Exploding English

We haven't, in the past ten months, managed to either finalize Thành's adoption or send out an announcement of his arrival but he has managed to learn an entirely new language.

Good bye Lake Country School!

Ted and I were both happy and proud to celebrate the end of the school year with Louis today. This was a challenging year for him and for us, as we noticed his frustration with his classmates and the lack of challenge for him at school.

We'd been told at the October 2007 conference with his teacher, Mr. Mullin, that at the pace he was working Louis was expected to finish the math and science cirriculum for 1-3rd grade before the end of the year. He did.

The idea that a mixed-age classroom setting would be beneficial to Louis, since he works ahead of his age, was a complete and utter failure. Louis' age peers rarely understood what he was talking about and shared none of his interests and the third graders felt largely intimidated and threatened by him and responded with mocking and teasing.

Because Louis was working so much outside of the class cirriculum, Mr. Mullin and Mr. Dittberner tried to work with Louis one-on-one as often as possible, but he spent a lot of time in the library doing independent research into the Periodic Table, atomic structure and nuclear energy on his own. These are topics that actually take teaching and even with 28 kids and two teachers, there really wasn't time for much of it.

Consequently, it was not a great year for Louis. Academically he did fine, but Ted and I often put in the equivalent of a half-day of home schooling him after school and after dinner, answering questions that he came up with during his day at school. He was bored a lot of the time and spent a great deal of the year reading and drawing.

As a result, Ted and I spent the majority of the winter exploring our options, visiting schools and reading cirricula to find a better home for our precocious child. We settled on moving Louis to Ridgeview Elementary School in Bloomington, MN (a first ring suburb of Minneapolis, about a twenty minute drive from our house. Louis will start there in Fall 2008.

Leaving Lake Country School was not bittersweet for Louis; he made one friend in three years there and was largely an outlier. He said, the day before the last day of school, "I'm tired of sitting in a classroom full of assholes." I guess that sums up his feelings about it.

Louis celebrated his first free day by spending six hours building the LEGO Mars Mission Armored Drilling Unit, an enormous kit that he had been coveting for a long time. It is an amazing six-wheeled vehicle (independent suspension!) that incorporates two other vehicles (a scooter of sorts and a space plane) and has a functional auger, which he demonstrated by digging a hole in the crocus bed.

In the evening our friends the MacAneney's came over for dinner and we made pizzas and banana splits. Sean (5) and Sophia (7) were allowed to join Louis on the garage roof, which was a lot of fun.

This week is a mish mash of care for him: Tuesday home with Mom, Wednesday spending the day with Grandma, Thursday going to MTS with Ted (and using Frontpage!) and then Friday home with Mom and Thành.

Next week Louis will spend three days with his cousin Charlotte (thank you Auntie Jo!) and then will leave for Baltimore, MD with Ted on their great adventure.

Ten Tons of Trash or How Old Electronics Took Over Our Home

Ted and Louis have been long attendants of Leonardo's Basement, a workshop in our neighborhood. Being in such good standing there, they were invited to "Test & Take Day on Saturday.

An old fellow, a retired electrical engineer, had bequeathed his life collection of electronic gadgets and machines to Leonardo's and they needed to test them to see if they worked and then they planned to integrate some of the inventory into the workshop and give the rest of it away.

How could one resist?!

Thành and I went to the garden and off they went, quivering with excitement about what they might find. Well, it turned out that the Leonardo's folks had pretty much taken what they wanted out of the stock but it sure was fun to look through the rest! Louis and Ted came home with a few fabulous prizes:

A Heathkit Oscilloscope

A functioning light meter

An 8mm movie camera

A laser focusing thingy

The oscilloscope was installed on the dining room table and first the mens hooked an MP3 player up to it and got the wave focused and centered and played with all of the knobs and figured out what they did.

Next they hooked up the kitchen laptop to the oscilloscope and Louis popped into Scratch and wrote a little program to produce infinite random sounds. Watching the waves from the variety of noises that were produced was really fun. The oscilloscope has been a BIG hit.

The camera was taken apart, as was the laser focusing thingy, and the lenses have been carefully stored away for future use. Louis is intrigued and amazed by the different ages of circuit boards that he comes across and is thrilled when he finds a mistake where one weld has to be connected to another with a string of solder, etc. He's also having a grand time with the light meter.

I explained that photographers used to use them to calculate the F-stop, which lead to a discussion of aperatures in general and you could just see the gears turning in his head. He's a funny being that way.

At any rate, we've had the stuff for about a week now and there are cookie sheets of parts all over the dining room. Some of the stuff has made its way down to the basement workshop, but the dining room is definitely a nicer place to work.

VMFC Picnic

After the daring duck rescue yesterday we did manage to make it to the bi-monthly Vietnamese Midwest Family Circle picnic at the home of Lloyd & Jennifer Komatsu in Inver Grove Heights.

There were eight families there, a much smaller turn-out than the inaugural dinner in late March due largely, apparently, to conflicting graduation parties of many nieces, nephews and neighbors.

We have joined this group because it is a good chance for us to occasionally see many of the families that participated in the Children's Home Society Yahoo forum that kept us going through the tougher parts of our adoption. We've become friends with a number of the families and are hopeful that we can keep some of these kids connected with each other over the years.

This was a weird picnic, though, in that there were only two families with kids there; the rest of the folks were people whose adoptions are caught up in the diplomatic snaggle that currently threatens to again stop adoptions from Vietnam to the United States.

The USCIS (successors to the INS) were quite undiplomatic this past spring when they issued a pretty unbalanced and rudely-worded review of the Vietnamese international adoption scene. The Vietnamese responded by saying that they would not be renewing the agreement that allows the countries to pursue international adoptions, which expires 1 September and for which negotiations were just starting.

They added that if a family doesn't have a paper referral for a child by 1 July, the adoptions would not be allowed to go through.

Now, if you are familiar with the world of international adoption you know that children are often brought to a family's attention through indirect ways: a child is on a medical needs list; a set of "institutional siblings" need to be adopted together; an older child without any hope of domestic adoption is listed.

Most of the families at the picnic had been receiving information about their proposed children for months and months because they had learned of the child through one of these methods. This is called a "soft referral" and a soft referral is never a sure thing.

Most of the families had been expecting a formal referral, called a "paper referral", this summer and were already worrying about the agreement expiring in September and whether it would be renewed. Now many of them are afraid that the paper referral for their child will not take place before the new deadline and they will lose the child(ren) they have been falling in love with over the last 1, 6 or 12 months. It's a desperate situation for them to be in.

After having been through what we consider to have been an ethical international adoption -the reassuring part being the additional 8 months we waited for Thành after our referral (the point at which the orphanage and provincial government deemed him legally available for adoption) while the federal authorities verified that he had been legally placed for adoption- I will be the first to suggest that the system is in serious need of overhaul. The money simply has to be taken out of any equation whose end result is the transfer of a human being from one entity's custody to another.

There are many suggestions and great organizations working on the problems inherent in the process and both Ted and I have felt that we are still too close to what was a horrendous experience for us to become involved, but still, it was painful to sit and eat pasta salad with these folks and understand that as bad as we thought our situation was, these families have it worse.

They have lots of money and all of their reproductive and emotional eggs in one basket and there is a cadre of snippy diplomats and career administrators having a pissing match over who wants to feel more insulted by the other. This is not a win-win situation.

The Komatsu's have been very outspoken and have been in the local media and in the NY Times, offering to be the family that will stick its neck out to get something to move. The media, however, has chosen typically to portray them as sad-sack childless people with dashed hopes. It's rather disappointing but not surprising. The fact is that they are a couple who has chosen intentionally not to reproduce (they also run Minnesota Greyhound Rescue) and yet they are portrayed as "those poor people with no kids".

At any rate, the picnic was fun for Louis and Thành because the Komatsu's have, in addition to 8 dogs of their own and 15 to be adopted on their 5+ wooded acres, an ENORMOUS Rainbow play structure that they installed never imagining that it would take them so long to get their girls home. The boys made good use of it.

It was also nice to see the family that will adopt a little boy that we met in Bên Tre when we went to pick up Thành. They have a four year-old boy now and will be adopting this little boy that they have named Wyatt just as soon as the CIS finishes the paperwork. We held this little boy and played with him when we traveled, so we feel a thread of connection to them.

Otherwise, there was no one there that we knew well other than the Komatsu's, who we met in our Vietnamese class in St. Paul in late 2006. None of the other three families that were in that class has yet to bring home a child. We feel luckier every day.

Wild Webbed Waterfowl, Batman! It's a Duck Emergency!

The mens were playing with gadgets this morning and I went off to pick some rhubarb down at the community garden in order to make a pie for a picnic we were going to in the afternoon.

When I got to the end of the block I came upon three women converged around the storm sewer drain in the street. They were surrounded by a variety of strange objects: a bamboo cane with packing tape wrapped around the handle; a cat's paw; a couple of kitchen knives; a cardboard box with a screen on top of it and a mother Mallard duck that was quacking her head off.

I knew one of the women, Anna, who lives nearby. She quickly explained that the duck family had apparently been walking along the gutter when they crossed the drain and the little ducklings had dropped, one after the other, through the grate and into the sewer.

Now, we've had a lot of rain this spring, but luckily the storm sewer was dry. The women had managed to get two of the ducklings out of the sewer and into the box by putting the bamboo cane down the hole and pressing the ducklings against the side of the sewer pipe and sticking the ducklings to the tape. These were tiny ducklings and the ones that were still in the sewer were hopping up and down trying to get back to the family, but their little wings were nothing but nubbins.

One of the women was doing a valiant job of trying to keep the mother duck from being run over as she circled the sewer drain, but she wasn't having much luck corraling her. The next idea was to try and pry the lid off of the sewer drain in order to afford better access to the victims.

I ran home and asked Ted if he wanted to get involved and while he showed his usual ambivalence about it, Louis was certainly interested so Ted let go of his free time and came down to the corner with me. I brought some corn meal along, just in case.

When we got back to the scene, the little ducklings had had enough of the circus above them and had started walking into the sewer pipe and could no longer be seen. By the time I walked the half block to the garden to get a shovel to try and pry the lid off, another couple of people had joined the effort; the shovel failed to pry off the lid.

In one of those synergistic moments that are barely to be believed, a Roto-Rooter guy pulled up to a nearby house and came over to see what we were all up to. Turns out that he had a long crow bar and the muscles to use it and he had the lid off the sewer in three seconds flat.

We lowered Louis into the sewer, which he promptly declared "smelled like Hanoi" and using a flashlight he was able to determine that there were three more ducklings and that they were about six feet down the pipe.

Roto-Rooter guy then proceeded to take the lids off of three more manholes in the intersection (by now Mr. Mallard had joined the sqwaking and the traffic had been successfully tamed, healthy dog treats had been brought along with a bucket of water to the dog whose owner had discovered the plight on their daily walk and Thành had nearly fallen into the sewer a number of times and had been removed from the scene, which lead to great distress on his part) and a small woman got down into one and the R-R guy hung upside down in another and between the three of them they were able to make enough noise/motion to drive the ducklings toward the fourth hole, where they were scooped up and put in the box with their siblings.

After all of the excitement was over, the ducks were returned to their parents who led them straight to their nest between two houses on our block. We suspect that this is the same pair that has nested on our block for years and probably the male is the mallard that was making such a racket on the top of Mookie's house a few weeks ago.

As everyone was dispersing Anna told me with a certain disgust in her voice that when they had initially called Animal Control the fellow on the line had told her that they didn't come out for wildlife and that these "were just ducks".

Discord in the Community Garden

I started a small mental breakdown in the community garden where Louis and I have plots last week.

At the Spring Community Work Day it was decided that everyone would take on the responsibility of one of twelve or so jobs in the garden so that no one person had to be Sheriff of the Garden.

I got myself elected as tree/sapling czar and we all agreed that if the crazy lady whose plot is next to mine had to have her failed arbor experiment (about twelve 15 foot Box Elders that she had tried to grow together, breaking many of the garden laws) out of her plot by 15 May or they would be removed for her.

The crazy lady (CL), who hasn't come to any of the six madatory work days that we've had since we joined the garden three years ago, told Tim (my brother and nominal head of the garden this year) that she couldn't come to the communal work day\ because she had an appt. at ten o'clock. Gardeners are asked to work anytime between 9-3.

At any rate, CL came out at 11:20 to pay Tim the annual rent on her plot ($15) and asked him to sign a receipt that he had taken her money because she hates him and doesn't trust him to give the money to the neighborhood association.

After he disgruntedly signed the receipt he asked her "What about the trees?" and she went ballistic. She told him to shut up, that he was a fascist, that he had no appreciation for diversity in the garden, that he was trying to get her out of the garden, etc. Tim, who said it was such a moment of channeling our Dad that he was rather embarrassed afterward, asked her to sign a statement saying she would get rid of the trees before 15 May.

After she stomped away, her pal (they both live across the street from the garden and regard it as more theirs than anyone else's)came out to be the adolescent message bearer of CL and told Tim that CL doesn't like to be challenged, especially in public (unlike the rest of us, who relish it) and that she would take most of the trees down if she could keep the biggest one in the middle of her plot until next year. Tim, at the end, of his wits said okay.

He, however, failed to pass that information along to me. So, on 15 May I went and cut the trees down along with all of the other saplings and suckers on the lot.

That evening I happened to be at Tim's house enjoying a gin & tonic before heading off to Charlotte's fifth grade band concert when CL called Tim; she'd been to the garden. She was absolutely furious, called him Hitler and threatened to sue him and a whole bunch of other craziness.

The next morning I called the neighborhood association (they own the land) first thing to get in front of the psychopath eight ball, but CL's friend beat me there. I spoke to the administrator of the land and they took a walk over to the garden that afternoon.

Essentially, they were aghast at the state of C's plot and called her in to their office and told her to clean it up or leave the garden. They also asked us to call them if we have any further problems with her. I will be more than happy to have it all being worked out by the trained association staff. Yikes.

Maybe now we can garden in peace? She brings bad juju to the place.

Freeburg Death March!

As I have said earlier, I can't ever sleep in at the schoolhouse so I often get up and go out with the dog on what Ted calls a "pajama walks", which is essentially a walk in my pajamas that ends up being much longer than intended.

This morning the world was so juicy and budding and sprouting and mating it was incredible. love the 'spring ephemerals' -the short-lived wildflowers that blossom early-on- and took a 2 mile hike looking for them. I returned and unlike yesterday, when I peeked in the window and found Thành just waking up (he was mighty surprised to see me looking in!), everyone was still asleep so I crawled back in bed and dozed off myself.

After we all got up, ate, washed and dressed, Ted suggested a 1.4 mile "as-the-crow-flies" hike to find a geo-cache he had looked up; it was extra-appealing because it was a cave! We left at 9 AM in glorious sunshine with Thành in his backpack. Crossing our neighbor Mac's hay field, we were suspected from afar of being mushroom poachers (morels are bountiful hereabouts and are in season) and he raced out in his pick-up with his enormous dog Jake to stop us. We had a nice chat and he told us about how waterlogged everything was so far this spring.

About three hours into the hike, which was all up and down in the coulee topography of Houston County, I started to think that perhaps Ted didn't know what he was doing and it turned out that he didn't! He had printed out the geo-cache listing, but never read it and had assumed that we would be able to find the route there on the system of State Forest trails that surround the schoolhouse.

By this point my infallible sense of direction was no good, because I had been taking pictures of wildflowers and just following along, not paying attention to where I was. Furthermore, in order to get the (#*$&@#! GPS device to recognize your current position, a person had to walk twenty or thirty steps. Let me just say that no one wanted, at this point, to walk twenty steps uphill only to find out that they were going the wrong way. We marched on another couple of hours.

After walking a long, long way -I estimate 8 miles- the last of which was a good 300 yard steep downhill bushwacking descent, we were .10 miles from the geo-cache but Thành and I were in desperate need of food and so we sat down in a dry creek bed on the valley floor to eat the SNACK that Ted had packed and drink sparingly from the ONE BOTTLE OF WATER that he had packed. I felt so bad for the dog that I let him drink some of it, too.

Needless to say, Louis was in tears at the prospect of not getting to the cave, so they continued up the other side of the valley, found the treasure, signed their names, explored the cave and returned happy.

By this time I was starting to worry about being out in the woods with a tot and no more supplies at 4 PM, so we followed the creek south and then trespassed across a farm pasture with a lovely pond. We stopped to let the dog get wet and were admiring the millions of tadpoles when we saw a tiny painted turtle hiding under an oak leaf. We checked him out, made some canals to repatriate some tadpoles that were stranded in footprints separate from the pond and continued on through a field and then a cattle yard.

By this time, Ted had removed his belt to use as a makeshift leash for the dog so that he wouldn't chase a calf, I lost my Merrell clog (why would you put on your hiking boots for a 1 mile hike?) in an unctuous mud/cow shit combination -Louis almost wet his pants pulling it out as I stood in the muck in my sock- and Ted had ripped out the crotch of his pants on some barbed wire. We popped out into a breathtakingly beautiful valley that we did not recognize in the least and when we got to a farm with someone home, Ted asked where we were. Low and behold, we were a stone's throw from Little Miami, our favorite supper club in the next valley. In other words, about ten miles from home.

It turned out that we had popped out of the forest where we should have started the hike. Ted doesn't get to plan a hike again for a really long time, if ever. Men and their gadgets. I only got mad once, when he offered the GPS to have me for the third time. Setting off with a two year-old and a seven year-old, one bottle of water, a can of smoked oysters, a box of Triscuits, two oranges and an apple. and no idea where he was going. I told him that I never wanted to see the thing again in my life.

When we hit the road that went to the main road he hung out his thumb and unbelievably two families going fishing together stopped for us. Who in their right minds would stop for two people with muddy shoes, a guy in a straw fedora with his underwear hanging out and a wet dog on a belt? Nice folks. Louis, Moby and I rode in the back of a pick-up and Thành sat on Ted's lap (to hide the hole) in a mini-van and we were delivered to Reno. Only two miles from home!

We walked to the Reno State Forest Campground where I told Ted that the kids and I would be laying in the grass while he went for the car. Not a soul passed going up the bluff, so we knew he was walking the entire way. Luckily when he came back he had the sense to bring water, cold beer and chips.

When we got back to the schoolhouse we were all so worn out we could barely move. Even Moby would not get up to drink a cup of milk I offered him. Initially I thought we needed to spend the night and leave for home early in the morning, but as the kiddie melt-down set in we decided to throw everything in the car and go. Thành was asleep before we hit the river road but Louis made it until 9 PM.

Without the good nature of our kids, the stamina of the family and the beautiful weather we had, this hike could have been a disaster. It certainly was an adventure. We call it the Freeburg Death March.