Kisses in the Wind

The Double Mohawk

2011-12-11T05:10:00.000-08:00

What will this boy think of next? Should we take a poll on what the NEXT hairstyle will be???

Say WHAT???

2011-11-17T03:56:00.000-08:00

I have to admit to a certain thrill over the fact that Charlie's English is now good enough that we can communicate by text message on our phones rather than depending on having a videophone connection between school, office, and home. It makes things so much more flexible.

Yesterday morning, however, I was reminded that we still have a long way to go. As I arrived to work thinking the day had gotten off to a good start, I received the following text message from Charlie.

"I plastic teen fall in sink."

Huh??? So I sent him a note back: I don't understand.

"Just I fall the plastic teen in sink of deep hole."

So I sent another note: I think you are using the wrong word. Teen is a person age 13-19. What do you mean?

At this point, he must have asked a friend for some help, because the next message came through perfectly.

"I mean retainer fall in sink."

Uh-oh, now I get it. This is bad news. As any parent who has lived through the process of a child with orthodontic appliances knows, retainers are expensive.

The radio station I listen to a few days ago had a listener call-in session where people were talking about things they have had to go dumpster diving for, and retainers popped up frequently. I should have known better than to congratulate myself over the fact that Charlie had never thrown his away like that...

No, he washes his down the sink. They got a plumber to check the pipes, but the retainer was already washed through, probably out in the Atlantic Ocean by then.

We have emergency orthodontic appointments today to get the impression molded and the new appliance made. Thank goodness there is a little money left in my HSA!!

Goodnight, Irene

2011-08-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

We were right along the path that Irene was due to hit. As a member of the Hopkins "Go Team," I take disaster preparedness pretty seriously. I was reviewing our household plan and current level of preparedness, and decided to seek Oldest Son's review to see if he had anything to add. Since we were both at work, I sent him a list of where we stood and what last-minute things I was picking up on the way home from work. Here is the list I received back from him:

Also charge Kindles and iPods. Make sure Kindles are set with wireless off, and iPods are on Repeat None to conserve power.
Unplug your laptop and printer when not in use. Mine should be fine until the outage, what with the UPS.
Gas up the bikes too, if it’s not raining when we get home.
Make sure any important documents exist locally, in the cloud, and on hardcopy.
We might also want to stock up on handguns, shotguns, long-range sniper rifles, ammo, throwing knives, body armor, concussion grenades, land mines, trip wire, portable generators, ATVs and EMP devices in case the zombies, robots, ninjas, demons, secret dark magicians, clone armies, scientifically resurrected velociraptors or all of the above choose this time of chaos and vulnerability to strike.
Oh, and protein bars. Can’t run a guerilla war against the clone armies without protein bars.

HSAs: Two down, two to go

2011-08-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

We've been dying all summer to get the results of the High School Assessment tests Charlie took back in May.

All high school students have to pass 4 HSAs in order to graduate. There is an alternate way for special needs students to graduate (called "Bridge Projects") if they don't pass all the HSAs, but colleges don't look as kindly upon students who didn't actually pass the HSAs.

Charlie passed the Algebra HSA last year on the second attempt. We knew English would be a problem. The first time he took it, he was around 60-70 points from being able to pass. The second time he took it, he was still 40 points away from passing. Last May, he took the English one again and he took the US Government HSA, as well (which is about to be phased out, but would be really great if he passed).

We just got the results. He passed the Government HSA with a good margin, and he is now WITHIN 9 POINTS of passing the English. He is just thrilled! He is scheduled to take it again in October, and since he has been working with a tutor all summer and learning some grammar, he really feels he will be able to pass it this time. Then the only one left would be Biology (which he is taking this fall, and already knows and likes the teacher he will be taking it with).

So, we now have two down and two to go, and he is feeling more confident about being able to pass the remaining two.

I decided this was something we just had to make a big deal out of, so I went out and bought a Snickers Ice-Cream cake and put two candles on it. We'll just keep up that tradition until he passes the last one, when we'll have 4 candles and some sort of little present to go with it.

Gotta celebrate the small victories, KWIM? Wahoo!!

Conversation @ Costco

2011-08-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

So, do you want that huge, plush, overstuffed bear you're standing there hugging to death?

No, it's fine.

Sure?

Yeah, let's get checked out.

(after we have checked out and the goodies from Costco are loaded in the car):
Y'know, I think maybe I want that bear for Christmas.

This store doesn't work that way. If you see it, you like it, you want it, you gotta buy it now, because they won't get it again for a long time.

Okay, let's go back and get it. Pleeeeeease???

So we get out of the car, leaving our perishables in the 100-degree heat in the back of the car, and head back into the store. On the way, he suddenly hurtles himself into my arms and gives me a big hug.

Some moms will do absolutely anything for hugs.

Ten minutes later, we are exiting Costco for the SECOND time, him hugging to his chest a stuffed bear that is almost as big as he is (and people are doing the swivel-head thing to get a second look at this gangly teen-ager blissfully snuggling into this bear's neck), and I'm left ruminating about the fact that he missed out on this kind of stuff throughout his whole childhood and that there is still a trace of that abandoned little 3-year-old in there who just wants a mommy and a teddy bear.

Who is that MAN in my house?

2011-07-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

Charlie's birthday was a couple of days ago--he just turned 18. Where did the time go? Wasn't it just a few jet-lagged days ago that we got back from China with a 13-year-old???

He has done an amazing amount of growing up in a very short period of time. But he's still rather gullible.

I'm afraid I've inherited a mean streak about gift-giving jokes from my parents. They are the absolute masters of the game. They once managed to hide a piano for Christmas right in the living room--had me convinced it was something else entirely and I had to keep the secret from my little sister. I was so gullible back in the day...

We had Charlie's birthday dinner/party tonight. Rick and I had gotten him a (used) Kindle, and I had loaded a whole bunch of free books (Goosebumps, Animorphs, Hardy Boys, etc.) on it. Everyone else gave him some sort of accessory to go with it.

He had said about a week prior to his birthday that he wanted a Kindle, 'cause he sees Rick and me sitting around reading all the time and wants to be just like us, I guess. We already had it by then--this has been in the works for a couple of months. When he said he wanted one, too, I gave him a bunch of stuff about how expensive they were and there's just no way we could afford to get him one. He bought it, hook, line, and sinker, since he sees me constantly trying to cut corners and save pennies.

So, party time. We started with the accessories. He opened the reading light from my former husband, Ted. Wasn't sure what it was, so we explained that it was for a Kindle, and now he would be ready once he had saved up enough money to buy his Kindle to read in the dark. He nodded sagely. Good to be prepared ahead of time. Then he opened the Amazon gift card from his godfather--oh, wow, this is so you can decide ahead of time what books you want while you're saving up for that Kindle. Then Rick gave him the leather cover....hey, cool, now you even have a cover to protect that Kindle you're saving up for!

Once he'd gotten all the accessories, we switched to non-Kindle-related presents. I gave him the information on a jewelry class he wanted to go to that month (more about jewelry later!), and my parents gave him a nice little wad of cash to put towards the class supplies he would be needing, since this would be a somewhat pricey endeavor. His godfather's twin sister and her partner gave him a gift card to one of the craft shops where he loves to shop for beads. So he figured the Kindle bonanza was over.

He still never suspected, when I gave him an over-sized box that actually had the itty, bitty Kindle inside, what was really in there. His jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Wish I had a picture of that face, it was great.

Nice party. I think he'll enjoy being 18.

The Next Belt/Mohawk Minus

2011-06-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

Charlie is ready to test for his next belt. This one would add a black stripe to his brown belt, signifying that he is now a first-grade brown, the highest level prior to black.

He was originally going to attempt it back in March, but his instructor felt that he should wait one more session so that he could fine-tune things and turn in a more perfect performance. Charlie wisely and graciously accepted this wisdom and waited and honed his routines and skills. He is now as ready as he could possibly be.

But he has this mohawk. And it's grown longer since the prom. I warned him the judges wouldn't take him seriously if they were distracted by this wild hairdo--they wouldn't be able to concentrate on how precise his moves were if all they could see was an overgrown mohawk flopping in the wind.

So Charlie promised he was going to shave it off prior to the test.

He came home the weekend prior to the test with his newest "do," which his roommate at the dorm had ever-so-kindly helped him out with.

I told him that was even worse than the mohawk...it looked like he had a bottle brush on his head. He went back to school on Monday saying he would get his friend to cut the rest off before coming home on Wednesday (the night of the test).

He came home Wednesday and still had the bottle brush on his head.

"What happened? Why do you still have that mess on top of your head?"

"Roommate didn't bring scissors back."

"C'mere boy..."

I'm no hairdresser, as my former husband would testify. (He once came to me in desperation with a pair of scissors in hand, asked me to get the hair off his collar and his ears because he had an inspection the next morning. By the time I finished, he passed inspection, but hid the scissors where I would never, ever find them again.)

But desperate times called for desperate measures--the test starts in an hour. I grabbed the scissors my mother uses to cut my hair, and I started hacking. Can't be too hard, right?

Twenty minutes later, I had the top reasonably level all over.

He absolutely refused to let me cut off the orange rat-tail in the back. He said the judges would get over it.

Sure enough, they did. He turned in a practically perfect performance and got his first-grade brown. Now he can actually start studying for black.

He also won the performance achievement trophy for having such a flawless test performance. I was told later that when the judges were voting between him and the other candidate of choice for the trophy, every single vote went to Charlie--even the other person's instructor.

Graduation

2011-06-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Guess what? A post that isn't about the boys!

I FINALLY finished practicum and managed to CLEP the one remaining course I needed for my degree. This was a special day for me, considering that almost a year ago I was in the ICU recovering from a heart attack and an appendectomy. I didn't really expect this to hit me, since I wasn't emotional at my high-school graduation and I've interpreted several other graduations since, and I was fine through the whole graduation ceremony (even when the friend sitting with my parents blew an air horn when they had the summa cum laude graduates stand to be recognized), but when we processed back out and there were all of our faculty lining the pathway we had to walk back to the disrobing location, and they were applauding for us, I started crying. Really, that's why my nose is so red in the photo and I look like I'd had a little too much wine too early in the day.

These pix show the people who made it all possible.

Top: Oldest Son (Rick) and ChinaBoi (Charlie). They have both supported me and made it possible for me to go to classes in all the little ways that add up to so much--taking care of my dogs after work on nights when I've had to go straight from work to class, cooking me dinner when it looked like I would come home from a late-night class and go straight to bed without eating at all, and forgiving me when I didn't have enough energy to keep up with both work and school and still be supermom.

Bottom: My parents, who financed my education even though I'm a little long in the tooth and should be able to stand on my own two feet financially by now. Finances have been so tight since the adoption that I would NEVER be standing here in this stupid hat if they had not provided the funds (and the encouragement) to get this done.

I think it's finally time to rest and spend some quality time with the boys.

Prom Blackmail

2011-05-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

When we went to get Charlie's tux for this year's prom, Men's Wearhouse was having BOGO sale. After looking at the price of the tuxes, I started doing some mental arithmetic. Charlie has 3 more proms to get through (including this one). Renting a tux every year would come up to more than just buying one, and if we bought one, he would still have a tux left at the end of 3 years that he could sell if he wasn't ever going to use it again...AND he would have a nice business suit, too! Didn't take much to sell me, huh?

So we bought a tux and a suit. Next year, all he will have to buy is a different colored tie and pocket square, and he'll be set.

Tux: $450
Shoes: $70
Prom ticket: $45
Flowers: $30
Picture of him wearing a tuxedo with a mohawk for future blackmail purposes: PRICELESS!!!!

Return of the Mohawk

2011-05-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear, I knew it would happen again. If you noticed in the picture in the last blog post, Charlie's hair went orange again--all over this time.

Sure enough, he decided the weather is warm enough, he wants his mohawk back. Once the black started growing in, he had the hairdresser shave it. The stripe runs a different way now...

2011-05-18T19:30:00.000-07:00

So proud of ChinaBoi. Some kid at the dorm tried to sucker punch him, and Charlie caught the punch, put him in a wrist lock, and sat him down.

What I'm proud of isn't that he defended himself--I expect that, since we are a martial arts family--but that he controlled the situation and didn't snap the kid's wrist (which he is more than capable of doing).

Funny, but his brother had a similar episode way back when he was blue belt. Rick had been bullied a lot in school, and he never let anyone know that he took martial arts because he was afraid they'd come after him even worse. But one day at the bus stop, some kid put him in a head lock, and instinct and training took over--Rick used his jujitsu moves to escape and gain control of the other kid and very gently forced him down to the ground. By the time he realized what he had done, the other kids had just backed up in a circle and fallen silent. He never had another problem with being bullied again.

I'm very grateful that our karate association teaches not only how, but how far.

The Skunk

2011-05-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

Lord help us all. Oldest Son just bought a bike.

No, not a bicycle. A motorcycle.

I knew he would. He's been fascinated by them forever, and he was very, very jealous when I got one a few years ago.

I knew, at some point, he would find a way to learn, and I was deathly afraid that he would just go and learn the basics from a friend and then take the test at MVA and not have any REAL knowledge of how to ride safely. And even in a car, his driving leaves a lot to be desired, IMHO.

So for his birthday, I sent him to the Motorcyle Safety Foundation 3-day training course. I figure if he's going to get a license, I can at least make sure he gets it as safely as possible and gets all the knowledge I can wish for him so that he has a fighting chance of staying alive out there.

He passed and got his license, and withdrew every cent he could afford to sink into it from the bank and started looking for a deal.

Prior to taking the MSF course, he wanted a crotch rocket. But afterwards, he decided he wanted a cruiser, after all. In a mature moment (rare when it comes to thinking about motorcycles!) he realized that riding in the forward posture on a crotch rocket gives the rider a more aggressive mentality, and that the straight-up posture of a cruiser gave a more laid-back attitude about the ride. (THANK YOU, MSF!!!!)

But he was so desperate that he was considering bikes that I wouldn't have ridden for even a test drive if you'd paid me--one that had been laid down (motorcycle-ese for a bike that hits the ground while still in motion), one that had 88K miles. I finally managed to talk him out of them and put his money back in the bank and just sit back, because a good deal would come to him when the time was right, just as it had when I got my Rebel.

Sure enough, a couple weeks later, he goes to look at a Suzuki Volusia Intruder he found on CraigsList. He gets the guy to ride it out to the house for him, since he doesn't want his first ride to be on someone else's tags (just in case!), and a couple of days later he has it tagged and on the road.

It's nick-named "The Skunk" for obvious reasons once you see it. Here's a link to the YouTube vid the seller posted. Rick's bike

He got a good deal. I think he's got a keeper.

And most important, since it is bigger and badder than mine, he has managed to reclaim the "macho" title of the household.

ERKC Trophy

2011-04-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Charlie competed in the Eastern Regional Karate Championships today. He took a 2nd place trophy in kata and got wiped out in the first round on fighting. He was disappointed in the fighting, not because he didn't win, but because it meant he was done after the first two minutes and couldn't fight any more.

When we got out to the car, I said something about him needing a piece of furniture to keep all these trophies he has racked up in karate, and just how many do you have now, anyway? (He keeps them squirreled away up in his room, so I never see them.) I figured there must be 9 or so by now.

He thinks for a minute....18.

Really? 18????

Wow!!! He really DOES need a piece of furniture just for the trophies!

Death of an Acura

2011-01-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

Got the call today that every parent dreads...when your kid has been in an accident.

Not Charlie. This was Oldest Son, Rick. I was at the office and saw his cell phone number flash on the display, but I was already on the phone and couldn't get rid of the other caller fast enough--it went to voice mail. Rick NEVER calls me at work. He is a child of the Age of IT, and he always either e-mails or texts. And we had a really wicked ice storm today....I got rid of the call as fast as I could and switched into voice mail, only to hear a very shaky and thready, panicky-sounding Rick. I couldn't even make out all of the words, he was talking so fast and there was so much background noise, but I clearly made out the phrase "flipped the car." When I called him back, I still couldn't understand half of what he was saying, but I managed to get enough to find out where he was, and I just left everything and flew out of the office.

Didn't get the full story until I actually got to him. Short version: He skidded on an ice patch, did a 360+, and his tail end caught the guardrail, flipped him end-over. He was belted, so he ended up hanging upside-down from the floor, and managed to undo his seatbelt and crawl out.

The car, of course, was totalled. But he was completely unhurt.

Rick doesn't believe in God (or if he does, in a very nebulous way), but he ought to. There's simply no one else to thank for the ability to walk away from this.

The Bread and the Wine

2010-11-30T18:42:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, I was getting ready for the next day prior to going to bed, and I asked Charlie, "Will you be going to church with me tomorrow?" His answer (or so I thought) usually depends on which church we are going to--my church, his church, or another church if I'm interpreting somewhere.

Did he ask where we are going? Uh-uh. His question was, "Is it communion Sunday?"

Forgetting Charlie's long-standing preoccupation with food, I'm pondering whether there's a deep meaning to this--does he feel more of a connection to God when the elements are served?--and Rick starts snickering off on the sidelines.

I glanced over at him with a questioning face, and he stops laughing long enough to say, "It's all about the snacks, man..."

Many Moons--Aztec moons, that is...

2010-08-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

Charlie and I decided to go to the "Many Moons Festival" at Towson University. I've been feeling bad, because when I adopted him, I made a promise to China (in writing) that I would take steps to preserve his cultural heritage and instill a pride in being Chinese, celebrate Chinese holidays, etc. I've been a miserable flop. Not that Charlie really cares, unless it involves food...

Which this event did. It promised Asian foods galore.

As it turns out, it took us quite a while to get to the food. The minute we walked in the door, Charlie and his mohawk became the instant darlings of a bunch of old Asian men. When they realized he was deaf, they weren't for a minute put off--they pantomimed the mohawk and gave him the thumbs-up on it. He had a huge grin.

Then a man rushed up, all excited, with STUFF in his hands. STUFF with feathers sticking out of it and bright colors. This gentleman had decided that Charlie looked very Aztec with his mohawk, and they were about to have an Aztec parade, here's your costume, here have a drum, just follow the other kids as they're parading through all the different floors of this building, and you'll end up back here when it's done.

Hilarious. Here's your Aztec....

Hair today and gone tomorrow - the tale of the Mohawk

2010-07-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

Charlie sometimes defies description. That's mainly because he won't leave his hair in the same style more than a few days running. He is constantly experimenting with it and changing up, I guess because while in the orphanage he had no control. When they were cutting hair, everyone got hair done, and everyone looked the same. Everyone had the exact same cut, because the kids' preferences were never taken into account, and it was easier to just do the same exact thing to every child. Now that Charlie is the boss of his own body, he wants to have some fun.

I put up with it up to a point. I won't allow tattoos until he's older and out on his own, because that's permanent, but hair? It grows back.

He has really tested me on that view, however.

My mother at one point had been putting highlights in my hair, and there was some stuff left over, so she jokingly asked Charlie if he wanted some highlights, too. He said yes, and unlike her, he wasn't joking.

So she put them in. And he loved it.

So the next time, he got bolder. He decided he wanted to go blond--on one side of his head. He bought a bleach kit and took it to my mother's house, and explained what he wanted. The right side of his head blond, the left side leave black. We tried to explain that his hair was not going to go blond. He didn't care, wanted to try. She looked at me, and I just threw up my hands, so she went ahead and did it.

What Charlie ended up with was the right side of his head ORANGE and the left side black. Hmmm, not quite what he had in mind, but it would do.

He paraded around like that for a couple of days, but then the black started growing in at the bottom. And that's when he got his grand idea...

His brother was going for a haircut, and Charlie's was starting to get long, so Rick took him along. When Charlie told the nice lady at the Hair Cuttery what he wanted, she refused to do it until Rick called home and got me on the phone to tell her it was okay to do whatever he wanted. I knew then it was gonna be radical.

The boy came home with a striped mohawk. Split down the middle, an orange stripe and a black stripe. All sitting on little black roots. Don't believe me?

Hush Your Face, Bugbat!

2010-07-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

What I said: "I should Facebook that." (referring to story in previous post about lying to deaf people)

What Rick heard: "Hush your face, BugBat."

Huh??? Obviously my diction isn't the greatest after a couple glasses of wine...

Even worse was trying to explain it to Charlie, who couldn't understand why we were laughing so hard we were choking. It just doesn't translate well into sign!

Fibbing to a deaf person

2010-07-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

I don't often fib to Charlie. I usually go to great lengths to explain what is happening in the environment around him if it relates to something he can't hear.

But after having a couple glasses of wine, I'm a little lazy.

We were at Pizza Hut tonight for dinner, Rick, Charlie, and I. I had two glasses instead of my usual one because I had Rick along as a double D. (Shhh, don't tell my cardiologist, he'd have a fit!) On the way home, Rick's neck seemed to be on a swivel, and I finally asked him what was wrong. He said he kept thinking he heard motorcycle engines, and he was looking for them so he could make sure he didn't hit one. But he couldn't find them, only hear them.

I didn't hear any motorcycle engines, so I started to tease him about the voices in his head. He decided to just roll down the windows of the car so he could hear better.

At this point Charlie, who had seen us arguing back and forth (and me not signing, which was very rude of me), gave a questioning sound that even in my wine-induced haze I could accurately interpret as "Why did he roll the windows down?"

I was feeling way too lethargic to go back and explain the whole scenario in sign language, so I just told him, "Rick farted."

I really AM a bad mother...

What Would Happen to Me?

2010-06-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

I was hoping it would be a while before this question arose. Charlie finally wants to know what would happen to him if something happened to me. Two recent events sparked the question in his mind, and he finally brought it up after wondering for a while.

The first event involved bees. Charlie didn't know I have a deadly allergy to bees until he saw me jump and run when a nest was discovered in a vehicle that has been sitting for a while. That started the thought process.

Then, about 2 weeks ago, I went into the hospital for appendicitis, and had a heart attack while on the operating table. Charlie was greatly relieved upon visiting in the hospital to see me sitting up, talking, signing, and looking okay, just in a lot of pain from the appendix surgery. But that really brought the question to the forefront: What would happen to him?

I explained that his godfather had agreed to be his legal guardian until such time as his older brother was professionally established enough to be able to take over, and that seemed to satisfy him.

He didn't ask for any more specific details than that, such as whether he'd be able to stay at the same school, go to the same church, etc., so I'm guessing that means that he is comfortable with the plan and the people involved. What I'm wondering, but afraid to ask, is whether he really worried that he would have to go back if something happened to me. After some of the stuff I have found out about his past, that possibility would be worse than traumatic to him. But he seems reassured that I've got him covered, so I guess that's all that's important.

Sometimes I'd just love to get inside his mind...

Big week!

2010-06-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

In addition to the brown belt, in the same week, Charlie had two other major accomplishments, in our eyes, anyway!.

Remember when I mentioned he had a role in the school's production of "Dracula"? He won the George Faupel Performing Arts Award (with a $50 savings bond) for that. We drove out to Frederick to see it being presented to him. When he saw us in the auditorium, he was surprised. The school had not told HIM he was getting the award, so he thought he was only there to watch his friends get college scholarships awarded! When he wanted to know why I was there, I told him I had heard there was going to be an ASL movie--look, don't you see the projector down there? And the screen? He swallowed it (boy, that kid is gullible...), and the look of absolute SHOCK on his face was priceless when they called his name for the acting award. Proud mommy? Heck, yeah!!!

Then the next day he brought home a piece of art I had never seen him do. Turns out as soon as he finished it, his teacher scarfed it up and entered it in some high school art competition because she liked it so much. He won third prize there. Here's a picture of the picture, which is now hanging in the dining room:

So, between the brown belt, the acting award, and the art award, he has just had a really big week. I'm afraid it might go to his head.

Going for the Brown!

2010-06-03T03:41:00.001-07:00

Charlie's brown belt test. He passed with flying colors, but only one color mattered to him: Brown!!

On top of that, he also won the outstanding achievement trophy.

But wait, there's more! There was even a funny background story happening behind the scenes.

We found out a couple of weeks before the exam that Charlie's regular interpreter would be on vacation and not able to interpret the test. Usually she and I do that together--she interprets the bulk of it as the primary interpreter, and I'll stand at the back as secondary to count and interpret whatever is being said when Charlie is facing the back of the room instead of the front.

Charlie flat-out refused to have a substitute for the primary interpreter and said he wanted me to do it, which is fine, I'm quite capable at this point. So what we cooked up was that his regular terp would request a sub, and we would put the sub in the secondary position, doing what I usually do.

Comes the night of the exam, and I got there about 15 minutes early, and the head instructor informs me the other terp is there already. Once we located him, he introduced himself by first name, and he was very nervous about the fact that they would be using Korean terminology that he wasn't familiar with. I reassured him that all he had to do was keep count (and the numbers didn't even matter so much as the rhythm so that Charlie knew when to do the next move), and that I would sign everything being said even when Charlie wasn't facing me so that the guy could just copy-sign me. Told him it would be the easiest 2-hour assignment of his life. He gave a weak, nervous grin and got in position where we wanted him.

His signing was great, and he did a fine job at what we wanted him to do.

Once the exam was over, and the candidates were sitting there waiting for the judges to finish deciding what belts each person would be awarded, the guy said I looked familiar and asked if I did a lot of community interpreting. I told him I was just a student and was starting practicum next week, and he grinned and said he was really impressed at how I handled the test, and then he introduced himself by both first and last names and said that he was the Senior Manager at __________ (a local interpreting agency).

My jaw just hit the floor - I had tried to get a screening interview with that agency back before Christmas, and it never came about despite many e-mail communications between me and the office staff. When I mentioned that, he said, "I'll take care of that."

The next morning, there was an e-mail waiting for me with a list of times to pick from for a screening interview, and he is also offering to give me some mentoring hours on team assignments with him personally for my practicum requirements. I told him I felt a little silly for having such a senior interpreter there and sticking him in the corner and just having him count and copy-sign, but that on further reflection, I honestly didn't think I would change a thing, since Charlie was nervous about the thought of having a terp who hadn't worked with him previously and didn't know the terminology--and ultimately, Charlie is the client. The guy said not to worry, he wouldn't have changed a thing about how I handled that assignment. (Whew!)

God is good. At just the point when I'm a little worried about the company I work for part-time and how much longer that job will last, God dumps this right in my lap to help me prepare for my new part-time profession. Yay, God!!

And Yay, Charlie, too!! He looks good in brown, don't ya think?

The Prince and Princess - Prom 2010

2010-05-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

Last week Charlie and I went to pick up his tux for prom. I nearly cried when I saw him in it. My baby has grown up already, and he looked like he was ready for his wedding. Sniff, sniff, sob, sob...

His grin was as big as Texas, and you could tell he was having a flashback to the past. I'm betting he never dreamed while growing up in the orphanage that his life would turn out like this, that he would someday be wearing a tux and going to a formal dance.

So Thursday night arrived, and I drove out to Frederick to do the picture thing. When I arrived, his girlfriend wasn't there yet, but Charlie happily spent the next half hour dragging me from this group to that, having his picture taken with just about every kid in the courtyard. (And there were a LOT of kids in the courtyard!)

Then Harmony showed up. It was like the parting of the Red Sea. The crowd just kind of melted back to allow her through. She was stunning, absolutely exquisite. When they all got done gaping, they mobbed her.

I had never met her in person before, just chatted with her for a couple of seconds on the videophone. She was just as sweet as she could be. And Charlie is obviously smitten, as you can see from his grin in the photos. I think the boy has pretty good taste in women!

After we got the picture-taking over with, Charlie fell in with a group of kids headed for the van that would whisk them all away to the prom. But after getting a few blocks down the sidewalk, he suddenly broke ranks, and came back to me, and said, "I'll see you later. Thanks! I love you."

It stunned me a little. We usually have to remind Charlie to thank someone for something, and although he will sometimes initiate hugs now, he isn't usually the one to say "I love you." Usually he will sign it back to me if I say it first. So I couldn't help but cry while I was watching him leave with his little princess, right?

They were the cutest couple at the prom. I swear it! Would I lie to you?

Name in Lights

2010-03-06T23:00:00.000-08:00

Charlie landed a spot in his high-school play "Dracula." It was a really good production, all deaf actors with a team of six voice actors positioned at the back of the theater on microphones to interpret for the sign-impaired.

What worries me is that his drama coach says that he is "perfect in his role." No, Charlie was not Dracula. He played Renfield, the mentally deranged lunatic in the asylum. Perfect? Ummm......

He had fun, though. He isn't sure if he'll go back to acting again in another production or not. This seems to be just one of those things he had to try just to be able to say he had the experience.

The local Frederick newspaper sent a reporter to do a review of the play, and Charlie got special mention as being one of her favorite characters. Here's a quote of her mention of him:

Mr. Renfield was another favorite. I loved when he walked out on-stage and was a living and literally nuttier Animal, from Jim Henson’s Muppets. The hair was just perfect. I won’t say more because I don’t want to give too much away about him.

I guess, since she mentioned his hair, I have to put a picture of it on here, huh?

Almost free ice cream

2010-01-30T13:29:00.000-08:00

Da boyz looked at me like I was nutso when I brought a couple of big bowls of snow in the house. They had never heard of snow ice cream. Less than two minutes later, I was setting bowls of wonderfully flavored and textured ice cream in front of them.

They were both very skeptical. They each stuck a finger in, scooped up a tiny bit, and touched it to the tip of their tongues.

The next thing I knew, the bowls were empty, and the oldest is asking me to show him how it's done, he wants more.

I talked him through doing it himself, and he had another big bowl.

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the only good thing about snow. Unlimited amounts of ice cream, practically free. (Have you priced ice cream lately???)

So, do I get THANKS from my progeny for making them such a delectable treat? HELL NO!!! The youngest one finishes licking the bowl and goes downstairs to watch a movie, and the oldest declares, "I simply can't believe you let me live to 22 years of age and never made this for me before...."

It's time to kick that one out, isn't it???

"I'm Not Eating That..."

2010-01-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

Quite some time ago, a blog I subscribe to had instructions on how to make your own laundry detergent. It looked simple, so I decided that once I finished my mega-sized box of Tide that I had just gotten at BJ's, I would give this a try.

The day has finally come, and I have made the laundry detergent. The hardest part was finding the ingredients. Mine weren't as cheap as what the guy who wrote the recipe managed to buy his for, but it still only came to $12 for enough ingredients to make many, many buckets of laundry detergent, which is a heckuva lot cheaper than my mega-size (and mega-$) box of Tide.

The first step is to cut or grate up little pieces of a bar of soap and boil them into a soup in a pot of boiling water. I was nearly through this step when Charlie arrived home from school. When he came in the kitchen, he saw me at the stove and got a quizzical look on his face. (That's because me at the kitchen stove is a rare occurrence these days.) He sniffed and came closer and looked at my pot of simmering green "soup" and looked up at me in consternation. His look alone asked, "What the hell is THAT?"

So I signed, "Dinner! Ready to eat?"

He looked back down at it, gulped, and shook his head "NO." It was emphatic enough to mean "NO WAY." Maybe even "NO WAY IN HELL." The next look he gave me clearly said, "Man, you guys eat some strange stuff in this country." Sign language is so eloquent, and sometimes Deaf people don't even have to pick up their hands to express a whole sentence, y'know.

Great relief on his face when I explained what it really was and that Tide and I are through.

Oh, and for those who are curious about the recipe, rather than copy it, I will provide you a link to the blog where I got it. The guy who wrote this did a wonderful job of documenting exactly how to do it, pictures and all, so why re-create the wheel?

Click here to learn how to make your own laundry soap.

But don't try to feed it to your kids.

Shot to the heart

2009-12-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in the living room, messing around on the laptop, and Rick (my oldest) is watching some TV show on his computer over in the office. I hear a very out-of-tune rendition of the song "Mandy" coming from that general direction, and I look up at him across the half-wall with a quizzical look, and said, "That's an old Barry Manilow song."

"I know," he says. "The main character in this is a vampire and he likes that song 'cause he was actually ALIVE when it came out."

Long silence.

I was alive when that song came out...

40/3=x???

2009-11-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

Charlie got hired to help a lady rake leaves. He was there for 3 hours. When I went to pick him up, he proudly pulled out an envelope that contained $40 and showed it to me. This seemed like the perfect time to do some real-life math. (Charlie has trouble with word problems and scenario type math.)

"So if you worked for 3 hours and earned $40, how much did you make per hour?"

He gives me a strange look. "I don't have the calculator with me."

"You don't NEED a calculator. This is simple math; you can do it in your head."

He sits and thinks for a minute, and then he leans forward and starts WRITING IN THE DUST on the dashboard of the car....and still got the wrong answer.

So my question is, does this make a stronger statement about his failure to master word problems, or my failure to clean the car?

The equation is still there, by the way.

Charlie's first brush with the long arm of the law

2009-09-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I let Charlie get up to 25 mph. Then he got pulled over.

We were doing some stop-n-go work down the truck bay of an industrial park not too far from home. The idea in stop-n-go work is to get him to learn to stop without snapping my neck. I had him take the car up to 25 mph and then hit the brakes enough to stop quickly but without skidding (that skill will be learned later, when there's snow) and then to let up a little just before the actual stop so we don't turn into bobbleheads.

I guess it WOULD have looked pretty strange to an observer. I didn't notice the observer hiding amongst the trucks. But he sure noticed us. After watching for a little while, he pulled out, and I had Charlie sit still until we figured out where this car was going, hopefully out of the bay. Instead, it drove straight towards us, turned on an in-dash flashing red/blue light, and pulled off slightly to the driver's side.

Rent-A-Cop. And he's asking Charlie questions, but not getting out of his car.

I leaned over Charlie to answer him, but he couldn't hear me, so I had Charlie put the car in park, got out, and walked over to his window, since he still wasn't about to get out of the car. In the car was a little old man hunched over the steering wheel, and it looked like his neck was frozen to his shoulders--he had to turn his whole body in order to look at me. He asked if everything was okay, and I explained that Charlie had just gotten his learner's permit and we came out here to practice since he wasn't ready for road traffic yet. I was bracing myself to be told this was private property, we couldn't do that, get lost or we'll get the real cops....but all he did was nod and say, "Okay." He rolled up his window and went back to where he had been lurking before.

Charlie was shaking and sweating when I got back to the car. I think Chinese orphans are instilled with a deep-seated fear of the police--Charlie has never been comfortable around cops. We continued on with our practice session and eventually went home.

When we got back to the house, I told Rick Charlie had been pinched by a cop. Charlie immediately--and VERY vocally--denied it. Told Rick the whole story in rapid-fire sign that Rick couldn't begin to understand (my sign-to-voice professor would be proud of me for interpreting that one!) and finished up with, "And I DID NOT get arrested!!!"

More Math Woes

2009-09-15T17:24:00.001-07:00

I thought my math woes were over once the school moved Charlie to that pre-algebra class back in January. After all, the qualified people are now doing the job that I started, right?

Big sigh.

Charlie is now in Algebra I. He came home after the first week of school with some homework sheets with really bad grades. Very upset because he isn't understanding it. A lot of it boiled down to English (he doesn't understand the directions at the top of each grouping of problems, so he does the wrong thing to the equations), but some of it boiled down to stuff that he just plain didn't know. For example, it blew me away to discover what he thought was the difference between even and odd numbers: He had simply memorized 2,4,6,8, etc. but never knew there was an actual RULE to it, that if a number could be divided by 2 and the answer is a whole number, not a decimal or fraction, then it is even. His face lit up when the light bulb went on.

Last Tuesday was Back to School Night for parents. It was a real struggle to get from Baltimore to Frederick after work in time for this thing that starts at 6, but I made it, sort of. When I met with his Algebra teacher and expressed my concerns, we decided that it would be appropriate for me to have a copy of Charlie's algebra book, and she will send me the assignments they are doing so that I can reinforce them at home. Our concern is that since he was switched in the middle of the year, he missed out on the second half of the year in the general math class he was moved out of, AND he missed out on the first half of the year in the pre-algebra class he had been moved into. So we also got for me a copy of the pre-algebra book from last year and decided that I would have to catch him up by working with him on the first half of the book on the weekends.

Y'all remember that math and I don't exactly get along, right?

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This past weekend, we spent HOURS re-doing failed homework (she accepts re-dos for credit), studying for a test he had coming up, and starting on some of what he missed out on when he switched classes last year. Hours and hours. Felt like forever.

On Monday after he left for school, nervous about the test, I shot off an e-mail to his algebra teacher (a hearing woman, as it happens), mentioning that he seemed to understand all the stuff if the directions for each grouping of sentences are signed to him, not leaving him to depend on the English just yet and that his IEP specifically states that testing is to be done in sign, not English, so that his English skills don't hold him back in other areas.

She e-mailed back that she would do whatever it took to support him and help him be successful, and that he had actually spent some time with her after school getting clarification on some things they had done. (I had encouraged him to do this, but wasn't sure he would.)

She got back to me this afternoon to let me know how the test went: He got a 96%!!!

I sat there crying when I read that. He worked so hard this weekend trying to prepare for that test, and got to see it pay off for him.

Looks like it's going to be a long, hard year for both of us. I guess I'd better quit whining now and just get 'er done.

I'm so proud of that kid.

"Hit The Building"

2009-09-09T17:30:00.000-07:00

Y'all can't say you haven't been warned: STAY THE HELL OFF THE SIDEWALKS! Charlie got his learner's permit yesterday morning, so it's just not safe to be out there any more.

He tried about a month ago, and was crushed when he failed it the first time. He was very quiet as we got into the car, so I stayed quiet while I was driving so he could lick his wounds without interference (especially since I got lost on the way home from MVA and was trying to figure out where I was). I didn't realize that my silence was killing him until he blurted out, "You're mad that I failed, aren't you?" Oh, heavens, child--no!!

He felt slightly better when he found out his big brother had also failed it the first time, but that was still cold comfort. Charlie isn't used to failing at anything. He only missed by one question, but that's still one too many.

Personally, I think it did him good to miss it the first time. He's so good at so many things, that he is starting to think life is his bowl of cherries and he gets a little big-headed at times. This humbled him a little.

We did some more studying and testing, and got another appointment set up with MVA. This time he only missed two questions, which is a pass. But get this: The deaf guy misses the question on HAND SIGNALS!!! What's up with THAT???

While we were waiting for the test to be graded, he was so nervous he was just about biting his nails, and when he explained to the interpreter that he had already failed it once, she told him, "Oh, that's nothing--most of the deaf I interpret for these tests fail it four, five, or six times before they finally get it!" All of a sudden, he's thinking getting it right on the second shot isn't so bad, after all.

I think a big part of that problem is that most of the deaf kids grow up in homes where the parents either don't sign at all, or have very limited sign, so the kids get their driver's training in classroom situations and don't have a lot of help at home in the studying and sample testing. Charlie all but slept with that stupid driver's handbook, nagging at me every day that he was home to go over it with him. Over and over and over and over and over again. And the MVA has sample testing on the web that I would interpret for him over and over and over and over again. (It changes the questions a little each time.) So he had a lot more in-depth understanding and practice for that test than most deaf kids have by the time they get to MVA.

Anyway, tonight was his first lesson. I took him out to an industrial park and let him do some stop-n-go work. Then I decided he should learn where the front and back of the car are. (I drive a station wagon.) You should have seen his face when I had him approach the concrete wall of one of the truck bays and told him to hit the building. I've never seen such a look of shock on his face. I ended up demonstrating for him how I wanted him to keep backing up slowly, bit by bit, until the car touched the building, so he could see and feel how much space he had to work with. Then I made him do it over and over again (both forwards and backwards) until he was able to stop within a few inches of the wall without touching it. I think he did a pretty good job.

Curbs, not so much. But it was starting to get dark, and we were both hungry and tired, so it was time to call it quits. There'll be more time this weekend and many, many weekends to come to practice some more.

Be careful out there!!!

Let My Words Be Few

2009-08-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

He's driving me nuts. I admit it.

First it was English. Then we added algebra. Then we started on the driver's handbook. Then about three weeks into a lovely lazy summer, the school sent home papers explaining a summer reading project and poster that the kids had to complete and bring back to school with them, so we had to pick a book and start reading that together.

Now that the algebra dropped out, I'm okay with teaching all that other stuff. I was never a big math afficionado to start with, so I couldn't have been happier once the school figured out how to resolve that situation. (See January's posts "Baby Einstein" and "No More Mama Einstein.")

But now Charlie has come home from karate camp, where he spent a week with hearing people, and he has reached a momentous decision: He wants to learn speechreading.

But wait--there's more! He doesn't just want to learn to READ it--he wants to learn to SPEAK!!

We've already gone there with the school. They evaluated him and said he is so profoundly deaf that he does't have enough residual hearing left to work with, and they agreed with me that since he is so smart, his energies were best used to focus on his academic subjects rather than hours and hours of speech therapy just to get out a few understandable phrases.

So I reminded him of all this--they aren't going to put him in that program since he wants to go to college.

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. That's why YOU'RE going to teach me.

'Scuse me? Do I LOOK like a freakin' speech teacher????

So now, in addition to the English, and the summer book and poster, and the driver's handbook, I am being shanghaied into teaching Charlie to speak.

Can I just point out that I'm not exactly TRAINED for this?

Sometimes I have no idea how to explain to him how to make a particular sound. It's a little frustrating for both of us, because he will run through every possible permutation of sound that he can think of making with that particular mouth/tongue position until he stumbles across the right combination, and then when I get excited and say "That's it!" he doesn't remember what it was he was doing to get that sound.

So far he has learned to say Aymom and Pop-Pop (his grandparents' nicknames that Rick gave them), Mama, mooooo, Bama (his best friend's name), and he's working on "How are you?" He has the "how" part down, but r's and y's are a little harder and we need some more practice there.

The day he learned to say "Aymom," it was hard to keep him from putting a glottal stop in betwen the two syllables. At one point, we decided we needed a break, so I leashed up the dogs and headed outside for a while. The dogs and I strolled onto the path that leads back around behind our house, and as we were approaching the house from the back, I heard what sounded like someone vomiting. As I got closer and could see up alongside the house, I realized it was Charlie. He had gone outside to practice so he didn't disturb Rick, and he was vomiting the word Aymom--the A sound was coming from deep in his stomach, and the mom sound was the projectile. I very quickly turned away so he wouldn't see me howling. I had just about gotten myself back under control by the end of the walk, but then I tried to explain it to Rick, and the giggles started all over again.

Today we started on the "how are you" stuff, and he had no trouble getting the how down pat. But then he started playing with it. He would say it in a variety of ways, and sometimes it would sound like a kid who had just sucked helium out of a balloon, and sometimes it would sound like a guy trying to project a deep, sexy voice. I'm sitting in my chair with my back to him while he's in the dining room practicing, and I'm hoping he can't see my shoulders shaking from the laughter. It just sounds so damned CUTE!

Maybe I DO look like a freakin' speech teacher--to him, anyway.

Down-Time - Part II

2009-08-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

I dropped Charlie off at school yesterday (Sunday) around noon for football camp. By about 5 pm, I get a text message that says, "I feeling boring." Wow--big change from his excitement over karate camp!

Later, before bed, I get another text message that says, "I hard work football."

I'm not sure how to interpret that one. Is he saying he's working hard at it? Or that he feels it's hard work? Hmmmm....

Today at work, I got a call from the athletic trainer saying I need to come pick him up. What the huh?????

It seems he was complaining that his hip was hurting him. That surprised me--the wound had been healed up, and the doctor had cleared him for both karate camp and football camp. And Charlie had successfully finished out the entire week of karate camp without complaining of it hurting so why all of a sudden is it starting now? Is it just that he doesn't care for football camp and this is his way of getting out of it? She said it seemed like he was putting his all into it, and she was sorry to see him go, because he was showing some real promise.

I asked her to take a look at his hip and tell me how it looked. She hadn't realized he had something wrong there, she just thought it was hurting. When she saw his surgical wound, I heard a little gasp. She said it looked scabbed over.

There was no scab when I dropped him off. His skin had been smooth and healed--a red scar, but healed. But I couldn't seem to get to the bottom of it by questioning her and having her question him. I was going to have to see the words come off his hands in person.

Rick and I piled into the car tonight and headed out to Frederick to get him.

Poor Charlie. It turns out that the hip had opened up last night during their first session, but he didn't say anything to anyone. He soaked off the scab in the shower and hoped it would get better overnight. But the next morning, they were practicing tackles, and he was getting hit repeatedly right on that spot. When he decided he couldn't finish the drill, the coach asked him if he didn't like football, and Charlie finally showed him the wound. Coach told him he couldn't keep playing on that, it would just keep getting worse. So Charlie made the sensible decision that he would have to come home. Wasn't a problem at karate camp, because he wasn't getting hit and was careful to lead off with his other side while fighting so he didn't get kicked there.

I thought he would be really disappointed about it, because he had been talking nonstop about wanting to join the football team, but he seems to be taking it very matter-of-factly. He's not even sure he will go back to it next summer, because there is an age limit of 18 to play during the season, and if he goes next year, he will be playing JV, and then will turn 18 before getting to the varsity team.

I guess I won't be a football mom after all, and Charlie will never have one of those multi-million dollar contracts with the NFL.

That's okay--I'm a karate mom at heart, anyway. And it sure will make our schedule this fall easier to coordinate.

So much for the down time and that list...

Down Time - Part I

2009-08-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

So Charlie left on August 2 for karate camp--a whole week of nothing but eat, sleep, karate; 3-4 workouts every day. I wasn't entirely sure about this, because he would be there for a whole week with all hearing people and no interpreter, not able to understand when an instructor was speaking to a whole group of people.

Yes, I know--he grew UP in that kind of environment, what's the big problem? Well, he can actually communicate now and has things to say and an insatiable curiosity to know what's going on around him. How will it affect him, being thrust back into an environment where he can't get his point across clearly? Will it frustrate him?

You wouldn't know I had any reservations when I was on the phone trying to convince the lady running the thing that it would be fine, and I'd explain the schedule to him ahead of time, and teach him all the important words I could think of so that he could spell them if it came down to trying to write back and forth. She had misgivings, but I encouraged her to speak with Charlie's head instructor and a few others who had worked with him and let me know her decision--he'd be fine.

She bought it.

I had a list of things as long as my arm I wanted to accomplish during the down-time while he was away. It can be incredibly draining sometimes with Charlie around. There is no down-time. The minute I look like I'm just reading for pleasure or playing with e-mails rather than working or studying, he is prodding me to do something with him: "Help me study the driving book. Help me read my story for the summer reading program. Help me learn algebra. Help me...."

And you know what? I help him. I would feel immensely guilty if I didn't, because he takes such joy in learning. This is what I adopted him for--to give him every opportunity it is in my power to give him, just as I gave to Rick.

And after I dropped him off in Rockville at the bus that would take him four hours away, I sat at home biting my nails down to nubs, and accomplished not a single thing on that list.

What was I thinkin'? He was fine.

When I picked him up today, every other sign off the boy's hands was "wonderful" and "awesome." He had the time of his life! He came back knowing the forms he needed for the next two belt tests and part of the first black-belt form, and he learned how to use several weapons, and someone apparently beat him enough that he learned how to look mean while doing his forms, and his team won third place in the team competition so he has (another) trophy to add to his little collection, and....

According to one of the adults I talked to, Charlie was the darling of the camp, and in no time at all was teaching sign language classes. There were two ladies there who knew fingerspelling and some basic signs, so he taught them some more, and they became his own personal little harem of Charlie's Angels.

He is already looking forward to next year.

I have to learn to let go. This week was hard. I was so depressed, I nearly started the process for adopting another one. And it's about to get worse--he is only home for one night, and then leaves tomorrow morning for football camp at school. He will be there for 3 whole weeks. Not as nerve-wracking, since it's a deaf camp and he will be in his own element communication-wise, but certainly every bit as lonely here on the home front.

I have a list as long as my arm of things to do during the down-time...

Finally able to breathe again

2009-07-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

*
"That bump is starting to look funny."
What bump?
"The bump on my hip."

A few months ago, Charlie had shown me what looked like a mosquito bite on his hip. Who gets bent out of shape about a mosquito bite? Not this mommy--I grew up covered in bug bites 'cause I didn't have the sense to go in when the sun went down. So I told him to keep it clean and it should go away in a couple of days, try not to scratch at it.

Never heard anything more about it. Until two weeks ago when the above conversation kicked things off.

I examined it, and decided we had cause for concern. It had grown to about the size of 2-3 peas clustered together, it was hard as a rock, and it had turned purple. And you could move it around in there. Time for professional help.

One small problem--I couldn't find a dermatologist at Hopkins (where I work) who could see him in a reasonable time frame. An adult dermatologist could have gotten him in, but because his legal age was only 16, he has to go to a pediatric dermatologist. (Remember, there is a discrepancy between his physical age and his legal adoption age.) The pediatric dermatologist was booked up into late September already. And they refused to let me schedule him with an adult dermatologist, even when I explained that physically he is already an adult.

Okay, phooey on Hopkins (maybe not in those exact words). I started looking outside the hallowed halls of Hopkins. And it seems like every dermatologic surgeon in Baltimore City and surrounding region was booked into September for new patient appointments.

I finally got the bright idea of going farther afield and found a dermatology practice in Frederick that could actually see him the coming week for the initial appointment.

The wonderful news was that when the doctor heard how far we had come and understood that we already knew it would have to be surgically removed, he actually agreed to do the surgery ON THE SPOT!!! That's practically unheard-of.

They excised the mass that same afternoon. The chunk of tissue he took out looked huge to me--he took really wide margins all around the mass just in case, so the incision was very long. Charlie went home feeling no pain. The local anesthetic they had given him lasted a long time. He didn't start feeling pain until just before bedtime. Once it hit, though, he wasn't real happy. It was reasonably well controlled with just ibuprofen, but it was a week before Charlie stopped asking for pain medicine.

And a week later, the pathology came back: Dermatofibroma. Benign.

Whew. I didn't realize that I'd been pretty much holding my breath for a week.

Charlie is doing great now, chafing a bit because he can't practice his karate for 2 weeks while the incision heals, but behaving himself for the most part and healing very well.

No more "mosquito bites," please!

Shredding his little heart out

2009-06-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

Charlie likes taking things apart. Sometimes he takes apart things I really don't want taken apart. We finally came to a compromise. I would keep an eye out on my local freecycle list and when someone advertised a non-working appliance of some sort, I would go fetch it. Charlie could take those apart, and then once he figured out whatever he was trying to figure out, he could just toss them.

The problem is, Charlie is starting to fix things. I picked up a portable boom-box that the owner said the CD player was broken on. I have no idea what he did, but all it took was a screwdriver. The CD player on the boom box works.

Hmmm, this could get interesting.

I was tired of taking mail with my address on it to work to shred, but too cheap to buy a paper shredder. Yesterday someone put up a shredder on freecycle saying that it was working, but all of a sudden now it wasn't, didn't know why, not interested in trying to find a repairman, wasn't worth the cost to fix, and if anyone wanted it, come get it, maybe the trash can it sits on would still be of use.

So I answered the post and went out to get it today after church. I told Charlie that he could do whatever he wanted to it, but once he was done and ready to throw it out, don't throw out the trash can, I can use that.

We picked up groceries after picking up the shredder. When we got home, he was so eager to crack that thing open, he ran in the house and started looking for the screwdriver. Yo! China Boy!!!! Get your butt out here and help mama with the groceries!

After he finished helping out, he found the screwdriver and went to town. Next thing I know, there are little screws and pieces spread out all over the dining room table. I decide I'm going to just ignore the whole thing and let him have his fun. I started peeling and chopping veggies that I was putting into a pot of homemade chicken soup. After a few minutes, Charlie gets up and moves across the room. I figured he'd gotten bored with it....then I heard a button click and a loud whirrrr, and Charlie signs and shouts PAH!!! He had gotten it working. I pointed at the basket where the mail remains go to wait for transport to the office shredder, and he was overjoyed to have something to shred in his new toy. This is a nice shredder!

The boy is now 2 for 2.

Got any appliances you want fixed?

Busted Buses

2009-06-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

For the past week, Charlie and I have been poring over bus schedules for the Howard County Transit System, learning which lines come near our development and where they go, how to read the schedule charts so he can figure out when they go and come back. Tonight it was time for our first field trip.

The whole idea is to make him more independent. He's home all day with nothing to do but talk to his friends on the videophone and watch TV or read (and his reading level is still somewhat limited), so I thought it would be nice if he could get out and about somewhat. Especially since the libraries are some of his favorite haunts.

Older brother Rick warned us the buses aren't always reliable, sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes don't show up at all. He would know; after all, he used to depend on those buses to get to work. That makes him an expert.

So, when I got home from work tonight, Charlie met me at the front of the development and we went out to the bus stop. I showed him the correlation between the schedule printout and the different color lines shown on the sign for the bus stop. He gets it.

We get on the bus and pay the fare. He gets it.

We get off the bus at the library. He gets it.

Finished our business at the library, and go back outside to catch the return bus. He read the schedule correctly to figure out what time to be at the bus stop.

But the bus didn't come. And Charlie didn't get it.

There was a guy waiting there with us who had been waiting for the previous bus, as well, and THAT one never showed up, either. After waiting (and chatting) a while, I decided phooey on this, because the next (and last) bus wasn't due for another hour and a half. I called Rick, the expert, and asked him if he could come fetch us.

He had just finished cooking his dinner, and had to shove it in the fridge to heat up again once we got back. This made him none too happy. I braced myself for the inevitable "I-told-you-so's."

While we were waiting for Rick, the guy called the 1-800 number for customer service for the bus line, and they told him the bus had been in an accident. Yeah, sure--wonder how many times a day they use that excuse!

When he pulled up, I asked if he could give our new friend a ride to the MARC train station--it was only one exit out of our way and would take 3 minutes, tops. He was rather surly about it, which is unusual for him. Then as he peeled out of the parking lot, he made the comment, "...and don't say jack about my driving. I'm doing you a favor."

Really not like him to be so overtly rude, especially in front of other people like that, so I said, "You're in a really foul mood, aren't you?"

He complained, "Well, I had the fork halfway to my mouth. I'm starving!"

I merely nodded and said, "So are we...that's why we called. Next bus isn't due until after 9 pm and we haven't had dinner, either." He grumbled, but shut up and drove.

We got to the train station, and I directed him to the proper building and then turned around to the back seat, where the guy was sitting with Charlie, and I said (and signed, for Charlie's benefit) "Bye, I hope you get your car back!" (It had been towed.)

He said, "Me, too, and thank you so much for the ride to the train!"

Whereupon Rick turned around and yelled, "Holy crap, you can HEAR!!!!"

The whole time Rick was sitting there bitching about being hungry and having to come get us, he thought the guy was some deaf friend of Charlie's who couldn't hear him.

He laughed halfway home. Thank God it put him in a better mood. It improved his driving, too. :P

Am I Blue?

2009-06-10T18:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Charlie's blue belt test. Needless to say.....

Stop, Thief!!!

2009-05-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

More from the darker side series: One of the things I learned during my pre-adoption training is that if the child comes from a hard environment into what he perceives as a fantasy world where everything seems perfect, he (or she) will work very hard to be perfect so he can fit in. The child is deathly afraid of being sent back, and so becomes the perfect little angel. Always agreeable, always helpful, always...perfect.

But he can't stay perfect forever, and the point at which most kids break is six months. At that point, they start wondering whether we could possibly love them for their REAL selves, and they start pushing the envelope and acting up to test us. Their mental process at that point works something like this: "Well, they might not love me if they really knew who/what I am, and although I like it here, I just know they'll send me back someday if they knew how really bad I am--after all, my REAL parents did that. So if I show them now what I'm really like, at least I KNOW they'll send me back, and I'm the one in control of the situation, I won't be caught by surprise, 'cause I know what they'll do."

Heart-breaking, isn't it? Children actually believe that they did something bad to cause their birthparents to abandon them. What they don't realize is that WE ARE THE REAL PARENTS in this case, and we're onto them. We have to love them through this time and prove that they aren't going anywhere.

In Charlie's case this was, thankfully, short-lived.

On the dot of six months (right on schedule!) one day I had the sensation that some money was missing from my wallet. I never carry a great deal of cash, and honestly usually don't know down to the dollar what's in there, but I just felt like something was missing. So I decided to pay better attention. Sure enough, within a few more days, a $10 bill went missing, and this time I knew it was gone. I had last seen it the evening before, and shortly after that had stopped for gas. Charlie usually gets my card out of my wallet for me as we pull up to the pump, so I had a pretty good hunch when and where it had gone missing.

I was at my office, and I have videoconference ability to reach Charlie from there. Still, just for due diligence's sake, I called oldest son Rick to make sure he hadn't borrowed it, though he always lets me know if he needs to borrow anything. He hadn't. So, I called Charlie to ask if he knew anything about it. He said that he bet it fell out of my wallet and rolled under the seat of the car, and he'd be happy to check once I got home.

Yeah, right. My suspicion is that he would have gone to look for it while "palming" the bill so that he could miraculously produce it.

Well, I was headed to school after work that night and wouldn't be back until he was asleep.

When I got home from school, I did check under the seat of the car, just to be absolutely sure it wasn't there. Then I came in the house and talked to Rick to fill him in on the sitch, and said "Go get him up."

A sleepy, bleary-eyed Charlie comes down the stairs. I asked again about the $10, and got the same story as earlier--it must have fallen under the seat of the car, and if I would let him go change into his clothes, he'd go out and look for it.

Hmmm.....lemme 'splain somethin' here, kid. First, I looked under the car seat already, and guess what? It isn't there! Now let me demonstrate something. Here's my wallet. See how my cards are in the snap section, and the money is in the zip section? That means that the money was zippered into this section and couldn't get out because you only opened the snap section to get the card out for me. Oh, but let's just suppose I accidentally left the zipper section unzipped. Gosh, the darned paper money just won't fall out! (I'm shaking the wallet upside-down really hard at this point.) And gee, let's look at this--if somehow a bill did fall out (I pulled one free and let it fall), IT DOESN'T ROLL. So it isn't going under the car seat.

Okay, now I think we've established that the money did not fall out and roll under the car seat. I want to get to the bottom of this, and it's late, and I want to go to bed, too, so I will simply tell you that if you lied to me, yes, you will be punished. But if you CONTINUE to lie to me, the punishment will be even greater--you will not be going to deaf camp. So, I'm going to ask you one more time: What do you know about the $10 missing from my wallet?

I unzipped the wallet while you were pumping gas and saw the money in there and took it and put it in my pocket and I have it upstairs and if you let me get up I'll go get it right now and give it back.

He sang like a canary. Who needs waterboarding????

Yes, he was punished for the initial lie, so that he would know that misdeeds carry consequences. But he got to go to camp, and he was still entrusted to get the card out for me when we pulled into the gas station, although he knew I was keeping closer watch on the money in there.

Most importantly, we ended the night with a hug and "I love you" signs after the tears and threats were over, and he felt secure not only that the rules were in place and enforced, but that he wasn't being sent anywhere, ever. No matter what.

East Coast Tournament

2009-04-25T15:22:00.001-07:00

Charlie competed today at the Eastern Regional Karate Championships. This is where martial artists from New York down to Florida converge on Rockville, Maryland to compete for bragging rights on being the best on the East Coast.

Last year was Charlie's first time there, and he left empty-handed after underestimating how hard it was to go up against the best. This year, he went in with a little more determination. I think he still underestimated it some, since he won all three first-place trophies at the state tournament a couple of weeks ago. He figured he'd just walk in and clean up again. Well, it didn't happen quite that way.

But he did win the third place trophy in kata! He's definitely making a name for himself. To win anything at all in this tournament is really a big deal. (I never won anything there.)

Here's a picture of the trophy and the trophy winner. If this is just the third-place trophy, can you imagine how big the first-place trophy is??? These are serious trophies! Charlie is thrilled to have one to adorn his mantel.

His next belt test is the second week of June. Hopefully he will get his blue belt then. Feel free to leave a blog comment to encourage him to study and practice hard--I'll be happy to interpret what he doesn't understand!

Here's a video of the third-best green belt kata performance on the East Coast:

Food Fight

2009-04-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the series of posts about some of the challenges we came up against, I thought I'd mention an issue that we had that I wasn't prepared for despite all the "training" I went through. One of the things I learned during the prep period for the adoption was that orphans have food issues. Lots of food issues. It's not unusual for orphans to hoard food. The usual scenario in an orphanage is for the food to be set out, and the kids who are fastest get the most to eat, the others not so much. Since the kids aren't always confident that they'll get enough, they try to hide food when they can get away with it. So even when they get adopted, they aren't always sure what's going on, and even though they may get enough food at a meal to feel full, they still aren't confident that there will be more later, and they continue to hide or steal food to store up.

Charlie spent 11 years in that environment, and I found out from someone who knew him back then that yes, Charlie was fast. He got plenty of food--and promptly started passing it out to the little kids. Charlie has a soft spot for the young ones. Knowing all this, I expected him to have food issues. I was prepared for that. But they didn't surface the way we were expecting.

To start with, Charlie liked good, healthy foods and lots of them. But he never got into the junk food scene. He was utterly convinced that eating any sweets at all makes you fat. Cake? An invention of Satan. But fruits, vegetables, rice, noodles, meats, eggs? Bring 'em on!! He ate, and ate, and ate, and never seemed to really gain a spare ounce on his frame. That's when I realized how fast he was growing. For a Chinese kid, he was turning into a giant. They thought he was tall when I adopted him, but in the space of four months, he had grown three inches, and before his first year here was out, he was five inches taller. He is now taller than I.

He started coming home from school with headaches. I didn't make the connection to food right away--when my other son had started having chronic headaches in school, it was because he was dealing with a difficult social scene and didn't want to be there, so naturally I started trying to find out what about school was bothering Charlie. He said nothing was wrong. He just had headaches.

One day the school called me and said he had a fever and joint aches, I needed to come get him. So I went and picked him up. By the time I got there, the fever was gone, but he was still achy. The next day, he was still achy, but had no other symptoms whatsoever. But he was ravenous, and when he made a comment about breakfast and lunch at school being very light, something clicked in my brain.

Charlie was dorming just a couple of nights a week. On the days and nights he was home, no problem. He could eat as much as he wanted for breakfast, and then even though lunch was light, he got home from school early enough that he could eat another meal. Then he'd have yet another meal when I got home from work and made dinner. And THEN he'd eat something, usually fruit, before bed. But on the nights he was dorming, he didn't get that bedtime snack, he didn't get enough at breakfast, and lunch was light. By the time dinner came around, he had a headache because he wasn't getting enough calories to sustain the wild growth spurt his body started once he was getting enough food on a regular basis.

That explained the joint aches and constant injuries, too. His body was growing so fast that the growth plates at the ends of the long bones in the arms and legs were soft and weak. Playing hard was putting too much stress on them during this spurt, so they ached.

What really made sense once I realized all this was his hunger pains. Charlie had grown up under-nourished and growth-stunted, but because it was constant, what he lived with was an ongoing, gnawing sense of hunger. But once he started eating more and growing suddenly, when he got hungry, he was hungry RIGHT NOW and had to have food RIGHT NOW because he would start getting sharp stomach pains if he didn't.

He was literally in more pain from hunger now than he had ever been in the past.

Time for Mama Bear to take action. I promptly dashed off an e-mail to his social worker at the school and to his teacher, explained the situation and Charlie's past experiences (they were unaware of any of this), and they agreed that if I were to send in a bag of healthy foods in his luggage on dorm days, they would give him extra times throughout the day and evening to be able to eat some supplemental meals.

That solved the problem, and that situation lasted for several months. By the time Charlie started high school, his growth had leveled off some and he was eating much more normal-sized meals and not as many of them, so he has been managing just fine with dorming at the high school without having to take any supplemental food.

It just hurts to think of the constant sense of hunger he used to know, and to watch him back in the days when he would feel physical pain from sudden hunger. It hurts even more to remember the faces of all of his friends that I saw at the orphanage and know that they are still living with that and there's nothing I can do for them.

So if you're skeptical when someone tells you to clean your plate, that there are starving children in China, the answer is yes -- there really are.

Cleaned Up!

2009-03-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

We interrupt the "dark side" blog series to bring you a public service announcement: Charlie attended the local level karate tournament today and cleaned up ALL THREE first-place trophies (kata, sparring, and jujitsu) for his division. That's my boy!

He has another tournament at the end of April (this is the entire East Coast tournament), and then in June he will hopefully test for his next belt level (blue).

The meaning of courage

2009-03-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

Charlie is one of the bravest people I know. Maybe even THE bravest.

Up to now, a lot of my blog since Charlie has joined our family has been all the funny stuff that happens when four cultures (American, Chinese, hearing, and deaf) collide. The blog was an affirmation that melding that many cultures can work, and indeed it has. But has it all been a bed of roses? Not by a long shot. My friend Jen (author of the Four Little Hawks blog on my blogroll) recently opened up about the issues and problems she is facing with her children, two of whom were adopted from China, and one of those two who is deaf. Her openness and willingness to share have given me courage to talk a little here about some of our darker moments and discoveries...not as a sympathy-getter, but more to show other adoptive parents or those considering adoption that even the greatest success stories have those dark times, and we get past them and can still consider our experience a success.

I'm going to start a series of blog posts, a little bit at a time, and each will deal with some of the issues we have run up against, some of which I was prepared for and expecting, and some of which totally blind-sided me. But in dealing with each of them, I have come to not only love but respect this child more and more, and I am sometimes in awe of the fortitude he had.

I knew the day Charlie signed his Chinese name to those papers in court that he had a lot of courage, but I really had no clue then just how much. He, the product of a society without faith, took an incredible leap of faith that day, and I can only now appreciate just how much he was risking in his own mind.

It was different for Charlie than for most other Chinese adoptions. For most orphans, the choice is taken out of their hands. Some loving couple here in the U.S. or elsewhere sees the child's profile, feels a stirring in their hearts, and whether they acknowledge it as a call from God or just call it fate, they somehow know that they are supposed to go get that child. They make all the decisions; the child has no clue what is going on until the day the staff at the orphanage take the child to some far-away city, sign over custody to these strangers, and walk away and leave the child with these people who look and smell different, and eat way different foods, and even use funny-looking toilets that these kids have never seen before and are sometimes terrified of.

But if the child is over 10, it's a whole new story. Children over 10 have to AGREE to the adoption in court before a judge. The deaf ones, especially the younger ones, usually don't even know what they're agreeing to, because they have never gone to school and they get by with whatever home signs they create for themselves at the orphanage, which doesn't exactly lend itself to in-depth conversations when they are the only deaf children there in a sea of hearing children. The staff usually don't learn any more "sign" than what is needed to give the child orders regarding personal hygiene. So they certainly can't tell this child that he or she is about to be adopted and will need to give permission. The child signs the papers with the Chinese equivalent of an X (an inked thumbprint), because he also has never learned to write, and it is pretty much the same as the other adoptions at that point, because now the child is committed and the parents are making all the decisions.

But Charlie--he had been sent to school, he could read and write, and he could hold in-depth coversations. Not with the orphanage workers, because they never did learn sign. They simply got two inches from his face (as though his sight were the problem) and spoke very loudly (like that would help him hear better) and expected that he could read their lips. But with the kids and teachers at the deaf school--ah, there communication could be had.

What I just found out not too long ago, what left me in awe of this kid's resilience, is that once the word was out that Charlie was to be adopted, by an American family at that, a campaign was set afoot to persuade him to not agree to the adoption. Teachers at the school told him and the other children that Americans adopt kids to use them as servants and then kill them. Giving a small element of credence to the story were recent articles about one family who starved their adopted Russian child to death and another family that abused their adopted child and beat the child to death. (The starvation episode was actually here in Maryland, 2005.)

Can you imagine the pressure? The only adults he's ever been able to truly communicate with are telling him not to agree to this because he will end up dead. The other kids are telling him the same thing.

Here I am, literally on the other side of the world, with no clue of the pressure he is under over there. I'm dealing with my own set of pressures here, stalking FedEx delivery personnel, driving the people at my adoption agency nuts. Then a miracle happened, and I found a liaison, someone who could get word to Charlie for me, someone he would occasionally sneak out and visit with while he was "home" at the orphanage on the weekends.

And so the letters started. (See the blog during the timeframe of about July/August of 2006 to December 2006 if you don't know what I'm talking about here.)

Now Charlie is getting it from both sides: People at the school are telling him don't go, but these letters...this person he has never met is saying he will have equal status in the family as her other son? He will have not only responsibilities, but equal rights?

He's torn. He wants to believe the letters, he really does. But then he goes back to school for the coming week, and they're at him again--don't do it, you'll be killed. And they have printouts of news articles about Americans killing their adopted children to back it up. But then he goes back to the orphanage, and there's another letter...this woman is writing to him faithfully, keeping him informed on the delays, telling him details about life over there. Maybe this family would be different from the ones the people at school are telling him about?

Somehow, he got a defiant streak in him and decided to go ahead with it. But he didn't tell them. He never did get to tell them, because one weekend when he went back to the orphanage, they simply didn't send him back to school, because the adoption date was imminent. Once the CCAA had approved the adoption, it was a definite, and they didn't need to spend the money trying to educate this one any longer, they could just keep him there and wait until it happened, and let the new parents take on the expense of educating him.

I have no way of knowing what his decision would have been had he not received those letters, but I thank God for the angel that was our go-between, because I believe that tipped the balance in my favor. Charlie signed those papers knowing there was a chance that he could end up abused or worse, figuring that if that happened, he would just try to run away and survive as best he could--in a country where he knew nobody and nothing.

What is scary, and has not yet come up in conversation, is this: What about his life there was so awful that he was willing to take that chance?

We got into a discussion recently about what his future would have been there and what it is here. He thinks that when he aged out of the orphanage, they would have tried to keep him on as hired help, because he was pretty handy and industrious about cleaning things and fixing things. But he understood that was the best-case scenario. (If you don't get that reference, read the blog post titled "The future of deaf orphans in China.") When he first got here, he had no clue how far he could reach. His big aspiration in those days was to be a cook in a Chinese take-out restaurant. Then, because we kept telling him "deaf can, deaf CAN--this isn't China where deaf can't," he moved up to wanting to OWN the restaurant. Now he's talking about being the engineer who plans it. He's knocking himself out at school so that he can learn enough to be accepted to NTID, a technical college for the deaf, where he can try for an engineering degree. Deaf CAN.

He found the courage to sign those papers on 12/28/06. That's really all that matters.

I have just been summoned--he wants to read me a story.

I'm so in awe of this kid.

A stunning piece of writing

2009-03-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

I was checking out Cody's parents' blog to see how they were doing now that the rush of Cody's wake and funeral were over with and reality starts to settle in, and noted that Mickey had linked to the blog of a friend of his who had written a post entitled "Goodnight Moon" after leaving the viewing.

Her post is a stunning and evocative piece of writing asking--and trying to answer--some of the questions that arise when a child dies. I'll link it here in case anyone is interested.

Goodnight Moon

Rest in peace, Cody.

Norah has her forever family!

2009-03-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

As Cody's family lays him to rest, Norah's new life is just beginning--Glenn and Lori finally got their arms around their little girl, and though it was a bit of a rocky start, she seems to be settling in well now, and the pictures on their blog are simply priceless. She's a real princess, and Glenn and Lori seem to understand well the trauma the transition brings for the child. They're doing everything right, and it's obviously paying off big after just one day.

What an awesome love story....

Update

2009-03-06T06:30:00.000-08:00

Cody died this morning. Please pray for Mickey and Diane as they deal with the grief that no parent should ever have to face.

Prayers for Cody and Norah

2009-03-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

For those who follow our story and believe in prayer, I have two requests for you.

One is a little boy named Cody who is dying of cancer. I have been following his dad's blog for a while, and I just listed it over in the blogs I'm following. Do not read this if you're looking for happily ever after stories, because the situation no parent should ever have to face is unfolding for this family. Cody has deteriorated so much recently that they are now in what they call memory-making mode. They just returned from a week at the beach, and before they left, Mickey had to sign the DNR paperwork at the hospital Cody is normally treated at so that the paperwork could be filed at the nearest hospital to where they were staying during their trip. Now they're back, and Cody went straight from the airport to the hospital and is not doing well. I think they are at the point where the prayers are needed for strength for the family to get through what is ahead and comfort once that part is over--miraculous healing does not seem to be part of God's plan for this youngster. Please pray for them as they face the deterioration and loss of their son. The ending of Mickey's post titled "80 to 30" just tore my heart out.

On a happier note, Glenn and Lori are leaving this week to go get Norah. I blogged about them earlier in January--this is the couple who is adopting a deaf Chinese girl with a heart problem. They have come close to rounding up what they need to make the trip. They will probably need to get a loan to cover the remaining amount, but they have managed between saving themselves and donations from very generous people to put together all but $2000 of the $10k they needed to make this happen. (Any last minute donations would, I'm sure, be gratefully appreciated!) I'm looking forward to following their blog while they're over in China, and I can't wait until Norah has a home and family of her very own. Their blog is also listed in the blogroll on the left.

Please keep both of these families in your prayers, one going through unutterable sadness and the other about to experience profound joy.

I hear you knocking....

2009-02-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

So today Charlie and I are sitting at the table, reading a story. More accurately, he's reading to me. We do this as a supplement to whatever they're teaching him in school, because he just soaks up new vocabulary words from doing this. The real challenge is not whether he can identify all the words in the sentence, but whether he understands the sentence or paragraph once he has signed it.

So one sentence in today's story used the word "knock." I have an aversion to just giving him the sign for a word he doesn't know. I prefer to have him try to figure it out, whether through telling a story using the word, or pantomiming the concept. So, I gave him the situation of arriving at a friend's house to find the door closed. You want to get in. What do you do?

"Open the door and walk in."

Okay, let's re-think this....the door is locked. How do you get someone to unlock it and let you in?

"I take out my cell phone and text my friend, saying, 'Dude, open the door.'"

I think this is one time I'm justified in just giving him the sign for the word. Duh--Charlie's friends are all deaf. Why bother knocking???

Charley wanna Harley??

2009-02-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight Charlie and I went to the Mid-Atlantic Motorcycle Show at Timonium. Just for yucks and giggles, neither of us could afford to buy anything.

Charlie has decided he's going to learn to ride a motorcycle. I guess that's my bad influence rubbing off on him.

But which one? There were so many to choose from. Maybe this one?

Nah, let's try this one!

Oh, wait...here's the perfect one!

Seriously, they had some pretty weird bikes there. It was fun wandering around and seeing just how much someone could mess up a perfectly simple machine.

Me, I'll stick with my plain little old Honda Rebel! Maybe when Charlie's old enough, I'll be ready to move up and he can buy it from me.

No More Mama Einstein!

2009-01-22T17:18:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, you just have to make a nuisance of yourself.

I have now been working with Baby Einstein (aka Charlie) for two weeks from algebra books borrowed from the library. It crossed my feeble mind that perhaps I should try to get a copy of the algebra textbook they use at school so I know I'm covering the same stuff they do and in the same order. So in addition to the e-mail notes I have been sending his math teacher every couple of days to keep him informed of what Charlie has learned, I also sent him a note asking for the textbook and teacher's guide, explaining that I needed them to be sure I taught him the entire semester's worth of algebra so that he would be able to start the next level in the fall.

All this time, he's been passing my notes on to the vice-principal. Apparently my request for the textbook was the last straw, since I had clearly articulated in that note what our goal was at this point. Today I get a note from him stating that the VP had figured out a way to get Charlie into a pre-algebra class. He starts tomorrow. Furthermore, his current math teacher will continue to work with him after school periodically to ensure that he doesn't miss any of the mathematical principles he would be getting from the general math class.

Squeaky wheel? I think maybe it bothered them that he was in essence being home-schooled by an unskilled teacher who admitted to them that she hated math. Successfully. After all, if he's doing this well under MY tutelage, how well could he do under theirs? They're the experts, after all, in both algebra and sign!

I have (gratefully) agreed to return the library's algebra books and cease and desist from teaching him at home so that he paces with the class.

I seem to have won this one without resorting to whining, begging, or complaining loudly (which does no good at a deaf school, anyway). All I had to do was spend a couple of weeks proving to them what he was capable of. They can't stand the thought of a child not performing to his potential, especially once he's demonstrated the ability. I like this school's flexibility and willingness to work with the kids individually where necessary. They've done this concerning his English lessons, too, because in that area he is naturally behind his peers and they're doing a lot of extra work with him to try to get him up to grade level by the time he finishes high school. (He will have a 5-year high school program.) But they're not going to let that hold him back in other areas, and now they're starting to get a taste of what I've known all along--he has the potential for brilliance if given the chance.

Now go get 'em, Charlie!

Yes, the picture really is Pauline Koch, Einstein's mother. I don't see much resemblance, except that we both had really bright kids.

Baby Einstein

2009-01-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

This Baby Einstein I've adopted is starting to irritate me. I simply can't abide having someone smarter than I in the house.

Charlie came home one day last week saying something about being moved to a different math class on Jan 20 (semester change), a lower class. When I had looked at his grade sheet a couple of weeks earlier, he had all A's and B's in math with a D in just one module, and he was able to show me what module was and that he now understood it, so I wasn't concerned about that.

But moving to a lower math class? Time to talk to the teacher and find out what's going on.

It seems that they were actually trying to move Charlie ahead at one point. His teacher felt, and another teacher who subbed for his classes for a while agreed, that Charlie was so strong in math he needed to move up to an algebra class next semester, so they were trying to figure out how to re-work his schedule to get him into an algebra class. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out, since each of his classes next semester is mandatory and is only offered by one teacher at one specific time. So they are planning to keep him in his regular math class (hence the "lower" sign he used) instead of moving him up.

Thing is, Charlie really wants to learn algebra. And before my brain was fully engaged and cognizant of what I was about to say, I told him the only other option I could see was to get an algebra textbook from the public library and for me to teach him that at home on the weekends. He jumped up and said, "Let's go!"

Ahem....I should probably mention that I grew up terrified of math. One of the reasons I delayed college is that I was afraid of math. Once I got started, I actually got A's, but I had to put in a LOT of hard work to do it, and I'm still not comfortable saying that I'm good at math. So the realization that Charlie's first algebra skills were going to depend on me not only remembering all of that crap but actually being able to explain it IN SIGN LANGUAGE struck terror in my heart all over again.

Unfortunately, we got to the library 5 minutes before they closed, so there was plenty of time to get a librarian to show us where the algebra books were and choose one or two. No backing out of this one.

We came home, and Charlie glanced through the books while I was preparing dinner. I kept hoping maybe he would look at it, decide it looks too hard, and quietly set it aside. Noooooo, not ChinaBoy. As soon as dinner was over, I curled up in my easy chair with my laptop to answer some e-mail, and there he is at my shoulder, signing "Help me." Help you what? "Algebra." He wants his first lesson RIGHT NOW.

So we sat down and cracked the book. Introductory stuff. Good--I can remember this part, I'm still with the program. Explaining it sometimes was a bit of a challenge, but we got through the first few topics. It's very easy with Charlie to tell when he truly understands something--you can see the lightbulb going on.

That was Friday night.

On Saturday, I worked and then ran some errands, and when I got home, I sat down with the laptop. Sure enough, within 5 minutes, he's at my elbow. "Help me, algebra."

So we hit the books again.

After only two lessons, he now understands (basics, mind you) prime numbers, factoring, exponents, variables, constants, commutative law, and order of operations; he is solving (simple) algebraic exponential expressions if given values for x and y; he understands area and perimeter of basic geometric shapes and can solve for those values with an algebraic expression; and he understands that the angles of a triangle must equal 180 degrees and how to solve for a missing side of a right triangle.

Okay, maybe not an Einstein (yet), but he is really soaking this stuff up at warp speed, and trying to stay one step ahead of him is starting to get on my last freakin' nerve!

Oh, no...I'm sitting here blogging from my easy chair with my laptop in my lap.

And I hear him coming down the stairs....

Discretionary Funds

2009-01-03T13:32:00.000-08:00

Someday when my adoption debts are all paid off (hah!!) and I again have that wonderful item euphemistically known as a discretionary fund, there are a few things I intend to do that serve no practical purpose whatsoever--just because I want to. (Those of you who know me well are gasping in shock and wondering what on earth has come over me, I know!)

One of them is buy a forensic photo regression of Charlie. I would like to make a really nice lifebook for him as a gift if/when he marries, but I have no baby pictures of him. In fact, the earliest pictures I have of him (and very few of those) are from the age of about 12. The orphanage never bothered to take baby or young child pictures of him because they never believed he would be adopted. They didn't really start taking a lot of pictures until the summer before he was adopted, when they found out someone was interested in him. But you've heard of how they can "age" a missing child photograph to show what the child can look like today after being missing for several years? Guess what? They can do it BACKWARDS as well! I caught a link for a company that does both progressions and regressions on photographs, and I'm so excited at the thought of having baby pictures of Charlie that I'm simply beside myself!! You HAVE to check out this link and look at the picture of what Elvis would look like today. This is really cool--take a look at some of the regressions they've done. http://www.phojoe.com/forensic_compositing.html

Another thing would be to start a search for his birth parents. I asked Charlie if he would someday want to know who his birthparents were if that information could be found, and he said yes. That's one of the reasons I follow Brian Stuy's blog (see Research-China.org in the blog list). He's the recognized expert in that field. I have no idea what it costs to mount a search--I have seen how extensively he works on a project from some of the descriptions, and I imagine it's a pretty penny, so it certainly isn't anything I could justify just yet. But someday, when Charlie turns out to be the next John Yeh, (see http://www.gazette.net/stories/12192008/businew173336_32472.shtml), it would be neat to at least reach out and let his birth parents know he turned out okay.

I'm sure I'll find more things to add to the discretionary funds list, but I think these two will be priorities!

New Year, New 'Tude

2009-01-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

I'm not much on the resolution thing, never been able to keep one in my life, but I really am going to try to be more optimistic and hopeful this year.

It's been hard this past year, being optimistic, when you're struggling to pay the mortgage, and gas is $4 per gallon, and the utility company raises the rates 72%, the grocery bill skyrockets, and your Chinese kid thinks his favorite things like pomegranates and tomatoes (which now cost $5 each at the grocery store) grow on trees or bushes or something. (Wanna make Charlie's day??? Send him a Harry and David's box of tomatoes or pomegranates!)

But I'm really going to do a better job of it this year.

Gonna spend more time with my kids (when I can get them to spend time with me--I have to remember they have friends and lives separate from mine). Making progress on this one already, since Charlie is working on learning the driver's handbook with me, and has been demanding time from me every day to work on the next sections. Rick is a harder nut to crack, but I'll figure something out. It usually has to involve food.

Gonna spend more time with my parents (when I can catch them at home--for retired people, they sure are gone a lot!). They almost moved last year, and it scared me into realizing how much time with them I'd lose, so I'm going to try and get it all in now, because I know they are still planning on moving, it's just a matter of when.

Gonna get my house in order. The clutter is stressing me out, so my local Freecycle group is gonna have a reason to really love me now. Planning to scan all my files to CD and ditch the filing folders except for the most important originals, get rid of the desktop computer setup since I do everything on the laptop, hopefully get the money together to get the basement leak fixed and maybe even get the house on the market at some point if the economy recovers well enough to sell. Lots of plans in this regard, one small project at a time.

Gonna get more organized. Okay, I'm NOT going back to the OCD days when I alphabetized the cans of vegetables in the pantry (yes, really!), but I will admit the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, and I'm losing my grip. Can't remember important events and assignments, and my oldest is starting to call me senile. This just has to stop. I forget how old I am, but it's too young to be senile.

Gonna be healthier. Notice I'm not using the word weight. I refuse to use the word diet. No numbers. But before I went to China, I was doing a good job of eating many raw foods and eating many small meals during the day instead of the traditional Big Three, and I felt good and was never hungry. That regimen got totally screwed up during those three weeks in China, and I've never quite gotten back to it. This ties back in with getting more organized, because it takes planning to have that kind and that much food with you throughout the day (and in my case, evenings at class too), but I'm going there. Also planning to resume my lunchtime walk around the campus I work on, which only took about 20 minutes, but fell by the wayside once I started needing lunch breaks to study for the killer classes I had. Might actually make a deal with myself to use the exercise bike in the basement on days that I skip the walking. No numbers, no end point, no pressure, just going to get healthier. It's easier to be optimistic when you feel healthy.

Okay, I know those things sound a lot like resolutions, but they're not, not really. They're just lifestyle changes that I think will make me happier and help me have a better attitude.

If anyone else wants to share a few resolutions, er, I mean lifestyle changes, hit the comments link. We'd love to hear yours and maybe adopt them, too.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Bring Norah Home

2008-12-30T17:23:00.000-08:00

I'd like to introduce you to a young couple with big hearts. Meet Glen & Lori Cook. They are the new parents-to-be of a little three-year-old deaf girl with a heart condition in Kaifeng, China, and they are racing against time. They are supposed to go pick her up in March, but Glen ended up needing back surgery that wiped out a good portion of what they had saved for the adoption, and they are trying to put together nearly $9000 by March. Glen figures if he could find 1000 people/families each willing to donate $10, they will be able to make it.

I am remembering the kindness of all those who donated when I was in need in order to have Jen travel with me. Some small gifts, some large gifts, but it all added up to exactly what we needed by the time we needed it. I was so blessed and so touched that total strangers would be willing to help me like that, and look at the result--I have been blessed with a wonderful child, and Rick has been blessed with the brother he's always wanted.

If you'd like to read Glen and Lori's story and information about Norah, visit their blog at http://www.2china4norah.blogspot.com/.

If you're willing to help them out with a $10 gift (or more--that isn't a limit!), you can either mail it to them at Glen & Lori Cook, P.O. Box 1114, Cabot AR, 72023-1114, or you can use the secure donation widget here or on their blog.

I'm so tickled to have a chance to help out another adopting family the way people helped me out, and I want to see Norah make it into the arms of her mommy and daddy.

Think it over, but don't think too long. March is creeping up on them quickly!

Trolling the Mall (the national mall, that is...)

2008-12-20T23:00:00.000-08:00

So this afternoon on pretty much the spur of the moment, I asked Charlie if he wanted to go see the National Christmas Tree in DC.

I expected a rolling of the eyes (like I got from Rick, the oldest...) with the expression that says, "Oh, thrills, another pine tree..." Instead, he started dancing around and bouncing off the walls, oh goody, goody, gonna go see Washington, maybe we'll see the President, maybe we'll see the Washington Monument, maybe we'll....

Okay, I officially qualify for "bad mother" status now. It struck me that this child has now lived with me for coming up on two years, and I have never taken him to Washington DC, which is only an hour away, but in the other direction from where we usually travel. (Truth to tell, I haven't been to WDC in years myself, mainly because I've been too lazy to figure out the Metro train system, and I despise driving there--the city planners were certifiably insane, IMHO.)

So, we drove to Greenbelt, parked, and figured out the Metro. It actually wasn't bad--the hardest part was figuring out the fare (which I still somehow managed to screw up and had money left over on the SmartCard).

On the trip in, he was studying the map, and started laughing. When I gave him a quizzical look, he pointed to the New York Ave./Gallaudet station and said, "The map is wrong. Everyone knows Gallaudet isn't in New York. It's in Washington." So I explained that the Ave. means the same as road, and that many roads in Washington were named after states. I pointed out a few others, and he nodded. The light bulb was on, so I sat back and relaxed. But it struck me that, given his background, that little episode showed remarkable critical thinking on his part. He wasn't willing to accept something that he thought was wrong just because it was in print. He had to question it.

We finally got to DC and emerged from underground, found a street map board, and figured out which way we needed to go. About half a block up, we ran across a huge bronze circle embedded in the sidewalk, and it had a picture of Helen Keller engraved in it along with an abbreviated bio. These things were embedded in the sidewalk every few yards, and Charlie would start eagerly looking for the next one, try to read it and figure out who it was, and then make me tell him who it was and what they were famous for. It's a good thing we had to turn off that street after a few blocks, or we would have never made it to the national tree!

And all the while, Charlie is looking up overhead in amazement at how tall the buildings are and how they're all white marble. He finally looked at me and said, "Baltimore lousy. DC buildings strong." While I think Baltimore would tend to disagree, I do agree that DC is more impressive, with its use of marble, while Baltimore seems to be modernizing. Charlie is not impressed by modern; he obviously likes the old look.

At the point where we turned, Charlie was absolutely convinced we were standing right in front of the White House. After all, the building was imposing-looking, and it had big white columns. Well, okay, but that describes about half the buildings in Washington DC. No, this isn't the White House, Charlie. It's the Treasury Building. This is where they make money. Yes, there are a LOT of cops here. Charlie is not yet sure whether to be in awe of cops or to fear them. He was very afraid when he first got here, but I explained that they were here to protect and help us (nobody say Rodney King, okay?), and he's relaxed a little, but still not completely buying it.

By this point we can see the national tree, so we head in that direction. He was very excited when we rounded a corner and could finally see the front of the White House. It was probably useless, but we took pictures anyway. It was already dark, and I know nothing about night photography. Come to think of it, I know nothing about day photography, either...

And just as I was telling him to give up and come look at the tree because we would not see the President, a chopper comes roaring overhead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the airspace around the WH is some sort of protected no-fly zone, so no one but the prez's helicopter can do that, right? Of course, it didn't exactly land in the front yard, so we never saw anyone get out or in. But still, Charlie was ecstatic, believing we had just "seen" the President.

We traipsed through the tree display. It was gorgeous. There are smaller trees all around it, one for each state and territory, and each is decorated with ornaments made in that state. There's a train village around the big one. At the far end of the whole display is a yule log pit to warm people up, and off to one side is a concert shell wtih bleachers where a men's choir is performing Christmas music. They were on their last two songs, which I interpreted for Charlie, and he got to see the playful side of Christmas music, because after they finished the last song (Let There Be Peace on Earth), they did an encore of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas," going into double time in the middle and legato at the end. Of course, there was no way I could keep up in the middle, so I flubbed over that to give Charlie the idea of how fast they were going, and I really hammed up the ending being drawn out. He loved it.

The whole time we were "doing" the tree, he had been glancing over his shoulder, sneaking peeks at the Washington Monument behind us. He finally said he wanted to walk over to it. I had already checked, and the trips up to the top ended at 5p, so there was no way we could go up it, but he didn't care, he just wanted to get near it, so off we hiked. We huffed and puffed our way up the hill, and I got a shot or two of him standing against the wall of it.

Then he looked to his left, and his eyes got big. He had just seen his HERO!

When Charlie first came to America and started school at the Columbia campus of the Maryland School for the Deaf, his very first social studies lesson was a unit on Abe Lincoln since he started in the middle of a school year and his class was already up to the Civil War. He was so proud to come home and discuss with me how slavery was bad and Abe Lincoln had freed the slaves because he believed all men were created equal. He had even had to write a letter to Abe Lincoln.

He's been fascinated by good ole Abe ever since. And now, here he is, what looks like just steps away from the guy.

Deep breath...yeah, okay, we can go see Abe. (Keep in mind, it is nighttime and pitch black out here.) Off we go for another hike. I was actually feeling pretty good, not too cold, not too tired, good night for a stroll. Charlie didn't realize just how far this really was. Halfway there, he spots a bench by the water and says he wants to sit. Hey, wait a minute. I'm old, and YOU'RE tired??? Yeah, want to sit a minute. Okay, in his defense, he's had a nasty cold and sore throat the last couple of days, so that probably had something to do with it. After we rested up, we started off yet again. Before we got there, though, we went through the new World War Two memorial. That was simply stunning. Very impressive.

Charlie was just in awe of Abe. He hadn't quite realized just how BIG that statue was. I interpreted the speech on the wall for him (four score and seven years ago...glad I still remembered how many years in a score!), and we went in the bookstore, which was still open, oddly enough, and bought some postcards.

When we left and started towards the Jefferson Memorial (hey, might as well do it ALL, right?), we ran into a black wall. Since it is dark, all walls looked black, but this was REALLY black. And, of course, the first thought that popped into my brain is VietNam Wall. I had found it (by accident) once before while in DC. But this was different, they had added stuff. There was a garden area in front of it with a bunch of white statues of soldiers in jungle type rain gear, carrying their comms equipment and weapons, obviously out on patrol in the jungle. Their faces were really expressive and haunting. Then we got to the wall itself, and I got really confused. The names were gone. No names on the VietNam wall? Something funny here...maybe around the other side? We went around the other side, and etched in the marble on that side, hard to read in the dark but in very large letters, were the words "Korean War Memorial." I felt like an idiot. This didn't exist the last time I was in DC. (Told ya it had been years!) I did some light research when we got home and found out it had been done in 2000. That explains it. From what I could tell in the dark, though, it was very nicely done. Those statues, being such a stark while, simply glowed in the dark. Very haunting.

We finally found the basin area. Didn't walk all the way around it to the Jefferson Memorial--Charlie was hungry (after all, dinner was all of two hours ago) and the area we'd been tramping through was absolutely deserted. Very few tourists, NO vendors of any kind. I promised him we'd come back to this one in the springtime during the cherry blossom festival during the day. (ChinaBoy likes flowers....)

We headed back towards the tree, and found some street vendors where I could buy him a hot dog and a hot pretzel. That oughtta hold him for another 20 minutes or so. (I swear, the boy is a bottomless pit!) I started hearing some drumming. Sounded a little like someone beating on bongo drums. Curious, we headed for the sound. It turned out to be a man who had set up a bunch of paint cans in upside down stacks of varying heights so that they would have varying pitches, and he was just banging away at them with two great big mallet-looking thingies. Eyes weren't even open, he was just in the zone, making his own special music like he didn't have a care in the world. It was so loud that Charlie could even feel the beat and was having fun watching the guy. We had found our very own Little Drummer Boy!

We finally headed back towards the Metro. Passed the Treasury Building again, and as we passed the cop standing outside one of the doors, Charlie asked me if there were cops all over the inside, too, keeping an eye on the people who are making the money. What you asking me for, child? There's a cop standing right there. Go ask him! Charlie's eyes got big, and then he looked at the cop, and I guess he decided the guy didn't look too formidable, so he marches up to the guy and asks his question. The cop just looked at him with a serious grim countenance, and then slowly did a repeated nodding of his head. Charlie backed away slowly, like he was afraid the guy was going to come after him, and beat feet back to the Metro station.

That pretty much ended our little adventure. Charlie had an absolute blast, and we both slept really well that night, given that we had just spent 4-5 hours and countless steps hitting (almost) every major memorial in the DC area.

Angel Covers

2008-12-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

I got a question about the "My Blog List" section off to the left of the screen. This is a list of blogs that I like to follow, and I wanted to talk about one in particular: The Angel Covers blog.

What does this have to do with Charlie? Angel Covers is an organization that is dedicated to helping orphans all around the world, and they take on some of the most unbelievable projects. Before Charlie came home to me, Angel Covers found out about him. They did fundraising to have him evaluated and get hearing aids for him. In essence, they gave him his first sounds.

Some of the other things they do are supporting blankets for babies type projects; milk for orphanages; the cow, chicken, goat thing; feminine hygiene supplies for areas where females lose too much time from school because of menstrual flow; and many, many others.

My pet project is an orphanage specifically for the deaf they support in Kenya. There is a deaf school named Humble Hearts, and Angel Cottage is a home connected with this school. They are trying to build a new home for the kids, because the original one was only intended for 25 children, and they now have many, many more than that. The building is very primitive (the kids have to bail water out of it periodically) and the new one is desperately needed because they have hit the point where they have had to turn needy children away. The building is only being built a bit at a time, as the funds come in.

If you are looking for a wonderful place to make a charitable contribution this Christmas, I ask that you prayerfully consider this one. You can follow the blog (linked under "My Blog List" to the left), you can visit their website at http://www.angelcovers.org/, you can buy Christmas cards designed by the orphans of Angel Cottage at http://www.angelcovers.org/holidaycards.html (a bit late for this year, I know, but you could buy early for next year!), or you can make a flat-out donation using the widget below:

Even the smallest gift will help to make a huge impact in the lives of the kids at Angel Cottage.

Many blessings,
K

And the winner is....

2008-12-07T16:50:00.000-08:00

Charlie took 1st place trophy in kata at the tournament today!

He didn't place in the fights, but he won his first two matches, and looked good doing it.

No More Adoptions

2008-12-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

Well, gosh, it looks like I won't be able to adopt any more. I recently got an e-mail indicating that the adoption agency I worked with had 10 deaf children to place, and in part of the e-mail they listed the new requirements for adoptive parents. Check these out:

Parents must fit the requirements for China adoptions:Married couples only. Couples must be married a minimum of two years, and couples with prior divorces must be married at least five years. Both spouses must be 30–54 years of age (before 55th birthday must complete the adoption for families adopting children who are older or have special needs). Applicants must be "physically and mentally healthy" as defined by the CCAA. Any of the following conditions may disqualify an applicant: A body mass index (BMI) of 40 or more (see this online BMI calculator), for either applicant. Infectious disease still at an infective stage; Mental handicap; Blindness or severe vision impairment; dysfunction of limbs or trunk caused by impairment, incompleteness, numbness or deformation; severe facial deformation; severe diseases that require long-term treatment and affect life expectancy, such as cancer, lupus, kidney disease, epilepsy, etc.; A major organ transplantation less than 10 years earlier; A history of cancer; Schizophrenia;Taking medication for mental disorders (mild or severe), including depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder, within the previous two years . In addition to the requirement for the family's income to exceed $10,000 per family member (including the child to be adopted), the family's net worth must exceed $80,000. Each applicant must hold a high school diploma or equivalent. The youngest child currently in the home must be over 1 year of age. Applicants must have no criminal record.

First off, I'm still single. Even if I were to marry TODAY (which is highly unlikely since Prince Charming is still clueless), I would have to wait 5 years, since I have a divorce in my past. By then, I will be 50. And since adoptions are now taking 3-4 years to process, it is highly unlikely that I would be able to finish the process before I am at the age of ineligibility.

It is also highly unlikely that I would get away with hiding my ICD a second time. That should have disqualified me the first time, and China would simply blow a gasket if they knew I'd gotten past them with that. Since I'm facing heart surgery for that again soon, it would show up in my medical records, so I'd never even clear the first hurdle.

Not that I had any solid plans, mind you, it's just sad that the door is now so firmly shut. Guess I'll just have to live vicariously through tales of other people's adoptions.

Sergey

2008-10-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

For those who were curious about Sergey's status but were too polite to ask: I don't know.

I was unable to go back for Sergey after I got back with Charlie. In addition to financial limitations, I also had the issue of having my job abolished. Even though I found another one right away, that disqualified me from starting another paperchase, because they look for stability.

Someone actually contacted me because she had been paperchasing Sergey even before I was, and had to suspend her process when she had a biological child. She was interested in resuming if I were not going to, and I gave her my blessing and the contact information of the agency rep who had his file.

But I don't know the outcome. I'm afraid to ask. Guilt? Sure. If he did not get adopted, he will age out of the orphanage by Christmas.

I can tell you I still think of him every day and pray for him always, and will always wonder what could have been.

Motorcycles and Melons

2008-09-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is off topic a bit, since it has nothing to do with Charlie except in a very indirect way, but did you know that motorcycles and cantaloupes are not well suited to each other?

For those outside the immediate family who didn't know it, I went and took the motorcycle classes this summer and bought a bike. Actually, it was the other way around--I bought the bike first, left it in the guy's shed, signed up for the class, and then went and picked it up once I was licensed.

No, I have not had a deep-seated urge all my life to be a motorcycle mama. But the words "70 miles per gallon" were just really talkin' to me...besides, I got cool-mom points from my oldest son, Rick.

Anyway, I belong to this Community-Supported Agriculture group, where a local farmer brings vegetables right to where I work each week, and each person who has bought in gets a set amount of this, that, and the other. I split a share with a colleague of mine, and I ran into a situation this week where I wasn't going to be there to get my share of the loot, so she took it all home, and I went to pick it up from her house a couple of nights later.

Naturally, I took the motorcycle. She had mentioned that one of the items was a cantaloupe, and that we could split it. Charlie loves cantaloupe, so I took a gallon size baggie, jumped on the bike and headed out. I was going to lay the baggie in my tank bag (a bag that sits in front of the rider, on the gas tank, held on with magnets) with the cut side down.

By the time I got there, she had changed her mind. Her husband hates 'loupes, can't even stand the smell of them, and she didn't feel like listening to his whining, so she decided to just hand over the whole thing. So now I have this round cantaloupe. Forget the baggie. I stuck it (along with the zucchini, the eggplant, and the tomatoes) in the tank bag.

Vibrations from the motorcycle don't agree with the melon. By the time I got it home, my cantaloupe had flattened on one side. I didn't have to worry about it rolling off the counter, that's for sure.

I expected to find it half gone by the time I got home from work, since Charlie gets home from school before I get home from work. But it was still intact. I asked him if he had seen it, and he said, "Yeah, but it was all soft. Ick."

Twerp.

How to Make a Birthday Cake

2008-07-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we are having the celebration of Charlie's 15th birthday, since it falls on Monday. His godfather is coming over as well as the rest of my family and Rick's dad. Last year I actuallly had dinner for them all. This year I don't have the energy. We're having a dessert party. Charlie made his own cake. I supervised. (Hey, he WANTED to, okay?) I have decided to take the cheater's way out. Instead of decorating it, I made a HUGE sheet cake, and bought a ton of sprinkles and colored sugars and crystals and tubes of gel in lots of colors, and we're going to mark squares on the cake, and each person is going to decorate one square. Then we'll take a picture before we do the candle thing. So all I have to do is smear icing on it and I'm done my part!

You get creative like that when you're old and tired. Creativity happens when you start thinking, "How can I shove some of this work off on someone else?" That's how Charlie ended up making the cake. It went something like this:

"Hey, Charlie, y'know how you said you wanted to own your own restaurant when you grow up?"

"Yeah...."

"You know, you'll have to know how to make desserts."

"Yeah...."

"Wanna start by learning how to bake a cake?"

"Yeah!"

So I told him what equipment to get out, and supervised him mixing up the first box. (Yes, we used box mixes--so SUE me!!) Then I went and browsed CraigsList while he was mixing up the other two boxes (told ya it was HUGE sheet cake!). Well, I couldn't stand there and watch him after he'd already mixed up the first box, could I? He might get the idea I didn't trust him to do it right, or something. That's just what we need--an almost 15-year-old China boy with a complex.

He did just fine, got it in the oven. I explained how important it was not to let the oven door bang when checking the cake or make any loud noises, how a cake can fall. He was very good about it, remembered to come up and check on the cake at the right time, took it out of the oven very carefully and set it on the counter. Then, as we were leaving the house to go run errands, he slammed the door shut. Aiyeeeeeeee....

Lucky boy, it didn't fall. We will still be having our dessert party tomorrow night.

So that's my recipe for how to make a birthday cake--buy the ingredients, and con the birthday boy into doing it. I think that officially qualifies me as a "bad mother" now, not even making my own son's birthday cake. My only defense is that at least I made sure he had one.

Ahh, let 'em eat cake.

Graduating Middle School

2008-06-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

What a sweet evening! It would seem that our very own Charlie Chan is on grade level with everything except English (which is expected, that will take a while to catch up on), so they are going to let him skip 8th grade and go to the deaf high school in the Fall so that he can stay with his peer set. We therefore got to go to the graduation ceremony. It was an awesome evening. I was sobbing when each of the kids took a turn going alone out onto the middle of the stage where a basket of long-stemmed roses had been placed, picking one out, and then seeking out his mom in the audience and presenting it to her. Thinking how far he had come in only a year and a half just took my breath away.

Then the kids did an improv type dance line to VERY loud music, so they could feel the beat, where they come out in pairs and just do whatever they feel like doing to dance (including the little girl in the wheelchair, who got quite a round of applause!). What we didn't know was that Mr. Charlie can DANCE!!! He ended his part with a one-handed cartwheel that brought the house down.

So, technically, Charlie is a 9th grader now. High school--wow! I won't get to see much of him during the fall semester, since he'll be spending more time at the dorm, only returning home on karate nights and weekends. Good thing I'll be in classes, or I might get lonely enough to go adopt me another one....

No, not under consideration. Had ya worried there for a minute, tho', didn't I?

No Hazing

2008-04-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Charlie competed in the Eastern Regional Karate Championships today. This event is a competition for martial artists of all different styles of karate for the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.

I tried to impress on him ahead of time that he had to really show power and a grim, mean face in order to be taken seriously. That mean face is hard for Charlie. You just don't get a sense of what you're up against in this one until you actually see it for yourself.

No trophies today. He did a good solid performance, no errors of any sort at all. It's just that he was up against the very best, and they were better. Now he knows what to expect if he participates in this one next year.

The exciting thing about his performance today, though, was in his fighting. The last time he did sparring in competition, he was eliminated in the first round. This time, he really came out fighting, and he won both his first and second fights, didn't get eliminated until the third round.

The REALLY COOL thing is that we found out afterwards that three gentlemen who had shown up at the tournament were former black belts who had joined the Navy and had to start all over in the rankings in the Navy's martial arts program, so even though they competed as green belts, they really were black belts. (Once a black belt, always a black belt!) One of Charlie's fights was against one of these men, and it was one of the fights that he won--CHARLIE BEAT A BLACK BELT!!!

Charlie's initial reason for wanting to take karate was that some kids at Frederick School for the Deaf told him that the new kids on the block always get beat up. Charlie starts at Frederick this coming Fall, and he was very worried about that.

He doesn't look worried any more. He looks confident now that he knows he held his own in a fight against a black belt. Not in a braggy sort of way, just confident.

I don't think there'll be any hazing going on here.

A New Trophy

2008-03-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Charlie competed in the local (state) karate tournament Saturday. Big surprise--he took home the third-place trophy in kata (forms). They don't give out beyond third place these days, but he placed fourth in jujitsu. He was eliminated in the first round on fighting, but this is still a very new part of martial arts for him--he just put on gloves for the first time last Wednesday.

He was quite happy to be going home with a trophy for his forms, so we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Now he starts getting ready for the Eastern Regional Karate Championships at the end of April. That will be competing against other martial artists all over the East Coast. Keep your fingers crossed and wish him luck!

Green With Envy

2008-03-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

As you can see from the picture, Charlie got his green belt.

They had me worried there for a little while. They always call up the kids in a group by the color of the belt they get promoted to, and then announce what color belt they got, and they go in order of the rank, so everyone knows what color is coming next. After they called all the yellow belts, red would be next, and indeed the teachers at the end of the hand-shaking line laid out a bunch of red belts as the kids' names were being called. Charlie's name was called.

He had had a nice, strong performance, no flubs of any kind, so I was certain he would get green, and when his name was called with this group, what ran through my mind was, "Hey, what did he do wrong???" Then, after they called out the last kid's name, they promoted them all to green. There were no red belts this time! So the teachers on the end who were responsible for actually handing out the belts had to scramble very quickly and get out a bunch of the green belts and size them to the kids coming through the line.

He's done a great job so far, but he is about to start the part of karate where you have to start taking people down to the mat and throwing them around. That requires slowing down and doing things very deliberately so you don't hurt anyone. I'm a little worried about this part, since Charlie likes to listen just long enough to think he understands, and then charge in.

Fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), I have decided to get involved again. Yup, I put on my gi and a brown belt for the first time in several years last week and joined the party. So I will now have the authority to slow him down if I can tell he wasn't really paying attention. Sure, I have that authority as his mother, but somehow there's just an ounce more respect there when you wear a brown belt with a black stripe on it and they know you're only one step removed from being a black belt. (Although, to be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no intention of going for the black, I'm what's known as a "career brown belt," in it just for the exercise and to help teach.)

Yeah, maybe it's Polyanna-ish to think they respect the belt, but hey, it worked with the other one--Rick is STILL a little bit afraid of me, even though he's bigger than I am. Either that, or he's being nice and letting me pretend I'm tougher than he is, since he stopped at blue.

So, how humiliating is it that I ended up with a three-day concussion my first night back? Let the bruises begin...

Black Water and Static

2008-02-22T10:14:00.000-08:00

Well, we're finding a few more things that Charlie will eat. Just not at school. He's not real happy about school lunches. (Then again, if I remember correctly, I never raved about school lunch, either!) I keep a well-stocked fruit bowl and individual-sized cans of tuna at home so he can have a snack when he gets home if he didn't eat lunch. He's happy.

I'm cooking Chinese dinners about half the time, and the rest of the time I cook other stuff just to see what he'll end up liking. He tries pretty much anything. Doesn't necessarily eat it after trying it, but at least he tries.

Ever seen anyone put a spoonful of peanut butter in his mouth and then try and get every last smidgen back out while gagging over the trash can?

We went shopping together at the local Asian market one night a couple of weeks ago, and got a ton of stuff he liked. The first night I made stir-fry, he was bossing me around the kitchen like he knows how to cook it. I had bought oyster sauce and hoisin sauce for the spices. He couldn't read the label but smelled it. Then he shook his head no, and said what we needed was black water.

Huh????

Black water. He then proceeded to go through my kitchen, opening every liquid bottle in the cabinets looking for black water. He finally found what he wanted.

It was a bottle of Gravy Master.

No, no, no....I'm puttin' my foot down here. No Gravy Master in the stir-fry. He was quite insistent that this is what they used in China. I flat-out refused and sent him out of the kitchen. I finished the stir-fry with the oyster sauce and hoisin sauce, and doggoned if he didn't love it and eat 2 heaping plates of it.

I have since realized that black water is probably soy sauce. That I could have dealt with. But not Gravy Master.

*************************************************

Last night we were playing Monopoly (Rick, Charlie, 'n' me). Charlie LOVES Monopoly. And he only got burned in a trade once. Rick got one of the cheap-o properties from him in exchange for two very nice, expensive properties, and then proceeded to put hotels on the cheap-o place. You should have seen Charlie's face when he landed on something that previously had cost him only $4 in rent, and found he had to pay something like $450. That has never happened again.

But I digress. We were playing Monopoly, and Charlie suddenly gets this idea. He picks up a metal ruler that was laying on the table near him, and he starts rubbing it through his hair vigorously.

What on earth are you doing, child?

Need paper.

So I handed him a piece of paper from his homework we had been working on earlier.

No, paper to tear up.

He jumps up and heads out of the room, comes back with a blank piece of paper, and promptly tears it into little shreds.

Then he picks up the ruler and starts rubbing it in his hair again.

???? Rick and I are giving each other rather puzzled glances.

Then Charlie takes the ruler and holds it over top of the paper shreds.

Okay, we get it now. He is obviously trying to use static electricity to get the paper to "jump" up to the ruler.

The problem is, this ruler had a strip of cork along the back of it. No static charge.

Charlie gets closer and closer to the paper, and just doesn't understand why the paper won't behave for him. He finally gives it an irritated look, smacks the pile of paper with the ruler, and little shreds of paper go flying all over the place. Then he looks at us with frustration and says, "But it worked in China."

Long, pregnant pause before Rick and I simply fell out laughing.

*********************************************

By the way, for those of you who are Sherpa fans, I have an update. Remember back when I blogged about our trip to the orphanage, and there was a young deaf boy there who made eye contact with Jen and wouldn't let go? He wrapped his little fist right around that huge heart of hers, and hasn't let go of that, either. His other little fist reached across the ocean and grabbed her husband's heart and held on tight there, too.

It is now official. Jen and her husband are in the paperchase, and we are hoping their new son (who shall be called Eli) will come home around end of summer. Since we now have the e-mail address and are in regular contact with the directress of the orphanage, she already knows about it and has already informed the child, and she says he is very happy about it.

Praise God--another deaf child that China considers "unadoptable" has found a family full of loving arms and hearts. And he was never even on the registry! Is this a fairy-tale ending, or what?

Congratulations, Eli. And congratulations Jen and Joel.

Brace Yourself

2008-02-20T10:56:00.000-08:00

Well, the braces are on. Charlie was really good about the whole thing, paid attention to all the instructions, and actually seems to be following them. He was sore the first few days, but that passed quickly and he was soon back to his usual happy self.

Happy Beginnings (AKA Emptying out the Orphanage)

2008-02-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to give everyone an update on some of the characters mentioned in the earlier part of my blog, because we are doing a good job of getting the orphanage emptied out.

If you remember from our trip to the orphanage when Charlie went to say good-bye and pass out presents, we met a boy with albinism who really touched us because his adoption had disrupted the week before we got there to get Charlie. It was so distressing to know that he would probably never get another chance at adoption, since they were unlikely to re-list him after a "failure" like that. (Like it's the kid's fault, right???) Amazingly, a conversation thread started about him on the Yahoo group set up for parents from that orphanage. They were following my journey on the blog and were outraged at his circumstance. Then one of the members said she thought a friend of hers was paperchasing him and she'd invite her to join the group. His name is now Brian. His family loves him to death, and I recently saw him singing "Baa-Baa Black Sheep." He looks very cool in his sunglasses (which he needs to protect his eyes, since his albinism affects how he tolerates light).

The little boy that we got measurements for and pictures of because his adoptive parents already had their referral and wanted to know if we saw him? His name is now Emmett, and he came home a few months after Charlie. He has an interesting story, because his parents originally adopted a girl from that orphanage, and when they went to get her, they saw what close friends she was with this boy. They ended up going back for him so that her best friend could be her brother. You should see their pictures of the two of them together as sibs--they're adorable and so obviously happy to be together again.

Another couple from Canada contacted me for the orphanage director's address shortly after Charlie and I got back. The orphanage director sent me some photos of the child they were adopting to pass on, and Charlie knew the child in those photos, so he was happy to see that this child was also being adopted. Their son's name is now Aidan, and they got back in the late summer/early fall timeframe.

And last but certainly not least....Does everyone remember Jen, my sherpa, and the child she "accidentally" (yeah, right!) made eye contact with while we were in Charlie's classroom? They were a love story waiting to happen. Jen and her husband went through a long period of prayer and contemplation, and then started learning ASL and filling out the paperwork to bring him into their family. God knew exactly what they needed when they needed it, because a part-time job turned up for her husband just at the point where it looked like they would have to send Jen over alone for the adoption. Thankfully, they were able to both go. They got home four months ago, and their new son Eli has settled in beautifully as a member of their family and is much loved by his brother and sisters. He is attending their local deaf school and signing up a storm. (Unlike Charlie, the orphanage had not sent him to the deaf school in China, so he did not know Chinese sign language and grew up without any real language to speak of, making his wants and needs known with gestures.) I am so thrilled that Eli has a home with loving arms and signing hands.

According to Charlie, there was only one other deaf child at the orphanage besides him and Eli, a girl much younger that he didn't know very much about. I don't have any info on her, but I could certainly e-mail the orphanage director to find out if she is still there, if someone is interested in starting a paperchase!

There have been other people join our orphanage's Yahoo group once they get their referrals for children from this orphanage and discover this group exists, and we've seen three newbies over the past two weeks, so the orphanage is still getting kids out there. Unfortunately, I suspect they take in new children just as fast, since the one-child-rule politics in China that cause this situation still haven't changed. But we'll keep growing our group to support each other and cheer on those who are bringing their children home.

Pow

2008-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

Next belt test: Green belt, March 12!
Stay tuned....

Money Matters

2008-01-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, Charlie and I are sitting at the dining room table, just chatting, and he happened to mention that he had some checks he needed to deposit. He has been tutoring someone in ASL off and on via videophone, and after every few sessions, he gets a check to cover a few sessions at a time. We had opened a savings account for him back in September with his first couple of checks. Now he's ready to deposit more.

I decided the time was ripe for a teaching moment. I had him get his quarterly statement, which had just recently come in. He brought it over to me, and I showed him the money we had initially deposited. Yup, he remembers that okay. There's $38 in there.

Then I showed him the entries for the next 3 months that each had 6 cents. He gets a perplexed look on his face and signs, "But I didn't put that in there!"

So I explained how interest works.

He gets a wise, understanding look on his face and says, "So I guess I should put that other $200 in there, huh?"

Now you must understand that we recently had a very serious misunderstanding, and I am no longer willing to trust that I have completely understood him perfectly. I'm quite willing to believe I did not really see him say $200. So I said, "You mean $20, right?"

"No, $200."

"You do not have $200."

"Yes, I do."

"Where?"

"Up in my room."

"Nuh-uh.....Show me!"

Off he goes to his room. He's up there a few minutes, and then he comes back with this HUGE wad of cash. It's about 3 inches thick. Mostly fives and ones.

Now, I knew the kids work for an hour each day at school. Some help out in the office, some work at cleaning, and Charlie works in the cafeteria during the little kids' lunch. For this, they get paid. I thought it was $5 per month. Occasionally I will see a candy wrapper in the kitchen trash can of a type of candy that I have never bought before, so I figured Charlie uses his $5 per month to get himself a special treat. And that's fine.

But no, it turns out they get paid WEEKLY, not monthly. And Mr. Charlie will occasionally buy himself a treat, but for the most part, he brings the money home and stuffs it in a drawer in his desk.

By the time we finished counting all the cash and the $15 in checks, the kid had $250 sitting there.

I told him it can't gain interest sitting in the desk drawer. And if someone steals it, it's gone. Safer in the bank. His answer? "Well, I didn't KNOW I should put it in the bank."

Yeah, well, I didn't know you had anything WORTH putting in the bank!

Next field trip: Drive-through teller, learn how to make a deposit and read the receipt.

I think he has more money in the bank than I do now.

Aging Gracefully

2008-01-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King day. Charlie has an appointment with an oral surgeon. To back up a little, Charlie is about to get braces. After the initial appointment with the orthodontist, we were asked to go see an oral surgeon, because there were some bright spots on the x-rays they wanted checked out.

So here we are, Charlie seated in the surgeon's chair. The surgeon examines him, examines the digital x-ray, and then asks, "How old are you?" Charlie answered that he was 14-1/2. The surgeon mutters, "His dentition is more mature than that."

I was busy interpreting for Charlie, so the ramifications of that statement didn't sink in until later, when I had a chance to process it in mommy mode instead of interpreter mode. I spoke with the surgeon later by phone and asked him just how much more mature the dentition was. His initial guess from memory was 16, but after looking at the films again, he said Charlie has the dentition of a 17-year-old, but to remember that this isn't an exact science.

I'm not quite ready to believe 17. When Charlie was found, they estimated he was 2; if he is now truly 17, that would mean he was actually 4-1/2 when he was found. There's a BIG difference between a 2-year-old and a 4-1/2-year-old, and I'm really having trouble believing they were that far off. I think the truth is probably somewhere between his legal age of 14-1/2 and 16.

What am I going to do about it? Absolutely nothing.

In the deaf school, you have until age 21 to get a regular high-school diploma. If you can't attain that, you can get a certificate of completion from the school. Charlie is shooting for the diploma, but he's at a disadvantage to start with, not knowing English as well as his peers yet and starting from scratch. He's in the 7th grade now, but he can stay in high school through age 21. If I change his legal age now, that would severely curtail the amount of time he has to achieve this. I think he is right on target with where he needs to be, and socially he is fitting in well with his peers. His attitude is sometimes more mature, but that's okay; it just means he sets a good example.

I really can't see short-changing him on the amount of time he has to get his diploma and graduate. I see no benefits whatsoever to changing his legal age. Besides, he knows his birthday and that is part of his identity. I think it would be a jolt, after all the adjustments he's dealt with in the past year, to suddenly be told he's older than he is.

I did tell him, but I also explained my reasons for keeping him at age 14, and he's fine with that. He seems to take everything in stride.

Besides, I don't want him to start asking for the car keys just yet.

It does explain the mustache, though.

You Can Dress 'Em Up

2007-12-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

Except for the too-long sleeves poking out, I think Charlie cleaned up pretty good, huh? This was taken at mom's house after church the Sunday before Christmas. My church is very informal, so Charlie usually doesn't dress like this, but he went with me to a cantata that I was interpreting at another church, so I made him dress up. My mother didn't recognize him when he walked in the door with me!

Nerves

2007-11-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Sorry it took me so long to get back to blogging! The picture from exam night tells the story. He got the yellow belt. I think (and his instructor agrees) he would have had a red, but the one thing we didn't have him practice was how to recover from a mistake. I don't know if he was nervous or what, but during one form he made a turn backwards and he stopped, trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

You just don't stop. You keep going and make it look like you MEANT to do it that way. He had never flubbed up in class, so we never had to pound that into him.

But he was a good, strong yellow performance. Rick and I were so proud of him, and he looked so happy as he went down the line of instuctors with the other students who had been promoted, accepting handshakes and hugs from them all.

Then they all sat down, and the two students (one child, one adult) were chosen for the Outstanding Achievement trophy. Since Charlie is over 13, he counts as an adult. You should have seen the look of SHOCK on his face after the head instructor presented the child's trophy to some kid and then Charlie's teacher was asked to come up and present him his trophy. He just doesn't seem to understand how remarkable it was that he tested a full cycle early and still turned in a strong performance.

What's funny is that he never told anyone at school. When I went to his IEP meeting a couple of weeks later, I said something about the trophy to his teacher, and she got a look of shock on her face. "Trophy? What trophy? He didn't tell ME about any trophy! Can he bring it to school???" For some reason, he refused to take it to school and show it off. Modesty? Dunno.

Great job--We love ya, Charlie Chan!

King of the Hula Hoopers

2007-11-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

We just found out from one of Charlie's v-phone buddies that Charlie is on YouTube! Apparently there was some sort of contest this summer while Charlie was at Lions Camp to see who could hula hoop the longest....this clip is the last two or three contestants.

Check it out here.

Charlie Chan

2007-10-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, Charlie apparently wasn't kidding back in Letter #12 when he said he wanted to learn martial arts. He started in mid-September. He has a professional interpreter, and on the nights the interpreter can't make it, I interpret for him. I prefer to sit and watch him, though.

The way it works in our association (where I used to teach) is that the kids stay at the white belt (beginner) level for the entire first 13-week course, and then if they sign up for the second course and have learned everything they need to know, they take their first "belt exam" a couple of weeks into the second course to get their yellow belt.

At least, that's how it works with normal kids. I'm learning very quickly not to be so surprised when I find out that Charlie is not normal.

Charlie walks in and makes it very clear he means business. He is very focused, and learns really fast. He practices at home and it is obvious when he goes to class each week that he has been working on what he learned the week before. We normally don't start teaching forms until they've practiced kicks and punches and basic motion for a month; Charlie started his first form the first night. He learned the second and third forms on his second lesson. Took him two weeks to get the third form down; it's a little tougher.

I mentioned something about needing to buy a gi (the white uniform they wear) to the head instructor (who knows me from my teaching days), and he said, "Oh, don't worry, he won't need that until he tests, which won't be until the February session." I snickered. The female black belt who was working with Charlie said something about me needing to get Charlie a gi, and I told her what the head instructor had said. She said, "I'll just have a little word with him." She came back later that night and said that he was going to work with Charlie the following week so that he could evaluate him and decide whether he was ready for the test or not.

Sure enough, last night the head instructor informs me that I need to buy a gi. Charlie is going to take the test on November 14.

Mr. Charlie Chan is feeling very pleased with himself.

Normally a white belt will get a yellow belt on the first test. But now that we all know Charlie is not normal, would anyone care to take bets on whether he will skip a belt, too? If the student isn't quite good enough for the yellow, he gets orange (which is a half-belt). If he does a really outstanding job on the test, better than any of the other students, he gets promoted straight to red. That's what he's aiming for (mainly, I think, because he found out that's what I did, and he has a very competitive streak in him).

Online Surveys & Market Research

Imperfect Understanding

2007-08-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we've had a truly funny misunderstanding, since Charlie's sign is getting so good. The tables are usually turned these days--it's me who doesn't always understand what he's saying.

But tonight was a good one. I was grilling some chicken on my Big Green Egg (if you don't know what that is, check out www.biggreenegg.com) and my parents had stopped by, not to eat but to sit and gab a while before they left on a trip and watch us eat. I told Charlie to find some veggies in the ref (refrigerator) and cook 'em up to go with the chicken since the chicken was almost done. He said okay and disappeared into the house.

A couple of conversations later, the chicken was done, so I went into the house to see how the veggies were coming along. Kitchen is empty. No Charlie, no veggies.

Checked the videophone. Nope, he's not chatting on that.

There's a light on in the basement. I flashed the lights from our level to get his attention, and he comes to the bottom of the stairs where he can see me. "I thought I told you to find and cook some veggies?" He got this stricken look on his face and signs "sorry" and runs into the utility room to get a bag of veggies out of the freezer. Told him too late, we were going to eat just chicken. So he gets his plate and we load up on chicken and start eating, when he confesses, "I thought you said 'get some fruit or veggies to go with the chicken' so I got some strawberries and took them downstairs to eat them while I was waiting for my chicken."

My mother just about choked on her glass of wine at that one.

So Dependent on Technology (AKA Bad Dog!)

2007-08-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've corrupted the boy, no doubt about it. He was living a nice, simple, uncomplicated life in China, and I had to go and bring him to the high-tech West where machines throw our lives into turmoil.

I came home from school late last night to find Charlie still up (no biggie, it's summer) and frantic to show me the remote to our videophone. It looked like it had been used for target practice or something--little pieces of it were gathered up and stuffed into a ziplock baggie. Closer examination revealed bite marks. Charlie caught one of the dogs chewing it up. Greyhound jaws can bite at 55 pounds per square inch. It looked sad. And when I looked at the TV that displays the videophone, there is a message bouncing across the screen that says "2 missed calls." Charlie, with a look of extreme concern on his face, is pushing buttons on what is left of the remote, showing me that it won't answer the videophone or bring up the menu.

A lot of machines have buttons on them and can be worked manually if you lose the remote. Not so the videophone. It is a very simple and sleek-looking machine, and the only button I can find is on/off. No remote, no videophone. It's that simple.

This would just ruin Charlie's day, not to be able to use the VP. It's amazing how quickly he has become accustomed to our high-tech world. He spends a lot of time chatting with his friends on the phone, and now he is tutoring someone by phone, so he really is dependent on it for communication.

After sending him to bed and saying a quick prayer, I decided to go to the company's website and see what I could find. Nowhere did I see anything about replacement remotes, but they did have a tech support team. Thank goodness they had e-mail support, because the primary way to reach them is by videophone. (Okay, follow me here--if you need tech support for your videophone, how do you contact them by videophone?) I dashed off an e-mail to tech support.

Then I started thinking--I have the e-mail address for the man who came out and installed the VP and taught us to use it. Maybe he would have spares he could sell? So I dashed him off an e-mail, too.

Turns out, both got back to me. (What a great customer service company!) Tech support is mailing me one, but the guy from training says he has tons of 'em, they're free, and since he works near my house, he will drop one off to Charlie on his lunch break.

Now that's service!

If only I could videophone Charlie and tell him the news....

Bad dog!

A Happy Camper

2007-07-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Well, Charlie and I just returned from West River deaf camp. We were at opposite ends of the spectrum. He got Camper of the Week, and I got kicked out. Yup, you heard me right.....

He had an absolute blast there, and everybody loved him. One counselor even asked (seriously) if he could hire Charlie to tutor him in ASL by videophone! Whatever. They've been at it every day since we got home. All I heard all week was how unbelievable he was, what a good kid, how incredible that his sign was so fluent already, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's what I heard when I wasn't hearing them yelling at me, anyway. I was co-director of the high school deaf camp, and we just couldn't seem to do anything right this week. We started off by busting a drug-dealing effort and sending home a roomful of 4 boys. This tainted the image of the entire high school camp in the eyes of all the other groups and their directors, so they carried a rather dim view of me and my co-director to start with. (No, we weren't considered heroes for busting the druggies--no good deed goes unpunished.) Then our kids got into a food fight.....

They were making gingerbread houses from a kit in teams. My co-director became much-beloved by standing up and telling them, "The rules are--NO RULES!" As those of you with older kids know, you just don't say that to a bunch of teen-agers (46 of them, to be exact, minus the 4 we sent home) without expecting dire consequences. It starts with one person who has sticky icing all over his hands touching another person on the nose, whereupon this person smears a line across the first guy's forehead, and the next thing you know you've got kids chasing kids, kids chasing counselors, counselors chasing kids, etc.

The counselors were up with the kids until 2 in the morning cleaning the dining hall.

Co-director and I got hauled on the carpet the next morning.

Then the girls and some counselors entered the boys' cabin while the boys were gone and turned all the furniture upside-down, stacked up the cushions, took some of it outside on the lawn....all a harmless prank, except for the fact that that camp manager had come to the cabin to deliver a message and was standing in the middle of the cabin looking around in amazement and glaring at me as I'm looking about in dazed confusion, having just awakened from a one-hour nap which came nowhere near to catching me up on my 16-hour sleep deficit. (I had been averaging just 2-3 hours per night since we'd gotten there.)

He says to me in a sing-songy voice, "Don't let it get out of haa-aand...." and walked out.

We had a counselor conference.

I got to bed at 11:30, determined to get some sleep this night. At midnight, co-director bursts into my room, giggling and shrieking, "We are SO gonna get kicked outta here...."

I turned my back on her and went back to sleep, knowing that whatever it was, we were going to be hauled on the carpet again in the morning.

Indeed. Seems a group of girls were talking about sneaking out and jumping off the pier for a swim at midnight, and a counselor "oversaw" them and convinced them if they were going to do it to at least take some counselors with them. So our girls and 4 counselors (one of whom was a certified lifeguard) went and jumped off the pier. Problem is, another camp director (someone who didn't care for me and my co-director to start with) saw them and blew the whistle on them, proceeded to have a loud argument with co-director, and then burst into the boys' cabin to awaken a sleeping male counselor and demand a head check, when the boys weren't even involved. (Can you believe this is a church camp? What a Peyton Place it turned out to be!)

Anyway, we did get berated for all of this the next day. They made it pretty clear we weren't welcome back.

Can't keep us down for too long, though. We're planning to start a new camp next year. It'll be for deaf people (maybe not just kids) with concomitant disabilities, both physical and mental. We figure this population is a lot less likely to sneak out in the middle of the night and jump off the pier. And the great part is that a number of our loyal counselors have said if we start something new, they want in, so we're already partially staffed.

How does Charlie fit into this? Not exactly sure yet. He doesn't have any other disability to go with his deafness, so he can't be one of the campers. He isn't old enough to be a CIT (counselor-in-training). I'm wondering if he can maybe be one of the one-on-one helpers. He is so patient that I think he'd be great at that, helping someone with a major disability to do crafts and activities that they normally wouldn't get a chance to do.

Happy Birthday Baptism

2007-07-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Charlie's birthday fell on a weekend day, which was fortunate, because he has been at one camp or another pretty much all summer (which is why I've been so bad about updating anything--he just hasn't been here to provide his usual antics!). The celebration was fairly quiet, just Charlie and Rick and me, Rick's dad, my parents, and Charlie's godfather's family. He got the Lord of the Rings set in Chinese from me, and Eragon and a book on transportation in Chinese from my parents. Rick gave him a set of cross earrings. His godfather and family gave him some money, a coffee mug that says "Got Jesus?" and a Hero T-shirt (which Charlie later told me was a total hit with the kids at camp). The best brownie points, though, go to Rick's dad, who gave him a silver/blue/black softball bat to go with the glove and ball I got from someone in my freecycle group. We got to see one of those split-your-face-in-half grins flash across his face at that. Ted had written Charlie's name on it in both English and Chinese in metal glitter paint. Very cool.

The other thing Charlie got from me was a cross necklace. He'd been bugging me for one, since both Rick and I wear a cross, and I had told him he could have one when he'd learned enough to know what that cross really meant--it wasn't just a fashion statement. So he's been studying once a week with our pastor (who is a deaf Korean--I think the fellow deaf Asian bond makes Charlie feel very comfortable with him) and his baptism was planned for the day after his birthday. He was really tickled to be getting his cross necklace.

Funny episode during the baptism, though. Rev. Joo Kang did not rehearse ahead of time with Charlie the exact questions he would ask and the answers expected of him. Keep in mind, Charlie's only been here 6 months. His ASL is really good now, but not totally perfect. So when Rev. Kang asked him if he renounced the sins of his past, Charlie grinned and signed, "No." Not once, not twice, but three times. I heard Charlie's godfather (who is a pastor himself), standing next to me, draw in a sharp breath and whisper sotto voce, "re-word it, re-word it...." There were a few giggles out in the congregation, too. Rev. Kang eventually re-worded it so that Charlie gave the right answer, and the rest of the baptism went on without further incident.

The minute the baptism was over, Charlie and I jumped in the car to head for yet another week of camp.

Just a cute picture

2007-06-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

Just a cute picture I got of him while walking around a nearby lake one night. Is it my imagination, or have his facial features matured dramatically over the past 4 months?

The Future of Deaf Orphans in China

2007-05-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

I can't say whether this article speaks for all or even most of China, but someone once asked me what kind of future Charlie would have had if he had stayed. In China, unadopted children age out of the international program at 14, which means they can only be adopted domestically at that point. They age out of the orphanage entirely at 16, out the gate and on their own to survive with whatever skills they've gleaned to that point. Charlie was well taken care of in the orphanage, but they can only protect them for so long.

I think this person was a little shocked when I answered that deaf orphans in China have pretty much two future paths: begging or crime. And my own personal feeling is that Charlie is too smart to beg. So I think, even despite his strong sense of ethics at this point in his life, he would have ended up a criminal. With his charm, probably a con man of some sort, but a criminal nonetheless.

Okay, so maybe that statement was a little harsh? But then today I got the text of an article that was published through Reuters News Service. I decided to copy that in here, just so y'all know I'm not blowing smoke here.

Enjoy, if you can.

Deaf-Mute Children Sold to China Pickpocket Ring **
Principal of School for Deaf Charged With Selling Kids

Chinese police have detained the vice-principal of a
school for deaf-mutes and other special needs children
for selling 10 students to a ring that trained them to
become pickpockets, the Guizhou Metropolitan Daily
reported.

Police rescued the victims, the youngest of whom was
12, in Jiangxi and Henan provinces this month, the
online edition of the newspaper said.

They went missing from their school in Liupanshui city,
Guizhou, last month, the newspaper said, adding that
the ring trained and required each person to steal and
turn in 500 yuan ($65) per day.

Zhu Xiangyu, 52, vice-principal of the school and
vice-president of Liupanshui's Deaf-Mute Association,
and four other suspects had been taken into police
custody.

Hundreds of deaf-mute students had gone missing since
2005, the newspaper said.

China has about 1.8 million deaf-mutes aged 18 or
younger, many of whom are unable to obtain an education
or steady work.

Police vowed this month to crack down on gangs that
exploit deaf-mute youths, highlighting the hardship
of disabled people in a society that gives them little
state support, especially in poor rural areas.

Earlier this month, the Legal Daily reported that
police in Hunan province broke up a gang of
gun-wielding deaf-mute robbers who police said were
behind hundreds of armed robberies across the country.

SOURCE: Reuters News Service (Published 5.24.2007)
Credited to a publisher for contributing to this story
from Beijing, China.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

2007-05-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

We were heading home from some running around this evening, and as we pulled into our housing area, it started to rain. On the other side of the car, though, the sun was shining right in our faces, so brightly it nearly blinded us.

Charlie, our budding scientist, remembered that if you see both sunshine AND rain, there's gotta be a rainbow SOMEWHERE. Of course, I didn't see that running through his mind. There was a cool song on the radio, and I was in the zone. Suddenly I hear a shout, and Charlie starts babbling and jumping around in his seat like he'd been stung by a bee or something. I look over at him (nearly running off the road in the process), and he's got his neck craned halfway around, pointing and dancing and babbling. He found a rainbow. He's definitely his mama's boy--I love rainbows, too.

I have never seen him so outwardly excited. He had his hand on the door handle, and I thought he was going to jump out while the car was still in motion. He starts gathering up the stuff that he has to take into the house, and puts his hand on the door, ready to open it the second I stop the car, babbling away the whole time.

I barely got pulled into the driveway when he launched himself out the door, had his keys out, got in the house. As I walked in, he barrels into me, on his way back out again, camera in hand.

It's pretty hard to get a rainbow to show up well on film, but I think he did okay.

A Pain in the....Ear

2007-05-15T10:28:00.000-07:00

05/15/07 - A pain in the.....ear
Charlie decided he wanted an ear piercing. He asked me which one. My suggestion, since I find him sleeping on his left side every morning, was that he pierce the right one so the earring wouldn't bother him when he sleeps.

My mother, God bless her, advised that I check with my older son, Rick, to make sure that was socially acceptable because she happened to know (which I didn't) that one ear or the other had a meaning that Charlie might not intend. (Have I been hiding under a rock all my life or what, that I didn't know that???)

According to Rick, the easy way to remember which ear to pierce (for a straight guy, anyway) is "Left is right and right is wrong." So I had to convince Charlie that mama was wrong, and he should pierce the left ear instead.

This was about a week ago, and we kind of dropped the subject after that. I have no clue where to get ears pierced. My mother took me to a doctor when I was 13, and when I asked Charlie's doctor about it, I got a rather funny look, so I didn't push the issue.

Tonight we had some running around to do (another whole story for later) and on the way home we passed through downtown Odenton, which is the little boomtown neighboring the local military base. What does one find in the vicinity of all military bases? TATOO PARLORS!!! And there was a sign outside of one that said Tattoos/Piercings. Aha! I asked Charlie if he still wanted to pierce his ear, and he got a big grin on his face, so we turned around and went back. It was nice and clean inside. They were currently working on someone's tattoo, so I got to see their set-up and that they kept things neat and clean in the work area. They said they sterilize their instruments. So I signed the forms and Charlie sat in the chair.

When the doctor pierced my ears eons ago, he used a little gun thingie that loaded the earring stud and put it in all in one fell swoop. It hurt, but not for long.

This looked brutal in comparison. They used what looked like a railroad spike....I'm not going into any more detail than that. Charlie sat stock still, but the look of pain on his face pierced my heart. And when the piercing was done, they still had to insert the earring. Eeek.

He sat through that fine, too, and seemed okay until we were ready to stand up. Then the sweat beaded up on his brow and his eyes rolled a little, and the dry heaves started.

Thank God we hadn't had dinner yet.

They gave him a popsicle and a wet paper towel on the back of his neck, and that straightened him out after a few minutes. We finally left.

Over dinner, I asked him what was next: Eyebrow? Lip? Nose? Belly button? Shook his head violently, and signed, "NO, NO, NO!!!"

His earring does look pretty cool--he wears it well. He's not planning to tell the other kids about heaving afterwards.

Squirrel (in a) Stew

2007-05-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

I still can't believe it. When I got home from work today, Charlie had a big box sitting over his contraption with a weight on top of the box. Told me to get my camera. Then he took off the weight, took off the box and revealed his catch. The picture says it all, folks.

That poor squirrel was so upset that he had peed all over what little bit of flooring was under him while he waited. Charlie said when the basket first came down on top of him, he was in such a tizz that he kept running around like a hamster in a ball, spinning all over the deck inside of this basket. Charlie got pictures of the whole thing, from the time the squirrel starting nosing around the basket until it trapped him.

After I got the pictures, I told him to let it loose, so he picked up the flower basket. His big mistake was to be in between the flower basket and the side of the deck that faces the woods. That squirrel damn near knocked him over trying to get away. When he hit the edge of the deck, he didn't even bother climbing down the support posts like he usually does (our deck is one story off the ground). No, he just jumped. Flew across the walking path and didn't hit terra firma until a tree got in the way.

Now I know why they call them flying squirrels.

Bee Stalker

2007-04-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

This kid is kinda scary sometimes.

First day of really nice weather we got here on the East Coast, I opened all the windows and screen doors. I'm sitting in my office working, when I hear a shout from outside--Charlie's voice.

Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash....only to find my son on a guerilla mission.

Charlie had commandeered Rick's super-soaker (think squirt gun, bazooka-sized), and was patrolling the grounds around the house, stalking BEES.

This child was waiting until a bee or wasp would land on the porch or the bushes or the wishing well, then squirting it with the super-soaker until it fell on the ground, and then yelling and stomping it out of existence.

He's going to make a great sniper someday, I just know it.

Of Mice and Men (or squirrels and boys)

2007-04-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Charlie has picked up quickly that squirrels are not my favorite creatures. I have a number of bird feeders hanging off my deck, and I spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to keep squirrels out of the bird food. I think a squirrel can eat something like 283 times his own body weight, or something like that. Anyway, Rick told Charlie the story about the day I was home with the flu, and the squirrel was looking me in the eye while he hung from the top of the bird feeder, digging seed out of the hole with his greedy little paws. Since I was feverish to start with, I was probably hallucinating the glee I saw on his face as he started cleaning it out, but it ticked me off so bad that I flew out the door onto the snow-covered deck, barefoot and in my bathrobe, scooping up snow by the handful and throwing snowballs and screaming at the squirrel, which is frantically jumping from bird feeder to deck railing to tree branch, trying to escape this maniacal, obviously sick woman.

Charlie was laughing hysterically while Rick told him this story, so it comes as no great surprise that Charlie is now plotting how to defeat the squirrels and do a better job of it than mom did.

The picture above is what I found when I came home from work tonight. Charlie spent the day devising a squirrel trap. So in the picture above, we see a box of sunflower seeds to attract the squirrel, an overturned wire flower basket to act as a cage, propped up on a candle with a string around it. The string extends to the kitchen, where Charlie has been sitting all evening, waiting for the squirrel to show up, so he can pull the candle out and make the basket fall on the squirrel, trapping him under the basket.

I haven't seen the kid sit this still since he got here. He can be incredibly focused when he wants to be.

I would say there's no way in hades he's gonna catch a squirrel with this thing, but this is Charlie we're talking about. I guess if he does catch one, we'll have to get pictures and post them here in an update, 'cause no one will believe me without proof when I say my 13-year-old from China caught a squirrel without a gun, using only a flower pot, a candle, and a string.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Gotta Be a Better Way

2007-04-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Shortly after I started my study of Chinese cooking, I discovered that one of Charlie's favorite dishes in the world is Jiaozi, a Chinese dumpling that is filled with pork, napa cabbage, chives, and various spices. I also discovered that Jiaozi is very time-intensive to make. Making the dough and rolling out those thin dumpling skins takes forever! Jiaozi ended up being a half-day project, and by the time we were done, I had pretty much decided that this was going to be a special occasion treat, not an everyday dish. I was afraid to try to make the stuffing ahead and freeze it, because the cabbage would get all slimy, but I was wondering if I could make a mountain of those dumpling skins and freeze them so I didn't have to go through all that very often.

Fast forward a week or two, and Charlie and I are shopping for fruit and veggies in the local SuperFresh store. I'm looking at the napa cabbages, and Charlie starts "talking." He doesn't use his voice in public much unless he is really, really excited about something, so I hurried over to where he was looking, and he is pointing at a package of round, thin, slices of dough. Dumpling skins. Ready-made.

It says you can freeze them. I bought 5 packages of them--there's 100 in each package. I figure that's going to keep us going for a while.

We had dumplings again tonight, and it took less than an hour. Goes so much faster when you don't have to start from flour and water.

Is that cheating? Don't know, don't care.

Cast Away

2007-04-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Charlie's cast came off this afternoon, and not a minute too soon. He was doing great with it for the past 3 weeks or thereabouts, never complained. Then on Sunday, we were sitting in Sunday school gabbing with some other folks before the leader started the lesson, and a lady whom we'll call Cindy ('cause it's her real name!) asked him if it itched. He signed back, "Just a little bit." She leans forward like she's about to tell him a secret, and signed, "You know why it itches, right? That's because there's little bugs in there crawling around...."

His eyes got big, but only for a second. He KNEW she was puttin' him on. Nonetheless, the power of suggestion had taken hold. That cast started driving him nuts. Poor kid was miserable for the next 3 days, and he was so happy when Wednesday rolled around. They took that cast off and he immediately started rubbing his arm. Of course, this raised little bits of skin, so he gets his face down there real close to inspect, then looks up at me, signs "BUGS!" with his good hand, and flies outta the room to a deep sink he saw in the hallway where he can wash off his arm, leaving the doc sitting there with his jaw on the floor.

Gimme a Break!

2007-03-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Well, Charlie has only been home 2-1/2 months and is on the injured list already. I got an e-mail from his teacher one afternoon that he had hurt his wrist slamming into a wall during a game of 4-square. The health center nurse said he could move the wrist, so she ice-bagged it and let him go.

When I got home and took a look, it seemed he had a lot more pain than simple bruising would cause--it was extremely painful to touch in two specific areas--so we went to one of those evening emergency clinics. They advertised x-ray capability, but it turned out they only had a mini-C-arm machine, so the pictures weren't good enough quality to pick up fine fractures. Since there was some doubt, they splinted him and told us to follow up with the orthopedist the next day.

I think the building where the orthopedist's office is must have looked like the hospital in China where they took him for an appendectomy, because as we pulled into the parking lot, he looked at the building, got very big eyes and a worried look on his face, and signed, "Surgery? Cut wrist?" I explained that it was just a doctor's office, not a hospital, and that they would only be taking pictures and might put a cast on it. Somewhat mollified, he agreed to go inside.

The orthopedist got better pictures and STILL isn't completely sure if it's broken. He suspects from the location of the pain Charlie is having that there is a little crack in one of the wrist bones called the scaphoid, and he decided to cast it just in case, because if it is cracked, it will never heal if he keeps twisting his wrist with normal use.

Charlie now has a bright green cast for the next 3 weeks. Doc warned him to keep it clean and dry. I explained that he would have to cover it with a plastic bag and a rubber band to shower.

At least it's on his non-dominant hand, so it doesn't much affect his ability to sign/communicate. Doesn't affect his ability to eat ice cream, either--we detoured out to Baskin Robbins on the way home.

We got home and showed off the new cast to big brother, Rick, who immediately tries to explain about the custom of signing casts and pulls out a black Sharpie magic marker. Charlie pulls back, screaming, "No, no, doctor said clean, dry!" (Guess I interpreted that part right, huh?)

We explained the difference between clean and "clean" and told him that the kids at school will all be wanting to sign his cast once they see it.

They made a liar outta me. He got home from school yesterday, and there wasn't a single signature on that cast except Rick's and mine. Don't kids sign casts any more???

He's dealing with it like a champ, not complaining, and only admitting that it aches a little if I happen to ask about it, but he's no longer asking for the ibuprofen we were using to help with the pain. Guess he's going to live through this one.

He got a nice pick-me-up yesterday evening, though. We stopped at the mailbox, and the first four fabric squares and wishes were waiting there. I let him open the envelopes and explained the custom of the 100 good wishes quilt and showed him pictures on the web of what I'd like his to look like. Now he's interested in checking the mailbox to see if any more show up. (For those who don't know what I'm talking about yet, look here.) He really enjoys getting mail. I think I'm going to subscribe him to a couple of magazines so he gets some mail of his own occasionally. Getting those envelopes was just what he needed to put a smile on his face. I even got some pictures of the big grin. Once I get them transferred to the computer, I'll add one to this post.

Chinese Cooking

2007-02-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Okay, you can't tell ME this kid can't read English yet. I think he's just not lettin' on....

I took him to Borders bookshop tonight to get him some picture dictionaries and flash cards to help with vocabulary building. We had a great time looking at all the kid's books.

Then on the way out, I took a detour through the cookbook section. The selection of Chinese cookbooks at my local library was somewhat limited, and I didn't particularly care for what I had found. I'm rather particular about my cookbooks--I like to have a picture of nearly every dish in it.

Once I found the right section, Charlie realized very quickly what I was up to, and he started at the far end of the Chinese section from where I started, looking through every cookbook to see if his favorite recipes were in there.

He finally found the one he thought I should get and hands it to me open to a recipe that he was particularly excited about. I didn't particularly care for it, because it had nearly no pictures, and I shut it to stuff it under my arm so I could talk with my hands. As I started to explain to him, I realized that the color combination on the front of the book was very distinctive, and I looked down at it again.

No one understood why I was doubled over laughing in the middle of the cooking aisle at Borders.

I guess this is Charlie's way of protesting my cooking skills.

First Day of School

2007-02-05T10:12:00.000-08:00

Charlie started at the Maryland School for the Deaf today. I followed him to the bus stop and got a picture of him getting on his school bus, and then got a photo of him in his classroom at school. He looked delighted to be surrounded by other deaf children. I'm planning to send the photo to the directress of his orphanage so she can see him happily ensconced in an American school. This is what he's wanted his whole life--to go to school so he can own his own business. He's convinced he's going to college. So am I.

There was a tear in my eye as I headed back out to the car, but I am convinced (and you can't persuade me otherwise) that it was there because it was 9 degrees outside with a wind chill factor of -4. That was enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes, right?

I got an e-mail from his teacher later in the afternoon with an update that he had had a great first day at school, and that he had eaten all of his lunch (hamburger, veg soup, apple, and milk) even though he told her he didn't like it.

Good thing I got that note.

We went to Pizza Hut this evening to celebrate the first day of school, and he spent most of dinner trying to convince me that he had had only one bite of the hamburger and that the apple had been drawn and quartered and rationed out so that he only got a thin sliver of it. He admitted eating the veg soup. Then he tried to convince me that she told him it was okay if his mom wanted to cook noodles and rice and let him bring them to school with him for lunch so he didn't have to eat what they gave him.

Uh-huh. I knew orphanage behavior would start showing up at some point. Let the fibbing begin....

They did send home some number flash cards and a color worksheet and some math homework. We did the math first and got that outta the way. He managed to learn the words and fingerspelling for the numbers 1-6 while we were waiting for our pizza. I decided that was far enough, when he starting mixing up the spellings for four and five. Tomorrow is another day, and I think he's had enough excitement for one day.

Okay, I have to put in a plug here for a really sweet guy. My ex-husband, Ted, is starting the free sign language class tomorrow night that is offered at Charlie's school because he is over at my house often with my older son, Rick, and wants to be able to communicate with Charlie while there. Is that cool, or what? Seems like Charlie is just inspiring all kinds of people to enter the Deaf scene--Jen is thinking about adopting a deaf child, Rick is now in the sign language interpreter training program, Ted is taking sign classes, and I have even caught my parents trying to sign a few things to him. The kid can't help being lovable.

Cream

2007-01-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

Well, we've had our first hilarious language misunderstanding. Shortly after dinner one night Charlie came to me with his dictionary open to the entry "cream." All the way through our China trip, he had been happiest drinking those drinkable yogurt drinks. They're very creamy. So I told him I didn't have any, but would buy some on our next trip to the store.

We went to the store a day or so later. I picked up some strawberry flavored drinkable yogurts for him. He liked them, especially since he has decided he doesn't like milk. He's been happily drinking them. Hey, as long as he's getting some dairy, I don't care if it's milk or yogurt, right?

Last night he came to me with sign dictionary open again. Same word--cream. I figured he was asking to have another one, since I'd only been putting them out at breakfast. I told him they were in the refrigerator and he could have one now, too, if he wanted. He got a startled look on his face, and kept pointing to the word in the sign dictionary. I went to the refrigerator and took one out to show him. He shook his head and pointed to the word again.

Hmmmm.....

Took the dictionary, and looked at the words clustered around that one. They were words like "perfume" and "bath oil."

Poor kid. His skin was dry and he wanted some cream or lotion to rub into his face.

No wonder he was startled. Here, have a strawberry yogurt.

Revenge of the Sherpa

2007-01-12T10:09:00.000-08:00

My sherpa, a faithful reader of this blog, will get much satisfaction from this post. I have gotten even with Charlie on her behalf.

Remember how people in China kept trying to feed us things described as "local delicacies" which cause most westerners to lose their appetites instantly? Remember how my sherpa kept turning green and either skipping a meal completely while pushing food around her plate with her chopsticks to politely look like she was eating, or begging at the next table over if it had something more appetizing-looking than ours?

And the whole time this was going on, Charlie was having a grand old time, eating things like dog meat and ostrich kidneys and duck innards of varying sorts, and laughing his head off at the colors our faces turned at the thought of touching what he was wolfing down.

Today was payback time. You're in America now, boy. For lunch I threw some Gorton's fish fillets in the oven and made a pot of macaroni and cheese.

He likes noodles. I don't know what his problem is. But the minute I set that plate down in front of him, he morphed into a picky teenager. Turned up his flat little nose and waved his hand in the Chinese sign for "no." Turned a funny color, too.

Revenge...how sweet it is.

We're baaaack.....

2007-01-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, today is 1/12/07 (I think) and we got in yesterday morning (our time) which was the day before yesterday (their time) and.....oh, good grief. We're just back.

I've still got to blog the Beijing portion. I will try to get that done in the next day or so. But once that's done, it will officially bring to a close our adoption journey.

Now that we're back, I won't be blogging as often, but I promise to put up an occasional update, especially since things are already pretty hilarious at times. Yes, we're having some frustrations, but on the whole things are going pretty well. So, check back once in a while and see what's new at the funny farm.

Now begins the journey of becoming a family.

Beijing

2007-01-10T10:05:00.000-08:00

We arrived late because our plane had been delayed due to ice in Beijing. They had apparently had a nasty snowstorm a couple of days prior to our arrival and were still recovering the runways. We saw a little bit of snow laying around still, but not much. After running around without coats in Guangzhou for nearly a week, it was a shock to walk into the Beijing cold.

Our guide, Tony, got us checked in at the hotel, and we arranged a time to meet in the morning. He's a very snappy dresser. Jen at one point commented that Tony was better dressed than most women she knew. He showed up most days in pinstripe slacks with a business shirt and sunglasses, very metro-ish.

We headed up to our rooms. For Beijing, I had arranged for two 2-person rooms, since Rick would be with us, and I figured we’d put Rick and Charlie in one and Jen and me in the other. Rick was already checked in and on the way to being asleep.

But Charlie didn’t know any of this. We had kept it a secret that Rick would be joining us. We walked into our room, and there were only two beds, of course. Charlie turned and looked at me with an “oh, no, not again….” look on his face, remembering the scene in Guangzhou when we were given a room the size of a small closet without a third bed or even a rollaway. So I crooked a finger at him to say “come here” and headed out into the hallway. I knocked on the door next to ours, and while waiting for Rick to open it, I told Charlie that I had a big surprise for him; since there were only two beds in my room, he was going to sleep in this room—with Rick. He got a very confused look on his face, as if to say no, no, I couldn’t have understood this right; then he looked up at me and signed, “Rick? Here???” When I grinned and nodded just as the door opened, Charlie’s face just split in half in the biggest grin I have seen from him yet. He truly just lit up.

Rick had a nasty cold. We could hear him all night coughing from our room. Thank goodness Charlie is deaf.

The next day we started out bright and early for the Sacred Path of the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. We stopped and picked up Hans, our Chinese sign language interpreter, from the subway station. He was a really sweet postgrad student at Beijing University who volunteers in their sign language association. I don’t think anyone in China actually works as an interpreter for the deaf—it sounds like they’re all just volunteers. Before we arrived in Beijing, I had given thought to actually canceling the interpreter because Charlie was doing so well in sign, but it was too late to cancel by that point, so we let it stand and Tony said we’d see how it worked out the first day or so. I’m glad we stuck with it, after all. He definitely added a new dimension to the trip, and Charlie really enjoyed being with someone who was fluent in Chinese sign. Hans did confirm that Charlie said he was picking up about half of what Rick signed and something more than half of what I signed but was not always letting on if he didn’t get it. So we started to get suspicious about every nod of the head, wondering if he really was getting it. But the signs started coming back to us more and more all the time, so I think he understands quite a bit, just not getting every single word but still getting the ideas.

We got some neat photos on the Sacred Path. We only got a couple of the statues in our photos, but if you want to see some really great shots, go to http://www.micktravels.com/china/sacredway.html and check out theirs. It was awesome! Then we went to a smoky little restaurant on the way to the Great Wall. Our guide here in Beijing, Tony, got a pretty quick understanding of our likes and dislikes, and most of the things he ordered were considered edible even by the Sherpa. Good thing, ‘cause we wanted to do some Great Wall climbing, and Jen was gonna need some calories for energy on that.

I was afraid that it would be just a walk in the park, since we were planning to take a cable car up and the sled down (since the cable car and sled were doing all the work, what more was there???). Not to worry. We got a workout, and we had the added excitement of almost getting killed, too.

Tony found out that we couldn’t take the cable car up if we wanted to sled down, because the cable car went to a tower in a completely different area a long way from the entrance to the sled/toboggan thingie. If you want to toboggan down, you have to take a ski lift up. Sherpa started whining. Claimed I had promised her an enclosed cable car (I never once used the word enclosed!) and that we would fall off this open ski-lift-chair-on-a-wire thing and be killed. I shushed the Sherpa, and up we went. It was c-c-c-cold going up on that thing! She got some footage with the videocam, but I think she had trouble turning it off because her fingers just froze to it. Just when we thought we were at the end, the crest of the mountain was coming up, it went through a junction pole and started up even further. The view was absolutely spectacular, by the way. Once we all got up to the very top, two by two, we realized this wasn’t gonna be a walk in the park. We were in one of the guard towers on the Wall, and the real work wasn’t in getting here, it was in getting from one tower to another. See the pictures on the photo section of the blog—it was really cool. In between each tower, there would be a combination of steps and steep ramps. The steps were not of uniform height, as they were all hand-made, so you really had to watch where you were going or you’d fall. Tony explained that the Wall was not just for guarding against invasion—it was a communications device. The dip in between towers was so that a clear line of sight from tower to tower could be maintained no matter what was going on at the top of the wall itself. If an impending invasion were sighted, the guards in each tower would light a torch made of wolf scat (wolf pu-PU, as Tony put it) and hold it up to signal the guards at the next tower. Each tower would then light the torch until the message got all the way to Beijing to the Emperor to warn of an invasion.

The Wall was just awesome. We climbed up to the roof of one of the towers for a survey. Rick was just standing there with his jaw dropped, and I swear he had tears glistening in his eyes (maybe it was just the cold, biting wind?) when he thanked me for inviting him along on this part of the trip.

Jen and Tony hung back after walking just one tower—Jen’s knee had been giving her trouble, and Tony has done this guide thing a million times, so he is no longer impressed. Rick, Charlie, Hans, and I walked about 4-5 towers. We wanted to go all the way to the top, but we ran out of steam and Rick’s coughing was getting really bad, so we headed back. When we came to the entrance to the toboggans, the Sherpa started whining again. She didn’t like the looks of them. Can’t we pleeeeeeeze just take the scary chair thingie back down again? Nope, the guide has already paid for the toboggan tickets, not the chair lift tickets. She’d have to climb down there to change her tickets. Rick led off and was out of sight in an instant. I thought I heard a faint “yahoo” about 5 minutes later, but I’m not sure, he was gone that fast. Then Charlie went. Charlie didn’t quite get the hang of the balance to get the thing going well, so he was going very slowly, not fully releasing the brakes. Hans went behind him and kind of pushed him along as best he could. Then Jen took off. I was behind her, and Tony brought up the rear. I waited a good while before heading off, since I knew they were all crawling behind Charlie, but I still caught up with them rather quickly, and Tony a minute later, and we all crawled down the mountain.

That’s when we nearly got killed. Despite signs every 100 meters telling people to beware of blind curves and to stay within a speed limit, an American idiot and his 4-year-old idiot apprentice come barreling down the mountain on a 2-person toboggan and never slowed down coming around the blind curve. They slammed into Tony’s toboggan, pushing the nose up. Tony was at least moving when they hit, so the impact on him wasn’t that great.

I, however, made a very bad decision in that split-second after hearing it coming. I stopped, figuring that it would end with my toboggan instead of causing a chain reaction all the way down through Jen, Hans, and Charlie. Bad move. Tony’s toboggan hit me square in the shoulders and flipped me up in the air, and I came back down hitting my tailbone on my toboggan, which folded in half and flew up, hitting Jen in the small of her back.

Jen was pretty bruised up. I couldn’t move at all for a minute, and when I could, all I could do was roll myself over the edge of the metal tubing the toboggans were in and drop off the side into the snow—I was afraid another speeding jerk might be behind the first one.

The guy never even apologized or asked if we were hurt. He just had a rather annoyed look on his face that were were still in the way and he had to wait until we took off again. Eventually I found my feet again, and got back on the toboggan and we made our slow, painful way down the rest of the mountain. As we were exiting the toboggans, we heard the staff who help you out of them and then remove them from the track yelling and screaming. Guess who they were yelling at? Jerk-O hadn’t even slowed down at the end, just came in full speed. Man, I feel sorry for his kid, growing up with an example like that.

All the remainder of that day and the next, I thought I had done serious damage to the sciatic nerve because I had severe shooting pains down the left back and leg when I tried to walk or even turn over in bed. But on the third day it started getting better, and I figure it must have just bruised the nerve really bad. It sure bruised me—I had huge bruises on my tailbone and down the backs of my legs, and it felt like there was a bruise between my shoulder blades, although it didn’t show one.

Of course, it didn’t take the Sherpa long to start in with the “I told you so” routine. I knew I’d never hear the end of this one.

After dinner, we went to see the Shaolin Monks do a Kung Fu exhibition. Jen described it well when she called it more of a ballet with Kung Fu moves. It was a story about a little boy’s journey to become a monk and master his Kung Fu. At one point, he fell from grace due to an illusion of a woman (why do they always blame women?) and the subtitles in English above the stage said his Kung Fu was damaged. That’s when Sherpa leans over and hisses, “That’s what wrong with us—our Kung Fu was damaged!” Got some dirty looks trying not to choke in a quiet theatre.

The next day, we went to the Confucius Temple and Lama Temple. The Confucius was inactive and under heavy renovation, but interesting anyway. Lama Temple was an active Buddhist Temple with monks all over the place and people burning incense and praying. It was fascinating, but the incense smell was overpowering, since they don’t just burn a stick at a time, each person burns an entire bundle. The Buddha statue in the main building was 26 meters high. (Think 3 stories high.)

The highlight of the day was the ice skating. I definitely had to sit this one out because I was still in extreme pain from being attacked by a toboggan the day before, and since I was just going to sit on the sidelines anyway, Jen (who was originally planning to sit on sidelines and take pictures of me falling on my keester) decided to stay at the hotel and try the internet connections again and let me do my own picture-taking for a change.

Charlie learned pretty quickly. I’d like to say he was doing triple lutzes and spins by the end of the session, but I’ll settle for the fact that he wasn’t wiping out too many times and no bones were broken. It was heart-warming to see Rick playing the role of big brother, helping teach Charlie to skate, holding his hand until he felt more sure of himself, helping him up when he wiped out. He was positively tender with him, and though I wouldn’t admit it to him, it made me cry. He’s wanted a brother for so long.

Back at the hotel, I was trying to wrap presents and asked Charlie for the tape. He signed that it was broken. Whaddaya mean, broken? How do you break Scotch tape, for cryin’ out loud? He brought it to me, and showed me the plastic container had snapped in half, no doubt the victim of rough luggage handling by the airlines. Then Charlie got a glint in his eye. I have already come to recognize that “I have an idea” look. A few minutes later, Charlie came back, having fixed the tape dispenser—he had seen Rick’s roll of duct tape in his luggage, and had duct taped the whole thing back together. (See picture in Beijing album.) Rick all of a sudden started chortling with glee, and yelling, “Now he’s REALLY my brother!!!” Rick fixes everything he breaks with duct tape, including his car. He has a Saturn. They don’t just dent, since they’re not made of metal, so when he had his first accident, he ended up with some holes in it, which he covered over with duct tape. He then got a bumper magnet that says “Silence is golden, but duct tape is SILVER” and since it wouldn’t stick (again, Saturns are not metal), he duct taped the magnet to the bumper. Rick and Charlie are now truly brothers, but the bond is not blood—it’s duct tape.

The next day we went to the Summer Palace. I think this was my favorite place on the Beijing part of the trip. It is easy to imagine being the empress and wandering through the outdoor arches and pine-arbored walkways. So ornate, very beautiful. I got some pictures, but they don’t really do it justice.

We did a “drive-by” (that’s what our itinerary called it) of the two stadiums that will hold the 2008 Olympics. Again, see the pictures. One is called the Bird’s Nest, and the other is called the Bubble Box. Two very interesting-looking edifices. Olympic village is still under construction, building huge buildings that will house all the athletes and all the workers it will take to put this gig on.

The Olympics is a big deal, and souvenirs are already on sale. At every major site, not just around the Olympics arenas area, vendors have Olympic babies for sale in some form or other, and they come after you shouting “Are you a baby?” Tony finally clued me in—the Chinese word for Olympic sounds like “are you a,” so they’re running after us asking “Olympic baby? Olympic baby?”

That is one thing I won’t miss. It is impossible to window shop in China without being accosted by someone trying to sell something. Vendors will bump into you deliberately on the street, strike up a conversation and beg and plead with you to come visit their shops. At places like the Great Wall, you literally get mobbed by vendors hawking their wares. They smell money the second they see our round eyes. And if you get a good deal, it’s “just for you.”

One great example: As we left the Summer Palace, an old lady started in on Rick. She had a dark red dragon in a box. Rick is a dragon collector, and he really wanted a dragon from China, anyway, so he asked her how much. She told him 126 (yuan). Having been warned that you should never pay what they ask for, he bargained her down to 70, and was feeling mighty proud of himself—until, having given her the money and taken possession of his dragon and turned to leave, another old lady starts chasing after him, yelling, “Just for you—30 yuan!” He turned to look, and this old lady was holding out the same EXACT dragon he had just paid 70 yuan for, and the first old lady was sitting back and grinning.

Just to rub it in, I bargain the second old lady down to 20 yuan, and bought her dragon myself. Gave it to him later so he could have a pair of bookends. Good reminder. He hates me.

In the afternoon, we visited a Hutong, which is an ancient neighborhood. Talk about a sense of community—you ride through by pedicab, and the first thing the Hutong guide does is take you to the public lavatories. Trust me, you just don’t wanna go there. Literally. Especially when it’s cold enough out to freeze your @$$ off. We had a nice visit with a local family who are considered wealthy by Hutong standards, since they are the only family in the neighborhood to have their own bathroom and shower. Their “house” was 3 rooms. It was worth $500,000 US dollars. Really! They heat with coal florets, one stove in the whole joint. Their kitchen has a propane bottle stove that they have to buy a new propane bottle for once a month. All what we here would consider rather primitive living conditions, but they have some beautiful and very valuable furniture. They are retired, so they are not allowed to drive. In China, they limit the age at which you can drive, and the elderly must get around by bicycle.

A tour like that certainly gives you cause to reflect on our level of creature comfort.

We then climbed the Bell Tower and had a tea pouring ceremony in the teahouse in the base of the tower. At one point, while we were shopping around in there, Tony asked Jen to put on his sunglasses. She thought maybe there was some optical illusion or something he was trying to get her to see, so she put them on and then looked up, and down, and sideways. Nothing. So she looked at Tony and asked why she was wearing his sunglasses. He replied because she looked so beautiful and mysterious, he just had to see how she looked in them. She took them off, trying hard not to laugh. When she mentioned it later that night, she was astounded that he would be making a pass at her. I don’t see why she should be so shocked, because she is really beautiful, inside and out. But it was funny to see Tony acting like a schoolboy over her. (Reminder: married woman, 3 kids….)

The next day we went to Tiananmen Square. Jen stayed behind, since she’d been there and done that already and wanted some computer time. Tony was distraught.

While at Tiananmen, we visited the Great Hall of the People. Rick did not realize this was considered a government building, not just a tourist hotspot, which was unfortunate, because they had a security check at the front door. For those of you who do not know what I mean when I say it was deja vu all over again, please go to the archive on the left of your screen, and find an older entry from early 2006 titled "What NOT to take to a federal building."

That evening we went to a Hotpot dinner. Can’t even begin to describe it, you’d have to see the picture to get an idea. Tony had done pretty good at that point, choosing meals that Jen could eat, but this one blew his winning streak. Jen just did her pushing food around game throughout the meal and drank a lot of beer.

I actually enjoyed the hotpot meal, but I drank a bit of the beer anyway since the food was so spicy. After we left the restaurant, we hiked to the subway station to head for the evening’s entertainment, and since it was so cold, Jen and I were arm-in-arm, cutting up like high-schoolers, just giggling and having fun. Okay, maybe a little tiny bit buzzed. But we were harmless.

That night we saw the Peking Acrobats. Awesome. Those kids simply have no bones in their bodies. Bodies are not meant to bend that way.

The next day was our flight home. We had a morning free of sight-seeing, so we slept in for a change and had a leisurely brunch before packing and checking out. Headed out to the airport at 2 p.m. Jen was a little worried that Tony would try to plant one on her and she’d be forced to smack him, but he behaved himself and settled for a quick hug when we said goodbye.

We saw Rick off on his flight, then settled in for a long wait until our flight was up. The flight back was fairly smooth, and Charlie slept through most of it. We had sent a note to the Captain asking if Charlie could visit the cockpit after we landed, and he sent word back agreeing. But what that meant, since Jen had such a tight connection, is that Charlie and I stayed behind on the plane while she literally ran to catch her next flight, so we never really had time for the emotional good-bye that we were both dreading.

The cockpit was nice. The pilot actually let Charlie sit in his seat and man the plane, which was cool. I showed Charlie the “steering wheel” and showed him that if you pulled it the nose of the plane would go up, if you push it the nose would go down. He just nodded sagely and then showed me the altimeter display and showed how the plane would tilt from side to side. Okay, I give up. How an orphanage kid knows some of the stuff he knows is beyond me. I’m beginning to think he has some other life experiences. Either that or they lied to me about his origins.

I miss Jen. It is uncanny how two total strangers can turn out to be so compatible. After we’d been together for a week, I asked her which of my habits drove her totally bats (because I was thinking it was so funny that she didn’t have any traits that drove me bats), and she laughed, because she had just been thinking the same thing in reverse. It’s so neat to spend time with someone who sees things through pretty much the same eyes you do, has the same sense of humor you do, and thinks the same thoughts you do and can finish your sentences in the same breath. We turned out to have so much in common it was uncanny.

It was amazing that this trip went so well, considering all that could have gone wrong. There were hold-ups here and there: The leaky plane toilet that almost kept me from getting to China, the camera going missing after adoption day, being attacked by one of my own countrymen on a wheeled device, but none of it was insurmountable, and we always managed to find that the blessings outweighed the problems.

Now if they’d only find Jen’s suitcase….it figures, they lost it on the last leg of the trip, between LA and Denver.

If you smell something burning, look at the Sherpa. She’s breathing fire…

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Guangzhou

2007-01-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

The next several days in Guangzhou were fun, but I’m going to condense them into one post. On 01/01/07, we met up with the Hales family. Heidi and her husband, Que, and four of their children (they have two others who are grown) are here to adopt their new son, Yue. The reason Heidi and I wanted so much to meet up is that one of Heidi’s current four, Nicholas, is a deaf child she adopted from China years ago (he’s 10 now), and he was very excited to hear that someone else was adopting an older deaf child and wanted to meet Charlie. Heidi’s whole family signs, so we figured it would be easy to meet up. We were even staying at the same hotel. So we gave them a ring once we heard they’d checked in, and Heidi came up to our room to chat for a while. She is a certified sign language interpreter, so it was fascinating for Charlie to see a whole conversation going on in ASL between us.

We all went shopping after her kids woke up from a nap. One of the coolest things we ran across was an art called finger-painting. The artist has a bowl of black ink that he dips his palm or fingernails in and then paints pictures. He was making the most amazing pictures of rocks, waterfalls, and trees. The lady standing next to him, who spoke good English, was extolling his virtues, but explained that he was the student, not the Master (so hard not to laugh recalling Jen’s description of the Master of the Crystal Balls in Nanjing). After looking through works done by the student versus the absent Master, we decided we liked the student’s style better, and we all bought a bunch of his stuff. He looked very pleased.

We were told the McDonald’s was just over the pedestrian bridge over the Pearl River and on the corner. (The area of Guangzhou where everyone stays during adoption work is called Shamian Island, and it’s separated from the rest of the city by a footbridge.) So we crossed over into the city, where nearly no one speaks English, and looked for a Mickey D’s on a corner. No can find. We started looking at 3 p.m. We finally found it at 5 p.m. And boy, did we get some stares while we were wandering around. Heidi’s family consists of two Caucasian teen-agers, a Chinese child, and a Haitian child, and I’ve got a Chinese child, and the two Chinese children between us and most of the rest of us as well were signing. We were a crew like nothing this island has ever seen before.

Later that night, Heidi’s deaf son, Nicholas, came up and played remote control cars with Charlie. The hotel room wasn’t quite big enough for races, so we took them out in the hallway, and Heidi, Jen, Shannon (Heidi’s teen-age daughter) and I all sat in the hallway chatting while the boys crashed cars into the walls and doors. Thank God most all the rooms were empty! Heidi has some absolutely fascinating and horrific stories about her former adoptions, and I have an enormous amount of respect for this woman. When she realizes that a child is meant to be with her, she is tenacious in bringing that child home and I don’t think anything can stand in her way for long. These stories belong in a book, and soon!

On the second day, we had some touring in GZ. We nixed another dead guy from the itinerary. We went to the Chen Family Temple, which was fabulous. Who should we happen to run into there? The whole Hales family! They had a separate guide. We agreed we should have coordinated this better and all shared one guide to save on some $. When we first arrived, our guide told us there were many executions going on there that day, so we wouldn’t be able to see everything. Well, gosh, if there were executions going on, I’m sure we wouldn’t WANT to see it all…it took a while to realize he meant excavations. There were a number of rooms that were closed to the public because workers were excavating things from them and renovating woodwork, etc. Whew! That was a close call.

Our guide then took us to lunch at a local dimsen restaurant, and we were seated in a semi-private room. It had two large round tables in it. The other was empty. They started serving our meal, which had a lot of shrimp stuff (apparently that’s another local delicacy), so sherpa was doing her push-the-food-around-the-plate-and-act-like-I’m-really-eating act, when the Hales family walks in and sits down at the other table. Their food started coming, and although they had a lot of the same stuff we did, their dimsen did not contain shrimp, and they had some other dishes without crustaceans of any kind, so the next thing I know, my sherpa is begging for food. Well, not begging exactly—more like bargaining, offering some shrimp dishes in return for anything, anything at all, that looked like noodles or rice.

After lunch, we went to a beautiful building we had seen from the road and inquired about earlier in the day. It turned out to be a music hall that was erected as a monument to Dr. Sun-Yat Sen, the first president of China. It was a gorgeous building, and the gardens around it were lovely. Very conducive to letting lunch settle while on a leisurely stroll. Then Wen took us to Yuexiu Park, which was simply huge. We had a great time there, rented a paddle boat (bike boat, as the Chinese call them) for an hour and paddled around the lake. Charlie had immense fun at this.

On Jan 3, we had a free day with no plans, which was a good thing, because breakfast ended up being a long, drawn-out affair. We went into a hotel that promised in English on the outside marquee that it had good food in three styles. The problem, we found after we were seated, was that the menu was not in English, nor did any of the staff speak English. We were the only Caucasian faces in the joint, and I do believe we may have been their first American customers ever, despite the English on the outside.

Did I mention that sherpa and I are brave? Rather than trying to pantomime eggs and bacon and pancakes (ever tried THAT?), we actually gave the Chinese menu to Charlie and let him order. You do remember that in earlier posts, we caught Charlie eating things like dog meat and ostrich kidneys, right? I handed him the menu, told him to order, and told him severely, “NO DOG!” That sent him into gales of giggles. He ordered three dishes, and we held our breath and waited for the results.

The first dish to come out looked like cubes of fried potatoes. I took his dictionary and asked him if it was potato, and he shook his head no and started digging on the Chinese side of the dictionary to find the word. Couldn’t find it. I tentatively tried it—not bad, so I had some more. Jen even tried it, and didn’t gag on it. Then Charlie finally found the word. Radish. Jen carefully set her chopsticks aside.

The next dish out was congee. This, for the uninitiated, is rice that has been cooked in water until it turns to mush, with whatever the cook decides to throw in for flavor or color. The cook in this case had thrown in cilantro and meat. Charlie hastened to sign “cow.” Hey, I’m all over this one. It’s basically beef soup with rice.

Turns out sherpa hates cilantro. She did her little pushing-food-around-the-plate routine again.

The next dish out was noodles with baby squid. Ain’t no way sherpa is touching that. Strike three, Charlie.

Charlie and I left full, but I heard a large growl from sherpa’s stomach on the way out the door. Fortunately, the guide had shown me an internet café on the way past the day before, so I knew where to take her. We headed down to a place called Blenz, where I planned to caffeinate my sherpa well. What did we see when we walked in the door? Cheesecake! Honest-to-God cheesecake, not white cake with rubber icing. We were both drooling at the sight, and they had three different flavors, forcing us to choose. We almost ordered all three.

The rest of the day we just wandered around the island, shopping, getting laundry done, etc. Nothing majorly exciting.

The following day was the consulate appointment, which meant we had to sit in our hotel while our guide was at the consulate getting Charlie’s visa processed. Our room felt like a sauna, and we couldn’t get the heat down any, so we were getting crabby by the time our guide was supposed to call. Eleven-thirty came and went, no guide. He finally rang the doorbell, looking harried. Apparently one form he had filled out still needed a signature (he had originally told me that section didn’t apply to me due to the category visa my son was getting, but it did), and he had to re-do the form and get it back to the consulate, which was 45 minutes away, within an hour. He said we could leave at that point, but me being the paranoid person I am, I made him promise to call us once all was clear, and THEN we would go. So we had another hour of sitting in the sauna before we heard word back that everything was good to go.

It was so nice outside that day. We didn’t even need sweaters. We went out to Friendship Park with a hackey-sack (those things are harder to use than I ever believed) and Charlie’s remote-control cars. We raced cars for a while, and even got a couple of the local kids interested. Then Charlie wanted to play at a little bit of karate, so I showed him a couple of stances and how to punch. Then I realized that a couple of guys were staring at us from the sidelines. Here’s a crazy western woman showing this kid karate moves and waving her hands about like crazy. They just kept on staring and staring. That’s when my sherpa found a secret weapon. She trained the video camera on them very conspicuously. I don’t know if it was even running or not, but it made them nervous. They immediately started smiling and waving and backing up. Eventually they backed their way out of sight.

Charlie is really starting to blossom. There are times when communications are tough, so we have our misunderstandings, but most of the time he seems to understand things pretty well, and he is starting to give me back more signs now and not just take them in. Not what I'd call full-blown conversations, but if I tell a funny story or I'm interpreting something funny that Jen has just said, he laughs at the appropriate time or asks just enough of a question that I know he got the basic gist of it. He is mostly happy, but on occasion introspective, which is totally to be expected, since he's been transplanted from everything and everyone familiar to him. I find it amazing that he's as good-natured and happy as he is, really. But I see him opening up a little more each day. He's a very sweet child, and it's easy to see why he's everybody's favorite.

The following day was oath day, when we go to the consulate, take an oath, and get the child’s visa. We checked out of the hotel, and since we were supposed to meet the paperwork guide at the consulate at 3:30 for our 4:00 appointment, we had time for a trip to the zoo, which our touring guide kept referring to as the ZOOM.

This ZOOM was one of the saddest places I have been in my life, and keep in mind, I’ve been to my son’s orphanage. We saw a monkey who had such a bad case of mange that he couldn’t decide where to scratch next, trying to scratch everywhere at once. The tiger was in a cage that only gave him enough space to pace for four strides before turning around. One of the lions was so near death that he had no fur left and you could see every vein popping up through his thin skin, just a bag of bones. Their national treasure, the panda, looked dirty and unkempt instead of white and fat and happy. He had a huge cage, but it was all concrete. It was just a sad, depressing little place, and I was happy to leave it.

Wen got us to the consulate where we were to meet the paperwork guide. (Wen was not licensed to enter the consulate and process adoption paperwork.) However, our paperwork guide was not there. We can’t get in, because the guide has to procure an entry appointment ticket. When it became obvious that our guide wasn’t going to show up, Wen had a stroke of genius. Another adoption group from another hotel was about to come through, and their guide had a group entry ticket. Wen suggested we just tag onto their group to get in and go from there.

Sure enough, we snuck into the consulate with this other group. Got through security and another family who had been through this before gave us advice on what lines to get in, what to do, what to say, what to look for. We took our oath, and this family “lent” us their guide to check over the visa and make sure everything was in order. Then we were outta there and on our way to the airport.

Sherpa could tell I wasn’t capable of coherent speech right then, and she had Wen try to get this other guide on the phone for us. When she got him, all he would say was that he was stuck in traffic.

My initial inclination was to contact WACAP and tell them what a disaster every contact we’ve had with this agency has been (first dragon lady making fun of my son’s signing, and now this no-show guide) and insist that they try to get back the $600 I had paid for this agency to process my paperwork. But I needed to calm down first, so I set the issue aside for a few days so I could settle a bit.

Later, in Beijing, by the time I was actually ready to write, I found out what really happened. I had sent a note to Heidi, telling her about this and to watch out if she got this guide when she returned to Guangzhou with her new son, and it turned out he was assigned to her. She discussed the situation with him to make sure the same would not happen to them, and he admitted to her that his mother had died that morning, and he had been stuck in traffic trying to get back to the consulate. Why didn’t he call me and tell me there was a problem and he would need to send a replacement? Because he was afraid for his job—in China, you do your job, it is your duty. There is no replacement to send, no one to cover your responsibilities. Even as much as parents are revered, apparently their deaths still do not interfere with your duties. He felt shamed because he had failed us, and he had tears welling up when he talked to Heidi about it.

I’m certainly not going to add to that man’s troubles at this point. I feel like a heel for being steamed up over him not showing up. It’s so sad that he felt like he had to try to rush to get there even at a time when he needed to be with his family, and failing to make it to that appointment just added one more thing to go wrong on what had to be the worst day of his life. I sent him my condolences through Heidi and prayed that God would give me a little more patience in the future when it feels like there must be more to the story.

The important thing was that we got the visa (since I didn’t have my guide with my paperwork, I won’t know if everything is perfectly in order until I get to Los Angeles) and we got to the airport on time for our flight to Beijing.

The flight was delayed, not sure over what, so we all had plenty of time to sit around the airport and eat potato chips. I couldn’t wait to get to Beijing, because I knew Rick was waiting there for us.

Charlie had some trouble on this flight, too. He did okay with the take-off, but we hit some more serious turbulence on this flight—my stomach even dropped a little—and it really unnerved him. And he felt sick the whole time we were descending for the landing. He spent the whole 20 minutes or so before landing with his head forward in his lap cradled in his hands. We had taught him on the last flight how to clear his ears when they hurt, but this seemed to be either a headache or some upset. He was better once we got on the ground.

Our guide met us once we got out of baggage claim. His name was Tony, and his English was fantastic. He informed me that Rick had landed okay and was at the hotel waiting for us, so we headed for the hotel. More on Beijing in the next post.

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What Happens When Sherpas Don't Double-Check

2006-12-31T10:01:00.000-08:00

Today we got up early for our flight to Guangzhou, in southern China. We had to leave the hotel at 6 a.m. to get to the airport on time, so our wake-up call was at 4:30 a.m. Charlie was not happy about being aroused from a deep sleep at such an ungodly hour, but he complied with my request to get dressed and pack up the last-minute stuff.

We had wrapped up gifts for Lily and our driver. I had managed to get a bunch of multi-purpose tools at a good price while in the U.S. You know—the things that had a wrench, three different screwdrivers, a knife, and a hammer all in one. These were nice, heavy ones, and I can feel my suitcase getting lighter every time I give one away. I started out with six. Two went to officials at Civil Affairs in Nanjing, one went to the teacher who accompanied Ms. Tang to bring Charlie to meet us, and now one to the driver. That left two of them sitting out, so I stuffed the remaining ones into a bag and handed over the wrapped one to the driver, who was supremely pleased at having been included in the gift-giving spree.

No time for breakfast today, nothing open this early. But we figured we’d have ½ hour to kill once we got to the airport and could grab some over-priced something-or-other once we got checked in and to our gate.

We got in line at the airline counter. As we were the next person up, Lily muttered that we had to get in line, she was just informed that the luggage machine in this line had stopped working.

Same thing in the next line. I think they were just funnin’ with us. I could feel our ½ hour margin shrinking.

Then we got in a line where the machine actually worked. Our paperwork was all in order, the suitcases took off on the conveyor belt, and we were ready to take our carry-ons and go through security.

Jen and Charlie made it through with no problem, but they asked me to open my carry-on bag. Sure, no problem. Opened it up, here help yourself.

The guy knew exactly where to reach—he was on a mission, ‘cause he had seen something he didn’t like on the x-ray. I must have looked like a ghost when he pulled out one of those tools and opened it up to show me the knife and shook his head no-no. Fortunately, this was not the United States. I think if I had done something that stupid going through American security, I’d have been handcuffed and hauled off for questioning. As it was, he merely said the words “check baggage” and handed me the tool. I reached for my carry-on, and he pulled it away from me, indicating that Jen could watch it until I returned from taking that to have added to my checked baggage. I finally managed to convince him that I needed to get in that bag, there were TWO of these things in there, and he had only found one. He looked a little sheepish at that, but let me get the second one, and sent me back to the counter.

Thank God that Lily, our perfect guide, never leaves the terminal until her guests are through security and she can’t see them any more. She was watching all this from a distance, knew something was wrong but couldn’t see quite what, until I got close enough. So she went back to the counter with me and helped me get them to bring one of my bags back. Fortunately mine were easy for the worker trying to find them to identify, since I had a bright yellow bungee cord around one suitcase and a bright green one around another. They brought one of them out (took them about 15 minutes, since they were already en route to the plane), let me stuff the tools in it, and then sent it back again.

I was finally allowed to go through security and rejoin Jen and Charlie. Sherpa was stewing because she felt she should have double-checked the packing. How did I end up with a sherpa with such a guilt complex??? We started the mile-long trek to our gate, and finally got there with 5 minutes to spare before boarding call. Not enough time to order any over-priced food.

They did serve a meal on the plane, which surprised us, since it was only a 2-hour flight, but none of it was to Charlie’s liking. I think he just wasn’t feeling very good. He was hot, and once we were up to altitude and the seat belt sign came off, I got him to ball up his coat and place it on my lap as a pillow. We removed the armrest between us and he leaned over and fell asleep in my lap for part of the flight.

He was a little alarmed when we hit some turbulence and looked at me to see if he
should start panicking, but from my calm “wow, isn’t this fun?” expression, he decided it wasn’t worth getting excited over.

I had explained to him before the flight started how the flaps on the wings worked when the pilot wanted to slow down the plane. He kept watching out the window periodically to see when the flaps would go up. He seemed to enjoy the landing, watching all the pieces. Jen keeps talking about what a genius Charlie is (doesn’t seem to be anything the boy can’t figure out), and she fully expected him to go fly the plane for the next flight now that he had it all down pat.

You should have seen his face, though, after we landed and were taxiing to the terminal. Remember in yesterday’s entry I mentioned that I wasn’t sure he understood exactly where we were going, just that he was getting his medical exam there and had to go on an airplane? Well, what I didn’t realize was that he thought we had just landed in America. You should have seen the confused look on his face when he read the Chinese characters for the city painted in big red letters on one of the hangars. Then he signed, “Chinese writing in America?” Oh, Lord, I just lost it. So I fished out a flight magazine from the seat in front of me, and fortunately it had a map of the whole of China in it, which I hadn’t had in the hotel room when I was trying to explain this whole scenario. I showed him where we had just spent 5 days, and where we had just flown to and repeated the highlights of why we were here, then where we were going next after this (Beijing) and some of the things we would do there, and then flew my hand off the page in the direction we’d be flying to go to America and signed “America there.” Ah, okay. Now he gets it. That explains the Chinese writing. This just wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

There was a guide to meet us and take us to the hotel (only one this time, thanks to Lily—the other agency had tried to mess this one up, too, but she caught it by coordinating with Dragon Lady and telling her to call them off). Our new guide was named Wen (pronounced more like Wun). Very nice man, but his English was very hard to understand. He didn’t quite seem to get the deal with Charlie, because he kept speaking to him. I explained that Charlie was deaf, and Wen would nod like he understood, but then talk to him some more. Okay, maybe he doesn’t understand the word deaf, not in his vocabulary. So I told him that Charlie could not hear him. He nodded sagely. He saw us signing. He asked him more questions.

Some people just don’t get it.

I let that one roll off.

We were taken to our room, but there had been a misunderstanding. The room had only 2beds and no space for a rollaway. We called and asked what was going on with the third bed, and they sent up a roll-away bed that was so small Charlie’s feet would hang off the end. And in order to set that up, they had to remove the chair for the tiny little desk. And in order to get out of bed, Charlie would have had to crawl over my bed, because there was no space to get feet on the floor—the rollaway was sandwiched in between one bed and the wall. I went down and explained that there had been a mistake somewhere, they had us in the wrong sized room, we were supposed to have one of the Executive rooms. The guy at the desk tried to tell me that all the rooms at the hotel were the same size. I’m not buying that. I called Wen back and told him we had a problem that needed working out. He merely functioned as an interpreter between me and the hotel guy, parroting that the rooms were all the same size. He obviously was not going to raise enough of a fuss to get this worked out satisfactorily.

I miss Lily.

So I told him, in front of the hotel guy, “Okay, get us a different hotel. Now.”

That seemed to work. In order to do that, he had to call Jenny in Beijing, who handles all of OCDF’s reservations. Jenny got on the phone with me and I told her if the rooms were all the same size, we wanted to be in a different hotel. She told me to leave our luggage in the small room, go on to our medical appointment, and let her deal with this. So we dug out our paperwork and were about to head off to the medical appointment with Raymond, the guide handling our paperwork in this city, when they said they had a room they would like us to see and approve before leaving and before having the luggage transferred to it.

It was beautiful. And oddly enough, it wasn’t the same size. Imagine that! It had three twin beds. And they were soft western-style beds, not plywood boxes with pads. If we hadn’t had an appointment to get to, we’d have just sunk down and taken naps on the spot.

They gave us the room keys, and we took off running for the medical appointment. It went pretty smoothly. Charlie had to have 3 shots, but he barely even grimaced. He admitted later that evening that his arms were pretty sore, though. The doctor doing his physical was impressed that he had been taught to read and write Chinese. He was asking him questions by writing them down, and the only one that befuddled Charlie was the one about whether he had been an inpatient before. He underlined the characters for inpatient and gave the doc a quizzical look. Doc looked at me as if to say “what now?” so I explained in sign language to Charlie that the doctor needed to know if he had ever gone to the hospital and stayed there overnight for any sort of surgery (and I made sure to make the sign for surgery at the abdomen, because I knew that Charlie had had an appendectomy last summer). That he understood, and he wrote out to the doctor that he had an operation on his stomach last June.

I’m loving this. My new son of only 6 days is understanding and communicating better with me in sign language than with this Chinese doctor in his native language.

Deafies: 1, Hearies: 0.

Sherpa took off during the medical appointment and went to get water so we could at least quench our thirst when we got back to the room.

When we got back to the hotel, I felt like a total fool. There was no slot in the door for the room key to be inserted. I had shown Charlie at the hotel in Nanjing how to put the card in the door slot in the direction of the arrow and then wait for the green light, but here there was no slot. Yet I still have this plastic little card that needs to go somewhere, right?

As I’m standing there staring rather stupidly at the door, Charlie grabs the key card out of my hand, holds it up to a sensor on the door handle, and I hear this little “do-do-do-doooo do-doooo” tune that you hear right before the word “Charge!” and a green light flashes.

How did he know that? The boy grew up in an orphanage. He’s never been exposed to hotels and stuff like this before! How did he know that???? And why am I too dumb to have figured it out?

His grin at having figured it out for me just split his face in two.

Raymond came back to our room and we spent the next couple of hours doing paperwork for our consulate appointment on the 4th. Turns out we don’t actually go to that appointment, we stay in the hotel room while Raymond goes and submits the paperwork and the fees, and if all goes well, he’ll call us and let us know we’re free the rest of the day.

Finally, we got to leave for dinner. We were famished, having had only an airplane breakfast and no lunch, so we hit the streets looking for dinner. We passed by a place called Cow Bridge that Jen had heard great things about, so we went in. It was busy and noisy, but the menu looked….ummm….interesting. The prices were good. We found some great looking and great sounding dishes for us. Charlie, however, was another story. He liked the looks of everything on the menu, and the dish he chose was ostrich kidney in green beans. Ostrich kidney? Well, we already know he eats dog, so how bad can it be? Charlie definitely has an adventurous palate. I hope he doesn’t expect to be fed like this at home!

He enjoyed his ostrich kidneys. We enjoyed our dishes, too. I had a chicken curry that was very spicy hot (loved it!) and Jen had a mildly spicy beef dish that was really good, too. So we all left feeling fat and happy. And we go to sleep on soft beds that night!

The internet here is no better than in Nanjing. We were hoping things would be back up by now, but Lily had informed us before we left Nanjing that she had heard a report on the news that it wouldn’t be fixed until the 9th. It’s been taking about 5 minutes to load a single e-mail, and web sites take anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes to load, if they bother to load at all before timing out. But Jen and I decided that we simply had to start up the blogs again before we forgot too much detail of these early days. So we have been writing our entries off-line in Word documents and then copying them into the blog as we can get them to load. Slow and painful, but at least we’re finally starting to get some word to the outside world. Don’t know if anyone’s really paying attention, but at least we’re getting it down.

So ended the first day in GZ. Charlie dealt amazingly well with his first plane flight and is now a seasoned traveler.

Happy New Year, everybody!

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