Luke's Mother's Day activity

What's a washing machine?

November 11, 2011

Greetings from the land of earthquakes and typhoons. Oh, wait, nevermind … maybe that’s Virginia?

Mark and Chris finished up basketball last Saturday. I think we had a successful season, although I harassed them so much about passing that they wouldn’t shoot the ball in the last couple of games. They’re fully into Tiger Cubs now, and piano and Chinese Culture Club continue. Soccer starts very shortly, and Luke will participate in the 4-year-old league. Annette is at the school several times per week, if not daily, and has gotten roped into serving on the committee for the Cub Scout Pack. At home, Annette and I continue to try and find afternoons without rain during which we can work on the treehouse (photo of Joy helping attached).

Little Mark’s teacher has started a daily video blog wherein two students report on what the class did that day. You can find them at http://kidblog.org/middleton/mr-middleton/taarini-and-mark-2/. Look on the right bar for others with Mark in them.

We had our first road trip a few weeks ago, to a campsite on the eastern coast of Taiwan. We traveled with some good friends of ours, who also have four kids, the oldest of whom brought a friend. Our crew of nine kids was quite a sight in a place where the birth rate is negative. Although it rained the whole time, the kids are all itching to go back. We walked on the beach, played in the surf, crossed a suspension bridge, and hit some badminton birdies around. We managed to stay reasonably dry, with tarps tied to luggage racks, tree branches, and coolers. The two knuckleheads (dads) who broke down the last parts of the camp in a driving rainstorm drove two hours back to Taipei in soaking wet clothes.

As we registered the kids for school in August, we went through the ritual of telling the teachers any nicknames, apart from the names on their passports, that the kids like to be called. We thought we had Chris (vs. Christopher) pretty well set, but for some reason the Mandarin teachers remain fixed on shortening his name to ‘Christ.’ I’ve written them a couple of messages about the Bill Cosby routine on that theme (“It was because of my father that from the ages of seven to fifteen, I thought that my name was Jesus Christ…”), but have just about given up trying to get them to take off that extra ‘t.’

We passed around some sort of nasty virus in this giant petri dish of a house a few weeks ago. The boys all suffered through it first, so Joy got in the habit of getting them each a toy with candy when she and Annette went to the market. When Joy finally got sick, Little Mark independently decided to get her flowers from the florist who sits in the lobby of the supermarket. Joy made us go see those flowers in her room every day for a couple of weeks. We finally got her to agree to toss them, long after they had dried enough to become a fire hazard.

Mark had his 7th birthday party last Sunday afternoon, after he had breakfast in bed on Saturday, the morning of his birthday. He decided on a bike theme, so we designed an obstacle course around the cul-de-sac and Annette made an amazing bike cake. We think he was proud of his party. He has an appointment this Sunday morning to take a large pile of food to the home for disabled children that’s attached to our church here, as he had his friends bring food donations for the home instead of gifts for himself.

For the ‘Kids Always Win’ file:

- We were practicing some Chinese phrases over dinner the other night. After we got through “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “How are you?,” Luke very earnestly asked, “How do you say, ‘I’m going to do whatever I want?’” We wish his teachers lots of luck.

- Joy: “May I have a cookie?”
Big Mark: “Oh, is your tummy hungry?”
Joy: “No. My mouth is hungry!”

- Those of you who have seen us react to Luke pitching a fit know that we walk away, and he soon realizes he’s better catch up if he doesn’t want to get left behind. That worked brilliantly until Joy started to scream at the top of her lungs when we started to leave him on the playground, fearing that we’re going to abandon her big brother. Rather than having the satisfaction of having gotten our point across the other night when Luke refused to get off the slide and come home for dinner, we had kids yelling in stereo – Luke on the slide behind us screaming, and Joy on Annette’s hip screaming because she was afraid we were leaving her brother. Time for a new strategy.

- I wrote last time that our fifth child, Nobody, had left the gate open and Clifford escaped. The kids had no idea that Clifford could have been hit by a car and had a very bad outcome. Annette and I were discussing how we were glad that they don’t yet leap to the worst-case scenarios, but also wondering, just off-handedly, if their lives are too easy. Just as we were having that discussion about whether their lives are too easy, Chris walked up with some dirty clothes in his hand. Annette told him to put the clothes by the washing machine. Chris’s reply: “What’s a washing machine?”

All the best from Taipei,
Mark & co.

Settling in Taipei (Part 1)

September 21, 2011

Greetings from Taipei,

We wound up our 44 weeks in Virginia in fairly good form, with Mark and Chris completing kindergarten very successfully and me getting out of my school with reasonable marks. We had a great year, spending time with family, connecting with new and old friends, and getting the kids acclimated to the States.

We enjoyed some leave on the way out here, with stops in Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and then a week in southern California (some photos are in the second posting here, below). In Georgia, the kids took swimming lessons, during which Joy screamed at the instructor for three days straight, and the same day in a different pool, on her terms, promptly did everything he had been trying to teach. We toured the Cowboys stadium in Dallas with Thad, and the kids got to kick and pass a ball around on the playing field. In L.A., the kids lasted at Disneyland until 10:30 at night, but didn’t really carry the party into the restaurant for dinner (photo attached). We figured it was time to get out to post and get settled when the kids started complaining about which rental mini-van was better than all the others, but we had a great time.

We’re getting settled in Taiwan and are really enjoying it. We’ve re-united with a couple of friends with whom we served in Singapore, including Luke’s “god-brother,” with whom he was baptized after they were born a week apart in the same hospital in Singapore.

Mark and Chris started first grade at Taipei American School on August 11, and both are doing quite well (photo of bus on the first day below). The school has some great resources to bring Chris along, which of course is a huge help. They have over 100 options for after-school activities, and so far the big boys are doing basketball on weekends (I’m coaching) and Chinese Culture Club. They’re on the Mavericks, in honor of Uncle Thad being in Dallas. They’re also taking piano lessons at home, so we feel like they’re well-rounded but not over-extended, yet. All the boys got their first typhoon day, the Taiwan equivalent of a snow day, a couple of weeks ago; the storm blew some rain around and knocked down some branches, but didn’t hit the northern part of the island very hard.

Luke is in a local nursery school (bus photo below), and he’s the only Westerner in his class. It’s supposed to be half English and half Chinese language, but it sounds like it’s mostly Chinese since Luke is the only native English speaker. He wasn’t doing well with the full days, so Annette, having done ‘trial by fire’ in navigating our van around motor scooters and stray dogs, is picking him up daily after lunch, thereby missing a bit of instruction as well as nap time. He very happily brought his sleeping bag home and gave it to Joy recently, as he figures they can’t make him nap there if he doesn’t have a sleeping bag at school.

The house is great. We’re on a mountain (large hill?) and have a yard that Clifford stays in, except when someone (we suspect Nobody, our fifth child who is responsible for everything that goes wrong around here) leaves the gate open – Clifford escaped two weekends ago and was found by a good Samaritan who took him to her house and later reported that he “eats like a vacuum cleaner.” We’ve been thankful that Luke, who perceptively noted that four bedrooms and four kids made a perfect match (he said Joy would allow me and Annette to sleep in Joy’s room), has not balked at sharing a room with Chris. Little Mark, who claimed that he wanted his own room so he could read quietly at night, spends about 50% of nights in his room and the rest with his brothers. Joy, who we thought might want a male-free room to herself, has slept in her room no more than twice since we’ve been here. Annette has done amazing work in getting everything set, as always.

We’re on a cul-de-sac, and Annette and I are working to figure out how to act as the parents of the kids who have potential to be the troublemakers on the block. The kids had me assemble their bikes as soon as we got the small shipment (four very large boxes) from Virginia, and between the bikes and making forts out of the large shipping boxes, we’re not entirely sure why we bothered shipping the rest of those toys from Nairobi and Arlington. True to form, Little Mark had me put a skylight and window into his box while he created a welcome mat, and then Chris and Luke turned their boxes on their sides and climbed to the top, while I studied the map of Taipei to locate the nearest emergency room that can handle broken arms. Joy, again true to form, goes around picking out which brother’s box she will occupy on that day, then screams at the top of her lungs if the chosen brother protests.

For the ‘kids always win’ file:
- Grandpa Zimmer trained the kids on radio etiquette over 44 weeks of visits in Virginia, and then he and Grandma gave Chris walkie-talkies for his birthday. The radio etiquette instruction appears to have been a success:
* Little Mark: “…, how do you read, over?”
* Chris: “I don’t know how to read. Over.”

All the best from Taiwan,
Mark & co.

Settling in Taipei (Photos part 2)

Hello from Arlington (cont.)

Hello from Arlington

Greetings, all-

I got away from this blog and then thought it was too late to restart, but have been asked to start it up again. So, I’ll just do a broad wrap-up of the last seven months and move forward. I’ll miss much, I’m sure.

We wrapped up in Nairobi with a final couple of adventures – a final safari and a beach trip – and enjoyed the boys’ closing ceremonies from their school there. When we left Kenya on August 3 of last year, the embassy sent a mid-sized bus come pick us up from the house there, given that we had six people and a large dog, a ton of suitcases, a dog cage, and four car seats. The trip back was fairly uneventful, apart from Luke spending 18 hours yelling at the floor of two different airplanes, and insisting that he heard his dog, Clifford, barking back in response.

Christopher became an American citizen when we landed in Atlanta on August 4. I told the immigration officer that after three years of trials and uncertainty, I expected confetti and streamers rather than a quick stamp in Chris’s passport and, “The naturalization certificate will be in the mail.”

We enjoyed several weeks of leave, mostly in Georgia. The kids quickly remember the deal on Happy Meal toys. The kids have had several moments where we remember that they need to be re-oriented to the U.S. One was Little Mark having no idea how to hang up a phone with a wire on it. Others included the kids getting mad the first time we stopped at a stoplight (a no-no in Nairobi, where being stopped made you more susceptible to car-jacking).

We got to Arlington, VA in early September. Little Mark, Chris and I all started our respective classes on September 7. Chris and Mark are both in kindergarten now, and both have better handwriting than me. Luke and Joy are home with Annette, who is doing amazing work, as always. They get to the Smithsonian museums most weeks, and Luke, owing to several trips to the Air and Space museum, says he’s going to be an astronaut when he grows up. I’m studying Mandarin Chinese in preparation for four years in Taipei, Taiwan.

We’re enjoying being 70 miles from my folks. For some reason unbeknownst to Annette and me, they insist the kids never do anything wrong, even when the kids have been cranky all day and we go out for dinner. Pretty amazing. Aunt Vi gets in quite often, as well, and then we’re spending a lot of time on I-85 between Virginia and Georgia, getting to visit the folks down south.

Little Mark is doing great in school. After a week or two of class, we got a certificate in his backpack that said he was doing great in Spanish, to which we replied, “He’s taking Spanish?” He’s reading quite well already, and he enjoys the attention when his siblings ask him to read stories to them. He and Chris both played soccer in the fall as members of the Wizards, and the team did well in spite of the coach (me).

Chris remains pretty free of confidence problems. He insisted to Annette a while ago that his hooded sweatshirt wasn’t on backwards. After she made him put the hood on, hoping to prove her point, he walked around with this face in the hood, maintaining that the sweatshirt wasn’t backwards. He’s enjoying kindergarten, and progressing well. He finished his first fun-run on the day before the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington.

Luke is ornery as ever, and growing in intelligence and vigor every day. He’s had to adjust from being in school in Nairobi to being home here. He thinks he’s really pulling something over when I take him for walks during my lunch and buy him a Slurpee, which has soda, which they can’t usually have. Just a couple of weekends ago, it took a bad crash for him to start focusing on how to avoid going straight down the ski slope.

Joy is doing all she can to keep up with her brothers, seemingly unaware that she’s half their size. I went into their room at naptime one afternoon to find Joy leaping from a stool onto a futon, with Luke, in all 30 pounds of his glory, waiting down below to catch her. She seems to be lagging in speech a bit, but not lagging at all in getting whatever she wants when she grunts at one of her three big brothers.

Annette pulled me along to finish the Marine Corps Marathon on October 31, along with her sister Kathryn and Kathryn’s fiancé. She takes Luke and Joy on adventures while the big boys and I are at our schools. She’s doing amazing work keeping the kids up on their schoolwork, including creating ‘homework’ for Luke, who misses being in school. She did fantastic birthday parties for all of the kids, including custom-made fire truck, princess castle, and space shuttle cakes. Each of the boys gave her a ‘dinner date’ for Christmas, and Mark and Chris have both taken her out so far.

We’ve had lots of fun living in American suburbia, for all of its quirks. During the fall, we gathered leaves into a huge pile, with the explicit purpose of allowing the kids to jump into it. The kids have managed to sled on about a half inch of snow (your standards aren’t too high when you come from the Equator). The kids often comment often that our minivan isn’t very tough (“It’s not a dirt car, like our Nairobi car1”); maybe it was the reindeer nose and antlers we had on it at Christmastime?

More from the ‘Kids always win’ file:
• Luke told me to be quiet at Christmastime when I began discussing presents for his black Labrador Retriever, Clifford, since Clifford was in the room and might hear me talking about the gifts.
• Chris and I went to look for a sled in Georgia when we got in on Christmas Day, since they had a couple of inches of snow on the ground for the first time in years. After unsuccessful tries at Target and Wal-Mart, we were headed home when Chris asked why no one had sleds. After I replied, “Because it never snows in Georgia,” Chris looked out the window at the snow-covered ground, looked at me in the front, and said confidently, “Yes, it does!”

I’ll do two batches of photos here, since I can do five at once.

Hope everyone is enjoying 2011,
Mark & co.

All six to the U.S.

Greetings, all-

We're just back from a long-awaited family, as in all six of us, trip to the U.S. We're still holding for some more processing on the adoption, but Chris was able to travel on his Kenyan passport. We started out in Atlanta, where the kids were fortunate enough to have all four grandparents meet them at the airport on arrival. Chris had made the flight and arrival with no worries at all, meaning we shouldn't have spent all that time worrying about how he'd react to the airplanes, relatives, new activities, and the general business of the U.S. We put about 3,000 miles on a minivan (we're far past sports car territory) over the three weeks.

We had a great time visiting with the in-laws in Georgia. Chris met several people for the first time, though he acted like he'd known them the whole time. He figured out the "treats in a Happy Meal" racket, too, and collected plenty of toys with his cheeseburgers. The boys spent a lot of time in Grandpa Watts' train room and only a few times caused train wrecks. We enjoyed a family gathering one weekend where Annette's grandmother had ten of her great-grandchildren with her at once (you might be able to see her behind all those kids in the attached photo). We got to see Rachel and Aunt Emily in an Irish dancing performance and did lots of bike riding.

We headed down to Louisiana next. Aunt Kathryn and Aunt Sarah graciously hosted us at their house in New Orleans, and they learned what a jet-lagged baby sounds like at 3 a.m. We had a great time playing tourist there. We hit the Audobon Zoo, ate beignets at Cafe Du Monde, and ate too much good food. We spent a night in Thibodaux, where the kids' Great Aunt Marcia made the mistake of sitting on the floor and encouraging three boys aged five and under to jump on her.

We spent an evening in Birmingham at Jubal and Jenny's place, and the house was still standing when we left. The boys really enjoyed the time with Lily and Eva, and look forward to meeting their newest cousin in August.

Back when we thought Chris might have trouble adjusting, we had scheduled a tip to Chattanooga, Tennessee for just our immediate family. Although the time apart wasn't vital, we enjoyed the trip, especially sleeping in a train car that had been converted to a hotel room. They still have the luggage racks along the top sides of the train car, so I told the kids when we got in there that the luggage racks were the kids' beds. Little Mark, not to be messed with by his old man, looked at me and demanded I pass a pillow up to him to make his sleep more comfortable. We visited the aquarium and Ruby Falls, as well.

We ended the trip in Virginia, with my folks, Aunt Vi, Uncle Jim (in from Wyoming) and Thad (recently back from a year in Afghanistan). Grandpa Zimmer issued the kids rubber band guns on arrival in Front Royal, much to Annette's delight. Somehow, the guns only made it out of the suitcases here in Nairobi ten days after we got home (Annette must have forgotten about them, I guess). The boys enjoyed a brief fishing trip during which Luke alerted us that his bobber was defective when it went under the water (he reeled in a blue gill shortly thereafter). Chris caught a bass but refused to touch it. I'm not sure if all that Army training made Uncle Thad ready for wrestling with the nephews or not.

Back home in Nairobi, Joy has finally decided to start walking. She's doing quite well, especially when she sees one of her brothers with something she wants. She has a new, very special, sound that she makes when things aren't going exactly her way. The sound is less frequent, though, as she gets us all trained to answer her every whim.

Clifford was happy to have his kids back, though we're enduring a hunger strike. I asked the trainer/kennel owner if everything went alright while were gone, since Clifford isn't eating his dry food well. He said, "Yes, he ate the rice and ground beef I gave him without any trouble."

For the 'Kids Always Win' file:
- The boys and their cousins decided that bikes were the flavor of the week while we were in the States. So, we bought Chris and Mark each a $50 bike to ride while were there (Luke got a hand-me-down from his cousin Alex). Chris refused to ride on two wheels, so we bought him some $20 training wheels. The rear axle wasn't long enough, so we bought a new tire for $73 that would accommodate the training wheels. So, we invested $93 into a $50 bike. Less than a week after we got back to Nairobi, Chris asked to ride his bike while I had the training wheels off to fix a flat tire. He took off on two wheels and hasn't looked back. Great investment on the training wheels.
- Annette and I always said we wouldn't be "those parents" who let the kids rule by, for instance, forcing us to run out at night to get a blanket or doll we had left somewhere. We went to a wonderful Easter lunch at the home of some friends here on Easter Sunday. We got home about 7 and got the kids ready for bed. We realized about 7:15 we had left Joy's rag doll at our friends' house. Joy screamed until about 8:00 while we debated about the doll, reminding ourselves that we weren't going to be "those parents." At about 8:01, I hopped in the car and took off down the road outside our house, fondly known as "Carjack Alley," to go retrieve the doll. Our friend, who will get his reward in heaven and has young children himself, understood the gravity of the situation and set out from his house to meet me partway with the doll. I got back with the doll in about ten minutes, and Joy was asleep about a minute later. We are, in fact, "those parents."

Hope everyone is well,
Mark & co.