School's out - big play date

Yesterday we hooked up with some of the other families from Wynn's 1st-grade class at Yinghua for a play date near the school. It was good for us grownups to be able to just sit around and chat (we learned more about behind-the-scenes stuff at school than we'd picked up through official channels for the entire year) - and we learned that Wynn's beloved teacher is leaving YA to get married and move to Copenhagen of all places! She is majorly bummed out about that as she really wanted to take Choir next year & be instructed by her...

Someone managed to bump her shin REALLY HARD on the edge of something ... neither Ann nor I recognized Wynn crying (because she just doesn't cry, she's awesome all the time!  we're not bad parents, right?  ...   oh we are so ashamed ...)

Long lens to get a candid shot, as Wynn hams it up whenever she knows she's being photographed...

 

Injury doesn't seem to be bothering her now.

NO IDEA what the story is here but the expressions are just great.

 

Book recommendation: Home is a Roof Over a Pig

I recently finished reading an interesting new book, Home is a Roof Over a Pig, by Aminta Arrington.  She's also a blogger, a teacher, and an adoptive parent of a girl from China.

Instead of raising her youngest child through a "normal American life", however, she and her husband and their other two school-age siblings moved to China not long after the adoption.  It's an interesting twist on addressing the desire by adoptive parents to not let a child's birth culture slip away, and pretty gutsy.  The book is a fascinating read - I've posted a full review at weninchina.com -  and do recommend it especially for other families who are in the China adoption track.

Will we eventually move overseas?  Wynn's in a great school, and is getting lots of Chinese acculturation there.  (She doesn't even notice anymore when we're around Chinese families speaking Mandarin in places like IKEA ... it's completely normal to her.  Also, this happens a lot more now that we're living in the city...)  But, Yinghua only goes to 8th grade.  And Ann and I may want to do new things with our careers, too. (And jinkies, we just moved into this new house!) So, not today and not for a while. But it may happen, and this book gives us some insights into what that kind of transition might look like.

First Day of First Grade!

She's got a new backpack, new clothes, new supplies - at the same great school where everyone's excited to see her return!  This year's classroom is only one door down from her Kindergarten classroom - so she knows where everything is.