Update

It's been a long time since my last entry. I stopped when we decided not to continue with our second adoption. Since the blog was started for that purpose, it feels sad to visit it when we won't be getting a baby after all. The reasons for our decision all sound kind of trivial and hollow when alliterate . The changing climax of international adoption has a lot to do with it. It was just not meant to be. God's will.

I am sort of in a slump now, not quit knowing where to re direct my energy. The children seem out of control except when they are under someone else care. I am not quite sure what to do with baby sitting arrangement with the kids in school, one until 2:45, one get out at 11:30, and one goes only three days a week. Currently we have three baby sitters, one during the day (also suppose to clean etc.), and two rotating ones for week nights because Scott and I both take call. I have reluctantly come to the realization that ultimately, nobody wants to take care of other people's children or clean their houses (it's not as terrible as it sounds, heck, I don't want to clean my own house even if Scott pays me). It's just a job, and the less they do, the better it is for them. Scott says that I need to give specific instructions as to what needs to be done. I find that so difficult to be nearly impossible. It's not that I don't know what needs to be done. I just can't bring myself to give orders. It's gotten so that I pack the boys their lunch even though they eat at home, just to make sure that they eat what I prepared, instead of being taken out for fast food. It's all much easier in the hospital. I write my orders, and a system is in place to see that the orders are carried out, otherwise, "the system" is in place to "take care of it" without me having to confront anybody directly. On the rare occasion that I complaint...meetings are arranged, apologies offered, and some attempts at changes are made... well I didn't say it is perfect...

I thought of changing the blog to a food/bento blog. There's only one problem. The kids just want to have PBJ, and chicken mcnuggets. List of acceptable food is short: cereal, macaroni and cheese from a box, Chinese instant noodle, chocolate milk. Baby drinks more milk than a calf. They love Pizza Wednesdays at school. They would each gulf down two adult size pieces plus dessert, no problem. In the mean time, I am churning out enough baked goods for a small bakery, and making multi layered bento boxes. I would not go so far as to say that Motherhood is not rewarding, but a simple positive feed back loop it is not.


I also find it difficult to reconcile the priorities that preschool and kindergarten demand with my work schedule. Kindergarten craft duty, lunch service duty, field trips to apple orchard, Halloween parties are all smack in the middle of a work day. It's not that I don't want to spend time with my children or be involved with their education. I insist on dropping them off myself every morning, which means I start my rounds an hour later than is typical. While that does not seem like a big deal, it is if you are waiting to be taken of the ventilator, or worse yet, need to be put on one. But, I do feel that the entire preschool/kindergarten curriculum is not designed with working parents in mind, let alone one that intubate and resuscitate people for a living.

Enough venting, time to plan that Disney trip for next Spring. Did you know that you need to make dining reservations 6 months ahead of your day of arrival to get the restaurants and character meal that you want? To get a meal with Cindy at The Castle, you have to synchronize your phone call to the atomic clock at the exact time that they open their phone line for reservation on the exact day six months ahead of you day of arrival because so many people are making the reservation at the same time. It's crazy! If you have no idea what I am talking about, you are a better person than I am. To think, I use to be able to pack for a trip to Peru an hour ahead of my flight and bring only a small duffel bag for the whole two weeks!

Expedited Referrals

It all started with the rumor on The Rumor Queen that a certain US adoption agency gets faster referrals for their clients. Waiting parents are mad that people are "cutting in line", and are concerned about possible corruption in the China international adoption program. There are no conclusions yet on exactly what's going on. Some discussions regarding what constitute an ethical adoption followed, mostly about the role of the adoptive parents, adoption agencies and the governments involved. Little were mentioned about the adopted children or their birth parent. Then came the negativity toward expedited families of Chinese ancestry. It's just not fair that Chinese families get Chinese children faster. I find it perplexing that these outlooks are coming out of the same China adoptive parents (hopefully not the exact same people) who study blogs by Korean trans-racial adoptees. These are the same group of adoptive parents who express sympathy, empathy and understanding of the pain and suffering of the trans- racially adopted and vow to do better for their own trans- racially adopted children by enrolling them in Chinese schools and celebrate every Chinese holiday. How can they forget the sacred Adoption Triad so well described by those adopted? Let me remind my readers for the quiz after reading my blog, The Triad consists of The Child, The Birth Parents, and The Adoptive Parents...but did not include The Government (an oversight?). (This would make a good multi multiple choice question, the kind that you pick A,B,C,D, A and C, B and D, A B and C, and all of the above.)

I am not a big fan of the Korean trans-racial adoptive blogs. If nothing else, they don't make me feel all warm and fuzzy. In fact, reading them generates "negative emotions" toward trans- racial adoptions. Despite all the disclaimers by the authors that they are not bitter, resentful, and ungrateful, that's exactly how they come across. Ungrateful is fine, since being "ungrateful" is probably a sign of parent-child attachment, but bitter and resentful is harder for me to sympathise with....until recently, when I realize what their parents may be like and what their lives entail.

It comes across loud and clear in these blogs that the Korean trans- racial adoptees don't mind being adopted so much as being adopted by White Parents. The hierarchy of their preference is very clearly stated: 1.) Biologic parents, 2.) Domestic adoptive parents (citizens of their birth country), then grudgingly 3.) White Parents on a good day, but maybe The Institution on a bad day. The fact that they are not with #1 and #2 is the source of their angst and in my view not fair game for public debate, so I won't comment on it. It does not take too much imagination to infer that they would have probably preferred being adopted by Korean immigrants than white parents. In fact, I would presume to venture, that the mental image they have of their biologic parents are most likely based on that of the immigrant Korean families. The parents of their dreams most likely bear striking resemblances to their Korean classmates' parents. The White Parents seem to have a mental block with that reality. They are blocking this message out the same way and for the same reason that they are blocking out the message that morbid obesity is a life threatening condition, and homosexuality is not the familial norm. When choices are being made, the adoptive parents' desire to be parents always out weights the best interest of the child. But that's being human, and is necessary up to a certain point, for the sacrifices demanded of parenthood.

Raising children is not a particularly logical enterprise except in the context of specie survival. Were it not for the Desire to be Parents, we would all let our neighbors raise the next generation instead of ourselves. Therefore, the responsibility rests with the society/elected officials (The Government) to set limits so that the desire of the adoptive parents whilst acknowledged and respected, do not overwhelm the best interest of the child, hence The Haque. To that end the CCAA lets white families and Chinese families adopt, but has an expedited line for families of Chinese Heritage. To that end, there are restrictions based on BMI for adoptive parents, to that end there are income qualifications, and criminal record checks...it's not that hard to understand. By the way, I have never heard of Korean adoptees complain about their adoptive parent's weight or income, just about them being white...food for thought?

Some people are not happy that families of Chinese heritage are expedited. In my view these people should not adopt Chinese children. If they can not overlook their self interest enough to see that Chinese children prefer Chinese parents, then they would not understand the complex racial issues trans- racially adopted children will face. These parents are the ones that raise children who feel that they are experimental monkeys. After reading about the embittering experiences that trans- racial adoptees recounted and the blatant selfishness and racism expressed by some adoptive parents in the international adoptive community, I sometimes wish that China would refer their babies to Chinese families first, then consider the non Chinese families. But that kind of attitude does not contribute to world peace in the end, and I want a better world for my children and their children.

Being Chinese, I am pretty sure it was the White Adoptive Parent who first opened the door to international adoption and worked to make IA as corruption free as possible. They are also the ones adopting special needs babies and older children. As a population, the Chinese community still has (to put it kindly) reservations about adoption as a mean to build their own families. When I read blogs written by Chinese families about adoption, they most often talk about the disapproval they face within their own families, and the conflicts they face are quite painful and heartbreaking. These are blogs written in Chinese, a whole different genre of reading. (I don't have that problem by the way.)

Fortunately (Hopefully) for all of us, by striving to be prejudice free one small step at the time, these issues I vent about will become non-issues for our future generations. May all children born be loved and well cared for. Amen.

The Wrongful Birth

I have been reading about the Australian lesbian couple suing their fertility doctor because their IVF resulted in two instead of just one baby. I am pretty informed about the process involved in IVF, having been through it a few times myself, and read enough about it to pass a board exam. From the information available through the Internet, the case did not impress me as an unusual malpractice suit. Perhaps there was a procedural, or system flaw that resulted in an error. If an "error" occurred, it only occurred by the narrowest definition...the birth mother's informal verbal request at the last moment of a very long medical process which contradicted her explicit written consent. The error did not occur because the IVF protocol was not followed; the error occurred because the mothers involved behaved in an unexpected and exceptional manner, outside of the scope covered by the protocol. I am not sure how things work in Australia, (is IVF really publicly funded?), but these harassment suites happen all the time in the US, and the society at large absorbs the cost because, well, our society obviously feels that it's worth the cost...However, now that I have expressed my bias, rather than using this case as yet another excuse to bemoan the plights (of which there are many) of the modern physician (of which I am one), I think this case is very important because it focuses the general public's attention on the ethical controversies surrounding IVF.

Legal merits of the case aside, what was to have happened to the embryo had it (she) not been transfered? What should have happened to the embryo if it were not transferred? Would the hypothetical embryo who is now a real three year old agree with your answer? Who had the right to decide, you me, the public, these women, or the three year old who was then an embryo? Here are two women complaining, to the point of filing a law suite that, two human embryos that they chose to deliberately and artificially create because of their sexual orientation, were transferred instead of one, therefore, the accusation being, resulting in the birth and existence of their two, instead of one, daughters. As they are raising their two daughters today, they are able to state with unwavering conviction, that they were wronged and harmed because both of these two equally viable embryos were allowed to grow into little girls, when they, the parents, wanted just to allow for one. In other words, While proclaiming that they love and cherish their daughters equally they are suing for damages because one of them is not dead, literally. Dead, NOT does not exist mind you, because they were both already created at the time of the transfer.

Unlike most IVF patients with "extra" embryos, these women actually have the unique opportunity to know and love (?) the "embryos" they created but did not initially want. Yet, to this very day, they still actively wish for the destruction of one of these embryos so fiercely that they are suing for compensation. They, and their lawyer, claim with righteousness that they are "injured" because their doctor caused the continuing survival of both of their daughters instead of killing one off as they really had wanted. Am I the only one alarmed by these people's attitude? If they were indeed "wronged" by the system, would it have been more right for one of the little girls to have been destroyed as an embryo? Would that hypothetical little embryo who is now growing up to be a real woman not have been more "wronged" if it was indeed discarded? It is understandable for the rest of the world to feel impersonal and unattached to hypothetical embryos for the sake of ethical discussion, but when a specific embryo escaped the protocol and proved to the world that it too can be a real human being, we, the rest of the world should reconsider the fate of all the other embryos that were not so fortunate. These women who are suing should serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of us, reminding the world how easy it is for people to devalue human life when it serves their(?our) self interest to do so.

Regardless of what any one's philosophical definition of when human life begins, from the perspective of the embryo, it is as alive as it can be at it's every point in life until it dies, no more or less than what any one of us can claim. After insemination, a healthy embryo divides and grows at a predictable and known fashion until, in the case of IVF, it's transferred into the perspective mother's uterus, where it will hopefully implant and continue to develop and grow. Sometimes the embryo does not implant, and dies (hence the practice of transferring more than one embryo, IVF is not the exact science some people believe it to be). Sometimes, the embryo implants, grows in to a fetus, but dies before being born. Sometime, the embryo implants, grows into a fetus, then an infant, but dies as a baby, or a child, or an young adult. Sometime, the embryo gets to die as a 100 year old demented nursing home patient on the ventilator. Nobody can predict the exact fate of any particular human embryo. Should anyone, as an individual or as members of the human society have the right to condemn an embryo to death? If so, under what bases? The entitlement of the biologic parents? What about the sperm donor? He was more biologic then the birth mother's lesbian partner by definition.

As I said in the beginning, I went through IVF a couple of times myself, not to mention all the other stuff preceding IVF. Fortunately for us, because I never produce many eggs per cycle, all of the embryos in every cycle were transferred, none were purposely destroyed. All six of them were excellent quality embryos, though none of them "took". I had pictures of them, they could have been part of a baby book. I confess, I did not give ethical matters much thought at the time, I just wanted a baby. Now I am mother to three. I also have ultrasound pictures of my sons (who were conceived the old fashion way after my failed IVF cycles) starting just a few days after implantation, not all that much older than these "embryos" at the time of an IVF transfer. I had these ultrasounds because I was considered a very "high risk OB". I can not imagine looking at my children now and think for a moment that I could decide if they should or should not exist, or if they should have been destroyed at any point during their lives. Can any mother? (yes yes yes, these Australian moms can). In fact, knowing what I know now, if we happen to have had embryos left from our previous attempts at IVF, I would transfer them all, one at the time, and hope that they all live. Easy to say since we don't have to deal with that situation...to actually do that is probably not economically or medically feasible. Yet these "extra" embryos are created and destroyed daily by parents who would have loved them if they were the ones transferred.

I do not believe that IVF is unethical per say. I do think that the way it's currently conducted leads to regrets, not only for the parents, but for our entire society. For example, if this couple really only wanted one child, they could have asked for only one egg to be retrieved and inseminated. If the success rate of IVF then drops to economically or medically unacceptable levels, then the procedure should be abandoned until it can be further refined. I am not even sure if it is ethical to apply IVF or other assisted reproductive technology to people without medical problems but are doing so for "life-style" choices. After all, we do not transplant a new heart into someone who's heart is perfectly fine or do dialysis on people with functioning kidneys. Quoting Rita Panahi from News.com.au

Ethicists are up in arms at the prospect of an ever increasing number of women capable of conceiving naturally but who take advantage of IVF to avoid the involvement of a male partner in producing a child.

In Britain single women and lesbians are likely to become the largest group to have donor insemination. Latest figures show they made up 38 per cent of all treatments last year, an increase from 28 per cent in 2003 and 18 per cent in 1999.

In Australia there are almost 120,000 fertilised eggs ready for use by IVF patients. Based on current success rates this equates to 12,000 children.

Fears that these lives could be traded as just another commodity are only strengthened with cases such as this, where a monetary value is being sought for the artificial creation of a life that was superfluous to the needs of the parents.

Genetic technology when coupled with the reproductive technologies already available make it possible in the near future (if not now already) for us to engineer human beings at will. My fear is that when we manipulate human reproduction for our own convenience and benefit (as almost all human endeavors are), our future generations will be created in our own image instead of that of God. These future generations will no longer be God's children, and will not be human beings as we define human beings today. Is that how we are to end?

The First Song

This is YehYeh's debut performance after just three months of violin lessons!

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for Bo. He has been looking forward to it all summer. Last night, YehYeh sat him down at the kitchen table and gave him some pointers. "No hitting, no pushing, no teasing, be respectful, and you'll do fine", I heard her said. She gave him a hug afterwards as an encouragement. YehYeh is a bluebird (the second year) at preschool this year. She talks about kindergarten next year the way high school seniors talk about college. We haven't discussed the educational opportunities post kindergarten yet. Nevertheless, she is a natural student. She is sociable, inquisitive, competitive, and a born leader who is not easily fazed by peer pressure, or intimidated by authority. She figures out the rules for success and eagerly follows them to her own advantage.

BoBo, on the other hand, has issues (sigh). A supremely sensitive little guy with an emotional intensity beyond what his tender years can handle, he takes everything personally, and can not tolerate being misunderstood. More than the average toddler, he feels an absolute need to control his environment and is frequently frustrated and angry because of the impossibility of it all. Needless to say, preschool with all it's rules and relatively impersonal routine is very stressful for him. In his mind, it's not only an intimidating environment where his voice is drowned by many others, but also a place where right and wrong is frequently relative (to him), and arbitrary.

I am very glad that he will have two years of preschool before kindergarten. In order to succeed in formal education, he needs to learn that being unique is a state of mind, that it's not necessary or even that important to be understood, and that rules are not only not personal, they are created based on the lowest common denominator. Preschool, the toddler's little microcosm of the real world, is all about getting along, and only incidentally about right and wrong.

BoBo is only three, and I am already wanting to tell him to stop being so idealistic :-). Next year, Baby will get an entirely different message from me on his first day of school...something along the line of "the end does not justify the means".

Ama's birthday

Don't forget to click play at the bottom left!
The kids really miss her. The first weekend after Ama went back to LA, they ran upstairs to her room at my parents' house looking for her. Baby asked,"Achoi hide?"

Wiggles and Giggles

We went to the Wiggles concert last weekend. When we got there, we found ourselves in the balcony, far far away from the stage, even though I asked for the best available seats on Ticket Master. To make matters worse, our camera was broken.

Fortunately, our professional childcare provider (Jamie) accompanied us to the event. She is just as much a Wiggles fan as Baby. She and Baby have waited for two years to see the Wiggles live. When she saw other little kids dancing around the stage she scooped Baby up and declared,"let see if they will say no to a two year old", and left. Esther, quick to pick up on the situation, scurried behind with Maddie (Jamie's daughter). I decided to follow them after a couple of minutes with Bo.

I asked the guard at the VIP section if I could bring Bo in, he looked at me like I was crazy, and said,"NO". A little embarrased, I hasten back to our seats. I noticed though that Jamie did not come back, and assumed that she found better seats somewhere in the economy section. Then, the unbelievable happened.

Scott and I looked down with amazement at Baby and Yeh wiggling right next to the stage, and Jamie standing a little bit behind, beaming with pride.

She was the one who took the pictures, with her hot pink cellphone.

We always knew that we were very lucky to have Jamie, but I never realized the scope of her virtuosity. The woman has skills that I will never have!

The Children's Bible

There was a thunderstorm last week. After some impressive thunder and lightening, BoBo exclaimed, "Mama Mama, God is angry!"

"Why do you think God is angry?" I asked, not wanting to miss an educational opportunity.

YehYeh, aka "Know It All", started to educate me about Noah. "it's going to rain for forty days and forty night!", she predicted as a matter of fact. BoBo nodded in agreement, looking very worried.

YehYeh proceeded to sing, "who built the ark, who build the ark..." for her multimedia presentation. "Noah, Noah" jointed the boys in refrain, to support their sister.

All together, for the finale, "brother Noah built the ark". Much clapping, thank you, thank you.

After the song, they took turns naming all the animals they can think of , including exotic creatures such as the mommy and daddy wombats.

Searching for more passengers, YehYeh enlisted Mary, Joseph, and their camel.

"Don't forget Sam!", BoBo shouted. He loves Samson, and just as much, the Sam in Green Egg and Sam. I think he thinks they are the same person.

"Two by two, three by three, four by four..." chanted the children in unison. "Then there was baby Jesus", YehYeh concluded.

Blasphemy, blasphemy, please forgive her God, for she knows not what she is saying.

Scott finally came home half an hour later. BoBo threw a tantrum because BaBa refused to build a boat.

"Why can't you build a boat", I implored.

"But I just finished twelve hours of surgery, now I have to build a boat?" Scott complained.

"Built him a boat while I make you some fried rice", I ordered.

BoBo got a paper boat, and Scott, some fried rice.

Then they all went to bed.

Amen

Was It Meant to Be?

I stumbled on a Korean adoptee blog today that bothered me more than others. The author also adopted from Korea, and has a bio daughter. She did not make her motivation to adopt clear on her blog. I do not find the author malicious in anyway. I do not believe her blog has an agenda or a cause. I think she writes about what she feels when she feels the need to write about it. I am almost certain that she is a pretty nice person, someone I would know from church etc. I felt the urge to respond to her opinions and observations, but I just don't have the heart to comment negatively on someone else's personal blog. She is not writing to me or for me. I read many of her recent entries to try to gain a more complete picture and to understand her writing style. The problem with reading blogs is that posts can be easily taken out of context. I think I read enough to know that while she appears happy with her life, she is not happy being a trans-racial adoptee.

What troubles me the most is her post that portrays adoptive parents as selfish insensitive people who thoughtlessly build their happiness upon the pain of the "birth parents". Specifically, she found adoptive parents' sentiment that the adopted children were "meant to be" their children distasteful and insulting to the children's birth parents. The fact that she over romanticizes the birth parents is obvious, or should be to anyone old enough to reproduce. Her reproach of parents who are just trying to express their love for their adopted children is not particularly charitable or helpful to those adopted. When I describe my relationship with my daughter as "meant to be", it does not imply that the events which lead to her adoption were also meant to be. Nothing bad that happens in our world is "meant to be". We chose with our free will to disobey God, and had to leave the Garden of Eden...after that, EVERYTHING was not meant to be. That is what is meant by the original sin. When I talk or think that my daughter is meant to be my daughter, I am talking about the grace of God that saves, protects, and blesses me, my daughter, her bio parents, infertile couples, China, USA, all of us, etc, despite all the things that are not meant to be. It's a miracle, and should be appreciated as such. Referring to my previous post, me, the child, her bio parents all knocked, and we were all answered, given the constraint of our inperfect word that is of our own doing. Please feel free to improve the world so the future is a better place. The past is what it is. I do understand and agree with her that there are adoptive parents with an attitude of entitlement that's hard to stomach. I complained quite loquaciously about them myself. But they are that way about everything in their life, they are not that way because they are adoptive parents. It dawn on me though, that her perspective is very much that of a sheltered American based on her somewhat romantic view of poverty, and child abandonment. while her views simply refect who she is and how she feels, they do lack insight and scope. ( If any one finds the term "sheltered American" insulting, realize at least that many in the world envy that dubious privilege.) In answer to her question, if I had to give up a child due to war, famine, extreme poverty,etc. I would be so thankful not to mention relieved that my child was loved and well cared for and did not die, I would have no problem over looking his or her adoptive parent's lack of talent for creative prose, or even their sense of undeserved entitlement. But that's just me. (By the way, bio parents with insight, do not feel entitled to their bio children either.)

Human love is by nature possessive. I claim my child, my child claims me, that's called attachment. Children need to attach, it's part of normal development. How would an adopted child feel growing up if she thinks that her parents would willingly, with gladness reunite her with her bio parents should they happen to show up on the front door? Only God is capable of the true unconditional love that is perfectly pure. The rest of us can only love in a way that God approves, allow God to guide us in our choices and trust in his timing. To think otherwise is hubris.

Her perspective about female Asian stereotypes is also very much that of an American woman (of whatever ethnicity) rather than that of an Asian. Ironically, it's the fact that she is so very American (and nothing wrong with that, by the way) that she sees it as a racial issue. I have no doubt that everything she described happened. However, if I were to be in those situations, it's the perversity that would offend me, not the fact that these people view me as Asian. Chinese is what I am, whoever that chooses to look at me. As an Asian women who grew up with a world filled with other Asian women of all ages, shape and sizes, ugly and beautiful but mostly just plain, the concept of all Asian woman as sexual beings is just too preposterous to be entertained even under duress. Bad men sexualize women, their hatred is universal. They would not treat white women or even their own wives or daughters any better. It puzzles me that anyone should find sexual perverts' opinion on women of any significance. I don't seek opinion on children from pedophiles. Of course these people are also racist. They are the same group that robs the poor and beats the elderly. They exist in all countries. Unfortunately certain percentage of the human population suffers from this particular form of "congenital defect", and are truly "learning disabled". One simply stay away from places where these people are likely to hang out (in the real world and on the internet) because these places are bad places for many other reasons. No energy left to comment on the sisterly comments she received. Maybe they view her as a threat because she is attractive, again it's not that she is Asian. I am starting to feel a little bad about myself. I don't seem to have her problem...I guess I am that ugly.

A lot of her complaints are also complaints of second or third generation Asians, they are only relevant to her adoption in the sense that had she not been adopted, she would have grown up in Korea. These are not issues caused by adoption. These are issues of immigration, and she is an immigrant though she is not likely to view herself as such. Other children don't get to choose if their family immigrate or not either, their parents make that decision for them, just like hers.

It's getting late, so I'll cut it short. If you get nothing else from this blog, please just remember that Google search is not a research tool (if one needs an example of something that is not meant to be... )It's the definition of selection bias by design. Besides, pornography is the number one use (or at least one of the top uses) of the Internet. Try to Google white women in an Asian country and see what happens. This is just a pet peeve about one of the failures of our liberal arts education.

A Lazy Summer's Day

I washed the kids twice today, not because they were dirty, but because I ran out of things to do with them. Mondays and Tuesdays are my "days off" so I really try to make these days as "educational" or at least, as TV free as possible.

Bo and I dropped Yeh Yeh off for her individual "enrichment session" at her school this morning. (I don't think her teacher gets paid by the school in the summer, so this is her "summer job".) To kill off 1/2 an hour, we grabbed some coffee/chocolate milk and donuts at a nearby cafe. Afterwards the two of them played at the playground for another 1/2 hr, we then stopped at my office to turn in my billing from last week.

The rest of the morning was spent at Stone Lake beach. We had a picnic by the lake, played in the water, and ate ice cream before heading home. Jamie (my babysitter) and I congratulated ourselves on a great outing without mishaps, washed them, then put them down for their afternoon nap.

What to do after nap was more problematic. We tried the backyard play set, watering the plants, driveway chalk, blowing bubbles, and crashing down the driveway really really fast in the red plastic car. After the stunt act, I canceled the planned picnic on the driveway with gold fish and watermelon and bathed them again, for an hour. I can only enjoy our driveway for so long.

Summer dinner in the country is a casual affair. Gold fish for Bo then pizza two hours later, cheese stick and Strawberry Yogurt Burst Cheerios for Baby, and ramen noodle 泡麵 for Yeh. I know what you are thinking, but I put flax seed oil in it at least. Later tonight I 'll popped a few uncrushed gold fish from the floor into my mouth as I clean up, eat the rest of the cheese stick that Baby can't get out out of the wrapper, and polish off the left over noodle soup that Yeh grudgingly allowed me to save for myself. I hope Scott is not planning on eating dinner tonight. He claims to have a stomach flu so he can hide in the bedroom to read the last Harry Potter book. He can always have bagel with humus and dried mango if he gets hungry, but then he would be busted. I already read the end of the book.

Tomorrow we will go to the county fair in the morning, and Yeh has ballet in the evening, another fun filled day.

I can't wait for Wednesday morning -when I go back to work.