I've got to admit, Dave and I were both pretty surprised. But we will be welcome girl #3 into our family in early May. Dave lost 100 RMB in the office pool, and we proved the Chinese prophesy correct.
Dave's Chinese co-worker congratulated him, telling him that three golden flowers is very lucky.
Dave says that we should get a boy dog. Some day.
The girls are very happy. Lilly says we should name her Sally. Sophia says we should name her Pizza. The floor is still open to suggestions.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Impressively, This is a First
My brother is coming to visit. He forwarded me his itinerary, which had the date January 18th written on the top. I checked the flight information. I checked the time. I put it all on my calendar. I told the girls - we counted down every day for the last week. I told Dave - he moved his schedule around, and pushed everything forward yesterday.
Dave got home right on time. The girls had their shoes and coats on. We've got our passes in our pockets, ready to take the Metro out to the airport and meet Uncle Adam. And then Dave says,
Do you wanna make sure his flight will arrive on time?
Good idea, I says.
So I log onto Northwest Airlines' website, and put in his flight number.
It says there is no such flight number today.
So then I start to get mad. Its time for us to be rushing out the door, and this stupid website won't process a simple flight number.
I move back to the itinerary Adam emailed to me. I find the flight number. I don't look at the date - why would I? I copy the flight number, and paste it into Northwest's website.
It still says there is no such flight number today.
Okay, now I'm getting really mad. This is ridiculous - an obvious next failure of the airline industry. They can't even run a simple website to track incoming flights?
I search for the flight by city. I say he's flying from Chicago to Shanghai.
The website says he would fly from Chicago to Detroit today, and then fly from Detroit to Shanghai - landing tomorrow.
Still not processing a date error, I see that I've entered the wrong city. But I had the right flight number! So, I now search for the flight by the correct city. I say he's flying from Detroit to Shanghai.
And this is where my heart skipped a beat.
Without any dispute, his flight would not be arriving that evening.
I checked his itinerary.
True enough. He left Kansas City on January 18th, to arrive in Shanghai on January 19th.
And the interesting question here is,
Had we not checked the flight information, we would not have known his flight would not arrive today.
How long would we have waited at the airport for him to walk through the customs doors?
Dave got home right on time. The girls had their shoes and coats on. We've got our passes in our pockets, ready to take the Metro out to the airport and meet Uncle Adam. And then Dave says,
Do you wanna make sure his flight will arrive on time?
Good idea, I says.
So I log onto Northwest Airlines' website, and put in his flight number.
It says there is no such flight number today.
So then I start to get mad. Its time for us to be rushing out the door, and this stupid website won't process a simple flight number.
I move back to the itinerary Adam emailed to me. I find the flight number. I don't look at the date - why would I? I copy the flight number, and paste it into Northwest's website.
It still says there is no such flight number today.
Okay, now I'm getting really mad. This is ridiculous - an obvious next failure of the airline industry. They can't even run a simple website to track incoming flights?
I search for the flight by city. I say he's flying from Chicago to Shanghai.
The website says he would fly from Chicago to Detroit today, and then fly from Detroit to Shanghai - landing tomorrow.
Still not processing a date error, I see that I've entered the wrong city. But I had the right flight number! So, I now search for the flight by the correct city. I say he's flying from Detroit to Shanghai.
And this is where my heart skipped a beat.
Without any dispute, his flight would not be arriving that evening.
I checked his itinerary.
True enough. He left Kansas City on January 18th, to arrive in Shanghai on January 19th.
And the interesting question here is,
Had we not checked the flight information, we would not have known his flight would not arrive today.
How long would we have waited at the airport for him to walk through the customs doors?
What We've Been Reading
Whether or not the Foreign Service invites Dave to Washington this summer, our time in China is drawing to a close. Dave's contract with Uncle H-- ends on October 1. As Uncle H-- does not know of his Foreign Service plans, the time has come to draw up plans for after the completion of his contract in Shanghai and his time in China. Dave needs to decide whether to focus on an international career within his company, looking into possibilities in Brazil and Switzerland; or to focus on changing careers entirely, and simply asking Uncle H-- to move us back to Chicago this summer.
Either way, its time we read all of our books on China. This should keep each of us busy for a few months, so those seeking a complete Chinese bibliography should be pleased. I just finished two.
Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler
I read and reviewed Hessler's debut book, River Town, about 2 years ago. I loved the book and decided that Hessler is one of the best writers on modern China. And so I eagerly picked up his sophomore attempt, Oracle Bones, a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Bestseller. Hessler writes well, and I always enjoy reading his narrative style. He also does his homework, writing informative pieces based on piles of research. And thirdly, he really understands modern China. Hessler first arrived in China in the mid-90s, landing in rural Sichuan where he taught English has a Peace Corps volunteer. He learned to read and write in Mandarin, and also developed strong, trusting and lasting relationships with a number of his Chinese students. Oracle Bones displays all of these strengths, as Hessler weaves his various journalistic writings and historical research into one book. At each point, his stories are interesting to read. But I felt that the whole book lacked organization, and came across more as a haphazard collection of pieces rather than one whole. This bothered me less as I neared the end of the book, but primarily because he ended with his strongest pieces. The recent history of Chinese characters really captured my attention. For the mood of China over the past few years, this is a strong resource. For a good read, this book is disorganized and feels hectic.
Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays by Bill Holm
I first learned about Bill Holm's book from Hessler's bibliography. Holm traveled to Xi'an, China to teach English in the 1980s. The country was a different place then than now, and Holm well captures a particular place in a changing time. His book is more journal than story of place, and his organization feels contrived. Still, Holms is a good storyteller and he also paints a wonderful picture of what China feels like beneath the shiny glaze which Shanghai displays and the struggling superpower the international media portrays. For one individual's picture of Xi'an, China, well told and easy to read, this is a good choice.
Either way, its time we read all of our books on China. This should keep each of us busy for a few months, so those seeking a complete Chinese bibliography should be pleased. I just finished two.
Oracle Bones by Peter HesslerI read and reviewed Hessler's debut book, River Town, about 2 years ago. I loved the book and decided that Hessler is one of the best writers on modern China. And so I eagerly picked up his sophomore attempt, Oracle Bones, a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Bestseller. Hessler writes well, and I always enjoy reading his narrative style. He also does his homework, writing informative pieces based on piles of research. And thirdly, he really understands modern China. Hessler first arrived in China in the mid-90s, landing in rural Sichuan where he taught English has a Peace Corps volunteer. He learned to read and write in Mandarin, and also developed strong, trusting and lasting relationships with a number of his Chinese students. Oracle Bones displays all of these strengths, as Hessler weaves his various journalistic writings and historical research into one book. At each point, his stories are interesting to read. But I felt that the whole book lacked organization, and came across more as a haphazard collection of pieces rather than one whole. This bothered me less as I neared the end of the book, but primarily because he ended with his strongest pieces. The recent history of Chinese characters really captured my attention. For the mood of China over the past few years, this is a strong resource. For a good read, this book is disorganized and feels hectic.
Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of China Essays by Bill HolmI first learned about Bill Holm's book from Hessler's bibliography. Holm traveled to Xi'an, China to teach English in the 1980s. The country was a different place then than now, and Holm well captures a particular place in a changing time. His book is more journal than story of place, and his organization feels contrived. Still, Holms is a good storyteller and he also paints a wonderful picture of what China feels like beneath the shiny glaze which Shanghai displays and the struggling superpower the international media portrays. For one individual's picture of Xi'an, China, well told and easy to read, this is a good choice.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Just Another Food Blog
When we first came to China, I didn't know how to cook. I believe I admitted this in an early posting - The Shanghai Kitchen Contest - where I asked for suggestions on fixing dinner with only a stovetop, a wok and a rice cooker. People came through with very few suggestions, but one friend put me in my place. He emailed that I could always just throw some rice, veggies and meat into the wok and create a simple stir-fry. His answer left me flummoxed - which veggies? how to cook the rice? what to do with the meat? I really didn't know how to cook when we came to Shanghai.
And now, after nearly 3 years in this town, I seem to have figured a few things out. Primarily out of necessity, I'll admit. The convenience foods are mighty expensive here, and it is much more cost effective to make your own pasta sauce and pumpkin pie. But the shops just don't hit the right chord here, either. If you want good wheat bread or brownies, you've got to make them yourself. And so I do.
Yesterday, I made homemade chicken nuggets for dinner, and then spent the evening making honey wheat bread from scratch, filling in the rising time with a batch of double chocolate cookies. Today is not so impressive - I ate the double chocolate cookies, and we had strawberries and whipped creme for dinner. The way we live when Dave is away.
Still, I am happy with this progression. Before, I needed a recipe to fix a good dinner. Now, I enjoy a good recipe, but I can also pull dinner together based on what is on the shelves. Before, I couldn't imagine finding the time to bake a loaf of bread. Now, baking bread seems simple and just requires a bit of forethought and a decent memory for time.
I've toyed with adding recipes to this blog, or at least stories about cooking. I toyed with this as I made caramel from scratch last weekend - yum! and beautifully simple. At some point I may, but at this point I'd feel like a hack. Anything truly impressive that I do comes from Simply Recipes or Cooks Illustrated, so anything worth writing and photographing would be a simple copy. Maybe upon arrival in a new land, my cooking stories will be more worth sharing.
The older my girls get, the more I have time for indulging hobbies like cooking and photography. And I'm quite pleased to say that the time is beginning to pay off. Unfortunately, the girls get older and they both talk more and nap less. The disappearance of the nap has led directly to a drop in blog entries. You'll have to bear with me until A: life becomes more interesting again, or B: the talkers spend more than a few hours per week in school. I may not have many stories for show for my time, and I won't soon be adding a food section, but there are some awfully tasty cookies in the kitchen!
Monday, January 11, 2010
One Decision Made
The Foreign Service holds training courses for them incoming officers about every 6 weeks or so. Invitations have already been sent and accepted to the January and February classes. The March class will begin on March 29. I would be 33 weeks pregnant. The following class begins on May 18. We expect to have a 1 week old baby at that time, so the May class has been off the table for nearly 5 months now. The June class begins on June 21.
We had been hoping that Dave would receive his Security Clearance in enough time to be invited to the March class. This is still a possibility. The crew in charge of clearing Dave have finished their investigations, and placed his file in a pile called Adjucations. This is the period of time where they decide whether or not to clear a person. People with clean records skip Adjudications, and go straight from Investigations to Cleared. People with foreign spouses, extensive travel, and connections in China tend toward Adjudications. With two of them three, Dave has already spent 5 months in Adjudications. We don't expect him to spend much longer here - Security Clearance could come any day now. We feel quite confident he will have his Security Clearance within the next 2 months - by March.
So, the question often arises for us. If offered a position in the March class, will Dave accept? The advantages are many:
- Dave moves out of a job he doesn't like, and begins his new career sooner.
- We deliver Jake in the states, at a hospital with a low infant mortality rate, and near our family.
- We can attend Dave's family reunion in May.
- We have all of our baby gear nearby, and easy access to stores which sell Pampers and Enfamil.
But would I rather move at 30 weeks pregnant, or with a 3 week old child? New moms may be amazed, but the old pros would agree - the 3 week old child is much easier. Plus, the advantages of delivering in Shanghai are many as well:
- Although Dave would be in a great new job, he would also have zero days of vacation. Think unpaid family leave, where we would have to reimburse the government for our housing on a daily basis. Here, he looks forward to nearly 3 weeks of vacation for the new little one.
- I have a great support group here. Although I look forward to meeting up with some wonderful friends in DC, I have some wonderful friends here as well. They will help with my kids, they will surround our family with prayer, and they may even cook for us sometimes!
- Wendy. While in Shanghai, we have someone who cooks and cleans for us, does all of our laundry and dishes, can pick up the girls from school and even get them dressed in the morning. Wendy knows our routines, she knows what we like, she knows our family and she knows how to help. In the states, our bathrooms would get filthy and our laundry would pile up at the arrival of a newborn - but now here!
- Tiny Tots. Lilly and Sophia can continue to attend school every day, offering a basic piece of continuity in their lives while they adjust to the new baby. That way we put off moving until school finishes for the year. Were we to move to DC early, I face delivering a baby with 2 children out of school. We move over the summer, and we've got better chances and seeing them each begin school in the fall, and meanwhile finding plenty of summertime playmates.
The list is certainly longer on the Shanghai side. Add to that how comfortable I am with my doctor, and that my hospital meets all Western accredidation standards. Our healthy baby will greet the world with no problems at all.
So, we've settled on the perfect timing. Dave's security clearance has 2-3 more months to come through, and then he can be invited to the June or July classes. If we're lucky, we might even make it back in time for the family reunion!
We had been hoping that Dave would receive his Security Clearance in enough time to be invited to the March class. This is still a possibility. The crew in charge of clearing Dave have finished their investigations, and placed his file in a pile called Adjucations. This is the period of time where they decide whether or not to clear a person. People with clean records skip Adjudications, and go straight from Investigations to Cleared. People with foreign spouses, extensive travel, and connections in China tend toward Adjudications. With two of them three, Dave has already spent 5 months in Adjudications. We don't expect him to spend much longer here - Security Clearance could come any day now. We feel quite confident he will have his Security Clearance within the next 2 months - by March.
So, the question often arises for us. If offered a position in the March class, will Dave accept? The advantages are many:
- Dave moves out of a job he doesn't like, and begins his new career sooner.
- We deliver Jake in the states, at a hospital with a low infant mortality rate, and near our family.
- We can attend Dave's family reunion in May.
- We have all of our baby gear nearby, and easy access to stores which sell Pampers and Enfamil.
But would I rather move at 30 weeks pregnant, or with a 3 week old child? New moms may be amazed, but the old pros would agree - the 3 week old child is much easier. Plus, the advantages of delivering in Shanghai are many as well:
- Although Dave would be in a great new job, he would also have zero days of vacation. Think unpaid family leave, where we would have to reimburse the government for our housing on a daily basis. Here, he looks forward to nearly 3 weeks of vacation for the new little one.
- I have a great support group here. Although I look forward to meeting up with some wonderful friends in DC, I have some wonderful friends here as well. They will help with my kids, they will surround our family with prayer, and they may even cook for us sometimes!
- Wendy. While in Shanghai, we have someone who cooks and cleans for us, does all of our laundry and dishes, can pick up the girls from school and even get them dressed in the morning. Wendy knows our routines, she knows what we like, she knows our family and she knows how to help. In the states, our bathrooms would get filthy and our laundry would pile up at the arrival of a newborn - but now here!
- Tiny Tots. Lilly and Sophia can continue to attend school every day, offering a basic piece of continuity in their lives while they adjust to the new baby. That way we put off moving until school finishes for the year. Were we to move to DC early, I face delivering a baby with 2 children out of school. We move over the summer, and we've got better chances and seeing them each begin school in the fall, and meanwhile finding plenty of summertime playmates.
The list is certainly longer on the Shanghai side. Add to that how comfortable I am with my doctor, and that my hospital meets all Western accredidation standards. Our healthy baby will greet the world with no problems at all.
So, we've settled on the perfect timing. Dave's security clearance has 2-3 more months to come through, and then he can be invited to the June or July classes. If we're lucky, we might even make it back in time for the family reunion!
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Baby News
The announcement about Jake's May arrival has some people worried about Mei Mei, and whether or not she will still be joining our family. The answer is yes. Here's how it shakes out.
When we began the adoption process, we expected to receive Mei Mei right about now. Paperwork had been taking about 6 months, and expedited families usually picked up their child about 1 year after having submitted their paperwork. Those dates should have worked out to December 2009.
However, the Hague treaty foiled us a bit, causing our paperwork to take 10 months rather than 6. And the Chinese government seems to have put a hold on expedited families. For many months, no expedited families received a match. And so that wait grew from 1 year to 15 months, and then 18 months, and then 20 months.
We looked at our family. The way this gap continued to grow, we could easily be facing a 3 year wait. With that, Sophia would be 6 years old when we finally picked up Mei Mei, and Lilly would be 7. That gap was not how we envisioned our family, and hence Jake. We prayerfully decided that we should just pop another kid into the middle there, and even out the numbers a bit.
Pregnancy has no major impact on the legalities and details of our adoption. It means that we need to file some extra paperwork, and it puts us under one stipulation: Jake must be at least 12 months old when we receive Mei Mei. Fine by us, I say. Mei Mei will be between 6 and 9 months old, and we're all too glad to have an enforced gap - however big or small it may be. We also have the option of voluntarily extending our wait time by 6 months - this would not keep Mei Mei in an institution for 6 months, but simply keep us on the list longer.
Finally, we received word this week that a few expedited families had been matched to their child. It seems that the wait time for them was about 22 months. That will be our minimum, with the possibility that it could rise over the next 1-2 years. So, here's the timeline:
2010, May - Jake is born
2010, June - We hope to move to DC
2011, Jan. - We likely move to our first posting
2011, Jan. - 22 months from when we logged in our paperwork
under this, the shortest expected time span, we would choose to extend by 6 months
2011, May - Jake is 12 months old
2011, July - 22 + 6 months from when we logged in our paperwork
We potentially receive match info for Mei Mei
2011, Aug. - We travel to China and pick up Mei Mei, who will be between 6 and 10 months old
Under this scenario, here's the family lineup. In August of 2011,
Lilly will be 6 years old
Sophia will be 4.5 years old
Jake will be 15 months old
Mei Mei will be 6-10 months old
For those of you hard up for calculators or calendars, that is a 5-9 month gap between Jake and Mei Mei. But luckily, as Jake will be born near the end of the school year, they would land in different school years. Once they reach school age, they would become 1 year apart rather than simply a few months.
This is not exactly the gap we were hoping for. A difference of about 18-24 months would be preferable, but we trust God's timing in each of these dates. And hope to live somewhere we can both A: afford household help and B: host grandparents / aunts & uncles / friends who like to help out for long periods of time.
When we began the adoption process, we expected to receive Mei Mei right about now. Paperwork had been taking about 6 months, and expedited families usually picked up their child about 1 year after having submitted their paperwork. Those dates should have worked out to December 2009.
However, the Hague treaty foiled us a bit, causing our paperwork to take 10 months rather than 6. And the Chinese government seems to have put a hold on expedited families. For many months, no expedited families received a match. And so that wait grew from 1 year to 15 months, and then 18 months, and then 20 months.
We looked at our family. The way this gap continued to grow, we could easily be facing a 3 year wait. With that, Sophia would be 6 years old when we finally picked up Mei Mei, and Lilly would be 7. That gap was not how we envisioned our family, and hence Jake. We prayerfully decided that we should just pop another kid into the middle there, and even out the numbers a bit.
Pregnancy has no major impact on the legalities and details of our adoption. It means that we need to file some extra paperwork, and it puts us under one stipulation: Jake must be at least 12 months old when we receive Mei Mei. Fine by us, I say. Mei Mei will be between 6 and 9 months old, and we're all too glad to have an enforced gap - however big or small it may be. We also have the option of voluntarily extending our wait time by 6 months - this would not keep Mei Mei in an institution for 6 months, but simply keep us on the list longer.
Finally, we received word this week that a few expedited families had been matched to their child. It seems that the wait time for them was about 22 months. That will be our minimum, with the possibility that it could rise over the next 1-2 years. So, here's the timeline:
2010, May - Jake is born
2010, June - We hope to move to DC
2011, Jan. - We likely move to our first posting
2011, Jan. - 22 months from when we logged in our paperwork
under this, the shortest expected time span, we would choose to extend by 6 months
2011, May - Jake is 12 months old
2011, July - 22 + 6 months from when we logged in our paperwork
We potentially receive match info for Mei Mei
2011, Aug. - We travel to China and pick up Mei Mei, who will be between 6 and 10 months old
Under this scenario, here's the family lineup. In August of 2011,
Lilly will be 6 years old
Sophia will be 4.5 years old
Jake will be 15 months old
Mei Mei will be 6-10 months old
For those of you hard up for calculators or calendars, that is a 5-9 month gap between Jake and Mei Mei. But luckily, as Jake will be born near the end of the school year, they would land in different school years. Once they reach school age, they would become 1 year apart rather than simply a few months.
This is not exactly the gap we were hoping for. A difference of about 18-24 months would be preferable, but we trust God's timing in each of these dates. And hope to live somewhere we can both A: afford household help and B: host grandparents / aunts & uncles / friends who like to help out for long periods of time.
Monday, January 04, 2010
You Can Go Back
Many of my friends in Shanghai discuss how you can never go back. My friend Ann is a perfect example of feelings many of us share. She comes from a small town in Ohio - the type of small town where people grow up, marry, and live through their retirement. Simply by choosing to move abroad, they became vastly different from their Ohio neighbors.
Further, she had worked full-time in Ohio. But in Shanghai, she lives as a tai tai, running her household, caring for her kids, and joining the ladies for Bible Study and charity events.
Her family dynamics changed as well. Her son left his small Ohio school for a large international school. And her step-daughters came to live with them full-time, because a weekends-only arrangement doesn't work when an ocean separates the two parents.
Their family dynamics have changed dramatically over the past few years, and each of those changes have led to a happy family. But the thought of returning to Ohio brings to mind the classic phrase, you can never go back. How to return to small-town, weekends-only life after what their family has become?
I often wonder the same about our family. When we left St. Louis, we had two very young children. Dave and I were still social animals, often having our weekends planned to the hour and relying on the grandparent babysitters down the street. We made entirely adult choices, and we enjoyed our lives and our friends. And like Ann, we are certainly the only of our friends to make the choice to live abroad. When will our trips home begin to feel less like home?
After 2 weeks spent in St. Louis and immersed in our old life, I've concluded that we are luckier than Ann. Our family has changed dramatically - Dave's and my roles inside our family have changed, the types of friends we have become are radically different, and having older children affects all of our choices now. But the same type of changes have happened to many of our friends. I sat to dinner with a few ladies from our home church. I shared some of our changes, some of our challenges, and some of the craziness of our current life. But so did each of the other ladies at the table. New babies had been born, houses had been bought and sold, the economy had changed and jobs had been impacted.
Maybe I'm lucky - my friends are in that same stage of life, where family and career grow and change quickly. And maybe being from the city helps - change can't happen fast enough on the run-down streets of St. Louis. But after dinner with a few friends, I am quite confident. We could move back to St. Louis and fall back into our old life quite happily.
We won't; but we could. And how comforting to know that home still awaits, and will for a long time to come.
Further, she had worked full-time in Ohio. But in Shanghai, she lives as a tai tai, running her household, caring for her kids, and joining the ladies for Bible Study and charity events.
Her family dynamics changed as well. Her son left his small Ohio school for a large international school. And her step-daughters came to live with them full-time, because a weekends-only arrangement doesn't work when an ocean separates the two parents.
Their family dynamics have changed dramatically over the past few years, and each of those changes have led to a happy family. But the thought of returning to Ohio brings to mind the classic phrase, you can never go back. How to return to small-town, weekends-only life after what their family has become?
I often wonder the same about our family. When we left St. Louis, we had two very young children. Dave and I were still social animals, often having our weekends planned to the hour and relying on the grandparent babysitters down the street. We made entirely adult choices, and we enjoyed our lives and our friends. And like Ann, we are certainly the only of our friends to make the choice to live abroad. When will our trips home begin to feel less like home?
After 2 weeks spent in St. Louis and immersed in our old life, I've concluded that we are luckier than Ann. Our family has changed dramatically - Dave's and my roles inside our family have changed, the types of friends we have become are radically different, and having older children affects all of our choices now. But the same type of changes have happened to many of our friends. I sat to dinner with a few ladies from our home church. I shared some of our changes, some of our challenges, and some of the craziness of our current life. But so did each of the other ladies at the table. New babies had been born, houses had been bought and sold, the economy had changed and jobs had been impacted.
Maybe I'm lucky - my friends are in that same stage of life, where family and career grow and change quickly. And maybe being from the city helps - change can't happen fast enough on the run-down streets of St. Louis. But after dinner with a few friends, I am quite confident. We could move back to St. Louis and fall back into our old life quite happily.
We won't; but we could. And how comforting to know that home still awaits, and will for a long time to come.
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