Snowbound

A noodle joint in Guangzhou where TJ told the waitresses: "No vegetables."

This morning TJ greeted the day singing -- a wordless version of the "Barney" theme song that Meimei has been singing to him in her own Chinese rendition. He came into Mom and Dad's room to play, and soon he and the sisters were playing Frisbee with a plastic plate and taking down unanchored objects. I put an end to that, after which he and Meimei tried to play catch with a 10-lb. medicine ball. These kids definitely need to be outside.
TJ's English is progressing from his first  sentence, "I want cookie." He can ask for noodles and ask his sisters if they want to play. He can say "please" and "thank you" when he thinks of it and has started calling his hero Spongebob by his English name. Tonight we read "Goodnight Moon" twice, and he loved it as much as Jiejie had as a baby. He repeated as many words as he could of that book and "Green Eggs and Ham" and a picture book of fruit.
Jiejie is picking up a few Chinese words and phrases in her efforts to talk to TJ and to help him. This morning, however, she confided to me that she missed our family "the way it used to be." Of course this may be no different than her somewhat less subtle protestations against the arrival of Meimei, most notably a sheet of paper shoved under the door that said, "NO BABY."
To compound the cabin fever, the snow removal guy failed to show up. He said the transmission died in his truck, so, barring an unexpected thaw, we probably aren't straying too far from home tomorrow, either.

Viruses and Blizzards and Tantrums, Oh My!

Sorry for the lack of posts and photos. Some photos are trapped in our phones. And then there is the matter of time. Mommy spent at least three hours rubbing Jiejie's tummy today before she spewed the prunes we had fed her. She got the tummy thing a day after TJ and Meimei did. TJ is taking his antibiotics for his sinus infection, but Mommy and Daddy haven't been to the doctor yet for their own sniffles. There are Bendaroos underfoot and heaps of tiny parts to various toys that have migrated around the house since Christmas morning. There is little chance of escaping, however, as the snow is piling up outside, and the wind is roaring around the house and whooshing down the flue.

This was TJ's first snow. We managed to get him bundled up and let the kids go out for a few minutes (before Clare got sick). He stood at the door repeating "Wow! Wow!" He told us that snow tastes like ice cream (he had already seen "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" at the hotel in China). He really enjoyed those few icy minutes, but the rest of the day was not such fun for him. He did not want to brush his teeth, and spent a long time crying and arguing about it in Chinese. He did not like the noodles I made him because they had eggs in them (he always eats noodles with eggs in them), because I did not drain the soup out and because they were a different color than Meimei's. (She likes hers with "panda sauce," which  think is actually oyster sauce with a panda on the label.)  He doesn't want to sleep in his room. The girls don't want to sleep in their rooms. Five people is too many for our bed, and we promised the social worker we would end the co-sleeping before TJ came. We had made great strides toward ending it, but two weeks in China with a choice of a king bed or two twins reinforced old habits, and now we are fighting the battle of the beds again with a bunch of jet-lagged, tummy-troubled kids. Daddy picked up TJ and carried him to his bed after he fell asleep, but TJ awoke and began a tearful debate on the floor of the upstairs hall. He said he is afraid to sleep in his room, he wants to sleep with the mom and dad he turns his back to when he deigns to address them. We know that none of this is unusual for a child adopted at TJ's age, and that he will test us and challenge us and try to keep us from loving him. He's working very hard at it. We have to work just as hard to convince him that we will keep loving him no matter what.

The Unreliable Narrator

TJ is watching the Tom and Jerry "Nutcracker" for the third time. Jiejie and Meimei  zonked out on the sofa a while ago. We were expecting Daddy at 7:30, but so far he's a no-show. Looks like that Christmas tree will go undecorated one more night. TJ's long-lashed eyelids are fluttering closed, too. We have been communicating a little better when no one is around to translate. When one of our Mandarin-speaking helpers is here, TJ is overflowing with questions. We have put a few questions to him as well. Today he complained about the bacon, eggs and pancakes on his plate but ate bananas and grapes. I asked him, through Haley, what he used to eat for breakfast in China. "Mei you," he said. Nothing.
Earlier, I patted his head, which was close-cropped when we met him but is starting to grow out. "Do you want to be a long-haired boy?" I asked. Yuanfang translated the question. "Only girls have long hair," was his reply. We had been told, however, that he hated haircuts and after the last one had bemoaned his lost hair and asked that it be returned. "Oh," I said "I thought you hated haircuts." Sure enough, he agreed that he does. At bath time he had a tantrum over hair-washing. It seems that in China no one has to wash their hair. He was assured that in the U.S. the hair-washing customs were far different.
Yesterday he cried for some treat he had been denied. "Did China Mama give you a treat every time you cried?" Haley asked him for me. "China Mama never gave me anything," he said of his foster mom. "She was no good." Hmm. I wonder what he's telling people about me.

Straight on Till Morning

It's 2:38 and everyone's awake. Not exactly the super-regular schedule recommended in the books for kids like TJ.  We had a midnight breakfast to make up for the dinner everyone slept through in piles on the sofas. The teeth have been brushed, TJ's with great opposition. He refused to put on pajamas. He is clutching a bag of cough drops like a kid in a Ricola commercial, acting out another ownership/control issue, and having a mini-tantrum downstairs with Daddy. I want to sleep. Meimei wants to watch "Kipper," Jiejie wants Meimei to sleep over in her new bunk beds.

Note for morning: look up ownership/control/hoarding and review chapter on how to set up a rigid schedule.

Home at Last

We're baaaaacckkkk! We arrived home last night and the kids and I were awake at 4:45 a.m. They are now sated after waffles and fruit salad and watching Spongebob (or baobao, if you're TJ). He seems very happy and comfortable at home even though we have only been here about 7 hours (is that possible?). This morning TJ let me hug him, told me he loved me and beamed as he played with his sisters. He's working on whistling and marveling at the toys and books, although he seems to have a very short attention span for being read to. We'll have to trot out the flash cards later today. We also need to buy a Christmas tree, drag the disabled laptop to the Apple store and prepare for TJ's birthday on Dec. 21, but we need to do all of this in as quiet and low key a way as possible. TJ definitely feels most confident in a home environment without too much stimulation (or in a plane, with blanket, slippers and headphones,  but that's another story!).
For most kids adopted internationally, becoming a citizen is easy under current law: just walk through immigration, hand over the famous brown envelope, and poof! you're a citizen (oops, TJ just landed on his bottom on the keyboard!), but for us it was a bit of a trial. We had told TJ through Yuanfang about the strict rules for behavior on the plane. He relinquished all the bottles of Gatorade he had hoarded in his backpack. He was terrific from the hotel in Hong Kong to the Airport Express train to the plane to Taipei to the long-haul flight to Newark. Then the meltdown. He sat on the floor in the fast-moving immigration line, annoying the people behind us, clutching the water bottle we bought him in Taipei, wearing his jaunty baseball cap. Lots of helpful Chinese people tried to talk him into standing up. He told them all that Mama would not let him drink his water. Finally someone translated. But he did not really want the water. Finally. I began to pick him up and carry him from stop to stop in the lines. (Daddy hurt his elbow and is trying to keep carrying big kids to a minimum). TJ is a bit of a load for me, especially when I have a backpack and carry-on to contend with, so I half-dragged him from place to place to get through immigration. While we were waiting for our papers to be processed, several people asked if everything was OK. Finally a woman who worked for the airline we had taken came and yelled at me telling me I was mistreating my child. I felt such shame and helplessness. She had no idea of the situation, but she kept repeating, "This is not how to treat a child!" And I, like the child abuser caught  in public, told her in equally loud tones that it was none of her business. I have a new understanding of the poeple whose public parenting styles I have frowned on in the past.  Maybe they were just doing the best they could to safely move their child from one pace to another. (I am wincing now at my holier-than-thou attitude toward the woman in the "Wo Ai Ni, Mommy" documentary  who pressed on with the flash cards to teach her daughter English, even when her daughter, the same age as TJ, cried and rebelled and asked why her mom could not learn Chinese instead. It is going to be a day by day effort to equip TJ with what he needs to survive and feel safe and then to succeed. We'll need a lot of help. The woman at the airport continued to follow us around. Instead of carrying or frogmarchin TJ through customs, we sat on the floor of the airport while TJ wailed and the girls began to whine for home. Tianjun wanted Yuanfang, but she had gone through a line for noncitizens and was waiting on another floor. Yuanfang, Ping and Haley have been great, but we may have too much expert help, and perhaps we are allowing TJ to rely on them rather than on his parents. Like the classic unattached child, he prefers any stranger to us and does not trust anything we (or Ping or Yuanfang or Haley) tell him, and checks it with several sources, good preparation for journalism or detective work, but first we need to get over the hurdle of school.

It's great to be home with the literal obstacle of travel  behind us. Now the real work (and fun) begins.

Wired

Sorry about the lack of communication. I’m happy to say the difficulties are only technical. One lost video camera, one lost Eye-Fi card, one fried hard drive (the one that had the VPN connection that allowed us to access the blog and Facebook). We’re back up thanks to helpers at home.


It’s another chilly, rainy night in Guangzhou. TJ spent most of the big group dinner sitting on the floor of the restaurant pouting. Not screaming, however. At least not for long. He has made huge behavioral strides each day and seems to be learning that tantrums will not earn him rewards. His problems, at least what we have seen, seem to be superficial, an emotionally undeveloped little boy acting out. His negativity, his professed hatred of learning, his boasts that he will never go to school, are all belied by his actions, his delight at Starfall.com and Super Why.

Tonight, wrapped in the huge white hotel robes and wearing the disposable slippers, TJ and Jiejie slurped huge cups o’ noodles before bath time. He let Mama hug and kiss him and made prolonged eye contact. Hooray! I don’t think these are the last of our issues by any means, but I am feeling confident that all will be well in the long run.

The Reluctant Rider

This morning TJ did not eat much breakfast. We had to coax, then nearly carry him onto the bus to the park at Baiyuan Mountain. Once we arrived at the gardens, he took lots of photos but wasn't himself, and then, back on the bus, he vomited without telling anyone. Poor kid. During a big, dim sum lunch, which he devoured with surprising alacrity, we borrowed a motion sickness patch from the family of his best buddy, who also hates the bus and taxi and, essentially any means of locomotion. Although this was the first time we had seen symptoms of car sickness in TJ, perhaps the patch will be an answer to at least one aspect of his worries.


At the park, he smiled for pictures, enjoyed the waterfalls and raced with Jiejie, but he also chose to stand in one spot for 20 minutes of the hour we had to explore. On the way out, he screamed and stomped when we did not buy him the most expensive bubbles, telling the vendor the set we got him did not work. When we got back to the hotel, we invited his buddy for a play date. All was well until the buddy left and he and  I took a promised walk to the pool. We never made it. Instead we had a 30-minute tantrum in the lobby of the health spa, much to the distress of the staff.
 TJ tried to pry open the elevator doors, then planted himself in front of them, screaming all the while in Chinese, "Why can't I see my friend? Why? Why?" A difficult question to answer. His friend's father had said they might meet us at the little playground past the pool, but we never got that far. We spent the time sitting on the cold mosaic floor, TJ crying, Mama coaxing, telling TJ how much I loved him, and repeating my other three comforting phrases in Mandarin.
We have never felt the language gap so keenly.

The amazing Ayi Susan, the local representative of our agency, came to the rescue again last night and this afternoon. She has been helping us to prepare TJ for each day's events by talking to him the night before about what's to come. She must never get any sleep.  She has suggested, very gently, that we be more direct in our parenting and that our reliance on our Chinese au pairs and Chinese friend, Ping,  to translate, did not really put us at an advantage. TJ might have understood more of the words, but (oops! stuck in italic) he was engaging with the person talking instead of with Mom and Dad. We are following her advice, and little by little it seems to be changing the course of our bus.

Holy Popcorn, Batman!

No matter how prepared you may think you are, no matter how many books you have read or parenting classes you have taken, you are never really prepared. Especially when it comes to children. TJ has zigzagged from joyful little boy to raging, screaming ... um ... well, he Chinese word he uses for himself, and I hesitate to repeat it here, is "monster" or "ghost."

His latest tantrums were at a noodle restaurant, where he made loud demands of the staff, and at a small grocery store, we he sat down in front of the ice cream freezer (wearing his Batman suit again) curled up into a ball and wailed for 40 minutes when we told him "yi ge bing chi lin" (one ice cream) per day was sufficient.

His behaviors are not unusual for a child who is afraid, confused and unused to family living. When our friend Ping, who is traveling with us for part of the trip, asked him to share with his sisters, he told her he did  not understand the word.

Daddy and I are being very patient, and so are Jiejie and Meimei, but last night's screaming in the store got them scared. No lure, including that ice cream would  get him off the floor.

We're getting used to the reproving stares of Chinese people. I'm finally understanding that it's not that they think we are cruel to our kids but rather that we are too soft. Finally a brawny Canadian came in with his Chinese wife. He suggested that Daddy pick up the 50-pounder and haul him back to the hotel. "Show him who's boss," he said, and gave us his business card with a photo of a much younger man promising a variety of seminars on such topics as Global Crisis Management. And so Daddy took his advice, peeled the wailing masked Batman from the floor, slung him over his shoulder and carried him out and back toward the hotel, drawing approving smiles from Chinese passersby and a lollipop from a woman who stood by to watch the drama. Daddy put TJ down for a momentary rest. He tried to bolt. When grabbed him and he flung himself down on the streetcorner. The girls have never seen their gentle dad behave quite so aggressively. I took them back to the hotel and Daddy followed behind with his kicking screaming superhero. who threw off his shoes and socks on the way. Haley, our new au pair, who had spent the day trying to soothe TJ and reason with him, was with us. She calmly collected his belongings. Thank heaven for her psychology degree!

Once we were back in the room, we called Susan, the local representative of our adoption agency. She came to visit and had a long talk with TJ. Susan is a cheerful, energetic Chinese mom of an adopted child. She is a pretty good guide, but a truly gifted Pied Piper.  She knelt to his level and told hm how much we loved him no matter what, that we were his forever family, the same things we had been telling him ourselves and through  Ping and Haley. She pantomimed a lot of the conversation. He was enraptured. She asked him to try to be quieter, and when he felt frustrated or wanted to scream or thought we did not understand, he could call Ayi Susan. We showed him how to dial her room on the hotel phone. Most amazingly, TJ did not talk back to Susan or tell her hated her or even try to use his considerable talents as a debater to argue with her or call her a liar. She was gentle and kind throughout, talking to TJ as if to a baby. When she was through, she told us one of his friends who lived in a foster home near his and who is physically much smaller and mentally exceptionally imaginative, has been telling him some stories. That he will get shots at the doctor that will kill him, and other charming ideas. Apparently this tiny little lad used to beat him up. Susan is going to try to get us more info on his history to see if that helps. More to come ....

Gaoxing!

The Boy Who Never Smiled

TJ could not believe the gingerbread house was really all made of cookies and candy.

In the handful of photos of TJ we received before we met him, there was not even a hint of a smile. Since Monday we have seen hundreds of smiles, 8-year-old boy smiles showing new front teeth growing in, top and bottom, and just as many tears, some of them surely crocodile tears, but tears nonetheless. And some very loud protestations, most in public places, and a few tantrums, sitting down in the middle of the Guangzhou Women's and Children's Wear Mart, standing up in cab and leaning out the open window, refusing to get on the bus because it frightened him. He told us, in Chinese, that he doesn't want to learn English, he doesn't want to go to school and he doesn't want to eat vegetables. I expect the vegetable ban may be the hardest to crack. He also said he was not a good boy but a monster.

The biggest smiles of the day came when he reconnected with a buddy, a child whose foster family lived next door to TJ's. On Wednesday he had denied knowing Max and even said he hated him. Today, they had a joyful reunion at the waterfall behind the hotel, took off their shoes and socks and plunged their feet into the icy koi pond. Max, who is a year younger, told TJ it was OK to dangle his feet in the water because the koi had only one tooth. TJ replied that one tooth was plenty.

TJ is kind and sweet, always telling us how pretty and cute his sisters are. Meimei is now Xiao Meimei (little younger sister) and Jiejie is now Da Meimei (big younger sister, which may be a promotion of sorts).

At the clothing market we pretty much failed to do any of the tasks we set out to accomplish. We did, however, end up scoring a very hip Batman outfit with hood and mask and two Supergirl dresses, a couple of pairs of pants for TJ, who will only wear sweats, an odd sort of running suit purchased because of the action figure attached, and two frothy party dresses for the girls.  For the rest of the day, TJ was Batman, complete with mask, even at dinner. He conceded to take the mask off for bed tonight.

A grandfatherly merchant, minding his tiny grandson, offered the children balloons while we were shopping. After a lively game of balloon volleyball, TJ kept his balloon firmly under his arm, until we got out the door. The wind snatched it from his grasp, and the balloon bobbed along as TJ vainly chased it, right to the curb of an insanely busy street. We managed to grab him just in time, although we had to hold him tightly for a long while until the balloon was out of sight. "Stop" is the word I forgot to put on my list of essential Chinese vocabulary.

Tonight, after Meimei's nosebleed (in her new party dress) and Jiejie's orange juice regurgitation (Max and TJ were competing to see who could drink a huge glass of orange juice the fastest, and Jiejie beat them both) the girls were asleep and TJ was in bed with Meimei's Leapster Explorer. "One, two, three," I heard him say. "Go!" In my halting Mandarin 101 Chinese, I told him again that I loved him and blew him a kiss. He blew one back. We held hands for a moment, then we played the snoring game, making outrageously loud, whistling snoring noises, then bursting into laughter. Soon, he was asleep, and in a minute, I will be too.

We Are Five

Tianjun and sisters were playing on Mac Photo Booth just a few hours after our meeting. The first few minutes were rather tough. We peeked behind the curtain after all the other kids had come out. Our lad was crying and the orphanage workers were pulling him by both arms.

 Angry Birds on Mommy's iPhone saved the day.  He is a terribly smart lad who at nearly 8 has had absolutely no schooling. We have peeled several layers of sweaters and sweatshirts in this 70-degree heat.

Outlets

Up in the Air

We are settled in for the first leg of our flight on our favorite airline, EVA. Our first stop is Palin Country, a suburb of the former Soviet Union; then Taipei, followed by Hong Kong. The girls have goodie bags with a little doll, cards and some activity books. The smell of dumplings is wafting through the cabin. At least we are hoping it’s dumplings. The dumplings might be for first class only, and we’ll have to settle for wasabi peanuts. Meimei is watching Spongebob. Jiejie is taking the Moron Test on one of the iPods. I think I’ll hook up the headphones and listen to the phrases we are learning to speak to TJ.  11 p.m. ET

One more flight, Taipei to Hong Kong. Meimei is sleeping; Jiejie and I are playing 20 questions. Daddy is reading a Jack Reacher book. Jiejie has discovered beef is ok if you pick out the vegetables and then mix it with rice (we’ll take our nutrition victories where we can get them). We’ll spend the day getting acclimated and sleep over on Lantau Island. We’ve been traveling for 22 hours now, and could use a shower and a bed. On Sunday we’ll take the train to Guangzhou, or perhaps the high-speed ferry. But we’ll be back to Hong Kong for three days before we go home. 

Ready for Takeoff

Jetless Lag

It's way too late to be less than half packed, to have the Christmas and Hanukkah presents piled in the hall in the boxes they were delivered in. There are phone messages left unanswered, laundry not yet washed, and a couple of suitcases missing. We still have not mastered those simple and reassuring Mandarin phrases we have been practicing or rounded up one more set of passport-size photos, or dug up all the books and swimsuits and entertainments for the plane or bought enough little-boy clothes. The Jibbigo translation, most expensive app purchased so far, butchers our English let alone our attempts to see if it can recognize us speaking Chinese. When Meimei tried to say "Wo ai ni," or "I love you," into the microphone, her words were translated as "national security." No, we are not prepared, but we are so ready.