Recent iTunes Purchase
November 30, 2011
The Shanghai Restoration Project, a musical group that blends traditional Chinese instrumentation and culture with hip-hop and electronica, has collaborated with Yip's Children's Choir Canada, a non-profit subsidiary of the internationally acclaimed Yip's Children's Choir (Hong Kong). The result is "Little Dragon Tales" a collection of 12 classic Chinese Children’s songs with a modern twist.
I found this album through an adoption blog I follow. While playing the video, Kai began to sing along with a number of the songs. I really like the musical arrangements of these pieces and they are great reinforcement to help the boys learn the songs they sing at Chinese school.
I found this album through an adoption blog I follow. While playing the video, Kai began to sing along with a number of the songs. I really like the musical arrangements of these pieces and they are great reinforcement to help the boys learn the songs they sing at Chinese school.
Please & Thank You
November 13, 2011
Remembering Steve
October 6, 2011
My first exposure to personal computers was on a brand new Apple III. That’s not a typo, it was the Apple “Three”. One of Apple's few well recorded flops. A friend and mentor of mine had one, and I can still vividly remember him explaining to me the basic concepts of the systems operating system: Apple SOS (Sophisticated Operating System). As criticized as it was, using that machine was a watershed moment for me. Learning the commands to navigate and display the content of the 5.25” floppy disks of that machine laid the foundation for my understanding of personal computers. I went on to learn to use and understand a myriad of competing computers back in the early 80’s, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Atari ST, and the Amiga. But it was the Macintosh computer that changed my life. I waited a year after they first came out, and bought a Macintosh 512K, the “Fat” Mac in 1985. I quickly realized I needed the secondary external 400K floppy disk drive if I didn’t want to spend hours flipping disks in and out of the internal drive every time I saved a file. Still I fell in love with that computer, and my love for Apple products grew with each succesive revision and upgrade.
I have continued using Apple products both personally and professionally for the last 25 years. They have shaped the way I understand and experience the world, and the way in which I communicate and express myself creatively.
Even if you’ve never touched an Apple product, if you use a computer, listen to digital music, use a smartphone, enjoy computer animated movies, your experience has been shaped by the vision of Steve Jobs. I remain in awe of his clarity of foresight, his demanding minimalist esthetic, and the unbridled enthusiasm with which he brought forth so many amazing products.
The world is a better place because of his efforts. He will be sorely missed. Thank you Mr. Jobs for all you shared with us. When I think of a world without you my heart bleeds in six colors.
Learning Chinese
May 15, 2011
Ni hao ma?
We've been involved with the local Chinese language school to varying degrees for about 6 years, but we've been pretty serious for the last two years now. The nice thing this spring is that they are doing an adult class. The teacher is a native Chinese speaker who is a professor at the local university. He is an excellent teacher and makes the class a lot of fun. It helps that we have been fooling around with the language for a number of years now. Having a focused class, even if it's only once a week, is starting to tie all the little fragments floating around my head into a bit of cohesiveness.
We had a set of cd's with phrases for adoptive parents that we listened to before adopting Kai. There were a handful of phrases we mastered, like "I am your father/mother", "this is your big brother", "this is for you", etc. Now those phrases are starting to make more sense to me, as we learn what the individual words and the grammar behind the statements.
It's much easier to provide encouragement and support of Kai and Shen's efforts at learning the language when we are actively learning it as well.
We've been involved with the local Chinese language school to varying degrees for about 6 years, but we've been pretty serious for the last two years now. The nice thing this spring is that they are doing an adult class. The teacher is a native Chinese speaker who is a professor at the local university. He is an excellent teacher and makes the class a lot of fun. It helps that we have been fooling around with the language for a number of years now. Having a focused class, even if it's only once a week, is starting to tie all the little fragments floating around my head into a bit of cohesiveness.
We had a set of cd's with phrases for adoptive parents that we listened to before adopting Kai. There were a handful of phrases we mastered, like "I am your father/mother", "this is your big brother", "this is for you", etc. Now those phrases are starting to make more sense to me, as we learn what the individual words and the grammar behind the statements.
It's much easier to provide encouragement and support of Kai and Shen's efforts at learning the language when we are actively learning it as well.
The New Banner
May 5, 2011
Yeah, it's a good excuse to write about my iPhone. After all, my iPhone is far and away the Stinkiest, Mousiest thing in my life. I think I like to rub it's little glass screen as much or than 凯 likes to rub Mouse's left ear. I drew the image above on my iPhone in a little app called Zen Brush. It's quite an addictive little program and very relaxing to doodle around with. It's supposed to be like using a Chinese calligraphy brush and ink. The only way it's really like that though is that I'm really bad at getting either one of them to do what I want. You can't use it the same way as you use a brush, you can't get your finger to go down onto the page or come up off it the same way, so I can't really figure out a way to use it to actually practice Chinese calligraphy. It's still a fun and relaxing little drawing app. It's better on the iPad, but I don't have regular access to one so it's the iPhone version for me.
(image links to app publisher site)
(image links to app publisher site)
Stinky Mouse 2.0
May 4, 2011
Hey!
Sorry if I startled anyone who still had this site in their RSS reader, but Wow! This blog was getting really, really stale! it was looking nearly as old and smelly as it's namesake!
I guess I just sort of lost my direction here. I started blogging over six years ago when we began our third son's adoption. Recording the story of that process was the blog's original purpose. Twice! :-) But then we finished adopting. So it became a "family blog". I loved blogging about my family, but Facebook actually does a much better job of sharing our family's stories with our friends and relatives. Also, there were lots of things I wanted to blog about that didn't actually fit into a "family blog".
After letting this poor little blog lie fallow for over a year, I think it's time to take it up again. I love where this blog has been, and I'm keeping all of it online and accessible through the archive links above. But Stinky Mouse is moving on. There's lots I still want to blog about. It will still probably end up being a lot about family, but I'm hoping I can do something here that I can't do on Facebook. So I'm reclaiming Stinky Mouse for my own directionless purpose. You're welcome to come along.
Sorry if I startled anyone who still had this site in their RSS reader, but Wow! This blog was getting really, really stale! it was looking nearly as old and smelly as it's namesake!
I guess I just sort of lost my direction here. I started blogging over six years ago when we began our third son's adoption. Recording the story of that process was the blog's original purpose. Twice! :-) But then we finished adopting. So it became a "family blog". I loved blogging about my family, but Facebook actually does a much better job of sharing our family's stories with our friends and relatives. Also, there were lots of things I wanted to blog about that didn't actually fit into a "family blog".
After letting this poor little blog lie fallow for over a year, I think it's time to take it up again. I love where this blog has been, and I'm keeping all of it online and accessible through the archive links above. But Stinky Mouse is moving on. There's lots I still want to blog about. It will still probably end up being a lot about family, but I'm hoping I can do something here that I can't do on Facebook. So I'm reclaiming Stinky Mouse for my own directionless purpose. You're welcome to come along.
The Tooth Fairy
May 10, 2010
Kai lost his 2nd front tooth this evening. I meant to post this story when he lost the first one but I forgot about it. I found this on the internet years ago and have kept a copy because it always makes me laugh...
The Tooth Fairy Naked At Last
by Michael Finley.
Copyright © 1992 by Michael Finley. All rights reserved.
Everyone knows about Santa Claus, and how he lives at the North Pole with his elves without any women at all except Mrs. Santa, and makes toys for all the little girls and boys.
And everyone knows about the Easter Bunny, how he lives in the forest with his bunny friends, coloring eggs and weaving baskets from the branches of the yimyam plant, which is now an endangered species.
But what does any of us know, really, about that other major benefactor of kids? I am speaking of course of the Tooth Fairy.
Every time a child loses a tooth, and places it under the pillow at night, the Tooth Fairy turns up. Somehow he gets into our houses, finds his way to our rooms, sneaks the money under our heads -- where he gets it isn't our concern -- and then sneaks away without so much as a never-you-mind.
Obviously there is much that is not generally known about this friend to mankind, and it is the purpose of this book to set the record straight, and to recognize this much-overlooked figure.
Who is the tooth fairy? A better question would be, Who are the tooth fairies?, for in fact there are over 10,000 registered tooth fairies in the world, and an additional number of gypsy tooth fairies, thought to be in excess of 5,000, operating without any kind of certification.
I'll bet you didn't know that, gentle reader.
But the original tooth fairy was not always a tooth fairy. In fact, he spent the first 300 years of his career not giving gifts to kids, but breaking into people's houses and stealing teeth they already had in their mouths, and making jewelry from them that he sold at a booth on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Fellow name of "Cal."
But one night, this Cal had a dream in which he saw that people -- kids, especially -- had a "thing" about losing body parts, and it wasn't very nice. He made up his mind he would change his ways, and so he did. For the remaining 700 years of his life, he spent every night out collecting the lost teeth of all the children of the area he lived in, and placing dimes under their pillows.
It was a rough business. He had to fight off competitors, dogs, and dads with baseball bats. Sometimes kids would try to trick him by clenching the tooth firmly in their fists -- prying the fingers apart to get the tooth was always a challenge, until the Tooth Fairy invented the knuckle breaker.
The dimes he got were part of a trust fund set up when his great aunt, who was the goddess of air and mineral rights, passed away. It is said that no matter how many kids lose how many teeth, the tooth fairy will always have dimes.
Twenty seven thousand eight hundred and eleven years ago, the original tooth fairy, Cal, went to live with the angels, in Canada. But not before he created a handbook, a continuing education program, and guidelines of professional ethics for tooth fairies to come.
Today his message has spread around the world, and if some kid loses a tooth and doesn't get a dime, well, it's news to the tooth fairies.
Few people realize that in the United States, tooth fairies are appointed by state legislatures, one per congressional district.
Needless to say, it is a plum assignment, and the list of tooth fairy wannabees is long indeed. Well-connected people are especially eager to use their influence to break into the fairy ranks, but to no avail. Legislatures are only on the lookout for individuals of sterling character, who are bonded, and who are not squeamish about the ins and outs of oral hygiene.
Tooth fairies are required to attend over 200 hours of basic training at the International Tooth Fairy Academy, Training Center and Research Institute for Orthodontic Commerce in Tierra del Fuego. There aspiring fairies are drilled in the various procedures tooth fairies in the modern world are expected to master.
How, for instance, does the tooth fairy enter the house? The chimney is out, of course -- that market is obviously already cornered. And that is just as well since the new higher-efficiency furnaces have made entry by chimney a virtual impossibility. But that is not our problem, is it, gentle reader.
No, after an exhaustive investigation the Tooth Fairy International Research Center concluded that the best entryway for today's homes is the dryer vent, and that is how tooth fairies usually enter homes, although a few old-timers still bore 38-inch diameter holes through the roof using battery-powered 12-mm portable jig saws. It is said that you can identify a tooth fairy by the lint on his mustache.
Making their way up from the basement to the child's room, sneaking in, making the dime drop, and getting the heck out of there without waking up Mom is the heart and soul of the tooth fairy operation.
Now, you may be wondering, what happens to the teeth? The teeth are all labeled and bar-coded, and then shipped to one of two hemispheric tooth fairy laboratories in Chicago and Cairo. There a team of skilled scientists examine each tooth, calibrating its size and condition, and checking for signs that the previous owner had been flossing and brushing properly.
That part is important, because if you haven't been flossing and brushing regularly, you get a computer printout in the mail, and you are on 6-month probation. At any moment, an investigator could pop in and ask to look inside your mouth. So get with the program, all you kids.
After the teeth are photographed and recorded, they are installed at the Museum of Teeth in Oklahoma City. There visitors can stroll through the exhibits of teeth through the Ages, noting the largest tooth, the sharpest tooth, the yellowest tooth, and strange and unusual teeth, like the bicuspid that looks just exactly like a famous celebrity -- sorry, we are not allowed to name names here.
The Museum of Teeth is open from 10 AM to 4 PM Wednesdays through Fridays, except in summers, when it is closed Tuesdays and Thursdays. It operates under a generous grant by the Proctor and Gamble Foundation, makers of fine dentifrices for eighty years.
The next time you are in Oklahoma City, stop in and see what happened to your baby teeth.
Meanwhile, that is the story of the Tooth Fairy, who he was, how he came to be, and how he created an institution which operates in over 128 countries and appears under the Quotron symbol TFRY on the New York Stock Exchange. It is a story of how one individual, with a bit of grit, elbow grease, and a sock full of dimes, stood up, broke into people's houses, and made a difference.
So the next time you hear some other child pooh-poohing the Tooth Fairy, or saying "it's just Mom and Dad," gentle reader, you be sure and set that child straight. Or you may both be getting a little visit from our legal counsel. Infringement of trademark and libel are serious charges, as I'm sure your parents are aware.
And give those back teeth an extra stroke, for us!
Some Serious Thoughts
April 15, 2010
Recently a woman in the US adopted a 7 year old boy from Russia, then apparently became overwhelmed by the child's emotional and psychological needs and proceeded to send the boy, alone, via a one-way ticket, back to Moscow, where a driver hired over the internet picked him up and delivered him unannounced to the Ministry of Education with a note explaining the American woman no longer wanted to parent him. In response to the fallout and backlash due to this unfortunate story The Joint Council on International Children's Services has asked people to blog about their own adoption experiences today. I would also like to share a link to their page of resources to help strengthen and preserve families.
They are also asking people to sign a letter to President Medvedev and President Obama: The letter asks both Presidents to ensure that inter-country adoption continues uninterrupted and to aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the abuse of children. Click here to sign the letter.
This blog began 5 years ago as a record of the adoption process we went through when Kai joined our family. Back then I wrote about the steps we went through and our adoption journey to China. This blogging pattern repeated when we adopted Shen. Back then I used to write from time to time about bigger adoption issues, but then that phase of our life ended. Our family was complete, and while the issue of adoption continues to be a part of our lives, the "process" of it no longer dominates our thoughts and this blog has moved on to being more of just a fun scrapbook of our daily family life. If you were to click back through the entries for the last year or so you might think our life consisted of nothing but holidays and outings to parks. Today I would like to write a bit more seriously about adoption, and while I consider both Kai and Shen's adoptions to be happy and successful, there are serious issues we have faced that we were not necessarily expecting.
Our decision to adopt did not come about quickly or easily and the impact it has had on our family has been profound. I tell a version of our family's adoption story fairly often, and I usually give it a pretty light, and somewhat funny spin. For example: we were already parenting two boys and were drawn to adopting from China because we wanted a girl. Yet somehow we ended up with two more boys! Funny, right? :-)
But truthfully, it's not a funny story. I don't like to play up the situation our youngest two sons were in before they joined our family because I dread the "You are so wonderful for you've done", or "you saved them" comments. Because I know I can never give back to these two boys a fraction of what they have given me, but I do know that we have altered their life paths in ways that are nearly incomprehensible. I want to share a bit more of their story here then I'm usually comfortable putting out there, but I think this is important.
Kai was 33 months old when we met him. He weighed 19 pounds (that's below the 1% mark on the WHO charts). He was hosting a stew of intestinal parasites. He had a silver dollar sized scar on his scalp where hair still does not grow. He had oral-sensory issues which prevented him from eating anything but soft gruel-like foods. His developmental delays were profound and somewhat frightening. And we had no idea about any of these issues before we adopted him. His club hand, the special need we were aware of before the adoption, quickly fell off the radar of issues we needed to address with him. Still, I know we are amazingly lucky with how easily he fit into our family and how loving he is with us. In spite of all the unknown issues we were faced with, things went so well we decided to adopt again.
Shen was 44 months old when we adopted him. Again, his known special need, the absence of a right hand from birth, became the least of the issues we were faced with when he joined our family. I will never forget the first night he was with us in the hotel room in Xi'an and Tina ran a bath for him and Kai. After she had undressed him and put him in the water she called me into the bathroom. Her voice was quite serious, and I quickly saw why. Spanning the area between his shoulder blades on his upper back was the most horrifying burn scar I have ever seen on a child so young. It was as large as my adult hand and fiery red at the edges where he could reach to scratch. We still have no idea where, when or how he sustained the injury that resulted in this scar. We do know that he had been moved from the orphanage to foster-care and back again, and that he had moved between floors and caregivers at the orphanage several months before we adopted him, resulting in 4 different sets of primary caregivers in less than that many years. Shen came to us pretty healthy, but with emotional scars nearly as profound as the physical one he bears on his back.
I like to think that Tina and I are really great parents. We've raised two boys to young adulthood, Tina has a degree in early-childhood education and has been a teacher for over twenty years. We took our adoption agency's educational requirements seriously, and continue to pursue information regarding adoption issues from as many sources as we can find. Still, we find ourselves struggling from time to time trying to figure all of this out. We have had discussions with our social worker, we have used a counselor. There are great resources out there for people willing to take advantage of them.
I don't mean to sound all doom and gloom here. Most of the time our family life is pretty sweet, but there is more going on than what I regularly share here on this blog. Raising two young boys with both physical and developmental special needs in an inter-racial family definitely has it's challenges, but the rewards are pretty amazing too. If you are considering adopting a child, please think carefully about what this means. We publicly swore a solemn oath to never abuse or abandon Kai and Shen. I consider my attachment and responsibility to them no different than that to our two older sons. If you are going through difficult times with a child in your family please seek help. You are not alone.
And now I'd like to share a couple of my favorite videos...
They are also asking people to sign a letter to President Medvedev and President Obama: The letter asks both Presidents to ensure that inter-country adoption continues uninterrupted and to aggressively investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the abuse of children. Click here to sign the letter.
This blog began 5 years ago as a record of the adoption process we went through when Kai joined our family. Back then I wrote about the steps we went through and our adoption journey to China. This blogging pattern repeated when we adopted Shen. Back then I used to write from time to time about bigger adoption issues, but then that phase of our life ended. Our family was complete, and while the issue of adoption continues to be a part of our lives, the "process" of it no longer dominates our thoughts and this blog has moved on to being more of just a fun scrapbook of our daily family life. If you were to click back through the entries for the last year or so you might think our life consisted of nothing but holidays and outings to parks. Today I would like to write a bit more seriously about adoption, and while I consider both Kai and Shen's adoptions to be happy and successful, there are serious issues we have faced that we were not necessarily expecting.
Our decision to adopt did not come about quickly or easily and the impact it has had on our family has been profound. I tell a version of our family's adoption story fairly often, and I usually give it a pretty light, and somewhat funny spin. For example: we were already parenting two boys and were drawn to adopting from China because we wanted a girl. Yet somehow we ended up with two more boys! Funny, right? :-)
But truthfully, it's not a funny story. I don't like to play up the situation our youngest two sons were in before they joined our family because I dread the "You are so wonderful for you've done", or "you saved them" comments. Because I know I can never give back to these two boys a fraction of what they have given me, but I do know that we have altered their life paths in ways that are nearly incomprehensible. I want to share a bit more of their story here then I'm usually comfortable putting out there, but I think this is important.
Kai was 33 months old when we met him. He weighed 19 pounds (that's below the 1% mark on the WHO charts). He was hosting a stew of intestinal parasites. He had a silver dollar sized scar on his scalp where hair still does not grow. He had oral-sensory issues which prevented him from eating anything but soft gruel-like foods. His developmental delays were profound and somewhat frightening. And we had no idea about any of these issues before we adopted him. His club hand, the special need we were aware of before the adoption, quickly fell off the radar of issues we needed to address with him. Still, I know we are amazingly lucky with how easily he fit into our family and how loving he is with us. In spite of all the unknown issues we were faced with, things went so well we decided to adopt again.
Shen was 44 months old when we adopted him. Again, his known special need, the absence of a right hand from birth, became the least of the issues we were faced with when he joined our family. I will never forget the first night he was with us in the hotel room in Xi'an and Tina ran a bath for him and Kai. After she had undressed him and put him in the water she called me into the bathroom. Her voice was quite serious, and I quickly saw why. Spanning the area between his shoulder blades on his upper back was the most horrifying burn scar I have ever seen on a child so young. It was as large as my adult hand and fiery red at the edges where he could reach to scratch. We still have no idea where, when or how he sustained the injury that resulted in this scar. We do know that he had been moved from the orphanage to foster-care and back again, and that he had moved between floors and caregivers at the orphanage several months before we adopted him, resulting in 4 different sets of primary caregivers in less than that many years. Shen came to us pretty healthy, but with emotional scars nearly as profound as the physical one he bears on his back.
I like to think that Tina and I are really great parents. We've raised two boys to young adulthood, Tina has a degree in early-childhood education and has been a teacher for over twenty years. We took our adoption agency's educational requirements seriously, and continue to pursue information regarding adoption issues from as many sources as we can find. Still, we find ourselves struggling from time to time trying to figure all of this out. We have had discussions with our social worker, we have used a counselor. There are great resources out there for people willing to take advantage of them.
I don't mean to sound all doom and gloom here. Most of the time our family life is pretty sweet, but there is more going on than what I regularly share here on this blog. Raising two young boys with both physical and developmental special needs in an inter-racial family definitely has it's challenges, but the rewards are pretty amazing too. If you are considering adopting a child, please think carefully about what this means. We publicly swore a solemn oath to never abuse or abandon Kai and Shen. I consider my attachment and responsibility to them no different than that to our two older sons. If you are going through difficult times with a child in your family please seek help. You are not alone.
And now I'd like to share a couple of my favorite videos...