dreaming of what we want to see/do in Taiwan

Kevin and I have been making a list of where we want to go when we return to Taiwan. Here's the list for my reference and to share with others.

must (new places):
Taiwan Indigenous Cultural Park
Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines
National Palace Museum
Longshan Temple in Taipei

must (do-overs):
Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall - photo op
Sun Yat-Sen Memorial - photo op
Din Tai Fung for dumplings - yummy!
go up Taipei 101 with Hudson

would like to (new places):
Snake Alley
Jade and Flower Market
Taipei Zoo
Ximending
Ping Hsi railway line
Taipei Eye

Restaurant suggestions

apartment and condo rentals in Taipei

This post serves as an index of sites where you can rent an apartment for a short term in Taipei. I'm using this to collect the information for myself and share with others that are interested. I'll add more links as I find them.

FRBO
HomeAway
Sublet.com
Trip Advisor - I like this site best

I'm seriously considering renting an apartment in Taipei for when we travel to Taiwan to meet Hudson. Because we're planning on traveling with Hannah, we need to go very light on luggage in order to have hands free for two little ones. Kevin and I are planning on only bringing four days worth of clothing with us and washing clothes at the apartment. Most likely Hudson will come with clothing and shoes that he's been wearing while living with his foster family.

We're planning on flying coach this time around. Business class was SWEET when we traveled for Hannah, but we can't justify the added cost this time around with Hannah. We will buy Hudson his own seat for the ride home so we'll have plenty of butt room for everyone.

"Mama? How does your name go?"

"Mama? How does your name go?"
"What do you mean, Hannah?"
"What are your letters?"
"Oh. S - A - R - A - H."
Two minutes later, "Here you go, Mama. I made this for you!"

That's my smart girl! So proud of this!"

"For Christmas?"

Today, out of the blue, Hannah asked me if I knew what I wanted for Christmas. "For Christmas?" I asked. That's a really long way away. Hannah replied, "Well, maybe you can want to bring home my baby brother for Christmas."

Uh... I'll settle for Christmas in July. Or May or June even. April will work. I'll start writing my letters to Santa.

push send/receive... push send/receive again. any news?

In the five months, one week, and one day since we've known about the little boy we hope to name Hudson, we've only received one tiny update on him that consisted of two undated photos. We have no developmental and personality info on our little guy since he was six or seven months old. We understood going into a foster care adoption case that we could have very few updates, but this is really hard. It is really difficult to feel emotionally connected to this adoption this time around because we feel that we know so little about him. We have all sorts of information on the social history of the case, but very little information on our little guy. This doesn't mean we don't want him. This means we yearn to learn more about him, if he's walking, what foods he likes, who loves on him in his foster family, what makes him laugh, and what soothes him when he cries. So if I don't post about him... it's not because I'm not thinking about him. I think about him every day, check my e-mail multiple times a day for a few words, a few photos, and there's never anything there. It's sad. It's a darn good thing I'm too busy to dwell on this much... because when I do, it makes me so sad! Still plugging along tracking calories, exercising at least three times a week, being really frustrated with work while having two good employees on medical leave... loads of extra work dumped on with new year changes, going to story hour at the library, planning play dates, doing laundry, etc etc etc.

Redirect: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!!!

We had a blast at Teresa and Curtis' home last Sunday to eat yummy food, girl gab, and watch the superbowl commercials. Gabriella and Hannah provided the entertainment. Thanks for sharing your photos of the girls HERE, Teresa!

good read: It okay to ask if someone's kids are adopted?

Linking to a good read at Rage Against the Minivan titled "It okay to ask if someone's kids are adopted?"

My answer to this question: It is okay to ask, but don't ask in front of my child/children because I don't want my child/children to feel as though they are being singled out for looking different than I do. Depending on how you ask and why I presume you are asking, I may answer you in the following ways:

• "We are an an adoptive family." I'll answer your questions, but I'm not going to allow you to single out my child for looking different than I do. We come as a package deal. We're a family.
• "Why do you ask?" I'm feeling protective of our family's information and want to feel you out first before I talk to you. I want to figure out if you're an adoptive family as well, if you're just nosey, or if you are genuinely interested in adoption.
  
• If you ask in a disrespectful way, I might say this. "I've always thought it was rude to ask strangers personal questions." I've never had to use this one, but I've got it on the back burner, just in case.
• If it's obvious that you are likely a member of an adoptive family as well, I'll just straight up tell you that we adopted our child/children from Taiwan when she/they were X months/years old. I can see why you're asking. I'm also more likely going to respond to Asian Americans with this answer, as I'm wanting to make connections with you and see what we have in common.

my Belle

Hannah has three favorite Disney princesses: Rapunzel, Mulan, and Belle. For her fourth birthday, our present to Hannah was a Belle dress and crown... with a promise to take her to see Beauty and the Beast at the movie theater, and she could wear her Belle dress to the movies. I think she was more excited about wearing the Belle dress outside the house than actually seeing the movie.

I had the day off today and decided it was a good day to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D before it left the theaters. I told Hannah, "Let's make a deal. Do you know what a deal is?" She nodded. "How about we go see the Belle movie tonight, but in order to go... you have to take a nap today because we're going to stay out late." Hannah was very excited! She ran to her bedroom, jumped in bed, and shut her eyes. It was so funny! This from the girl that forever tells me, "I'm not tired."

After a good nap I helped Hannah get the Belle dress on with plenty of warm clothes underneath. It's 26F degrees outside, after all! She also requested to wear gold sparkle shoes and carry a pink wand. We had dinner at Panera Bread and got all kinds of smiles from the other diners. I don't think the other diners expected a "character dining" experience when they decided to eat at Panera tonight. After a quick Target run, we hit the theater. We didn't even have to tell the ticket attendant what movie we wanted to see. Somehow... he guessed that we were there to see Beauty and the Beast!

She was so good and so sweet tonight. "Mama, there's some scary parts at the end. But it's okay. It's just a-tend." Hannah kept offering me popcorn from her popcorn cup, and wanted to make sure that I had plenty of snacks, too.

Today was a great day. Love that girl!

Redirect: A Very Special Birthday!!!

Thanks, Teresa, for sharing your photos of Hannah's birthday party with us!

note to self

Note to self: Make sure child's iPad is not in said child's bedroom when you put child in bed. Child might be up an extra two and a half hours watching Angelina Ballerina in bed on Netflix.

photos from Hannah's 4th birthday party

Get out your toothbrush. This post is so sweet and sugary
that if you don't brush after reading it you might get a cavity!


Thanks to Lora for these four photos! They're my favorites!


Teresa and Lora helped out in the kitchen.


We had cupcakes (and more cupcakes), fresh fruit, taco chips and a dip tray,
Valentine peanut M&Ms, pink lemonade, soft drinks, and coffee.


I can't believe we really fit 40 people in to our little house.


Decorating cupcakes and cookies is one of Hannah's favorite things to do,
so of course we had to let everyone decorate their own cupcake. Kids went first.


Hannah accessorized her party dress on her own that day.


That's my girl!


Gabriella thinks this was a good idea, too.


Allie and Lora look like they're having a good time.

We bought a cupcake pinata and stuffed it full of all kinds of candies. We didn't have anything to hang it from, so Kevin held it. We didn't blindfold the kids. We started with Hannah letting her swing a big stick at it first. She didn't make a dent in it. We went from the youngest to oldest, letting them take several whacks at the cupcake, but it was tough! It was a little nerve wracking to watching the kids swing that stick and trying to stop them from smacking each other with it. The bigger kids fought hard with the pinata, and Lora's boys started to make a little progress. Finally, the oldest kid at the party, the neighbor girl across the street, took a couple of big hard whacks at the cupcake and it rained down candy.

A big thank you goes out to my mom and dad for helping with chairs and tables and to Teresa for getting supplies for and facilitating a round of the Grand Prize Game. Hannah has played with the heart shaped buckets and ping pong balls every day since the party!

The sweetest thing about the whole day was watching Hannah
hold hands of both of her friends Allie and Gabriella
and run around the house with them. Big smiles. Pure joy!

my little valentine, the circus, and conversation hearts about Chinese school

Hannah was being a funny little monkey on Saturday before we left for the Chinese New Year party with some other adoptive families. "Are we going yet?" "Daaaad! Are you ready?" She wanted "my Chinese dress" on early in the afternoon and couldn't understand why she was all dressed and ready to go... and we still hadn't left yet. That and I had to keep her from helping herself to all of the leftover yellow dragon cake icing.

Our photo taking spot is right inside the front door with a blank wall as a back drop. I open up the front door to let in natural light... but in January... IT'S COLD! I snap snap snap as many photos as I can super quickly and sing things "Twinkle twinkle little hamburger" to get a rise out of Hannah, get some quick picks, and SHUT THE DOOR before we freeze.

I heart this little pink sweater. Old Navy. Need to buy another to save for when she grows out of this one. Cute cute cute.


We went to the circus tonight for the first time with Hannah. We've been reading a book about going to a circus and she was really excited when I told her we'd take her to a real circus. Hannah didn't like the really loud music and was a little over stimulated. We were in the second row right in front of the tiger cages and had a great time. She said that her favorite part of the circus were the arial acts that did flips and spun in the air. Mine too! At the end of the night she was "big tired" and fell asleep before we were out of the parking lot.

It may have been a mistake to start Chinese school so young. Our class started this fall with children ages 3.5-7 with Hannah the youngest in the class. There's a HUGE difference between children at this age. Class is two hours long with a 15 minute break in the middle. Hannah can barely sit and pay attention for an hour and fifteen minutes. Two hours is a long time. She's still shy and rarely answers her teacher's questions, and refuses to participate in songs and dancing. The teacher has children come to the dry erase board and circle answers and write letters. She's a wonderful wonderful teacher and I'm learning a lot and having fun, but it's not my class. It's supposed to be Hannah's. If Hannah were five and had five year old skills, this would be perfect. But... she's a pretty shy little thing that just turned four. I've debated pulling her out of class or keeping her in. I think I'm going to stick with it and we'll see how much she absorbs from just being there. Hopefully she'll be better prepared next fall when she can write more letters and has more classroom experience from preschool. Hannah's learned more from Chinese language DVDs because she'll actively participate repeating words back to the TV, but I've picked up more from her Chinese school than the DVDs.

CNY with the little peeps

Our family welcomed in the year of the dragon tonight with good food...



good friends, new and old...
{yes, getting the kids rounded up for this photo
was more difficult than herding cats!}



crafts for the kids...



a dragon cake that looked pretty cool...
until a case of Coke fell on top of it while we
rounded a curve four minutes from our destination.

GASP!



There was some yelling from inside our vehicle as we
examined the injuries sustained by our dragon.

Tip: Don't put other objects anywhere near a special cake
when transporting it in your car. Even if you think it's so heavy
that it won't budge, you could be wrong.

Very wrong.



Hooray for our Taiwanese blessings!
Who cares about the smashed cake when you're around this much cuteness?



Double Happiness.



Watching Mr. Personality work the crowd cracked me up!

my dragon cake

From the moment that I read M3's blog post about making a dragon cake for her girls' birthday party, I knew that I had to make one. I'm not a cake boss. I don't even own a bundt cake pan. My idea of making dinner it to stick something from the freezer into the microwave and cut up some fresh fruit. But... I knew that it was inside of me. I could make a dragon cake and bring it to a Chinese New Year party where there would be lots of people eat it so I wouldn't have it at home looking at me... tempting me with it's calories. My big hang up about the cake was the dollar amount and time invested in putting on all of those M&Ms. Then I read this blog post by Kelly the Overthinker with her "rough icing" and knew I could create a good looking dragon cake without all of the M&Ms. Kelly also has a link to this awesome dragon face. I printed it out on photo paper so it is thick enough to stand up. I cut a piece of cake at an angle creating a wedge for the dragon face to be propped up against. Some icing makes the photo paper stick to the cake wedge.


Hardest thing about this cake was finding a board to place it on. Then... it came to me. I could wrap a leaf from my kitchen table in red plastic table cloth! I decided to make three white bundt cakes, as I couldn't decide if two or three cakes would fit best of my board. My cakes fell right out of the pans thanks to some baking spray with flour in it. I ended up using two and a half bundt pan cakes, three Twinkies to taper the tail, four tubs of icing, one container of Wilton lemon yellow icing color (found at Walmart), a spash of red icing color gel to warm up the yellow tint to a more golden yellow, one package of Kroger brand fruit slices, and a couple of pieces of cherry pull and peel Twizzlers. I really like the look of the red Twizzlers rope down the side of the dragon for more color pop, and I'm glad that I chose multi color fruit slices.


It took more time to bake three bundt cakes and let them cool than it did to put the icing and decorations on the cake. I made the cakes the night before, sealed them up in zip lock bags, and decorated the dragon the following morning. I sliced the cakes in half with a bread knife and tapered the tail cutting the Tinkies at an angle. I would have liked to have made the dragon red, but I didn't dare try to create deep red cake icing. Red is supposed to be hard to get just right, and I didn't want to end up with a pink dragon.


I'm looking forward to taking the cake with us to a party tonight with several area Taiwanese and Chinese adoptive families! We're blessed with such good kids, and they're stinkin' cute as well.


What does Hannah like best about the dragon cake? Left over icing, of course.



Post script: Remember that NEXT year is the year of the snake, and one could easily make a snake cake using a couple of bundt pans.

新年快樂!

Just a few pics from our area's Chinese Association's New Year party. So glad that our friends, another Taiwan adoptive family, could join us! Hannah had a cold and was a grump because of a sore runny nose, so we left early and didn't stay for all of the entertainment and red envelopes at the end.

After leaving the party, Hannah perked up and had lots of things to tell us. We were having a conversation in the car about going to The Fresh Market. Hannah pipes in, "Daddy, we can buy more of your favorite cookies because Mommy ate them all gone." Who taught that kid to tattle already?

Happy Lunar New Year! Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous year of the dragon!

our princess turns four

Phrases that we've heard a lot of this past week:
"I'm so excited for my birthday!"
"Can I help make the cupcakes?"
"What shoes should I wear with my party dress?"
"I wanna help!"
"Right now I'm three, but on my birthday I'll be four."
"How many sleeps until my birthday?"

This mama is very tired of cleaning, worrying how all of these people are going to fit in my little house, making 5 batches of cupcakes between 11-3am and waking up at 8:15am to a little voice asking "Can I put on my party dress yet?" I decided it was all worth it when I watched Hannah running around the house laughing and holding hands with BOTH Allie and Gabriella. Daddy agrees, that was his favorite moment of the day.

I don't have many photos of the day as I was busy with FORTY PEOPLE in my little house. We invited everyone that Hannah asked to invite, and all came! Hopefully our family and friends that took photos will email some to me. Hint hint. Nudge nudge.

Hannah's favorite present: a hula hoop.

Mama and Daddy gave Hannah a gold Belle dress and crown, with a promise let her wear the dress when we take her to see Beauty and the Beast 3D in the movie theater. She's planning the popcorn and candy purchases already!

The hair clip that she's wearing today was a gift that Hannah received on the first day we met her. I can't remember who the clip is from, but knowing that it is from a birth family member or a nanny at the baby house makes the clip an extra special accessory on a very special day.

not your ordinary white woman from Farmville, IN

I had a really enjoyable work experience this week with a Vietnamese American in her early 20s that I'd never met before. After work we talked for about twenty minutes having fun comparing and contrasting what Vietnamese and Chinese to do celebrate the lunar new year. I like spring rolls way better than egg rolls. We both agree that moon cakes with egg in the middle are really gross, but she suggested I try ones with mung bean. She told me that she'd like to open a restaurant some day. I voiced that our area really needed someplace that sold boba tea. Her eyes widened and she got so excited, and shared that's exactly the kind of shop she'd like to open! We have the same favorite place for boba tea, the Joy Yee shop in Chinatown Chicago. I was told that I'm the only white person that she's ever met that knew about and was into this kind of stuff. I replied that I hope she'd get to know some local adoptive families, especially Vietnam adoptive families. I'm an adoptive parent that's totally into my kid, and I'm looking for inclusion for us into your word, too.

National De-lurking Day

I've read that today is de-lurking day. Readers, I'd appreciate it if you could take a moment to tell me who you are, how long you've followed this blog, and why you follow it. Let me know what your favorite kids of posts you are so I can get a feel for what'd you'd like to write more about. Thank you! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Reserve your room for Taiwan R.O.C.ks 2012

Taiwan R.O.C.ks Reunion for Taiwan Adoptive Familes will be at the Embassy Suites in Downtown Chicago, less than two blocks from Millennium Park and short walk to Navy Pier and the Lake Michigan beachfront. Check out the reunion blog for a link to make hotel reservations with the group's reduced rate. We made our hotel reservations tonight for a party of (prayerfully) four!

will smile for candy necklaces

Wanted to share a few funnies from today.

Offer Hannah a candy necklace and she's ready to pose!



Nana emailed me this morning about having Hannah over last night: "Funny at dinner. Nana said if you eat all your broccoli tops, do you want ice cream with sprinkles? Hannah chomped into the broccoli. Papa said, guess you need the right carrot? Hannah said, these aren't carrots!"



A phrase we hear a lot in the evening is "I'm not tired. I'm not tired!"
Tonight, I think she was tired!
I can't believe that she slept sitting up through an entire 45 minute Target trip.
She usually RUNS down the isles laughing and can't wait to see the toys.

Hudson's room has been painted and wood laminate flooring was installed yesterday. We moved all of Hannah's baby furnishings into Hudson's room today, cleaned them up, and changed the toddler bed back into a crib. We still have some some work with to do with accessorizing the walls and such, but it's really starting to look like a little dude sleeps there! I'll share photos when we're all done. Obviously, I have loved putting together special rooms for our children. Hannah's room was inspired by the mural of a plum blossom tree with everything pink and brown. Hudson's is a space theme with rockets, stars, planets in blue, green, and brown encouraging him to "dream, explore, and grow."