after three nights in the hospital, we came home on Sunday May 24th.
Uncle Max and the kids welcomed us home with this poster on our porch.
flowers from the Rubys
lots of hugs, this one is from Jessica.
Popo trying to settle Emile in his bassinet.
nursing.
Same with Ming Ming, Emile is a hungry baby. We are supplementing 6 oz of formula everyday. I am still conflicted about it. But the experience with Ming Ming (my struggle to stop supplement was so painful during the first month of Ming Ming's life) makes me more relaxed this time around, it does not worth all that pain and struggle. I am still trying hard to breastfeed, but if it takes 2 oz of formula to make Emile feel contented, I am not going to beat myself up for it.
May 21st, we arrived at the University of Chicago hospital at 8:30am. My OB doctor made an appointment for me to be induced on my due date. The rationale being that I have a history of belated labor (Ming Ming was nine days late and induced) and we did not want to go past my due date for too long because of my age. I was fine with the idea of induction, the birth of Ming Ming was very short (12 hours total) and smooth. Yet, upon checking in, the doctor in charge told me that the average for induction is 24 hours and I had been extremely lucky the last time. It would probably be longer this time, and she was right.
I was immediately hooked up with IV and then later pitocin. The contraction was still tolerable during most of the day, I was able to read a little. Most of the activities during the day consist of unhooking myself from the five lines connecting my body to different monitoring machines in order to go to the bathroom. At 1am on May 22rd, the contraction reached a much stronger level and the doctor suggested epidural, I took it. Sometime between 2 and 4am, the doctor broke my water and the pain become much more severe. We finally called the doctor in and luckily, one of them detected a sudden drop in the baby's heart rate, and suggested that we should stop pitocin as the baby was dropping into the birth canal at too fast a speed. The pain was more tolerable once they stopped giving me pitocin. I started trying to push around 3am. Then they asked me to stop and wait for them to set up. 14 doctor were in the room, with the main doctors in full surgery gears when they asked me to start pushing again. At that time I just assumed that all these doctors were interns and thus were there to observe. But Antoine thinks that they were getting ready for surgery because of the sudden dip in baby's heart rate.
Anyway, much to everyone's relief, Emile was born after a few more pushes. He cried immediately once he came out: strong, loud cries. My baby is whole and sound.
May 22nd holds special meanings for me. 12 years ago, my father passed away on May 22nd. The sheer coincidence of dates is a testament of the continuity of life, but it also reminds me of my father's undying devotion and love to his family and children. May 22nd is also the feast day of Saint Emile, which we did not know when we pick out the name Emile.
Ming Ming was home with Popo. We called before 6am to tell them that Emile was born. Ming Ming was so happy that she decided to skip school (it was Friday) to come meet her baby brother right away.
This is Ming Ming's fourth spring concert with Hyde Park School of dance. After dancing as a bee, daisy, and rainbow, this year she graduated with a Swan dance - a much more mature dance with a white feathery costume and a beautiful performance.
thanks to her height and skin color, Ming Ming is easy to recognize in this video. Avi was in the same dance, the first girl who came out.
Lily was dancing in the same show -- the Lilac dance. It was quite a challenge to recognize her, too many blonde girls. but I think I capture her in this video.
Professor Duara is in town, and so are some colleagues who have graduated already, for the Association for Asian Studies annual conference. A memorable dinner last night at China Town. I took Ming Ming with me as I have so little time to spend with her these day.
After almost two years since she started the violin (May 2014, first blog post here), Ming Ming finally graduated from Suzuki Book 1. This past Sunday we had her book 1 recital at home to mark and celebrate the event.
a program prepared by papa Antoine
the audience was ready
Introduction by Ming Ming's violin teacher Miss Hilary. Piano accompanist: Liz. Liz was most generous with her time. She rehearsed with Ming Ming twice before the recital. We could not have done the recital without her!
Ming Ming played really really well for the first half of the program (from Twinkle to Etude), the quality of her sound and her playing was much better than during practice. Unfortunately I did not record any of it (camera malfunction, I recorded the intervals instead with camera filming the floor). This is the first video that I did caught on camera - Bach's Minute 1.
Bach's Minute 2
Ming Ming messed up a little while playing Bach's Minute 3 and Schumann's The Happy Farmer, but was able to stay calm and keep going. This is the last and longest song of the recital - Gossec's Gavotte. And Ming Ming played it really well!
graduation certificate
I baked a chocolate cake with caramel decoration and icing (can you see that it is a violin) to celebrate.
and a bundt cake with a recipe from Anne
after cake, the kids had a serious dancing party! Sometimes helped by Liz's piano playing...
January 6th 2014
The coldest day in Chicago, -40C. Everything was closed: public schools, university, grocery stores, public transportation... The commune set up kid-watch teams at the Ruby's house, and working team at my house. Anne and I had just turned on our computers and bad news came from upstairs. Ming Ming fell (running with slippery socks) and cut open her chin. I called MM's pediatrician, sent her this image, and she said "emergency". Anne volunteered to drive us. It was snowing really bad, her car had four-wheel drive, mine did not.
Anne dropped us off at the ER and parked one block away (too much snow outside the ER building and they did not clear it up yet!!). When she came back, she could barely see as her glasses were all foggy and frozen. The ER at the children's hospital were pretty empty, and we were taken care of quickly.
Anne was great in calming down kids in a medical emergency. MM looked pretty calm in this pic. But then, the doctor came and wrapped her up very tightly with a bed-sheet (like a mummy), with her arms tightly bounded to her body so that she could not move. Then they gave her some numbing creams and shots (Ming Ming kept saying that it still hurted), and then three stitches. Unfortunately it was an intern who did the stitches (under supervision), and it took at least twice as long and caused much more pain. She stitched it wrong and had to do it again.
When it was finally done, Ming Ming was full of sweat and tears. My poor little thing!
One week after the stitches, we went to her pediatrician to have them removed. The same night, she ran to give me a hug and bumped her chin to my face, the scar opened up again. Her doctor said that they could not sew it back up again, and suggested butterfly band aid.
The ER visit costed more than $2000 (insurance paid the whole bill), and we were not sure if it did any good. This was how the scar look like in March.
her graduation project: she wrote a whole book! title - The anmols in a sekrit grdin (the animals in a secret garden). The book was more than 20 pages long, with lots of text (creative spelling) and illustrations. For almost a whole month, each morning her teacher would read her what she had written before, and she would add another page of text and illustration to her story. The story mirrors pretty closely her life at home and in the commune. The day after we had taken her to a sushi restaurant, the insect friends in her book go to a sushi place too. The day after she had a sleep over with friends, the ladybugs and butterflies did the same thing, etc. etc..
parents were invited for a book reading ceremony when all the books were finished.
a small graduation ceremony at her classroom on June 3rd. Her teachers spoke about their evaluations of Ming Ming and presented her a kept-sake folder with all her artworks from the kindergarten year.
a school picnic to mark the end of the year
with her teachers
and friends
And so ends Ming Ming's preschool life at Akiba Schechter. She was there for three years. We are very happy with her schooling there. The first year with Emliy and Hannah and the second year with Aru were both extraordinary. The kindergarten year were not as impressive. There was a bit more formal schooling (alphabets and numbers) and the program was not as creative. But still, Ming Ming was very happy there for the entire year.
------------------------------------------
August 14, I finally decided that it is time MM tackle the two-wheeler. The big girls bike that I found with Anne in a second hand market this summer has been sitting in the bike room for a while. We took it and walked to the parking lot of our local public school. This was what happens after I held her bike and ran after her for ten rounds.
That afternoon, we biked home.
Then I forced her a few times to bike with me to music and ballet classes. She was not happy because she was scared biking on the sidewalk: always afraid that she would run into someone, dare not to pass anyone walking ahead of her, stop her bike whenever someone walks past her, etc.. But after a few trips, she was already a pro.
I really like these two pictures; they capture some of the sweet moments that Ming Ming enjoyed with Papou immensely. Basically, when Mamie and Papou are around, Ming Ming wakes up early either to read with Mamie (in French) or solicit Papou to read with her (in English). The first few days when Papou arrived, Ming Ming picked up this rather thick Berenstain Bears book (Jessica loaned her that book) and read it to Papou. She is in the reading stage in which she likes reading to an adult, she got most of the words right, but needs help from time to time. This is a bit tedious for me because of her reading speed. With Papou it is just prefect. Sometime Ming Ming would translate a word in French to Papou, sometimes Papou would explain a word to Ming Ming, and sometimes they would argue over a word and papou would look it up in the dictionary. As the stories are mostly about the silly things that little bear and papa bear do, I heard them laughing out loud all the time, with a sense of intimacy or complicity that you can only envy.
and papou is always there for silly things!
and for a game of memory or jeu des sept familles in which he would cheat so badly that it is not fun when he does not (which never happens).
and for taking Ming Ming out... (Mamie is always there too, but she is behind the camera)
in the busy holiday season, I also squeezed in time to take MM to catch the last showing of 2013's most acclaimed Japanese anime - the Tale of Princess Kaguya (which recounts the traditional Japanese folk tale of the bamboo cutter and the moon child).
Taking advantage of the last few days before school started again, we finally finished Harry Potter Book 4 - The Goblet of Fire. It was quite an intensive experience for Ming Ming. for a few days she did not want to stay in her room or go to the bathroom alone, because "the Harry Potter people is everywhere in this house" and "I am afraid I will suddenly see lord Voldemort."
X'mas present from Xiao Tie and Li Zheng
from Selina Yiyi!
Ming Ming retelling a story that she just read with Mamie
