My Beautiful Ballerinas!

Mama bragging rights time again -- another ballet performance has come and gone!  This year, the studio put on Peter Pan, a full ballet, and quite well done.  Zoe was a mermaid and Maya a lilac.  Zoe also took a turn as one of the "big girls" who got to help the little girls -- Zoe helped the 5 and 6 year old daffodils.  The first two photos are backstage before today's performance, the last two from the dress rehearsal.

Zoe was in her element as the boss -- she lives to be the boss of SOMEONE and this time it wasn't Maya and it wasn't ME!  Poor little daffodils. . . . Being a mermaid was also cool -- she got to have a ponytail instead of a bun, got glitter on her arms and shoulders, and got to dive through the waves (the "waves" were long lengths of cloth that even bigger girls got to shake and shimmy).

Maya had a ball -- her class was well versed enough in their dance not to need big girls to help them!  She did a great job in her dance, and managed to avoid the usual 6-year-old ballerina faux pas -- she didn't pick her nose or pick any costume parts out of any place unmentionable! 

All joking aside, they were really remarkably beautiful and talented up there.  I was so proud of both of them!

Spring Photos

Just because . . . .

Snow! In Texas! Really!

Zoe, Maya, and our neighbor, Harper, managed to make a snowman that was taller than at least one of them! That's unprecedented for us -- we usually have to scrape up every little bit of white stuff just to make an 18-inch snowman.

Not a thing adoption in this post. Sorry. Couldn't help myself!

Another Halloween Costume

OK, I picked at Halloween costumes in this post, so now you can pick at Maya's! I think she looks cute as a button in this picture from the kindergarten Halloween party, but I'll get you started --

-- how can you venerate piracy in light of what's happening off the coast of Somalia these days?

-- a sword? Do you customarily promote violence and warfare?

-- don't you know the history of piracy and consequent depravity in the U.S.?

There. Now do your worst! (Actually, this is all just a badly-disguised excuse to put up a cute picture!)

Cute Kid Pix

Sisters Forever

Zoe drew this sweet picture at school today -- she and Maya hugging, with the names of cities in China we've visited around them, Maya's orphanage, Mother's Love, noted and illustrated with a heart within which Zoe and Maya are hugging, the tag "China Girls" in the top right corner, and the title "Sisters Forever."

Sisters Forever -- interesting in light of the Ancestry and Adoption discussion.

Maya, Kindergartner

My baby is BIG! We went to Kinder orientation this afternoon (she had to show up in uniform, which she LOVED!), and she officially starts school tomorrow. We went to 12:30 Mass before the orientation, Maya in uniform, and she walked so tall, and was on her best Kindergartner behavior -- no wiggling, no talking, no sitting on Mama's lap (apparently Kindergartners don't DO that!).

We're thrilled with the teacher she has (not the same one Zoe had, who asked at each parent-teacher conference if I worried about fetal alcohol syndrome (WTF?!), and opined that her single daughter's eggs were going to get too old before she had babies, and she'd just "have to" adopt). Ms. C. has a reputation as a great teacher, and she's African-American to boot. I think that's especially good for Maya, who doesn't like to be Chinese because it's "different." Ms. C. is the only African-American teacher in the building -- she can show Maya a thing or two about being "different!"

Lion Country Safari Slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

OK, now I'm one of those obnoxious people who foists slideshows of vacation pictures on unsuspecting friends! You'll be glad to know our vacation ends tomorrow, and AdoptionTalk will return to it's regularly scheduled program.

Cruising

Today's highlight was cruising the Intercoastal on a 105-foot yacht. It was a beautiful boat, though the Intercoastal waterways are pretty tame. The girls loved the fact that we got to go under two -- count em', two! -- draw bridges.

Knot Heads

This is the real reason we're staying at this kitchy resort, instead of the Ritz-Carlton! Getting hair braids and beads was the high point of our Palm Beach trip last year, and the girls wouldn't dream of NOT having Ally of KnotHeads do their hair again this year!

Pictures

Where we're staying

Zoe cartwheels into the pool

Zoe digs it

Maya contemplates the ocean

Rock-n-roll girls

View of hot tub from our balcony

The Palm Beach Princess from our balcony

View from our balcony

We're on vacation!

Greetings from Florida! We arrived in Palm Beach yesterday and hit the pool right away. We love coming here -- reminds us of Xiamen! We expected to hit the beach first thing this morning, but it's raining.

Vacation means a blogging slow-down -- unless it rains the whole time! I'll still try to post, but no promises!

Video From Heritage Camp

Just in case you're not thoroughly sick of hearing about China Heritage Camp, here's a video wrap-up!

Photos and Videos of Camp from Mi Hilo Rojo

My friend Mei-Ling (no, not Mei-Ling Hopgood of Lucky Girl, and not Mei-Ling of The Original Heping, this is Mei-Ling of Mi Hilo Rojo!) has posted some great video and photos of the Tulsa camp here and here and here.

In the last link are videos of the closing ceremony, and the dance one is Zoe's class -- she's an umbrella girl! I was amazed at what the dance teacher could do with each group in only 3 sessions, including getting the three boys, who insisted they were NOT going to dance, to cooperate. Pretty impressive!

More Photos From the Fourth

Taken by my friend, Victoria!

Happy 4th!

I hope you had as nice a 4th of July as we did! We continued our 8-year tradition of inviting our China-adoption friends over to ride in our neighborhood parade.

When I bought the house just before sending my dossier to China, I had no idea the parade went right by it. I was delighted, though, and had all these visions of having Zoe home before the next parade. It didn't happen -- referral times increased to 12 months (which we thought unconscionable until we started to see the 3+ year delays now). But the first 4th of July after adopting Zoe in October 2001, we had all our friends and their new children over to celebrate. We walked the parade route that year, pushing our decorated strollers.

The group has gotten much larger over the past 8 years, with now just about all of us having two (or more!) kids. We now decorate 2 pickup trucks and everyone rides (a testament to the group getting bigger or the parents getting older, I'll leave you to figure!).

As you can see in the video, it's not a very high-falutin' parade -- the video shows the Rolling Elvi, a group of grown men who dress up like Elvis and ride tiny motorcycles; and the new "marching" band, which used to be a guy in a super-hero cape playing a saxophone, but is now a trailered garage band! After the parade, the hot and sweaty kids (it is July in Texas, after all!) return to my house for watermelon and lemonade.

Enjoy!

Rice Babies

Today, we made rice babies – and seriously, no pun intended. The babies are rice babies because they’re made of rice, has nothing to do with being Chinese, really, really, really, truly! All the kindergartners at a local private school make rice babies, as a project about weights and measures, and make the babies to match their birth weights. As soon as I heard of the project, I knew I wanted to do it with my girls. We don’t know their exact birth weights, but we know their check-in weights at the orphanage -- for Zoe that was on the day of her birth, and for Maya, that was 3 days after birth.

We carefully weighed the rice, and poured it not-so-carefully into tube socks (we spent more time sweeping up rice than we did pouring rice!).

Our measuring bowl only held about 2 pounds of rice, so we weighed the sock when we thought we were close to birth weight.

We tied off the sock at 6 lbs, 8 ounces for Zoe and 4 lbs, 2 ounces for Maya. We made another tie to make the head, and then pulled the top of the sock down to make a tiny baby hat. The girls had great fun coming up with descriptions for their babies – Zoe’s was a cucumber with a hat, and Maya’s looked like a squash!

Mimi helped with the project, and instructed the girls on holding the “newborn” rice baby so the head was supported. What fun! The girls love playing with dolls, so this was a natural for them.

The last steps were drawing on a face, using a permanent marker to make sleeping u-shaped eyes and a little blush to make rosy cheeks; and wrapping the rice babies in receiving blankets.

Quite a fun project. Yes, the girls learned a lot about weights and measures. But more importantly, they got something concrete to connect them to their births, and by extension, to their birth mothers. We don’t have pictures, we know no one who can tell their birth stories. We do have those numbers – 6 pounds, 8 ounces; 4 pounds, 2 ounces. The numbers have little meaning, though, when you’re 8 and 5.

I think we made it real with this project. And tonight before bed, when Zoe put her rice baby up her nightgown, with Maya following suit, and said, “So this is how much I weighed when I was in my birth mother’s tummy,” I knew it had worked!