Household Help

I have a compulsion.

Most Tuesday mornings, if you were to visit my house, you would find me rushing around, throwing laundry into the washing machine, putting the books we've been reading back on the shelves, folding blankets, hanging up coats, putting shoes back in the shoe cupboard, sweeping.

Why?

Because our helper, He Ayi ("Auntie He" in English), comes on Tuesdays, and I am giving in to the compulsion I have every Tuesday morning of tidying up before she gets here.

(Keep in mind that I am the type of person who makes the beds in hotel rooms so it won't be messy for the maid. It drives my husband bananas.)

For those of you who have never had household help, you will probably think I'm crazy. Why would I tidy up when I have a housekeeper coming who can clean up for me?

Probably part of it is good-will. I don't want her to have WAY too much work to do. I don't want her to think I'm a preschooler who can't clean up after myself.

Which leads to another part of it: pride. That I don't want anyone to see my house in it's raw, Tuesday-morning state, not even Ayi, who is practically part of the family.

Then there's the other part of it: practicality. If I leave everything scattered around the house as it usually is on a Tuesday morning, then all that stuff will be put away. Put away in all the wrong places. (She means well, but this inevitably is the case.) So, it's actually labor-saving for me to run through the house stuffing pajamas in the correct drawers, piling up the clothes that really are dirty in the hamper and putting all the other ones away, putting the library books on a separate shelf from the books we own so that I can actually find them on library day.

So, there is method in the madness. Not to mention that the realization that Ayi's coming is a fantastic motivator. I work harder on Tuesday mornings than I work all the other mornings of the week.

I wonder what I'll do next year without that accountability. Just live in dirt, grime and disorganization 'til I sink into a gloomy depression? Hmmm....

Hopefully not.

The Ins and Outs of Teeth

We've had a lot of tooth action around here lately.

As Olivia lost her first top tooth....

(Olivia's on the left, Anna on the right)

...Sophie got her first bottom tooth.

When Aaron felt her tooth coming through and told me about it, my first sensation was disbelief. Then sadness. Then despair. (Well, okay, that's melodramatic.) After all, Sophie's our last baby. Our last baby is getting her first tooth.

It's the beginning of the end.

Next thing I know, she'll be going off to college and I'll be standing there -- a thirty year old in a fifty-year-old's body saying, "What happened?"

Please join with me in whistling "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. I think it's only appropriate.

Meanwhile, in other news from the Sonnichsen homestead: Gabe's expanded nose has now turned purple. I was also very embarrassed to hear that he's been picking out bloody boogers while on the schoolbus, eating them, and seriously grossing out the other passengers. I just hope he'll grow up to be a nice boy that people will want to be around. Sheesh!

Anna was pretty cute tonight. I made punch for my friend Janella's baby shower, but I had a lot of the frozen part left over. She was helping me "make" the leftover punch, ie. put the frozen part in a jug and pour Sprite over it. I put the frozen part in and she said, "Mommy, how do you punch it?"

"What?" I asked, confused.

"How do you punch it, Mommy?"

It took me a few moments to figure out what she was really asking.

Of course, I had to laugh.

So, here they are, five of my very favorite people. They're a fun group with whom to go through the ins and outs of life.

More Boy

Gabe this morning, when he saw himself in the mirror: "Mommy, I look weird!"

More of you to love, Gabe, more of you to love.

Boy of the Crooked Nose

Today while coming home from school, running up our concrete stairs, Gabe fell, smacking his nose onto the edge of a step.

He didn't break the fall with his hands, so his nose took the full impact.

After it stopped bleeding, I called a few friends to ask for advice. I'd always heard there wasn't much you could do for a broken nose, so I didn't really have a plan of action.

Because his nose actually looked crooked (the picture above really doesn't do it justice), my friend suggested I take him to the doctor.

Diagnosis: possible hairline fracture; swelling on one side of the nose makes it appear crooked; bone felt straight to the doctor; no x-ray needed. **relieved sigh**

So, Gabe continues to be the most accident-prone member of the Sonnichsen family. His list of injuries include: two head wounds (one from a swing, one from another set of stairs); a pierced lip (when he fell off a chair and his tooth went through his lip); and now a possibly broken nose. Anna follows in second place with a split upper lip from pulling a lamp down on herself. Olivia wins the award for least-likely-to-get-hurt; unless you're talking miniscule finger scrapes that require excessive bandaging and arm slings (but that's another story for another blog post).

Still no confirmed broken bones, so I guess we're not doing too badly....

Boy Forgotten

Today I won the Worst Mommy Award.

Someone needs to give me a medal made out of a rusty, jagged tin-can lid. I deserve it.

Olivia stayed home from school this morning so I could take her to the doctor for a probable urinary tract infection. We waited at the doctor's office for a long time, saw the doctor for two minutes, took a urine sample, waited some more, saw the doctor again, then waited some more for the pharmicist to get the antibiotics ready.

By the time we made it back to school, I was forty minutes later than my projected time to be back at school. But my brain was working it all out. We'd find Aaron, eat lunch with him, run to the library, then go home.

It was 11:40 when I was making all these plans.

And if you've ever been a mom of at least one small child, you know how long it can take to (1) find a husband in a large building, (2) eat lunch with him (because right in the middle of eating there will inevitably be potty breaks and hungry, crying five month olds), (3) run to the library.

So, here we are in the MIDDLE of lunch at 12:30. We hadn't even made it to the library. Aaron had just finished a meeting and looked up with his fork halfway to his mouth and said, "What's happening with Gabe?"

My eyes flew to the clock on the wall. GABE!

Yes, Gabe. My beloved son Gabe who arrives home from the Early Childhood Center on the schoolbus at 12:30.

The next few minutes, I'll admit, were panic-stricken and probably pretty hilarious to all the people sitting around me who didn't have a five-year-old son standing outside an empty apartment knocking incessantly and crying.

Finally, I commandeered my husand's cell phone and called my downstairs neighbor Rachel (Yay for community!). She went downstairs and found him. I guess he'd come up to our sixth floor apartment. When I didn't answer the door he went downstairs and was waiting outside. Our first floor neighbor Renee saw him and brought him in. But she had to leave, so as Rachel was coming down to find him, she was coming up to find someone to take care of him. So, Gabe spent a happy 45 minutes at Rachel's house with his friend Sam, while I tried to accomplish ONE task -- getting home.

Of course, if you have ever been the mother of at least one small child, you can imagine how long performing even one task can take. "Quick! Finish lunch, child!" "Mommy, I have to go potty!" "No! We don't have time for hand washing right now. We'll wash our hands when we get home! Let's just go!" "Come on, Anna, run!"

It did ease my burden incredibly to know that Gabe wasn't standing out in the cold waiting for us. I knew he was probably having fun at Sam's. I, therefore, did make a brief stop at the library, but I'm going to put that in very small print so that hopefully Rachel won't read it and get mad at me.

When we got out in front of school at long last, Sophie was asleep and there were no taxis to be had. So, that meant another ten minutes, and more mommy-stress-comments like, "Stay right by me! Don't run in the road!" (I don't know why I bother, though. Really, in Tianjin, you're just as likely to get hit by a vehicle when walking on the sidewalk as you are walking in the road. )Finally, we did get a taxi; we did haul ourselves up the stairs to Sam's house; we did find Gabe, crying and moaning....

But only because he didn't have "any fun." It was "too short." He only got to play at Sam's for "one minute."

So, I dragged Gabe up the stairs listening to his lamentations. I laid Sophie on the bed in her snowsuit, still fast asleep. I held Gabe and cried. Gabe stopped moaning. I walked around the house. I stared at the dirty dishes in the sink. I considered the wet clothes in the washing machine that needed to be hung up. I stepped over toys littering the floor. And thought, "I need some therapy."

So, here am I. Blogging.

Stolen. Snow.

Stolen.

My bike was stolen. **sob**

I'm grieving because I have three months left in China and riding my bike was one of my favorite things.

I don't know why anyone would go through the trouble of stealing my bike, either. It was old. It was rusty. It had two ratty baby seats on it.

Why in China, with an enforced one-child policy, would anyone need two ratty baby seats?

I needed two ratty baby seats ... but now I have none.


Snow.

On the beautiful side of life, it's snowing this morning.

Hefty flakes are falling, doing feather spins.

Gabe wore his snow boots because I told him to.

Olivia still didn't wear socks.

Another First

The whole family bundled up and attended the Tianjin Golden Lions' basketball game tonight. It was our first China Basketball Association (CBA - China's version of the NBA) game. We went with our friends Ai Xia and Cory Cheng. Thanks, Cory, for the free tickets. Yay for guanxi!

The Golden Lions played Guangdong. We were expecting Guangdong to kill them, but they held their own and were actually in the lead when we had to leave after third quarter.

Besides the game, the highlights of the night were...

THE GOLDEN LION MASCOTS!

Besides terrifying Anna, the golden lions stole our older children and carried them up and down the court. Probably wouldn't have gotten that kind of attention at an NBA game!

(Didn't realize until I saw this picture that I was dressed like a bag lady....)

THE TIANJIN CHEERLEADERS!

Wow. This was a spectacle.

To set the scene, you have to keep in mind that the ping pong stadium (where the game was held) was frigid. I wore my coat and hat the whole time. Out come the cheerleaders wearing ... Santa-style bikinis? Oh, and don't forget the thigh-high black knee socks. The best thing was that they would do their little dance and then run off to the side and put their coats back on.

I think these girls need to look into getting winter uniforms.

I Hope I'm Wrong

I may be wrong about this, and I hope I am.

Tonight Aaron and I are going on a date.

Here's the scary part: I think it's the first date we've been on since last summer when Aaron's parents and sister watched our kids and we went to Walla Walla for our 9th anniversary. That was in July.

And now it's February.

I mean, we were together alone in the car (with the driver) when we went to the hospital in September so I could give birth to Sophie. I clearly remember Aaron holding my hand and timing my contractions. But talking in between contractions doesn't constitute a "date", does it?

After she was born we had a candlelight dinner (provided by the hospital -- gotta love getting pampered at Beijing United Family!). But I don't think that was technically a "date". I mean, insurance paid for it. When insurance pays, can you call it a date?

We have hired babysitters in the last seven months. But they weren't for dates. They were for team meetings and small group and school functions. Oh, and Teppanyaki with a bunch of friends. But those things don't count as dates, do they?

I know this is an incredibly lame post. I guess the good thing is, I've recognized the problem and that's the first step to change. Right?

So, on that note, Happy Valentine's Day!

(And, no, Aaron and I aren't going to wear our matching TIS basketball sweatshirts to dinner tonight. We're not that lame.)

Sophie Update

Sophie is now 4 1/2 months old.

66cm long -- 26 inches


8kg -- going on 18 pounds

Growing eyelashes. Very blue eyes. Hair color still undecided.




New tricks: playing in her ultrasaucer; rolling over, though still not proficient; gurgling and spitting; happy shrieking; laughing; loves peek-a-boo; very ticklish.

BOOM!

No sleeping here tonight.

It's the first full moon after the Lunar New Year. Also known as Lantern Festival.

Which means we get a fireworks show right outside our bedroom window. Literally. Right. Outside. I'm talking ten feet away. Ka-pow!

I saw the moon outside the bathroom window while giving Anna a bath. Suspended over the next-door building. White, round, luminous. Catch-your-breath beautiful.

The buildings reverberate with the crash, bang, boom of fireworks and crackers. Sounds like a warzone. The city's last night to party. Tomorrow will seem dull and quiet with black garbage bags of firework refuse piled up. Charred red paper swept into mounds or still scattered over the ground. Depending on if the street sweepers get to work on time.

When I was a kid in Hong Kong, Lantern Festival was my favorite. Different from here. My friends and I would meet at the sea wall in Mei Foo. We'd bring candles and matches. We'd fill every hole in the wall with candles. Line them along the top. Let them flicker in the salty breeze. Burn our fingers on dripping wax. It was glorious. End the night in a bonfire. The guards would come rushing out with fire extinguishers.

And to think, next year Lantern Festival may go by without me noticing it. Seems impossible that I may not hear the booming of fireworks across the ocean. Maybe I'll save a sparkler from Fourth of July, stand outside my house alone and light it.

Looking up at the moon.

Frozen World

Looking out the airplane window at the flat Tianjin countryside below, I surprised myself. I thought it was pretty.

Frozen canals, frozen fish ponds, skeleton trees reflected in the glassy ice. Brown, brown, endlessly brown. Fallow fields; one shimmered on the edge with orange fire.

Then, as we approached the city, it began to look like something made with Legos. Little factories, matchbox cars, apartment blocks. Gray streaks of roads.

In the distance appeared the city, rising out of a thick, brown-tinged fog. I could see the TV tower in the middle. Touching down, I actually felt excited.

Surprised, too, about being excited.

It's good to be home.