Home at last!

Oh, it feels good to be home!  No more eating every meal at restaurants, no more living out of suitcases and hand-washing desperately needed items of clothing in a hotel sink just to hang them up to dry in a hotel bathroom without enough space, and no more appointments and worries about schedules!  Mr. "I want to know exactly what we're going to do when, and I'm going to ask you about it ten times a day to make sure the answer stays the same" hasn't asked me a single schedule question today except for "When are we going to go visit the neighbors?"  (Did I mention we think he's an extrovert?)

We don't have any urgent need to get back on American time, since Tim doesn't have any summer classes and can do research and planning whenever, so we are settling in to a schedule of long afternoon naps and short nights.  Daniel informed me today that he wasn't tired and didn't need a nap, so I told him he could entertain himself quietly in his room.  But the next time I checked, he was out cold, and still is.  The only reason I'm up now was the thought that I could get in a little internet time without having to be constantly aware of what little people are doing!

Since we've been home, I have: unpacked some of our stuff, done two loads of laundry (one dried in the drier and one hung outside, not yet retrieved), cooked two meals, pulled weeds, cut Daniel's hair, chatted with two sets of neighbors, and of course supervised two kids.

Tim has: gone grocery shopping, cooked one meal, trimmed some out-of-control hedges, chatted with neighbors, set up some software on our computers, and been to work and discovered that he was awarded a grant for this summer!!  And, of course, supervised two kids.

Daniel has: taken a grand tour of the house, put most of his stuff away in his room, rearranged his furniture (with Tim's help), decorated his walls with wall stickers bought in China (cute dancing penguins, anyone?), gotten his hair cut "like Father's but shorter," watched/helped me do some chores (I think weed pulling is his favorite so far, but he can't wait to see how the dishwasher works), eaten dinner outside and admired the cool night air and the fireflies, met two sets of neighbors and been to visit one of them (he was very anxious to see how other people's houses compared to ours), decided that he likes tostadas but can't stand feta cheese, ridden Esther's scooter and demonstrated that he has fabulous balance (he said, "Wo lihai!" which means something like "I'm awesome!"), and gotten in trouble several times for pushing buttons and flipping switches without permission (thus turning on and leaving on our bathroom heater and setting off our carbon monoxide alarm, among other things).

Esther has: mostly been following other people around and joining in their activities.  She was very happy to see her toys and videos again!  She convinced Tim yesterday to take her and Daniel up in the attic.  Today when she saw our neighbors she was very excited to say hi and to introduce them to her new brother.

Esther and Daniel have been getting along very well since we got back.  There are occasional spats over personal space and possessions, but mostly they have been having fun together.  I think it probably helps to have more space to spread out in, so they can be doing separate things some of the time.  But it also feels like they are starting to find an equilibrium in how they relate to each other and to us.  Right now I am very glad that we took Esther to China!  It wasn't really an option not to, for several reasons, but I am so glad that we were able to adjust as a whole family from the get-go, and are not having to deal with a whole new dynamic right now!  Not to mention that the recovery from jet-lag is much easier for the parents when all the kids are on the same schedule!

Daniel is, I think, finding that Meiguo (America) is different from Zhongguo (China) in more ways than he expected.  He is, as always, full of questions.  I am, as always, wishing that my Chinese were better!  Some of his questions so far: 

Why is there ice in my glass?
Why is the TV only in English?
What does [English word or phrase that someone just said] mean?
What is this?  (thermometer, dishwasher, patio, temperature control for our air-conditioning system, antiquated alarm system left over from the previous owners of the house...you see why I'm having trouble answering some of them!)
Why is that truck making that noise?
Why is it hot in the summer and cold in the winter?
Where does so-and-so (my grandmother, his friend adopted from China earlier this year) live?
What did s/he say?
How does this work?  (asked many times!)
Does this light turn on from inside the house or outside the house?
Can we string up an extra clothesline?
How come this [neighbor's] house doesn't have a basement but we do?
Why is it so quiet outside here?
Why isn't it dark yet?
Why is this table [card table that we were eating dinner on] so shaky?
Why are there so many fireflies here?
Why are these plates so big?
Why do Americans all like to eat this yucky stuff?  (feta cheese)
Why aren't you wearing socks today?
Do we have potatoes?
Does Father know how to cook eggs and tomatoes?  (typical Chinese dish)
Why is our refrigerator so big?
Why do we have so many clothes in this house?
Are there birds in our trees?
Does that tree belong to us?

Some of the questions took several attempts for me to understand, and there are others not recorded here because I never did understand them.  Most of them really stretched my Chinese ability to answer, if I was able to answer them at all.  I told him that our outdoor thermometer was a "how-hot how-cold machine."  And an instruction not to leave the door open because he might let in insects became "Enter quickly!  We don't allow small animals to enter!"  It's a wonder that we can communicate at all!  Daniel has really met me more than half-way in learning to decipher my bizarre attempts at describing things I don't know the vocabulary for, and in changing the way he talks to me (slowing way down, rephrasing things, choosing words he knows I know, etc.)  I know some families adopt older children without knowing any Chinese, but I don't know how they do it!  I can't imagine our boy sitting with all these questions and no way to answer them, or unable to tease us verbally the way he does.  Well, he does have an electronic translator, but it is a painfully slow process and sometimes what it comes out with doesn't make any sense.  It is useful on occasion, but I would hate to have to rely on it for all our communication.

Wow, I've spent a long time writing this!  I'd better go think about dinner...