Six Weeks - A letter to Lana

Dear Lana,

In the six weeks since you became our daughter, you have gone from a sad and quiet child, into a little girl who laughs. A LOT. You giggle. You are FUNNY. (Restricted by language as you are right now, you love to make a joke. The last several days that joke has been, to point to Gabriel and say, "Lana!" Then you point to Daddy and say, "Mama!" You point to me and say, "Ba!" Then you point to yourself and say, "Gabriel". Then you laugh like a lunatic, and we laugh with you. Sometimes you point to Batsu and Nolan (our cats) and say, "Con vuoy!" And you laugh some more. (We believe that Con Vuoy means Elephant in Vietnamese.)

You are LOUD. Wow. You can make some serious noise when you want to.

You are starting to like your school. In the mornings, in the car, you ask me, "Apple Tree mo? Apple Tree mo?" (Where is Apple Tree?). When I take you into your class in the morning, you look around for Shelley, your teacher. You are disappointed when she is not there yet, but, you let me kiss you goodbye, and you are brave and do not cry. Shelley and Sena tell me that are starting to sing songs with the other children. Which brings me to the next thing -

You love to SING. Six weeks ago, your foster mother told us that "this child would sing while she eats if she could." She was not exaggerating. You love to sing, but, sadly (this breaks my heart), at this point, you seem to be forgetting the words to your Vietnamese songs, and haven't yet learned all the words to new English songs. So...you sing the first few lines of "Happy Birthday", over and over again.

You sleep. You fall asleep by yourself after cuddling with me and singing three songs. You sleep almost 12 hours at night. All the books say this is the exact amount of sleep that you need. I thought the books were lying when they said four-year-olds need 12 hours of sleep a day. But, you do. It's incredible to me. Friday night you actually PUT YOURSELF TO BED. Evidently your were tired.

You love love love your daddy and your brother. You regularly throw your arms around them and give them big kisses and say, "I huv you." This is more adorable than you can possibly imagine. Sometimes, but not as often, you wrap yourself around me, and say, "I huv you Mommy." This makes my heart melt like an icicle in July.

You are a GUM ADDICT. You love GUM. You ask for gum 12,000 times a day. Your optimism on this front is astonishing.

You love shrimp. And pizza. And noodles. And toast with Nutella. But, you hate peanut butter. And yet you love peanuts?

I think we still have a lot to learn about eachother, little one.

Love,
Mommy

Happy Lunar New Year!!

The new lunar new year begins tomorrow!

Welcome to the year of the boar (or the pig)!

This photo was taken last weekend just before we left for the Ann Arbor Pan-Asian Lunar New Year Festival. We will spend celebrate tomorrow at a Chinese New Year party with some friends of ours from my FCC group.

Lana was thrilled to wear her ao dai, but, not so happy to have to wear other clothes underneath since it was 1 degree outside.

Gretchen

She Was Surprised to See Me

When I arrived at the center at 5:20 this afternoon, she was sitting on Shelly's lap (Shelly being one of her two teachers.)

She had a sad look on her face as she watched the other children being picked up by parents. I'm not sure if the look was sad or resigned.

Then she saw me and the look on her face was SUPRISE.

The child was surprised I came for her.

I think this breaks me heart more than if she had been angry with me. I think, because if she had been angry with me, she would have arrived at the place in our relationship where she feels entitled to be mad at me. And I'm not sure she's quite there.

She cautiously got off Shelly's lap and came over to me. I looked down at her, and she raised her arms up to me. She said, "Bahm!" which, as near as I can tell, means, "pick me up." (At least, this is what this means in our house, where it is said about a gazillion times a day to Husband.)

I picked her up (she only weighs 34 pounds after all) and she wrapped her small hands into my coat. "Do you want to go home?" I asked her. She nodded vigorously. "Gabriel* mo?" she asked. (Where's Gabriel?) I said, 'Let's go find him" and she nodded again, vigorously.

I put her down and she ran to get her coat. With her coat on, she showed some excitement in showing me some things in her classroom, like her mailbox.

David wasn't home when we got there, as he was at a board meeting.

There was REJOICING when he came home. There were squeals of delight. There was dancing in a little circle and hopping around and cries of "Ba! Ba!" (You see, he was already gone when she when she woke up this morning, so, she hadn't seen him since the night before.)

I am glad she was happy to see him, and I am glad her first day at school was less traumatic than anticipated. I'm a little bit sad that she doesn't believe we will come for her, that we will always return for her. (Considering the loss of her foster mom, can I blame her? Not a chance in hell.)

Gretchen

*She pronouces Gabriel with suprising accuracy, considering the trouble she generally has with consonant blends. But, Gabriel started off as "gay-be-ul" and is now pretty much a perfect mid-western "Gabriel".

Harder this time

On a Monday morning in May of 2000, I took my infant son to a child care center on the campus of the University where I attended law school.

Gabriel did not cry when I left him the capable hands of Molly, Sam and Jini. I cried, but, Gabriel, a happy (though sleepless) baby, cuddled into Molly's arms, and my husband and I left the center. My husband had taken a personal day, so he could come to the center with me. I was due back at work the next day.

David and I actually went to lunch and to see a movie. I don't remember where we ate lunch or what movie we saw, but, I do remember feeling relieved to do something "normal" (wherein my life to that point with tiny Gabriel felt nothing like "normal".)

When we returned to the center to pick Gabe up, he was happily sitting on Jini's hip. I watched him through the observation window. He was 11 weeks old and Jini was just fine by him. Until I opened the door, and Jini handed him to me, and he hollered and butted his tiny baby face against my blouse, pulled on the buttons with his fingers and loudly demanded FOOD. At least I was his one and only for something!! :-)

This morning was different. This morning I took Lana into that same center, and we were greeted by Jami (who, as soon as she joined the center staff in late summer of 2000, replaced Jini in Gabriel's small heart.) (Jami replaced Jini when Jini left to teach at a public elementary school when Gabe was about 5 months old. Jami is still referred to, by Gabriel, as "my Jami". Gabe's first word was "ma-ma", but, his third word was "mi-mi" (his tiny infant word for Jami.)

Anyway, Jami greeted us with her own darling baby girl (hi Lily!), and then Lana and I walked down to her classroom. I put her boots and her snow pants her cubby, and hung up her coat and signed her in, and I sat with her for a few minutes, and read a short story, and then I held her close to me and kissed her face, and she clung to me, and I disentangled myself from her and...I left.

I left and she screamed and I could hear her screaming as I walked away. I felt like someone had stuck their fist through my chest and was squeezing my heart. I did not feel relieved. I felt...awful. Logically, I know that she is 4 years old and is used to being in school all day. Logically I know she was bored at home all day with David. Logically I know that David needs to go back to work so that a) he doesn't lose his mind being home all day and b.) so that we can continue to pay our mortgage!

But, illogically...I felt lousy. I had been sitting at my desk a few minutes when the director of the center called to tell me that Lana was doing okay. That she had stopped screaming, that she was sitting with her teacher, that she was thinking about eating a banana, that she was a little sad but, not hysterical.

I felt...less horrible. And I just got off the phone with her teacher, who told me that she had settled down on her cot to rest after lunch, and she is, right now, fast asleep. That she ate a whole piece of pizza and three slices of apple for lunch. She stays close to her teachers, and is being, as is typical for Lana, "watchful". I still worry.

I worry that she will be angry when I pick her up. I worry that she will allow this anger to disrupt her attachment to me (she seems to love David without strings and with total abandon, but, her feelings about me, I think, are more complicated. She will tell David she loves him, both in English and in Vietnamese*. She told me she loved me once in English, at David's urging...) Worrying for my watchful girl,

Gretchen

*I THINK she is telling him she loves him in Vietnamese. What she says is "Mai yeu toi" - which, as near as I can tell is the words "You love me." I suppose she might be asking a question, but, I am assuming it is just that the words are in a different order...anyone happen to know how to say "I love you" in Vietnamese?

Bluegrass and Sunday Morning

We took Gabriel and Lana to the Museum on Friday night. Our art museum has special events every Friday night, and the museum is open until 10:00 PM on those nights. Gabriel had been studying “France” at school the week before last, and, as part of that study, he and his classmates had painted their own versions of Monet’s Water Lilies. Since then, Gabe has been asking to go downtown to the museum to see one of the real Water Lilies (his teacher told the class that we have one of Water Lilies series here).

So, on Friday afternoon, David brought Gabe and Lana downtown, and I met them at the museum after work. They were waiting for me at the entrance, and when I walked through the doors Lana came rushing at me, her arms wide, her face grinning, hooting “Mommy!!!!!!!” at the top of her lungs. It was cute. And also loud. We got “shushed” by the guard.

We walked around the museum and Gabe was extremely impressed with the Water Lilies. He sat on the bench across from the painting (it is a very large painting) and stared at it for several minutes. Then he said, “It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” He also liked looking at the other impressionist paintings in the museum collection, and some of the hyperrealism and of course he loved the sarcophagus in the Egyptian collection, as all children seem to. He was less impressed with 16th Century European art. I don’t blame him.

At 6:30 we walked over the Cloisters section of the museum, because they were having a Bluegrass band playing.

Can I say that Lana is not impressed with bluegrass music?

Gabriel, on the other hand, loves bluegrass music and was having a great time listening to the band, and asked David to ask the band to play “Big Rock Candy Mountain” – which is a song from one of the “O Brother Where Art Thou” CDs that is pretty much Gabriel’s favorite song in life.

Since Lana was not enjoying the music, I decided to take her and head off to meet our friend Shelly, who was babysitting a child who is going to be in Lana’s preschool class. (Well, rather, a child is WHO is the class that Lana is GOING to be in.) Lana and A~ (the other little girl) played for about an hour. I hope that they will be good friends, as A~ lives less than 2 minutes from our house, and since they will be in the same class, I think it would be convenient for them to become good friends. (And yes, I’m just the kind of person who would choose my child’s friends based on convenience for me. Shoot me.) I was glad that they had a good time playing together, as attempting to leave the museum without David and Gabriel with us resulted in a crying fit. The fit subsided during the car ride, thank goodness, so, by the time we got to A~’s house, she was not screaming or crying anymore.

I should mention that we stopped (Lana and I) to get some dinner at Wendy’s (between the museum and A~’s house.) Lana’s foster mother described her to us as a “watchful child” and it really is an appropriate description of Lana much of the time. She watches people very intently. While we were at Wendy’s, she was openly staring at a man who was eating there with his small son. She was quietly eating and following the man with her eyes. It was like she couldn’t take her eyes off of him, and then it occurred to me that she may not have ever seen a black man before. (There are black students in her class at pre-school, but, she has only seen the children, not their parents, since she and David have been visiting the school in the late mornings when no parents are around.) The man, who had his hands full with a cranky toddler, did not seem to notice, and I’m glad he didn’t because I’m afraid that it might have come off as rudeness instead of curiosity.

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Yesterday morning we took Lana to church for the first time. She balked at going to children’s chapel with Gabriel (we expected as much), so, she sat with us through the service. We were at 9:15 service which is a family friendly service, where people don’t mind so much if there is a fussy or squirmy child. She mostly sat on David’s lap, and she was quite shocked when the organ began the processional hymn. After her initial shock, she opened her mouth now and then and pretended to sing. (She also pretends to sing when I sing to her.) She was, as usual in new situations, very watchful. However, she did make noise one time…oh my. My ten year old niece was sitting next to her, and they were drawing pictures on a bulletin. My niece drew a picture of Jesus (standard oval head, smile, with a beard), and Lana looked at it and excitedly pronounced, “Bac Ho!! Bac Ho!!” Jesus Christ as Ho Chi Minh, who would have thunk it? Fortunately, I don’t think anyone in the congregation knew what she meant! During announcements, Father P~ introduced Lana to the congregation. Next week, we are going to have a blessing over her adoption during the service.

More later,
Gretchen

Spring Rolls

Yesterday afternoon, a Vietnamese family invited us to come to their home for dinner for traditional Vietnamese spring rolls.  We thought this was a very gracious and generous offer, and we had a lovely evening with them.  The family was comprised of my sister's nail technician, M~, her brother V~, V~'s wife, D~, and their son, J~.  Also at dinner was M~'s boyfriend, who is not Vietnamese.

 

Most people probably think "spring roll" and imagine a "spring roll" from a Chinese restaurant - sort of like a smaller version of an egg roll.  But, a traditional Vietnamese spring roll is different.  Sort of like a burrito.  But cold.  With shrimp and vegetables.

 

It was a very social kind of meal.  We sat together at the table, and we dipped hard rice paper disks into bowls of warm water.  When the rice paper was soft, we put it on our plates and then put cool rice noodles, strips of cucumber, cilantro, mint, green onion, lettuce, beef and shrimp into the roll, then rolled it up, and ate it, dipping it into a garlic sauce.  It was very very good.  We have had pre-rolled Vietnamese spring rolls before, both in Vietnam and at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chicago - but, I didn't care for them on those occasions because they had been chilled and it hurt my teeth to bite into them (my teeth are really sensitive to cold) and I don't usually eat cold foods (except ice cream, which requires no biting) because I hate the way cold food makes my teeth feel.  (I even heat up milk before I put it on my cereal in the morning.  I don't like cold food is what I'm trying to say.)*  But, because we were fixing these ourselves, they were more room temperature than cold, and they were really really good.  Lana was in heaven.  She ate two whole rolls and some plain shrimp.

 

What she didn't do for most of the 3 hours we were there, was TALK.  I kept telling the family that she DOES speak Vietnamese to us all day long, but, she was not keen to speak to strangers.  Finally, towards the end of the night, she began to talk a little bit to D~, who was playing with her and D~'s 2 year old son.  Afterward, D~ told me that Lana has a strong "central" dialect in her Vietnamese, and she may not be completely understanding the southern dialect of their family.  I hope that if we visit them again she will be comfortable enough to speak more freely.  I would love to know what she is thinking of all this - her new life, etc!

 

More later,

Gretchen

 * Yes, I am aware that both my uncle and my cousin are dentists and that both are probably reading this right now and swearing at me for not asking for  help with this tooth problem.  Sorry!

Feeling A Bit More Human

Lana seems to be feeling better. She has had good sleep the last few nights and is in a much better mood. She has been happy and affectionate - offering kisses and hugs and wanting to be held.

She met David's parents (Nana and Poppa) yesterday evening. She was shy at first, but, warmed up to them, and spent some timing laughing and playing with them. It seems to me that she watches Gabe for clues as to who to trust and who to show affection to. I notice that began to offer freely kisses to me once she noticed that Gabriel often kisses and hugs me. Sometimes, if Gabe is cuddling or snuggling with me, she comes in to "get in" the hug. I find this endearing - I think Gabe finds it both cute and annoying at the same time. The last two nights Lana has been to sleep about an hour before Gabe went to bed, so, he has had some one on one time with David or I - which he seems to need. He slept by himself two nights ago, but, last night he was back in bed with us. One day at a time...

Lana has taking a liking to my sister and we are hopeful that David and I may be able to go out to dinner for Valentine's Day and that Lana might be able to stay with my sister for an hour or two. She played very happily with her cousins the other day at my sister's house, and actually left the house with them to walk around the block without Dave or I. (It could be that they were taking the dog for a walk, and the lure of being able to walk the dog was greater than the desire to keep Dave or I in her line of sight.) She also sat on Stace's lap while Stace got her nails done. The Vietnamese-American nail tech tried to get her to talk to her in Vietnamese, but, no luck. It was clear that Lana knew what she was saying (for example, when asked if she wanted her nails painted pink, she nodded quickly and picked up her hand to put it on the counter.)

Lana and David have been visiting Apple Tree (soon to be Lana's preschool) every day for a little while. Today Dave left the room for a few minutes and watched her from the observation window. She is not entirely comfortable there yet, but, I think each day she will become for comfortable with her new teachers and friends.

Gretchen