Maggie Lin Chen

Please see our new blog!

2009-02-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

We have created a new blog for our two girls:

The Adventures of Maggie and Ella

All new posts will be there instead of here.

Finally, photos!

2009-02-04T22:26:00.001-08:00

On Saturday morning, Maggie and I made dragon heads for the dragon parade at the FCC - N. Calif. Between Two New Years party. I gave Maggie a bunch of scrap foam sticker material, and cut little triangles for her. She decided to use them to make eyelashes on the purple dragon! Very creative.

Here are some photos from the party:

Maggie on the way into the Mill Valley Community Center.

Maggie with a Cal-Berkley student in the craft room.

Jiana and Maggie making paper bag panda puppets.

Marin Chinese Cultural Association Lion Dance team.

Maggie in the purple dragon.

Kendra in the red dragon.

And here are some photos from the race on Sunday:

Crossing the bridge at sunrise.

In Golden Gate Park at about mile 6. I was feeling pretty good. Loved the shade and plenty of room on the road.

Along the Great Highway at about mile 11. I'm smiling in the photo because Baba and Maggie were cheering me on, but I was struggling at this point in the race. It was sunny, a little too warm, and much of the 4-5 mile segment along the Great Highway was crowded. (I'm sure if I could have run faster it wouldn't have been so crowded!)

Crossing the finish line.

After the race.

Finally (after realizing that Craig was waiting for us at a different Mel's location!) eating lunch with Uncle Craig.

The picture Maggie colored for Craig's birthday earlier in the week.

Kiefer and Sphinx snuggling on the couch.

Maggie was a dear and actually stayed quiet during quiet time so I could take a nap on Sunday afternoon. I was very thankful!

New measurements for Ella

2009-02-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

We asked for updated height & weight information to make sure we bring appropriately-sized clothing when we travel. The orphanage wouldn't tell our China facilitator how much Ella weighs, but her height is reportedly 80cm (31.5"), which is on the 3rd percentile for Chinese girls. She was also in the 3rd percentile at 16 months of age, and consistency is a good thing (at least she's not decreasing in percentiles). I hope her weight has been consistent; it's a bit concerning that they wouldn't share that information. It's probably safe to say she doesn't weigh more than about 21 or 22 lbs.

sorry, no news yet!

2009-02-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

Since the folks at the CCAA have just returned to work and have a backlog of papers to sign, we don't expect to receive our Travel Authorization until Friday at the earliest, and more likely early next week.

In other news, on Saturday Maggie and I went to FCC - N. California's 14th annual Between Two New Years party, which was lots of fun, and yesterday I ran my first half-marathon. It was unseasonably warm in San Francisco, and the course was pretty crowded, so it wasn't easy. I missed my goal time by 2 minutes, but I was just glad to have finished, because the last mile or two were really tough! I kept having to tell myself "Just keep running. Don't walk. The finish line is just up ahead. Don't walk!" I think I preferred the 32 degree weather in Stockton a few weeks back.

No photos to post - in my hurry to leave for UCD this morning, I forgot to bring my camera and the USB headphone/microphone, so now I am stuck in Davis (we had my "farewell" dinner this evening, so I'm staying at a hotel up here) and can't even do a Chinese lesson or upload the weekend's photos. I feel gross from eating so much at dinner so I don't want to just sit in bed and watch TV, either. Blech! Maybe I'll go play "who has the biggest brain?" on Facebook.

I almost forgot to write about last weekend!

2009-01-25T22:49:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday I did my 2nd 10-mile run in an 8-day time period. Edward ran it pushing Maggie and still finished about a half-hour ahead of me! Maggie took some interesting photos from the stroller:

Baba took a couple of photos of me coming in for the finish.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as the Cal-10, but it was still a confidence-builder going into the half-marathon next weekend.

Edward ran in his 20-year-old Joy Division T-shirt (and now we're worried it will fall apart when we wash it!):

The weather was unseasonably warm, and after the race Maggie played on the beach with Hetti, Lena and TT.

Eventually we headed up to Ghirardelli Square and had lunch at Lori's Diner. Tyler lucked out in only having to push one kid up the hill: poor Peter got stuck with 3!

After lunch, the kids ran around the Square, eventually setting up camp in the doorway of a now-defunct restaurant.

Yesterday was the first Saturday in recent memory where we didn't have anywhere to be or anything scheduled to do. Other than running in the AM and swimming at the YMCA in the afternoon, I don't even remember what we did all day! Oh, except I do remember almost choking on some lettuce at lunch time, and after I was better and returned to the kitchen table, Maggie said "Maybe you should take smaller bites. Then the salad wouldn't get stuck in your throat, but would go all the way down to your stomach." She cracks me up.

This morning, Edward ran a 15K in the East Bay and Maggie and I lounged around in our PJs

before going for a run. It was pretty windy by about 10am, and my legs were tired! It's been a while since I had to push Maggie. We picked up a few pinecones along the way to make pinecone bird feeders later in the day.

After our run, I made the mistake of letting Maggie watch TV while I showered - she had behaved so nicely all morning. But almost on cue, when TV time was over and I asked her to get her shoes and socks on to go to the store, she got whiny and fussy. Edward was home by then, so I ended up going to the store by myself. It turned out to be helpful that Maggie wasn't there, because at Michael's I found a bunch of little crafts and things to keep her occupied on the plane to China, all in the clearance rack for $1 or less. When I got back we ate some lunch and then went to buy birdseed and supplies to make Chinese New Year dragons. Maggie had regained her pre-TV personality, so we made two peanut-buttered pinecone bird feeders.

just like Tex and Indi in one of her Highlights magazines. She was so proud.

Well, it's late and if I want to stay in a good mood I'd better get some sleep.

I'm feeling much better now...

2009-01-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

Every time I think of that phrase I picture the little girl ghost in "The Sixth Sense" who says that to Haley Joel Osment's character right after she throws up.

Anyway, I'm feeling better because a) last night I watched one of my favorite feel-good movies on TV - "That Thing You Do" (it's hard to be in a bad mood when you're singing bubblegum pop music); b) I got caught up on sleep - which makes a HUGE difference in my mood; and c) Maggie reminded me of something very important this morning by singing one of my favorite Sugarland songs:

But it's poor me, why me, oh me
More of the same old, worn out blah, blah story
There's no good explanation for it at all.
Ain't no rhyme or reason, no complicated meaning
Ain't no need to overthink it, let go laughing
When life don't go quite how you planned it
We try so hard to understand it
The irrefutable, indisputable fact is...
...it happens!

Ah, the wisdom of a 4.5-year-old. She may not know what "irrefutable" means, but she gets the gist of the song.

So much for a happy Chinese New Year

2009-01-24T04:50:00.000-08:00

We got word from our China facilitator that "owing to the very busy schedule of meetings of directors at CCAA before the Chinese new year holiday, our TAs (Travel Authorizations) have not been signed off by the head directors. We have to wait until after the Chinese New Year holiday."

Which, in all likelihood, means we won't travel until late February and won't be home until March. I've already had to reschedule about two dozen patients, most of whom were not very happy about being moved. I can't go through the stress of rescheduling them again. Also, I've hired a doctor to fill in for me for the entire month of February, and she already has patients booked, so I can't just tell her not to come in. So now I get to sit around the house for two weeks moping and cursing. Not that I don't have a million things to do, but it's hard to focus when you're mind is on your child whose been waiting in an orphanage halfway around the world for 6 months when she could have been home before Christmas.

I am trying so hard to be calm and to not let things bother me, but I am so upset right now that I can't even sleep. It is 4:30 in the morning. I saw in one of the online forums yesterday that several LOAs were issued this week, all for families who submitted their Letters of Intent (LOI) just a few weeks ago (including one family who just submitted their LOI on January January 7!). I am very angry that the CCAA found time to issue LOAs to these families, when there are at least a dozen families who waited MONTHS for their LOA and now are going to wait 5-6 weeks for TA. I am just fed up with the apparent lack of common sense in the people running things.

But then again, what do I expect from the country who brought us lead paint in children's toys and toxic additives to pet food and infant formula?

Jane, stop this crazy thing!!!

2009-01-17T20:42:00.001-08:00

January 10: FCC Waiting Families seminar in Berkeley, 1-5pm. I had spent a big chunk of time organizing the event, and it went really well. It was great having on-site child care, as Maggie got to play with Billy, a 7-year-old recently adopted by our agency's China facilitator (with whom we carpooled to the seminar), and several other kids. After the seminar ended, Maggie came into the meeting room and asked "Where's all the food??"

January 11: The "Cal 10" race in Stockton - my first 10-mile run. It was 32*F!!

Maggie and Edward braved the cold and fog to cheer me on.

The race itself was great. I'm no speed demon (think tortoise rather than hare!), but I had a good time and felt fabulous at the finish.

It was, however, a little difficult to sit through a 4 hour FCC Board meeting right afterwards in Emeryville, when all I wanted to do was sleep!

January 12-13: My monthly stint at UC Davis, and I lived up to my reputation as an Emergency Magnet. Among the patients in the Dental Operatory on Tuesday were a St. Bernard shot in the face with a .45, a hit-by-car stray cat with a proptosed eye and a subluxated jaw (I'll spare you the photos of those 2), and a hog-nosed snake named "Hawg" (who is too cute not to share) who needed skull x-rays:

January 14 - we had a meeting with our China facilitator, who gave us tentative travel dates! We are hoping to leave for Shanghai on or around February 11-12, meet Ella on February 16, and return home on the 26th. We still have to wait for Travel Authorization before we can book our flights, though.

It was a little bit of a rough week, as a still-grieving client posted signs all over town about the death of her dog this time last year, which she blames on me. (The dog had a major surgery for a jaw tumor, had post-op complications, which I thought - and still think - were treatable, but she gave up and had him euthanized by a different doctor. She blames me for doing the surgery in the first place. Despite the fact that she practically begged me to do the surgery as soon as possible, and both my nurses and myself arranged to come in on our day off to do the surgery. So much for trying to help someone.)

I also had to let one of my assistants know that we will be changing our work schedule upon my return from China. Our new schedule (Monday-Wednesday-Friday) interferes with her other job, so it remains to be seen what will happen. We had a light surgery day, but spent the afternoon calling clients who are already booked for Tuesdays and Thursdays in March & April to reschedule their appointments.

Last night was date night, as Maggie was at her monthly preschool PJ party. Thai food & a Lemon Drop followed by dessert at The Cheesecake Factory...blissful. Today we had our local FCC playgroup, for which we had absolutely gorgeous weather,

followed by a "Moms' day" at Mani & Nanny, a new place in Pacific Heights where you get your nails done while your kids play, supervised, in a separate room. It was a fun day but I am exhausted! And I have another 10-mile race tomorrow morning! Edward's shin is feeling better, and he ran 8 miles in the city yesterday, so he is going to push Maggie in the 10-mile run tomorrow too. And even pushing 50 lbs, he'll still beat me by a half hour!!

It's been an eventful year thus far...

2009-01-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

On Friday, January 2, Maggie had her first trip to the ER! She helped me make penne with broccoli, cherry tomatoes and provolone for dinner (saying with a hint of foreshadowing, "Baba doesn't let me use knives" as she cut up the broccoli), then helped me with the dishes afterwards. She said "I'll let you wash the knives, Mommy." and not 3 minutes later, as I turned around to dry my hands after finishing rinsing them, said "Mommy!" and showed me her right index finger, with a pretty deep laceration. Those of you who know me know that I do not panic easily, and tend to brush off minor injuries (remember when Maggie got her first bloody lip?). Well, I could tell this one might need stitches, so off we went to the ER, arriving just before 7pm.

Here she is in the car on the way:

Here's the knife she decided to give a feel - not the tiny paring knife she'd used on the broccoli, but this huge bread knife!

Crazy girl! Luckily we live only 5 minutes from Kaiser. However, the ER was hopping on this Friday night. A guy with what looked like a broken arm, a girl bleeding pretty badly from her right eye, and a man with a head injury were some of the folks we saw. After about an hour waiting, in walked a man who looked to be in his early 30s, with the same injury (from the same brand knife, even!!). There was a little 17-month-old girl there with a dislocated elbow, and she and Maggie entertained each other for a while. One of Edward's patients was also there, so we talked with her and the other Wusthof victim quite a bit. The kids did remarkably well. At about the 2 hour mark, having held his tongue from the "I told you so" I knew he was thinking, Edward went home. Finally, after a 3 hour wait, we saw the doctor. Maggie cried before he could even take off the gauze she had wrapped around her finger; just the anticipation was enough to start the tears. (It started bleeding again, of course, with her elevated blood pressure from her fear, plus she's squeezing the gauze super tight around the finger to prevent the doctor from looking at it. I had to pry her little left hand off of her right hand to let the doctor have a peek.) The verdict: may need sutures. But if the bleeding would stop again, may just be able to get by with tissue glue. The nurse put a glob of lidocaine jelly on it,

we sat for 20 minutes, and when the doctor returned, he pronounced it fit for glue. So, after numbing, scrubbing, air drying, gluing and bandaging, we were able to leave, and we got home a little after 10:30pm. When Baba came to pick us up, he brought her Cloud Kimochi, which made her smile:

So that was Day 2 of the New Year!

Yesterday, I received photos of the fire at my Dad's house in Alabama. It happened just before Christmas, and they'd called the day it happened, but seeing the photos was really shocking. It was so much worse than I'd imagined. Here's one example:

I am in awe of how well he and my step-mom are doing. Luckily all of the family (including the 3 dogs) is safe. The helpfulness of their State Farm agent and their wonderful neighbors has gone a long way, I think. Fingers crossed that the reconstruction goes well. I hope the professionals in northern Alabama are more competent than those we've run across here (between the contractor who remodeled our kitchen in the condo, the landscape architect who did our yard here, and the guys who just repaired our heating system, we don't have a lot of confidence in the home improvement field!). I wish I could go out there to help; I am cramming extra patients in left and right to try to accommodate as many pets as possible before we leave for China next month, and there's just no way for me to get away.

Today, Day 4 of the New Year, was eventful but in a good way: Maggie ran her first race!! I did the DSE Lake Merced 4.5-mile run, after which there was a 1-mile Kids' Run. Maggie finished! She took a few little walk breaks, but never complained about being too tired, etc., and she was so proud when she was done.

Her favorite part was the "prize", a box of Sno-Caps!

(Unfortunately, allowing her to eat an entire box of chocolate was not such a good idea; she was incredibly hyper the rest of the day! No nap, and her "quiet time" was anything but quiet. Edward and I are more exhausted than she is!)

Finally, she's fast asleep, which is where I'm headed now.

Welcome, 2009!!

2009-01-01T18:51:00.001-08:00

We started the day with a run across the Golden Gate Bridge with DSE.

It was a chilly and foggy morning, and Edward's right leg is still bothering him so he only ran about 2 miles, but it was a really nice run of almost 4.5 miles for me and Maggie.

I got to wear my new shoes, a present from Edward (via Fleet Feet gift card):

The run was especially fun because we exchanged greetings with just about everyone we passed (going opposite directions), saying "Happy New Year!" or "Good morning!", both DSE runners and random pedestrians out for a walk across the bridge on New Year's morning. When we finished, we met up with Baba again and took a family photo

before joining up with the other DSE members for celebration and snacks.

In addition to some fabulous homemade cookies, Maggie was given a noisemaker, which made her day.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We said adieu to our pillow-top queen size mattress & boxspring (I love Freecycle!), bringing us one step closer to having Ella's room ready. We also took down the Christmas decorations and tree, had a delicious lunch of grilled vegetables with rosemary mayonnaise on sourdough, and spent time playing with Maggie. Her favorite activity of the day was "driving" around her twin babies, Ella and Elizabeth, in her improvised car. She also practiced writing (she can write Maggie, Baba, and Mommy without help, and Ella, dog, and cat with a reminder here and there) and, prompted by a scratch from Kiefer on her thumb, enjoyed playing doctor and pretending to amputate my fingers. I don't know if it's simply because I've had more time with her recently, but over the past 3-4 days she has been really fun to be around. I hope that trend continues throughout 2009!

Goodbye 2008!!

2008-12-31T21:33:00.001-08:00

The last couple of days have been great. I haven't worked since December 23rd, and it was a wonderful break. Baba's been working, but Maggie and I have had lots of fun together. We ate the gingerbread house,

had some lovely weather to play at the park,

including a playdate with Kyra:

got silly together playing in her bedroom

and had a blast swimming at the YMCA.

On Sunday December 28, I had a personal best for a 5K

prompting Maggie to say "You're a good runner, Mommy. Even though you're slow." :-)

We've also gotten our heat fixed (no more blown circuits as I work on 2 computers at once and run the space heater!). Maggie wanted to give the repair men a present, which she wrapped herself:

We tried to make Rice Krispy treats, which Maggie thought were tasty

but Baba, having had really good Rice Krispy treats before, knew better! This is why they recommend using fresh marshmallows:

The thing was hard as a brick and about as tasteless. We'll buy some new marshmallows (these were left over from camping last summer) and try again tomorrow.

Like previous years, we took a silly-face photo before Maggie went to bed tonight:

Other than that silliness, it will be a quiet evening for us tonight. (Gotta get up and run tomorrow AM!) Happy New Year to everyone!

Letter of Acceptance (LOA) is here!!!

2008-12-29T11:54:00.001-08:00

I just received word from our China facilitator that our "Letter Seeking Confirmation from the Adopters" (aka Letter of Acceptance or LOA) is here!! We will sign it today and FedEx it back to China. Then we wait for Travel Approval (3-4 weeks), and about 2 weeks after that we will go to China!!

I wrote this spontaneously on the China Adopt Talk Forum two minutes ago, where waiting parents can vent to one another and share good news:

Yipee, yipee, hooray! It's finally here, our LOA!
We've waited so long and cried many tears, but now, at last, at last it's here!
When our baby turned 2 on December 8, we felt we didn't have much to celebrate.
But today, Monday, December 29, the sun has finally decided to shine.
Soon we will travel halfway around the world, to bring home our beautiful, littlest girl.
We hope all of the others who still patiently wait will soon have their own reasons to celebrate.
And send our best wishes for the New Year to all of the friends who have shared with us here.

Maggie quote of the month (December 2008)

2008-12-28T18:02:00.001-08:00

"You're a good runner, Mommy. Even though you're slow."

(Another quote of note:
Maggie - "I'm still hungry."
Mommy - "Sorry, the kitchen's closed."
Maggie - "Then why are the lights still on?")

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-26T23:02:00.001-08:00

Greetings from our home to yours.

We hope the holidays have been as stress-free as possible for our friends and family. The fire at Nana PoPo and Papa GongGong's house in Alabama last weekend has added a little bit of stress to this Christmas, but they are good at making lemonade out of lemons, and with unexpectedly helpful insurance personnel and kind and caring neighbors, the situation has not been as dire as one would expect. So, other than that and a few meltdowns on Maggie's part, it has really been a pretty relaxing holiday season thus far.

We are a little sad not to have Ella with us, but I keep reminding myself that she will be with her family for all her Christmases henceforth.

Some of my favorite moments from the past few days:

Visiting the SF Zoo, seeing reindeer and ice skating with Hetti and Lena:

Maggie playing "pirate" at preschool and falling asleep with her eye patch on:

Making and decorating cookies for Santa (Maggie in her Hello Kitty scrubs again!):

Coming down the stairs on Christmas morning:

The look on her face when she saw her pink castle alarm clock from Santa:

Reading her new books:

and fun family time:

(including making "reindeer antlers" in the background of Maggie's self-timed photos at dinner!)

We wish a safe journey to those families departing tomorrow to be united with their new children in China, and hope to be following soon in their footsteps.

looks like it'll be February, folks

2008-12-15T21:07:00.001-08:00

Overall it's good news: I received an e-mail from our agency's China facilitator stating "Just want to you let you know that your application has been approved by CCAA and was forwarded to the matching office on Friday 12-12". Which means our LOA (letter of acceptance, also known as "letter seeking confirmation from the adopters") should be here within the next couple of weeks. Woo hoo!!

However, doing the math, it takes 3-4 weeks to receive travel authorization (TA) after receiving the LOA. Which means we can expect our TA around the 3rd week of January. From then, it will be 2-3 weeks until we actually leave for China. So, unless we get LOA this week and TA exactly 3 weeks later, there is really no way for us to travel in January. Plus the last week of January is Chinese New Year, and things are pretty much shut down. We could, however, do our "pre-trip" that week (time on our own before the adoption, to get used to the time change and see the sights of Shanghai!). Wouldn't that be fun, being in Shanghai for Chinese New Year?

If I had to guess, I'd say it's more likely that February 9 is the day we will meet Ella. But that's just a guess! If we get our LOA this week it could be February 2, in which case we'd pre-trip during CNY.

Even though we'd originally been hoping for December and now we're looking at February, I'm actually not disappointed. I'm happy that we are officially approved, and I'm excited that we finally have a somewhat predictable time frame with which to work. (Plus it means I can accommodate the dozen or so patients waiting for surgical appointments with me, since I will still be here in January!)

A December to Remember

2008-12-10T09:12:00.001-08:00

Friday, December 5: I did a root canal on a 210lb. Irish wolfhound. I hadn't finished my records, so after picking Maggie up from Chinese school, we went back to the hospital. She was brave and had several photos taken with my wonderfully sweet patient.

Sunday, December 7: The California International Marathon. We spent Saturday night in Folsom, then woke at 5 to drive Edward to the start by 6. Maggie and I then drove to old Fair Oaks, where we had breakfast at a cute little cafe and met several roosters (who were already crowing at 6:30am even though it was still dark!).

In the above photo, the rooster is actually jumping up to attack Maggie. I didn't realize it when I was shooting, because when I lined up the shot he was still on the curb. The shutter went off a split second before Maggie even realized the rooster had jumped on her. She promptly whined and ran over to me!

But that didn't stop us from having a great morning (we just kept our distance from the roosters from then on!). Maggie enjoyed her hot cocoa

and waited to cheer on Baba with signs and cowbells.

He didn't see us in old Fair Oaks (Mile 10), so we drove to Loehman's Plaza (Mile 20) and waited there as well. This time we saw Peter as well as Baba, who also saw us. Maggie had to go potty, so we endured a long line, which delayed us in getting to the finish, so we didn't see Baba cross the line, which made me really sad. But we found him moments later, had a joyous reunion, and celebrated his finish AND the fact that he qualified for the Boston Marathon.

Hooray! Hopefully Ella will adjust well enough for all of us to go to Boston, particularly since we have family and friends there.

Speaking of Ella, while Baba was running his marathon, Ella was about to wake up to her 2nd birthday. We were quite sad not to have been with her, as back in August there was still some hope that we'd actually meet her on her birthday, just as we had with Maggie. But we sent her a cake, with a note and camera attached, from Red Thread China. Imagine my surprise when I found 7 photos of Ella's birthday celebration in my e-mail today!! Ann from Red Thread went above and beyond to send them and we are so thankful.

This is my favorite pic:

Isn't she precious??

Last day of a lovely little break...

2008-11-30T15:03:00.002-08:00

I can't remember the last time we had several days' break and just stayed home: no travel, no guests, no plans. It is so nice to be able to sleep in every day, get caught up on little projects around the house, and just hang out. (Although my knees are getting sore from crawling around on all fours, pretending to be Maggie's pet horse!)

On Wednesday we finally mailed Ella's care package with a translated letter inside, as well as the clothes, blanket, stuffed bear and photo book we'd packed up eons ago.

We put printed some Chinese characters and put them inside the photo book so the caregivers can tell her who everyone is. For example, this page says WaiPo, WaiGong (maternal grandparents) and JiuFu (uncle; specifically, mother's older brother):

After going to the post office and the YMCA, we spent the afternoon making apricot-glazed sweet potatoes, whole-berry cranberry sauce, and "mile-high caramel apple pie" in preparation for the following day's mini-feast. It was our first attempt at a homemade pie; I have many fond memories of making pies with my mom, and I was feeling ambitious, so we decided to try it. I even bought a can of Crisco just for the occasion (eek!). Maggie had a great time helping to make the oat-pastry crust, though she decided it doesn't taste very good uncooked! (I used to love uncooked pie crust - weird, I know. But at least it has no raw eggs in it!)

Thanksgiving itself was very low key, with just the three of us and Uncle Craig. It was quite a relaxing day, for a change (especially compared with last year at this time, when we were visiting YeYe & NaiNai, and I flew from Chicago to Providence, attended 2 high school reunions, then flew back to Chicago and back home the next day!).

On Friday we braved the crowds and ventured out to the Academy of Sciences with Hetti and Lena. They loved touching sea stars and sea urchins at the tidepool exhibit

and playing in the very uncrowded preschoolers-area.

Even as we were ready to leave, the girls had boundless energy, playing tag out front while we waited for the Babas to pick us up.

Afterwards we went to the "Welcome Santa" parade in San Rafael and got take out from Del Sol (tasty Puerto Rican food), where Lena and Maggie got silly with our order numbers.

We finished our meal with pie (store-bought pumpkin and the afore-mentioned apple, which turned out to be quite yummy) before calling it a night. I think all the girls probably slept like the dead that night!

Yesterday we went to the YMCA, played trains, played more horse, then spent some time sorting through old books and things. We're giving some to the Yolo County SPCA (I'm on my way up to UCD tomorrow), found homes for others on Freecycle, and will be sending a bunch of textbooks to China through Bridge To Asia. Maggie also picked which of her books she wanted in her new bedroom and which ones she'd like Ella to have.

Finally, today we put up the princess decorations in her bedroom.

We kept her home from a birthday party this afternoon because she's had a cold all week and I figured she needed to rest before going back to school tomorrow, but she hasn't napped. She's been in her room for almost 2 hours now, not sleeping. I don't know where the girl gets her energy. (And *%#@&* the FDA for disallowing use of cold medicines for kids!!)

Maggie quote of the month - November 2008

2008-11-25T19:45:00.002-08:00

At dinner last night, out of the blue:

"Mommy, I've never had prosciutto before."

(I asked where she had even heard of prosciutto, and she said "Izzy had it". Only in Marin do 4-year-olds get prosciutto in their lunch boxes! Heaven help us - how are we going to survive raising 2 girls here??)

New Ella photos!

2008-11-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

These were taken on November 14 by a family visiting the Hefei CWI during their adoption trip (which you can read about here). It was so kind of them to send these glimpses of our daughter. I haven't decided whether seeing new photos makes the wait easier or harder!

There are more on the flickr site (click on any photo to get there), but I will leave you with my favorite:

Whew! What a week!

2008-11-22T21:17:00.001-08:00

It's Saturday night, and I should be doing something other than blogging. But we've had a busy week, and this is the equivalent of relaxing in front of the TV for me. ;-)

Last weekend was our local playgroup, which was sparsely attended despite the amazing 80 degree weather.

Maggie has been asking for a playdate with Kyra ever since, though! It's been a long time since they've seen each other.

That same night (last Saturday) was the Fall Festival for Redeemer Preschool, and it was a lot of fun. The kids watched a music/puppet show about being kind to the earth (I swear I found myself singing "Recycle it, recycle it" for days afterwards!),

got their faces painted

and their hair braided,

played with their dinosaur gliders,

and of course, ate a lot!

It was a special treat to see Lucy twice in one day! She and Maggie had a good time together.

Last night was the monthly Pajama Party at Redeemer, aka "Date Night" for Mommy & Baba! Maggie got to play with her friends from school and watch Kung Fu Panda, and Edward and I saw the new James Bond film and ate lots of Kettle Korn. The whole evening cost about $80 but it was SO worth it.

Today Edward and Maggie braved the dense fog at the Davis Turkey Trot, and in the 5K Baby Jogger Run/Walk they won the Masters division and finished 3rd overall! Woo hoo! Edward generously gave up his stylin' psychedelic T-shirt so Maggie could have a tiny one:

After returning to San Rafael, they saw Madagascar 2 (and ate MORE Kettle Korn!).

I was in the city all day, doing surgery on two cancer patients. I bought sandwiches, chips and cookies for the staff (to thank them for working on a Saturday) and I think I ate about 10 Oreos. Eeek! (Boy were they tasty, though! Those 100-calorie packs just don't compare!) I'd better do that 4-mile run with DSE tomorrow morning!

Wasn't I just saying she's 4 going on 14?

2008-11-22T21:06:00.002-08:00

smush face snuggle cats

2008-11-22T21:05:00.002-08:00

wretched news

2008-11-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

After seeing that other families from our agency have received LOA within a month of PA, I e-mailed our agency's China coordinator and asked why it is so inconsistent. Also, because I am already booked through the end of December for patients at my practice and didn't want to start booking into January if there was a chance we'd have to reschedule everybody, I asked her what her best estimate is for us. Here is her reply:

"I am sorry that your LOA has not been sent out yet. My estimated time of receiving your LOA is sometime in the middle or end of December. The earliest possible travel time for you will be mid to late January."

"Your dossier is in the review room right now and once your application has been approved by the review room, it will be forwarded to the matching office. The matching office is the one to send out the LOA. Families usually receive the Notice of Coming to China for adoption within a month after LOA is received."

I am devastated by this news.

WHY do they make these babies wait months and months and months for their families to come and get them???????? It makes no sense. I want to go to the Consulate in San Francisco and yell "WHAT IS THE PROBLEM???? LET US GO GET OUR BABY!!!!!"

AAAAARGH!!!!

November 9, 2008

2008-11-09T21:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday, Sofia! Maggie really wished she could spend today with you. We hope you are adapting to life in Singapore. We miss you!

Maggie had a little celebration of her own today, as it is her "half birthday" - she is 4 years and 6 months old. We decided to observe this particular event for a couple of reasons: 1) Maggie just moved into her new bedroom, in preparation for becoming a big sister.

2) She neeeds to stop sucking her finger when she sleeps, which means she has to say bye-bye to Sleep Dog. (She's had him since the day we met her - I think it is as hard for me to put him away as it is for Maggie!)

Basically, we hope that by celebrating turning 4-and-a-half, Maggie will perceive that she is a big girl now and needs to begin acting accordingly. She used to be developmentally ahead of her peers, but now she seems to be behind. Academically she is doing ok: she can write almost all of her letters (although G, J, K, N, S and Z give her a little trouble) and do simple addition and subtraction. Her reading has not progressed much beyond where she was last winter, with sight-recognition of words like cat and moon, but she can pick out words based on their initial letter sounds, so I think she's not too far off there. But socially she seems quite a bit delayed: she still acts like a 2- or 3-year-old. Most days she vacillates between bouncing-off-the-wall hyper and uncooperative, pitch-a-fit-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, with a 4-going-on-14 attitude. If I get 20 minutes a day of the calm, sweet girl I love so much, I feel fortunate. (And if she's already somewhat insufferable with no competition, I dread to think what she will be like when Ella arrives.)

But enough of the bad stuff! Today was actually not too terrible, although she was on the hyper side. Edward was up in Clarksburg doing a 20-mile run (in less than 2 and a half hours!! I am in awe...). After brief "Sunday morning snuggles" and breakfast in our PJs, Maggie and I went to The Container Store and Bed, Bath & Beyond, then spent the afternoon switching all of the stuff between her old closet and her new closet (which used to be the guest room closet, where I had been stashing all of her old clothes in anticipation of a little sister). It felt good to get a little more organized.

Then we baked a cake and frosted it pink.

She wanted to dress up for dinner,

after which she got to make a wish

and, finally, dig in to that pretty pink cake!

(I'll be sure to show that photo to her high school sweetheart! Payback for those tantrums!)

We all watched AFV together, then she bid a formal farewell to Sleep Dog and went to bed without him (surprisingly with no tears, but certainly not without complaint!).

We'll see how the evening progresses and whether she is able to self-soothe without him.

Tomorrow is Day 89 of our wait for our LOA (Letter of Approval, also known as Letter Seeking Confirmation from the Adopters). Three families with our agency have been waiting over 110 days, despite the average of about 79 days. We are hoping that all five families (those three, ourselves, plus one other family who submitted paperwork around the same time we did) get LOAs this week. This is our last possible hope to have Ella by Christmas, so cross your fingers for us.

One of Ella's orphanage-mates is meeting his forever family this week (he is probably with them right now, in fact, as it is currently 1pm on Monday in Hefei) and they will hopefully send new photos of Ella to us at the end of the week. (Visit their blog.)

November 4, 2008

2008-11-04T20:02:00.001-08:00

A historic day. (And no, it's not "An historic day", as Americans actually pronounce their H's and therefore it is "A historic day" not "An 'istoric day"!)

As I heard someone interviewed on NPR say earlier today, "People died for this to be able to happen." I also heard of the oldest voting citizen in the U.S., a 110-year-old woman, who has voted in every election since women were granted the right to vote in 1920. Can you imagine seeing what this woman has seen in her lifetime??

Although I don't agree with all of his policies, I feel that Barack Obama has the potential to heal a lot of rifts: both within the country, and among nations who see us as the world's biggest bully. And for that I am excited.

On the home front:

Maggie sang some songs for Meme on the phone on Sunday, including most of "Ghost" by the Indigo Girls (in the photo above she is singing "Ghost" in the car on the way home from the city on Halloween).

She also sang the "Seven Days in a Week" song. When Meme asked what her favorite day of the week was, Maggie didn't answer right away and I said "Probably Fridays, because that's when she goes to Chinese school." Then Maggie interjected, "No, I like Saturdays because of Saturday Snuggle Time!". It was so sweet.

She asked last night if she could snuggle in bed with us in the morning, and I said "No, sweetie, I have to leave early because I have to vote before I go up to UC Davis." She said "Are you going to vote for Barack Obama, or John McCain? What do you think of Sarah Palin?" I was shocked at how much kids actually pay attention to the TV and the radio.

Apparently today the kids got to vote in her preschool. When she came home she said she voted for John McCain. I said "That's fine, honey, you are allowed to have your own opinions." (Heaven knows if you try to make this kid do something, she's likely to do the exact opposite!!)

Actually her behavior has improved greatly over the past couple of weeks. Since reading "The Connected Child" I have been much more sympathetic to her when she's fussing about something, and I calmly ask her what she needs. This tells her that I recognize that she's fussing for a reason, but also lets her know that she should express her needs with words rather than whining, crying or having a fit. Tonight when she started to fuss about her lotion, she said "I need a minute alone." I said "What's that all about?" and she said "You said when I want to hit or kick that I should ask to be by myself, so I'm asking!". WOW! So I left her room and told her I'd be right nearby so that, when she was ready to finish with the lotion, I would come back in. Not three minutes later she said "Mommy, I'm ready" and we finished up the bedtime routine without incident. I told her what a great job she'd done calming herself down and how proud I was of her for using her words.

She's growing up! I hope she doesn't regress too much when Ella arrives.

Look at how big she is now

compared with

taken on April 2, 2006, when Maggie was one month and 7 days shy of 2 years old. Today, Ella is one month and 4 days shy of 2 years old.

We finally started painting the guest room in preparation for Maggie's move and Ella's arrival.

Three walls are pink and one wall is lavender. I think it will be really cute when it's finished.

Maggie and Mommy with all the Halloween candy

2008-11-03T21:10:00.001-08:00

Maggie's Halloween haul. She got to pick a few pieces (as many as would fit in that little plastic treat bag in the foreground) and the rest will go elsewhere (some to Mommy & Baba, some to Ella's orphanage). Interestingly, she picked almost all lollipops and gummy candies and no chocolate (leaving more chocolate for me to eat - drat!)!

Halloween 2008

2008-11-03T21:08:00.001-08:00

About to go trick-or-treating.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-30T21:33:00.002-07:00

This is Maggie's third Halloween; last year and this year I gave her a choice between a scary face and a happy face. She has chosen the happy face both times!

Halloween is one of those times where it's fun to look back at old photos. Here's Maggie last year:

(Waah - I miss her long hair!!)

It's funny, when I look back at older photos, I always think "She was so cute (or so much fun, or so sweet, etc.) at that age!" But I faintly remember that (despite the photo above) she wasn't that pleasant to be around the night we carved the pumpkins last year. It's a good thing we mostly take photos of good times; it makes it easier to forget the not-so-good times! I can picture myself, a year from now, looking back on these pre-Ella days as calm and free of chaos, totally forgetting Maggie's non-stop manic energy/tiny-teenager attitude/argumentative nature, and the level of frustration both Edward and I experience on a near-daily basis. Some moments I am totally antsy to hear from BAAS about our LOA, and other moments I think to myself, "Holy cow - what are we doing?? Are we ready for this?? Am I insane to be voluntarily adding to the chaos in my life?? How are we going to do this?? EEEK!!"

For now I am content to just let things be as they are, trying to enjoy each moment as it presents itself, and not wishing life was anything but what it is right now.

MCF Halloween Party 2008 - eleven happy Halloween girls

2008-10-28T20:33:00.002-07:00

Our third annual MarinChinaFamilies Halloween Party was Sunday, and we had a great time. All told there were a dozen girls in attendance, but baby Audrey left before we got to the group photo (click on any photo to go to our flickr page to see pictures of this precious pumpkin!). The girls are all enjoying a treat from the pinata, so it was relatively easy to get them to sit still for photos!

I feel so fortunate to live in an area with such a fantastic group of families, and so many peers for Maggie. There are at least a half dozen girls in her age range whom we see regularly. (It will be a little harder for Ella - her peer group will be much smaller, because China is now doing many more in-country adoptions, resulting in many fewer babies coming to the US. Hopefully having a big sister will help her when the tough questions come up.)

We are expecting rain on Halloween itself, but with the high density of houses in our neighborhood, we should still be able to get a fair amount of treats without staying out for too long!

Princess Maggie

2008-10-28T20:17:00.002-07:00

Maggie's beautiful Halloween costume (Thanks, Meme!!). The princess with three names (Sleeping Beauty, Aurora, and Briar Rose) befits our Margaret, Maggie, Chen Chen, don't you think? (Besides, it's pink! How can you go wrong?)

Ava and Maggie

2008-10-28T20:01:00.002-07:00

Ava is a darling 20-month-old from Jiangxi Province; she and her parents live just a few minutes away. (They are celebrating their one-year anniversary as a family next week! Congratulations!!) We see them regularly at playgroups. Since Baby Skye moved away, Maggie has been getting her "little sister" fix with Ava, trying to feed her at every opportunity. This past weekend we had some gorgeous weather, so we met up with Ava for a playdate at Millenium Park in San Anselmo. Maggie got to push Ava on the tire swing and Ava's dad helped Maggie climb the rock wall. Ava is just 2 months younger than Ella, so we're hoping they will be playmates once Ella comes home (which is looking more like January, since we didn't get our LOA with this most recent batch....)

I actually LIKE Mondays...

2008-10-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

...now that I've changed my work schedule. Doing only exams and no surgeries on Mondays makes for a less strenuous day, and I'm usually home before 5:30pm. Today after I got home, Maggie and I read 2 Curious George stories and played "horsey" while Baba made dinner.

After dinner, we did some "gymnastics" (actually just a little yoga and stretching). She pretended to be Coach Isaac, who brings his Gymnastics Bus to her preschool on Thursdays. She is so much fun to be around when she has one-on-one attention. She was also unbelievably easy to get ready for bed; no fussing at all. For the day, she earned 6 tokens (30 cards!) and got all 5 stars on her "behavior goals" calendar*.

I'm definitely seeing a pattern: the times she acts up the most are the times when I/we aren't paying enough attention to her. On the flight to Jacksonville (the four tantrum day!) I was working on committee stuff and reading, and Edward was reading also. We hadn't brought the DVD player, and coloring just wasn't enough to keep her occupied, so she just went crazy.

I also think that she acts up when she is about to have a growth spurt. In the past couple of weeks she's gained 2 lbs and seems to have grown at least an inch: all the 3T pants I just got her are looking a bit short!

Of course, all of this makes me worry that her behavior will go down the toilet once Ella arrives. The lack of attention could mean endless tantrums. Or, maybe she'll step up and relish the role of the big sister. (Well, I can dream, can't I?)

* This is a "family activities" organizer/calendar, and instead of writing the names of family members across the top, we've written 5 desired behaviors: PATIENCE, NO TANTRUMS, NO AGGRESSION, DOING AS ASKED, and BEING RESPECTFUL. Each day she gets to place a sparkly star sticker in each of the columns on which she has done well. If she gets all 5 stars in a day, she gets to punch a fun pattern out on the side of the calendar with a fancy scrapbook puncher.

(Yes, I'm using just about every "gimmick" I can find to use positive reinforcement for desired behaviors. Unfortunately, there are still moments of yelling, but I think that, overall, there is much less yelling than before we implemented all of these techniques.)

October 17-19, 2008 - A weekend of fun

2008-10-20T20:34:00.001-07:00

Edward and I got a special treat on Friday, when Maggie attended a Pajama Party at her preschool. We went to dinner at Sol Food and then saw Eagle Eye (which was entertaining, if not highly plausible). Maggie was awake when we picked her up at 10:30pm, but fell fast asleep within a moment or two of buckling into her car seat.

On Saturday, Maggie, Hetti and Lena got a special treat of their own, as we went to see Disney On Ice at Oracle Arena in Oakland. First we went to the family festival at the Katherine Delmar Burke school (where both Judy and myself had a bit of "campus envy" - gosh, that place is gorgeous!). The girls tried the rock wall (it was Maggie's first time, she was quite nervous, even after watching Hetti the "old pro" go up almost to the top!) but we managed to avoid the $5 pony rides.

Maggie learned a valuable lesson when she chose to use her tickets for the "ring the lollipop" game instead of a pony ride. I warned her in advance that she might not win a lollipop. Predictably, she didn't win a lollipop, and since bubble gum was the consolation prize, she couldn't have that, either. It could have turned into a tantrum, but I was really proud of her for handling the whole thing with aplomb. Not even the slightest whine. :-)

The weather was spectacular and the girls had a good time. Judy saved the day with a PBJ when they were out of cheese pizza and there were no other vegetarian food options. Then it was off to Disney On Ice, where the girls were enraptured by vignettes of Nemo, Toy Story, It's A Small World, Pinocchio, Mulan, and nearly all of the princesses.

They also got their first taste of cotton candy!!

The bag came with a plastic crown, which the girls all shared very nicely.

On Sunday, Edward left super early for a half-marathon in San Ramon, and Maggie crawled into bed with me. We slept in until 8:30 - it was heaven! (I am cherishing every moment of sleep these days, as I know once Ella gets here those uninterrupted nights will be few and far between!)

Sweater weather!!

2008-10-12T16:52:00.002-07:00

It finally feels like autumn. We were just at the swimming pool 4 days ago, likely for the last time this season, because today we turned our heat on for the first time (and I'm wearing my favorite fall "ensemble", jeans and a turtleneck sweater!). Unfortunately, it's also the first day I've had serious allergy symptoms - and it will only get worse as I am headed up to UC Davis tomorrow.

No word from the CCAA yet, and with each day that passes without our LOA, the likelihood of travel in December diminishes. (Although during breakfast the other day I found myself saying "I can't believe I am voluntarily increasing the level of chaos in my home!")

Since my last post: we traveled to Jacksonville, FL on business. After a horrendous couple of flights out there, the rest of the trip was actually fairly enjoyable.

Maggie got to go to the Zoo, we did a 2 mile fun run, and ate at the Cheesecake Factory with my favorite colleague.

We had just barely unpacked when it was time to pack up for a trip to Lake Tahoe, where Maggie played on the beach while I attended my first forensic dentistry seminar.

It was a little chilly, so she and Baba returned to the hotel and watched Wall*E.

The next day we'd been hoping to go hiking, but the weather didn't cooperate. It rained in Truckee, but at higher altitudes the first snowfall of the season dusted the mountain tops (visible across the lake).

On the way down to Sacramento, we stopped at a couple of places in Apple Hill to pick apples. It was definitely not the experience we'd hoped for (I sure wish someone from New England would set up a farm out here!) but Maggie enjoyed picking a few Granny Smiths.

We spent the night in Sacramento for the Cowtown Marathon the next morning (Baba ran the 1/2 marathon, and Maggie and I did the 5K).

It was quite a sad and eventful week at work for me, with two cancer diagnoses, three emergencies (dog kicked in the face by a horse, a dog who chewed through her metal crate in a panic, and a dog with a jaw fracture secondary to severe periodontal disease), and one of my favorite long-term patients was put to sleep due to advanced kidney cancer.

Maggie went to a pumpkin patch with her preschool (photos from a mom who attended are visible here)

and yesterday we said goodbye to our good friends, David, Chiara and Sofia, who are moving to Singapore in a couple of weeks.

This morning we ran a 10K (my first in under an hour - yipee!!) and attended Mandarin lessons...which brings me to another lament:

Maggie has had babysitters (other than grandparents and the parents of a close friend, Maggie has never had a babysitter before) for two hours at a time on three different occasions in the past week as Edward and I are attending Mandarin classes nearby. The first night, we got Maggie fed and ready for bed and instructed the sitter (an older Cantonese-speaking Chinese woman whose sister attends Mandarin with us) to put her in bed at 8:00. We got home at 8:50, and Maggie was in the hallway upstairs, all the lights on, yelling and running around like a banshee. On Sunday afternoons, the middle-school-aged daughter of one of the ladies Maggie spends time with at the YMCA while I am working out has come over. Last Sunday we came home to find them watching TV, Maggie having raided a huge bag of Craisins (of which she is normally only allowed to have a small handful). Today, I expressly stated "No TV, no sweets" and made a list of appropriate activities. They were playing nicely when we got home but Maggie was chewing GUM, having convinced the babysitter that she was allowed. She also talked the babysitter into putting new batteries in one of her noisy toys (for which we'd been intentionally "forgetting" to change the batteries) AND somehow managed to persuade her that the cats needed LUNCH. What do you do when your kid outsmarts the babysitter?? I don't want to hire a prison guard from San Quentin to watch her, but criminy, we need *someone* with a backbone!!

September 10, 2008 - Maggie's first illustrated short story

2008-09-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

new Ella photos!

2008-09-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

The amazing "extended family" that comes with adoption: a dad from the Hefei Yahoo! Group announced that he was going to be in Hefei with A Child's Right and asked if anyone wanted photos of their waiting children. We contacted him, and, as promised, he e-mailed us photos of Ella taken on September 11. She is with her Half The Sky nanny on the orphanage grounds:

We are so grateful to this man. These photos will be a treasure for Ella when she is older, as well as to us right now, while we wait for her.

I hope time keeps flying by like this...

2008-09-15T22:08:00.001-07:00

Well, I've finally uploaded the rest of the Scotland photos, although I was really sad to find that 3 days' worth of photos were somehow lost. Photos of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies on TV, our flights to London and Glasgow, and most sadly, our time in Falkirk & Alloa are all gone. I think I had a partial power failure while uploading to my computer or something. :-(

Shortly after we arrived home from the UK, with Meme and Papa here to babysit, Edward and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary with a road trip to see Jason Aldean, first in Reno on Saturday, August 31, then at an outdoor show near Sacramento on Sunday.

Both shows were quite fun, and Maggie enjoyed her time with Meme & Papa (which included getting to watch The Sound Of Music for the first time!).

We spent Labor Day swimming (Maggie can now swim across the pool by herself - what a difference compared with how nervous she was in Meme's pool back in June!), ran a race last weekend in SF, and celebrated Autumn Moon Festival yesterday and Saturday.

In addition to decorating lanterns and making cookies, we made our "family banner" for Maggie's preschool picnic which is later this week.

I also have to put the finishing touches on three presentations for an upcoming conference (Are we really getting back on a plane next week already? What was I thinking???), so it's been pretty busy! And we haven't even gotten started moving Maggie's room yet...

Timeline of events for Ella's adoption:

2008-09-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

Many people have commented on how quickly this seems to have happened. I have found it very helpful to see timelines from other waiting families' blogs to help me get an idea of what to expect, so I thought I'd post some details of the process in case it helps other families thinking about adopting a waiting child, or thinking about changing from a non-special needs to a special needs adoption.

July 5, 2006 - Dossier mailed to China (DTC) with our original agency, US Asian Affairs (USAA), for a non-special needs adoption. We are assigned to Group 124.
2006-2007 - Over the course of the next year, adoptions from China slow down dramatically. The wait from DTC to referral stretches from 6 months to 2 years. There is much speculation that this is mostly due to the upcoming Olympics and China trying to 'save face', but the slowdown also coincides with CCAA having begun domestic adoptions.
September 2007 - During our work at the Wuhan Children's Welfare Institute with Half The Sky, we see firsthand that there are no healthy babies in the orphanage.; all the children are older or have medical conditons (aka "special needs"). We are told by one of the founders of A Child's Right, who has visited numerous orphanages throughout China, that there were over 25,000 domestic adoptions within China during the previous year. A beautiful but very sick baby girl at the CWI tugs at my heart.
November 13, 2007 - Our I-171H is due to expire in a month or two. Having just submitted our I-600A renewal to USCIS the week before, we receive a letter from ACCEPT. They are closing and transferring client files to Adopt International. We begin looking into alternatives, contacting Holt International to see if we can transfer to them instead.
November 15, 2007 - We learn that, because USAA is our China facilitator, Holt is unable to take us on as clients without starting from scratch with a new Dossier. We sign forms allowing the transfer of our file to Adopt International.
January 2, 2008 - LiveScan fingerprinting for Adopt International
April, 2008 - With the wait ever increasing, and my heartstrings pulling me towards a child with congenital heart disease (something I've felt for a couple of years but which only recently became an undeniable force - perhaps this is the work of my Nana, who lived with dilated cardiomyopathy for 87 years, and who passed away in March 2007), we discuss changing to a "special needs" adoption.
Sunday, April 13, 2008 - Research online reveals that the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) releases a "shared list" of waiting children each month. The select agencies in this program have access to the files of dozens of children each month. Neither USAA nor Holt is participating in this program. Joined Bay Area Adopton Services Waiting Child Yahoo! Group to learn more.
Thursday, April 17, 2008 - There is an 8-month-old baby girl on the April shared list with an atrial septal defect. I contacted Xiaoqing and learned that the child has already been spoken for. Starting this month, CCAA requires that the files of children with minor special needs can be released only to families whose Dossiers have already been logged in with the CCAA in China. (Previously, families could find a child, apply to adopt that child, and then start their dossier. Because the "paperchase" can sometimes take 6-9 months, these children were then waiting in an orphanage for up to a year to be joined with their families. By requiring families to be logged in first, the children will only have to wait 3-6 months to join their families.) I ask Xiaoqing if it is possible to transfer our Dossier from USAA to BAAS.
Sunday, April 20, 2008 - Xiaoqing confirms that the CCAA will not allow a Dossier logged in with one agency to be moved to another agency. After much discussion, we decide to start over with BAAS to pursue adoption of a child with congenital, correctable heart disease.
Monday, April 21, 2008 - BAAS representative Nikki confirms that they can use our original files from ACCEPT and have their social worker perform a home study update rather than three new home study visits. The paperchase begins again! We mail the registration fee to BAAS and send a fax to Adopt International asking for our records to be transferred to BAAS. Online request to VitalChek for birth certificates from Iowa and New York. So far, everyone we've spoken to at BAAS has been very nice and amazingly helpful, and we are optimistic.
April 23, 2008 - Obtain Criminal Clearance letters from Marin County Sheriff's office.
May 1, 2008 - Mail check to BAAS for review of our documents from ACCEPT/Adopt International.
May 3, 2008 - Over sushi in San Francisco after the Cherry Blossom Festival, I tell our good friends from USAA Group 124 that we are likely dropping out of Group 124 to pursue a special needs adoption. We are all sad that we won't be traveling to China together.
May 7, 2008 - We e-mail USCIS explaining that our homestudy update will be performed by a new agency; we are told it will be no problem to renew the I-600A with a new agency. :-) We have our physical exams and blood & urine tests performed.
May 14, 2008 - Edward picks up a Marriage Certificate from SF County Clerk. We take our half-completed new Dossier for notarization at MailBox Services in San Rafael.
May 21, 2008 - LiveScan fingerprinting for BAAS at the Marin County Sheriff's office in the morning; home study update visit with BAAS social worker in the afternoon.
May 26, 2008 - Home study update mailed to USCIS.
July 2, 2008 - Receive notification from USCIS that we can be fingerprinted next week.
July 9, 2008 - USCIS fingerprinting in Santa Rosa for renewal of the I-171H. None of the May, June, or July waiting child lists posted to the BAAS waiting child newsgroup have had a girl with a congenital heart condition.
July 19, 2008 - New I-171H arrives! That must be a record for expediency!
July 21, 2008 - Our first snag: when I contact Xiaoqing about authentication of our now-complete Dossier, I learn that the Iowa and NY birth certificates have to be certified by the Secretary of State in Iowa and NY and then authenticated at the Chinese Consulates in Chicago and NY, respectively. Drat! They've been sitting on my desk for two months! Prepare and FedEx applications to LegalEaze in NY and There's Always Hope in Chicago. LegalEaze is closed for vacation from 7/22 through 7/30. I'm beginning to appreciate all of these steps with the paperwork that USAA does for its clients!
July 23, 2008 - Mail copies of Dossier to Xiaoqing for translation.
Sunday, July 27, 2008 - Second snag: Xiaoqing e-mails that we need our original home study from ACCEPT in addition to the update from BAAS as part of our Dossier. We also learn that the BAAS financial status statement is not the same as the CCAA's and that our self-employment letters are insufficient, so we will need letters from our CPA. I e-mail our CPA, Yvonne, to request letters from her ASAP, and Nikki at BAAS to ask if they have the copy of our original home study from ACCEPT.
Monday, July 28, 2008 - Yvonne has the letters done! Edward picks them up at her office. BAAS has our ACCEPT home study on file. I call Nikki at BAAS and ask her to FedEx the ACCEPT home study to us for inclusion in the Dossier.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - We have the ACCEPT home study, CCAA financial status certificate, and income verification letters notarized in the morning by our friendly neighborhood bail bondsman! We take our dossier (minus birth certificates) to Sacramento for certification by the Secretary of State. I hear from Chris at LegalEaze that my birth certificate has been state certified and is now at the Chinese Consulate in NY, expected to be FedExed back to me on August 5 (my birthday!). :-)
Third snag: While we are at lunch in Sacramento after dropping off our paperwork, we learn that the first notary we used filed in the wrong county: she is licensed in Contra Costa but filed in Marin. The Secretary of State is unable to certify those four documents (Physical Exam and Criminal Clearance letters for each of us). We return to the Secretary of State's office. Fortunately, a traveling notary happens to be at the Secretary of State's office while we are there, and she is able to notarize the four documents for us on the spot! What luck! All our documents are state certified.
August 1, 2008 - Edward takes our dossier (minus birth certificates) to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco for authentication.
August 6, 2008 - Just 2 days before the Olympics begin, there are protesters outside the Chinese Consulate when we go there to pick up our authenticated documents. After receiving the authenticated paperwork and inserting the birth certificates, we stop by Xiaoqing's house to drop off our now-complete, new-and-improved Dossier.
August 8, 2008 - Our Dossier is mailed to China.
August 11, 2008 - We leave for Scotland. Interestingly enough, we left for our last trip to Scotland within a few days of our first dossier having been sent to China for Maggie's adoption, in September 2004!
August 14, 2008 - checking e-mail from the lobby of our hotel on the Isle of Skye, I see a note from Xiaoqing dated 8/13/08; she has found a child for us! At 7:28pm UK time (11:28am in California), we see our daughter's face for the first time. Four hours later, after reviewing her medical information and receiving feedback from a family friend who happens to be a pediatrician (and mom to a China girl herself!), we e-mail Xiaoqing to let her know we would like to pursue adoption of Lu Rongwan.
August 15, 2008 - We submit our Letter of Intent (LOI) to adopt Lu Rongwan.
September 2, 2008 - On the eve of our 10th wedding anniversary, we receive our Pre-adoption Approval letter (PA).
Now we have to wait for the Letter of seeking confirmation from the adopter (LOA), which could come anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months from now, and Travel Authorization (TA), which should follow the LOA by 3-4 weeks. Travel to China will be 2-4 weeks after we receive TA.

Two days of fantastic hiking on Skye

2008-08-17T15:32:00.001-07:00

We've been in such a flurry over Ella that I haven't even had a chance to write about our amazing hiking! Here's a summary:

Friday morning (August 15) - We took a bus out to the Red Cuillins, intent on a long hike across three of the peaks.

The ground was damp and the peat was springy in most places, except in certain areas where the mud was like quicksand. I had the misfortune of stepping in up to my knee while trying to navigate a cattle gate, but the giddiness of having learned about Ella made me immune to annoyance.

The hike was fantastic – we didn’t see anybody else on the way up the mountain, and the views were spectacular. We made it up the first peak, where we were met with blustery winds and foreboding rain clouds headed our way. After our snacks, we decided to call it a day and head back down.

The views were magnificent, and the hike was satisfying even in its abbreviated version. Maggie fell asleep on the bumpy bus ride back to the hotel, but this time she stayed unconscious as we walked back to the hotel, and she had a good long nap. (While she slept, I posted Ella’s photos on the blog.) When Maggie awoke, we went out for a walk around Portree

and then had pizza at Cappuccino’s at the Portree Hotel. Other than minor annoyance at the bathroom (tiny, dirty, no toilet paper, wouldn’t flush, hot & cold water from separate faucets, and the most ineffective air-dryer I’ve ever seen – my hands would have dried faster if I’d blown on them myself!) the meal was quite enjoyable, and we went for ice cream afterwards. Getting Maggie to sleep later was an exercise in frustration, and we figured there would be hell to pay on Saturday!

Yesterday morning we took a bus a little north of Portree, to an area known as Trotternish. The weather wasn’t as nice as Friday’s but we were lucky to only have a few drops of rain as we ascended through forest, then up to the rocks, and finally, after hopping a fence and following a lesser-known trail, making our way to the top of the plateau. We stopped for a snack behind some boulders, mostly to try to get out of the wind rather than due to real hunger, and enjoyed watching the sheep as they grazed nearby. If I’d described the views from the Cuillins as magnificent, then I could only call the views from The Storr “otherworldly”. The combination of cliffs, grass, heather and water is like no other place I’ve ever seen. Absolutely breathtaking.

The photos don’t nearly do it justice. We also found a partial sheep skeleton (spine, ribs, pelvis, hind limbs and mandible) and saw some rabbits. On the way back down, Maggie seemed to be working her hardest at being good. She had excellent manners when passing other hikers, she listened when we asked her to stop on the trail, she smiled nicely for photos, she sang songs and told stories, and at one point she even said “You’re the best Baba in the world!” We both kept saying to each other “Wouldn’t it be great if she was like this all the time??”

If it wasn’t for the hour-plus-long wait for the bus surrounded by biting midges, the day would have been perfect. As it was, it was still one of the most memorable days of my life. We finished our day with the best Indian food we’ve ever tasted, at the Prince of India restaurant (which we chose after wandering down Bayfield Road only to find the Chinese/Thai restaurant advertised on street signs demolished!). After writing 9 postcards, we dropped to sleep, exhausted.

More info about our new sweet pea

2008-08-17T14:46:00.001-07:00

At 16 months of age, Ella weighed 8.2kg (18.0 lbs) and was 70cm (27.6 inches) tall. This puts her in the 3rd percentile for height & weight for her age, so she is quite tiny. Luckily, her head is big (!) which means she shouldn't have any significant developmental delays. (For comparison, I looked back at Maggie's 7-month development report - she weighed 17.6 lbs and was reportedly 26" tall at that age!).

If Ella stays at her current percentile, she will weight approximately 20 lbs and be about 31" tall at 24 months old, which is about when we expect to get her. (That means she will fit into all those cute 12-18 months outfits we saved from Maggie! Yipee!)

Maggie is so excited about moving into the other bedroom (which she wants painted pink, of course) after we get home. Although she wants to decorate it with Disney's "Cars" instead of princesses!

Introducing Ella Rongwan H.

2008-08-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

Maggie is pleased to share with you that she is a big sister!

Lu Rongwan was born December 8, 2006 in Anhui Province. She had surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect in May 2007 and is in a Half The Sky program at the Hefei Children's Welfare Institute. We were DTC on August 8, 2008 with Bay Area Adoption Services, and were matched with her yesterday from the CCAA waiting child list. (Yes, while we are on the Isle of Skye in Scotland! If we didn't already know a baby named Skye, we might consider naming her that!)

We have chosen to name her Ella, which means "complete" in German. (We anticipate that Ella will complete our family; we are also quite fond of Ella Fitzgerald's velvet voice and timeless elegance.) Her Chinese name means "gentle hibiscus" (Rong is hibiscus, Wan is gentle. Lu is the surname given to all children from the Hefei CWI, as it is a reference to the city of Hefei).

According to her development report, Lu Rongwan is outgoing, talkative, and likes to sing. She should fit right in with our family!

We expect to travel to pick her up in December or possibly January. We can't wait to meet her!

We know this is going to come as a surprise, but we did not know when or even if this would actually happen, so we wanted to keep it to ourselves that we had submitted paperwork until a match was made. We hope our family and friends will forgive us this and share in our joy.

Greetings from Scotland!

2008-08-14T16:46:00.001-07:00

It has been a most eventful trip thus far. The flight was long and not enjoyable in the least - United's fleet and customer service are lacking, particularly in comparison with Singapore Airlines. After our delayed flight to London, our flight on BMI to Glasgow was quick and easy. Yesterday we visited with Auntie Patricia and her family while staying in Falkirk, and today we are in Portree on the Isle of Skye, after taking a taxi, two trains, a ferry and a bus. It is simply gorgeous here. (I will post more photos later - the WiFi makes uploading painfully slow!) Maggie has had more than a few moments of "difficulty", shall we say, but as she adjusts to the time change her behavior is improving. We have enjoyed watching the Olympics from a non-USA perspective, including seeing sports normally not even shown on US TV such as equestrian eventing, rowing, and 'canoeing'.

Our trip has been eventful in another way, also. See if you can guess.

What could have Maggie and me so enraptured, you ask? Stay tuned...

August 3, 2008 - A Marathon Day!

2008-08-04T22:38:00.001-07:00

We started the day at 4am, quietly getting ready in the dark and then placing Maggie in the car in her PJs at 4:30am. The drive to SF felt longer in the dark than it usually does; it was neat seeing the lanes on the Golden Gate Bridge cordoned off for the runners. During the drive, Maggie yawned and said "I'm tired." I told her she could go back to sleep, to which she replied "No, because when we get there you'll have to wake me up and I'll just be tired again."

Maggie and I dropped Edward off near the Embarcadero for his 5:30am start. He joined a stream of people heading towards Mission and Embarcadero - it was weird to see so many people getting ready to run in the dark! Trying to find street parking was an exercise in frustration, so I finally pulled into the lot at Bryant St., where we got Maggie changed, had a snack, and chatted with some other runners in the LONG line for the only working parking permit machine on the lot. Finally, we walked over to the start a little before 7. All of the marathon runners were off by then, and it was somewhat deserted.

I walked up to Justin Herman Plaza to register for the 5K, and Maggie got a cowbell from the Saturn folks.

If only the cowbell had helped move people out of our way when we were running! I made the mistake of starting near the back - trying to be polite since strollers aren't even officially allowed - but I didn't realize that a) as slow as I am, I am still faster than the people in the back of the pack and b) it is much easier for runners to pass me than for me to pass other runners! I would have started near the front if I'd known these 2 key facts!

The run was great - nice asphalt, no hills, nice water view, energetic crowd - and other than feeling boxed in a few times, I really enjoyed it. I finished in my best time ever (under 32 minutes, which is still slow, but hey, it's only my third race pushing the stroller, so I was pretty happy!) We never did find Judy & the twins (I'm sure they finished at least 10 minutes before us!) so after the fabulous snacks we headed up to Alamo Square to pick up Baba, who'd finished his first half-marathon before we'd even started our 5K! Woo hoo!

We drove over to Judy & Peter's, changed, and then set off for Gilroy. Maggie napped in the car on the way. We enjoyed a post-run breakfast at Black Bear Diner before hitting Gilroy Gardens for the day.

The girls had a great time on the rides

and in the water

not to mention the special treats

We even bravely pedaled the swan and duck boats (well, Judy & I can't complain too much about it but I felt bad that Peter had to pedal after running 13 miles!)

Amazingly, there were no meltdowns. All of the girls did remarkably well and played together beautifully. It was a fantastic day overall.

We left just before 6pm - Maggie was asleep by 6:30 and didn't wake up until 7am today!

Is it really the middle of July already??

2008-07-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

I used to blog at least once a week, but over the past 6 months I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find time. Now I feel lucky to do it once a month! But, Maggie is now in preschool Tuesdays and Thursdays and only goes to Chinese school on Fridays, which makes our week a little less hectic, and I've just hired a third staff member and rearranged my consult & surgery schedules so I can a) get home before 6:30pm every night and b) not have to do as much work from home. It seemed I was spending hours on the computer after Maggie went to bed answering client e-mails, paying bills, and entering appointments into my Palm.

Speaking of which, my crummy RaZr finally died last month, right before we went away, so I got a Blackberry. I figured, well, it has a calendar function and contacts, and I hardly ever use the "To Do" list on my Palm, so it will be fine, right? WRONG!! After a month of trying to adapt, I've finally given up. The Blackberry can't categorize, searches really poorly, and won't sync events in the past, so I can't quickly look up a pet's name and find their last appointment date, for example. (I ordered a Treo 755p, which should be here in a couple of days).

The ordeal did, however, lead me to finding a few AMAZING services which will vastly improve my life: PhoneTag (transcribes voice mail into e-mail - yay! No more listening to rambling client messages telling me their pet's life story over about 4 mintutes and then blurting out their phone number in 2 seconds!), Jott (call Jott on your phone, and it takes what you say and sends it as an e-mail to the person you specify on your contact list), Google Calendar (now my new receptionist can enter the appointments into the online calendar, which any staff member can view from home or work) and GooSync (which syncs the Google Calendar to my Palm). Now, if I could just find a web-based medical software system which is applicable to veterinary practice, I'd have a completely paperless practice.

Anyway, since my last post:

We spent Father's Day weekend in Olema on the FCC campout (see photos here).
We flew to Providence to visit Meme & Papa in Massachusetts
Maggie stayed with Meme & Papa while Edward and I went to Bar Harbor, Maine to hike in Acadia National Park (photos).
Maggie and I flew to Nashville, then drove to Alabama to visit Nana PoPo, Papa GongGong, and cousin Bentley. From there we visited the US. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville and the Nashville Zoo (photos).
Edward came back to CA, then drove 9 hours to Death Valley to hike Telescope Peak (photos)
Maggie has graduated from dog paddling to swimming with her face in the water - she can now go halfway across the pool without help!
We went to the Novato Fourth of July parade for the first time. Nothing like the Bristol Parade in RI, but seeing the old cars, the Basset hounds and the tiny horses was fun (photos).
Maggie got to go on her first real rides at the fair!

Although she did really well on the first part of our trip back East, Maggie had a few tantrums in Alabama, and her behavior at home has been less than stellar. She threw a tantrum at the fair because she wanted ice cream right now and we'd told her she could have some AFTER we finished looking at the crafts and art inside. (Not only did she not get any ice cream after that, but we left the fair immediately, so she didn't get to go on the ferris wheel, and she lost TV for the entire week.) Today was the first day she was allowed to watch TV since then; she watched Fruity Pie in the AM. She had a great day with Baba, and after dinner we all watched AFV (rerun) this evening. After that, she went upstairs to get ready for bed without complaining, but then decided she wanted to goof around instead of getting ready. So I counted. She lost both bedtime stories, then her lullaby, then her stuffed animals in quick succession, each time with counting and a description of what she was about to lose when I got to 3. After I took away all those things plus her radio and her clock, I realized that, even though she cried and tried to hold onto the things I was taking away, nothing she lost would make her cooperate to get ready for bed. So I said goodnight and shut the door. She fell asleep in her t-shirt and undies about a half hour later, I'd guess. So, since she didn't get her teeth brushed tonight, she gets no sweets all day tomorrow. And, since she didn't get lotion on after swimming today, she doesn't get to swim on Wednesday. I don't know what else to do. It's like nothing matters to her once she digs in her heels about something. She clearly doesn't want to lose privileges, and she even told me she didn't want to lose television again, but then she just won't back down and cooperate. I tell her "This is your choice. If you don't want to lose X, just come and get your teeth brushed. It's that simple." But she chooses to cut off her nose to spite her face. I'm sure this determination will make her very successful later in life, but right now it's a pain in my keister!

Sunday, June 8 - SURPRISE of a lifetime

2008-06-09T20:18:00.001-07:00

Edward was supposed to go to a CE class in the city, but he didn't set the alarm. Waking at 7:30am, I asked what time his class started. "8 o'clock" was his reply. "Oh, no, we'd better get moving!" I cried. "Nah, I don't think I'm going to go" he said casually, channeling Peter in Office Space. "What do you mean?" I asked. Finally, after much cajoling, he told me he'd canceled. He said Maggie and I could do whatever we'd had planned for the day as long as we were back by 12:30pm. I was intrigued. We were going to meet up with Craig, who turned out to be sick, so we went to the pool again instead. This time we saw JJ there, but we only stayed an hour in order to get back for lunch by 12:30.

At lunch, Maggie told me (with Baba's permission) that she was going to see Kyra that afternoon. So then I realized that Edward had something planned for just the two of us. Woo hoo! When I asked what I should pack in her bag to take over there, he said "She'll need pajamas!". He answered my quizzical look with "She's going to spend the night there!". I was shocked and a little sad - she's never spent the night away from home before! But I was also excited - what could be in store?? I had no idea if we were just going to have dinner and then see a late movie, or if we were going out somewhere. But once Edward helped me pick out what to wear (my favorite Levis, brown boots, a brown t-shirt and my brown corduroy jacket) I figured we might be going into the city. He told me we were going to Stern Grove. But then why would Maggie need to spend the night?

As we drove into the city and he didn't take 19th Avenue, I knew we weren't going to Stern Grove. Seeing cowboy hats on some tourists along Lombard Street was a kick, but I didn't think anything of it. When we drove down to the other side of town, towards AT&T park, and started seeing more cowboy hats, I figured we might be going to a concert. But I didn't remember that Kenny Chesney was playing, and figured there was no way in a million years Edward would want to go to that show anyway. I saw a truck for Brooks and Dunn, and Edward told me to stop playing dumb when I asked if that was who we were seeing, but I honestly had no idea! It still didn't make any sense. I hardly know any Brooks & Dunn songs. Finally, he gave me the tickets, with a grin. It was for Kenny Chesney! I was shocked and a little confused. And $110 per ticket! Yikes! On the way into AT&T park, we saw someone selling floor seats. Assuming we had "regular" seats, I said "Wow, I wonder how much THOSE go for?". When we got to the gate, we were redirected to a different entrance, because we had FLOOR SEATS!

I got more excited as we walked around the side of the stadium, and I saw Gary Allan t-shirts alongside the Kenny Chesney shirts - then it clicked as to why Edward had surprised me with a Gary Allan CD earlier in the week. I wished I'd spent more time listening to it and to the 3 Kenny Chesney CDs he'd given me! When we got inside and started walking up to the front of the floor section, I was blown away. We had the BEST SEATS AVAILABLE! The "sandbar", a section right in front of the stage and alongside the walkway. I was floored (no pun intended).

But wait, there's more! I learned that we weren't just going to see Gary Allan and Kenny Chesney, but Luke Bryan ("All My Friends Say"), LeAnn Rimes, and Brooks and Dunn (yes, the truck really was theirs) also. What an amazing surprise. After taking a photo or two from the Sandbar, we went up into the stands, where we ate pizza and french fries and shared a beer and a diet Coke before going back down to watch the show.

I really enjoyed Luke Bryan and Gary Allan; their voices and stage presence were wonderful.

LeAnn Rimes sounded and looked great, although I didn't know some of her songs (she opened with "Nothing Better To Do, which made me happy!).

Brooks and Dunn were very entertaining, and they played songs I recognized from the radio. I really liked "Red Dirt Road".

Kenny Chesney played a great set. He ran around all over the place, but spent quite a bit of time near us.

Of course he played the requisite "Keg in the Closet", "When The sun Goes Down" and "Beer in Mexico" - which I actually enjoyed live! - but the highlights for me were "I Go Back", "Never Wanted Nothin' More", "Don't Blink" and "Better As A Memory". He even brought out Steve Miller and Sammy Hagar, neither of which I was ever a huge fan of, but it was fun nonetheless. Sammy Hagar looked like a kid in a candy store; he was having such a great time it was hard not to be happy watching him.

The entire day was so amazing because I hadn't expected any of it. (How am I going to top this??)

(See all the photos from the show here)

Daycare haircut debacle

2008-05-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

When I picked Maggie up from daycare on Tuesday (May 27), her daycare provider told me that Maggie and Alisa had snuck off and hid when they were supposed to be working on a project with scissors. This is the result of the project THEY decided to do instead:

She didn't seem to mind so much:

And I thought, "Ok, it's only hair. It will grow back." But the story gets worse: When Baba picked her up on Thursday (yesterday), the daycare provider had taken the liberty of having Maggie's hair cut EVEN MORE! Aaargh!!!

She's still cute, of course, but I miss this:

I just keep telling myself "It's only hair....it's only hair....it's only hair...."

Then and Now

2008-05-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Before we were parents, people always told us how fast time seems to fly once you have kids. Boy, were they right! Looking at some photos, I was struck by how much Maggie has grown in the three years we've known her. She is definitely not a baby or toddler anymore, she's a little girl. (Thankfully, she's also decided that, as a four-year-old, she is going to be helpful, cooperative, and a good listener. Which has been a nice change from age 3!)

Here are some of the "then and now" photos I found:

Hetti, Lena and Maggie at Maggie's 4th birthday party at China Camp State Park, 2008

Hetti, Lena and Maggie at Maggie's 2nd birthday party at China Camp State Park, 2006

USAA Group 102/104P/105P reunion 2008

USAA Group 102/104P/105P reunion 2007

USAA Group 102/104P/105P reunion 2006

Kirby Cove, 2008

Kirby Cove, 2005

Maggie quote of the month

2008-05-22T21:30:00.001-07:00

Mommy: "Only good girls get presents."

Maggie: "What about me?"

Maggie's 4th birthday: May 9, 2008.

Stagecoach - after the show

2008-05-06T21:36:00.001-07:00

We are home, and I can't remember the last time I was this happy to sleep in my own bed!! The first night, the flood lights on the campground went off at 1am. Even so, the people in adjacent tents partied long into the night (with one couple forgetting that a tent is made of fabric and we can hear - ahem - EVERYTHING!). To make it worse, the revelers didn't sleep until noon or even 10am, as I'd hoped. Nope, they (and Maggie) were up before 7am. Edward and I were at a loss as to what to do until the gates opened at noon. And did I mention it was HOT already!?

So after goofing around for a bit, and Maggie squirting water with the girls in the tent behind us (who, although they were drinking beer at 9am, were actually very nice, and on the quieter side compared with our other neighbors!) we went to K-Mart (hey, we don't have any of those up where we live, so it's a novelty), bought Maggie some shoes and some write-on, wipe-off books, and bought a couple of novels for ourselves. We checked out the grounds, although we didn't plan to see any of the performers until later in the day. Then we went back for a nap (under the palm trees on the perimeter of the campground).

After the nap, we went back to the grounds and set our chairs up under a tent, where we stayed for the beginning of Taylor Swift. When I realized that Maggie was still engrossed in her book, not noting the difference between being at the show and listening to a CD, we moved a little closer to the stage and she had a good time.

He hadn't been one of the reasons we'd come, but the highlight of the show on Saturday was Dierks Bentley. His set was fantastic, I liked every song. But when he picked up a girl from the audience and brought her up on stage, singing "Come A Little Closer" and dancing with her, it was amazing.

Between Taylor Swift's high school angst songs and watching Dierks dance with an elated fan (like watching Bono dancing with a girl to "Bad" at Live Aid), it felt like 1985 all over again. I didn't know music could still make me feel like that.(At almost 39, sometimes I feel like the lyrics of Trace Adkins' 'I Wanna Feel Something' were written for me).

Although we didn't know much about the Judds before the show, we enjoyed their set quite a bit. Rascal Flatts were the headliners, but we only stayed for a few songs. Maggie was happy to be able to hear a little bit of "Life Is A Highway" from the tent, though.

Back at the campground, the partying was just as loud as Friday night, and to make it worse, the stadium lights flooding the campground NEVER went out. It was pretty unbearable. But on Sunday morning, we headed into the Polo Field early enough to stake out some territory closer to the stage. I got Maggie a cute t-shirt

and we watched Chuck Wicks before the man himself, Trace Adkins, came on. The first half of his set included "Swing", "You're Gonna Miss This", and "I Wanna Feel Something", after which he said "That officially completes the 'family friendly' portion of our show" before launching into a series of bawdy bar tracks like "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" and "Hot Mama".

Unfortunately, Maggie was way past nap time, and Edward gallantly took her back to the tent for a brief sleep during the last part of Trace's set.

I watched Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich, both of which I enjoyed more than expected, and then Edward and Maggie returned for Carrie Underwood. Maggie was pretty excited

and seemed to enjoy the show. She knew all the songs, but only sang along to a few. Carrie's voice was fantastic, but I found it distracting that she continually waved to audience members, even during a really emotional song such as "Just A Dream".

Finally, Tim McGraw came out, looking like he'd just woken up and stating "I think we're your entertainment for the rest of the evening". He opened with "Still", followed by "Unforgiven" and "Back When". We were debating how long to stay, and decided to wait for one more song to see if he'd play "Last Dollar (Fly Away)", Maggie's favorite song. Lucky for us, it was his next song! Maggie was thrilled

and afterwards we walked back to the tent, still able to hear him sing "Where the Green Grass Grows" and "When the Stars Go Blue".

The winds were pretty gusty at the campground, and in combination with the lights and the crazy drunkards, we decided to sleep in the Escape. Maggie and I (being relatively short) actually slept pretty well, but poor Edward (who is 6'4") barely slept a wink.

We were happy to pack up and head home, stopping in Stevenson Ranch to have lunch with a good friend of mine (and buying some CDs at the Circuit City there as well). The drive home wasn't as bad as the drive down, and we are so happy to be home!

Howdy from the Stagecoach Country Music Festival!

2008-05-03T00:11:00.001-07:00

Back in December I got tickets for this 3-day country music show down in the Southern California desert. We decided to camp on the grounds. (We're either really adventurous, or really stupid.) We left just before 7 this morning, and Maggie was still in her PJ's.

We left the house a little later than we'd planned, and forgot to get cash, so we stopped in Pleasanton, discovering that the GPS guidance in the Escape is not nearly as user-friendly as mine in the Prius. (For example, it won't show you all the ATM icons in the area, you have to select a specific name, and then that one might be behind you.)

After that, the trip was pretty uneventful until we go to the greater LA area. Maggie was a little whiny in the car at times, but considering we didn't play a DVD for her and she had no crayons, she did amazingly well. She fell asleep just before we got to the Grapevine.

She woke up just after Santa Clarita, which is when traffic started to get really heavy as well. We stopped for gas & lunch but the section of town we were in was not great, and there was no parking in front of the Subway, so we got back on the road and drove another half-hour or so, by which time we were all pretty grumpy and hungry!! The traffic through LA and east of LA was hideous.

It took us a total of 10 hours to get here, and when we finally arrived, the cops directing traffic wouldn't let us into the area marked "TENT CAMPING UNLOADING AND LOADING" despite our credentials in the window. They were telling all the tent campers to park in the general admission lot and walk (WITH ALL THEIR STUFF. YEAH, RIGHT!!) I finally had to walk down to the check-in area and talk to a supervisor, who came out to the traffic-directors, and after several supervisors' arguments and about 30 minutes later, we finally got to park where we were supposed to, to unload.

The tent camping area is like nothing I've ever seen before. It's literally just a big field, with sites (8x8' for each person, so we have a 16 x 16' site for the 2 of us - Maggie doesn't count) crammed in next to each other.

Hey, at least it's on grass, not dirt, and there are showers.

Maggie helped put up the tent:

After we got settled, some nice folks (who used to live in Iowa) took our photo for us:

Then we went to eat, and got ice cream at McDonald's since Maggie had done so well on the trip.

We came back to more parking woes, as the headliners were about to start and people were arriving in droves. We hadn't purchased tickets for today's part of the show, but we could hear the Eagles' whole set from our tent. They sounded great, opening with "Hotel California", then into "Peaceful, Easy Feeling", "Boys of Summer" - a pleasant surprise, "Lyin' Eyes", "Dirty Laundry", "Life's Been Good", one song I didn't recognize, "Fast Lane", and finishing with "Take It Easy" and "Desperado". Amazingly, despite stadium lights over the campground (which are still on, now at 12:40am), a crazy party atmosphere, and the booming concert, Maggie managed to fall asleep.

We've only seen a handful of other kids here (one of our neighbors, who looks about 25, said "This is the first vacation I've had in 6 years. I have 4 kids." - yikes) and most of our neighbors appear to be college-aged or late 20s. There is definitely an all-night party atmosphere here!

Quotes from our neighbors:

"WATER? Who drinks WATER???"

"I got a boom box and two hot-ass chicks. Good luck to you guys!"

"I saw your tits!" "That's ok, you won't be the last person to see them tonight!"

"I wanted to be an OB RN. But I decided that I don't like working with people, because people are stupid."

"There's a group hug. I think I should go and partake."

We'll see how tomorrow goes. As we've been saying all along, this could either be really fun, or a total disaster. Either way, we'll probably have a great story to tell!

Maggie quote of the month

2008-03-22T21:32:00.001-07:00

"Sometimes we're cross.
Sometimes we're sad.
Sometimes we forget to flush the toilet."

Xinian kuaile!

2008-02-13T16:24:00.000-08:00

Since Maggie came home, the time surrounding the Lunar New Year is always a flurry of activity for us. This year it started with our screening at CAIS, where we bumped into some fellow Language In Action students.

There were about 140 kids being screened for fewer than 30 spots (our best guess, anyway), so we don't have high expectations of getting in, but one can always hope!

After that, we spent the afternoon making 4 dozen oatmeal-chocolate chip and oatmeal-butterscotch chip cookies for the Big Kids' Bake Sale at the Between Two New Years party.

The BTNY party is one of the highlights of the year for FCC - N. Cal. Hundreds attend, and we usually get to catch up with friends from far and wide. This year we only saw one of our China travel group families, but spent lots of time with friends from our local playgroups.

In the absence of the dragon parade, the lion dance was the highlight of the party.

The following Wednesday we got to see the Mass Greeting at CAIS, where students welcomed the new year with music and dancing.

We were really impressed with the performances, and it was especially fun to see Hetti and Lena. They performed with the other Pre-K kids, but from where we were we couldn't see them very well. Here they are (in lime green) watching the lion dancers, though.

Thursday night we celebrated the Lunar New Year with Chinese food at one of the local restaurants, and on Saturday we got to see another lion dance!

The Marin Chinese Cultural Association lion dance team is our favorite, and even though we've seen them a couple of times already this year, we never get tired of them. In fact, we'd planned to see them again that night, but Maggie didn't get a nap even after running around with Kendra for a good bit of the afternoon!)

and she didn't make it through the show after the MCCA banquet Saturday night. She and Kendra wanted to continue running around like banshees during the performances, and attempts to restrain them led to tears and tantrums from Maggie, so we called it a night.

The following day was our little, local New Year Party. Despite a frustrating late-night attempt to make rat/mouse-shaped cookies for the kids to frost & decorate, I managed to regain my sanity (these are three- and four-year-olds after all - do they really care what the cookies look like??) and thoroughly enjoyed the party. The tattoos Caitlin's mom brought were a big hit

as were the cookies

but our favorite part was the dragon dance

which the girls did not want to end! They traded off who got to be the head

and even after our group photo

they went back for one more round. After the party, Hetti and Lena came over to play in our neighborhood park.

And later, Uncle Craig came over for his (belated) birthday dinner.

It was a very busy weekend!

Welcome back to N. Cal, C-Webb!!

2008-02-01T21:26:00.001-08:00

We are so excited that Chris Webber has joined the Warriors!! A little of the old Kings' magic, excellent passing, and that killer smile to boot. Now we are even more psyched for the Warriors-Rockets game on March 21.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-22T21:43:00.001-08:00

We spent the last day of 2007 hiking at Point Reyes.

Although we didn't see any migrating whales offshore, we did enjoy sharing the spectacular day with some grazing cows.

So far this year there have been basketball lessons at the Y,

gymnastics classes,

and playgroups in SF

and Corte Madera.

We were lucky to have such gorgeous weather for both playgroups, as it's been alternating between rainy and quite cold (it was 37*F when I left UC Davis this evening!).

Next weekend is our screening at CAIS (yikes!), and on Sunday is the Between Two New Years party, which should be lots of fun.

The best things about Christmas this year

2007-12-30T21:16:00.001-08:00

1) spending time with Meme, Papa, Craig, Nana PoPo and Papa GongGong

2) building our first gingerbread house

3) Maggie and Bentley "stair-surfing"

4) the movie "Enchanted" (and Maggie singing "Happy Little Working Song")

and 5) Maggie is learning to read! On Christmas night, she began recognizing the word "Cat" as we read The Cat in the Hat. She is so excited! She can now consistently recognize "cat", "moon", and "car", and asks to learn new words after every bedtime story. It is a thrill to watch her learn.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-30T21:09:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Getting ready for Christmas

2007-12-16T21:35:00.001-08:00

We got our Christmas tree on Wednesday morning. The chilly weather put us in the Christmas spirit but Maggie's whining put a bit of a damper on that.

Later in the day she seemed to be in a more jovial mood, and helped with the last of the holiday cards by stamping silver snowflakes on cards and envelopes.

On Saturday, we had a pretty good day together, and she colored quietly for quite a while in the study as I worked on a manuscript.

After Baba got home from work, we decorated the tree:

On Sunday, we took an early ferry to the city, enjoying some hot cocoa and donuts on the way.

We met up with Judy and the twins, and got the girls on ice for the first time.

It was quite amusing, and lots of fun. (Maggie seemed to enjoy throwing ice shavings at people more than skating, though! We're hoping to go up to Tahoe this season - then she'll have a chance to play in the real snow.)

After skating, we went into the Hyatt Regency to see their holiday displays, which were beautiful. I especially liked the little Golden Gate Bridge.

We'd been hoping to have lunch with Peter & Judy, but Maggie had a meltdown

so we caught the 12:30pm ferry home instead. We spotted a whale on the way home, though, just off Angel Island, so that made the journey home much more fun than it might have otherwise been.

Good thing we're not going anywhere for the holidays - something tells me our little drama princess needs some time at home!

Maggie quote of the month - December 2007

2007-12-10T21:59:00.001-08:00

Mommy: "What do you want for Christmas?"

Maggie: "Lights on the house, and a snowman."

December 8-9, 2007 - weekend in LA

2007-12-10T20:52:00.001-08:00

Maggie and flew down to LA early in the morning on Saturday,

where we met up with Maya and her family at the LA Zoo

After all the 'monkeying' around, we saw some baby tigers and this baby giraffe

but before we knew it, it was 2:30pm and time to go! Justin tired Maggie and Maya out by letting them chase him around on our way out.

Both Maggie and Maya were asleep within minutes of getting in their respective cars!

After we checked into our hotel, I joined her in a nap before we headed over to my veterinary school-mate's house in Stevenson Ranch for dinner. Her son, Andrew and his cousin, Aolani, kept Maggie entertained in his enormous playroom until dinner. After dinner, they all enjoyed a snowman-cupcake treat!

We started watching Cars,

but at 8:30 I had to call it a night so we could get some sleep for our busy Sunday ahead!

We both slept from about 9pm until 7am, which was fantastic, and after a shower

Maggie and I headed to Santa Monica. It was a gorgeous morning, and we enjoyed a walk along the greenbelt. Although a little nervous at first, she had a blast getting her photo taken while balancing on a tree limb.

She also balanced on a railing for this pretty pic:

We could not have asked for a more beautiful day! Seven blocks from the beach, my high school friend Dan and his new bride Molly live, and we met up with them for breakfast. Maggie & I hadn't seen Dan since December 2005, but she wasn't shy with him at all!

Maggie took an instant liking to Molly as well.

Thankfully, Molly was not only very tolerant of her, but both she and Dan patiently obliged Maggie's antics (despite having been out late the night before celebrating Molly's birthday)!

Then it was back to Stevenson Ranch for our travel group mini-reunion. Maggie made herself right at home with one of Jane's baby dolls

then she, Minjiao and Jane watched a Disney Princess Sing-Along DVD.

We did some crafts,

decorated some cookies,

and the girls played all afternoon

Playing house with Sarah, Maggie volunteered to be the Daddy. I told her that they could both be Mommies, because some families have 2 mommies or 2 daddies instead of a mommy and a daddy (to which Maya's mom said "We can tell you live in San Francisco!").

When it came time for group photos, Maggie was just a little mopey

...until Justin sat down next to her!

Minjiao didn't get in on the fun, so Matt had the brilliant idea to move all the kids over to where she was sitting. He then proceeded with some slapstick comedy to keep them all smiling.

At around 5pm, just as some of the girls were starting to hit the meltdown hour, we hopped back in our rented Prius and drove to Bob Hope airport. Maggie had done so well all weekend (with the exception of a tantrum at the Zoo on Saturday, the weekend was tear-free) that she got a Princess coloring book at the airport

and she got to carry our bag on the moving walkway

We were both glad to see Baba when we got home (though I think *he* could have done with a couple more days of peace and quiet)!

fur kids

2007-12-10T19:53:00.001-08:00

DSC03913 fur kids
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Aslan and Sphinx snuggling in the study

2007-12-07T22:27:00.001-08:00

A new baby has recently come home from China, and we got to see her this past Saturday. She is almost 10 months old, and super cute. Maggie was thrilled to meet her

and even let her try out her trike.

It was a good thing Ava and Skye were at the playgroup for Maggie to tend to, because after the little ones left, Maggie had a hard time keeping up with JJ and ViVi!

After running around like banshees for another half hour or so, the girls called it a day and Maggie slept like a rock for almost 3 hours at home!

This worked out well, because we were able to go to an evening movie, and she wasn't tired. We saw Enchanted, which we all loved. Afterwards we got cozy with an ad for "The Water Horse".

On Wednesday we went to Oracle Arena for a Warriors game against the Bucks, who have a new Chinese center. Hence, it was Asian American Heritage night, so there were lion dancers.

FCC-N. Cal and the Marin Chinese Cultural Association purchased a whole section of seats, so it was fun to see some families we knew as well as watching the Warriors beat the tar out of the Bucks.

Thunder even came over to sign t-shirts for the kids.

("He's not scary", Maggie said to me after he handed her her t-shirt.)

Of course we couldn't stay for the whole game, as it was WAY past Maggie's bed time, but we had a good time anyway.

Tomorrow Maggie and I are off to LA for the weekend, so I'd better get packing!

'I did my chores' board

2007-12-07T22:16:00.002-08:00

DSC03881 'I did my chores' board
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

This thing has been a godsend. (Thank you, David and Chiara, for telling us about it!!) It's a rewards system for getting kids to do their daily tasks. It comes with plastic cards, color-coded for time of day, and stickers for various chores (such as "brush teeth", "comb hair", '"eat your vegetables", etc.). I found the black-and-white line-drawing stickers a bit bland, so I found fun clip art for most of the chores (and used our own photos for some of them) and taped them to the cards.

It's very simple, and Maggie caught on right away: Once she does a task, she takes the card and puts it in the "I Did It!" box on the right side of the board. At the end of the day, we total up the number of cards she has, and she earns a token for every 5 cards. The tokens are good for little things (for example, we decided that 1 token is worth 15 minutes of TV time, a 5 minute back rub; for 2 tokens she can drink chocolate milk instead of regular milk, or eat breakfast in her PJs on a school day, 4 tokens to have a picnic dinner in the family room) and big things (15 tokens for a new Thomas and Friends engine). We keep the tokens in little plastic-ware containers. She has a 'spending account' of tokens to use right away, and a 'savings account' to save up for something big. (At first she just spent them as fast as she earned them, but now she's saving a little every day!)

It works really well because it's instantaneous (unlike the marble jar, which seemed to take FOREVER to fill up!). We've been using it for almost a month now, and Maggie typically earns 5+ tokens on a good day, and only 2 or 3 on a bad day. She also has to give up a token if she calls for us after "lights out" (no more "I need a glass of water", "I need to go pee", "I need different music on"...), 2 tokens if she spits, and 3 tokens if she hits or kicks. It's brilliant, and has reduced the daily battles from 7 or 8+ to 1 or 2 (most days). Hallelujah.

Maggie quote of the month - November 2007

2007-11-27T21:02:00.001-08:00

Baba: "What do you want to do when you get older?"

Maggie: "Eat gum."

Four planes in five days - whew!

2007-11-26T21:42:00.001-08:00

After a lovely day with my Mom and best childhood friend, Rose, I flew back to Chicago and met up with Maggie and Edward. We departed Midway really early this morning, and Maggie caught a few ZZZZs on the plane.

Upon returning home, we had some stale bread which we decided to feed the ducks over at the Lagoon.

There were gulls everywhere (perhaps they can't hang out on the seashore due to the oil spill), but this goose was brave enough to eat from Maggie's hand.

We had a tough time trying to feed the ducks amongst all the gulls, so finally Edward lured all the gulls away so Maggie could feed the ducks.

Afterwards, we went to the playground for a few minutes.

We skipped school this afternoon and all took a nap! Tomorrow it is back to the grind.

Class of 1987 Reunion x 2

2007-11-26T21:19:00.001-08:00

Saturday, I flew from Chicago to Providence, rented a Prius (yipee!) and had dinner with my best high school Duranie friend, Lisa, at the restaurant she manages.

I got to see some of her artwork, which was really cool. Then I convinced her to come with me to the Barrington Yacht Club (where I'd attended a school dance at about age 14, I think) for the reunion. Got to see a few old friends (and old crushes!) and photos of everyone's kids, which was fun. One of my classmates (who is a doctor also) is now married to a veterinarian: we were joking about having the youngest kids of anyone there - his kids are 2 and 4 - because of med/vet school, residency, etc. It was kind of amusing to see all the other folks in our class who have 8 and 10 year-olds: most of the moms in the SF area are older, so most of my friends are my age, and their kids are Maggie's age. The average age of first childbirth here in Marin County is 38 - which might account for the fact that we have one of the highest rates of breast cancer of anywhere in the country. (That and the alcohol consumption! "Your poor, rich, drunk mother"... in the words of Judd Nelson in the Breakfast Club). Speaking of alcohol, although I definitely regret over-doing it at the 10-year reunion, the reunion wasn't nearly as much fun without it this time!

Of course I could not partake even a little, as I had to drive up to Massachusetts for the second event of the evening. Immediately upon entering the Thorny Lea Clubhouse, I saw a bunch of my old friends, and (because everyone had been there for a couple of hours, drinking!) everyone greeted me exuberantly. It was pretty fun.

Here are some of my favorite people from my last 2 years of high school:

I hadn't kept in close touch with any of them, so it was nice to catch up.

RI from the air

2007-11-25T21:18:00.001-08:00

DSC03723 RI from the air
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Flying into TF Greene Airport, I remembered how lovely Rhode Island can be.

glee

2007-11-25T21:16:00.001-08:00

DSC09490 glee
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Running at NaiNai and YeYe's house in Indiana

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-24T06:36:00.001-08:00

We are celebrating Thanksgiving in northern Indiana, enjoying (well, I am anyway) the snow flurries. After a busy Tuesday at the VMTH (we had a police dog who needed surgical root canal treatment, a kitty with a jaw fracture to repair, a dog with oronasal fistulas and multiple extractions, and three dogs with possible tumors, one of whom had a CT scan), I was happy to get home before 7pm to pack. We had a not-so-fun overnight flight from Oakland to Chicago (Maggie cried for about 15 minutes, which felt like an eternity - she doesn't usually cry at all on planes!), but once at Midway we picked up our luggage and rental car with no trouble at all, and drove to YeYe and NaiNai's house early Wednesday morning. Maggie has been happy as a clam playing with baby dolls,

Baba's and Uncle Jason's old matchbox cars,

NaiNai's old cell phone,

and watching us play video games on the X-box and Wii.

She loves Uncle Jason

and his boyfriend, Kevin, and is especially pleased with her new Lightning McQueen spoon and fork

and after a teary start (because she was scolded for not being polite), Maggie did very well with her Thanksgiving dinner.

Most of the snow melted off in the morning, but it was chilly (in the high 30s) as we took a walk around the neighborhood to get some fresh air yesterday afternoon.

A few of the trees still have their leaves, which was lovely to see:

After an entertaining game of Scrabble (in which we used all but 5 tiles),

we had tasty Mexican food with Key Lime pie for dessert - yum! (With pecan, pumpkin and key lime pies in the house, it will be a miracle if I fit into my pants for the reunions tonight!)

Now it's early Saturday morning, and I'm on a bus to Midway airport (I love my Verizon broadband access card!). Once I get to Providence, I'm meeting up with a friend from my 1st high school (in RI) whom I haven't seen since our 10-year reunion. Despite not having graduated from that school, I lived there from 5th to 10th grade and it is a pretty small town, so I will probably know almost everyone at that reunion. My second high school (in Mass.) was much bigger (I graduated in a class of 840!), and many of my friends were from the class of '86, so I won't know nearly as many people at that reunion. I did see a handful of familiar names on the RSVP list, though. I'm a little sad that a number of my friends from there won't make it tonight, but over all I am still pretty excited to go to both reunions. Hopefully I will be able to post photos tomorrow evening, while I'm waiting to fly back to Chicago!

Sunday, November 11, 2007: Happy Birthday, Sofia!

2007-11-24T05:52:00.001-08:00

The day didn't start out so well - I don't even remember why Maggie was crying, but she sure wasn't happy that I captured it on film.

I distinctly remember my Mom taking photos of me at this same age - I was crying after my brother had taken my beloved Mary Poppins doll away, and I was just as mad about having my picture taken as Maggie was! I don't remember ever having the mean streak that Maggie has though. Meme may need to correct me, but I don't recall hitting and spitting the way Maggie does. It's all I can do not to smack her back sometimes, but if I can't stay calm and collected at 38 years old, how can I expect her to calm her 3-year-old self down?

Anyway, she did finally calm down

and we were able to get on with our Sunday. We were blessed with a beautiful day, so we headed into the City and met up with Chiara and David for an early picnic lunch at Crissy Field.

The girls were really happy to see each other

and had a grand time playing on the amphitheater steps. Maggie even saved a worm which was stranded on the cement - she proudly ran over to tell me that she had picked him up and put him on the grass. :)

The beach was closed due to the oil spill (although the water looked clean on the SF side of the bay, we saw workers in white haz-mat suits on the Marin coastline)

but we took a nice walk along the path down towards the bridge, where we got some fun photos.

In all, it was a lovely day. This is my favorite photo of the day, capturing David trying to speak with Sofia holding his mouth closed:

It was a precious moment. We were so happy to have spent part of your 4th birthday with you, Sofia!

watching Monsters, Inc.

2007-11-10T22:20:00.001-08:00

DSC03495 watching Monsters, Inc.
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Maggie was really well-behaved today, so she got to watch a movie tonight. We rented Monsters, Inc., which I found pretty amusing. She was frightened at first but after a few minutes she thought the monsters were funny, too.

Maggie at the Steinhart Aquarium

2007-11-04T17:40:00.001-08:00

DSC03468 Maggie at Steinhart Aquarium
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

The Marin County VMA had its annual family/social event at the Steinhart Aquarium this year. We got to watch some sharks being treated with antibiotics, and had a 'behind the scenes' tour. After lunch and a lecture about the new complex being built in Golden Gate Park, which looks like it will be spectacular, we explored the aquarium on our own. Maggie brought along the manta ray Darryl had bought for her during last winter's visit to the Long Beach Aquarium, and had a great time goofing around for photos.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T22:14:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, we had our 2nd annual MarinChinaFamilies Halloween Party. A couple of East Bay families joined in the fun, and the 14 kids (who ranged in age from 2 to 6-ish) had a great time with arts & crafts

decorating cupcakes,

pumpkin & sack races,

and a mini-jumpee

Of course there was the requisite pinata

and our group photo (which almost didn't happen this year, because we did it AFTER the pinata -- oops!)

On the one hand, they all have lollipops in their mouths, but on the other hand, it kept them still for the photo (for the most part)!!

My favorite photo of the day is Edward running around with Lena, Maggie and Hetti in his arms, just before everyone went home:

Yesterday we finally carved the pumpkins we picked up at the Tolay Fall Festival earlier this month. Maggie got to help this year.

And here's our "year by year" photo series of Maggie and me:

2007:

2006:

2005:

(Why is it that I look **much** older this year than in 2005? Could it be because I have a "spirited" child who has since gone through the terrible twos and into the even worse threes? It was so much easier when she was 18 months old...but then again, back then she couldn't tell me all about how "It was so dark, we couldn't see *anything*" the July night we drove from Nashville to Huntsville, and she opened the rental car door and scared me half to death, or how we brought toys and costumes to the "childrens in the orphanage" last month - I love it when she tells stories of things that we've done together...)

Anyway, back to Halloween: our jack o'lanterns turned out pretty well:

though we are certainly not artists, like the guy on our street who did this one:

Tonight, JJ and her parents joined us for some pizza, followed by super efficient trick-or-treating (one of the benefits of living in a high-density neighborhood!).

The girls were pretty excited to realize that they could go to EVERY house and get candy!!

We saw some cute costumes

and some scary ones

but the highlight was our neighbor's new kitten, dressed up (much to her chagrin) like a chicken:

Afterwards, Maggie surveyed the spoils proudly:

She gets to keep 10 pieces (and, alas, I had to limit myself to 10 pieces as well, if I want to fit into my pants for my high school reunion in less than a month!). The rest will be devoured in no time by the doctors and nurses at the pet hospital!

Maggie goes to the Dentist

2007-10-22T21:47:00.001-07:00

On October 17, while I was in mid-air on my way to Minneapolis, Maggie went to the dentist! She had a routine cleaning done last month, but needed to go back for a sealant (despite avoiding juice, raisins, and other caries-inducing foods, she has an early cavity). Having watched me work on patients numerous times and pretending to work on each other's teeth at home, Maggie did really well.

While in Minneapolis, I purchased some Hello Kitty scrubs for Maggie, which she loves. Last night she was happy to play doctor with Sphinx, who is the most patient cat in the world (no pun intended)!

She's been watching me give Aslan his subcutaneous fluids, so here she is pretending to give Sphinx a "sub-Q" injection:

To give poor Sphinx a break, I brought down some of Maggie's smaller stuffed animals, with which she was happy to play and pose:

Is it really the middle of October already?

2007-10-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

October is just flying by! I've been preparing for the conference which I am currently attending in Minneapolis and trying to catch up at work after being in China for 2 weeks last month. So, here's the skinny on Maggie's activities:

Saturday, October 6 - we had a mini-reunion of our adoption travel group at Gilroy Gardens. Jackie & JJ carpooled with Maggie and me - traffic was a breeze, so we got to Gilroy about an hour early! We took advantage of the time by eating a fantastic breakfast at the Black Bear Diner.

When Natalie and Bella arrived at Gilroy Gardens, Bella was a little shy but Natalie jumped right into the fray with Maggie and JJ (who are always on the rowdy side)!

Bella definitely seemed more comfortable with Natalie, whom she sees on a regular basis.

Maggie got to go on her first non-carousel ride, and she and JJ had a blast!

After going on the tiny carousel,

the girls ran around the pond like whirling dervishes:

Then we met up with Laura and Manami, had some food, and got some "treasures" from the Halloween Treasure hunt.

Waiting in line for the train, some of the monkeys lived up to their Chinese Zodiac signs:

We had to call it a day after a ride on the big carousel, but we'll be back next spring, I'm sure.

Saturday evening I met up with Hetti & Lena's mom for a "girls' night", which was a blast. We attended the premier of "Rendition" at the Mill Valley Film Festival (after which the director answered questions - how cool is that?) and then had some amazing pizza at Small Shed Flatbreads. (We need to do that more often, Judy!!)

On Sunday, we hiked up to the Headlands to watch the air show.

The highlight, of course, was seeing the Blue Angels,

and at one point they flew right over us!

I wasn't fast enough with the camera and nearly missed getting a photo!

It was a gorgeous day, and we were happy to have hiked out to our prime viewing spot rather than fighting the horrific traffic the show induced.

Monday was Columbus Day, and while I worked, Edward and Maggie had a great time at Hetti & Lena's 4th birthday party in Yerba Buena Gardens.

\

Among other activities, they played Red Light, Green Light

and Duck, Duck, Goose.

Of course, everyone's favorite part was the cupcakes:

This little girl's chocolate frosting goatee gets my vote for best photo of the day!

On Wednesday, Maggie had her first gymnastics class at MEGA (Marin Elite Gymnastics Academy, which makes it sound much fancier than it really is!). After a few uncertain moments at the beginning of class, she was soon completing her first tumble track

doing tuck swings,

and learning how to do a handstand (with help, of course).

She enjoyed class, so we enrolled her for Monday mornings.

Saturday night after dinner we had a special treat: ice cream cones at home! Maggie wanted "pink" ice cream, and since we only had vanilla bean, I obliged her request with pink sprinkles. She was tickled...well, you know - PINK!

Saturday was cold and rainy, and we spent the day at the YMCA and shopping. The weather was gorgeous on Sunday, when we headed up to Sonoma County for the first annual Tolay Fall Festival. We played in the hay maze,

took a hay ride to select a pumpkin (or two!)

petted some horses, goats, ducks and chickens

painted a pumpkin, watched bees making honey, hung out with the scarecrows

learned how to card and spin wool, made vegetable stamp art

took some silly photos

played in the kiddie corral

and even entered a seed-spitting contest!

We also ate some of the best pumpkin pie I've ever had! It was a really nice way to spend the day. (The festival is running next weekend, too, in case anyone reading this wants to go!!)

Now I am in Minnesota, envying the fall foliage and the lovely, large, abundantly treed lots on which the homes sit and getting a little homesick for New England (as I do each autumn). Now, Edward always teases me that I talk about high school when I've been drinking, so I must state for the record that I did not have any alcohol with dinner! (Although the margaritas were awfully tempting!) But my 20-year high school reunion(s) are approaching, and I've been catching up with old friends this week. It has been great to reconnect with people who were once a huge part of my life.

I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

October 3, 2007 - Maggie's musical clock

2007-10-10T21:56:00.002-07:00

DSC02459 Maggie's musical clock
Originally uploaded by Maggie Lin Chen.

Meme sent Chen Chen this Fisher Price musical teaching clock. I used to have one just like it! Maggie loves it.

While we were in China, it turned from Summer to Autumn, and hardly any of Maggie's cool-weather clothes from last year still fit her. So, I ordered a bunch of stuff from Gymboree online, which came today. Maggie loves this green velour dress (and matching leggings). The sandals aren't so great for chilly weather, but try telling *her* that!

I'm almost afraid to say it, but....

2007-09-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

...Maggie has been really good since we returned home! She was a little hyperactive in preschool yesterday, but I can imagine how excited she was to see Wei Ping. Ditto tonight at dinner, i.e., she was a little over-animated, but I had just come home from my first long day of work in SF and we were having Mexican food for the first time in 3 weeks. :)

Tonight, when getting ready for bed, she didn't fuss at all for her toothbrushing, lotion, or getting into her PJ's. When I told her she was doing a great job and asked her how she got to be *so good* at getting ready for bed (which used to be a nightly battle), she whispered in my ear "Because if I do a good job, I get a marble!".

So maybe the idea of positive reinforcement isn't dead yet! In China, we drew a star for every act of generosity or kindness she displayed (plenty of stars earned in Beijing, none in Wuhan!). When we got home, we gave her a marble for each of her stars. Perhaps seeing all of them at once made it more clear for her: the better behaved you are, the more marbles you get! (When the marble jar is full, she gets a new puzzle, or we go to a movie, or some other reward she enjoys.)

It's only been three days, but hey, I'm counting my blessings while I can!

Out and About in Wuhan - 2005 and 2007

2007-09-25T20:49:00.002-07:00

Since I didn't get to post photos while we were exploring Wuhan, now that we're home I thought I'd post the comparison photos from our adoption trip and this recent trip.

Outside the Best Western Mayflower Hotel:

(Note: for that last photo of all of us, I wrapped the legs of the Gorillapod around the railing. If the Gorillapod had not held, the camera would have been dashed on the street below! Hooray for the Gorillapod!)

Wuhan street scene:

Then:

Now:

Pedestrian overpass near the Friendship Store:

Then - Stroller races with Maya and Meilani!

Now:

Pizza Hut!!

Then - With Meme and NaiNai:

Now:

It's hard to believe how much the city has changed in just over 2 years. We really enjoyed being out and about in Wuhan, and hope we get to return again someday!

We're home!

2007-09-24T22:07:00.001-07:00

Our last 2 days in Wuhan were exhausting; on Thursday morning we finished painting, although color errors in the huge library led to repainting a blue stripe not once but twice (and yes, once was my fault). After our final meal in the CWI dining hall (thank goodness we brought a suitcase full of Clif bars, nuts, and oatmeal!), we were going to go sight-seeing, but a few people wanted to stay to finish up the library, and we didn't feel right about leaving, so we stayed, too, but basically did busy work all afternoon like scraping paint off of the tile. Not very rewarding work. (Then it turned out on Friday that the library wasn't ready for the kids' party anyway....)

Thursday afternoon we went for a brief swim at the Renaissance pool, then we took a bus ride to a restaurant for our final group dinner. Maggie fell asleep on the bus, so we decided to take a cab back to the hotel and get room service. :)

The preschool teachers and nannies did the finishing touches on all the rooms, cleaning them top to bottom and setting up all the furniture and toys on Thursday night. Friday morning, we all put on our Half The Sky t-shirts for the finale of our time in Wuhan.

At the CWI, after we unpacked the dress-up costumes we'd brought from home (one family had collected dozens of beautiful costumes from their daughter's school, which was fabulous!), group photos were taken. Then we sat through a big presentation by the Wuhan Civil Affairs minister, the Hubei Provincial Civil Affairs officer, the CWI director, and HTS founder Jenny Bowen, who presented each of the volunteers with a Certificate of Honor, a plate from the city of Wuhan, and a wooden comb with the Yellow Crane Tower etched on it for each of the girls. This was done in the infant nurture room, and the poor nannies had to sit there with the babies on their laps throughout the presentations. It had to be overwhelming for the babies.

Finally, we got to see the 10-room preschool all set up with the chairs and tables we'd built and painted, all the toys we'd lugged from the U.S., and the bikes, trikes and wagons laboriously assembled by HTS volunteers. The kids got to try on the dress up clothes and play with all the toys. We're not allowed to write about the kids individually, but there were quite a few who captured our hearts with their sparkling personalities. There was lots of junk food being given out to the kids. In spite of the sugar high combined with the sensory overload, Maggie did pretty well, and played with the dolls with some of the CWI kids. As Maggie played with puzzles, we were briefly interviewed by a TV crew (who actually asked "Do you love your daughter?" - can you believe that?). Maggie did not like the attention from the TV crew and hardly looked at them, also refusing to speak to them. (In fact, throughout the trip, whenever Chinese-speaking folks would approach, she would cling to me, refusing to make eye contact or to speak any Chinese.)

We did finally get to see the Yellow Crane Tower, although we had less than half an hour to get up, take some photos, and get back down.

The view from the top was fabulous.

You can see the Wuhan Children's Welfare Institute (red-roofed buildings):

On the bus ride back to the hotel, Maggie sat on Julia's lap, and...

fell asleep!

We managed to finalize our packing, get checked out, and get on the bus to the airport for our flight to Beijing without waking her.

On the plane, she and Anna played with their loveys:

When the girl is not crashed out, she's going 90 miles an hour. And not always being nice about it! She had her moments on the plane, and when we got back to Beijing we were all so tired we just said a quick goodbye to the HTS volunteers and crew and headed up to our room.

Saturday morning, we went to the Friendship Store and Silk Road to do some shopping and had some sorbet at 31 Flavors before catching a cab to the airport. Maggie slept a little in the cab, but was hyperactive during the prolonged wait (an hour delay to board and then another half hour delay to take off).

While we waited to board, a nice elderly couple began asking about her (in Chinese); I replied as best I could that she was Chinese, we were Americans, and that she was our daughter, from Xiaogan. Maggie again refused to speak to them, although she did make eye contact with the older woman and I think she nodded once or twice to a question she was asked.

Finally on the airplane, for whatever reason I found myself in tears. Partially because the trip overall was somewhat of a disappointment, in that I don't really feel like our presence will make a big difference for the kids in the CWI. Don't get me wrong, Half The Sky does great work, and the Infant Nurture Room and Pre-school are beautiful. But the volunteer work crews really seem to be more of a photo-op frivolity than a get-it-done necessity, and I feel like our money (airfare, lodging, meals we didn't eat) would have been better spent sponsoring a nanny or otherwise going directly to the kids. (I'm sure Edward will have more to say on this aspect of the trip.) I'm sure I was crying also because Maggie just wore me out and I felt so powerless to rein her in, and because I want Maggie to have a sister but am not sure I can handle another one!

Interestingly, the last 9 hours of the flight were relatively easy, and yesterday, Maggie had a perfect day. Jet lag and all, she was smiling, pleasant to be around, no attitude, no time outs, no tears. So maybe the trip really was more than she could handle, as several of you have suggested in comments and private e-mails to me. (And I appreciate knowing that her "acting out" is somewhat normal, so thank you for sharing!) Sometimes I forget that she is still a baby of sorts. She seems so precocious in some regards, perhaps I expect her to be more mature than she is capable of being. At any rate, it will be interesting to see how she does over the next few weeks, and to see if what I've read in "Raising Your Spirited Child" helps make it easier.

Photos Maggie took in China

2007-09-24T19:33:00.001-07:00

The hotel carpet in Beijing:

Part of Maggie's first series, taken in the Beijing airport, waiting to fly to Wuhan:

Fiona:

Tracey:

Ingrid:

Katie, Ally and Anna:

Debbie and Maddie:

Series #2, at dinner in Wuhan:

Self portraits:

photos from Wuhan - September 16 & 17

2007-09-23T22:09:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

2007-09-19T06:39:00.001-07:00

Today we spent the entire day painting. We are exhausted! Although we had a great time out and about in Wuhan last night, when we got back to the room Maggie was back in her defiant mode. (I think I forgot to mention that she scratched two of the other volunteers' girls while at the SWI on Monday, then scratched me in the face on Monday evening when I was trying to get her dressed for dinner. Later on Monday night, after she fell asleep in the bus on the way home from dinner, I decided to wake her at about 10pm so she could empty her bladder. She's had "accidents" at both the Russian River house and in Beijing, and we didn't want another wet bed. Well, despite my attempt at gently awaking her to use the potty, a screaming fit ensued, and it took me nearly a half hour to get her to pee. It was ridiculous, and I didn't know what else to do but sit there on the floor, holding her on the toilet until she went, with her screaming almost the whole time. But it was purely a battle of wills, as I KNEW she had to pee! I felt like such a horrid mother. Why didn't she just GO??)

Anyway, back to last night: after Baba's feelings were hurt by Maggie's back-talk and spitting (and after 2 warnings of the possible consequence of her continued bad behavior), Baba was so sad that HE needed to sleep with Maggie's sleep dog. Boy was she sad. She cried for a while, but knew ultimately that she was the one responsible, so she didn't have a temper tantrum. I felt a little guilty listening to her sad whimpers, but I'll tell you what - she was SO MUCH better behaved today. No back talk. No scratching the other girls. No spitting or hitting. And no tears all day, for the first time in at least a week. You can see her puffy eyelids in the photo entitled "Happy to have sleep dog back"; the photo was taken this morning after she got to say hello to sleep dog after her tearful night without him.

We attempted to eat with the group this evening. While we waited for the food to arrive, Maggie occupied herself taking photos of the other HTS volunteers (some of whom have taken to making silly faces for the camera!!). Once the food arrived, there were very few vegetarian options, so we decided to head back to our (new) room and order in. (We had to change rooms because of a non-functional drain in the shower which had not been addressed. We are just one floor above where we were previously, in room 1702, so the layout is identical and the view is slightly better.) we ordered penne napolitana, a large green salad, apple pie a la mode and lemon cheesecake. Heavenly!

I seem to have caught a cold (thought the sore throat was from breathing the polluted air, but now am congested as well) so I'm hitting the hay early tonight. Zai jian!

Hello from Wuhan!

2007-09-18T09:10:00.002-07:00

Help! Blogger seems to be blocked here in Wuhan! I am trying to blog via e-mail, so if someone could send me an e-mail to let me know that this has shown up, I'd appreciate it. Also, you'll have to go to the flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/maggielinchen/) to see photos. It's odd - from Beijing, I could post to blogger (though cannot read the blog - or anyone else's blogs), but could not always see the photos I uploaded onto flickr. From here, I can see the photos on flickr, but can't get into blogger. Bizarre.

Anyway, where did I leave off? We left the hotel in Beijing at 7:30am, and there was almost no traffic to the airport, so we arrived a little early. It was almost eery how empty the airport was when we got there! Group check-in was a little chaotic, but everyone got their own boarding passes and passports back, so other than having to handle all the luggage and boxes ourselves, it was pretty easy. While we were waiting at the gate to board, Maggie took photos of many of the Half The Sky volunteers and staff (these are titled "Maggie's portrait series"). Most of the photos came out pretty well!!

The flight was uneventful, just a little over 2 hours. Maggie slept for about an hour, I'd guess. Edward took some photos from the plane and I tried to read a little more of "Raising Your Spirited Child".

We arrived in Wuhan, collected all the luggage and boxes of toys, and got on a bus (with some of the boxes inside the bus since they wouldn't fit underneath!). We took lots of photos as we drove through Wuhan. Some things were familiar, but the city has grown and changed quite a bit since we were here in May 2005.

As we waited in the lobby for the group to get checked in, Maggie and some of the other girls explored the waterfall and played a little. We took a photo or two on the sofa in the lobby, and as Maggie started to get rowdy again, she bumped her head on the coffee table (photo entitled "tearful Maggie").

It was about 3pm when we got to our room. Anticipating another less-than-satisfying group dinner (planned for 5:30pm), the first thing we did (after we stopped "ooohing" and "aahing" at the size of our room!) was order room service: grilled veggie panini and margarita pizza. Mmmm! Boy, was that fabulous.

At 5:30pm we all met in the lobby and the kids went off with Ayi (more tears from Maggie) as the work crew met with Jenny Bowen (founder of Half The Sky) for about an hour, discussing the significance of this project (it is the first of 31 collaborative Half The Sky/Blue Sky institutes - more on that later) and our role in it.

We rejoined the kids, and Edward took Maggie up to our room so she could watch "Cars" and the remaining adults could enjoy their meals. We went upstairs to the hotel's Chinese restaurant for dinner. There weren't enough tables all in one room for everyone, so we were split into two groups, which was less than ideal. The food was actually pretty good, although I only had a little bit because I'd eaten a large panino a few hours before!

Monday morning we went to the SWI, where we had a tour and met some of the children. The population of children living in the SWI was clearly almost entirely special-needs. The pre-school and school-aged kids sang a few songs for us. Some of the school-aged kids have so much personality! It was really sweet to meet them.

We spent the rest of the day working on the new space. We are basically remodeling several rooms of one wing to be the new school rooms, infant nurture room, and library. The initial building has already been completed, so we are doing finishing work: painting walls, assembling and painting furniture, and assembling toys. Edward and I spent the morning assembling Ikea tables and chairs for the school rooms. Lunch was in the SWI cafeteria. We spent the afternoon finishing assembly and painting the tables. In the evening there was a banquet in a nice restaurant across town, hosted by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Wuhan. We left fairly early, as Maggie had not gotten a nap and was very tired!

Today (Tuesday) we got to see the new Family Village nearby (in which 12 special needs children will live with their new families while still receiving support and services from the SWI and HTS). Although we'd hoped to witness the joining of the children with their new parents, it was still special to see the new homes the kids would be in and to meet a couple of the parents.

Back at the SWI, we finished the second coat of paint on the tables and helped paint the chairs (much more tedious work!). We have been getting to know some of the other volunteers, which include an adoptive mom from the Netherlands, a young woman from Australia, and a gentleman from Chicago in addition to U.S. adoptive families from NY, NJ, N. Carolina & California. There is also a team here from A Child's Right (http://www.a-childs-right.org/) installing a water purification system.

There has been media presence both days so far, both print (reporter and photographer) and television news crews have photographed and filmed us. George, one of the crew from A Child's Right who actually helped with a lot of the toy assembly, had his photo in today's paper! We were forewarned about this, because of this SWI being the launch of the Blue Sky program, which is a big deal.

About Blue Sky: In the past, social welfare institutes (SWIs) were all run by local governments, with variable quality of care. Some provinces, like Hubei, have budgeted fairly well and manage to provide excellent care for orphaned children in their SWIs. In others, the children receive basic care at best: food and shelter and little else. From the HTS website:

Blue Sky is a new government initiative which promises, over the next five years, to create, replace or upgrade 300 children's welfare institutions, also making services (rehabilitation, medical care and special education) available to poor families in the community, in order that, according to President Hu JinTao, "orphans and disabled childrencan live under the same blue skyas us all."

Half The Sky will collaborate with the Chinese government to create 31 model centers throughout China, upon which the others will be based. (Here are all the details: http://www.halfthesky.org/journal/?p=63)

We bowed out of the group dinner tonight and headed back to the area of Wuhan we'd gotten to know a little bit during our last trip. We took some photos in front of the hotel where we stayed (the Best Western Mayflower hotel) and along the nearby street where we spent some of our time. There is a brand new building on the corner of the street where the hotel is and the street where the Friendship Store, Pizza Hut and McDonald's are. It has a facade of constantly changing lights which is just beautiful! Combined with the other colorful lights on the buildings, it makes the whole area seem that much more vibrant. We stopped to chat with some local folks and their daughters (it seems to me that there are a lot more families with girls visible in Wuhan than last time we were here... yipee!) and then ate at Pizza Hut, where we'd had memorable meals with some of our travel mates in 2005. (Hello, Michele, Darryl, Justin and Maya! We wish you were here!!) On our way out, we met a newly-formed adoptive family from South Carolina. Their new 15-month-old daughter, from Daye (like a Bay Area family we know!), is just beautiful. How lovely to be able to meet them on their first day as a family!

It is now late at night (after midnight) and we have another busy day tomorrow, so I'm going to sign off. I hope this goes through to the blog, or I will have wasted two hours typing and uploading photos!! :)

Saturday, September 15, 2007 - last day in Beijing

2007-09-15T14:28:00.001-07:00

Maggie has been such a trooper going to all of the historical sites, we decided to make today all about her. After breakfast, we took a taxi to the Uptown Mall on the other side of Beijing, where, on the 4th floor, there is a place called "A-Z Kids". I'd read about it in a magazine I picked up at Subway (a publication in English edited by an ex-pat American, designed for parents). It's a giant indoor playground.

There's even a real car (a tiny two-seater, with doors that open like a DeLorean) the kids can play in/on:

Maggie preferred the toy cars she could actually "drive", and was frequently in the Little Tikes police car (or pretending to be pit crew for it!)

Her second-favorite activity was painting.

She had her "serious face" on throughout her time in the arts & crafts section, even when a bigger girl came over to paint with her.

After painting, there was a loud, "party" type activity in another room, where kids were dancing and racing on bouncy toys. We went over there for a few minutes, but Maggie didn't want to dance or race, so we came back into the main section, where Maggie quickly discovered the "supermarket". She loved playing cashier, scanning each piece of merchandise, typing in the total, and giving the "customer" a pretend receipt!

After she saw a couple of kids break out of a tower, she wanted to do the same.

We did it one more time

before she was back in the police car.

Then we went over to the "Fun Battle" zone, where the kids could shoot objects (and Baba!) with soft rubber balls.

Then there was a maze of tunnels, slides, and other places to crawl and run.

After one final trip in the police car,

we headed home. On the way, we passed the new CCTV building under construction:

It will look like this when finished.

After her exciting morning, Maggie slept (without moving an inch!) for a couple of hours:

Tonight we have dinner with the other Half The Sky volunteers, and early tomorrow morning we leave for Wuhan. Zai jian, Beijing!!

Friday, September 14, 2007 - in and around Beijing

2007-09-15T06:24:00.001-07:00

We really wanted to see the Ming Tombs' Sacred Way, for which there are apparently no tour buses (other than those going to the Badaling section of the Great Wall). One of the women in our volunteer group mentioned that she'd hired a car and driver to see some of the sights, so we decided to do the same. The hotel's concierge arranged it for us, and the cost for the entire day was only RMB100 (about US$13) more than taking a taxi just to the Ming Tombs.

We started with the new Olympic Stadium being constructed on Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, officially called the National Stadium but commonly referred to as the Bird's Nest due to its interesting design.

Go here to see details of its construction and what it will look like when complete.

We then drove out to the Ming Tombs. It was another rainy day, but there were still quite a few tourists out and about (including ourselves!), and the place looked beautiful even in the drizzle.

The Sacred Way is designed to represent a "Divine Road" by which the Emperor, thought to be a "son of heaven", would return to the heavens upon his death. It is lined with stone statues of animals and people, each having a unique symbolic significance. Maggie was a little frightened of this one:

These particular statues were created, each from a single block of granite, in 1540 AD. It's really pretty amazing. Of course, to Maggie it was just fun because the camel is featured in the movie "Big Bird In China":

I've always been partial to elephants, so I had to get in on this photo:

More Big Bird for comparison:

Lisa Ou, the actress who played the little girl in the movie, Xiao Foo, is in her early 30s now. She knew no English at the time of filming, just learned and recited the lines. She posted some comments about the movie on the amazon site for the DVD.

Considering these statues were carved five-hundred years ago, they still look remarkably good.

Our final stop of the day was the Temple of Heaven. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests has been restored, and is just beautiful:

The grounds and other buildings were also lovely.

I appreciated the intricacies of the carvings on the rooftops.

Despite the rain, there were a LOT of tourists there, and Maggie got fussy as we waited to see the Imperial Vault of Heaven.

She was happier once Baba picked her up,

but I couldn't help thinking "This is what we waited to see?" when we finally reached the Imperial Vault of Heaven and were able to see inside.

Ok, so it is pretty remarkable that this was built in 1420. And the marble on which the buildings sit is beautiful. I would have liked to have experienced the Echo Steps and the Echo Wall, but with several hundred people all in the same place, it wasn't going to happen.

Like most of the rest of what we've seen, a good bit of the Temple of Heaven was being restored. Edward (being 6'4" tall) snapped this photo over the top of one of the construction barriers:

It turned out to be one of the more interesting photos of the day!

On the drive back to the hotel, we admired the gardens along side one of the main roads

although the windows of the car were so darkly tinted that we had to roll them down to see much of anything! Being a passenger in a car in Beijing is quite a unique experience. It is definitely "every man for himself". There were innumerable instances where I would have been screaming and giving the finger to other drivers, but we never saw one example of road rage. There was certainly abundant use of horns, but more in the "Hey, I'm here" kind of manner than the "Thanks a lot, a**hole!!" manner in which I am accustomed to using my own car's horn.

I guess it is all about expectations: I expect people to be polite, and when they aren't, I get mad. Here, they expect people NOT to be polite, so it's no surprise when someone cuts you off or doesn't let you into the lane of traffic into which you're trying to move. I suppose if I just adjusted my expectations of people, I would be a lot mellower. And to some degree, that is happening as I get older. But a nasty encounter on the road can boil my blood, a ridiculously slow cashier can annoy the heck out of me, and a rude client can still ruin my day. So I guess I have a long way to go. But I'm not ready to write all humans off as "stupid jerks until proven otherwise" just yet.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

After a meal of Subway sandwiches and McDonald's french fries (yes, I know...), Edward and Maggie revisited a favorite old game:

May 2005:

and it wasn't long until we were all sound asleep.

Thursday, September 13, 2007 - hiking on The Great Wall

2007-09-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

Alas, our big day opened with an early-morning thunderstorm! It was exciting to see the lightning (which is pretty rare in San Rafael), but we were a little disappointed that the views we'd imagined would not be ours today.

We had breakfast in our room, and met our guide, Lee (from the Great Wall Adventure Club), in the hotel lobby at 7am. We expected a bus or a mini-van at least, with a few other tourists, so were surprised when a driver picked us up in a private car! It was a little scary, driving with great celerity along the wet road, frequently venturing into on-coming traffic to pass other cars. We passed no less than three traffic accidents

and Maggie had no car seat or seat belt, so she was buckled in with Baba:

.

Thus began our adventure, and we weren't even at the Wall yet!!

It was raining when we got there, so instead of on my back, Maggie was in the Ergo carrier on my belly, which made it easier to keep her dry under the umbrella which shielded us both from the drizzle.

The Ergo carrier is fabulous - I wish I'd had one when we first got Maggie. It has been easy to adjust for both Edward and myself to wear, and we've found both the back and front positions quite comfortable, even with Maggie at 30 lbs. It was, I must say, a little over-ambitious of me to think I could hike 4 hours on the Great Wall with her, though! Just getting up to the Wall at Jinshanling was an onerous task! (Can you see me perspiring in the photo?)

We were alone on the wall when we reached it, which was perfect. We'd planned the 10K hike from Jinshanling to Simatai purposely to avoid the crowds at Badaling (which is closer to Beijing), and also to see the Wall in both restored and original condition. The Wall was breathtaking, particularly in the mist and rain.

It is even more spectacular in person than can be imagined from photos and paintings. Its sheer extent is astounding. Even on flat ground, the achievement of its construction would be herculean. But given the terrain on which it was built, it is almost unfathomable that such a task could be accomplished.

It was difficult not to stop every 30 seconds just to say "Oh, my gosh!" and take photos (and also to rest! There were so many stairs to climb!).

After about a half-hour, we took our first break at a fortress, which offered these dramatic views:

Edward took over the task of carrying Maggie, and we pressed onward, with Lee at the helm, so to speak.

The wall stretched on as far as we could see, traversing the jagged peaks as if they were part of the natural design of the mountains.

Much of the Jinshanling to Simatai section has not been restored since its completion in 1579, which made it that much more impressive.

Some sections were rather treacherous

but we managed the steep climbs without overwhelming difficulty (just some pretty sore gluteal muscles!). Our efforts were rewarded with amazing views from the one of the highest fortresses along the section:

After a few more steep descents

and ascents

we were finally able to rest our fatigued legs for a moment!

We heard a noisy tour group approaching, so we decided to press on to the next fortress before having lunch.

On the way, Lee explained that the bricks were inscribed with the location and date of their fabrication. These bricks were made in 1579.

I really enjoyed seeing the un-restored sections, although it made the walk a little more challenging!

At last, we took off our packs and enjoyed an extended break.

Maggie enjoyed running free for a little while, munching on Luna bars, almonds and an apple.

The rain let up, leaving the Wall and mountains cloaked in mist.

Then we were off again, this time mostly downhill, towards Simatai.

This section was in the most disrepair

but it made for really interesting hiking. The rain had made the stones slippery, so the descent was more difficult than the ascent had been, and we each slipped once or twice. Even Lee, our guide, who does this hike 3 or 4 times a month, had a misstep or two along the way! He was very patient with us, obliging my request to stop for photos every few minutes.

Edward took his share of photos, as well,

and was particularly interested in the suspension bridge near the Simatai entrance to the Wall.

The reservoir over which the bridge extended was quite lovely

but the height of the bridge over the water made Maggie a little nervous.

She got through it by thinking about the donkey in Shrek. Until she remembered the part where the dragon breathes fire on the bridge and it falls down! But we made it across with only a minimum of whining, just a little bit of hand-holding.

Thus ended our journey on the Great Wall, an amazing and exhausting adventure which will not soon be forgotten!

Maggie and I napped in the car on the long drive (2.5 hours) back to the hotel, where we showered, rested,

(note the date on Edward's t-shirt: nine years ago today!) and Maggie watched some of Big Bird In China.

At 6pm met Lee in the lobby one last time, so he could show us to a little vegetarian restaurant he knew of. After a little trouble catching a taxi (again!), we finally arrived at the little restaurant on a small side road.

We had a tasty dinner and then walked back to the main road to catch a cab.

We topped the fantastic day off with ice cream from Haagen Dazs, which (at RMB75 for three small cups) was more expensive than our dinner (RMB70)!!

It was worth it, though, especially because Maggie had "earned" it by behaving so nicely all day long!

It was a wonderful ending to an unforgettable day.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - Tian'anmen Square and Bei Hai Park

2007-09-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

We started the day with breakfast in the hotel. Some folks were doing Tai Chi outside by the waterfalls.

After breakfast, we took a taxi up to Tian'anmen Square to catch a tourist bus to the Ming Tombs, but were told there weren't any buses there. This struck us as odd, because all of the tour books we have mention that nearly all the tourist buses stop there. So we asked another person, who told us that there is only one bus per day, which leaves anytime between 8:30 and 10:30am, depending on how quickly the tickets sell! Since it was 11am by then, we decided just to stay nearby. We explored Tian'anmen Square, which is immense.

Mao's mausoleum is undergoing renovation, so is closed to the public. Not sure we would have wanted to go in anyway.

We didn't feel like going in the China National Museum, either, although one of the guidebooks says it's worthwhile.

The neatest thing about Tian'anmen Square, in my opinion, is that they are building replicas of many of China's famous landmarks in the square. Presumably they will be ready before the Olympics next summer, and hopefully they will stay as a permanent feature of the otherwise somewhat formidable square.

After a final family photo in front of Tian'an Men, taken by some friendly Canadians,

we walked up to Bei Hai park, north of the Forbidden City. We found a quiet spot where the moat surrounds the Forbidden City, which was special.

Bei Hai park was beautiful and quiet, in sharp contrast to the busy street it borders on the south.

Maggie was all smiles as she invented the Chinese version of La Bocca della Verita (The Mouth Of Truth),

petted a fearsome-looking wu gui,

and horsed around with Baba:

We enjoyed a picnic lunch in this pavilion

before heading down to a ferry to the other side of the park,

where we were dismayed to find that Xiao Xitian Temple is closed for renovations.

We had wanted to go inside, particularly to see the brightly painted sculptures. But, the park was beautiful and we enjoyed our time there anyway.

Also, we did find the Nine Dragons Screen on our way out of the park,

which was interesting in that it is the only one of the 3 Nine Dragons Screens in China with 9 dragons on both sides of the screen. It is over 200 years old and still has its original colors. The area around it is being worked on, plus there were 2 or 3 tour groups descending on the location, so we only stayed for a minute.

After our difficulty catching a taxi yesterday, we enlisted the help of a traffic cop and got a taxi easily!

We were hot and sticky after a day of walking around, so we decided to take a swim at the hotel's pool. It turned out to be one of the strangest and most uncomfortable events! First, we were the only people in the pool areas. Then, the assistants (there were 3 or 4 of them!) insisted that we wear swimming caps (except for Edward, who is nearly bald). Finally, it was just so awkward to try to have a pleasant, relaxing swim with a gaggle of people standing by! It was nice to cool off, but definitely not like swimming at, say, the Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo (where half our travel group would congregate and play)!

After a shower back in our room, we wandered off to find some dinner, and were happy to come across a Pizza Hut not 15 minutes from the hotel!

With fond memories of the Wuhan Pizza Hut in our minds, we entered. The service wasn't great but the pizza sure was good!

Tomorrow it's off to the Great Wall, for a 10K (6.2 mile) hike from Jinshanling to Simatai. We leave the hotel at 7am!

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - Exploring the Forbidden City

2007-09-12T05:14:00.001-07:00

We all slept well and awoke around 7am. The time adjustment was much easier than last time (when Edward and I arrived in Hong Kong, it was 10am, so we had to force ourselves to try to stay awake all day, which was not easy! It was great arriving in Beijing in the evening, so we could go right to bed and wake up at a relatively normal hour the next day). We set off on foot for the Forbidden City, about a 2-mile walk from the hotel.

Maggie started out in the carrier on Baba's back, then I took over for a little while. Then, as we approached the Forbidden City, she walked for a while. The walk was not difficult, but it was made more strenuous by the high level of particulates in the air; our throats were sore within minutes of walking outdoors. (It's surprising that Beijing was approved as an Olympic host city with this degree of pollution, actually. The poor long-distance runners will do more damage to their lungs running here than if they smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for a week.)

We posed for the requisite photo in front of Tian'an Men ("The Gate of Heavenly Peace") before entering the Forbidden City.

We noticed we were getting a lot of looks from local folks, but were surprised when one of them asked if we would take our photo with him! His girlfriend took a photo with her camera, then we asked her to take one with ours as well!

There seemed to be much curiosity about Maggie, although she also became an excuse for peddlers to approach us with offers to guide us to the Great Wall. However, there were also people genuinely interested in her/us, who smiled and said "piao liang" ("Beautiful") or "Jong-guo-ren haiza" ("Chinese girl"). This gentleman even let her take a photo of him:

Highlights of our visit to the Forbidden City:

Seeing relics from ancient China, like these Qing Dynasty soldiers' uniforms:

and this pillow from the Song Dynasty:

Of course, the buildings themselves were also really cool

as were the animal sculptures:

The most enjoyable portion was the Imperial Gardens, which were beautiful.

There were fishes to look at

and new friends found

As evening neared and we made our way back to Tian'an Men, we set the self-timer for a family portrait in front of the Palace of Heavenly Purity:

We caught the tail-end of a basketball game on the way out

and, unable to find a taxi stand, made the long trek back to the hotel as the sun descended in the grey sky.

Edward's tired feet were not finished for the evening, as we sent him to Subway for some sandwiches before calling it a night. Maggie and Edward were asleep by 8:30pm, and I nearly fell asleep uploading photos, finally hitting the hay by 9:30.

September 9 & 10 - en route to Beijing

2007-09-12T04:03:00.001-07:00

With Maggie in her new Ergo carrier and a luggage cart, we made it from the Airporter drop-off into the International Terminal with only one trip!

Checking in was pretty easy, and we were happy to get the baggage and boxes off our hands.

Our plane:

Maggie did really well on the 11-hour flight. She ate a couple of meals,

watched "Cars" on her new DVD player,

and took 2 naps of about 1-2 hours each.

Baba got some neat photos as we flew over north-eastern Russia:

I took advantage of the relatively quiet time during the flight to read about half of "Raising Your Spirited Child" (some of which made me say "So THAT's why Maggie does X,Y,Z!" I haven't gotten to the part about how to discipline her more effectively yet...

Thankfully, Maggie was more manageable than expected, and was only fussy for a few minutes upon waking from her second nap. Luckily there was only one hour to go on the flight, but we were all pretty tired:

Approaching Beijing, I thought "This may be the last blue sky we see for a while":

After a weird episode in the bathroom at the airport (Maggie was afraid of the toilet, even though it was a Western-style toilet and not a "pit" toilet), we got a taxi to the hotel (which cost quite a bit, since we needed a mini-van for all the boxes rather than just a sedan). We were in bed by 8pm Beijing time, which was perfect to get us adjusted to the time change.

September 8 & 9, 2007 - getting ready to go

2007-09-11T05:34:00.001-07:00

Maggie and I went to Costco today for some provisions for the trip, including LOTS of food (we're determined not to starve this time around!). Of all the things we bought, Maggie became attached to the Pepto Bismol and wanted to carry it around. She even wanted to hold it in the car on the way home (hence this photo):

My favorite item (besides a new Cybershot camera) was this $14.99 veterinarian dress-up outfit:

We picked one up for the orphanage girls, along with a princess dress and six pairs of princess shoes:

Saturday night was the Autumn Moon Celebration at the Chinese Consulate in SF. We watched some dancing and Kung Fu

and Maggie ran around with Sofia, Hetti and Lena.

Lily and June were also there. There were actually four sets of identical twins at the party, and they got together for some photos, which was pretty special:

The kids each received a goody bag before leaving the party, and we let Maggie open hers on Sunday morning, which kept her occupied as we got loose ends tied up before leaving.

She was excited to find a red envelope with lucky money in it,

and a piggy bank in which to store it!

Her favorite present was a little Tinkerbell "purse" which she decided was going to be her carry-on for the trip. As if we needed another item to carry: here's all the stuff at the Marin Airporter, ready to go:

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Tune in tomorrow for another update on our journey!