summer days

Our summer days in Maine are passing by quickly, and it really is beginning to feel like summer. The sweet corn is on the market, and so are the juicy fat tomatoes. Binbin's favorite foods, though, are Annie's chocolate bunny graham crackers and Ian's chicken nuggets with ketchup. He is slowly adding more English words to his vocabulary and seems delighted to wrap his mouth around such long words: chicken nuts-ts? toe-tee-yas? boo-li-toe?




Binbin has also taken to name brands, especially Thomas the Tank Engine. He especially likes to use the Thomas toothpaste on his Hot Wheels toothbrush. Do four of five dentists recommend these products? Here he is with his new cup.



He has also more dexterous, putting "me-gah bwox?" together quite proudly. Here is a house we built together. Binbin decided that many smaller objects (marbles, blocks, cars, etc.) should all go inside the house.



Later on, he made himself a "squirt gun" out of me-gah bwox. He gleefully ran around the house, calling out "superman" and then making raspberry sounds all the while dousing mama and baba with imaginary water.

re-discovery

...of mega-blocks, and all sorts of other toys. A delighted Binbin deftly stacked mega-blocks this morning, choosing naturally to use the four-wheeled bases. Come join the fun!

home sweet home

Oh the wonderful things you can do
The things you can do when you are
Home sweet home.

You can sit in an exersaucer
You can munch on chips
You can sip your juice
And you can share it, too.



You can sit on Baba's lap
You can grab copper pots
You can take chopsticks, too,
And bang like Animusic robots.



You can stack blocks up high
Build them into a town
You can admire them briefly
Before knocking them down.




You can look about your great big room
Pick up a pinwheel to blow
You can get on your trike
Take a big bite, and GO!

summer reading

What we are reading:

Binbin:
Sheep in a Jeep
Yoga Baby (which Binbin transliterates as 有一個baby, for those of you who are bilingual)
Car, Trucks, Planes, and Trains
Llama Llama Red Pajama (given by his pediatrician at his 30 month checkup)

De-nin:
Mirror of Morality
The Inheritance of Loss

Jack:
Socrates Cafe

very maine

Well, we are home at last! We spent the past week getting our refrigerator re-stocked, our boxes and bags unpacked, and generally resettling our home. It was exciting and wonderful to live in Taipei for six months, but the feeling of coming home can't be beat!

Today, Sunday, we breakfasted at our favorite diner, the Kopper Kettle. And, the waitress remembered precisely our regular order: eggs benedict, yogurt and fruit, and the waffle special; two cups of coffee, and one milk. Dee-licious! We worked off some of our breakfast at the playground in Topsham before heading home for a rest. But not a long one...

The Horches--Hadley, Fred, Cordelia, Everett, and baby Ian--invited us to join them in a classic summertime Maine activity: foraging for blueberries.

Binbin runs down the sandy path along property that belongs to...the town? Crystal Springs farm? We're not sure, but hey, there's lots of blueberries to go around. They won't miss another pint or two, right?



Here are some of the Horch clan hard at work harvesting.



This smile must mean that the work isn't too hard...or is that indulgent Baba provides handfuls of already picked blueberries.



All those blueberries that went into the container? All gone!

summertime

Here are some snapshots of a happier pre-mumps Binbin enjoying himself on the deck at his grandparents' home in Rockford. The Tonka toys are vintage items from Jack's childhood. The froggy pool, with a sprayer, is new.

not again!

It looks like Binbin is experiencing another round of the mumps, or whatever virus he had three weeks ago that produced mumps-like symptoms. This time, it's the left side of his face that's swollen. We went to see a pediatrician in Rockford yesterday, then headed to the hospital lab for bloodwork. More complete results come back on Tuesday. Until then, it's alternating doses of ibuprofen and tylenol for Binbin, who is feeling under the weather.

"When I grow up..."

We are posting today to mark a momentous event. Binbin, for the first time, said what he is going to do when he grows up.

We had been watching the July 4th parade and there were several bands that had gone by during the parade. When it became clear that the parade was about over, Binbin kept asking if there were going to be any more drums. We said "no" and Binbin was very sad. On the ride home he began to tell us that "When Binbin grows up I'm going to play lots of drums and cymbals." He even suggested that Mama and Baba could grow up with him and play drums and cymbals as well. So, you heard it here first, on July 4, 2007 Binbin decided that he would be a drummer when he grew up. We'll have to wait a while to see how it all plays out... :)

ps. pictures to be posted soon.

homeward bound

We left Taipei on a bright and beautiful Sunday morning. The sun was blazing, the cicadas were calling, and we crammed all of our suitcases, carefully weighed to meet the 50 pound weight limit, into the back of a van. Binbin hadn't slept well the night before. Since Friday, he has been telling everyone that he is "going to take a plane to America to visit his grandparents 坐飛機去美國看爺爺和奶奶." He doesn't understand that you can't catch a plane in the same way that you can walk out to the street and catch a cab or a bus. Why did we have to wait until the day after tomorrow?

Binbin received more than the normal quota of hugs from his teachers and the staff at Elite's on Thursday and Friday. He was well loved, and we will all miss Zengzeng laoshi, Yiwen laoshi, Miss Shaun, and Eric Shushu as well as the little friends 小朋友: Buju, Qiqi, Weiwei, Pangpang, Chenyan, and Joshua. If Binbin was sad to go, his sadness was sweetened by a parting gift from Zengzeng laoshi and others...a set of oversize animal and vehicle stamps with three stamps pads in orange, green, and (his favorite) purple. He was all smiles bringing that gift home. And in the evening, he and our neighbor Jiaxuan purpled their fingers as they stamped up scrap paper with purple roosters and purple bicycles.

We will also miss Yigong and Yipo 姨公姨婆, who treated Binbin like their own grandson, visiting on the weekends and bragging about his new skills. We spent much of our last day together with them. We also got a last visit from Aron Shushu and Chelsea Ah-yi, who by now, are taking their summer holiday in their Canadian homeland.

We didn't get to say goodbye to many folks we saw day in and day out in our apartment building. Some of the old grannies would habitually tossle Binbin's hair and dole out stern pieces of childrearing advice in Taiwanese to us the strange, foreign trio. They're sure to notice that the little didi who looked like a little meimei, along with his parents, are no longer living in their neighborhood.

We are now in Rockford, Illinois visiting Yeye and Nainai. Though the jetlag hasn't been terrible, Binbin is a bit disoriented. But he is pleased as punch running around on the deck and lawn, which are for him a novelty, since such things simply don't exist in Taipei city. And, Binbin is discovering tne Tonka cars and trucks from Jack's childhood, which have been carefully stored in the basement awaiting him.

Pictures to come soon.