I saw this today and loved it. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days with our kitten coming to live with us and my baby coming back HOME from her vacation in Rhode Island.  After much debate we all finally settled on the name, Cammie. 

Cammie loves company.  From the moment she stepped foot in our house she never really liked being alone.  She’s very playful, which is to be expected since she’s only 2 months old.  She’s also very mellow.  When it’s just me she just lays on my lap and relaxes with me.  I thought she would need her space to get used to us, but it’s been quite the opposite.  If anything, she craves being with us and playing with us and laying next to us. 

Chloe is loving have a kitten.  The only other pets we had allowed her to have previously were fish so this is a bit more exciting.  Now this is a very familiar image in our house:

Opps!  Wrong one.  I meant this one:

I have had a lot less time to do anything last week than I originally anticipated. All week last week I attended seminars for work. Show up, sit, drink lots of coffee, listen to speakers, keep going to the bathroom because I don’t agree with what they’re saying and don’t want to listen, go home, sleep and start all over the next day.  By now, a week later, I have a lot to catch up on (reading blogs, writing posts for LRT, commenting, getting a kitten today, my daughter coming home tomorrow. . .)

I enjoyed only one of the five days of the seminar.  The day that I enjoyed was a seminar on understanding poverty.  The woman talked about the general culture of poverty, the middle class, and the wealthy.  It was interesting and she very easily applied the subject to how we can use the information at work.  (*side note:  only thing missing was the “system” - the system that put people in poverty and keeps them there**)

I won’t bore you with all of the work information that we discussed; there were things that I took away from it personally, but there were a couple of ideas that really shook me up inside.  For this you’ll need a little bit of background first. 

My mom came from poverty.  When I say poverty, I mean, she didn’t know if she was going to have food to eat every single day - something that I take for granted.  The daily wages that was earned was spent on food.  If the family didn’t earn money that day, the family didn’t eat.  My mom comes from a family with six children and used to tell me stories about how the food would be gone the second it hit the table and if you didn’t snatch it up, you didn’t eat.  There was no being picky because if you were, well, you didn’t eat.  A common story that I heard growing up was the rule that there was not to be even any grain of rice left in your bowl.  It was considered a waste.  To this day, it makes no sense to my mom to waste even one grain of rice, and you don’t want to know how many times I have heard that same lecture when there was one or more grains of rice left on my nearly-empty plate.

My mom was the second youngest child in the family.  The only reason my mom and youngest uncle got to go to school is because my oldest aunts and uncles banned together and set up a deal where the four of them would work and take care of what the family needed including paying for school for my mom and uncle.  All my mom and youngest uncle had to do was go to school.  Keep in mind that most, if not all, if my other aunts and uncles are also of school age.  These aren’t 30 year olds making this deal, it’s teenagers, maybe one older than teenage or one younger, but for the most part they were of school age (I don’t know the exact ages of my aunts and uncles, but they were fairly close in age; my oldest aunt being maybe 10 years older than my mom which would have put her at high school age at the time).  I am starting to cry just thinking about this because I know that the decision to let go of two incomes could not have been easy.  Everything they did, everything that every person in the family did, was specifically for the family.

It’s no secret that my mom and I did not get along while I was growing up.  We fought all the time, about just about everything.  Fought means that there was yelling and screaming and crying and at times there were objects thrown, etc.  Our fights were very raw and very emotional.  I’ve spent most of my adult life repairing that relationship.  It’s not that we didn’t love each other, it’s that we disagreed and quite frankly we’re stubborn people. 

Growing up we’d frequently get into these arguments.  The next day, without fail, sometimes on that same day, my mom would take me out shopping to buy me something.  When I was a teenager I was insulted that my mom would do this.  First off, a lot of the times I was still mad over the argument.  I also thought that it was a way for my mom to avoid any issues we had with each other.  Often I thought that she was trying to buy her way into making me shut up about whatever it was we fought about. 

One of the concepts that our lecturer spoke about was buying things as a way of showing love.  I think a comparison would be the story, “The Gift of the Magi” where they didn’t have much money but in order to show their love they both bought each other a gift.  They bought the gifts out of love to show their love even though they didn’t have a lot of money.  It is done out of love and that is what is key. 

Do you see it?  My mom was showing her love.  After the fighting and the emotional toll, my mom was trying to prove to me that she loves me.  That’s not to say that she bought me stuff all the time.  Trust me she knew the word “no,” but there were key times in my life, moments where she was showing her love. 

There was one other thing that hit me pretty hard, although that first one outright made me cry.  There was the idea of communal property and communal money that our speaker touched on.  For example, when my aunts and uncles and grandfather and greatgrandmother worked and brought home money - that money was for use for the whole family, to buy the family’s food or other needs.  I have more examples even of my husband and his family, but it’s private and I didn’t really want to password protect this post. 

When you make money, it is not your money.  That money, and all money made in the family, belongs to the family.  My mom has always sent money back to Vietnam to her brothers and sisters.  It just was.  I know that it is because they don’t have as much money as we do, but it honestly never felt like we sent money to help them out.  When my mom always talked to us about sending the money, it was because they are family.  They are family - and that is what you do when you are family.  In fact, my oldest uncle, who is visiting from Vietnam, will be going back home to his family in two days and I, along with my mom and aunts and cousins, will be sending him with money (and gifts) for him, for his family, and for the rest of our family in Vietnam.  I think that it is not as extreme as it once was, but the practice of communal money is still there. 

One of the things that I and my fellow coworkers liked was the lack of judgment.  I know too much to listen to someone that thinks that people are poor because they’re not smart enough, or don’t work hard enough, or don’t think positively enough (that was what the speaker the day before was preaching), or don’t believe in themselves (same butthead speaker from the day before this one good one).  Certainly not all people who are living in poverty or middle class or are wealthy behave in the exact same way, but the day and its discussions were interesting.  These things are not good or bad, they are just a part of people’s lives.  I remember how I was pretty resentful when my mom used to have me put half my paycheck in the bank - this all happened when I was a teenager and up through my early 20s.  However, at this point, looking back, I’m more appreciative that my mom’s priority was teaching me that family comes first over my own needs. 

Bags are packed.

Not my bags.  My baby’s bags.  MY BABY.  Chloe is leaving early tomorrow morning with her grandparents to stay with her great-grandparents for a week.  I’m having a really hard time letting go - without going *insane* and so I can’t sleep.

I thought I would recap some questions that came up in comments or things going on here.

Chloe’s concert went spectacularly.  The pictures were crap.  I *could not* take a good picture; the lighting was horrible and all my pictures are very grainy.  The video we got was great though.  I’m torn about posting the video even though I want you to see how cute my daughter is because there are other people’s children on it.  Really, her group’s dance STOLE.THE.SHOW.  Not even exaggerating.

We’ll be welcoming a kitten into our home next week, one day before Chloe comes back home.  She doesn’t know yet; it’ll be a surprise for when she comes back.  We don’t have a name for the cute kitten right now; we’re still debating that.  So far the suggestions are:  Splenda, Avocado, Olive, Magenta, and Chocolate.  I have no idea how most of the suggestions ended up being food.  I’ll let you know when we pick a name.

Website.  Ah yes.  We can keep track of the stats on hits and where from and such.  I don’t really want to at this point.  I’ve actually been asked a lot about this in real life.  My friends and coworkers want to know how many hits we’ve had.  It’s just a personal preference of mine.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be checking at some point.  What I am excited about is that every month in the middle of the month we will hear from our counselor and he will tell us how many of our letters have been sent out the month prior.  The first one we will receive will be mid-July for the number of our letters that went out in June.  I’m trying to keep at the forefront of my mind that while seeing the number may be exciting, they only mean so much.  It will happen.  It will happen when the time is right and the decision is right.

My daughter’s very first school concert is in a few hours.  .  .  . so why am I the one who’s a bundle of nerves?  There will be pictures hopefully within a couple of days.

My mom used to tell me that I had itchy fingers because I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.  I would have to be doing something.  Chloe reminds me of that all the time now.  This is before, before when she could sit still long enough for me to actually take a picture of her:

I have thousands of pictures of my beautiful baby, looking straight at the camera for mommy.  I loved that period.  I got gorgeous picture after gorgeous picture.  Now she’s so itchy that all my pictures look like this:

Busy playing and discovering her world; always on the run.  Another sign that she’s growing up.  My only secret weapon for any photo session is. . . .ice cream.  Now that’s something to sit still for.

Of course, she doesn’t mind posing for the camera when she’s taking pictures, but then I get shots like this.

One of four pictures she took of her hand.  The other ten pictures she took were of the shopping cart, and my butt (*those have been erased, not long after she laughed herself silly*).

 

Something extra thrown in for fun:

 

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In other breath-taking news, I have a new toy!  It’s a Wacom tablet, and it’s gorgeous.  I’m ecstatic!  No more running away from the pen tool (check out my curves!)!

 

 

4 weeks old; moving in with us July 2008; currently living with her mommy and 3 siblings

The two things required by our agency that we create ourselves to give an expectant mother an idea of who we are is a letter and a website.  Our letter was available for distribution beginning this past Monday.  Our website is “going live” today.  Going live just means that on my agency’s website our picture and an intro will be linked to our website.  From what I know website’s are becoming a norm just like the pap profile or letter. 

Something I thought was neat:  Our agency’s website is searchable.  For example, if an expectant mom wants a family who is not Christian (like us), there is a search for the religion of the family and we would be under “Other non-Christian” (don’t get me started on the terminology; there are four different categories for Christian, one category for “other non-Christian,” and one category for “no religion”).  A list of paps that are not Christian would show up along with a picture and an intro with the link to each pap’s website.  Potentially, an expectant mom would see our picture and read our intro and realize what a cute family we are and click on the link to our website.  On our website are pictures of us, some words about who we are, and information on how to get in touch with us via email or phone.  I’m toying with the idea of adding a blog to our website.  It seems to be a new thing that is starting to catch on.  I’m just not sure what I would write about.  The thing that draws me about having a blog on our website is that I’m much more articulate in written word than I am in person.  I don’t have a lot of charm and charisma (my sister is the one that managed to keep all that for herself, but I got the boobs, so you know. . .), and I was hoping that part would shine through more if I were to write. 

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Completely changing the subject.  About the gas:

I’m jealous of all of you under $4. ;p  By now, it’s been 2 days since I took that picture and we’re at about $4.73-4.79, depending on the gas station. At the moment I’m paying just over $60 to fill my car up (no big giant SUV or minivan or truck, just a car) about once a week.  When I first started driving I was 18 and paid about $12-15 to fill my car up. 

June 11, 2008.  Monrovia, CA.  Seriously.

 

I wanted to celebrate being “in the books” so I bought myself/our future baby (*who, for now, will be Baby M  - because I hope he/she will be born this year, the year of the Mouse*) a brand new boppy.  I LOVE the boppy.  My chest isn’t really made to be able to just hold a baby and breastfeed.  It is really uncomfortable for me and the baby.  We tried all sorts of breastfeeding positions with Chloe, and it was always so hard to be comfortable.  Using the boppy was comfortable, for both of us, so that’s what we used to breastfeed every.single.time.  Chloe’s boppy got to where it was flat because we used it so much. 

A beautiful brand new boppy.  I’m happy.  Let’s hope that Baby M and I will use this one so much that it will be flat.