camping in the bedroom

Julianna is gearing up for our annual camping trip with students (in October). Yesterday she made this "tent" and then insisted that Lydia lay on the pillow and sleep in the tent with her. Lydia obliged, for a few brief seconds.

I actually didn't really get it either - the tent is definitely a Julianna-creation, and only her eyes could see it as a tent. But she was convinced ... Lydia and I had no choice but to play along.


Matt and I actually just discussed the camping trip a week or so ago. I wondered if he wanted to take both girls (last year he took Julianna, Lydia was about ten weeks old and stayed home with me). He's convinced that one daughter is his max - Lydia goes only if I go too.

Jury is still out on that one. I love camping. But I'm thinking through all the ramifications of taking both girls camping with about 40 other college age folks. No camp ground either, just a random field in the middle of a random (not so populated) area of the county. It's a short walk/hike from the nearest road. What to do??? I have another month or so before I have to decide :)

first day of school, take three

If you have ever lived in, or are currently living in China, this post will not surprise you. If you are used to a western way of "doing things", it probably will.

Julianna's first day of school has been delayed once again. Matt took her (and a big pile of paperwork) to school to register this afternoon. There he discovered that we are missing one important stamp from the Children's Hospital (her second round of blood work was done at a local hospital that - apparently - doesn't use the right stamps). For the un-initiated: the Chinese LOVE stamps. You know, the old school kind where you dip a stamper in an ink pad and slam it down on a sheet of paper? The entire Chinese nation has an ongoing love affair with stamps. I'm not kidding. Something as simple as paying a phone bill could require four stamps - from four different people!

Here's the miracle: The headmaster of the preschool agreed to take her even without the right stamp! That's what I call "foreigner privilege".... Julianna is the first foreign kid to ever attend this preschool, and I guess that's why the rule is being waved in this one instance. We have been forewarned that, at any given moment, they may ask us to return to the Children's Hospital to acquire the appropriate stamp. This will undoubtably require at least three hours of my time and involve lots of standing in lines and showing previously stamped pieces of paper. For now, we're going to go with the flow, and hope they never bring up the missing stamp issue again.

So, why not start tomorrow? You know what? That's a dang good question. I wish I knew the answer. Apparently, the first week of school was suddenly postponed - it's not this week, it's next. This is breaking news as of Monday morning. Seriously... we saw the headmaster Sunday afternoon and she assured us that school started this week. But, alas, things change quickly around these here parts.

Long story short, she starts NEXT Tuesday. But who am I kidding? At this point, you probably shouldn't believe me. Let me just say this: pray whenever you want to. I'll let you know how the first day went AFTER it actually happens. Don't hold your breath :)

PS - You might be interested to know that even Chinese universities operate on this kind of "last minute change" prone scheduling. (The universities also love stamps - but you already knew that, right? If I had a penny for each stamp I've gotten since arriving in China I'd be a wealthy momma.) Some of Matt's students find out the first day of school in this manner: a phone call, the voice on the other end saying, "school starts tomorrow".

Gotta love that!

first day of school, take two

I know that many of you prayed for Julianna's first day at school today. Thanks for loving our family! Unfortunately, Julianna didn't get to go today. There is a required health exam for all kids who want to go to preschool, and Julianna did hers on Friday. Monday morning Matt went back to the Children's Hospital to get her results and one of the numbers on her blood work was flagged .... she needed to be re-tested. So, that afternoon (Monday) instead of registering for school, her blood was drawn a second time for re-testing. We got her results back this afternoon - no worries and she is set to go.

Now we plan to register tomorrow afternoon and her first day will be Thursday morning. She has been anticipating the first day of school for two weeks now, so a brief delay wasn't too significant....

Other than the brief school delay, we've been having great times around the house. During Lydia's morning nap Julianna spends a chunk of time playing by herself in the living room. Yesterday she was really quiet and I started to wonder what she was up to... peeked around the corner and this is what I saw -

She was sitting in her little chair, her feet up on a footstool, just relaxing. Apprently playing is harder work than I thought!

One of her favorite games to play while Lydia naps is "cards". When Julianna plays "cards" she lays them out on the carpet and finds special ones. Cards that qualify as "special" include the 2, the Jack and the 10. She refers to the 2 as "my number" (she's two years old). The Jack is "my letter" (J for Julianna) and the 10 is "Lydia's number" (Lydia is 1, and the ten has a 1 on it, so that counts in Julianna's book).

Poor Lydia, there is no L in a deck of cards, so she has to settle for only four special cards, while Julianna racks up 8. Of course, the whole point is to play cards while Lydia sleeps, since Lydia messes up the stacks and eats the cards. Lydia is never aware of her "special card" deficit.



Speaking of Lydia, she enjoyed a "first" of her own yesterday evening.... first Oreo. The photo speaks volumes as to why Oreos are a bath-night-only food. I only wish you could see her other ear, it was caked in Oreo slime.

Dave Barry in China

In an entirely different spirit than my previous post...

My friend Leah pointed out that Dave Barry wrote some absolutely hilarious columns while he was in Beijing for the Olympics. If you have EVER been to China, or if you just think Dave Barry is funny, you must read them! Matt and I sat at the kitchen table and read a bunch of them. I laughed so hard tears rolled down my face.

They are on the Miami Herald website - link to them here

school days

I've been thinking about and wanting to write this post for a long time, and today I just decided to do it. Unfortunately, both little girls are getting close to "potential wake up time" in their afternoon naps, so I'm guessing that I'll start now, and finish later (this evening? tomorrow afternoon?).

So, here goes...

Julianna starts preschool on Tuesday.

It's been a long road for Matt and I as we "traveled" to this decision... here's a brief summary of the path we've walked:

First things first, the road started long ago (maybe even before we had kids?) when we knew we wanted our kids to be in local schools. We've watched many families here and one conclusion we've drawn is that kids in local schools are kids who like the local culture, who are part of the local culture, who are equipped to interact with nationals, who speak the local language well, who thrive here long-term. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, so it's not a simple formula, BUT... there does seem to be a consistent pattern.

[quick disclaimer: We do realize that local schools will not provide for all of their educational needs... after all, if they've inherited their father's tendency towards poor spelling, they are going to need a lot of help in that department and I can't really expect a local teacher to teach my girls to spell correctly in English! Our tentative long-ish term plan would be to do local school for a while, then a combo home school/local school plan sometime during the elementary years.]

Ok, so, that's the deal with that. We really want the girls to speak Chinese well. And we want them to love living here. And we want them to be able to interact with local children (no need to limit friendships to the other white kids in town, you know?). And we think that being bilingual is a great "gift" that we can help give them.

But, of course, the next big question on the road is WHEN?????? When to start? When is the "right age" to send a kid to preschool? Or maybe you never do the preschool thing - and wait til kindergarten?

I realize this big WHEN question is certainly not unique to our circumstances - everyone with children asks these questions. But there are additional layers of complexity to consider when "preschool" happens to be 幼儿园 and the teacher happens to speak 中文, and the entire schooling culture in your host country is distinct from the one in America in approximately 1000 different ways.

Honestly, if we were in America, I don't think that we'd even be considering preschool right now. For one, it's expensive in America. And I like to save money. And spend it on things like trips to the Olympics. Second, if we were living in America, I would not be concerned about Julianna's language acquisition. I speak English quite well, and assume she would just learn English from me :)

But, we don't live in America. That's for sure. So, this summer, the preschool decision hits the radar screen. And the big WHEN question looms. And after much prayer and discussion and two trips to the preschool down the street, Julianna starts on Tuesday.

Here are a couple of the "whys" behind the WHEN = NOW decision.

First, my dear, precious, charming, naturally bossy oldest daughter is frustrated by her inability to speak Chinese well. It's very difficult to boss around a bunch of three year olds when you speak like a two year old. [My current assessment is that her Chinese is about six months behind her English - she can string together some simple sentences, tell brief stories and communicate about simple things, but speaks with much less animation and much less detail.]

Second, she WANTS to speak Chinese. She asks me how to say different things. She initiates speaking with Chinese people (especially when she's playing outside and she wants a toy that another kid is playing with).

Third, we had very strong feelings about how much time she would spend in school (not very much, at least compared the local children, who start day-long programs at very young ages.... you probably won't believe this, but preschool is academically competitive here!). And, the local school worked with us - they are willing to let her attend only two mornings a week.

Fourth, she WANTS to go. In all honesty, 90% of the attraction is the playground at the school - it's the only one in town. Apart from that playground, the KFC a 25 minute drive from our house is the next closest playground - if you count their slide as a "playground". What little girl wouldn't want to go to the school that's home to the only slide in town??

So, those are all great reasons to send her along. Preschool here we come, right? But there are other factors that made us hesitate. We know these first few years with our kids are precious and formative in many ways. I really do love staying home with my girls. I love knowing every detail of their days, everything little thing, like how many bites of lunch they ate, and how many times they giggled at one another. I'm jealous for these years, and don't want to treat them lightly.

I reduced it down to a few numbers to help me really understand what we were talking about. Julianna is awake for about 75 hours in any given week. Two mornings of preschool at 3 1/2 hours per morning is almost 10% of her wake-time! Parting with 10% of my little girl's week wasn't an easy decision.

One additional big reason to hesitate? Several foreign children have had really difficult preschool circumstances that didn't work out well at all. Like the teacher treated them super special, and the other kids resented it. Or they just spent the entire time frustrated by the language issue and playing independent of the rest of the class since they didn't have a clue what the teacher was saying. Or ....

But we both feel confident that this is the right choice for all of us right now. And she's so excited to go! Will their be tears? Most definitely. She's spent very little time in childcare environments and two weeks ago cried when I dropped her off at Sunday School.

So, she starts Tuesday. I'm really excited for her. And a little nervous about whether or not it will be a successful experience. But mostly excited.

I'm also wondering what I'm going to do with all my "free" time now that I'll only have one little girl to care for on Tuesday and Thursday mornings!

watching my buddies win gold

It's been almost two days since we arrived home from Beijing. Our time there was so full, so intense... and so so so fun. I just read that Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor won the beach volleyball gold. Hello - I was there, at Chaoyang Park, watching them play only a few days ago! I almost feel like they're old buddies :)

I also read that Usain Bolt won the men's 200 meter, and I saw him too - running in two different preliminary heats - at the track where he just set another world record. Again, I feel like I somehow know him, even if all I did was watch him from row 24.

It's really neat to have seen all these places and athletes that I now read about. I'm so thankful that Matt and I had the opportunity to go - what a cool experience.

I keep thinking I'm going to sit down and sort through our photos and put a few more of my favorites on the blog. I haven't even gotten a chance to look at all of them yet - Matt hit the ground running here back at home and has been working like a crazy man :) [He's not crazy, of course, but he does love his job - and it's a very intense time of year for him.]

So, hopefully more photos soon!

Olympics pictures

Here's a sampling of photos... a photo tour of our time in Beijing. It was INCREDIBLE!

The first morning we went to the Olympic Green which is just a really cool place to be - it's home to about seven different sporting venues, so it's always full of people and activity. The three biggest venues are the outdoor stadium (the birds nest), the water cube, and the indoor gymnasium.


That afternoon we went to water polo. It was super interesting to watch - the players are really strong and the game is very fast paced. Montenegro lost the game we watched :(


The next day we went to beach volleyball - we got to see Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh beat a Brazilian team to enter the quarter final match.


Security was a big part of the experience - it was extremely well run and efficient (much more so than many airport lines I've been in!) but also very strict. The great thing was, once you were through security for the day, you were free to roam the entire Olympic Green without exiting the "secure zone".

That evening we saw men's field hockey - I have photos, but didn't upload any. One of the teams we saw was China - it was always fun to be at an event with either American or Chinese athletes. The home court advantage was pretty intense - the crowds went wild for their Chinese athletes!

The third day we were at track and field for the morning and evening sessions. It was definitely the most exciting event to watch - there was always something going on, kind of like a three ring circus. The time passed so quickly, before I knew it, the three hour morning session was over.


It helped that we had fantastic seats. We were at the start line for the men's 200 meter heats and saw Usain Bolt (that's him in the yellow jersey, lane 4).



That evening we watched an American win the women's discus, a Panamanian long-jumper win his country's first ever gold medal, and three American men sweep the mens' 400 meter hurdles. At the end of their event, the athletes ran a victory lap - here are the US guys celebrating their 400 meter hurdle sweep.

We also saw a Russian athlete break both the Olympic record and the world record in women's pole vault. That was pretty cool - especially since the pole vault was right in front of our seats!


The Olympic Green is really fun at night - all lit up. This is the Birds Nest, you can see the flame super well even during daylight, but at night it was especially striking.



It was such an amazing trip - I loved it all, even the long days and sore feet from walking miles and miles! The atmosphere was electric, and it was great to be with people from all over the world.

busy days = no blog posting

How can I be at the Olympics and not have anything to post to the blog??? NO TIME! We've been moving at such a fast pace for the past few days - we're out of the house for 14 hour long days... leaving early in the morning and returning LATE at night. So fun, but so tiring!

Yesterday was our busiest (and my favorite) day so far - we had tickets to the morning and evening sessions at track and field and it was SO AWESOME to be there. Basically, we saw a lot of people who run really really fast - and some of them are really famous, like Usain Bolt - who won the men's 100 dash and ran in 200 meter heats yesterday morning and evening (he qualified). Also saw an American win the women's discus - that was my favorite medal ceremony of course, it was really cool to hear the national anthem played in the Birds Nest.

So, this morning we're downloading all the photos from our camera to the computer (it's been working for half an hour already and it's not done yet!). So, I can't load any photos, but I'll put up a bunch when we get home. Going to see some friends this morning, then heading to the airport about lunchtime - if our flight is on time, we'll be home before the girls get in bed. Man, I miss them!

at the olympics

We're here! Our flight from Kunming was delayed and we didn't get to bed until 2am - argh! Then, this morning we headed out to the Olympic Green to hang out there and enjoyed an afternoon of water polo - Montenegro lost :(

Now we're back at our friends (Matt and Jill's) to rest for a few minutes before heading out to dinner. I actually can't believe I'm still awake - it must be the adrenaline!

Tomorrow morning we go to beach volleyball - look for us on tv, since I heard that lots of beach volleyball is being aired in the States! We have a big USA flag, so maybe we'll get on camera :)

I have lots of great photos, but no time or energy to upload. Check back soon!

Happy Birthday Lydia!

Our birthday celebration started bright and early! The girls were digging in to the birthday loot while they were still in their pjs!





Julianna loved the new things as much as her little sister did!

Here's the birthday girl playing with her new caterpillar....



After a little morning nap/rest time, we headed out to the park. On our way we stopped to "ride the toys"


I wish you could see these sisters together - they have the sweetest relationship. Julianna has truly delighted in her sister today and it's been so fun to watch her love on Lydia. I bet she has sung the birthday song ten times!



After the park, it was time to head home for lunch and cupcakes. Lydia did much better today (her first cupcake experience two days ago was a bit of a bust!). But, at the beginning, she still had a bit of a "what is this thing??" kind of expression on her face.


It took a minute, but once she got the hang of cupcake-eating, she was all smiles!


the perfect end to a birthday lunch: a fistful of cupcake

Happy 1st Birthday Lydia! We love you!

an end of summer get together and a birthday party for Lydia

Yesterday afternoon we had a great time with some friends - ten adults and six kids gathered for a little end of summer get together and to celebrate Lydia's birthday. Lydia was actually a bit of a grouch, and when it came time for her to eat her cupcake, she put her hand in the icing and immediately burst into tears! Maybe she isn't going to be a big cupcake fan? Nah, I think she was just having a hard day. Hopefully her real birthday will be a bigger success!

Erin Ashley bought a blow-up swimming pool and the kids had fun playing before we went inside for dinner...


I have more cute pictures from yesterday, but no time now. It's a busy day and I've got lots to do before we leave for Beijing tomorrow. Lydia has a huge pile of presents to open in the morning, and then we are going to a local park to play and have lunch together as a family. Again this morning Julianna volunteered to help Lydia open her presents, claiming that Lydia was "just going to eat the paper, and she's not supposed to do that because if she swallows it then the paper will go down into her tummy".

a 2 year old's diving commentary

This afternoon I watched a little Olympic diving while the girls napped (one cool thing about living in the host country is all the real-time events... I can get online, check the schedule, and if I see something that looks interesting, I turn on the TV- this afternoon was womens synchronized 10m platform).

So, when Julianna woke up from her nap she came out to the living room for (what I later realized was) her first glimpse of diving.

and this is what she said:

"Those people are just flying around and then they get in the swimming pool. That's pretty silly."

Think "sports commentator" is a career possibility?

4 days to go

Only 4 more days til Lydia's birthday, and the anticipation is building. We opened up two packages and the girls dug into the gifts - but didn't open any!


Well, Julianna did open one un-wrapped gift - a set of dress up stuff, including earrings and high heels. She has taken the necklace off only to sleep.



Here are the girls waiting to dig into the stuff :)


It's also only 4 more days until Matt and I leave for Beijing - that's right, we leave the night of Lydia's first birthday. Actually, a confession: when we were first planning the trip last October, we almost accidentally scheduled it so that we were NOT HERE for Lydia's birthday. It was kind of a last minute thing, and we were scrambling to get flights, and were ready to buy a plane ticket for Aug 14th when it hit me - "no way Matt, we can't leave the 14th, Lydia's birthday is the 15th!" So we quickly changed our flights and scheduled it so that we leave for the airport right after Lydia goes to bed.

Here's my disclaimer for why I almost missed my child's first birthday: I had just returned to China (30 hours of travel, 13 time zones crossed) with a newborn and 21 month old. My first month back was easily one of the most difficult I've ever lived (endured? survived?) and I reached depths of sleep deprivation I never dreamed possible. I still maintain I can't be held responsible for any decisions I made between mid-September and mid-October 2007 :)

But I AM GLAD that we made the decision to go to the Olympics. I'm so excited!!

what if you got a package that was as tall as you are??

A birthday package arrived for Lydia today - and I couldn't resist snapping a photo. The box is as tall as she is! Julianna is EAGER for the big birthday to arrive. She's already volunteered to help Lydia open her presents, and is ready for some serious cupcake eating :)


We stayed up late last night to watch the opening ceremonies. I managed to stay awake through the entire parade of nations (I really wanted to see China's athletes), dozed off and then woke back up when the torch was entering the stadium. The torch was lit about midnight and I cannot even begin to guess the last time I was up that late! I am not a night owl, and morning came way too quickly today!

I think all of China did watch the ceremonies... we were at Erin Ashley and Andy's (they live in the building next to us, a 2 minute walk away). As Matt and I stumbled home at midnight we noticed that almost every apartment still had lights on! I really think everyone in our complex watched the event on television.

It's crazy to think that I'll be in that same stadium in just a few days, watching track and field events! Don't worry, I will definitely be taking lots of photos and plan to post some to the blog!

the IOC answers

Only a few of you dared to guess the IOC country codes... my cousin Karen got 4 of the 5 right! Yay Karen!

Here are the answers:

1. BIZ = Belize
2. PRK = People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)
3. TPE = Chinese Taipei (aka Taiwan, or the People's Republic of China)
4. ESA = El Salvador
5. IRI = Islamic Republic of Iran