Driving at the Correct Speed

One thing I miss about Germany is the non personal manner in which you could drive as fast as you want and later you would get a ticket in the mail - no delays on your trip, no public humiliation, no need to make up a story to tell the officer. Very impersonal (this is one of the few times that you will ever hear me say that I miss the impersonal nature of Germany).

Today I was pulled over by a cop as I was running errands during my lunch hour. I had dropped off a huge load of clothes and shoes at the Salvation Army - trying to do a good thing instead of just throwing them away! So as I am driving past I see the police car hidden toward the back of the driveway and I knew I was probably driving too fast (even in my Prius). I get pulled over and it is embarrassing and frightening and awful. I wanted to say, just mail me a ticket and get this over with !!

In the end I got a verbal warning and no ticket, probably because my driving record was impeccably clean (living outside the US for 9 years will do that). Getting a warning instead of a ticket is something that never happens through the mail in Germany.

Jiang Lei's 5th Birthday

Jiang Lei was having difficulty waiting for his 5th birthday to arrive. He kept telling me "Mommy, its not coming". We were on vacation so we celebrated early with the family. He got lots of great gifts. Now he keeps saying his birthday didn't come because he didn't get a Gameboy ( Ji Ji got one for her birthday). We keep explaining to him that he is too small but he doesn't like that answer.

Speech Therapy Report for the summer

Jiang Lei has finished his summer session of speech therapy which was 2 x per week for 4 weeks. We received a final report from the therapist and I am quoting :

"He has only been immersed in English for 5 months but has shown tremendous gains in his comprehension & expression of English grammar & vocabulary skills."

"Jiang Lei is very active & curious. He is eager to learn new things & to demonstrate what he has learned."

That sounds just like him and isn't it great? He really is doing well on his communication skills and we are very proud of him. We think the Kumon has really hepled with his vocabulary. Now if we can just get him to stop annoying his sisters !!!!

Cultural Snobs

Ok, its true, we are cultural snobs.

We went to a wine tasting tonight of Pinot Noir and the woman asked if we had ever been to Oregon to visit the vineyards and we told her no, we had been to Burgundy, France to visit the vineyards. We couldn't bring ourselves to pay $27 for an OK bottle of wine, when we know we could get a bottle that we like more for 10 Euros at the vineyard in Givry. Ok, so there would be expenses to export it, etc. - details!

Next we were lucky enough to have the neighbors watch the kids so that we could go out to dinner. We went to a neighborhood Japanese restaurant. They served a set meal and as soon as the salad with thousand island dressing was served, we knew we were in trouble. Mark said, watch them not even have Miso soup and give us chicken noodle or something. We had a good laugh over that one. Well, next they served us chicken soup, I couldn't believe it. And then came the teppanyaki meal which they cook at your table. The first course of fried rice didn't taste like rice at all, it was sweet! We complained and got some white rice instead. Next came the sweet fried vegetables followed by Mark's sweet steak and the sweet bean sprouts. We laughed but it wasn't really funny. At the end someone came over to ask how we liked it and we told them it didn't really taste like the food in Japan. They were actually very straight forward and told us they need to cater to American tastes because Americans don't like the way Japanese food tastes! They told us next time when we come back, tell them that we don't want the Americanized version and they will give us a more Japanese meal.

Hmmm, let's see......we spent $100 on a meal which we didn't like, and they think we should come back and spend another $100 to see if maybe we would like this version of food better ???? Don't think so. Mark was hinting quite strongly that maybe they could give us a coupon or something toward this meal which would incent us to come back and try the food again, but they wouldn't go for it. So, another restaurant off of our list for good!

Family Photo

Just had our yearly family photos taken. Here are the kids - growing like weeds!

5 month Progress Report

Jiang Lei has been in our family for 5 months. Reading adoption blogs I always hear people say that “it feels as if he has always been there” and that is kind or true for us. He is definitely part of the family and we could never go back to life before him.

The girls really love having him around, though at times it is a love / hate relationship. Nora likes to take care of him and baby him. Ji Ji likes to play with him and boss him around. He is always playing with one girl in a manner which excludes the other. Occasionally the girls have gotten smart and gone off to play by themselves without him at which point he is shocked and he says they are being mean.

He is always on guard to make sure that he gets his fair share of whatever is given out and he will tell us when the girls have something that he doesn’t. After 5 months of getting stuff, even small stuff that the girls don’t want anymore, I would say that he is a little less obsessed about his ownership of things. This week he actually cleaned out the floor of his closet which is where he was keeping all of the junk that his sisters didn’t want anymore. The fact that he agreed to put it down in the basement is a huge step. He feels comfortable that it will be there for him and that he will continue to get more stuff.

He teases the girls all of the time, just trying to get a reaction out of them. Usually they go running to Dad to report on what Jiang Lei is doing.

He will get sent to the Naught Mat (time out) maybe twice per week. I think that sometimes he doesn’t understand exactly what he did wrong and that is frustrating to him. He sees other kids doing things like hitting but he gets punished for it. And he is always fighting for his place on the tire swing, taking stuff out of other’s hands because it belongs to him and just sticking up for himself – and somehow he gets punished for it.

He has been going to speech therapy for 30 minutes, two times per week through our school system. Also he is doing Kumon reading prep with Dad (the other girls do Kumon) and he is increasing his vocabulary as he learns new words each week. Is is also teaching him good homework habits as he needs to get his Kumon done every day (he likes having his own homework like the girls). He communicates very well and we usually can understand what he is talking about.

Mommy is practicing counting objects with him and he can count things up to 10. I am also helping him to learn the ABC song. Ji Ji is teaching him to spell his name. Daddy is practicing shapes and colors with him, which he is has not been quick to pick up.

When he first joined our family, his gross motor skills and coordination were not very good. He fell over a lot when outside playing with the kids. He has been taking gymnastics classes for a few months. That plus the playset that we have in the backyard has really improved his coordination as each day he climbs to the top, does the monkey bars with help, walks up the slide and plays on the swings. Also keeping up with his sisters and their friends requires him to run around the neighborhood. I have to say that he is still a very slow runner…..

Our friends are moving to Shanghai for 1 year and they have invited us to visit them. We are thinking about going in November but I am wondering how strange it will be for Jiang Lei if he goes back to China within the same year that he was adopted – will he revert to old behaviors or will he stick by the family and refuse to speak Mandarin?

One good thing from this past year is that the girls are using more Mandarin and they have gotten comfortable with it. They only know some baby words that we have been using with Jiang Lei but they aren’t shy about using it. Will be anxious to see if they will speak more while in China. Because they saw the usefulness of the language with Jiang Lei, they may be more receptive to taking lessons again.

We will be starting the 6 month report for China on his progress. This past 6 months has been so eventful but the time as gone so fast! It seems like only yesterday that we were in Harbin with this wild boy. July 4th we went to the community fireworks and he was dancing around watching them – he loved it!

Blog about living in Shanghai

Our friends are going to Shanghai - check out their new blog!