soldiers’ nightmare: the hill that has to be retaken time after time, the river you assault across only to find another identical river just beyond…and another…and another.
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You tell yourself that you’re the best parent you can be, that you may not be perfect but that you’re struggling ahead under fire towards your goal: a solid family with happy, confident kids. That the exhaustion you feel at the end of the day, the lack of real personal time to do the things you vaguely remember enjoying before kid arrival, is the casualty of the fight you’re waging to be good parents and to raise good kids. You tell yourself that a family isn’t a contest, that nobody “wins” or “does better” than anyone else.But it’s hard not to compare yourself to other parents. Our friends Millicent and Floyd came back from China with their little girl Nola about the same time we did. Here’s Millie’s conclusion to their blogoventurous account of the journey. Writes well, doesn’t she? It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Aren’t they a terrific little family? I stopped by the other day to say hi and was knocked sideways by Nola’s fabulous “windmill-Bud-carton-slam”. The girl is a marvel. Her dad is just great, cold and all, and her mom is just as outstanding as we all knew she’d be. And Millie puts it so well; “Life is just so very sweet.”
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I am so filled with happiness for them I could bite myself. But as I write this in the back of my mind the bitter cold little voice asks “So why isn’t your life so very sweet, giacomo? How come you come back home every night praying that you won’t open the door to screaming children and an overwhelmed wife? How come your weekends seem like an 18 hour day for straight wages at the KinderMart? How come for every sweet loving moment there seems like two moments where you are not the loving daddy but combined cop/chef/referee/janitor/rodeo child-roping cowboy?I don’t have a good answer for my little cold voice except that parenting, like war, has tough times as well as easy ones. That while when you're in luck parenting is a joy and a delight; but that it is also duty, a duty to your kids who can't go forward without you. And that sometimes duty is heavier than a mountain.
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But who knew that such a little girl could weigh so much?

The Missy Files

This weekend was the two-month-i-versity of our parenting of young Miss Shaomei; from gotcha day to Thanksgiving. Here's our 60-day "progress report".
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To say that she's emerged from her orphanage fugue state would be an understatement up there with "Gee, that Chomolungma's a pretty big hill". She's become an energetic little girl, full of giggly toddler business and an insatiable curiousity. She babbles along in a positively brook-like fashion; we even think she said her first word ("hello!") the other day while she was listening to and babbling at the cell phone. She loves to throw, and she's developing a sly delight in nailing unsuspecting parents with projectiles whenever she can. She still adores pestering the cats, whose patience has been admirable (and who have been rewarded with a largesse of stinky cat food which she adores, too: there's nothing as surprising as nuzzling a cute little orphan child and getting a reeking facefull of Little Friskies' Ocean Whitefish that she has just sampled. Eegah!). Her diet is changing, and while she still loves her some congee as a belly-filler she's doing well with pretty much anything from bananas to cranberry stuffing. In fact, about every other day she becomes ravenous and we can barely keep her tummy filled. It does a father's heart good to see her getting bigger and stronger.
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Unsurprisingly, she does still retain some of the behaviors we saw first in China. She has a passion for being held. The intensity of her craving changes with her environment and with her mood. Some days she's as clingy as a baby monkey, and will sob if you plop her on the floor for so much as a moment. Other days she's fine by herself for long stretches of time. She is developing a healthy toddler jealousy of her ge ge - if we're cuddling with the Peeper she is so swarming up onto us like a Chinese Everest expedition. She's also started to fight back, and even initiates some of the "picking-on". She's even thrown some honest-to-God foot-stomping toddler tantrums. So emotionally and physically she seems to be doing very well.
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The Peeper his own self is still unthrilled by the "Mei-mei Phenomenon", and has developed his room into his own Fortress of Solitude, a refuge from loud and grabby little sisters. Miss Lily is his furry symbiote, providing purrs and soft fur for petting in return for a lofty refuge from clutching little fingers. She doesn't mind the trainyard under the bed - or if she does, she hasn't said anything.
One aspect of her hasn't changed: Missy is still a very compliant diaper-changee, throwing her feet over her head with the abandon of a purse-pinched Republican country club debutante enticing a callow Choate-and-Princeton trust-fund heir, but she's becoming much less compliant about actually getting dressed, to the point where catching and dressing the naked baby is something of an indoor sport. She is also the terror of the tub, a tiny raven-haired Cailleach Beara conjuring storms from the porcelin deeps. I'm still not sure how those tiny hands can move so much water from inside to outside the tub. Hydrologically it's an interesting point, but domestically we're gonna need one of those wet-dry shop vacs to keep up with our own little storm surge!
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So we're very happy and excited about our little girl's progress and looking forward to seeing what the next two months will bring.
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But I have to be honest and admit that I'm the one that's not progressing quite as well. It's very difficult for me to re-adjust to a life that's all kid, all the time, especially just when we were moving past that with the Peeper. It's like you were just getting over a cold when, slam, you're right back amid the crusty kleenex and the Dayquil. Not that I think of the kids as a disease! I love our kids and I'm excited about our future, but our present - the retreat of any semblance of an independant adult life - is a little tough for me. I'm trying to be a good, loving and happy Daddy for Missy and the Peep and a loving and caring husband for Mojo, but sometimes my crankiness seeps through. I've gotta find a way to deal with it, and I just haven't yet. Or perhaps it's more an issue of "resignation" and I'm still kicking against the pricks, so to speak... Just an aside, here, but any helpful ideas and suggestions would be gratefully accepted...
But, hey - how about these sweet faces, neh?

Rainy Sunday

Well, something goofy is going on with Blogger (am I surprised? No.) and all the pictures for this post have uploaded as ASCII gibberish. I'll keep on going in hopes that the pictures will show up online as pictures.
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This entire weekend has been the worst kind of Portland autumn weather: just a constant miserable drizzle, cold and raw. The sort of weather than can keep all but the hardiest of little peepers indoors. And to redouble the curse on our weekend, the expected indoor playpark at the St. John's Community Center didn't happen - not their fault; we read the schedule wrong. Duh. (Cool St. John's trivia: did you know that the SJCC was originally plunked down in an old cherry and prune orchard? Like, three blocks from "downtown" St. John's? In 1947? True fact.) So here we are: fourty-eight hours in to a weekend of nothing but each others' company and whatever entertanment we could scramble from what is in the house. We've played computer games. We've chased Little Missy around the house, watched Diego rescue the goddam elephants until I'm ready to go poach the things myself and to hell with the World Wildlife Federation. We're toast.
Important parenting safety tip: ALWAYS SCHEDULE SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKENDS. Sweetbabyjesus I'm ready to go mad.
One of the few nice things happening is that Little Missy has been terrifically sweet and happy this weekend. So I've thrown in all these pictures of a happy girl and her family. After the first week when we were so worried, it's nice to hear her silly laugh. Now we just need to find some friends for her to playdate...we're had completely ZERO luck contacting other parents in the Families with Children from China (FCC). Not sure why. Maybe our address raises fear. North Portland - that's where the gangsters are, right? So maybe they think we're raising our Orphan in the Hood...
Oh, and with the rains coming on we brought in a new exercise bike from my favorite sporting goods store: Play It Again Sports (your one-stop shop for truly funky smelling used lacrosse gloves!). Here's the Peeper trying it out.
So nothing new, or exciting. Just a nuclear family in the Twenty-First Century, locked in together by the rain and slowly going totally bugnuts.
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Come out, oh Great Heat Tab in the Sky! Have Mercy on your People! Come out, come out, wherever you are and let the Children of Your Sunlight Run Free (and their Parents Save Their Sanity!)

Blue Sunday

I should probably start out with the conclusion of this post: I'm struggling more than a little with all this child-rearing. It's not that I don't love my kids. I do. Or I don't love spending time with my family. I love my family and spending time together. It's just that I wish we could spend some time doing things less...juvenile. So I've been down-at-mouth and kinda blue this Sunday.
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I know, I know...what else do you expect when they're 4 (and a half! he'd want to be sure I added) and eighteen months? Intellectually I understand that it may very well several months before I can expect my son to discuss the constitutional implications of the military tribunal system erected for Gitmo or my daughter to appreciate the subtlety of a Marta backheel or sit quietly with me on the porch and watch geese punctuate the gray palimpsest overhead. But viscerally? I want to roll over and drum my heels like my own kids, wailing "I want my adult life back!!!"
Now occasionally we do get a break. We had a nice one yesterday when our friends the Ravas were back (here's a little account of their visit in July) - that's them (with Miss Shaomei looking on curiously) at the top.
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Mama Rava was all agog at the laminate floor - she actually got down and caressed it, she was lusting after such a floor. Sadly this snapshot has more of a "Kimchi Squat" look to it. And I was hoping to make a name as the "Ansel Adams of Domestic Photography". Well, damn, there's another chance at glory shot to hell.
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I have to admit that sometimes the Ravas are...overwhelming. They're fun, loud and active, and I always feel very timid and retiring when they arrive. This is a bit of a jape, as anyone who knows me will volunteer that I am usually considered a bit of a lout; loud-voiced, less than suave and a trifle louche'. Saturday's visit was the perfect power level, though: fun and energetic without ever getting too far over the top. Here's our Little Missy with Etzion Rava, two divas in the making if ever I saw them. Don't they have great smiles?
So everyone played with everyone, admired the home improvement, and - wonder of wonders - the Ravas offered to sit our two littlies for an hour so we could go out and have a nice dinner.

So we did! Nothing fancy, just wandered over to North Denver, not too far from the Peeper's beloved Kelli's house, for some mighty damn fine Korean sushi at Ukiyoe - better known up here in North Portland as the "Teriyaki Steakhouse" with dimmer lights and some tarted-up decor. But the sake' was hot, the sushi cold and the conversation delightfully...adult...shall we say? Okay, innuendo aside, it was nice to actually get to look my bride in the eyes for more than a moment!

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The really amazing thing is that we got back to find our little girl....(you remember her, the poor little orphan child who can't go a moment without her mommy or daddy right there? Whose entire raison d'etre is "Stranger Danger"?)...asleep on Mama Rava's chest. I mean, I knew that they'd played and had fun and generally gotten on pretty wall...but...wow. This is a good sign. I hope this means that our little girl is starting to feel more loved and secure. That would be a Good Thing...

Oh, and just in case you haven't looked at a calendar lately...

It's getting to be awful Halloweeny...
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My understanding from the critter on the left is that the Peeper is a dinosaur, not a dragon. He is quite insistent on that point. Peeposaurus is going to need so serious pinning/sewing if he doesn't want to come out of his costume on Halloween night.
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Miss Rava's ensemble is a stunning creation of La Salon du Peep, that is to say, it's his LAST year's H-ween costume. I like it with a feminine twist, I must say...

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So anyway, that was a fun end to a busy Saturday (we also went to the Truck Petting Zoo at the Children's Museum - at least Peep and Mojo did; I sat inside the Honda in the rain and read Naomi Novik's latest Alternative Napoleonic dragon-tale Empire of Ivory with a sleeping mei-mei in the back). So today was always going to start as a bit of an anticlimax...

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Peep enjoyed his scrambled egg (since Shaomei had one he had to have one, too)

Little Miss carefully inspected the newly-rearranged toys (since the Peep objects to her playing with his stuff we've had to move the boy-toys into his room, leaving only the unisex playthings in the front bookcase)...we had already been up at 5, back to sleep until 7, up again and then out to our St. John's Starbucks for a latte' (for Daddy), a steamer (for Missy) and the sunday papers, then back home by 9. And they used to say that the Army "did more before 8 in the morning"...

Mommy sprawled in a chair, somewhat exhausted already from refereeing the Peeper-and-Mei-mei Championship Fight all morning. Poor woman - she's looking at a week alone with these two little terrors...I go back to work full time tomorrow.

And the Daddy, seen here, attempts to put the notion of quiet, adult conversation and life without diapers deep in a locked closet at the back of his mind.

And Miss Lily is starting to wonder is there is a Cat Exchange Program that would enable her to spend the next several years as a convent cat in a Cistercian abbey in Dorset.

Bad kitty! Bad, naughty kitty! Bad, naughty, EVIL kitty! (And don't look at me in that tone of voice...)

I should add that we did have a bit of a nice interlude - went for a rather chilly, rainy walk down at Smith & Bybee Lakes and met two very lovely couples, all four from Taiwan, one pair at the penultimate point of having their first child (she was bloomingly pregnant with a month still to go!), the other couple adopting a child from Taiwan. I had heard elsewhere in the IA community that Taiwanese adoption involves presenting your (the adoptive parent's) "case" for adoption to a judge, which frankly sounded quite difficult and potentially risky to me. The couple - presently in the early stages of paperchasing - seemed to feel very confident about their process. Very cool. Foolishly, we didn't get names or contact info - they seemed like very good people and I wish we had a way to find out if we could become better aquainted with them. A pox on these missed opportunities!

Oh, well. A childish life it is for me. Have a nice week - I'll try and be back on schedule with another post Wednesday!