With a little help from technology we’ve found a wonderful woman and her family who’ve agreed to provide childcare services for Li Li. Lei has two children, a daughter who is 3 1/2 years-old and a son who is 11 months old. Lei’s husband is a PHD student in applied mathematics at Brown, and they are from the Anhui province in China which is a neighboring province to Jiangxi (Li Li’s home province). They speak Mandarin at home so Li Li will be able to maintain her Mandarin skills, not too mention be extremely well cared for by Lei and her mother-in-law. We feel very lucky to have found such a wonderful family so quickly. It’s definitely a load off our minds.
So many of you have asked for more pictures so here are a few just so you can all see just how beautiful our little daughter is.
Catherine spends lots of time staring at the our little jewel. Like her father, Li Li has become a big fan of the morning paper. Here she is about to rant about how those darn Red Sox.
One of the benefits of being up at 5:30 is you can see the sun rise. This is the first sunlight coming through our antique bay windows. The light only stays on the door for about 3 minutes before moving across the room.
Maggie has adopted Li Li as a member of the pack and even seems to accept the fact Li Li is now the highest ranking female in the household. (I as the only male, am still the Alpha male but we’ll leave the relative rankings of females and males in the household for another day….).
Maggie likes to be be close to the action and Li Li is where the action is.
Baths are still problematic. Li Li expresses her displeasure. We’re not sure why she’s so unhappy with baths but we haven’t had much success convincing of the fun to be had splashing in water. Once bathtime is over, she returns to her wonderful happy self. Here the neighbors came for a visit and even the sun cooperated by highlighting the newest star of the neighborhood.
Sorry the posting frequency has dropped but parenthood is much harder when there is no maid service, no laundry service, no buffet breakfasts, etc. It’s all worth it, but we do miss China. -tjm
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Andrew Cox
I’m so glad you were able to find good childcare. You will come to see how important it is as working parents to feel confident your child is loved by the people she will end up spending a lot of time with. Now that you both are back to “reality” welcome to the world of working parenthood. If you think you have guilt because you don’t know what you’re doing, wait till it hits you that your cherished child isn’t learning and doing wonderful things just for you because you’re at work. I’ve been told the working mom guilt is normal….So, I guess I’m saying don’t feel guilty about feeling guilty…
The wonderful times are just beginning…did I tell you the new “yes” in our household is a loud and confident “no” to every question (the twos are terrible!)