Meimei Turns 5

It's hard to believe that Meimei is 5. Well, actually, I think she is probably a few months younger than that. The orphanages in China do not set much store by accurate record-keeping, and indeed the workers, with dozens or hundreds of children to deal with, probably do not have the time to keep track. Some anecdotal accounts indicate that random birth dates are assigned, but every orphanage is different and surely the intake procedures vary. Someday, we might have more information, but it's something to hope for, no something to count on.
With Meimei's birthday coming the day after school started, she maintained she was four-and-a-half until the last second, confusing some folks in Kindergarten who asked how old she was!

She had a very small family celebration with a special dinner (ok, it was Slacker Mom pizza and wings) and a cake sprinkled with tooth-shattering multicolored candy doggie bones. It was a lovely party, but something very important was missing. Daddy. He set off from his office by car at 4 for the 7:30 p.m. celebration. At 9:20 he had not called. Calls to his office and his cell phone and texts were unanswered. Dad turned up around 10, well past bedtime, bearing a sweet music box that played "Fur Elise" (can't find the umlaut). he had been waylaid by flooding that closed the roads, more than doubling the two-hour commute.  That same morning he had driven from home to the office after having come home for the first day of school. The backing and forthing is putting a lot of miles on Dad and on the car, which is truly a lemon and one that is racking up repair bills that are coming close to what we paid for it three years ago.

What's the solution? Pull the kids out of the school where TJ is finally at ease and Meimei has just begun? Where Jiejie is excelling and feeling secure? Put the house on the market and sell low and buy high? It is going to be hard to find a community as comfortable as this one, where everything is just right.

In the meantime, we are hoping Meimei will begin to accept her classmates as her new friends so we can have a real birthday party. She persuaded me to buy a boxful of themed favors online for a big puppy party, but she only wants to invite 5 children from her preschool, none of whom have turned up at our public school. She is starting to make friends, boys first of course, although there is a little girl in her class who may have been adopted from China or Vietnam. Meimei said, "She is my friend, but I free-got her name." I asked if she was from China. "Yes," Meimei told me matter-of-factly. How do you know, I asked. "Mom, I'm form China too, you know!"