shiso mama

A little while ago, I received an email from Second Aunt Grandma, which included the following passage:

Earlier, when I was telling my visiting friend how smart XG (Xiao Guei, which is my family’s nickname for Otis, meaning something like “Little Obedient”) is for speaking many languages, he immediately pulled out his mobile which has the tape-recording function, and replayed his daughter’s voice citing a long Chinese POEM, most amazingly learned from her middle-school educated Ah Ma (like a live-in baby sitter). His daughter is 3 months older than XG. My face turned green. Please do teach some poems and tape-record it so that I can brag about it scientifically, meaning with XG’s voice to prove of it. HA!

I thought it was pretty amusing. But when I told my mother, Grandma R and other Grandma Aunts, the reaction was more one of indignation. “But but but she doesn’t even know what it means!! She’s just reciting it like a little robot!” they sputtered. “You tell them that we’re going to start reciting our own poems, but in English! We’re just as smart! Smarter! We’ll show them!  She’s 3 months older?  Just give us 3 months!”

So in the spirit of parental competition, we offer up our own little show and tell. So take that, poem reciting Chinese girl baby! Put this in your pipe and smoke it!

1. Our baby is a fashion plate.

OK, sure, he doesn’t actually pick his own outfits, but let me tell you that this is certainly one case where the baby wears the clothes, the clothes do NOT wear him!

2. He’s really good at lining up his toys.

Yes, in this particular case, he has the help of magnets to keep his line nice and straight, but the compulsive fastidiousness that Otis employs to lines up his toys goes pretty much unrivaled in this hemisphere.

3. Not since the days of Svengali has anyone witnessed the eery beauty and effortlessness of Otis’s approach to interpretive dance.

4. And last but not least is the haunting quality of Otis’s singing voice.

This one is really for me. Because today is my birthday.  Happy Valentine’s Day, all.

You may have noticed that lately there have been a whole lot of pictures, and not really all that much writing. And not pictures of models, either. Only Otis. And the collages, they are not happening every day, and really, you can feel the lack of tangible effort on my part. The response I have for you is that the Chinese Mafia has gotten to me, and they’re not that interested in what I’ve got to say about anything other than The Boy.

Let’s say I write this long, run-on sentence:

I’ve been feeling sad and weepy, and there was a time, before Otis, when I really liked cats, but now I find that when I look at feline creatures of all sorts I just feel inexplicably angry, and I just don’t know what to do about it.

Here is what the Chinese Mafia understands:

blather blather insignificant thoughts don’t know what she’s talking about OTIS REALLY LIKED CATS droning on and on wish she would stop using the word I so much thank god she’s finished.

Then I’ll get a phone call asking me, Where are the pictures of Otis with some cats? The don of the Chinese Mafia, who prefers to be known simply and ominously as “Grandma,” is always notified when there are new pictures posted and will make an appearance at the computer to check out the results. Often there are sniffs, with a dissatisfied, “Only three pictures today?”

And their spies are everywhere. Let’s say I reveal that last week, I experienced one of my most luxurious, indulgent, baby-free days ever, where I did nothing Otis-related all day long, preferring to waste it instead on nothing but me, my mental health, and improving my wardrobe. You can bet your bottom dollar that I would soon receive a phone call from one of the Chinese Mafia’s hench(wo)men, demanding to know how could I be so lazy as to permit such crimes could occur, and dammit, where are those photos?

So, my friends, I ask you, what can I do? And just so the Chinese Mafia doesn’t forget that I am more valuable ALIVE than dead, here:

Dear Faithful Readers,

I know you’ve been hanging in there. At times, you’ve wandered around this blog listlessly, thinking, why am I reading about sleep and poop yet again? Maybe I should stop reading. But you hung in there, clinging to the hope that one day, maybe one day soon, I would post about models. Beautiful models. Lovely little Asian lotus flowers. Your Suzie Wong fantasies come to life Well, folks, let the air back into your lungs! Here we are, in larger-than-usual image size!

These are pictures from Shiso Bro’s wedding, scanned from the newspaper (thus the horrible picture quality). The wedding was covered in a bunch of newspapers. Don’t too excited, Taiwan seems to have the worst tabloid-y journalism coverage around. While I was there, I actually watched a horrible 10-minute piece about a young girl who tried to commit suicide because her schoolmates made fun of her for being poor. There were interviews with the victim and her mother, plus extensive footage of the squalor that is her home. Last time I was there, I watched a story about a family that hid a video camera in their backyard to catch the thief who had been stealing the matron’s bras and CAUGHT HIM. So this is the cultural climate that these pictures and stories come from.

Here’s Shiso Bro and Mrs. Shiso Bro exchanging rings and meaningful looks. Doesn’t my brother look adorable? Oh, and F’s 15 minutes of fame! Too bad he wasted it hiding behind my brother’s boutonniere.

Here’s Mrs. Shiso Bro standing with her bridesmaids and friends (the promised MODEL shot). Look at those carefree legs kicking with reckless abandon! Be entranced by the come-hither looks directed from jauntily cocked heads! Watch as they line up according to size!

Here are two publicity shots that Mrs. Shiso Bro did for the wedding gown designer who made her dresses. Yes, hideous dresses, but can you understand why I now do and forever will refuse to stand next to her?

In all seriousness, Mrs. Shiso Bro is a sweet gal, thoughtful and down-to-earth, and has a casual tomboyish style. So, I mean, I will stand next to her. No really, I do. I just do it while sucking in my stomach as much as my flaccid abs are able. And I’m sure her friends are likewise lovely ladies. Really. Truly. Please don’t kill me, models.

Now that you’ve gotten what you came for, dear readers, does this mean you shall abandon me? Or have I just whetted your insatiable appetite? Oh, but you just never know when I shall post about models again, do you? Now I’ve got you hooked. I guess you’ll just have to suffer through more weepy letters and ponderous posts about the loss of childhood. HA HA HA.

Love you lots,

Shiso

As you know, my brother's getting married on F's and my fourth wedding anniversary. We're starting to get ready to head back to Taiwan. I have my dress all ready, a long white goddess gown with lots of gorgeous silkscreened patterns on it (I know I'm not supposed to wear white, but you know, it doesn't really look white). But the big question on everyone's mind is, What's Otis going to wear? The wedding will presumably start around 7ish or so, but Otis's bedtime is 6:30. and the kid gets pretty screechy tired soon afterwards. So what's a mom to do? Call her mom for advice? Well, here's the conversation that I had when I called her.

me: Hey mom, do you know what time the wedding starts?
mom: I'm not sure, but probably around 7.
me: Right. But you don't know.
mom: Probably 7.
me: Right. But you don't know for sure.
mom: But ALL weddings start at 7.
me: Uh, OK. Anyways, I guess I'm just wondering what to do about an outfit for Otis, since he probably won't even be there for any of it. Do I actually need to buy an outfit for him?
mom: Of course you have to! (nervousness creeping into her voice) Everyone will want to see him.
me: Well, I don't know about that. Everyone's there to see Shiso Bro get married, not to see Otis.
mom: But everyone has to see him. Plus, people will start arriving at like 5.
me: 5? I thought you said that the wedding wouldn't start until 7. Why would people show up at 5?
mom: People like to come early. You never know about traffic and stuff.

editorial note: my family members are the only ones who ever show up for a wedding 2 hours early.

me: That's kind of weird.
mom: Well, and we'll be there by 5.
me: Yeah, but we're family.
mom: So, yeah, for sure, he definitely needs an outfit. A really special outfit. And it's too bad he's not really walking yet, because he could be like a flower boy or a ring bearer. (voice starts to get all dreamy) He should go down the aisle! In his stroller! Leading the procession! (voice starts to get more excited/agitated by the thought of Otis looking extremely cute, rolling down the aisle, all eyes adoringly on him.
me: But you do know that he'll get really tired, and when he gets tired, he gets noisy and starts screaming.
mom: Oh nooooooooo! And probably when he sees all those people, he just won't be tired anymore! Absolutely you have to buy something very nice to wear!

You can see this wedding is going to be excellent fun for Otis and for his handlers (me and F). Although I'm absolutely positive that my mom will have several outfits waiting for him when we arrive in Taiwan, I can't help but feel like I should also have something ready, so I've been looking around. I guess you could say that I've embarked on a journey to the darker side.

It's so unfair. Girls get such cute outfits. According to the children's clothing lobby, all girls love to wear frilly pink dresses to drink afternoon tea, and all boys only like to wear casual clothes so that they can roll around in dirt and trash. Although I see the appeal in such comfy clothes, I just wish there were more options. Here are some of the results of my research.

Of course, there's the old fancy standby, the tuxedo. Since it's summertime, we might want to consider the white tux, or even better the shorts tux.

If we found F a matching white tux, then they would give these two a run for their money:

Then there's the suit. For some reason, the "suits" that I saw were all attached, as though they were a suit onesie. But with lots and lots of layers. Even the tie seemed stitched on. You know, to avoid the choking. Some were three piece suits. Some were tweed, others seersucker. But we're going to a wedding in a tropical country, people. At the beginning of summer. This baby would bake.

The other "fancy" options seems to be the sailor suit. Why is that considered fancy? When I see real live sailors, I don't think, Boy, those good-lookin' sailors must be on their way to a party! It must be the undercover navy agents working in the garment industry.

That kinda exhausts our fancier options. After looking around a local children's clothing store blankly for some time, trying to get my eyes to focus on something, anything wearable, I finally asked a salesgirl for some help (and by the way, why do such stores only employ 20 year old girls whose ovaries are already aching?). F always says that the best way for a salesperson to lose me as a customer is to approach me - I prefer ALWAYS to shop undisturbed - but I was hoping that she could show me something I just wasn't seeing. Her response to my query, "Do you have anything less, uh, preppy?" was this:

except that instead of a white shirt, there was a multi-colored striped polo shirt. And instead of dark pants, they were orange plaid madras pants. I've become a convert to the baby sweater vest, but this I couldn't get behind. She sort of half-apologized, saying perkily, "Uh, I guess I kind of like the preppy look!"

At this point, I'm starting to think, you know, outside of the box. I saw this pair of really cute sweater shorts with suspenders. The comparison that would probably conjure up the most accurate image would be lederhosen. Unfortunately, they were sold out.

And it is a well-documented fact that I love dressing Otis up as a cowboy. I'm not ruling it out. Maybe I just need to find a "fancy" cowboy outfit.

Maybe I should just forget about it. I don't really have the time or energy for this. I should probably just let it go, and let my mom do the shopping, which would be just about the best Mother's Day present I could possibly give her.

Dear Otis,

Today is your first birthday. Happy birthday, baby! We hope you had a good day. We had precious time together this morning before you went off to Grandma R’s house. You’re spending the night there, too, your first night away away from home. If, years from now, you’re in therapy, and you say to your therapist, “You know, I just have no memories of my parents from my first birthday,” you should know that it’s because we’re trying to get everything ready for your big party on Saturday.

Grandma R called us this afternoon with a report of what you had done on your birthday. She took you out to lunch and you were the central attraction in the restaurant. In fact, we were told that you caused business to grind to a halt while the waitresses and owners cooed over you. And in typical Otis fashion, when they tried to return to work, you protested loudly and insistently until they returned to fawn over you. Curiously, you still don’t really like it when unfamiliar men hold you, but you’d happily pack your bags and move in with any attractive woman who looks your way. You’re such a sociable baby and love it when people pay attention to you. In fact, sometimes when people nearby are close and NOT paying attention to you, in spite of your best attempts at calling out to them or (your secret weapon) giggling adorably to get them to look your way, you’ll look slightly puzzled, wondering how they’re managed to stay impervious to your charms.

We were talking about you during dinner – we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate surviving this past year – and discussing some of our favorite things about you.

Baba is the one who invented the famous bedtime room check routine. That’s where we check off all the familiar and necessary objects in the room until we get to the “Uh oh, no sleeping baby!”. One of Baba’s favorite things is at the end of the room check, he likes to gently lay you down in the crib and bring his face very close to yours, and although you may be fussy or distracted, you will always look him right in the eye for a minute with a big smile and a little chuckle. "Hu huh, hu huh."

Mama loves bringing you to our bed in the morning after you’ve nursed, and the three of us play. She’ll take the opportunity to squeeze your feet and tickle you. She loves it when you pause expectantly. When it finally comes, you’ll scrunch your shoulders, giggle and wait for another tickle. This morning she changed your clothes before she brought you to our bedroom, and you grew impatient with her, mad that you were being forced to wait for our usual play session.

Baba usually takes you downstairs to start feeding you breakfast while Mama gets dressed. By the time she heads downstairs, you’ve been eating voraciously by when you hear Mama’s footsteps on the stairs, you stop and cock an ear with a quizzical expression on your face. Then you’ll wait and crane your head to the side, trying to get a first glimpse of her when she becomes visible in the doorway. You love it when she hides and then peeks at you. You get so excited that you’ll bounce up and down in your chair and sometimes you’ll forget to eat.

You have become so mobile recently. You zip around, using your own special crawling techniques, which we might describe as a gimpy, out-of-alignment commando crawl. After months of crawling like this, you’ve finally decided these past few days to start crawling with your belly off the floor, like other normal babies. Just in time to start walking. Fifth Aunt Grandma K bought you a walker wagon for Christmas, and we brought it out recently for you to try walking on your own. You were unsteady at first, but by the third try, you were a pro. You’ve tirelessly walked from the back of the house to the front, and to the back again, over and over. If you could turn the wagon around on your own, you wouldn’t even need us at all. But for now, you’ll call out to us impatiently to turn the wagon around when you’ve reached a wall or an obstacle that you can’t overcome on your own. Your eyes light up when you see the walker. You’ve also started climbing the stairs, and when Fifth Aunt Grandma K is here, you do your exercises, climbing up and up the stairs all day long.

You’re becoming more independent. You play by yourself, you explore on your own, you want to take food from our hands so that you can feed yourself, and you have your own likes and dislikes, which you are starting to express with increasing vocalness. It seems so recently that you came out of your Mama and we heard the first loud cry, that harbinger of resolute boisterousness to come. We look back at all the pictures that we took of you in the early days and we notice three things: 1. There sure are a lot of pictures. 2. You weren’t as cute as we thought you were, especially compared to now. And 3. You didn’t do that much back then. It’s not like you were SLEEPING, unfortunately, but compared to what you can do now, you just seemed like a little lump in a cowboy/pirate outfit.

We love you,
Mama and Baba

1. That pesky 6th tooth that's been causing all the orneriness and oh so much drooling has finally reared its little white head.

2. We got home tonight, and Otis decided that he finally wanted to start crawling with his belly off the floor. We'll see if that lasts.

3. For those who are concerned that Otis is developing a "beer belly," we assure you it's just the angle of the naked bath pictures. He's still around 21 pounds, and we know 6 month olds that weigh more than him! I mean, he looks positively svelte compared to these babies:

I wasn't going to post about this, but it really appears that I have terrible self-control issues.

Otis has been working on his manual dexterity. You know, using his hands to eat, using his pincher fingers to pick up tiny bits of debris and placing them very carefully into his mouth. All very normal and unremarkable.

Most of you know that when I was pregnant, before I found out that I was having a boy, I imagined a tiny little shiso baby girl who looked exactly like me, probably with the same hair cut, wearing frilly matching outfits and saying things like, "I love you Mama! Let's make art!" Then Otis came, and of course, I can't imagine living with a different baby (and I still have hope for the last part of that previous statement). But there's just been one thing that I haven't exactly reconciled with, and it's his penis. It's just that I don't know exactly what to do with it. And how is this relevant exactly? Well, he's found a new way to practice using those pincher fingers of his, and it's in the bathtub. You can guess the rest.

Ages ago, F and I were giving Otis a bath together and his penis looked different.

me: "Uh, what's happening, F?"
F: "That is an erection."
me: "What??!!?? Gross!!! Why is he doing that? How do we get him to stop? What is he thinking about?"
F: "Nothing. It's just something that happens for no particular reason sometimes."
me: incomprehensible muttering and averting of the eyes and from this point on, attempting to avoid touching it while hoping that it doesn't get so dirty that something bad happens to it

Then at about 7 months of age, Otis started this little habit of getting into the tub, mauling himself with his hands until he had an erection, and then peeing in the water and laughing uproariously. Much nervous laughter and hand wringing on my part. Do I try to distract him? Do I pull his hands away? If I do that, will I be doing irreparable harm because he become repressed? One time when Fifth Aunt Grandma K was here bathing him, I heard her say in a rather alarmed tone, "Otis! Stop, uh, scratching yourself! No scratching!" I think we were both relieved when he seemingly lost interest.

Otis has this tricked-out bathtub, with these little nubs under between his legs and under his arms so that it holds the baby ergonomically in a reclined position, and he won't slip into the water. So these past few days, he just been going at it with his pinchers, left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand. I guess we still don't know if he's a righty or a lefty. And he is not distracted by the introduction of his water toys, impatiently swatting them aside with his free hand, or merely switching pincher hands when one of his toys got in the way. The kid can concentrate. The other night, I pulled him up into a sitting position to wash his back, and his penis became hidden by one of the little nubs. And he got so confused. He just kept pinching at the water, pinching pinching pinching, as though the mere act of pinching would bring back the lovely object of his pinching.

Yes yes, all very normal practicing of the manual dexterity and exploring of his body, blah blah blah. But really, people, look at the expressions on his face, and tell me with a straight face that you wouldn't feel a little at a loss for words.