Kindergarten

So, tomorrow is kindergarten orientation, and Wednesday is the first day of kindergarten. We start at the traditional time around here, right after Labor Day, although it seems like people in other places have mostly already started. I guess we can't start any earlier, because the tourist traffic is terrible right up until the day after, and any buses trying to get over the bridges would be late. I'm excited about kindergarten... I guess... *sigh*

No, I am. I've already made a list of things I have to do in my new free time. But my list is unreasonably long. I guess I've been waiting for school to start for so many years now that I forgot how quickly 6 hours passes. Some of it is in the direction of a job, or at least stuff that brings in money, and some is just catching up to things that have been neglected around the house and yard. And some of it, of course, is just keeping my kid ready for school. I have a lunch plan and all sorts of containers to keep his lunches interesting. I bought him a nifty new umbrella with the map of the world on it. I need to create a routine where his backpack gets emptied right away and repacked in time to leave. All run-of-the-mill stuff for you other parents, but a brand new set of challenges for first-timers like me.

Thank goodness we don't have to deal with buses or drop-off. We'll be strictly walkers, rain or shine (or snow). If you see our house in relation to the school and its drop-off area, you'll know why I'll never say, "It's too rainy out there. Let's drive instead." Umbrellas for the win. Honestly, though, I do feel good about it all. My kid is intellectually ready to go to kindergarten, and I'm trying to be intellectually ready to not sweat the small stuff. To not be neurotic if he's learning his ABC's too slowly, to handle it gracefully if he resists doing his token homework, to let it go if the teacher has opinions I don't agree with. Maybe to volunteer, only of it's for something fun and laid-back. I do have some legitimate worries to worry about, and I rightfully should worry about those things, but hopefully it'll mostly be all right.

And the new umbrella is pretty awesome.

We're going to China

So... we'll be moving to China in about a year. Probably. A lot of pieces have to fall into place first. But the pieces exist, so there's no reason why we can't just move to China.

Why? Because it's there. Because we haven't found any real immersion opportunities locally. Because a friend invited us to participate in an awesome mentoring program... for Koreans. Because a woman at the agency was telling us about a Homeland Tour they offer, in which several of the families they help place spend two weeks touring the cities and seeing the orphanages, bonding and crying and healing and getting to know their birth culture... and when I described it to my husband, we just kinda looked at each other for a moment. And then we said, "Why don't we just move there?"

 So now we're looking into what it takes to just move there. It'll be fun. It'll be a good life experience. Wo men xuexi Zhongwen. Cloud won't have a chance to bond with his adopted peers, but I'm sure he'll be all right. I think it's more likely that he'd say, "We did we only go to China for two weeks when we could've gone for a year?" than "Why did we go to China for a year when we could've gone for two weeks?"

Just a guess.

The story with the baby and the cats

AwesomeCloud has generally not been one to be wrapped up in adoption issues. He has never been sad about his birth mommy, and he's very matter-of-fact about racial differences in our family and in society at large.

He has never done a thing that made me contemplate getting him a therapist for adoption trauma. I'm sure adoption trauma exists, and I've seen some possible signs that he has some, but not on a call-a-therapist level. His therapy is regular life in a stable, loving home and at the moment that seems sufficient.

But lately he has been obsessively asking for his origin story. He calls it "the story with China and the baby and the cats." It started when he pulled out his adoption picture books again... "I Love You Like Crazy Cakes" and "The White Swan Hotel." And he soon realized that his story parallels those stories, but with cats. You see, Trixie died of a brain tumor a month after we came home from China. Then a month later, we got Riley. Then Christmas came, then in January we got Ban Lu. He loves the parts where the cat in the cat carrier rides next to the baby in the car seat.

Melody