Category — The YaYa Sister

To say that I am exhausted would be a vast understatement. But exhaustion seems to be normal, right now, just as feeling as though I’ve been scrambled and put on toast seems to be normal. And we did get home last night at 2:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning Detroit time.
However, not to brag or anything, but the kids were angels, ANGELS, on our flights home. I mean, they were quiet, they slept, they sat and entertained themselves, they read the Sky Mall magazines and the safety manuals dutifully. The seventeen-year-old behind Chinua was a lot louder than my kids were, that is, until my husband turned around and asked, “Excuse me, are you going to be THAT LOUD FOR THE ENTIRE TRIP? Because I think you could bring it down a few decibels.” And then I died, because it was not at all Canadian of my husband, to do that. But he justified it by saying that everyone on the flight would be happier as a result. And they were. And they broke into song.

I was actually feeling a little bit of concern for YaYa, wondering whether I should be worried about her, as she sat next to me and amused herself for about an hour by eating one side of an apple off and creating a perfectly flat surface. She chiseled away tenderly with her little tiny teeth, humming to herself the whole time. Then she ate the skin away and made little faces, with eyes, and noses, and mouths. And then she named them. It reminded me of when she was at my Grandma’s house and she ate the skins off of the grapes while murmuring softly over them, “There you are, little baby…”

But then, as she held her apple in her hand, as the flight attendant finished announcing our landing in Minnesota, she shrieked, “Mommydaddymommydaddymommydaddy! She said we’re in MINI APPLES!” And I thought, okay, now I’ll die of love.

Yup. The kids were great. Chinua and I, now. Well, I think we did pretty well, and it was all because of pheromones. We were doing that thing, you know, when we start bickering at each other and picking fights and sighing, and then we talk in fierce whispers for awhile about which one of us is being meaner. But the whole time I was thinking, “I don’t want to do this right now, this makes for bad memories, I have had enough traveling bickering to last a lifetime, no more…” So, when my Superstar Husband came up and hugged me, I did what I knew would cure me for the rest of the night- I smelled his face. And then I sighed for a long time. And he smelled the top of my head. And he slumped and leaned his head on mine, and said in the sappiest voice, “I love you.” Pheromones. I’m telling you.

Maybe it sounds silly that I love the smell of my husband’s face, but I DO. Especially around his jaw. Try it, the next time you’re bickering. Now, the people around us may have wondered about us, a little, but I think they usually do anyways, so the fact that we were sniffing at each other probably didn’t faze anyone too much.

(At the dinner table tonight, after taking about 0.34 bites of splendid navy bean soup.) 

“I’m full, Mama.  I’m all full of food. Look.”  She turns to me and I expect her to show me her rounded adorable belly.  Instead she lifts her little bird arms in a parody of showing off her muscles. 

“What?”  I ask. 

“I’m strong,” she says, completely exasperated, because that’s what food does, it makes you instantly strong. 

Then, later, when she has finally convinced me that she is completely full, she needs no more food, not another morsel, I let her get down from the table.  Kid A asks me if he can have some more scrumptious Renee-made garlic bread.  I say yes, and cut off YaYa’s question. 

“You can’t have any more bread because you are full.”  She starts to make those terrible sawing noises, the ones that sound like forests crying because they are being destroyed, the ones that make you shiver in your soul. 

“Uh, uh, uh,” I say, finger wagging and all. “You know the rules.  If you’re too full for soup, you’re too full for more bread.”

She rolls her big eyes up at me and lifts one eyebrow in that way she has. “My belly is saying that it needs bread.“ 

It is very cool, you know, that she understands Belly.  Not many people do.

Later, when we’re sitting around playing UNO, and Renee and I are killing ourselves laughing over YaYa’s speed of dealing cards, (think of the length of time it takes to make a trail of pine needles end to end down the Pacific Crest, and then multiply that by a thousand) she asks me for some water.  I have been popping up and down to get these children things throughout the whole game, and now I ask for just one moment, JUST ONE MOMENT, so that I can sit and play cards. 

“At the end of the game I’ll get you some water,” I say.  “Unless you want to get some for yourself right now.” 

Her head droops.  It seems that she may pass out.  Her eyelids are at half mast, fluttering and threatening to close all the way.  For good.  Her bottom lip is sticking out. 

“I’m getting very sleepy,” she says, not using her saw voice, but her sad, sad, voice, “and I need water because I don’t have any allergies.“  I’m drawing a blank.  Finally understanding wins out and I say, “You don’t have any energy?” 

“Yes, I don’t have any energy,” she says, before hopping off her chair and doing a 50 metre dash with a jump rope.

 

YaYa on the playground, originally uploaded by journeymama.

 

Trust1, originally uploaded by journeymama.

Going home in order to move.
Excited, happy, afraid.
Missing my forest already.
Longing for Asia.
Feeling disoriented, away from the trees.
Waiting for a true home.
Taking care of my family.
Trying to rest in a restless soul.
Knowing how much work is ahead.
Looking around the world and shrinking back.
Reaching out.
Waiting for mercy that never ceases to come.
(New every morning, new every morning.)

 

Lara angel, originally uploaded by journeymama.

Of course the bride walked, she walked very nicely. But I was a little concerned about YaYa and the other flower girl, and so it was a sigh of relief when they tottered down the aisle together. There were a couple of false starts when I handed the other flower girl her flowers and she kept throwing them on the ground. And wouldn’t you know, we waited forever for some family members to show up before we could start the wedding, and then right as the little girls decided they both needed to pee pee, they were ready to go. I came out of the bathroom to a panicked wedding party. “RAE!” they shouted, and gestured for me to herd the little girls towards the door.

I’m exhausted from herding little girls. Also from many late nights and the crazy job of taking wedding photos. My Superstar husband and I really busted it out, him more than me, and we are very happy with the results. (I took the above photo of the bride on Friday, two days before the Sunday wedding. Just so you can orient yourself on the timeline, here.)

One of the highlights of the wedding was the number of tourists who snapped pictures of the wedding party as we walked around Queen Elizabeth Park. You wonder why people bother to take photos of somebody else’s wedding, and I think I have it narrowed down to one of two things.
1. People thought that the wedding party was a group of rock stars, or
2. People had simply never seen a wedding party that looked like this one, and they nudged each other, “Hey Betty, have you ever in your entire life seen anything like that?” before capturing some not-so-subtle clicks, while the bride continued to politely ask people to stop taking pictures.

More highlights:

The fact that my brother looked a little like Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon in his wedding clothes.

The bride laughing her way through her vows. (She was overcome.)

Taking photos at a spot where a photographer waited in line for his turn to use the location, having some portfolio shots to do of a woman wearing nothing but silver spandex pants and some strategically placed electrical tape.

Lara (the bride) climbing a ladder on the side of a train car for us, in her dress and high heels, just to get a great shot. I know. It’s crazy. But she loved the idea even more than we did, if that’s possible.

Wedding food.

Leafy Boy and his dancing.

My speech, which did include numbers 2 and 8 from a couple of posts back, and which my brother told me touched him immensely.

Sometimes when you go to your brother’s wedding, there are festivities beforehand that allow you to see people whom you haven’t seen for years, since you are a Canadian who lives in California. (Which is equal in ill judgement in a general Canadian mindset to maybe littering or breaking young trees for no reason.  It’s not that California is bad, it’s just that the U. S. of A. is where Canadians go to sell out, like Jim Carrey and Michael J. Fox.)

Sometimes you are talking to one of your best friends from high school, and sadly you have lost touch, although he is still friends with your family.  It is so good to catch up, and he is telling you about his new apprentice work.  You are fascinated, listening intently, but your daughter runs up to you and wants your attention, which she communicates by plucking at your lip and then moving your mouth as if you are talking while she fiercely tries to tell you something.  As if you listen with your mouth, and if it is not moving, you are not really listening, and you hope that this will not be a habit of hers, moving her mouth while other people talk like people do to you sometimes, making you extremely nervous and unsure of where to look, because their moving mouths distract you and make you stumble over your words.

But anyways.

She moves your bottom lip up and down as she states in her high squeaky voice, “It wasn’t because I had to pee that I had a sore tummy, it was because I had to POOP!”  You nod and say, “Er- okay, YaYa.”  And she can’t stop there and she says, “And I POOPED and my tummy doesn’t HURT ANYMORE!”  “Oh,” you say, and then you look at your old friend, who doesn’t have children.

He nods and says, “Sometimes you have to poop because your belly hurts.”  Then he turns to you.

“Is that one of the cool things about being a parent?” he asks.  “Focusing on the simple things?  Like poop?”

You think for a minute and then say, “Is it ever.”

1. Will YaYa (the flowergirl) walk? Or will she cry? Can we convince her not to have her fingers in her mouth? 

2. Remember when Matty was suspended from Junior High for mooning a schoolbus full of kids? Shall I bring this up at the wedding?

3. Why are my Chacos so stinky?  Is it time for new ones?

4. Must. Finish. Knitting. Present.

5. Should we rent another camera body?  It is helpful to have two.

6. Don’t forget the food in the fridge.

7. I love brides.

8. Remember when Matty used to ride around in the trunk of our car?  Shall I bring this up at the wedding, too?

I have these moments with parenting that I feel are absolute triumphs, when I’ve figured something out with one of my kids, or when I know that I’ve made someone’s day, they are glowing with it. And then I have moments when I feel like I’m living in parenting outtakes.

I’ve mentioned before that YaYa is in an interesting stage. Three seems to be an emotional age for her, and I’m trying to figure out which buttons make her work and which ones cause a crash. The other day she was on the verge of a meltdown, (or, in the process, really, she was melting down) and it was happening while I was trying to get the other kids some dinner. We eat together, as a community, for lunch and dinner a few days a week, and she was having a really hard time while I was gathering plates together for the three of them. It kind of sounds like someone is drilling into your skull when YaYa is having a meltdown, which adds a little extra pressure when I would like to spare other people from the strain of having their skulls drilled.

I took YaYa aside for a minute.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “If you can’t eat nicely, you should eat by yourself in the laundry room.” (The laundry room has a desk in it that I use to have a kid eat at if they seem to be unable to focus with everyone else.)

“I want to eat in the laundry roommmmmmmmm,” she wailed shrieked.

“You need some time to be alone?” I asked.

“Yessssssss.”

So I set her up, left the door open so she wouldn’t feel totally alone, and rubbed her back before I left.

“Sometimes it’s nice to be alone,” I said.

A few minutes later Renee came into the room and found her there eating.  “I’m having alone time,” she chirped happily.  And she ate every bit of her lunch, a phenomenon not to be understated. Problem solved.

And why not?  There is nothing that I like better than alone time when I am having a hard day.  The bliss of solitude is rare in my communal, family-oriented, busy-as-a-bee lifestyle.  It is sweet, precious nectar to me.  It appears that my little daughter feels the same way. 

I love it when I can figure out a little piece of the puzzle. 

***

On the road, we are on the second leg of our trip to Canada today, happy to be going, happy to have spent time with wonderful friends here in Eugene on our way up. 

YayaGrain01.jpg, originally uploaded by chinua000.

“Do you know why I’m so happy? Because I LOVE you!!!”

“You’re beautiful, Renee!”

“I LOVE this WHOLE world, because there’s NO bad guys in it!” (When I gently suggested that there may be some bad guys, she replied, “Well, then I’ll KILL them with my light-sword!” in the same adorable tone that she used talking about her love for the world.)

“I’m SO HAPPY because I LOVE you!”

“Do you know what, Daddy? I LOVE you!”

“I’m beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful in the world!”

“This world is so BEAUTIFUL!”

(I apologize ahead of time for the quality of the photos.  I cannot figure out my mom’s camera for the life of me.)

YaYa has always been an artist.  She has drawn beautiful pictures for as long as I can remember, unlike Kid A, who has mostly scorned drawing.  The other day a few of us sat around the table and she drew portraits of us. 

[Anatomy of a YaYa portrait: It's pretty self-explanatory, really, the long straight line in the middle is a mouth.  The dots above are eyes, the lines at the sides are arms. The only thing you might not see right away is that the dot underneath is a chin.]

First off, we have a portrait of YaYa’s brothers.

 

 

I’m reasonably sure that the one on the bottom of the page is the Leaf Baby, and the one above, with the one leg, is Kid A.  Why does Kid A look the way he does?  Revenge, maybe?  We may never know.

Next, we have a lovely picture of Aunt Becca.  Notice that both of Aunt Becca’s feet are securely set on the ground.  YaYa seems to be quite perceptive.  When she handed the picture to her Auntie, she said, “You’re dancing.” 

 

 

And so she is.  Aunt Becca has a lovely egg shape, and her arms are wonderful and symmetrical.  What a beauty.

Next, YaYa drew her Uncle Matty.

 

 

 

She said, “You’re dancing too.”  And so he is.  We weren’t quite sure what the horizontal-ish lines were in Uncle Matty’s hair, but I would guess that they were either his sunglasses or his eyebrows.  One of the two.  Uncle Matty’s chin is well-defined and his dance is a little wilder, he is dipping quite crazily.  He also appears to be a little perplexed.

Next comes Grandma, with a very, very well-defined chin.

 

 

I can vouch for the fact that Grandma does not actually have a goatee.  I’m serious.  She really doesn’t,  She has a nice, bare chin.  I particularly like the fact that Grandma seems to be itching to hop onto Uncle Matty and Aunt Becca’s dance floor, but she is only allowing her right leg to do a little dancing.  A little right-leg jiggle.  And she’s getting some groove on with her arms, too, it seems.  Grandma has such lovely long legs.

One of my favorites is YaYa’s self-portrait.  I don’t think she’s dancing, really, she looks like she’s flying.  She looks like she’ll land softly.

 

 

And then, of course, there’s me.  The Mama.  Notice my gorgeously long tresses!  Clearly YaYa was giving me a compliment when she drew my hair. 

 

 

I’m not too sure about those legs, though.  And what is going on with my left eye?