This morning we went to visit Cousin Bill in his new house. His living room has great light and I had our camera with us. At one point Tina’s dad Len started telling a story and he was being very animated so I moved over to the side of the room with the windows behind me and just started snapping photos of him. I caught some great expressions! Then I asked the boys to sit with him for a photo too. It is really sweet how much they both love their Grampa!

The boys really enjoyed visiting Cousin Bill’s cows and horses in the big field below below the house and barn. It was a very fun outting...

It’s been a busy last couple days. Tina’s 90 year old father, Len, and his friend Joyce are here staying with us for a few days and they’ve been doing a pretty good job keeping up with us. We had swim lessons again this morning and then had just enough time to turn around and head out to the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association’s annual picnic. There was an amazing amount of food there, both Chinese and western dishes. There were some really great steamed buns, and a desert dish made with red bean paste that was really good! There were also these really fancy looking thinly sliced things with lots of different looking textures and colors running through them. They looked something like this without the fancy presentation:

Tina and I both took some and were trying it. Parts of it were soft like tofu, and other parts had a crunchy chewy texture. I continued to wonder what it was as I ate some more, then the Chinese woman sitting across from us at the picnic table said she was surprised to see us eating the pig’s ear. “Evan many younger Chinese people won’t eat it these days”, she said. Suddenly I understood what all those different textures were!
The boys really enjoyed watching the dancers...


And listening to the music. These kids were playing the húlúsī - Chinese gourd flute. The first song they played is one that we knew from our trip to adopt Kai.


We had brought a bunch of bubble stuff for the kids to play with. When we brought it home, Kai and Shen were playing with it in the backyard. Shen wanted to hold the bottle in his left hand and was trying to hold the wand with his right elbow. So I got some elastic and made him a little wrist band that would hold the wand at the end of his arm. We’ve been reading about prosthetics lately and have really mixed feelings about them. I do want to find ways to make more adaptive things like this for him.

The first two videos I posted in this series were both of amazing athletes excelling at sports generally thought to require two hands. This week we turn to the musical arts with a video of Art Gonzales a recovering stroke victim and an amazing keyboard player.

We have celebrated two Adoption Days and three Birthdays with Kai, all of which have felt like huge milestones. But today we mark a different day with him, one that will never come to pass again. Today we are not marking an anniversary, it’s not a special day of the year, or month or week, but rather, it is a span of time.

It was two years, eight months, and thirty days ago that we first met Kai on a warm and sunny afternoon in September, in an office of the Social Welfare institute in the city of Baoding, China. It was a full moon that evening, the fullest moon of the year, and China was celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival - Moon Festival, a special holiday for families. So at the last minute the SWI directors moved Kai’s adoption day up by one, to let him be with his new family for this special day.

Two years, eight months, and thirty days ago.

Two years, eight months, and thirty days before that, was the day Kai was born. Interestingly enough, There was a full moon that day as well.

Today is the day that marks a changing point in time. For Kai has now been a part of our family for as long as the time he lived before we met him. Every day after this, the balance will shift further and further. I believe, that on a conscious level, for Kai this “shift” happened a long time ago. We talk about his life in China a lot, and look at pictures we have of him before his adoption. I know he remembers our return visit to Baoding and seeing his nanny Chin-yen when we traveled to adopt Shen. But I don’t know what, if anything, he can concretely recall from his life before the adoption. So while this day may not be of any great significance to him, it is for us. On a feeling level, it seems as if Kai has always been ours, but when I stop and truly think about it, two years and roughly 9 months is a very short span of time. And while I hate the thought of rushing through my days any faster, much of the work in helping adopted children to fit, and really feel they belong with their new families comes down to the simple passage of time.

This evening as I look up at a not quite full moon, and recall first meeting this small, timid, and confused little boy who looked upon us with apprehension and worry, I am amazed to see the outgoing and playful child who now runs up to greet me with hugs and kisses! I cherish each of the last two years, eight months, and thirty days, but am glad too for their passing and am grateful for the changes they have brought about in Kai and our family.

Now that summer vacation is here Tina has Kai and Shen enrolled in swimming lessons at 10 o’clock on Saturday mornings. Kai took lessons for a while over a year ago and really enjoyed it, but we haven’t had him back until now. He and Shen both love the water and I think they could keep up with the skills in the next class up, but it will be good for them to start a little slow and learn the format of how the lessons work. They really enjoyed the lesson a lot today. It was Shen’s first time at the pool and he was very impressed. I laughed when I saw that their other four classmates were all boys. One of the other little ones was a little spacey but all of them were very well behaved. It was a great way to spend Saturday morning!

Ben came home from school on Friday - his Last Day for the year - with this painted on the side window...

Good Times, Good Times...
Tina and I got quite the little chuckle. A long, long time ago we were “Feeling Fine in ’79!”

Yes!! We finally splurged and spent the $7 to register the domain name STINKYMOUSE.COM. We’re still hosting the site through our .Mac account but everything is configured to use the new domain name.

There’s currently a technical problem with the blog publishing software I’m using that stops the RSS feed from working right on the STINKYMOUSE.COM version of the site, so if you use Bloglines or some other RSS aggregator to read our posts you won’t want to change anything until that gets straightened out, but it does look pretty cool having http://stinkymouse.com in the address bar!

We finished Winnie The Pooh tonight! The book that is. It’s one of my favorite children’s books. My family members who read this blog know my fondness for stuffed animals - heck maybe the blog mascot gave that away. But the Winnie the Pooh books have been a big inspiration to me in my storytelling for the boys (all 4 of them). I love that Kai and Shen are old enough now to start listening to these beginner “chapter books”.

I was always passionate about emphasizing the original source material for Disney films our older boys like, and the Winnie the Pooh films are ones that Kai and Shen have watched quite a bit now. They have lots of the stuffed animals: Pooh, piglet, Eyore, and Tigger. So I was eager to have them experience the REAL Winnie The Pooh.

It’s not the easiest book to read to kids due to it’s age (written in 1926) and it’s Brittish. But even given that, the writing is in such a peculiar style. Milne writes the book very much as though it is just for Christopher Robin. The rest of us readers and listeners are enjoying a bit of voyeurism as we get to peek in on their father/son exchanges. The beginning and ending of the book are not truly part of the story but rather a transcript of Christopher Robin and his father talking to one another. The shift out of this, and back into it at the end are abrupt and almost jarring when reading the book aloud - again emphasizing the personal aspect of it.

I know Kai and Shen don’t pick up on any of this, and much of the language in the book goes right over their heads, but they know all the characters and some of the stories, and they just like the cuddle time in bed hearing the story being read. And for me, that is the best part too.

Continuing with our series series of videos of people doing things one-handed, we have another sports video...

Our Sunday morning routine restored order to our house after days of busy-ness and evening engagements. Kai and Shen let Tina and me “sleep in” until 9:00 AM. They made their regular 7:00 AM appearance but after going potty they were willing to return to their own bed where we could hear them talking and playing quietly together while we listened to NPR. At 8:00 they reappeared and told us they were going to “go play”. We could then hear them deconstructing the playroom while we managed to listen to a few more NPR stories. Our goal is always to hear Will Shortz’s puzzle before we get up. The challenge is that it comes on at exactly the point when Kai can no longer wait for breakfast. This morning, right on time, his desperate pleas began just as the puzzle segment began. Grudgingly he consented to give us three more minutes, and we got to hear the whole game before getting up to serve the boys cereal: oatmeal for Kai, and Cheerios for Shen.

Shen has for months now insisted on making a small bowl of cereal last for over an hour. This is in stark contrast to Kai’s ability to empty a bowl of oatmeal before I can return to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. Shen would stretch out the meal process to interminable lengths, but for nearly a week now, he has been eating his breakfast (and other meals as well) in a reaonable time. We don’t want him to bolt his food at the same speed as Kai, but we don’t want to wait until lunchtime for breakfast to end either, so this change in behavior is a welcome one.

After breakfast on the weekends we let Kai and Shen watch PBS kids programs on the Tivo while Tina and I read news and blogs on the internet. When we feel we’ve passed the limit for acceptable “screen time” for the boys we move on to other things. This morning it was still gray and cold outside so I brought out the Lincoln Logs and Brio Trains. The base set of both these toys are hand-me-downs from Cam and Ben. The older boys never really played with these much. If I got them out they would play along, but would rarely sustain or initiate play with these toys. Kai and Shen on the other hand, love these and will spend hours on them.

I designed the structure above, but Kai and Shen both actively participated in the building of it by following the base pattern I layed out to stack up the walls. Kai is particularly good at this and can build his own simple structures. He enjoys the repeating pattern and seeing his towers grow taller and taller. Kai is also quite good at laying out the Brio track. He is able to to close off the curves to create elaborate circuits, and both Kai and Shen enjoy driving long strings of train-cars around the track. It’s really nice seeing these classic toys put to use. I think I enjoy watching the boys use these as much or more than they enjoy the playtime themselves!

Well I missed posting an entry yesterday. Tina’s and my day was consumed by the Mei Hua Chinese School’s Garage Sale Fundraiser. Tina pretty much coordinated the entire event. The school doesn’t have a strong parent organization system in place, and we’re pretty new to the group so getting this event off the ground had some pretty tough challenges to it. And of course it rained hard all morning and the temperature hovered around 50 degrees. Not great weather for hanging around outside!

We had our own garage sale about a month ago. This is not something we do regularly. That one was our second in 25 years. I always think that going to garage sales on a regular basis would be fun, but we’re not really interested in bringing random stuff into our home. Particularly not items that other people have already decided they don’t want or need. If they don’t want or need it, chances are I don’t either. I know there’s great stuff out there to be found but it’s like diving for pearls.

Running a garage sale is funny thing to do. You really meet all kinds of people. Lots of young mothers looking for baby items, people who seem a bit down on their luck looking for basic clothing or household items, apparently well-to-do folks that are looking for ??? I have no idea, and families out letting their young children blow their pocket money on treasures culled from the dregs of playbox fodder outgrown by other kids.

Then there are the people that show up a full hour before the sale opens to get first crack at things. These are the pros that are looking for specific types of items. I saw a guy with a little laser barcode scanner go through all the books. I guess he was looking up market value on them. I have no idea what others were looking for. They pass through the items with an air of indifference, offer no small talk and quickly leave if the desired object isn’t present. Or just as often pick up an item you were certain would never sell, and give you full price before heading off to their car. I guess we should have priced that thing higher?

It cracks me up to watch people carefully consider a $1.50 purchase as if they were investing $100s. To be fair I suppose it may not be the money, but the internal struggle of committing to taking on one more piece of junk in their lives. Fortunately for the Chinese School there were a good number of people willing to take the chance and we did pretty well.

Here it is the 6th of the month and I realized I have managed to post every day for five days in a row. I was about to get ready for bed but thought I should keep this momentum going. It’s been an interesting week this week, our routine has been off a bit as Tina has been busy in the evenings. The class she taught for first and second grades at the Waldorf school is graduating this year so she went to see them present their 8th grade projects on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. This gave me a chance for extra one-on-two time with the boys. Then this evening Tina was out working on setting up a garage sale for the Mei Hua Chinese School. Along with Tina was our friend Laurette. Her husband Ken is an EMT and was working so I had their daughters Lana and Lily here to play and have dinner with me and Kai and Shen.

Thankfully we got a break in the lousy weather that we’ve been drowning in and the kids were all able to play outside in the sun. We ate pizza and played with blocks and Hot Wheels, and looked at pictures of our trip to Xi’an. The four kids played really well together and I enjoyed getting to spend some time with little girls. Tina was home in time to tuck the boys in with me and it looks like our evening schedule is going to return to normal now.

No pictures tonight, but I kept my blogging roll going for 6 days in a row!!

This is one of my favorite expressions of Kai's. It means "big enough" but always comes out as "Bigger Nuff." For example, Kai might tell you, "I go to school. I'm Bigger Nuff! Shen not go to school. He not Bigger Nuff." Kai has a very long list of things he's Bigger Nuff to do but Shen is not.

Before Kai came home and for a while after he came home, we looked around quite a bit at online resources for people with limb differences, but it has become pretty much a non-issue for both the boys at this point in their lives so we don't think about it much on a daily basis. In the future we realize that they will probably develop interests which will probably require some kind of adaptive equipment or at least some creative problem solving on their part.

Then the other day I came home and both the boys were wearing their black dress shoes. Tina said they saw them on top of their dressers and wanted to put them on. Shen's are lace-up shoes and Tina mentioned that he really wanted to tie them himself. We looked at each other, then wondered aloud if he or Kai would ever be able to do that. So I "Googled" up "tying shoes one-handed" and found some interesting resources online, some of which we had seen before, including some fun YouTube videos of people doing things one-handed. I thought it would be fun to start posting some of these here on the blog. Let's start with this one...

Kai and Shen have shared a bed together almost every night since they first met. When we were in China we pushed the two small beds in our hotel room together and all four of us slept together. When we got home, we had two little toddler beds in their bedroom, but we found that this made it hard for us to cuddle with them for stories and songs at bedtime. We ended up replacing our bed and giving them our old queen. This has worked out great as the bed is more than big enough for the two of them and has lots of room for us to cuddle with them both at bedtime.

We do so much better in terms of the bedtime routine with Kai and Shen than we did with Cam and Ben. Cameron suffered from being too much of a novelty for us as the first child and we would keep him up to play because we enjoyed him so much. Ben rolled right into this pattern, but in general was just fussy about almost everything including going to bed. Consequently they were often up till at least 9:00 pm or later. With Kai and Shen we have held to a strict routine - something they were both used to having - and bedtime is rarely later than 8:00 pm, and very often even earlier.

Our nightly routine usually begins with cleaning up toys, then brushing teeth and putting on pajamas. We pile in bed and Mommy gives everyone lots of kisses and hugs. I lay down in bed between the two boys and they have some time to look at books. After looking at books for a bit, we put them away and I read one or two aloud. Then I turn off the light and sing lullabies to them. The usual selection includes Hush Little Babies (Mockingbird), the "animal version" of Irene Goodnight, which goes like this:

Foxes sleep in the forest - lions sleep in their dens
Goats sleep on the mountainside and piggies sleep in pens
Irene Goodnight Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene Goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams

Whales sleep in the ocean - zebras sleep on land
Hippos sleep on the river bank and camels sleep in sand
Irene Goodnight Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene Goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams

Coyotes sleep in the canyon - birdies sleep in a tree
And when it's time for me to rest, my bed's the place for me
Irene Goodnight Irene Goodnight
Goodnight Irene Goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams

Of course, you substitute your child's name for Irene, so we sing "Kai Hui Goodnight, Shen Yu Heng Goodnight."

I usually end with the Peter Paul and Mary version of Stewball. I like the random inappropriate nature of this song (drinking, gambling, existential loss) which is actually quite a traditional form for lullabies...

Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.
He never drank water, he always drank wine.

His bridle was silver, his mane it was gold.
And the worth of his saddle has never been told.

Oh the fairgrounds were crowded, and Stewball was there
But the betting was heavy on the bay and the mare.

And a-way up yonder, ahead of them all,
Came a-prancin and a-dancin my noble stewball.

I bet on the grey mare, I bet on the bay
If I’d have bet on ol' Stewball, Id be a free man today.

Oh the hoot owl, she hollers, and the turtle dove moans.
I'm a poor boy in trouble, I’m a long way from home.

Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.
He never drank water, he always drank wine.

Other songs that enter the rotation include Puff the Magic Dragon, Simple Gifts, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat, and Yellow Submarine.

This picture is actually a couple weeks old. Tina had Lily and Lana at our house for the day and they were playing around. Lana (on the right), who lived with Shen in Xi'an, got Lily and Shen to strike this pose then told Tina to get the camera.

We have been desperately wanting a climber type of play structure for the backyard. Kai and Shen are always climbing all over stuff - most of it not meant to be climbed on. We've looked at the big fancy swing sets but they are way too expensive for us and most are too big for the yard. And while swings would be fun to have, what Kai and Shen really seem to need right now is something to climb on. We've been watching Craig's List for the Little Tikes climbers like the one above, but the ones we've seen listed that are big enough for what we need are still more money than we wanted to spend right now. Then our friend's Ken and Laurette (Lana an Lilly's parents) said they had one they didn't want anymore. We went over to their house after Chinese school today to pick it up and found it to be exactly what we were wanting. It's the perfect size for the boys and fits great in the yard. We got it back to our house, put it together and the two boys climbed all over it for well over an hour. Fortunately they worked up and appetite so they were willing to break away for dinner.