Violin Recital or I Guess I Didn't Give Birth To The Next Mozart After All

Let me set the scene for you. About 10 kids standing in a row demonstrating their newly-acquired skills at playing the "violin" for all of the assembled parents. Since they have only had a couple weeks of lessons, they are first learning such critical skills as how to hold their bow (a wooden stick) and violin (a toilet paper roll), and how to move their bow to different rhythms. All of these lessons have clearly sailed right over Miriam's head at this point. Notice that she seems to think her bow is meant to be a plunger. And yes, in the second picture she is on the verge of biting her bow. But the video really just speaks for itself. I have no words to describe what a proud parent I was at the first recital a child of mine has taken part in!

I will say this for her though. In the 2 or 3 weeks since the recital, she has gotten a real violin and actually made vast progress. She now attempts to hold the bow correctly, does a decent job of holding the violin in place, and is close to being able to repeat rhythms. It has given me hope that she might actually be capable of playing the instrument one day. At least she is still very excited about playing her "biolin". And gosh if she isn't adorable doing it!

So for a while Jeff was operating under the assumption that he could turn his iphone sideways to take videos and it would work that way. He was wrong, and that is the reason this video is shot sideways. Remember the blame is all his.

Miriam's First Day of Preschool

Miriam has started going to pre-school two mornings a week at a local school. She really gets excited to go and has lots of fun playing. The school has a big playroom complete with a very fast slide and a little play kitchen area. She goes outside for PE class and has a math class as well. She is also getting violin lessons. I don't think she is actually learning much, but she enjoys being there with the other kids. Most of the rest of the kids are 4 or 5 years old, she is by far the youngest kid. She is supposed to be at least 3, but they are willing to let her in anyway. When I get it off the camera, I'll have to post pictures and video of her "violin recital" they had during a family day at the school. Most of the time at the end of the day when I ask her what she did in school, she is most excited to tell me what she ate for lunch. :) But I can tell a difference in her willingness to speak the local language even after just a couple of weeks of going. So here are a few pictures of her on her first day of preschool.

Let's Just Keep Going!!!!

This is the name of one of Miriam's very favorite games. She and her best friend Bree invented it together oh maybe a couple of months ago. It goes like this. They each pick a toy that can be pulled by a string (this is usually either one of those snoopy dogs you can pull along or a car that has balls inside that pop up whenever you pull it) and stand next to each other. Then they scream at the top of their lungs, "Let's just keep going!!!" and they start to run in circles in our basement play room dragging their toys. They never make it more than a couple laps before at least one of them has to stop because their toy has smashed into some object and gotten tangled around it. They run so fast and fling the toys so hard that they are usually airborne most of the time and often ricocheting off of walls, other toys, occasionally Elijah's various body parts. Whenever they have to stop to re-collect their toy they yell once again and take off. If left to themselves they will play this game for a half hour or more and I am incredibly surprised that nothing has actually been broken yet. Lately Bree's little brother Jesh has started to join in the fun so their are occasional fights over who gets the best toy and we often have to find a piece of string and tie it around something with wheels so that there are enough let's just keep going toys. I try to ban Elijah from the basement when this game is going on, but being the incredible social extrovert that he is he cries piteously if left upstairs. So mostly he just gets sat in a corner with an adult to stand between him and a high likelihood of death or dismemberment.

So probably most people wonder why we allow our children to play this game. To be honest, I wonder that myself most times when I send them down to play and stay upstairs pretending like if I can't see them then I don't have to care what they're doing. But I think the reason they get away with it is the look of such joy and anticipation on their faces when they first pick up the toys and are poised to launch into their first chorus of "Let's Just Keep Going!" That and the bond it creates between Angie (Bree's mom) and I as we cringe and laugh together every time we hear the chorus followed by loud thumping, smashing, and cries of delight.

Why I hate working out

So I decided to do this 3-part workout video for 30 days because let's face it, I'm fat and out of shape. I figured I'd do each part for 10 days, and it couldn't be all that bad, right? I'd feel good and it promises that you can lose 20 pounds if you do the workout for 30 days.

So day 1 I do the first part of the workout and by 5 minutes into it I'm pretty sure that I hate myself for even thinking of this idea. I am supposed to be doing some sort of lunge while pressing weights over my head, but after about the first 5 of these my arms give out and I am merely barely waving the weights somewhere around mid-chest. By 15 my legs are also shot and I'm more swaying back and forth than lunging. I have a blister on my big toe and my underwear is riding up but I can't adjust it because I'm holding the weights. I'm panting like a dog and trying desperately not to think about the fact that it's only been 5 minutes.

It doesn't get any better from there, but I finish the workout and feel a small surge of satisfaction that I can now say I am "working out". That glow of happiness dies by the next morning when I wake up to discover that my left earlobe is the only part of my body that moves properly. Nevertheless, I have made a commitment so I start up level one once again and I can only describe the following 20 minutes as the next layer of hell.

By day 3, the body is slowly adjusting and I don't actually curse out loud at the instructor on my screen cheerfully encouraging me to "keep pushing through it!" Maybe this is only actually purgatory and not hell itself. Days 4 and following are progressively less painful and I start to secretly tell myself that I don't look that much different than the toned, fit, skinny women on the screen. Until I catch my reflection in the window while bounding off the ground like a gazelle during the jumprope exercise and realize that the only part of me that looks like it's bounding are my boobs. The rest of me just looks like a mass of jiggling fat.

After 10 days of level one, I am ready to move on to level 2. And discover that the previous tortures were only a warm-up to the real thing. I spend more of level 2 sprawled on the ground trying to get myself back into the push-up position that you are supposed to be in for half the workout than actually doing the workout. Tonight I finished day 3 of level 2, and while I did manage to only lay prone on the ground once, I still spent most of the 20 minutes of the workout wishing that I could have my toenails ripped out instead. I just don't enjoy it. Not really any part of it.

But in the end, after completing almost half of the 30 days, is it at least producing the desired results? Am I burning fat and creating lean muscle so that in a matter of 17 more days I will be proud to stride around in a bikini? Well, Jeff does do his part to tell me things like, "I think you're looking more toned. Your legs definitely look more toned than they did before." Miriam isn't as helpful. She snuggled up to me yesterday and said, "Mama, is your tummy fat?" Well this morning I stepped on the scale to see where all of my hard work had gotten me. The verdict? Two whole pounds off. Like I said, I don't like working out.

Asian Renovations

There are fewer times I notice as much difference between Asian and American cultures as when having renovation or repair work done on your house. Here are a few examples:

1. Every room has it's own air conditioner, and therefore in the wall of every room there is a hole roughly the size of a large fist that allows the hose to go out of the house. The hose however is only about 2/3 the size of the hole, so you end up with a partially open hole in every wall. When asked if they could seal the rest of the hole sometime, the reply is "nothing we can do about it" (you hear this phrase on an almost daily basis if you spend time around renovators much). The suggestion was to shove some rags or bits of plastic into the rest of the hole.

2. Two days after we move in, we notice water running out of our fuse box and also out of the ceiling in another room. Reason? When they installed our bathtub upstairs, they used a hose a half-foot too short to reach the drain. And they didn't seal the hot water faucet so it was continuously leaking water into the wall.

3. When in need of a ladder the workers didn't have, they took some pieces of metal railing and metal wire and created their own ladder. Let's just say not the sturdiest looking structure to use while standing over a stairwell.

4. Every building in this country is made out of concrete and rebar. So when our neighbors decide to convert a basement window into a door, you get at least two solid days of having to shout at the top of your lungs in order to be heard by the person next to you over the sounds of sawing and hammering. They might as well be doing the work in your own place. Jeff using the concrete drill in our own apartment was less noisy than the neighbors construction.

5. When they lay the carpet in a room, they just sort of unroll it and glue the corners down. No stretching or anything. Eventually with much pressure they actually stretch it a little and glue it down better.

6. When they tile the floors in a bathroom or kitchen, they use grout that just chips out after a while. They have no sealer that you can put on the grout, so after just a few days the grout looks dirty. I haven't been able to find anyone who doesn't claim that they don't have sealer in this country.

7. When they paint they don't actually stir the paint very well, so by the end of the can the color is slightly different than when they started. Making it impossible to do touch-ups because the paint is all a different shade now.

But on the positive side, labor costs virtually nothing here. :)

Top 10 Reasons Not To Get Deported

10. No matter how sympathetically the customs agent looks at you, you are never emotionally prepared to hear "your visa is expired so you must leave the country now" after just arriving from a 10-hour overnight flight and expecting to be home in a half hour.

9. You might lack adequate food supplies to keep your family fed when you are expecting to arrive back at your home by 3pm and instead are being detained in the airport and flying to a new country until 1am. You might be forced to buy a small box of cookies for an exorbitant price to prevent a total toddler meltdown and fork over $20 for a couple whoppers for "dinner" at around midnight.

8. It costs a lot of money to buy one-way tickets to Hong Kong for your whole family.

7. It's embarrassing to be escorted onto said flight to Hong Kong by the police.

6. Your family doesn't get over jetlag more quickly when they don't get to bed until nearly 2am.

5. When you wake up the next morning at the hotel and go to the desk to ask about staying an extra night, they might tell you all the rooms but one are already booked, and that room will cost $500 per night. That might be the emotional straw that breaks the camels back for your husband and he might spend half the day in a spiral of depression and gloom as a result.

4. After spending all morning waiting in line to apply for a new visa, you will then be forced to spend all afternoon wandering the streets of Hong Kong looking for a playground to relieve all the pent-up energy and stress that your 2 year old has built up over the course of the trip.

3. Your daughter might wake up covered in small red bumps that you will later discover are probably bedbug bites.

2. It will cost you nearly as much money to buy return tickets home as it did to get you to Hong Kong in the first place. Plus expensive hotels and food. Plus new visas. Plus the $200 your husband might accidentally leave sitting in the ATM.

1. When you finally arrive back home, you realize you now have 5 days to pack up your home before you are moving. :)

Miriam's Best Friends

Today Miriam came up to me and said, "Mama, I want you to come see my best friends!" I didn't even have to guess what she wanted me to see. So I smiled as I walked down the hall to her room where she proudly showed me 4 small plastic figurines lying on a pillow. She quickly turned to me and whispered loudly, "Shhhhh!!! They're sleeping!! I do NOT want you to wake them up!!" She beamed at them and then declared, "I just love them so much!"

Anyone who has ever met my daughter knows who those 4 plastic figurines are - Leo, Annie, June and Quincy of course. I think pretty much from the first day grandma and grandpa introduced her to the Little Einsteins, Miriam has never gotten over her love of them. She only watches a 20 minute episode of the show a couple of times a week, but she gets so excited when we turn it on that she just giggles and squirms all over. At least one of the little friends accompanies her around the house and "watches" her eat, go potty, read books, etc. She talks to them constantly and makes up endless games and activities with them.

Part of me is a little disturbed by how very much she loves cartoon people. She's not kidding when she calls them her best friends. She does have real friends that she loves to play with, but I do believe that in her heart she loves those Einsteins more deeply than she does anyone else except maybe Jeff and I. Even though she loves her little brother, I'm pretty sure she'd trade him in for Leo. :) But then, I watch and listen to how she interacts with them, and I realize that she is actually learning true lessons in friendship from her relationship with her "friends". Here are some examples:

1. One day Miriam was carrying two of the friends around when she accidentally dropped one of them. She scooped up June, said "Sorry June! Did you get hurt? Let me kiss your arm!" Then she turned to the figure, Annie, still in her hand and said, "When June gets hurt you have to say sorry and be kind. You should give her a kiss to even if it is an accident. That's being kind."

2. A fight broke out between Leo and Annie one day. Not sure what the cause was, but apparently Leo wasn't being a very good big brother to his little sister Annie, because I overheard Miriam lecturing Leo saying, "Annie is little and you are bigger, so you have to be gentle with her. When you see babies you have to take care of them!"

3. Miriam was busily eating a cookie one day while Leo was looking on. All of a sudden mid-bite she stops and looks at Leo. Looks at her cookie then looks at Leo. Looks at her cookie and looks at Leo. Finally she breaks off a miniscule little piece and puts in front of Leo and declares, "I share with my friends!"

So while I hope that Miriam continues to learn about friendship more and more from her real live friends, I've made my peace with the fact that in her crazy ever-changing world she has found some real happiness and comfort in her Little Einsteins. Thanks Leo, Annie, Quincy and June for being such good friends to my daughter!

So I couldn't find any pictures of her with the little figurines, but this is her with June and Quincy at Disney while we were in the States. Below is her with Leo.