Family

Aidan is starting to see my flaws and Lydia is starting to see my values. I’ll call this progress. During our vacation Aidan noticed a toy gumball machine. One of those put in a quarter, turn the handle a few times, and a round hard piece of gum drops down. But in this case, the gumball machine was not dropping gum, but rather small plastic egg enclosed toys. And it wanted four quarters, not one. Aidan is a bit of a toy addict and as soon as he spotted the pokemon gumball machine he was asking for me to buy him one. I first told him no, too expensive. Then I told him I didn’t have four quarters. He protested, at which point I showed him all the coins in my pocket. The problem being that I actually did have four quarters. So, now I was stuck buying the toy. But the pokemon gumball machine was jammed, it would not take my quarters. Aidan wanted me to try anyway, I tried to show him that it was broken. He settled for another toy from a neighboring gumball machine. ...

I’m sitting alone in our Beijing apartment having just returned from a two week US vacation. It feels large and empty and they dryer takes a long time. Yang and the kids remain in Fremont for a few more days. We headed out on our vacation with some trepidation. We are not used to watching the three kids by ourselves and it must be said that the main worry in this regard was me. In our 3.5 years in Beijing, I’ve cooked three times, done laundry 4-5 times, changed at most a half dozen diapers, given the kids a dozen baths, and washed dishes maybe once. It is a hard life, I know. Another worry we had was that one of the kids might get sick as they have on past trips. ...

Sometimes it feels like I live in a commune. Shortly before Elisa was born, three goldfish appeared in a small fish bowl in our bedroom. I’m not sure how they got there and I didn’t ask. Last Saturday morning at 6am, Aidan came into the bedroom, woke me up, and with sheer glee taped a drawing he made onto the wall. There are now drawings of his all about the house. The drawings are remarkable for two reasons. First, they don’t show a lot of…how do we say…talent. Second, they are happy pictures drawn by a damn happy boy. I never used to buy into the thinking that pictures drawn by a child give some deep insight into the child’s mental health. I thought they more or less just demonstrated what crayons the kid had that day or some random thought in his mind that had nothing to do what we adults consider happy or sad. ...

Well, I was thinking of making the switch to soy anyway. Best I can tell, here’s the deal, and its a bad deal. Dairy farmers were adding melamine to their milk in order to fetch a decent price. It might be because their milk was of low quality to begin with or because they were adding water to it. In either case, melamine helps give the appearance of higher protein, hence higher quality milk. This makes it really bad news, as the problem now lies at the source and all dairy products are implicated. ...

It is mid autumn festival day here and Yang says we should go out as a family some place. I guess it is tradition that we go look at the moon. And the nice thing is that with all the pollution controls still in place, we can see the orange moon clearly to the east. So we head to the new Solana Mall, to walk along its eastern most edge, where the modern shops and bars meet the lake at Chaoyang park. ...

Somehow one month has passed since Elisa was born. It passed so fast it seems memories could hardly be formed, yet formed they were. It passed so fast that one could be mistake the two points in time connected as one. It passed so fast that I never did take that extra time off of work. It passed so fast that the magic 42 days is almost here. It passed so fast that Yang was overheard wondering out loud “why stop at three?”. Because three’s damn plenty, that’s why. It passed so fast we barely noticed Elisa grow, but grow she did. ...

I started this blog for three reasons. First, to let friends and family in the US get a sense of our life here. Second, to keep a rich record of what Aidan, Lydia, and now Elisa were actually like as they grew. You have to guess the third reason. So given the first two reasons, there is no way I could not write about our Olympic experience since it is by far the biggest event to happen to Beijing since we got here. And frankly, I didn’t still expect to be here when they came. ...

I’m taking the kids to school. Yang is with me, pushing Elisa in the stroller. I guess this is the life now. It the day after I returned from a business trip to Tokyo and I’m having an easy morning to offset the travel. We walk down a small alley where the brick school building sits. We pass a small chalkboard that during the Olympic games had this sign. ...

It is such a nice Friday afternoon that I decide to walk home from work. Two and a half hours later I arrive home tired and hungry. It is 8pm. Aidan is noticeably excited, not so much because I made it home but because he could show me his latest lego creation. Yang’s dad had bought him a pirate ship earlier in the day and Aidan has worked tirelessly on it for seven hours. He would spend two more on it before calling it a night. He was especially proud because the packaging said the pirate ship was for “9 and over”. ...

As I was running through the light rain in my “Free Winona” tee-shirt a couple of thoughts occurred to me. First, I hoped one of the Olympic security volunteers who I pass on every block do not interpret this to be a “Free Tibet” shirt because I’m not sure my Chinese is good enough to explain the context of my Winona shirt. But I am not too worried, the security volunteers are mainly young men who just sit around and observe and do not really appear to be paying much attention at all. They carry no guns or weapons of any kind and they look worn down by the heat and humidity. They are all over town and not just by the events. Their job is to report any strange behavior. A foreigner running in this heat may quality. ...