Pleasant Goat and Great Grey Wolf

And now for something completely different...

My wife found on YouTube some subtitled episodes of a very popular Chinese animated cartoon called "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf"*.  While I've only seen a few episodes, I enjoy them.  They hearken back to those thrilling days of my childhood when I could watch uncensored classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and other uber-violent fare generally denied the more delicate children** of today.

The plot of the cartoons, so far as I can tell from the handful that I've seen, is pretty predictable:

A colony of rather juvenile sheep, under the leadership of their very wise, VERY slow elder (he is often shown being outrun by snails), live in bliss behind a large wall, put there by their ancestors to stop a pack of marauding wolves.  Life is good... until the Great Grey Wolf and his wife, the Great Red Wolf, move into the neighborhood, enticed by legends of a place where the sheep are numerous, fat and tasty.  Happily for the sheep (and the viewer!), Great Grey Wolf has quite a lot in common with a certain well-known Coyote: he is vain, pigheaded, and never manages to see the fatal flaws in his deeply-laid schemes to break into the sheep village.  Throw into the comic mix that he is very henpecked by his wife who, though she can't be bothered to try to catch the sheep herself, excels at post mortems when her husband returns, empty-handed and usually via crashing through the roof, from the hunt.

The animation of "Pleasant Goat" is primitive to say the least, what one might expect from a video game targeted at very young children.  However, the characters are interesting, the violence amusing, and the wolf especially an engaging character.  For those with small children recently home from China - or for big children who like animated slapstick a la Loony Tunes - this cartoon is worth a search on YouTube.

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(*) 喜羊羊与灰太狼, Xǐ Yáng Yáng yǔ Huī Tài Láng

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasant_Goat_and_Big_Big_Wolf


(**) There was a successful lawsuit against the producers of "Pleasant Goat" after two small boys injured themselves trying to imitate a scene from one of the episodes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25447851

Maybe it's not such a bad thing, after all

During the adoption process, I had some lurking fears that I would have trouble accepting my daughter as... well... my daughter.  Those fears, I am pleased to say, have proved groundless.  While I'm still getting used to parenting, I (shall we say?) recognize Caroline as my daughter just as I recognize my mother and father as my parents, Chrystal as my wife, etc.  I don't think of myself as her "adoptive" father or her "other" father or her "second" father or even her "real" father, but simply as her father. 

I wonder: did the long adoption process help with this mental transition?  Did the "paperwork pregnancy" prepare me to accept her just as the father pacing nervously in the waiting room has been prepared by nine months of ultrasounds, doctor visits, weird cravings, etc. to accept the child that will soon be presented to him?  Would I feel the same about my daughter if she had been handed over to me after a few days instead of several months?  I think not.

Maybe that long wait isn't quite such a bad thing, after all.  Some things ARE worth the wait.  Very much worth the wait.  I also add as an aside that, while I was doing some yard work this morning, she came to the window and smiled and waved at me. That was pretty nice.

What she's up against, pt. 2

Some time ago, I lamented about the pressures that will very likely be brought to bear on my daughter as she grows older: she will be badgered from every TV show, movie, magazine cover, and advertisement to meet a very narrow, very artificial, very commercialized standard of beauty.

And now this...



source: http://www.starpulse.com/news/Kevin_Blair/2014/06/16/kendall_jenner_goes_commando_sister_k


I don't want to sound like one of those old fudds who think that Al Jolson, talkies and the New Deal signal the end of civilization, but what in the world are people thinking???  Is THIS what we want for our daughters???

On a somewhat related note, Red Thread Broken has a post regarding the "whitening" of dolls and Disney princesses.

http://redthreadbroken.wordpress.com/2014/06/16/to-girls-from-consumer-culture-white-is-beautiful/

The care and feeding of children

Ally of Even Miracles Take a Little Time recently commented:

It's so funny. You get a big brand new TV and you get a 1000 page how to. You have a child and they say ok here she is and good luck and a hug.  Thank GOD for parenting books and the internet, I think !? 

True dat!

To borrow from a joke about economists, the problem is that one can go to ten different sources on how to deal with this or that problem and get eleven different answers!  For example:

--- How much should she eat?  On what sort of schedule?  WHAT should she eat?

--- How much should she sleep?  On what sort of schedule?  What if she doesn't act tired: should she still go down?  What if she DOES act tired long before she's scheduled to go down?

--- When should we start potty training? (my wife is working hard to break me of using the term "house breaking")

--- What about play?  Am I a bad parent because I do / don't put on educational videos or let her play by herself or try to guide her play?

--- I gave her a math book and even opened it for her.  Should I worry that, instead of trying to work some problems, she started chewing on the cover?

AAAARRRGGGHHHH!

Whether to give her chicken or fish for lunch shouldn't be such a hard choice!

The Ghost and Mr. Gammage

I have written before about The Ghost at the Feast: the birth mother.  Very recently, I have written about a book that has been so helpful to me during the process of adopting our daughter and becoming a father (two ENTIRELY different things!), China Ghosts by Jeff Gammage.  By coincidence, my wife found a more recent article by Gammage where the ghost of the birth FATHER makes his appearance:

One night last summer, I was putting my 10-year-old daughter [Zhao Gu] to bed when she gave me the news:

"Dad, you're the best dad in the entire world . . ."

Oh, I answered, thank you!

" . . . except for my birth-dad."

Now, it occurs to me (from my safe position as a spectator) that it's perfectly normal for a child to sooner or later have somebody other that his father occupy the #1 slot on his list of People I Admire Most in the World.  In my case, that honor has been held variously by Presidents Washington and Jackson, Admiral Nimitz, Winston Churchill and Alvin York.  This is not at all to say that I don't love and honor my father or that I would trade him for any of the men I've just named (imagine having Andrew Jackson, bloody Andrew Jackson, as a father!).  I simply say that it's normal for a child to find somebody he admires, a process made easier by the fact that the person he knows only through TV, books or his imagination never sends him to bed early, punishes him for not cleaning his room or does any of the other unpleasant things that fathers have to do.  As Gammage notes, his daughter MIGHT have chosen some pop star!

Still, Gammage has much the attitude towards this unknown man that I think I would towards Caroline's biological father:

I think we would have a lot to say to each other, not all of it pleasant.

Indeed.

Gammage also brings up a related topic: what is expected of us as fathers?

The other day, Zhao Gu brought me her copy of Romeo and Juliet, wanting to dissect the plot structure. She left disappointed to realize her dad doesn't know much about Shakespeare.

I am reminded of the scene in "It's a Wonderful Life" where the adolescent George Bailey, realizing that Mr. Gower, drunk and shattered by the death of his son, has accidentally put poison into a child's prescription.  George wonders what to do and sees an advertisement: "Ask Dad: He knows!"

Yes, Dad is ALWAYS supposed to know.  Just look at Mike Brady or Ozzie Nelson or Dr. Benton Quest or any other TV dad who always had the answer. 

Well, of course we (may a man who's been a father for less than a month say "we"?) don't always know the Right Answer to Life's Little Problems anymore than we know how to dissect the plot structure of Romeo and Juliet.  We do the best that we can, hoping to get it right at crunch time.  Gammage writes about this in his book:

Now that I'm a father, now that I'm the age my parents were when they were raising me, I know: they were making it up.  The were doing their best to apply their knowledge and experience in a way that seemed appropriate to the situation.

I will not always know what to do and I regret to say that I'm pretty sure that my daughter will figure this out pretty quickly, though I hope I'm rather more Mike Brady than Homer Simpson!  But, like Gammage, his father, my father, and all those fathers stretching back to old Adam (and including both the man who is responsible for my daughter's birth and the splendid fellow who cared for her for sixteen months in China), I will do the best that I can.

And that includes trying to be graceful if, one day, Caroline informs me that I'm #2 on her list, taking a backseat to the Ghost.

No I'm Not Taking A Nap

Since we've been home, we have struggled with Caroline taking a nap.  She goes down fairly easily at night, but at nap time she fights it tooth and nail.  We have been letting her sleep in her toddler bed at nap time.  Although she would often scream for 30 minutes or more, most days she would eventually go to sleep in the toddler bed.

 

Yesterday reached new heights in her refusal to take a nap.  She was acting very sleepy so I put her down around 11:30.  She did her normal screaming for about 20 minutes and then it got quite.  I assumed that Caroline was asleep.  Oh was I wrong about that.  After about 10 minutes, she started crying again.  Jim commented that it sounded like her door was open.  I decided I should check on her.  I stepped into the hall and there she was sitting.  Not only had she climbed out of the toddler bed, she had opened the door and was headed down the hall.  We decided to let her stay up until after lunch.

 

Just before Jim left for work, he put her back down for a nap.  Once again she cried for about 20 minutes and got quite.  I decided after about 20 more minutes to check on her.  This is what I found:

Notice all the pillows, rails and other protection.  I added pillows to the floor at the end of the bed after I saw this.



She was stuck with her legs dangling at the bottom of the bed.  She was really pouting.  I laid Caroline back down in the bed 4 times.  Thinking that she was finally going to take her nap, I went back to my office in the front of the house to work.  She cried for a few minutes and then it got quite.  Finally sleep, sweet sleep.  WRONG!!!  She was laying in her bed scheming how she was going to get out.  About 20 minutes after laying down, I heard a huge boom and a blood curdling scream.  I panicked and went running forgetting that you have to open the baby gate before you run through it.  I almost fell, but managed to grab the wall to avoid a fall and continued running toward Caroline's room.  When I got there I found her on the floor in the crawl position very close to her toy box.  She had apparently tried to climb down the end of the bed and fell.  After close inspection, I saw that she was fine.  She just scared herself and needed some Mama loving.  Thank God she was not hurt.  I, on the other hand, was not so lucky.  One of the toes on my left foot is most likely stove up and my right foot is covered in bruises. 

My friend Robin happened to be walking up when all of this was going on.  She heard and witnessed the commotion and was very concerned.  Once she made sure we were both ok.  She said "WELCOME TO PARENTHOOD."

I'm a mother and it is so worth it!!!  I am blessed with a smart and curious girl.

Feeling blessed even under the circumstances,

Chrystal

Photos - Caroline Since We've Been Home

I plan to post many photos of Caroline and our Journey to her soon.  I've been trying to get some posts together as Jim is far ahead of me in that department.  He is the writer.  I'm the photographer.  I wanted to share a few photos that I have taken since we've been home. 

Caroline is getting to know her family.  Here she is with her Cousin Paige.

Caroline loves our dogs.  She was only scared of them the first night.  She initiates contact with them and even lets them give her kisses.

Caroline has learned to play.  She barely knew what toys were 3 weeks ago.



Caroline is such a happy child

Caroline has mastered peek-a-boo

Being Silly



Caroline happy to be playing in our sunroom

I look forward to sharing many more photos of our sweet, adorable girl.  She will be meeting my Grandmother and some of my extended family on Saturday.  I can't wait to see her with my Grandmother.

Feeling Blessed.
Chrystal