Stuck and Unstuck, The Upside-Down Boy, and Other Tales

I'm writing here, because nothing else is writing well lately. I'm reasonably reassembling old notes into new lectures, inarticulately given in Hard Foreign Language for two versions of the same class. But otherwise.... nada. Revisions: no. Article I need to write: nope. Newsletters for home: not so much. I feel like I have a mix of writer's block, culture shock, and expectant parent distraction all rolled together. Here's hoping things turn around this week....

In other news, Sam is doing fine. We went to church today. Two weeks ago (before the typhoon) and today I took him by myself to Local Church. Emily's having trouble moving and I think when the twins come, it will probably just be me and Sam on Sundays for a while. I want him to feel like he has a home church or two and I can tell he's a little out of sorts going to different places. This week he really enjoyed playing with the older kids. He threw a pink ball at church over and over again and enjoyed the response of the older kid. He would then laugh uncontrollably. But then he didn't sleep very well. A toddler insomniac. He painted in the afternoon with the neighbors, so from his perspective it was probably one of the best days ever. Weekends often feel like marathons to us, however.

We also did our thirty week visit for the little ones. Unfortunately, little boy is now head back up. This makes a c-section a lot more likely. Breach is possible for him, but about 25% of the time this requires birthing number one and then doing a c-section anyways. Further discouraging this option was a story from another American at our hospital who did 44 hours of labor, including two hours of pushing, and still ended up with the c-section. We will see. We still like the doctor. The babies are both healthy weights and moving around. Everything seems to be on track.

Emily is getting larger and larger, and is slowly outgrowing her maternity collection. She's now added almost exactly 20kg since we started at this hospital (~4-5 months). She naps and sleeps a lot, which is hard for her, because there's a lot she wants to do. And she has some swelling now when she's out for part of a day. She won't be on bed rest proper, but she's slowed down substantially.

I still feel like our biggest problem is the anxiety about the future. There are so many unknowns that it has really thrown us. At the same time, we are working on managing better and doing the best preparation we can. We may look into cleaning or babysitting help. I've done some modest nesting this week. We're doing our best to balance out the chaos, the expectation, the fear, and the hopefulness.

Unexpected things that make you happy...

Emily gets up with the baby.

Sleeping in.

Waking up.

Bye-bye family!

Working at home.

Prepping for language class (and feeling like prepping for language class).

A good language class, with a teacher you like.

Mr. Doughnut.

Incredibly loving people who watch over your child while you do other things.

Your child running to greet you when you arrive at nursery school.

Your child's very cute "bye-bye" in English and Northern Island.

A walk in the park.

Encouraging the ill-conceived, messy, and exuberant fountain playing while...

Talking to some other foreigners who are also at the park.

Watching your son play in the sand and then in the fountain again.

Admiring how well-behaved, polite, and non-aggressive your child is.

Wringing out your child's clothing and risking letting him go "commando."

Meeting your wife and walking (slowly, she's pregnant) to dinner.

Getting the diapers.

Eating the dinner (yum!).

Kid is playing in the playground.

Hey, he's on the second level.

He's a little scared, but you can get him down.

(Being a parent makes you feel all-powerful sometimes).

Bye-bye playground!

(Kid is willing to go without making a fuss.)

And get in the car.

Fill up tank.

Go home.

How did it get to be 7?

Before bath, kid watches you pee.

He wants to pee.

He starts to pee by the toilet.

You put him on the toilet, but then he doesn't want to pee anymore.

You take him off the toilet.

You demonstrate peeing: we can pee sitting down or standing up!

He starts peeing next to the toilet.

You put the toilet underneath the pee stream.

We all applaud!

Yes, you are peeing in the toilet!!

Demonstrate emptying the toilet (which he has seen on potty video).

We are all flushing the toilet!!!

Give kid a bath.

And feed him cheese, milk, and yogurt. (Yes, we do sometimes have three dairy products at the same meal.)

Give him his "gum" (actually fluoride, but he is enthusiastic about it because he thinks it is gum, which I am always chewing but which he has never had).

Brush his teeth.

Read books.

Sing "Old McDonald."

Goodnight!

A nice day, all around.

1 year here; Sam is two years and five months

Today is our one year anniversary of coming to Northern Island. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year (two if you count the 2005-2006 school year), or that it took some time to arrange and execute. Some of you remember that the forced rout out of the garden state was unpleasant. It included two periods of packing, a bout of food-poisoning, multiple stabs at getting a visa (including health checks for the three of us), end of semester grading, frantic conference paper writing, extended extended-family time (mostly very good), and general post-semester exhaustion. In July and August there was a conference, orientation, a trip home, and finally the final packing. It makes me exhausted remembering it. Em’s parents put us in the car to Columbus, and my parents got us out on time (I left several things with my dad since we were overweight on baggage). Not a clean exit by any stretch of the imagination, but a successful one.

The rest has been easier. We arrived to find that our boxes had made their six week journey and were piled up in our new apartment. With three rooms (including an open study space), a nice living-eating area, and great views, this is the biggest place we’ve lived as adults. We re-started language. Emily’s now done five semesters of Mandarin. I’ve added another year and have begun Taiwanese. Sam was weaned, not by any action on his part, but simply because Emily’s pregnancy tapered him off. He’s a happy preschooler, and is taking the first steps towards potty-training (he enthusiastically sits on the toilet, having read books and watched a video about it, but doesn’t seem to understand that there’s more to it than sitting). Emily is the reluctant host to future twins, a boy (head down) and a girl (head up). We think we have a good hospital.

Emily completed her practicum and, if she finishes her pre-proposal will “only” have the dissertation to write. She’s been working on the proposal all summer and hopes to present it via skype sometime this fall. I’m working on too many projects, but am also making progress. I’ve felt a bit stuck the last month, but slowly untangling things and regaining momentum.

It’s still pretty easy to be overwhelmed by the logistics of life. We got our visa in, but need to work more on other things. We definitely need to do some house organization, and perhaps explore vehicle options, since the care we’re using won’t fit three car seats. That said, we can eat in the cafeteria again, which provides a good chance to meet students and cuts down on cooking/cleaning. We’re also getting a little better at asking for help.

Some Sam updates… Sam is working on potty training. He sits happily on the potty although he hasn’t yet figured out what to do. Twice he has peed near to the potty, which we’re figuring is a step in the right direction. Today he is officially two years and five months old. We had his baby-sitter teens over today, who tired him out properly so that now he is sleeping very well. He’s very cute with the sitters. They’re fifteen and eighteen and he really enjoys playing with them. He wasn’t at all upset when we left, but was sad when they left (and then fell asleep immediately). Now it’s a fairly relaxing Saturday afternoon and life is looking better.

Other updates? Sam’s favorite book recently is the Alaska book, but he still likes Clifford, Sam I Am, his animal book, the duck book, and others. His favorite song is now “Old McDonald,” which we use if he’s starting to break down and needs distraction.

That’s our life on the island. Today it’s blue skies and a lot of green, and the frantic nature of the weak seems to have quieted.

Good day with somewhat fussy kid

This week has been a bit of a wash. Fast retreat, some drama over assorted projects, need to get visa moving, etc, etc, etc. So Saturday rolls around and it struck that perfect toddler balance of (1) a fair amount of joy, bliss, kid happiness, and (2) some tantrums, whining, and frustration. Sam is just a really fine kid, and yet today was a little hard on us. He woke up early. We let him watch some DVDs. We set up our little toddler pool nearby, and he did fine in the morning, playing happily for about an hour. The sun shifted and we came in (he was okay about it). He took a huge nap (me too since I have been sleeping weird). Then he was just kind of fussy when he woke up. He really wanted to go back to the pool. I took him but it wasn't a great time (buggy). I brought him in to switch with Em and he did the full crocodile tears-fussing-whining deal. Emily took him back out which went better. We went to dinner at a little pizza place down the mountain. As soon as we went in he started complaining: "outside, outside, outside." Emily eventually let him walk outside for a while as we waited for dinner to come. Then everything else was smooth: dinner, a very nice walk, a ride home, toothbrushing and book, bedtime. This was a pretty normal Saturday for us. Good kid. A bit exhausting. Hope he stays mostly adorable. Still not sure we can handle two more.

Excitement and fear

Boating

At Nine Ethnicities Park

Sam in cable car

He would have happily sat here all day if we'd let him

Last night I hung out with the Baptists across the street (they're the local English church, and they are always hospitable). There I met another American with an older kid and then two younger ones, almost the same age (one was adopted). He offered this folk advice: the transition to marriage was not hard for him, but adding a kid was a huge adjustment, adding the second was not bad, but going to three was the biggest change he's had. He suggested the type of bargain I've seen others make, where one parent is "on" for a night or two and then the other is on. He said you can only see hope if you know you'll get a good night's sleep eventually. He also said that initially they would sometimes each take a kid, but in the long run it was better to just have one parent take both children. This is sounding about right to me, even if it's a little depressing.

I know we shouldn't be this scared, but it's still a bit scary to think of the adjustment it will be. (I will also say that most parents of twins have said basically, "it will be as bad as you can imagine it will be.") I think I will have to rotate the following mantras: this isn't forever, we can ask for help, it's suffering now but then a lifetime of knowing each other... Any I missed? Our situation actually isn't bad. We're probably going to need to consolidate language study into blocks (5 hours 2x/week) and I'll have to figure out some ways to make the limited teaching better. Ok, enough of the frightened rant.

We just came back from two days of retreat, and it was a great experience. We went to a touristy destination, but were surprised that there seemed to be no foreigners. I'm not totally loving it when people take lots of pictures of Sam, but I guess if he doesn't mind it's not a big deal. He's gotten to the stage where if people are too touchy he let's them know. He learned to say "rain" and "boat" in Chinese on this trip, which were both good things. I got in some bonding with some pastors and their families. All in all, a good trip.

Parenting Classes

These are three pictures from our trip to a riverfront town to our north, about a month ago.

Yesterday we did our first parenting class in Northern Island. It was pretty interesting. Whereas in the States our parenting classes were a fee-based series that treated infant care and childbirth, here the hospital provides basically a series of large free lectures on major topics (birth process, nursing, breathing, after birth). The one yesterday was on breastfeeding and the birth process. The section on the birth process treated c-sections and natural birth, pain control and anesthesia, things that can go wrong, etc. It was fairly clinical and straight-forward, which I appreciated. I was surprised by a few things. The hospital was very pro-breastfeeding and taught things like avoiding pacifiers and bottles in the beginning. They showed us how small the babies’ tummies are to begin with and how they expand during the first ten days. They offered feeding advice. I would say in our birthing class in the States they pretty much avoided this and the nurses in the US were anti-nursing (gave Sam a pacifier when we said not to, high anxiety over how much he milk he was getting in the first day, etc.). Anyway, I think this is a very good hospital and we will be happy there. I think I could come around to having hospitals be the center for medical care, where you get scales of efficiency, instead of everything run out of little offices open 9-5 that refer you to specialists. I know every system has problems, and I may well eat my words later.

We’re back into language again. Emily hit a wall on Monday and I hit mine on Friday. I think we’re both basically doing well, but weren’t quite ready to head back into school. I only really had two weeks after the end of the semester and our cold/Sam’s class being closed killed one of those weeks. My brother once laid out the stages of parenting as: (1) complaining about how tired you are, (2) complaining about how sick you are, (3) complaining about all the activities you have to take your kids to. Right now we’re in #2, but we’re about to regress to #1. The flip side of all of this is that it’s a sunny July, we have some kid care that will let us eventually finish our work, and we could probably take a week or two at the beginning of September to get caught back up. Emily seems physically quite well, for which we are very thankful. The daily sickness has dissipated and the hugeness has not yet arrived.

That’s the news here. Oh, and it’s a boy and a girl we learned a week ago Friday. We saw the boy on the ultrasound first, so I think Emily was worried. (Although three boys could have been fun also.) It will be interesting to see the dynamics of the three. I hope big brother is up to the task.

Declining Cold, Cute Kid

We've all had a cold for the last two weeks. It's lingered, thwarting our plans to get away during this transitional month when we aren't in language. Two weeks ago I pretty much wrapped up school stuff. Around the same time Emily finished taxes and we did our taxes here. I'm working on copy-editing different projects, which has taken some time, and I've done some language work and spent some time on campus figuring out next semester.

We kept Sam home a few days last week with the cold, and then when we went to his school on Friday we heard that several classmates have "foot and mouth disease." It's basically just a virus that spreads quickly with kids. But the policy here is if two students have it they close the class for a week. So we've had him home this last week. It's been fun, although our productivity has dipped. Sam is saying a raft of new words: all of his colors, parts of the face (even "eyebrows." thanks to a faces sticker book from Em's parents), foods ("yogurt," which he pronounces like "Rutgers"), machinery ("tractor" and "helicopter" are new favorites, both pronounced something like "gokter"), athletics (b-ball, ball, big ball), and some new spatial terms (fast, high, go, drive). Sadly, he can say "bite," because he gets mosquito bites. He can say the neighbors names and is still pretty friendly to strangers.

We did several park trips this week. Sam can stay at a park for hours and getting out of the house and spending time together was good for all of us. I got a full sized basketball at the store, and we spent a good morning playing around campus with that. Those of you who know me know that I am pretty much a loss at any team sports (I can't do a lay-up, kick a goal, or ground a ball). Nonetheless, it's fun to have a kid who's enthusiastic about all of this and shows a high level of patience and concentration (something I never had, as the kid who was picking grass in the outfield) and some coordination.

A classmate of Emily's left Taiwan this week and one of the things she passed down was two doll babies. Sam doesn't play with them a lot, but they're helping us to communicate what is coming for Sam. Tonight he had the babies "sleeping" on Emily (this is one of his new words also), which is a good sign. Emily thinks he may be realizing that her tummy is growing, and hopefully his own development will proceed such that he's not entirely horrified when they arrive in another five months or so.

Tomorrow's (hopefully) the rescheduled doctor visit. It's possible we'll find out gender then. Sam goes back to the nursery tomorrow, which should be good for all of us. He's coming along fine on Chinese, but we're hoping to find a couple of people on campus who could play with him in Chinese a couple of hours a week. He really gets a lot of attention at school, but we want him to get a bit of reinforcement now.

Otherwise, all is well. I think Emily's excited to be back full time into language. I am feeling a little over-committed, but am doing my best to flex. The weather's been reasonable, although it will soon inch into the boiling range. It's hard to believe we have just a couple of months of summer, and then a few months beyond that before the new arrivals.