sore thumb

I've been thinking about my blog and wanting to write something for awhile now. Maybe its because its the end of the year and I'm thinking back some on all that this year has held. It's impossible not to think of my MS diagnosis. How the year had barely begun and we were running around Chengdu and then Hong Kong looking for answers. The testing in Hong Kong was such a low point. It was the lowest point by far. I remember after the spinal tap I was lying perfectly still and thinking over and over, "This can't be me. This can't be me." And yet it was. The reality of that was just horrible. Then it was to America. It was strange to be so excited about going to America when the reasoning was so tragic. Yet, we were all very excited and it was really a highlight of the year. I loved the food and the air. I loved seeing Madeleine love the front and backyard. We took strolls in the evenings and Sheryl cooked all our meals. I had time to reflect and ...

So it seems that Madeleine has stopped sucking her thumb. Last night was the 1st night we forgot to put the bitter on her thumb but it looked like she had fallen asleep without her thumb in her mouth. She had been reminding us to paint on the bitter if we forgot. Lily no longer uses a pacifier. That was SO much easier than the thumb sucking. The big draw back has been that Lily doesn't like afternoon naps anymore. It started as soon as she didn't have her pacifier. So everyday we have this battle to get her to nap. Sometimes we win and sometimes she does. At night she has no problem sleeping. Yesterday the 4 of us went shopping at Decathlon and IKEA. We needed some winter clothes for the girls because we're going to Kangding next week for 4 days. It's in the mountains. Phil will drive. It takes about 7 hrs to drive there but may take us longer with potty breaks and other stops along the way. Kangding has a strong Tibetan influence. It looks beautiful. We...

So we've been in this process of trying to get Madeleine to stop sucking her thumb for a long, long time now. We actually started trying right after her 3rd bday. She'll be 5 in November. I can't remember when but a while back we got her to stop sucking her thumb during the day. She loved sucking it while reading books or watching something. That was hard to stop but we did it. Then about 2 weeks ago I decided I would try to get her to stop at night. It fell on the same week as Phil being in Hong Kong and Lily giving up her pacifier. She got really excited about stopping because I bought a Barbie kitchen that she could have if she didn't suck her thumb for 3 nights in a row. It was very, very hard but that kitchen was a huge draw for her and so she stopped. Yesterday afternoon she confessed to me that she's been sucking her thumb all along. She had been lying to me/us every day about it. I had my suspicions because for the last few nights when I'd check ...

So it's here. It's September 1, 2010. Madeleine Diane Steiner, the girl that made me a mom, is going to kindergarten. She's 4 years and 10 months old. Why does my heart ache and my eyes well up with tears? Madeleine is showing signs of growing up and somehow that feels sad. Who knows all the reasons why but I safely assume I'm not the first mom to have these feelings. And I assume I'll feel them many times again. I have all these hopes and fears for her today. I hope she makes friends. I fear that she'll be lonely. I hope she loves to learn. I fear that she'll be overwhelmed with the Chinese language. I hope she gets the best education we can offer her. I fear that I'll too soon be writing about her first day of middle school, high school, college. Yet, in these hopes and fears I have this knowledge that this is all right. This is good. This is how it should be. She is meant to grow up, meant to move in to a stage of life where challenge...

This morning I got up around 5:30am. I'm leading a study tonight at a friend's house and so I've had time to this morning to think over what I want to share with my sisters. Our weather cooled off yesterday and this morning it's still cool and the crickets sound so lovely. Something about this morning has reminded me of working at My Favorite Muffin in Clarkesville. I had to get up around 5:30am back then so I could be at the shop at 6am. We opened at 6:30. I was never the only one on the road but it always felt peaceful and fresh driving to the bakery. The baker was always at the shop before me. He would get there around 5am to start the days baking. I really loved that job. It was so simple and predictable but it was just a great job. The sun is just coming up here and it looks like a nice day is coming. This is our last full day with the Littletons here. They'll leave tomorrow night for their flights back to Thailand. I'll miss them.

I am really enjoying my life. Somehow, even though CD is so hot and muggy, I still like the summer best of all the seasons here. We have lots of sun and those wonderful thunder and rainstorms that pop up on lots of afternoons. We also have this wonderful swimming complex within easy walking distance of our home. The girls and I have been going there on almost every Tuesday morning. The kid's section is great with slides and things that squirt. Last summer my friend Kara was visiting around this time and I was thinking about that recently. I felt so out of place in this city and in my life then. I didn't know what to do with the girls, how to spend each day and how to take care of myself. Over this past year those things have all gotten easier. I still have times when I don't know what to do with the girls but it doesn't stress me out like it did before. I'll miss CD when we leave next year. Today I'm hoping to get a project started. I've been wan...

It's Monday. I like Mondays. I get to attend the Monday morning weekly meeting at the office. It's mainly in Chinese so I can focus on it and understand and it for a while and then I tune it out and think about what we'll eat for supper this week or where Phil and I should eat lunch. I attend because I'm a coworker that never works at the office so I like to show my face and support for what's going on. The first time we came to Chengdu was the summer of 2008. I liked it so much. When this year's summer started I couldn't figure out why I had liked it so much. For the last couple weeks I've been reminded why. It rains often and we have thunderstorms. We also get clear days with hot, hot sun. I like all of that. We had a thunderstorm 2 nights ago that was unbelievable. It lasted almost all night. Last week and this week I'm getting to help out a new mom who's daughter is just 2 weeks old. She's a single mom with no family around ...

I started back with a Chinese tutor yesterday morning. 3 hours, 9-12pm. It was great. I've been such a slacker in finding the time and energy to study and for whatever reason I've gotten motivated recently. I knew I needed to just do it and it needed to be done all in one shot. 3 hours is a long time to stare at your teacher, or Chinese characters or talk only in Chinese. I'll meet with her every Wednesday morning. We meet at a bakery, Leanna's Bakery. So, it's a nice place to meet and I get a good lunch out of it. As I'm writing, a funeral tent is being taken down. I can't see it from where I sit but I can hear all the metal poles hitting the cement. They started the process before 6am. The tent went up in our apartment courtyard at the beginning of this week. It was a long rectangular shaped structure made out of poles and tarp. I never peeked inside but I guess the body was in there and there were folks hanging out with it 24 hours a day. Th...

So it's been nice weather here in Cd. We still aren't seeing the sun much but we keep having these clear, gray sky days. I love being able to see the sky even if it's gray clouds. And almost everyday or night we're getting rain. And it's cool, in the 60s and 70s. It's great. Last week and this week I started looking at kindergarten's for Madeleine. There are 3 within close walking distance of our home. 2 are already full for the fall (maxed at 50 students per classroom) and one is already at max or close to it but they are willing to register Maddie. The other 2 wouldn't even let us in the gate to look around the school. One won't even let us talk to a teacher, it's just the guard we get all our information from. It's very frustrating. HePing (peace) Kindergarten is the one we've looked at and it's an older school. The headmaster was happy to have us visit, happy to accommodate our wishes (half day is what we want rather t...

Here we are back in Chengdu. There is no sky. There's no definition to it. No clouds, no sun, nothing. It's just a low grey. So, I just hold out hope that this too shall pass. Madeleine and I are both stuck at a 4am wake up call. Phil and Lily seem totally adjusted to the time zone change. Madeleine was so wide awake this morning. She just talked and talked to me at around 5:15am. If she wasn't so cute and cheerful (and I was also wide awake) I would have been annoyed with her non-stop monologue about taxi drivers, cavities, all-night movie watching, jet-lag and delicious bread. I wish I could just blow all this smog away and look forward to a blue skied, spring, Saturday. Instead, I'm trying not to get too negative and dwell completely in my Lord. Sighhhh, this is hard.

There's a shop called Daily Grind in New Philadelphia, OH. I like it so much. I've been there twice and yesterday was one of them. I had lunch (which was delicious) and read a Grisham that I'm really enjoying (Painted House). The coffee is good and the food great but what I might like best is the clientèle. There was a chubby mom in a low-cut shirt with her chubby baby and her grandmother who both ordered sandwiches, ice cream and diet Pepsi. A white farmer with a John Deere hat and a black business man shared a table and ate Tomato Basil Bisque. A table of well-dressed middle aged white ladies sat around a large formica table laughing, eating and drinking espresso. Three college aged people drank cup after cup and finally switched to ice water. My favorite was a large white man in bib overalls who walked with a limp, carried a hardback Grisham and told me he couldn't put it down. That's what a coffee shop should be like. If you like coffee, good food or a...

Every evening now for over a week around 10 pm, I heat up a heat packet in the microwave. Then I sit and watch the end of a show - House Hunters, Property Virgins, Holmes on Homes, Man vs Wild- with the packet on one of 7 spots of my body. Tonight it was on my left thigh, outer side. The packet heats up my skin and gets it ready for my shot. After about 5 minutes of sitting, I say, "Phil are you ready?" He says, "Yes" gets up and gets my autoject bag and sharps container. We head downstairs to our bedroom. Sometimes we forget the icepack in the freezer so Phil runs back up and gets that and wraps it in a kitchen towel. I lie on the bed while Phil loads the syringe filled with medicine in to the autoject . One of us cleans my skin with an alcohol square that came with my syringes. We let it dry. We both agree on the spot to inject and then Phil says, "Ready?". I look away and "click", I've been shot. I'm usually the one who pick...

I'm sitting on the back porch this morning. It's about 60F and the sun rising on my right has been lovely. Birds are having a hay day with this morning and I'm feeling it too. It's at this moment that I feel dread about returning to Chengdu. Uhgg. In my mind and in my heart, China is what I call home. It seems like it should be because that's where my bed is and most of my clothes. That's where I spend most of my time. It's the currency that I've been converting US dollars in to while here to figure out money's true value. It's where Phil and I have spent the majority of our married lives. It's where Lily was born. But as I sit here this morning and as we played at the park yesterday I felt and I feel like this is home. This is where I understand small talk and where everyone knows that apple pie is something to smile about. I don't have to explain why the smell of someone grilling makes people feel content and happy. This is...

There are certain foods that sound so amazingly good to one person and horribly nasty to another. I am blessed to be a person that feels affection well up in her heart when I think about biscuits and gravy, especially from Cracker Barrel. And this morning I'm going there with Phil. Just Phil. :-) Today is the 29th, it's the day we were to be flying back to Chengdu. If that were still true today we'd already be at the airport in Cleveland and boarding for our flight to Newark. I'm glad that I'm still sitting here in Dover with plans for the week.

I am so glad that I'm saved. I love having a Savior that gets me. A Savior that holds me and carries me and walks with me and cheers for me. A Savior that doesn't care that I'm weak and tired and so inclined to doubt but instead he gets excited in my weakness because then he can be best understood. I also love that he doesn't want me to be weak. So he gives me strength. I remember the first time Phil told me that he loved me. I felt shocked and astounded. That this guy that I thought was so awesome, loved me. And he told me! He didn't have to. He just couldn't help it. He loved me so much that he just had to let me know. And then there's my Savior. Jesus. He loves me. He loves me so much that he just had to tell me. He didn't have to love me but he does and he told me. He told me this morning, too. He keeps telling me over and over how much he loves me. Jesus loves me. I'm astounded.

Yes, I'm sitting in Dad and Mom Steiner's house this morning. It is so nice. I love looking out at the neighborhood behnind the house. I love hearing some birds tweeting happily as the sun comes up. I love having Maddie lying on the floor watching cartoons. I just love knowing that we're here. I love that we're going out for breakfast and then doing some shopping at Dutch Valley store. Yesterday we shopped all day. I had forgotten how wonderful thrift stores are. In fact, I know that I have a whole new appreciation for them now that I haven't had one anywhere near for almost 4 years. Honestly, why would you shop anywhere else? I got almost everything I had on my need list from a Salvation Army and a Goodwill. Ok, you probably aren't going to be impressed because you may not know the horror of shopping for hours in an itty-bitty sized jeans world (aka Asia) and only leaving with the impression that your butt can't even fit in an XXL pair of sweats but I got 2...