OmegaMom

So OmegaDotter is starting third grade today.  Ah, me!  How the time is flying!  We recently looked at some pictures from just two and a half years ago, and she looked so much younger.  Now she’s swiftly moving into the “tweens”.

We finished her new bedroom look, and she is thrilled.  Zebra stripes, bright pink, orcas everywhere, and her most favorite stuffed animals clustered by the headboard of the new bed: 

This is probably the last year I’ll be taking her into her classroom on the first day of school.  I asked her on the drive in (all four minutes of it!) whether she wanted me to keep doing it, and she was rather firm on the subject.  So we marched in, meeting her teacher from last year acting as traffic cop in the hallway; Mr. Snows was pleased that she got the particular teacher she got and amused that her partner in crime and best friend A. was in her class but carefully placed at the opposite end of the room.

Here she is, all dressed in her new teal outfit (it’s more teal-y in person):

You can’t see it, but she is sporting brand new pierced ears.  I had been saying she could do it when she was twelve, but this past weekend, when we were buying new school clothes, we stopped into Claire’s as usual, and another girl about her age was getting her ears pierced, and…well…there you go.

But, while she’s getting bigger and more grown-up by the day, she also still likes to play hard.  She spent the other day “sneaking” around the house as a ninja.  As she’s wearing a pair of my sweats that she begged to have as hers, she looks like a droopy-bottomed gangster:

It’s been a busy few weeks.  Lots of things going on.  I may pull myself together to post on a current “hot issue” over at the Rumor Queen.

Then again, I may not.

The Chinese name request lasted two days, tops.  She’s still interested; there was an interesting discussion about how she figured she would still be her even if she had a different name (Shakespeare, anyone?), but the question of having friends call her OmegaDotter and others call her ChineseName bothered her.  I suggested that when she starts school we could talk with her teacher, and maybe her teacher could call her by her Chinese name.  She’s dubious at this point, but she realizes that we can do this any time she wants.

Maybe that’s all she was after—that reassurance?

Chinese camp was a blast for her.  There was a performance on Saturday that included a demonstration of Chinese yo-yoing by a one-time Taiwanese yo-yo champion (who had been teaching the kids), a variety of dances that were quite well done and very long for 7-10 year olds, and a potluck. 

Here’s the “Happy Farmer” dance the kids performed.  It’s –>six<— minutes long, so only watch if you’re really interested!

I was overjoyed at the prospect of no longer driving an hour to Big City, an hour back, working, then driving another hour to Big City and an hour back.

So now that Chinese camp was over and done with, the next big project began.  OmegaDotter has been agitating for redecoration of her bedroom.  Sunday, she and I went to the local bedroom furniture shop and purchased a new bed and mattress for her, and then went off to Target and bought a zebra-stripe comforter and bright pink sheets…the original plan was to do her bedroom in orcas, but she decided she loved the zebra-stripe and that her stuffed orca collection would go well with it.

Every day since then we have been going through the (HUGE.  MONSTROUS.  APPALLING.) mess conglomeration of stuff in her room, sorting it into “keep”, “donate”, and “throw out” bags, a couple of hours a day.

It has been emotionally wrenching for me.

She put her Polly Pockets into the donate bag.

She said, “None of my friends my age plays with My Little Ponies any more,” and *poof* went the MLP collection into the donation pile.

She went through her collection of horsies with ruthlessness, culling her herd to half its size.

Tonight, we went through a box of her old schoolwork and artwork.  All I can say is: “WAAAAAAH!!!!”

There were kindergarten projects.  Pictures.  Old notes to and from friends.  A sign she had designed for the TV cooking show she and OmegaDad were going to do.  An illustrated “mennyoo” with idiosyncratic spellings.  Various stories.  She was ruthless there, too—keeping much less of it than I had expected.  Some things I grabbed for myself, many she “gave” to me to avoid saying she didn’t want to keep them but sort of did want to keep them at the same time.

The old bed gets listed on Craigslist for this weekend; the new bed gets delivered soon.

Folks, it’s the end of an era…

Early this summer, I signed OmegaDotter up for Chinese Camp in Big City.  When she heard, she pouted—seriously.  She did not want to go, no, no, no!  This came with associated stomping of feet and whining.  This Monday, as we were driving in to Big City early in the morning on the way to her week’s worth of Chinese Camp, she whimpered some more, and I laid down the law:  She was going to Chinese Camp, she was going every year we could do it, and we’d make her do it when she was a teenager, too.

Why?  She whined.

Well, because we want you to get at least a smidgen (I gestured with my fingers less than an inch apart) of an idea of Chinese culture and her heritage.  Oh, and, by the way, adults who were adopted from other Asian countries who didn’t get to go to culture camps as youngsters felt more deprived than those who did.  (Not to say those who did go felt “not deprived”, just a little “less deprived”.)

She flounced in the front seat of the car and “hmphed” and made various unhappy sounds as we pulled into the parking lot.

When I picked her up that afternoon, she was much happier about the whole thing.

Tuesday, she did a performance of the dance she was learning for OmegaDad and me after dinner.

Today, she showed us a (really cool!) “magic” trick with Chinese yo-yos that she has practiced.

And tonight, at dinner, she asked us if she could use her “real name” rather than the name we gave her when we adopted her.

Well.  What a difference a few days makes!

Now, first off, I remember very distinctly being about nine years old and telling my parents—also at dinner time—that I wanted to be called “Elizabeth”.  No real reason—I just liked the name much better than my given name, Katharine.  I also remember my mom and dad acquiescing, and calling me Elizabeth for a week, at which point I begged them to puh-leeze call me Kate again.

However, OmegaDotter has a reason:  SiSi is the name she had before we adopted her.  It’s a connection to China and her past and her heritage.  So we’re going to do our best to remember to call her that all the time, rather than OmegaDotter.  She’s asked to do it for a week to see if she can get used to it.  She wants to be registered at school using that name—I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that, alas, but maybe we can ask her teacher to call her SiSi instead of OmegaDotter.  We did tell her that she would have to get used to telling people how to pronounce it, since any American seeing it will call her “Sissy” instead of “Siih-Siih”.  In fact, OmegaDad and I, who have used her Chinese Name on a semi-regular basis anyway, pronounce it incorrectly, calling her “Ss-Suh”.  (There’s a very small schwa in there after the first S, but I don’t know how to put in a schwa, so just imagine it, please.)

We did, however, tell her that we wouldn’t change it legally for a while, because that requires going before a judge, and we wanted her to be sure.

We’ll see how this goes.

(For those wondering:  I am using her Chinese name in this one post, but will continue to refer to her as OmegaDotter.  Since her legal name is not SiSi, and none of her friends know her as that—so far—I figure one post with her Chinese name is okay.)