shiso mama

First, an update about swimming. Thank you for all your concern and relief about Otis. I thought you would like to know what happened when we went back to the pool.

I went with Otis to class on Wednesday, ready to hold his hand if need be. During my rather alarming conversation with the 19-year old “supervisor,” when I kept wondering if I should let him know that my husband was a lawyer and that he shouldn’t say things like, “Yeah! It’s really a problem how understaffed we are! We have no control over it at all!” I suddenly realized that my dramatic and emphatic claims that my traumatized child might never go back into the water were undermined by the fact that he was, in fact, sitting by the pool, kicking his feet in the water. I stayed close to him during the rest of class and encouraged him, but I think he would’ve done well even if I hadn’t been there. He jumped in and out of the water as he debated whether to be scared or not, but eventually went several rounds in the pool. He did well yesterday too, which was the last day of class, and I’m relieved that we finished up on a positive note. Happily, Otis has shown himself to be quite resilient.

Second, I have a confession to make.

These last two nights I have snuck into Otis’s room and cried into his hair. Isn’t that horrible? It seems like one of those selfish things that parents do that force kids to grow up too fast. I have just generally been feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, mixed in with a tiny dose of resentful and angry. It’s not just the baby; it doesn’t feel like I have control of anything in my life right now, and that’s hard for a control freak like me. Aren’t there times when you just need to cry to feel better?

Last night, he was fast asleep and stayed asleep, so I had the steady rhythm of his breathing and the smell of his hair to console me. Tonight, he was still awake and threw his arms around my neck as soon as I crawled into his bed. When he discovered how sad I was, he patted my back comfortingly, stroked my hair, and gave me tiny kisses on my forehead, nose and cheek while saying, “Don’t cry, Mama.” He was so gentle and seemed so grown up. It felt good to be snuggled up close to him and to listen to him drift off to sleep, particularly because I feel like I’ve been losing my grip on him in recent months. When did he learn such empathy and kindness? Tonight I feel like I saw the sweet boy that I have known but perhaps also caught a glimpse of the man that Otis is to become.

Otis has been going to swim lessons with his classmates at the community swimming pool this past week and a half. He’s gone “swimming” before, at my grandmother’s condo and when we’ve gone on vacation, but this was a little different. Imagine a big group of pre-schoolers in their swim suits, marching off on their own, throw in a big pinch of too much adorableness, and there you have it. The parents are supposed to sit in a separate area on the side so the kids can have their independence, and we’ve been rather surprised to see Otis, for the most part, sitting on the edge of the pool and sucking his thumb, and only occasionally kicking his feet in the water or venturing in. Which is fine, since for me point of these lessons is for him to have fun with his friends and to start feeling comfortable around the water.

Yesterday I did not go to the pool with Otis. I was running errands in preparation for our trip so he went with my parents. And by all accounts, things were going well. He went into the water, and did several rounds around the pool while holding onto the teacher. There was no thumb sucking, and he was having fun playing in the water. It just so happened to be that my mom was standing close to the pool yesterday, chatting with Emmett’s grandmother, and she was watching when she saw Otis walk down the stairs right into the shallow end. It’s only 2.5 feet of water, but he was completely submerged and couldn’t get out. And the teacher had turned her back and was helping another kid, so no one saw him go under until my mother started yelling and the teacher pulled him out of the water.

He’s OK, but pretty badly shaken. He did not want to get near the water after that, and has been talking about how scared he is, and how he does not want to go back. Understandably. We’ve spent a lot of time today, talking about what happened and how he feels. I spoke with his teacher, and we agreed that it’s important that he finishes these lessons feeling positive about the water and about swimming so I’ve been trying to talk with him about his fear, yet encourage him to go back, if only to sit with me and see his friends from afar. We looked at some pictures that I took last week, and have also talked about how much fun it was to spend time with his friends.

As I listened to the story, and as I thought about it throughout the day, I felt chills down my spine. What if my mother had not been standing close by, watching? There’s supposed to be a lifeguard keeping an eye on the kids, since there are a lot of kids for the couple of young instructors to oversee, but for some reason, the lifeguard had not been paying attention. Our teacher is as upset as we are, and she called the pool to talk about our concerns, which I will do as well when we (hopefully) go this afternoon. They were apologetic and will give Otis a one-on-one lesson today, to help him start to feel safe again. I can’t really blame anyone since I do feel that it was an unlucky confluence of events, but I do feel rather alarmed. I generally think it’s important to give Otis his space and foster his independence, but I think I’ll have to do that while pretending not to watch closely from now on.

Oh my goodness, four weeks? Surprisingly enough, I found myself alone with the kids for the very first time earlier this week and I lived to tell the tale. The logistics of taking care of more than one kid seem tricky, to laughingly understate it, and I’m not looking forward to doing it by myself. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a LOT of wonderful help - between my mom, Fifth Aunt Grandma K and Grandma R, the transition has been tiring but totally doable. Without them, I think I would have been overwhelmed by both the kids and my hormones. What would we do without family?

We are slowly adjusting to the new rhythms of life as a foursome. Bee has been doing well, and has been generally agreeable. With so much sleeping and so few opportunities to exhibit or develop any personality, newborns are just so un-formed. I had forgotten. It becomes all the more obvious in contrast to Otis, with all his singing and performing, his love of charming others, and, of course, his exuberance. I catch fleeting glimpses of him in all his Otis glory, and I ache with how much I miss him.

This weekend will be Bee’s one month birthday. It’s a big event for Chinese families, to celebrate the “full month” or “man yue” and we will be having a little celebration. Pictures and stories to come.

I hate to brag, but we’ve been receiving the greatest presents lately. We really have a wonderful group of friends, and I can’t wait to brag some more and share the pictures with you, but first, I wanted to show you a present that Otis received recently:

It’s a handmade sticker book, with a pocket full of animal stickers, made by my friend, Carey.

Can you imagine how excited Otis was to get his hands on this? Just as I was handing the present to Otis and we were admiring the stickers together, Miss Bee started fussing so I went to go check on her. When I returned a short while later, I was surprised to see that EVERY SINGLE STICKER had been peeled off and stuck in his book. He didn’t save a single one. Hmm, I think this is a kid that would definitely eat his dessert first. Well, that’s it for that activity, I thought. But as we looked through his sticker book together, I realized that Otis had actually created little vignettes with his stickers. His animal play has expanded to include elaborate narratives lately, so this was really perfect for him.

Here’s a farm, with the horses climbing up a hill:

Here, the dinosaurs are afraid and running from the flying dinosaur:

One clever thing about the sticker book is that the pages are made of wax paper, so we can actually move the stickers around and create different stories (although I doubt that Otis will let me). I hate to advocate stealing Carey’s idea, but this is such a great, handmade kids’ present that I think that everyone should make one of these. What do you think, Ms. Carey, can we write a tutorial for this great project?

I just love Otis’s school. The teachers are so in tuned with his personality and his needs, and he has grown so much since he started in September. Heck, they even taught him how to pee standing up, which I personally thought could wait at least until his age hit the double digits. But I am most grateful for how well they prepared him for the arrival of Miss Bee. Our head teacher and her partner had a son a few months ago, and he was quickly integrated into the school curriculum. Often I arrived in time to witness the kids learning the difference between gentle touching and mauling. The teachers did a lot of family role playing with Otis, with him taking care of his baby (usually a kangaroo or a frog) and his playing repertoire has been much expanded as a result (although I’ve heard that occasionally while playing “family” with classmates, he prefers to be the family dog).

So I think that this baby experience is so far a little disappointing for Otis. By the time she arrived, he was more than ready to practice all he’d learned, but she’s asleep most of the time. So we’ve started to consult him on various issues. When she wakes up, we ask him if he thinks we should feed her. Does her diaper need to be changed? Would she like the pacifier? And now, I think I’ve found the perfect way to include Otis. Bee has been so sleepy that it’s usually difficult to keep her awake during feedings, and the perfect way to exploit Otis’s, er, talents seems to be for him to be the official waker-upper. He gets to be silly and loud and helpful, a perfect combination for Otis, and for once, I am encouraging it.

We’re still a party of three here, waiting and waiting. I’ve been feeling contractions for days, but they just haven’t been getting any stronger, and I’m feeling rather dispirited. Would it be uncharacteristically dramatic for me to say that it’s starting to feel like there’s no joy or laughter left in this world? Oh well, there is nothing more to do but to be patient. F and I have been taking leisurely walks every evening, and I’ve generally been taking it easy, since I can’t really get myself to sew anymore, but boredom is starting to set in along with the anxiety.

Life continues, however, and we have started to enjoy the bounty of our garden. Otis has been really excited to play farmer and to harvest vegetables, and it’s fun to see him so enthusiastic about being able to eat things from our own backyard. Here he is, after pulling up some spinach:

It went into some pasta that F made for dinner the other night. We also threw some radicchio, red leaf lettuce and red scallions into a salad another night. Tell me, though, why I planted radicchio when I don’t even really like bitter foods. They’ve grown quite large, and short of eating lots of very bitter salads, I don’t have a lot of creative ideas for them. I’ve saw a recipe for braising them with balsamic vinegar and bacon and tossing them with pasta, which actually sounds like a tasty combination. Anyone else have any ideas?

Today is my due date, but we are still waiting. And waiting (I think the landscapers are finishing their work as I type, so it looks like they’ve won the race to the finish line). Our friends, who were originally due 2 1/2 weeks later, even had their baby this morning! In the meantime, I continue with the sewing. Oh, and the waiting.

We have a baby friend, Oliver, who celebrates the same birthday as Otis, and despite how easy it should’ve been to remember, we actually forgot. Naughty naughty. So I made him a small belated present - a food related present, since he has recently been magically cured of some trying eating difficulties.

I sewed him a bib from fabrics collected from Otis’s baby clothes . Does that seem unsanitary somehow? But I loved all of these clothes, and they bring up such great memories for me, and it seemed like a shame not to use them all up. I embroidered his name on the bib, and it’ll go into a package with some dishes and utensils from Boon, whose new feeding products I’m rather enjoying. Oh, and the new layette looks nice, too.

What actually started this bib project is the idea that I wanted to make Otis a quilt made of his old baby clothes. After we found out that we were having a girl, I went through all the boxes of clothes that I had been holding onto for the past three years, figuring out what to keep and what to give away. I used to love buying these little button-up shirts with great patterns on it for Otis (yes, uncomfortable and silly for a 2 month old, so sue me), and I just couldn’t quite bear to give them away. So it seemed to make sense to make him a keepsake with them, especially since he doesn’t have a large enough quilt to cover his bed now that he’s moved onto a twin-sized one. So I took all of the clothes that were made of woven fabric, took a very deep breath, and cut them all to shreds. After the first shirt, whose destruction made me quite sad, it was actually quite therapeutic. I’ve actually had to stop myself from eyeing clothes that have great patterns but that he still fits into. And the verdict?

Otis had a lot of blue clothes, which surprised me a little.

But now I’m finding that I’m a little stuck, because in case you can’t tell, I generally don’t mix a lot of colors and patterns, and every combination that I’ve tried to work out seems to be just so darned busy.

See?

And see?

Is it just me? Probably, since thinking about more than 3 colors at a time usually makes me feel slightly tipsy. I think I’ll just have to sort of give into the (perceived) busyness. I’m not used to this whole concept of mixing and matching, but since I feel quite committed to using all of these little squares that I’ve cut up, I think I’ll have to just go with it. I guess Oliver’s bib was a sort of try-out, and it doesn’t look too bad to me, so maybe I’ll feel differently about it once it’s all put together. I think I’m leaning towards two rows of pieces squares, followed by a solid band of white or off-white (rather than the small squares, like the bottom photo), repeating this, and then putting a white/off-white border around the whole thing? Anyone have any opinions about this?

And here’s another question - I’m debating the fate of a shirt of Otis’s, which is one of my absolute favorites. I’ve only just stopped stuffing him into it because it’s cutting off circulation at his wrists (it’s an 18m shirt). A friend recently said, “Hey, that shirt looks like a girl could wear it.” and I had to respond, “Um, that’s because it is a girl’s shirt.” So it’s really something that could be passed on to Otis-ina, an idea that F likes. But it’ll really be Otis’s shirt forever in my brain, and it feels like it should be part of his quilt. Should I cut the mother up, or should I save it?

Today Otis got to experience what it would be like to die and go to heaven. It was a birthday party which started with plastic guns that shoot bubbles everywhere, progressed to a clown who performed animal tricks and slapstick jokes (he laughed uproariously at every joke and yelled out the answer to every question - every clown’s dream shill. I swear he has such a boy sense of humor. Unfortunately for her, he was often the only one laughing and yelling), graduated to a pinata filled with plastic animals, all topped off with face painting and a balloon animal coup de grace. He’s wearing the shirt he likes to refer to as his cheetah shirt, so it only makes sense that his face would be painted to fit. It’s the kind of party we would throw for Otis if we wanted to include just about everything Otis loved in the world. Ahhh, it almost makes me wish that I wasn’t so darned lazy about throwing birthday parties that are actually geared towards children. Speaking of laziness, I actually stayed home and took my first nap in a long time, which was just about the most luxurious thing imaginable, so we both had pretty good days.

Only two more days until my mom arrives Stateside, and my doctor returns from vacation. Hoping to hold on at least until then…

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past three years worrying about Otis’s lack of interest in art. It’s such a large part of my life that the thought that it might not be an important part of his has caused me no small amount of distress. It was as troubling as if he suddenly discovered a passion for pleated khakis, button down oxford shirts and non-ironic penny loafers. But I was determined not to push or force any art-making on him. We’ve let him discover his own interests, and on his own time, so I would offer him art materials once in a while and let him decide whether he was interested or not (usually not).

Now I’m happy to report that he has lately discovered his love of drawing and sculpture. And wouldn’t you know it? He doesn’t draw or sculpt anything except animals. Watching his developing interest in art has been really interesting. In the beginning, he rarely wanted to attempt to make anything himself - he was never a doodler, and rarely took much pleasure from just making lines or exploring. Rather, he wanted to watch us draw or sculpt whatever he requested (animals, of course), which I quite honestly was reluctant to do. I never tell or show any of my students the “right” way to make anything, and I didn’t want to do this for Otis, either. As a result, he usually grew quite frustrated with not being able to make things as he thought they should look, and gave up quickly, despite all encouragement. Now he is much better able to translate what he sees into what he makes, and it makes art-making a more satisfying experience for him (although he does still become frustrated if he can’t make it “right”).

It is one of my greatest pleasures watching him create now, illustrating his elaborate animal narratives. My current favorite drawing is above, which he describes as “Giraffes - bird giraffe, eagle giraffe, giraffe with big ears, giraffe with short hair and giraffe with long hair.” We’ve been steadily making our way through the roll of paper on his art table and our pencils are getting shorter and stumpier by the day as his portfolio grows thicker (what can I say? I’m sentimental and save everything). I’m excited to see how his interests and his artwork develop.