Poetry

My grandma is practically perfect in every way. I'm planning on becoming the type of old woman who yells at teenagers and shuffles through the grocery store in her house dress and slippers. But if I decide to change, I think I'd like to age as gracefully as my grandma has.

She sent me a letter this week. I always love her letters, which is why I always try to write back. This letter was for my birthday, and as part of it, she included a poem. I'm sure she won't mind if I share this part with my dear friends.... or the whole internet.

"There is a little song I used to like, about how the sun goes around the world to look after allhis children. I wish I could remember the end, but that which I remember is:

Good morning, merry Sunshine,

How did you wake so soon?

You've chased away the little stars

And frightened out the moon.

I saw you go to sleep last night

Before I stopped (ceased?) my playing.

How did you get 'way over there

And where have you been staying?

I never got to sleep, dear,

I just go 'round and see

My little children of the East

Who rise and wait for me.

. . .

Maybe I'm remembering that because you are now 'the little children of the East.'"

My grandma knows thousands of poems, stories, and songs. They often come up in conversation, and I always love to hear her recount the story or sing the song that has come to mind.

My dad does that too, but mostly with songs. If you listen to what he's whistling, you can usually tell what he's thinking about. When we were living with my parents last year, if I was around he was usually whistling that song from "Fiddler on the Roof" where the girl is saying goodbye to her dad at the train station before heading off to Siberia.

Shenyang isn't exactly Siberia. But it's pretty close.

I wish I'd memorized more poems growing up. The only one I ever had to learn for school was "Invictus" in 8th grade. Every once in a while, it pops into my head. Lately, I sing it to the tune of this song. "Invictus" shouldn't make me laugh, but I can't think of a song more different from the poem.

Penny and I read some children's poems together before she goes to sleep, and I've memorized several already. I doubt I'll ever know as many as my grandma does, but it's a step in the right direction.

Poetry

I love children's poetry. I found an old book of poems published in like 1950, and Penny and I have been reading it before bed twice a day now for several weeks. I've almost got all the poems memorized.

There's one about roses and mud. One captures perfectly Penny trying to play with Meimei. And of course, there are several of Robert Lewis Stevenson's verses.

I love the rhythms. I love the vignettes they portray. I love slowing down and noticing the beautiful things in a child's life-- noticed by other people who took the time to look. Poems like these help me appreciate the small moments.

In school, I only ever had to memorize 2 poems. In high school, we had to memorize one of Shakespeare's sonnets, and our test was to write it from memory. Only once did I have to memorize a poem and recite it to the class. It was in 8th grade, and we memorized "Invictus." At the time, I don't think I understood the whole message of the poem, but I appreciated the dark imagery and then the final two lines.

I love that I had to memorize it, though, because now it's on file in my brain whenever I need it. Sometimes it comes to mind at the oddest times, like while singing a Primary song about spring. You can sing the original words about happiness or springtime... or switch them out for the words of "Invictus."

And because I know you didn't click on the link and because it really is THAT hilarious, the original song is really perky and goes,

"Why is the sky so blue and clear?

Why is the robin's song so dear?

Why is the sun so warm and bright,

Filling the earth with glorious light?"

Penny's poetry books

Grandma's poem

Daddy's singing

* Little

I am the sister of him

And he is my brother.

He is too little for us

To talk to each other.

Every day I show him my doll and my book,

But every day he still is too little to look.

Anniversary

Kevin called me from work. "Hey, I got invited to an event on Friday. It's a formal dinner, and we'll have to find a sitter. Do you want to go?"

"I think that would be fun! Plus, it's our anniversary."

Long pause. "Yes. Ahem. I knew that. That's why I'm inviting you."

Originally, I didn't think we'd go out for our anniversary. It's a pain getting a babysitter, especially when your kid is 2 months old, doesn't take a bottle, and prefers to cry all evening even when you're home taking care of her.

Once we found a sitter for each kid (I wasn't about to ask someone to hold my crying baby AND chase my toddler around all evening!), I still had to find an outfit. For some people this would sound fun, but I'm not that big into shopping. But for a couple evenings, I ran downstairs right after the kids were sleeping and shopped for a dress fancy enough.

In the US, I'm about a medium-large size. But in China, I'm gargantuan-size! I feel like I'm shopping in the children's section, because the average size is probably a 2 or 4. If I see a size 6, it looks big on the rack. But I'd need about two size-6 dresses to cover my booty, so it's a little frustrating.

Thankfully, though, we have H&M and Zara, which are both international clothing stores and occasionally carry clothes my size. I found my dress at H&M and found shoes at Zara. I may try and find a belt to go with my dress in the future, because while it is super cute and I love it, I think a waistline might improve the shape.

So here we are in all our glory:

We had place cards and were assigned seats at the center table, right in the very front of the room.

I've been to fancy weddings, but I think this may be the first formal dinner I've been to with so much silverware and so many courses. The food was fantastic!

While we ate, there was a program, and these were our MC's:

Our first course. I took a picture not only because the food was lovely, but because I love that they wrote Chinese characters on the plate. At first I thought it was the name of the dish (what?! they could have a salad named Fragrant Palace!), but as the courses continued, we figured out they were the names of each restaurant in the hotel, where the dish was from.

One of the benefits of our front-row seats was the clear view of the entertainment. This woman had a beautiful voice and sang a beautiful Chinese song, apparently about waterfalls and hydroelectric power, if I'm to believe the slideshow they played behind her as she sang. But the volume was cranked all the way up until my teeth rattled. Her singing brought tears to my eyes, but the throbbing eardrums were from the volume.

Then my favorite piece was this woman playing the... um... gu-zheng, I think. It's like a zither or a harp but sounds way more Chinese. It's one of the most beautiful and peaceful instruments, and I would love it if Penny wanted to learn to play it someday. If I remember years from now, I'll be sure to give her a push and a shove in that direction.

It's not very often you have to show a video of your food, but this sorbet palate cleanser was pretty much the coolest thing I've ever seen.

It was an awesome evening. I am thrilled that the hotel arranged this amazing banquet just for our anniversary!

We actually left before dessert, and I'm glad we did. We missed dessert (Belgian waffles with fruit), and the hotel General Manager actually got up to see us to the elevator and give us a box of mooncakes. I feel incredibly awkward about that, but Naomi had actually been crying for quite a while at that point, and we needed to go.

It was a great evening, and it will be hard to top that next year!

Payback

Yesterday we had a HORRENDOUS afternoon. Starting at about noon, the girls took turns crying and napping. One would nap while the other would cry the whole time. Then when that one napped, the other one would be up and crying... or consistently, insistently whining, which is even worse.

Add to that that I decided I wouldn't let them watch TV or videos all day.

Add to that that I decided to make a push for potty training. Penny pushed back by refusing to sit on the toilet. Ever. All day.

I was asking for it, I know.

By about 4:00, I was shaking because I was trying so hard not to FREAK OUT at my kids. We went for a walk. The girls were darlings on the walk. We saw a stray cat and got to watch it for a while (I miss my Toby). Everyone we passed commented on how cute the girls are, and halfway through the walk, I stopped gritting my teeth and wanting to offer them up for sale. I just smiled and kept walking, reminding myself about the endorphins that come from exercise and hoping I'd feel better after a while.

Meimei fell asleep for the last 5 or 10 minutes of the walk, and she considered herself done with her nap once we got home.

Grrrr....

Kevin saved my bacon when he got home from work. He took Penny with him to get McDonald's for dinner. He lured her to the potty with his iPad, where she happily peed an pooped while playing all sorts of fun apps.

We had a nice Family Home Evening with only one girl crying the whole time (Meimei), and then we finished it off with a pan of brownies I'd made at one point during the afternoon, knowing I'd need them.

The two girls eventually did go to sleep. Once they were in bed, I ran downstairs to use the spa for the first time. I simmered in the hot-tub for a long time and then returned home and fell into bed.

I didn't wake up until 7:30 AM.

Did you read that right? Does that mean my 2 1/2 month old child slept through the night? Oh yeah! She slept for 12 hours straight!!!

I don't know if that was a fluke or a pattern, but right now I don't really care. It was more than I could have ever asked for, and I'm the happiest person alive!

Today we're still potty training, but I've loosened the restrictions on videos. Penny can use the iPad all she wants as long as she'll agree to sit on the potty, which she has.

Linguistic analysis

I have a kind of love-hate relationship with Linguistics. On the one hand, I absolutely love the subject. When I first took Intro to Linguistics in college, as I flipped through my textbook before classes started, I found myself lost in the pages. I read most of my book before class even started. I am fascinated by the studies and articles about airline crash black-box recordings, Klingon as a first language, language acquisition, and even how inflection can change the entire meaning of a sentence (I love your shirt-- I love your shirt-- I love your shirt, etc).

But then don't get me started about Linguistics classes. I hated my first class mostly because of the teacher. It should have been my first clue when she spent the first two ENTIRE class periods taking roll. There were over 100 students in the class! Then the next week, she took three class periods to tell us her life story in painstaking detail, including the names of each graduate student she worked with on each project, and what each of them is doing with his or her life these days.

I made it 3/4 of the way through the semester and then finally dropped it, W/F.

So when I retook the class and actually did my classwork, I realized it wasn't just the teacher; I hated Linguistic classes. I loved reading what other people have found in their research, but I hated doing the research. And I hated even more learning the stupid names of phonemes, syntax, morphology, blah, blah, blah.

But getting back to my loves: it has been fascinating watching Penny learn to speak. It's cool to see what I learned in my textbook being played out in front of me. She's comfortably into her two-word phrase phase, and I'm sure she'll pop out some longer sentences one of these days.

In our apartment building, there are several kids about Penny's age. Each of them is bilingual in various combinations. One boy is Japanese with a Chinese nanny. One is Chinese with an American daddy. Actually, two of them are. One is Korean-American. One is Chinese-Canadian. All of them can understand two languages fluently-- well, as fluently as toddlers can understand. But each of them has chosen just one language to speak, usually the one their mom speaks. But Penny's Korean-American friend has just been living in the US, and even though his mom speaks to him 95% of the time in Korean, he speaks English to her 95% of the time. The other 5% is after he's just been playing with his Korean friends (some older kids in the building).

Most of the time, when our playgroup gets together, the moms speak to each other in mostly Chinese. But then each of us will yell at-- I mean, talk to-- our children in our own languages.

Penny says "thank you" like an American. She faces the person, smiles, and says loudly and confidently, "Thank you!"

Penny's little Canadian-Chinese friend is younger, and he puts his two hands together and shakes them while he kind of mumbles, "Xie xie."

Penny's Japanese friend is even younger, and when his mom tells him to "domo," he bends his knees and bobs a little bow. It is the cutest thing ever!

I love watching the kids play together and learn their languages. It will be fun to keep watching as we're here and Penny grows up a bit more.

Blessing Baby Naomi-- in China

Naomi did me the honor of smiling for a picture in her frilly blessing dress.

A couple weeks ago Kevin was able to bless Naomi in church here. And by "here" I mean here in our living room. It was a beautiful blessing for a beautiful, joyful child. We love her a lot already, and it's fun to get to know her better day by day.

A lot of people ask us how church works here in China, and I'll try to give a good explanation.

China has 5 officially recognized and accepted religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Even those religions have to work within the boundaries defined by the government here, which leads to such situations as Chinese Catholic churches having no ties to the Vatican. There is freedom of religious belief, but no freedom of religion or religious practice.

So being Mormon in China means I'm part of a church that isn't officially recognized by the government here. In China, then, we don't have missionaries, we don't talk about our religion, we don't even answer questions. I mean, if I have a friend who's also American (or other foreigner), then sure, I can talk about whatever I want. But I can't go preaching the Gospel to my Chinese friends.

There are many Mormons living in China. In big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there are enough that they have big, hopping branches of the church there. As long as foreigners are meeting with foreigners, we can have church just like we would anywhere else. Well, anywhere else that would check your passport as you walk into a meeting.

There are some Chinese Mormons, too. Maybe they joined the Church while they were outside China, or maybe their Chinese LDS friends taught them about the Church. That's all fine and dandy. The Chinese LDS meet with other Chinese LDS. The foreigners meet with foreigners. We just don't intermingle.

Now, that's how it works in the big cities. But what about the random folks sprinkled around China? Here in Shenyang, we have several LDS families, and there are a couple other cities with groups of 20 or so, like us. But what about the one Mormon guy going to school in some city? What about the couple teaching rock-climbing in the South? What about the group of English teachers in that one place? There are random Mormons sprinkled throughout the country in small groups, often for short times. So in order to give us the opportunity to worship together, we get to be part of the China International Virtual Branch!

Our virtual branch works like this: our Branch President and Relief Society President live in Beijing. On Sunday, we all call them on a teleconferencing system, and we have church over the phone. They play a song, and we sing along. Someone in one city might give the opening prayer, while someone in another city gives a talk. For the Sacrament, they just mute the phone lines, and if your group has someone to administer the Sacrament, then you can go ahead and have it in your place. Or if not, it's a nice quiet time to ponder the Savior's life.

We communicate by email, receiving a newsletter every week. It's nice to hear from our leaders and hear what our other branch members are doing around the country.

We have a ton of kids in our twig (mini-branch, ha ha ha), so for the second hour of church (we only have 2 hours), a few of the parents go take all the kids into another room for nursery and Primary, while the rest of the adults get to attend Sunday School, Priesthood, or Relief Society. We rotate through those meetings each week.

Kevin and I taught Sunday School last week. It's interesting to ask a question and hope that someone A) is listening, and B) is planning on answering. You can't see them, so you just have to wait. Once a discussion gets going, though, people just introduce themselves and comment like they would anywhere else. I feel like we should preface our comments with something like, "Hi, I love your show! I listen every week, but it's my first time calling in."

So how does a baby blessing work? Well, we had about 4 elders meeting here, and they all held baby Naomi. And Kevin just gave the blessing over the phone. One cool thing about our virtual branch is that some of our family members were able to call in and hear the blessing, too-- all the way from America!

If you've followed me this far, you probably have some idea of how our church works. If you're like me, you've probably read this explanation and still have no idea how this would possibly work. It took me actually attending a meeting before I kind of understood. :)

One for the grandparents

Our little Naomi likes to smile now.

One word at a time

I majored in Chinese in college. That means that I've studied Chinese now (on and off) for 11 years. You'd think this would make me awesome. But read on, dear reader.

The other day, I was getting Penny ready to go, and our Ayi rattled off the fact that Penny was wearing her rain boots and running around the house. I didn't hear her very clearly, and I asked her again how to say "rain boots." She told me very slowly," 雨靴 yu xue." Hmmm, that translates as... RAIN BOOTS.

There's a reason I don't go around telling people about my bachelor's degree.

Another day I was rocking Naomi in my rocking chair. I didn't know how to say it in Chinese, so I asked our Ayi if they had this kind of chair in China. She raised her eyebrows, "What? A 摇椅 yao yi?" Ahh yes, ROCKING (as in, to rock back and forth) CHAIR.

I'm brilliant.

Saturday morning we went to a market. On the first floor they sell aquariums, fish, and plants. On the second floor are tons of booths, selling paintings, jade carvings, intricate furniture, jewelry, etc. One store had huge polished chunks of petrified wood. I asked the store owner how to say that kind of rock in Chinese. Before she even answered, Kevin turned to me, "木化石mu hua shi." WOOD-CHANGED(into)-ROCK.

Kevin only minored in Chinese.

Home videos

Most of my favorite home videos from growing up end with a crying child and a quickly turned-off camera. This one isn't exactly action packed, but it still fits in that category.

When babies cry, there are really only 3 or 4 fixes, and Penny starts listing them off: Milk? Burp?

She'll be a good mom someday. :)

I just realized that I have approximately zero pictures of myself. So here is one I took:

We haven't been doing much lately, just living real life. Naomi is starting to grow up a little bit, to the point where she doesn't sleep through everything anymore. This means I can't just strap her on with the Baby Bjorn and let her doze as we go throughout the day. She's starting to take definite naps rather than just zoning in and out. And she doesn't go to sleep in noisy places as well, meaning I have to keep her needs in mind a little bit more.

She also coos and smiles, which I love. I put her in her swing a lot, and today she was in there just crying for a while. I couldn't figure out why she was still crying. She had a new diaper, a full tummy freshly cleared of burps, and she usually falls asleep in her swing. I picked her up, and she just wanted to talk to me. She smiled and cooed, and I smiled and cooed right back.

Penny is loving to sing and dance. I play the piano for her, and we sing. She doesn't know words to songs yet, but she's getting there. We've sung "Here We Are Together" a few times, and we list all four people in our family. Today she sat at the piano and sang something about Daddy and Meimei, and maybe Mommy and Penny. Otherwise, she just loves to clap and do hand motions to songs as we (I) sing them.

Last night we went to a BBQ at the Consulate. One of Kevin's coworkers was in charge of the music and was playing a mix including a bunch of songs from Glee. Our nightly dance parties usually have several Glee songs in the mix, thanks to Pandora, and Penny LOVES dancing to them. So Penny entertained the entire consulate staff with her enthusiastic dancing, even starting her own dance party in on the lawn-- kids and adults alike. She was really the life of the party.