A few of the things that make me happy to be home

Mimi & Grandpa – automatic ice makers – salad – even my crappy minivan – HalfPrice Books – Blue Mesa with friends – “What Not to Wear” – brushing teeth without thinking – Dr. Pepper – air conditioning – Frito Chili Pie – knowing where I’m going most of the time – my own bed – a really good cheeseburger – finding clothing my size in stores – fast internet – memories and mementos of China – my office – the ease of language – my new rice cooker – “The Colbert Report” & “The Daily Show”– bacon, egg & cheese biscuits from McD’s – hot water from all my faucets – my oven – Tex-Mex – NPR – Tuesday Morning – Nordstrom’s Rack – Prairie Home Companion – having a couch again! – having more than 3 pairs of shoes to choose from – the dishwasher – Ben & Jerry’s – Purple Cow Diner – cereal with cold milk – Hong Kong Market – IKEA – National Cowgirl Hall of Fame – crème brulee at Michael’s Restaurant – Target – enrolling the kids for ballet again – friends, friends, friends!

Another Expat Family Blogging

Take a look at The Lewis Family Goes to China. They've got a passel of boys and one girl adopted from China.

Buddha and Mao

Having told you Maya’s reaction to the Jesus portrait, I have to tell a portrait story about Zoe, too.

Before we left for China to adopt Maya, we spent time looking through my old pictures from Beijing and China travel books. Zoe was intrigued by the portrait of Mao that hangs above Tiananmen Square – probably because we saw it in practically every guidebook. So by the time we were headed for Tiananmen Square, she was fired up to see the portrait of Mao.

So fired up, in fact, that she kept up a running conversation about it as we walked toward it, and soon the conversation degenerated into a song with lyrics something like, “I wanna see Mao, Mao, Mao-ey, Mao-ey, Mao. . . .” I was beginning to wonder if we’d get arrested for disrespect or heresy or something!

Then as we passed under the Mao portrait into the Forbidden City, Zoe says, “Mao was a nice man, wasn’t he?” I hemmed and hawed and answered, “Well, some people think he was nice and some people think he wasn’t.” Zoe looked at me gimlet-eyed and said adamantly, “Well, I say he’s NICE.” Ooooookay!

There are some nutty conspiracy theorists out there who decry Americans adopting babies from China, because they believe they’ve all been implanted with microchips that the Chinese will use to “activate” this stealth army when the kids reach adulthood. For just a nanosecond there, I had to wonder . . . . [Not really, but can you imagine what one of those whack jobs would have thought if they’d heard 4-year-old Zoe singing Mao’s praises?!!]

China Expat Families Blogging

The Xiamen adventure continues – I’m thrilled to be able to give you a few new blogs to follow expat families in Xiamen.

One of the families is the Fulbright family who will be in our Apartment 301 in the Foreign Scholars Guesthouse. It’ll be so great to see whether their experiences will be the same or different from ours. I feel nostalgic already! They’ll be blogging at “Our Year in Xiamen.”

The second family is blogging at “China Diary.” The dad is already in Xiamen and the rest of the family will be heading there in 2008. They’re planning to home-school their kids.

And then you can check out “G.A.C.E. in China,” a family with two kids who are living and working in Kunming. She is our own commenter, A.M.B.A. in MI.

200th Post?!

According to the Blogger dashboard, my last post was my 200th. When I first started the blog, I was worried that I'd run out of things to write about. Guess it didn't happen!

Tooth Fairy, Redux

OK, I need the low-down on the tooth fairy. Zoe keeps asking questions I can't answer! The most basic is "What does she do with all those teeth?" I did the law-professor/mommy Socratic method and asked, "What do YOU think she does with all the teeth?" Zoe, being into collections, decided the tooth fairy kept them in a tooth collection. But, then, "How does she remember whose tooth is whose when they're too small to write the names on?" "Well, how do YOU think she does it?" Zoe thinks maybe she glues them on a big piece of paper and writes the names under the teeth. "But how can the tooth fairy, who is so little, carry the big piece of paper?" Arrrrgggghhhhhh! "How do YOU think she does it?"

So what exactly is the story of the tooth fairy? You have to admit it's kind of a creepy thing -- what next, the toenail fairy?!

"I LOVE Buddha!"

After five months in China, the girls know a bit about Buddha, and are quite used to seeing paintings and etchings and statues of Buddha. When we took Zoe to visit her school -- her Catholic school -- Maya was with us, and as we entered the building there was a painting of Jesus, but kind of in a Russian-icon way. Maya looks at it and says, "Buddha! I LOVE Buddha!" We're bound to be excommunicated any minute now. . . .