My American boy

It's been three years since we've been in the US for a proper Fourth of July. Myles has been very excited about "American National Day," particularly the fireworks. I'm sure he thought the fireworks activity would be much like Chinese New Year's. He kept asking when we were going to buy our fireworks. Even though we are in South Carolina this week, I told him we probably couldn't buy anything like what we had in China.

Before we left Beijing we were out shopping for gifts to bring back and Myles saw these clothes and he just had to had them. They had American flags on them, he pointed out to me. He proudly wore them on Saturday. I mean, what says "I love the United States" more than Chinese-made fake Ralph Lauren clothes with American-ish flags on them?

Giant Polo logo. I think the motto (chengyu) in Chinese fashion is, roughly translated, "Fake it, fake it big!"


Saturday night Myles got to experience that great American institution of 4th of July fireworks. We spent 20 or 30 minutes looking for parking, watched 20 minutes of fireworks (which were quite good), and then another 40 minutes in traffic to get home. Much different from walking outside the apartment and setting off our own, that's for sure!

Oh, great

Via Donna, the US Department of State has issued a cautionary statement about travelling to China right now. We don't leave for another two weeks but I'm still a little nervous about the possibility of quarantine.

I got the football

International experiences right here at home

In our first year in Shenzhen, we sometimes ate dinner with some of Randy's co-workers at one of the many Tappanyaki restaurants in Shekou. One of his co-workers, a British guy, commented how great the experience of living in China would be for Myles who was two-and-a-half at the time. "Besides," he said. "How many preschoolers in American eat sushi any time they want?"

"Uh," I said. "We live in an American city. We can get sushi freshly made at the grocery store. We actually eat it all the time because it is my nephew's favorite after school snack."

Why bother living overseas when you can have all kinds of exotic experiences right here at Giant Eagle!


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Returning to Beijing

One thing I've been worried about this summer is what will happen when we return to Beijing because of the Swine Flu. Swine Flu has pretty much dropped off the radar here in the US but in China it is still a serious subject.

On Sunday Randy flew back to Beijing. When he was in Chicago waiting for his flight to board, a few announcements were made to the passengers. One was that anyone whose travels had taken through Mexico should expect to be quarantined, with or without flu symptoms. All received a hand-out, both in English and Chinese, about the Flu.

When Randy got back to our apartment, he called into his office and learned that he was to stay home for seven days. He was not to go to work and avoid "populous areas" and public transportation. This was similar to what happened to one of my American friends in Shenzhen when they returned from a US trip in May. Their four-year-old daughter was not allowed back in her Chinese preschool for one week after their return.

So with all this going on, I asked Randy about how he was to report to the police station within 24 hours of his return as a condition of our residence visas. He had asked his boss about that, and apparently that requirement has stopped. Additionally, this sign at the entrance to our apartment complex is no longer there. So, yea! in addition to a possible quarantine we have new visa rules to look forward to when the kids and I return to Beijing in three weeks.

Like Cousin Balki

We've almost reached a point where Myles has lived outside of the US longer than inside the US. This is mind-boggling to me. It also sets up situations that make me feel like we actually live inside a scripted 1980s TV comedy.

One day recently, Myles staring into one of the freezers at Giant Eagle, yelling to me, "Look mom! They have frozen peas! They really do exist!"

Last week he was enjoying a little afternoon treat. "I'm eating two cookies with ice cream in between them," he told Ashley, Randy's daughter-in-law. She told him it was an ice cream sandwich. "You know what it's called?" he said in amazement.

And then, sometimes to my amusement and sometimes to my annoyance, Myles is obsessed with public water fountains. On both this trip and last August's trip home, he cannot walk near a public drinking fountain without taking a drink.

He is completely obsessed with drinking fountains. He doesn't even have to be thirsty, only near a fountain, to need a drink. He stops everywhere--the park, the museum, Barnes & Noble to name a few. He often exclaims, "You can drink the water here!" Yes, son. Potable water is a wonder. Especially freely distributed potable water.

Alma mater, hail we greet thee!

Earlier this month I attended my 15-year college reunion. My alma mater was until relatively recently a Catholic women's college. While the school has changed incredibly since we were there, it is always fun to get back to Greensburg and the campus and wonder what ever happened to our twenty-year-old selves.

Outside the dining hall was a bulletin board put together by student volunteers, highlighting clips from yearbooks and newspapers from the classes that were meeting this reunion year. It is amusing how dated everything, including my own class' images, looked.

For instance, is there a college in the US today that would print in its school paper a record of all the Christmas-break engagements as this article from the late 1940s did?


Hair is certainly something that really dates an image. I love these pixie-haired dancers, looking like instead of dancing they're doing choreography. To their left, you will see, are my teased and hairsprayed classmates during our Freshmen Creche ceremony.


Now that the school is a completely co-educational university, there are even more changes that will, at some point in the future, make these images of and writings by the earlier graduates of the women's college, the alumnae, seem even more quaint to the alumni. They will look at us older graduates as funny relics of a different time, us silly proud graduates of a women's college in the 1990s. Our newspaper editorials about the value of an education at a women's college will seem to the future alumni as funny as those alumnae in the 1940s gushing over engagement rings seem to us.

Oh--I bought Myles this Seton Hill football with a sense of irony, as in how incredibly funny is it that Seton Hill (!) has a football team. And a contender in NCAA Division II at that!


In the not-too-distant future, other returning alumni will also probably buy Seton Hill footballs for their sons, though probably without the irony. They will have actually participated in the football culture and have happy memories about Homecomings and rivalries.

Babies up the vest

About two weeks ago I was in a Squirrel Hill Starbucks, a convenient place to nurse a baby and let some boys use a proper restroom before heading to the park. The shop was busy so we were actually sharing a sitting area with two 65ish women. I was in a comfy arm chair, wrestling a very thirsty Brigid to keep her under my nursing canopy. The two older women (one was named Pat-aren't they always?) were meeting for coffee on the sofa across the table from me. In our small talk it came up that our family no longer lives in Pittsburgh. Both peppered me with all kinds of questions about our life in China, and several about things about which they've read or heard. Then one asked me about Chinese attitudes toward breast-feeding.

I told her some of the things about which I've blogged before. While nursing isn't frowned upon, in some of the more affluent parts of China (like Shenzhen) I encountered surprise over my nursing from other Chinese mothers of babies. Many believed that as foreigner, I could certainly afford the milk powder with that being the perceived obstacle to more universal formula use. I would, however, frequently get the thumbs-up from the grandmothers.

In the more working-class and middle-class part of Beijing, where I live now, my nursing doesn't cause quite the commentary that it did in Shenzhen. What does get noticed, though, is my attempt to maintain a little bit of modesty under my nursing canopy. Or rather, my canopy is misunderstood. Most women tell me that it is bad for the baby, with one even trying to remove it from me in the middle of Mass. (!) One time someone said it was an interesting idea; she thought I used it to encourage Brigid to sleep. No one could understand that the canopy was for me, as in to cover me.

There are several other nursing mothers at my parish in Beijing. One in particular that sometimes sits near me has a son who is over a year old, possibly even 18 months old. He is, of course, totally mobile and somewhat on self serve. This does not raise the notice of any of the people sitting near her, even when her little guy just lifts her shirt during Mass and snacks. No cover, no canopy, no worry that someone might stare.

I thought about the differences between American and Chinese attitudes toward nursing last week at Mass in Pittsburgh. Had this happened even a week earlier, I could have used it as a perfect illustration of my point for those women at Starbucks. As sometimes happens, Brigid wanted to nurse during the course of the Mass. I realized I had forgotten my canopy at my in-laws' house, so I excused myself to a pew along the rear of the church. I figured that in this fairly empty church, I would be alone in the back. And I was, mostly. In front of me and to the left were an infant in the company of its mother and grandmother. When I sat down, Brigid smiled at them, and the two women turned around a few times to smile back. I couldn't help but hear one of them whisper to the other about the cute baby. And then it happened. I started to nurse Brigid, rather discreetly, I think, since I was wearing a large sweater that she just fit under. The other baby's mother looked horrified. Up went her right hand, swearing-in-style, and try as I might I couldn't avoid hearing most of what she said: "I don't care how something-something-something. I would never something something something at church."

Certainly, I couldn't decifer all her "something something something," but I suddenly felt incredibly self conscious and wishing I were back in a country where feeding a baby at the back of a church isn't something to get into an uproar over.

Chores

Most of the days since we've been back in the US for this trip, I've been completely head over heals in love with how much easier/better/insert favorite happy adjective here my life is here than in China. Yes, that would be my, as in me. Some mornings I've had two loads of laundry washed and dried before breakfast. I am cheerfully loading and unloading an entire day's worth of dishes in the dishwasher at my sister's house. And since we are staying with family members, there's no shortage of extra people around who want to take my kids for a few minutes to a few hours so I can do whatever I want.

I know, I know. Had we domestic help in China, none of these chores would seem less chore-like while we are here in the US.

Happiness is....

Happiness is not normally waking up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to the airport and back into town, getting to a Starbucks right when they open at 5:30, and going to a Giant Eagle right after they open at 6:15.

However, when you are in the company of quite possibly cheeriest morning baby ever, it is as happy as that early in the day can get. Maybe moreso.

And even more American summer

Actual text blogging to resume soon. But in the meantime...

Boogity boogity boogity

Let's go racin'!

More American summer

Mini-golf!

And they're free?

For those of us who haven't been in the US for a while, this is a shocking scene at WalMart. They even double bag! Triple bag! For free!


Ever since China went suddenly and completely bag-less at the grocery stores I've had to pay for plastic bags if I haven't brought my own. The bags are usually kept under the register, and at some stores under lock and key!

I might just grab a bunch of these and take them back to China with me next month.

Baby food

I am spending a lot of time these days thinking about baby food, or, rather, what to feed a baby. Brigid is not that fond of eating solid food, continuing her protest that this stuff I keep shoveling into her does not properly feel like eating.

Though I usually prefer to make my own baby food, both in Beijing and in the US I have had to look at buying commercially available food. Of course there are differences between the products marketed in China and those in the U.S. I wonder at what these differences mean to how we raise our children. What do the first foods we introduce to a baby signify about our expectations for that baby? Like what we hope to gain from toys, what do we think baby food does for our babies, exactly?

Here are images of a Chinese baby food aisle at a mid-size grocery store (not Wal-Mart). Some food in jars, but many, many, boxes of powdered cereal, rice, and noodles with some flavoring mixed in. This, of course, doesn't include the whole other aisle of powdered milk and formula products.




In the US, the ratio seems reversed. A small selection of boxed cereals and so many choices of food in jars.


Of course, this is only commercially available food. What families prepare on their own wouldn't be included. But it is interesting to me to see these differences in the grocery stores.

Even in the US, we see differing opinions on what baby food is meant to do. Some people believe in an early introduction of cereal to promote longer night-time sleeping for baby and parents. Some believe in postponing all solids until the second half of the baby's first year as the ecological breastfeeding component of NFP. Even the order in which to introduce certain foods is something that we see differing opinions in the West.

I'm interested in learning more about what the current popular theories are in China about what babies eat and when. One of Randy's employees has a baby close to Brigid's age. I ran into on the street one day, around the time both babies were four months old. She was just returning from the store with a box of rice cereal in her hand. She told me it was time that we fed our babies rice cereal and then was surprised that I was still planning to wait a little longer. I didn't see any signs of readiness in Brigid (and, heck, if maybe I still don't). She had mentioned it to Randy, too, and found his response about solid foods and process of introduction odd. Interesting, too, that her baby's primary care-giver, the mother-in-law, was pushing for delaying solid food for the baby.

It seems at times some of our popular theories about child rearing are about fifty years out of sync with one another. In China, formula is popular, as well as rice cereal at an early age. In the U.S. more and more mothers are interested in extended breast-feeding and delaying solid foods. These are attitudes wrapped up in industrialisation, pediatric theory, and economic development, among a host of other cultural factors (you can't ignore the working mother angle, for instance). As long as I am not getting yelled at by random Chinese women about my perceived negligence as a parent, I find these differences endlessly fascinating.

Scene from an American Summer

I'm still here

Just very busy. I love our families and friends!

Western Pennsylvania

Though, truth be told, I am a long-time soda drinker myself.

BLING!

Update 6/10: The picture doesn't do the ring justice. You have to see it in action to appreciate it. Three years ago James Harrison complained that his Super Bowl XL wasn't as "flashy" as he expected. I suspect he is happy now.