I haven't done a blog entry about Stinky-Mouse in a while (and it will probably be a while for another one!). Sometimes I wonder what people who have only recently discovered this blog make of it's name. I assure you that Mouse is still a very big part of Kai's life. Kai doesn't play with Monkey much anymore, or any of the other countless stuffed animals he has either. But Mouse is pretty much Kai's constant companion. Mouse serves two purposes; he is a transitional object used for self-soothing (thumb-sucking is infinitely better with Mouse's right ear clutched in your fist), and he is also an imaginary friend. I spend countless hours doing what I call "driving the mouse". This is basically where I manipulate Mouse like a puppet and interact with Kai. Kai initiates this game by handing Mouse to me and saying, "You hold Mouse Baba." So I hold mouse and Kai then looks Mouse in the eye and says, "Hello Mouse!" If I don't make Mouse reply Kai will repeat, "Mouse? Mouse? Hello Mouse." Until I make Mouse reply in some way. Kai's follow up question to Mouse is usually one of the following: "You hungry Mouse?", "You tired Mouse?", "You want tea Mouse?", or "You wanna fight Mouse?" Sometimes I will talk for Mouse, and sometimes I make Mouse be mute and pantomime everything with him. When we play this game Kai always looks at mouse and talks to Mouse as if he truly believes he is real. Lately Kai has taken over some of the driving and will manipulate Mouse while I talk to him. Occasionally Kai will talk to Mouse on his own, but he much prefers to have someone animate Mouse when he plays with him.

This is a short clip I shot with our new camera while Kai and I were waiting for Tina in the car the other day...


An unusual thing about Mouse is that he somehow goes missing most nights right at bedtime. Throughout the day he seems to be always around. Kai is either clutching him, or he's lying in the middle of the room, or wherever. But at bedtime he somehow vanishes. Tina and I then have to start what we call The Nightly Mouse-Hunt. We retrace Kai's path, checking all the logical places. It's almost like a poltergeist affect. So far he has always turned up, but it is quite the mystery all the same.

Occasionally when he goes A.W.O.L. like this we will suggest "going to the closet" to find him. This is code for bringing in a replacement Mouse. You see, we have seven Stinky-Mice. There are four that are in active rotation. All four of these mice have been through the washing-machine more than once, so they don't look new. They are not exactly identical, however neither Tina or I are certain which one is the original. When the current Mouse gets too Stinky, or his right ear (the good one) starts getting too stiff, we tell Kai we are going to give him a bath, which we do, but we also swap him out. This is sort of like rotating your tires to extend their life. This is important because the company that originally manufactured Mouse no longer produces this model of stuffed toy. When we discovered this we bought up all the Stinky-Mice we could find. Each time we have introduced a brand new Mouse into the rotation I have wondered what Kai would think, and worried that he would reject it as not His Mouse. But he actually likes a fresh extra soft Mouse and is happy to snuggle and talk with the new one just as he had with the old!

We are feeling pretty confident that we are getting close to traveling. In the meantime, we were very excited to receive a DVD from the last family we know to have been at Shen's CWI.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SHEN'S BLOG AND SEE!

Okay, this is kind of a technical entry, but if you are reading Shen's blog through an RSS aggregator like Bloglines you will want to update your subscription.
The software I use to publish this site has a bug in the current version that is forcing it to upload the entire site with each new entry I make. Consequently the upload time for blog entries was getting quite long. I was concerned about how this might work while we are in China. Since I will only be making updates to Shen's blog while we are traveling I decided to split that page out into it's own site. It looks the same, and has links in and out of the Stinky Mouse blog in the same way, but the URL address has changed. It used to be:
http://homepage.mac.com/socheltree/mouse/page9/page9.html (this is now a redirect page)
but now it's:
http://homepage.mac.com/socheltree/shen/

I have also moved all the pictures in the entries to PhotoBucket. This way they aren't contained in the blog file that's uploaded each time, only the referencing HTML code (hey, I warned you this was a technical post). This has changed the size of Shen's blog on the server from 4.5 MB to only 463 KB. That is a LOT smaller! This way when I'm writing new entries in China the uploads won't be too crazy.
Sorry for this technical interruption. Hopefully we'll have some exciting news to report soon!

Sunday evening we shared dinner at the home of a family who is waiting to bring home a seven year old boy from China. They had invited a bunch of local families who are all waiting to adopt. It was a great group of people and we had a wonderful time. The hosts have a beautiful home on a small farm. Kai really enjoyed himself as you can see in these pictures.

I wanted a nice picture of Kai for Independence Day, so I said, smile Kai! ... No, really, give me a nice smile ... Come on Kai, just one nice smile...
Never mind.


It was a fun day at my sister's house in Marysville. Here's a few more pictures in a slideshow...

This blog entry is participating in the "FFFF" Family Foto Fun Friday event now being hosted by Lissa at Loving Lydia.

We finally broke down and bought a new camera. I had been looking at cameras a while ago, but had decided not to buy one for now. Then last weekend we had an experience with our present camera that changed our minds. It decided not to take pictures for a while. It didn't appear broken, but when you pushed the button it would auto-focus, blink the display, and... nothing. We messed around with it for about 20 minutes, and then for no apparent reason it started working again. It's done this about three times to us now and we decided this was not the camera we wanted as our main tool for recording our upcoming trip to China. This little camera was pretty much the cheapest digital I felt was functional two and half years ago. We have used it more than we ever imagined we would, and consequently have found ourselves repeatedly frustrated by its limitations. As its replacement we decided to go with a Sony DSC-H7. It's classified as a digital "mega-zoom" camera and features a 15x optical zoom with image stabilization. It's definitely still in the "point-and-shoot" class, but it's significantly more capable than what we had before. We are really looking forward to having it with us on our trip to adopt Shen.
I have been playing with it this weekend to get used to using it and to learn what it can do. Here are some pictures we took in the backyard with it...

Ladybugs are supposed to be good luck in the Chinese-Adoption Community as they are supposed to foreshadow a speedy TA. "Why is that?" you ask. Nobody knows, but I was really happy with this photo. This image is pretty tightly cropped to get this close.

A butterfly was flying around the flower garden and I was able to get this photo from about 4 feet away. Both of the next two images are not cropped at all. I was able to get this close with the optical zoom.



We went to the Farmer's Market for lunch and to shop for some gifts to take to China.

A woman selling fancy hula-hoops had testers out for people to play with...

There were some free art activities Kai enjoyed...

It was a fun day and the new camera works really well. I think we'll be really happy with the pictures we get on our trip to bring Shen home.