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Q: What did the mathematician say after Thanksgiving dinner?

A:

If this doesn’t make any sense, just highlight between the brackets below:

[[ This simplifies to i/8, or “I over ate.”  Ha!  Happy Thanksgiving! ]]

Dear Ladybug,

Today you turned 20 months old.

Often when I sit to compose these newsletters for you, I’m often challenged by the sheer enormity of chronicling your changes, for even over a measly thirty days, you manage morph into a completely new creature.  How do I distill all the changes and events and attidtudes of you into a single post?  Is it possible to sum up the entire parent-child bonding experience forged over the course of a month into only a few paragraphs?  Most months it is impossible, and I do what I can to cobble some slightly less-than-comprehensible narrative for completeness’ sake.

But this month was easy.  This month can be distilled into a single word.

Candy.

Yes, this month marked your first Halloween, that classic holiday wherein young children express their thanks for the torment of demonic possession and supernatural terror by begging on doorsteps for sugary foodstuffs under threat of prankish retribution while dressed as Power Rangers and Disney Princesses.  While we did not dress you up as either of these — in fact, we dressed you as, uninventively enough, a ladybug — we did introduce you to the wonderful world of super-candy-funtime-goodness, and our world has never been the same since.

On Halloween Eve, or All Hallow’s Day’S Eve’s Eve, as it is less affectionately but more recursively known, your mother introduced you to the festive pastime of vegetable lobotomy as she let you help her gut and disembowel a pair of teeny tiny pumpkins on our kitchen floor.  The highlight of the experience for you was not the excuse to make a fantastic mess with gourd guts (which you in fact showed a little distaste for), but rather that mom had finally, after months and months of coersion, finally gave in and let you run with knives.  In fact, you should have been thrilled to get a pumpkin at all, since I had to drive all over the Black Hills to find a pair of pumpkins that would pass your mother’s exacting criteria of being suitably round, orange, small, and not hideously cancerously deformed the night before Halloween.

On Halloween night itself, we dressed you up in a little ladybug costume, put on your ladybug booties, gave you a bumblebee candy bag (in the interest of entomological diversity), and painted your nose black.  You were not thrilled by the latter, and you and your mom spent a fitful half-hour of spiritied brinkmanship during which you alternated between her painting your nose black and you wiping it off before it set, a conflict eventually only resolved by your mother stapling your arms to your sides.

We then tossed you into the car and headed over to the mall for a “safe” Halloween experience, wherein parents and children formed a massive line around the inner perimeter of the mall that slowly rotated counterclockise, systematically passing by each store front where a festively decorated retail professional dropped candy into the eager hands of equally festively decorated (and significantly more excited) children.  Think of it as the longest ride line at Disneyland, except that it spirals back upon itself and completely bypasses the ride in question.

At least, that’s what it’s like for parents.  For you, little Ladybug, it was consumer nirvana.  Person after person was falling over themselves to give you candy.  Candy!  For you!  Candy!  And mom was letting them do it!  Give you candy!  Candy! You were so excited by this development and the concept that it might end that we stayed at the mall for two hours as you circumnavigated the whole of the mall twice… under your own power… to fill up your candy bag.  Your mother and I congratulated ourselves on a successful introduction to Halloween and scotted you off home, only to be forced of the road by your shrieks of panic to find out that — Holy crap! — there are kids outside the mall still getting candy from strangers, and by God Almighty, you would not be deprived.  So we also took you out for a round of authentic, non-consumer-santized trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, finally ending the night with a bag of candy that weighed as much as a small Buick.

That night you slept the exhausted sleep of angels.

The next morning we descending into Hell.

It never really occured to your mother and I that you would remember all that candy you collected, after all, we were so exhausted racing after you from the night before that we could barely remember it.  But you… you knew.  You knew you had a bag of candy that had somehow disappeared overnight.  (SPOILER HINT: Mommy did it!  Blame her!)  “Candy?”  you’d ask.  “Do you want to color?” I’d ask.  “Candy?” you’d reply.  “DO you want some cheese?” I’d ask.  “Candy?” you’d reply. “Candy?” you’d continue.  “Candy?” you’d clarify.  “Candy?” you’d insist. “Candy?” “Candy?” “Candy?”

I suppose if we’d just held out a few days, you might have forgotten, but that night we gave you some of your hard-earned candy for dessert, and suddenly you knew that your candy was still existent, and hidden throghout the house.  Hence, most of November consisted of you divising means to climb into every nook and cranny of the house in the search for your candy, an collection of activities that have resulted in your trifecta of abilities to climb into your high chair unassisted, violate other’s mail, and pick locks with nothing but a bottle nipple and a plastic hair clip, a dubious set of skills that will serve you well in, say, Fulsom Prison.

You also perfected quite the soft sell when it came to your candy dealings.  Upon earning a piece of, say, candy corn, you’d squirrel it away and then come back with “Candy?” If I said there was no more candy, you saw your opening, and would grab my hand and forcibly walk me to, say, the fridge or the pantry or some cupboard behind which you knew a stash of candy was hiding and point out that “yes, there is in fact more candy, and it is conveniently located right here where I have so kindly directed you.”  With an argument that compelling, how could I refuse?

Eventually when you’d pop up with “Candy?”, I’d counter the less-easily-challeneged “You just had candy.”  “Mooorrrre?” you’d ask with a pondering face, signing.  “No more candy,” I’d say.  “Plleeeaaaase?” you’d counter, batting you little eyelashes and  signing feriously. “No more candy.” And then you’d deal your trump card: you point your index finger up as say with a squinty grin “Just onnne?,” thereby appealing to may innate satisfaction of your competent numeracy and virtually ensuring yourself another piece of candy.

As your candy supplies dwindled, you amused us immensely by trying to replicate the candy-obtaining event, by occasionally emerging from your room haphazardly dressed in your ladybug costume toting your bumblebee bag, march to the back door, and announce “Car?  Candy!” in a futile attempt to motivate us to take you to the mall to restock on stranger-provided sugar.  Eventually you surmised that candy-collection was not a function of your whole Halloween costume itself, and so over the week that follwed experimented with other combinations that would return you to candied favor, such as just painting the nose black, or just wearing ladybug boots, or just taking your bumblee bag when we went in the car, or (my personal favorite) just walking up to the cashier kiosks at the stores in the mall and demanding candy and stickers from the comically befuddled staff.

Somewhere in the midst of this month’s candied combat we also celebrated our one-year anniversary of being made a family.  On November 13, we celebrated our official “Forever Family Day” by going out to the Olive Garden and letting you open your mom’s birthday presents.  Among them was the DVD of Ratatouille, a movie that, given your exposure to a large poster for the Ratatouille video game featuring the protagonist mouse carrying a large blok of cheddar, you immediately dubbed “Cheese,” and then proceeded to ask to watch it eighty-seven thousand times per minute, a trait that one might find irritating if not for the fact that it at least diverts you from asking for candy.

Of course, like all good holidays, the real celebration was on “Forever Family Day Observed,” the following Saturday.  There, you and I and mom, together with all of the folks in Rapid City who helped cover our (cl)asses while we were gone in China to fetch you, enjoyed a traditional round-table Chinese dinner in your honor, swapping stories about parenting and sharing our collective marvel at the amazing little girl you’ve become.

That night we brought you home, and I whisked you off to bed.  As I put you down, I whispered “I love you” in Chinese, and shared a hushed conversation with you in the dark that typifies that special father-daughter bond we’ve developed.

Me: Wo ai ni.

You: Eye nee.

Me: Thanks, baby girl.  Go to sleep, pumpkin.

You: Cheese?

Me: Not now, honey.  It’s bedtime.  We’ll watch it later.

You: Cheese?

Me: Tomorrow, pumpkin.

You: Cheese?

Me:  NO! No “Cheese” tonight.  Stop asking.

[ Pause. ]

You: Candy?

Such is life in the Komplexify home.

I love you, Ladybug.  Now stop asking for candy.

–Ba Ba

Photo album

See more pictures from your twentieth month of existence over at Flickr.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the day the Ladybug came into our lives.  Today marks the one year anniversary of the first time we ever held the Ladybug.  Today marks the one year anniversary of the Queen B getting the best birthday gift she could ever hope for.

Hence, today marks the start of another anniversary: the zeroth anniversary of the asking of the question “This birthday present is nice and all, but remember when you got me a daughter?”

It also means that I am now official one year behind schedule in keeping up the Ladybug Chronicles, which I shall try to rectify forthwith.  If you’re a little behind, you can reread all about the initial part of our trip to China, starting with our stay and Bejing and ending one year ago today, on the day we met the Ladybug.

Part I : Part II : Part III : Part IV : Part V

One of my goals during our trip to China last year to fetch the Ladybug was to post pictures to Flickr and to update the site with stories from the Far East. Unfortunately, I neglected to remember the fact that I can’t remember to do anything on time, and so I didn’t. Nevertheless, late is better than never (even if it’s a tear late), and I’d still like to document the voyage (no matter how late) simply for myself, so that I can remember all the interesting details when I tell the story to the Ladybug years down the road. So, I present The Ladybug Chronicles.

Day 6: Finalizing the adoption

Tueday, November 14, 2007, was the first time we awoke as a complete family: the Ladybug, the Queen B, and me. For the Ladybug, it was the first time she awoke to her new family, and so the little girl was still sad and afraid and confused, and comforted herself by sucking on her two middle fingers, which we learned was the Chinese equivalent of sucking on one’s thumb. For the Queen B and I, it was the first time that we were all alone in our attempts at child-rearing, as the three exhausted grandparents were fast asleep in their own hotel rooms. Let’s say it was not entirely successful.

One of the first orders of business was getting a bottle ready. The Queen B and I figured that, having just fundamentally destroyed her familial worldview, it was probably asking a bit much of the Ladybug to alter her digestive one as well, so we agreed to continue to use the Chinese milk formula Maoqing had provided us with. That sounded easy enough, but trying to figure out the correct ratio of formula to water when all the documentation on the box is in Madarin Chinese while your new daughter, suddenly realizing where she is, explodes into tears and fitfully cries, is surprisingly difficult. Nevertheless, after several minutes of what I’m sure would have appeared to the detached independent observerer as the comical panicking of new parents over the potential lethality of an incorrectly proportioned bottle of formula, we eventually settled on what we hoped was a non-fatal dose and popped it into the Ladybug’s mouth.

…Who survived, so score one for us. Yay.

After getting the breakfast into the Ladybug, the next order of business was, well, getting it out. Now, we’d been told by Les that almost all Chinese babies had some level of potty training, even as young as the Ladybug. According to Les, a Chinese mother would simply lovingly hold her baby over the potty, whisper sweet tinkling noises into the baby’s ear, and the baby would magically… well… go. So when it was time to for the Ladybug to do her business, we dutifully stripped down her lower extremities, lovingly (if awkwardly) held her over the potty, whispered sweet tinkling sounds into her ear, and our baby magically burst forth into terrified screaming and clenched herself up into a little ball. I’m not sure if it was that the Ladybug was confused with her new inept parents or concerned by the Western toilet (let’s face it, from her perspective, it must have looked like we were trying to dunk her into a giant bowl, mayhaps to eat her), or that Les was just full of baloney, but in either case, we (1) were unable to replicate the magic Chinese potty training technique and (2) terrified the Ladybug so much that we plugged her up for a couple of days after.

So, score minus-one for us. Boo.

Still, despite the ginormous extent of our incompetence, we played and cooed and held and loved the Ladybug all morning long, eventually discovering that we could feed her bananas, a ready-made foodstuff that, in addition to its obvious nutritional benefits and conspicuous lack of Chinese assembly instructions, also had the added bonus of making the Ladybug smile:

Now even though the Ladybug had been handed over to us and she was our daughter by love and our daughter by spirit, she was not yet our daughter by law. To finalize the adoption, all of us new almost-legal families piled into a bus and made our way across Guiyang on what was now becoming an old-hat kamikaze traffic excursion. We eventually stoppped on a non-descript street lined with multistory apartment buildings on one side, and multistory government buildings on the other. In fact, on the face of it, the only way to distinguish between the two types of otherwise faceless high-rises is that apartment buildings always have clothes drying on lines outside each window, whereas the government buildings, as a rule, do not.

Our guides Pheobe and Simon lead us up to the second story, where we reassembled in a long, undecorated white room that glowed hospital green under florescent lights. The room had round windows one one wall and was utterly undecorated, save for a long chain of tables forming a connected rectangular ring of seating just within the periphery of the walls. At the head of the table was a gaggle of young women armed with what appeared to be a old-growth-forest’s worth of legal documents and a number of digital cameras. Once we were seated, the women went about collating the different forms, and then one-by-one, family-by-family, began the paperwork of finalizing the adoption.

As we waited for our turn, the Queen B and I took turns holding the Ladybug who was, if still not exactly thrilled about her clumsy new family, was at least willing to put up with us as long as we fed her bananas and Chinese milk formula. She even chatted with us a little, teeny-voiced Wah-wah-wah’s that would trail off in her tiny, gravelly voice. From time to time she’d even smile, a small but wonderfully-non-banana-induced smile, and I had the first glimmers of hope that our sad-eyed little girl could in fact be happy with us.

Eventually it was our turn for paperwork, initiating the weirdest legal session I’ve ever participated in. One women would hand out paper from us while Pheobe explained that we were to look over it and make sure everything was in order. This was, of course, a completely assinine request, as each of the forms was written completely in Chinese, with the only recognizable characters on any page being the letters of our names or Arabic numeral digits in patterns we recognized as our birthdates. The content of each form was hastily explained to us by Simon as we glanced over it — this is an approval of the abandonment certificate; this says you will care for your daughter in the United States, and so forth — but it could just as easily stated that we the undersigned agreed that all Westerners were in fact assholes and we had no right to be parents of anyone at all. Nevertheless, upon the approval of the spelling of our names and birthdates, another women would whisk the paper away while the first women dug out another sheet and the cycle repeated. The process continued like this for some time, periodically interrupted by the need for us to sign our names here, or put our thumbprint there, or surrender mitochondrial DNA now, and the like.

Eventually we got to the last form, which required mot only both our signatures and our thumbprints in red ink, but in fact an entire handprint from the Ladybug. The Queen B placed the Ladybug’s open palm on the cold ink pad, whereupon the little girl whipped away her hand and balled it into a fist. We then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get the Ladybug to open up her hand to get the hand print on the legal paper, a process slightly less difficult than, say, asking an engineer to build this in your backyard. Eventually the Ladybug realized that she would require both her hands if she wanted to, say, operate a banana or her bottle, so she relented and placed her hand on the paper, forever sealing her fate as the daughter of two unapologetic math dorks and the protagonist in a series of embarrassing monthly newsletters she will one day resent ever had existed. Welcome to the family, Ladybug.

Our papers were the collated together, and we were given copies of her birth certificate, abandonment certificate, and an English translation of the final adoption decree. The actual decree itself was given to us in a small red book, adorned with the the seal of China on the outside and a picture of the Ladybug looking petrified of her parents on the inside. Ah, good times.

To complete the final completion of all the Guizhou girls’ adoptions only took a couple of hours, but given the heat of the cramped little room and the percussive and perpetual crying of the little Chinese babies (who, let’s face it, were still terrified of their new, slightly-more-than-24-hour-old families), it felt slightly longer than that, like, say, a week. Hence, upon the final red-handed baby signature, Les decided that us frazzled new parents, now suddenly officially parents of a confused little girl in the middle of an alien nation, could use a little familiarity and, perhaps, some baby supplies, so he bundled us back up in the bus and headed to that most sacred of American Meccas:

Yes, Wal-Mart. On the one hand, walking into that Chinese Wal-Mart Supercenter was just like being back home in the states: its massive warehouse homogenity, universally tacky discount posters, and staff barely proficient in cursory English made me feel right at home. On the other hand, walking into a Wal-Mart Supercenter and being initally greeted not by some charming geriatric but instead by bin after bin of barely-dead tentacled things to take home for dinner is, well, considerably disconcerting. Nevertheless, we dutifully shopped like the good consumers we were, stocking up on Chinese baby formula and diapers for the benefit of the Ladybug, and intensely alcoholic Chinese beer for the benefit of the parents.

After shopping, Les felt it was time for us to celebrate with our first group dinner as families, so we were then scurried away to an upscale restaurant in the heart of Guiyang. It’s worth mentioning at this point that one of the delights of being in China is Chinese dining. I’m not talking about the food itself (although admittedly real Chinese cooking is otherworldly divine compared to its Americanized analogs); rather, it’s the eating experience. At a restaurant in China, tables are invariably round, with a massive Lazy Susan set in the center. At meals, the food — soups, noodles, meat dishes, fruits, and so on — are place not in front of whatever patron ordered them, but on the rotating disk. Then all the guests help themselves to portions of all of the dishes, sampling a little here and there:

As you dine, the wait staff periodically removes empty plats and replaces them with something else in the diner’s queue, eventually exhausting all the orders. One end result is that all the guests sample a little bit of everything, making the dining experience far more interesting and adventurous: after all, why not sample the rosted tentacle thing? If you don’t like it, you’re not stuck with a whole plate of it. Another consequence was that dinnertime tended to be every animated, vocal, and fun, since the openness of the round table meant that everybody could see everyone else, while the interactive nature of, say, twelve people trying to rotate a Lazy Susan in tweleve mutually opposing directions virtually assured that everybody needed to talk to everyone else.

It is worth noting that Chinese restaurants that also serve international cuisine (like familiar American or Italian or French foods) inveriably serve them Chinese style. Hence, if your party orders, say, a hamburger, a plate of spaghetti, and an oprder of crepes, then the food will come out, one-at-a-time in a futile attempt to encourage sharing. As such food is really not meant to be shared, the invetiabl consequence of this is that non-Chinese dinners end up being a sequence of incomfortable solitary dining experiences during which one person eats while all the other folks watch intently. So my advice: if you’re ever in China, just eat Chinese.

Midway through dinner, we were briefly serenaded by two girls in authentic regional ethic costumes who not so much sang at us as attempted to replicate the frequencies that would cause glassware and cranial tissue to rupture. Ostensibly this was a special treat for all of us. For the parents, it celebrated our becoming Chinese, for according to old custom, when you raise a Chinese child you are, no matter your place of birth, Chinese as well. So for all of the new parents, it was a special thing to be welcomed and thanked for the adoption, as many of us were wary about how we would be perceived in Guiyang, a city in which international adoption is still relatively a unfamilar concept. For the baby girls, it was to celebrate their finding permanent families, and a blessing for their prosperous future. While I can’t speak for the rest of the Guizhou girls, I think the message was not entirely lost on the Ladybug:

We were finally, legally, and now musically, a family.

And that night, the Ladybug slept like a rock.

More…

You can check out more pictures from our first full day as a family over at Flickr.

Continuing with yesterday’s theme, I present a conversation with some colleagues.

Professor X: I was at the mall yesterday, and everything is already dressed up for Christmas.  I couldn’t beleive it.

Professor Y:  Yeah, Walgreen’s is the same way — it’s all seasonal holiday stuff now.  Is it just me, or are the stores trying to push Christmas earlier and earlier?

Professor X:  Just imagine… a few more iterations, and store’s will never have to take down their decorations.

Me: Ah, that’ll never happen.  I don’t think most stores will ever go into full Christmas mode until after Halloween.

Professor Y: And why is that?

Me: I just can’t imagine to many stores willing to stock their shelves with both the Baby Jesus and candy-dispensing Satan at the same time.

Although, truth be told, that would be awesome.