Eleanor recently chose an animal for her African Animal Report for first grade. She chose the baboon. Genevieve calls these critters Bad Poons. Apparently there are Good Poons and Bad Poons - and the Bad ones are more fun, of course. Here are a few more recent comments from the peanut gallery:
In the "I Want It... What Is It?" category:
Eleanor: (Knocks)
Mom: (Getting dressed on the other side of the door) "What do you need?"
Eleanor: (After trying unsuccessfully to open the locked door - because "what do you need" is apparently easily confused with "come in") "Can I eat these things?"
Mom: "What things?"
Eleanor: "I don't know."
Mom: (With a shirt half over my head, trying not to laugh) "Um, ask Sarah what they are, then come back and ask me again."
It turned out the "things" in question were canned peaches. Yes, Eleanor, you can eat them. As a side note, anything you don't want Eleanor to eat has to go on the top shelves, where they're harder to see. That girl will eat anything that looks edible (as evidenced by the preceding conversation)!
Also from Eleanor - we had an interesting conversation about skeletons in the car today. Sarah was talking about the plastic Lego skeletons she has included in some of her Lego block sets. Eleanor commented thus: "You know, skeletons are alive, and then you die and they're dead, and then people can get inside them and pretend to be alive, but they're not really alive, because skeletons are dead." Hmm... not sure what to make of that one (first thought is that she saw a skeleton costume at Halloween last year). Alrighty then.
And yes, we've been having some birthdays lately. Here are some pics from Gennie's 5th! (And Sarah is 11 now - wow. Middle school here we come. Yay?)

Here I go, talking about myself and my work again. Sorry.

I've recently been looking into completing a part-time course in massage therapy, so I could work as a CMT for some extra cash and quiet time. It's also directly related to my current state of mind as I contemplate the end of my doctoral program, and think to myself about how I REALLY need a less stressful way to be, and possibly an "out" if I decide I'd rather not continually say "how high" when my boss says "jump." I am going to finish my degree (dammit), but I've been mildly (okay, very) depressed that things never get less stressful, as optimistic about that as I attempt to be. I know what I'm doing is valuable and good, but the job is a weird sort of "Devil Wears Prada" meets the research world - I wear lots of hats, including audiologist, public relations specialist, personal shopper, travel agent, clown for small deaf children, interior decorator, electrical engineer, cat herder, paperwork queen, international ambassador, secretary, finder of things other people lost, computer expert, statistician, chauffeur, graphic designer, and psychotherapist to imploding graduate students. Occasionally, I gather and write about EEG data, too, and write grants and IRB protocols in my spare time. Rather than have a total meltdown and quit entirely, I've decided to come up with possibilities for things I'd rather do than what I'm doing now, and get ready to do those things. I will finish my program, and see how I feel when I'm done, and whether the funding fairy has decided to bless our lab. I'll have a few extra letters after my name, and I won't have any "what-ifs" to wonder about or regret as I pay off my voluminous student loans. Then I will choose which letters I want to use most - Ph.D., or CMT, or a little of both. The amazing (or depressing) part is that I would be making nearly twice as much as I do now, working 25 hours a week as a CMT, and I would finish the CMT program in a little over a year (before graduating with my Ph.D.). Yes, it's reliant upon having a large, regular clientele coming in, and that would be something I'd need to build over time and market to folks well, but still! I want to be careful about saying where the grass will be greener, though - usually grass is greener because it's well fertilized with... unmentionable stuff we don't want to deal with.

Anyway, as part of my research into massage therapy, I've been looking into resources for massage therapists in practice. This has inevitably led to some... interesting resources. See also "Your Friday Dose of Woo" at the Respectful Insolence science blog: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/skepticismcritical_thinking/friday_woo/ See also the City of Boulder, Colorado. I came across this site: http://www.greenspiralherbs.com/1st%20product%20page.htm As I was looking into soothing scents in massage oils, and down beneath the herbal balms and salves and lavender spritzes, I found a listing for "No More Monsters" spray. Only $8.00 (before shipping) will buy you an all-natural anti-monster spray guaranteed to keep those monsters at bay. Um, wow. I drafted this letter, and almost sent it. I couldn't quite bring myself to be that directly snarky.

Dear Betty and Dan,
My children would like to know which monsters your "No More Monsters" spray keep at bay. Specifically, they want to get rid of slimy, drooling, or loudly snoring monsters, while keeping the cute, fuzzy ones around in case they need a hug. Will these beneficial monsters also be affected by the spray? We are also worried that using too much "No More Monsters" spray might lead to strains of monster that are genetically resistant to the spray, eventually leading to more icky monsters under the bed that are harder to get rid of. We hope that your monster-repelling active ingredients are long-lasting and nontoxic to faeries, brownies, and kitty cats.
Your garden is lovely, and your needlework is amazing, Betty.
Best wishes,
Amy

For those who would rather see cute pictures of my kids than listen to me moan (that would be most of you) - here are the kids making Lego towns on the kitchen table, and Gennie wearing her new sundress, even though it snowed a day or two ago. C'est la vie.

You may ask just what we think we're doing, celebrating Easter, since we are not of the church-going variety. Well, I think the Saxons were on to something with their celebration of spring and new life (it began as a celebration of the goddess Ostara - her symbol is the hare, and the colored eggs are symbols of life and fertility). There's nothing better than seeing the world come to life after sitting through too many snowstorms. Never mind the excuse to eat chocolate. Did the ancient Saxons have chocolate? I don't think so. Yay for the advent of global economies (probably wasn't as much of a 'yay' for the people growing the cocoa beans at first, but I don't want to think about the history of chocolate - I just want to eat it). Speaking of snowstorms, I came across this recently, and it gave me a good laugh:



I love snow (well, except for driving in it), but still, enough is enough. Spring tends to come later in the Rockies than the equinox would suggest. You think you're home free, and you end up getting snowed on in April. Even so, I am thrilled to see signs of spring poking their way through the soil. Brave little crocuses are already blooming, my strawberry plants are pretending it's safe to come out, and the daffodils are preparing to put on a show. Genevieve has made me smile a lot lately, with her frequent public service announcements, "Spring, Mommy! I see Spring coming up through the dirt! Do you see it, Mom? Do you see it?" I know we'll see a few snowstorms before we're really done with winter weather, but the crocuses (and Genevieve) are doing their best to encourage me.

Anyway, here are a few more pictures of the girls at Grandma Jean's house. After our egg hunt, we headed up to Red Rocks amphitheatre and park near Golden, and hiked around for a while. It was lovely. Warm, even!

Here are some pictures I took this morning of Eleanor Zitao on our one year family anniversary.

Thinking about where we were a year ago boggles the mind. That we were halfway around the world, adopting a child we had never met, whose language we didn't speak, and who was more than a little terrified of us, seems like a hazy dream to me now.
I remember little Zitao's effort when we met, that she was trying to look at us and smile, but trying not to look at us at the same time. She was so overwhelmed. I was so glad her sisters were there; they were so much easier to trust.
There were times that I thought we were truly crazy to be adopting an older child from another country. But I knew, even the first time I saw her, that she was my daughter. And that nothing would ever change that. I loved her, and she had me at "ni hao."

We're having a little "family day" anniversary party at a local Chinese restaurant tomorrow. We're not doing anything big, just a little acknowledgement that we are really grateful to be together.

Recently, there was a post on our agency's e-mail listserve asking for experiences after coming home with an older child. This family was having trouble with bonding and behavior in their first weeks home with a child not much older than Eleanor was when she came home. This was my post to that family; I certainly remember the early days!

Dear *****,
We came home with our daughter last March - our one year "family day" anniversary is this Wednesday! She'll be 8 in a couple of months. When we went to adopt Eleanor, she would have nothing to do with me if she could help it. I remember saying "Wo ai ni," in China, and she smirked and said, "Wo BU ai ni!" (I don't love you!) in return, and ran out of the room. Looking back, it's actually funny (it was her way of saying, "Lady, you're a NUT!"), but I had to take a deep breath at the time! Eleanor didn't care how much I wanted her, or had worked to adopt her, or had waited to see her little face. She was NOT going to like me (so there, Mom - phhhbt!). She would go for her older sister's hand, or her father's hand, but NOT mine. She wouldn't sit by me if she could help it. That preference carried over for a while when we got home - several weeks at the very least. I remember how stubborn she would be about what I would tell her to do. There was a lot she didn't understand, but there was also a lot she pretended not to understand. She resisted listening to me for quite a while (whether I used Mandarin or English), and she resisted being touched in any way (except for basic care like dressing and brushing hair). Our house is across the street from a park, and when we were coming home from the park one day a few weeks after coming home (maybe it was more - it was warm enough by then to be at the park without jackets), she started to run towards the street to cross it and get home. I shouted, "BU! BU! ELEANOR! NO!" and she laughed and kept running. I caught her before she got to the street and scooped her up, and she screamed bloody murder and wriggled and kicked the entire way back to the house. I just held on and marched her inside, but I remember thinking that I hoped nobody saw me, because surely they would think I was kidnapping a child! I plopped her onto her bed once we got home, and she proceeded to have a raging fit. She kept waiting for my reaction to her fit, but I just looked at her with a stern face, grabbed a pencil and paper, and said, "You scared me. I didn't like that," and I drew a picture of a stick figure in the street, a car coming, and made a loud "splat" sound. She looked at me serenely, and a look of "Oh. I guess you had a REASON for torturing me by holding me," came across her face. I left the room, and she cried quietly for a while.

It was shortly after that when she began wanting to be carried (yes, by ME - the horrible mommy person) everywhere she went. I think I was the hardest for her to accept, because I was the one who presented the greatest risk. If she loved her new mommy, that meant she might LOSE somebody really, really important (again - she had already lost everyone she knew). Intellectually, I knew that. It didn't make it much easier when she was raging against me, but I knew there was a good reason it was taking her longer to warm to me. So, I was just there. I was there when she needed something, I was there when she was hungry, I was there when she cried (and raged), and I was there when fun things happened. I went from being shunned to having a little Chinese girl glued to my hip (usually carried on one hip - she was smaller than my youngest who is three years younger). I couldn't go to the bathroom by myself for a while without Eleanor knocking on the door to make sure I was still there.

Finally, a year later, I can say that she's a well-adjusted, loving little girl. She loves me fiercely, and I love her, too. She doesn't have grieving fits anymore, and she doesn't monitor me in the bathroom anymore, nor ask to be carried 24/7. Her bond is much more healthy now. She is still very concerned about "fairness" and whether she gets everything her sisters get, and she keeps an eagle eye on me. She still does what we call "hoarding on the inside" - she eats more than my husband and I combined at dinner - we swear she must have a hollow leg. She's not completely secure yet - that will just take time and consistency. She's on grade level, despite starting behind and without language. She can have wonderful conversations with us now. And she really, really, wants to be loved. It oozes from her every pore - this need to be touched, talked to, cared for. Never would have thought that, on the day I had to haul a tantruming child home from the park!

My only advice would be to be calm, be consistent, and be patient. I know it's easier said than done, but your girl will transform in tremendous ways very soon - and I bet that transformation will include deciding to love you! I reminded Eleanor that tomorrow is a whole year from when she first met us. I asked her if she remembered. She nodded, and said, "I was scared. But you were a good mommy." Hearing that made the whole year worth it.

Best wishes, and may time ease your mind -
Amy