March « 2010 « American Family

Mean(ish) Girls and the Census

We had our first run-in with nascent mean-girl behavior this week. When I asked M about who she has been playing with at recess, she reported the following:

“I used to play with Farah, but now I am only playing with Laura. Farah and her big brother Chuck were mean to Laura’s older sister. Laura’s mom told her if Laura OR any of Laura’s friends play with Farah, Laura will be grounded. I don’t want to get Laura in trouble, so I am not playing with Farah any more.”

I spent a while trying to convince M that Laura would not get grounded if she (M) played with Laura, but she wouldn’t believe me. She was really worried about getting her friend in trouble. I was concerned because Farah was (as far as I know) one of M’s best friends in her class at school. Also, this is so clearly a lie concocted by some kid because it doesn’t make any sense at all.

After a quick consultation with another mom of older kids, I decided to call Laura’s mom (who I have met briefly in the past, but who I do not know well at all). I was pretty nervous because you never know how someone might react to getting a phone call about their kids.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Hi! This is M’s mom. I am calling to see if you can help me put M’s mind at ease. …blah blah explained what M said blah blah…She is really worried that Laura will get grounded if M plays with Farah, so I told her I would call you and make sure Laura wouldn’t get grounded if M played with Farah.

Laura’s Mom: “Wait a minute, I don’t even know Farah or her brother?? So M said that Laura said she would get groudned if *M* played with them?”

Me: ” Yup! I tried to tell her she was being silly, but she wants to be a good friend to Laura and doesn’t want to get her in trouble, so I told her I would call you to make sure it would be ok.”

Laura’s Mom “Hmm. Well, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR CALLING. Not every parent would call, but this is exactly the kind of thing we want to know! If our kids are being unkind to other kids or excluding , I want to know so I can nip that in the bud! I will talk to Laura tomorrow and make sure she clears things up with M.”

That was when I wanted to reach through the phone and kiss Laura’s mom. I only hope I will be so gracious when someone tells me something unflattering about my kids.

The next day at school, Laura went up to M and said “Sorry about Chuck’s sister.” As far as M was concerned thing were completely resolved.

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In other news, I filled out the census forms for our family this week. It was interesting.

For Mr. A, we selected Other Asian because we had seen this Write in Taiwanese video. I am guessing it is an attempt to separate Taiwan and China politically? I don’t know, but we saw the video, so Mr. A said to write in Taiwanese. I did.

(I also wondered why Taiwanese wouldn’t be considered Pacific Islander, since they are from an island in the Pacific. Mr. A was not amused by that line of thinking and refused to consider Pacific Islander as an option too.)

For me, obviously, I checked whatever the whitebread option was. I don’t remember if it was Caucasian or European.

I asked Mr. A what he thought we should do for M. Other Asian write in Taiwanese or Other and write in Mixed Race and Taiwanese/ European. Mr. A wanted her to be only Other Asian Taiwanese. Apparently, Mr. A is a subscriber of the One Drop Rule. I didn’t have a strong feeling either way, so I wrote in Other Asian Taiwanese for her. I was surprised there wasn’t a mixed race box with the option of checking off specific races.

Then came L. Mr. A tried to convince me that she should also be Other Asian Taiwanese, but I vetoed him. I just checked Asian and Chinese. Mr. A wanted to call her Taiwanese because he is Taiwanese, but that didn’t make any sense at all. With that logic, I could just call her European, which would be ridiculous.

It doesn’t seem like the results are going to be that accurate if there isn’t a standardized way of filling out the answers for mixed race families.
P.S. Well crap. I just googled it and it looks like I could have selected ONE OR MORE categories for race. I wonder if we already put the envelope in the mail?

Looking in the Mirror

In the last month or two, L seems to be growing up by leaps and bounds. Like most parents, I can’t believe how quickly time has passed. She was adopted a tad over three years ago and she will turn four years old very soon.

Lately, L has started to notice differences in people around her. We had lunch with a friend of mine from South Africa and afterward L said “Why is she blacker?”

Being an old pro at these kinds of conversations after running the gauntlet with M, it was easy enough to answer her question. I explained that people are born with different colors of skin, just like they have different colors of hair. I explained that my friend and her ancestors are from Africa where people have darker skin than some other places. I mentioned that people from Africa have darker skin just like people from China usually have very dark hair. L isn’t nearly as verbal as M was at this age, so I didn’t know how much she absorbed from that conversation.

A few days later, I found L standing in front of a mirror looking intently at her reflection. “Am I a little bit blacker?” she asked.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t know. My hair is blacker. What color is this?” She asked, pointing at her arm.

“I think it is a little bit brown? What color do you think it is?” I asked.

“Yep. It’s a little bit brown.” she agreed.

“You know, Daddy’s skin is a lot like yours. He also has black hair like you.” I said (once again eternally grateful to have an Asian adult in this house to lean on), “That is because Daddy’s ancestors are Chinese, just like you.”

“Yeah,” she said, “Black hair is why we like noodles.”

Somehow, I think we still have more work to do.

The Goings On

The sun! It has been shining! I have had so much more energy, I feel like I am constantly rushing from one activity to the next. In quick digestible bites, this is what has been going on

The House Situation: We still haven’t found a house. I am probably going to feel the need to report that each month until we get back from our Big China Trip ™ sometime in 2011 when I will begin knocking on doors and bribing people to move out so I can have their houses. I am antsy for a new house. I am tired of the brown living room in this rental house. I am tired of the annoying housing market in our town which has a lot of houses <$250,000 and >$400,000 but absolutely NONE in our desired neighborhood in our price range which is currently $250,000-$350,000.

Is that too much financial information for polite company? Honestly, I don’t care if you know how much we spend on our house. All of you on the coasts are currently shaking your heads at the insanely low cost of living here, I know. People around here who know how cheap new big fancy houses cost are wondering why the heck anyone would spend half a million dollars on a house. If we wanted to leave our lovely little walkable suburb, we could have a house tomorrow. Alas, we don’t want to leave it so we will wait here in this small house with very BROWN walls in the living room. I am so over those brown walls.

The Money Situation: We finally started trying to use only cash for groceries and weekend eating out the last two weeks. It was much harder than I had anticipated. We budgeted $120 for groceries and $60 for eating out and we spent every last dime. Actually, Mr. A spent about $2.00 more on groceries because he forgot about the cash and bought himself a bag of tortilla chips when he went to buy his weekend 2 liter of Coke Zero. (Seriously, if you cut him open, I think instead of blood he has coke zero in his veins). He got a big lecture from me.

I think this week was especially hard because our grocery stockpile was especially low and I had to visit the regular grocery, the Chinese grocery (because horror of horrors we were almost out of rice!!), and Trader Joe’s (to stock up on soy milk for L). The budget meant I was severely restricted on buying unnecessary convenience items like frozen steamed buns and the ridiculously overpriced grapes L loves. (Seriously, why are grapes $.89 one week and $1.99 the next? Can’t we meet in the middle so L can have her grape fix every week??) By the end of the week, the pickings were slim and undesirable. We were so low on other fresh fruit and easy snack items so I had to resort to feeding L croutons for a snack. I also think we ate rice and egg three times in three days (breakfast, lunch or dinner on different days). We all really love rice and egg, but some variety would be nice. Don’t get me wrong, we had food in the house, it just wasn’t anything that sounded very appetizing or that we wanted to take the time to prepare.

This week, I found myself shopping more like I did during my Food Challenge of 2009. I went for items where we could get more for the money like buy one get one free bags of apples $3.49 for 6 pounds). Normally, I would have wanted to mix and match several different kinds of apples but the unbagged kind cost $1.49 a pound and that sounded very expensive when I actually had to pay attention to what I was spending.

One more thing I learned is I don’t have a problem adding up the groceries in my head as I go through the store, but it is almost impossible for me to remember the total for more than 30 seconds. I don’t know what that says about my brain, but the next time I am going to have to bring some paper.

I was going to update on some other stuff, but this ended up longer than I expected. Who knew I had so much to say about groceries?

Mean(ish) Girls and the Census

Looking in the Mirror

The Goings On

Brilliant Blogs

Friends and Neighbors

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