As parents of kids from China, it's important (they tell me) to seek out Asian-American role models - people who are relatively noteworthy and who are both Asian and American, who live well here, in this society. So here's another one.

Scientist. Adventurer. Atom Scrambler.

Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz is a Costa Rican-American of Chinese descent. The Chinese press typically calls him Zhang Fulin (張福林 ), his Chinese name. That's the same "Fu" you'll see in a lot of adopted kids'... more

Those who have already been through the process of adopting a child from China will, I'm wagering, immediately understand why Google's latest web thing is so cool. Just take a look:

This is a page from a Chinese music-and-food... more

One of the things about parenting that I find interesting - I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday, in fact - is the way milestones work. It seems like parents-by-adoption are a little more obsessed over developmental hurdles, and for good reason - institutional infancy has a way of interfering with development in lots of little ways. For example, when we met Daughter, she was just turning 1 and had yet to learn to crawl. She could roll around and grasp things, but she'd never had enough time just lying on the floor to get the hang of moving from point A to point B. Now... more

Panwapa is a website for young kids to learn about different places in the world. It's been put together by the Sesame Workshop, so you know it's been baked with goodness. It's heavy on the audio, so don't look for it as a peaceful escape into computerland for the kids while you rock out in the living room or something. Anyway, there's a penguin who teaches you a few words of Mandarin while playing hide and seek (as well as other languages, like Japanese and Spanish),... more

So, we've been having trouble, all of a sudden, getting son (son!) to go to sleep at night. It seems (seems!) to be related to the beginning of preschool. He goes three days a week, but for the past two weeks or so, he's spent every night absolutely refusing to go to sleep in his own bed. He's also become alarmingly clingy and generally tearful in the hour or so between the end of dinner and the bedtime story.

There was a time - I can remember it well - when bedtime for him involved giving him a sippy cup of milk, turning on the miraculous Fisher Price Aquarium music... more

So, Daughter is seeing a speech therapist - a speech language pathologist (SLP). Not because she has any language problems or pronunciation - she gets enough practice talking and talking and talking, after all - but because she has nodules on her vocal cords.

We've gotten hooked up with a therapist through the auspices of Child Find, a free "special education program" that handles things like developmental delays... more

CD Review: Lullabies: For China's Daughters & Their Adoptive Families, by Chuck & Lynette Giacinto (Final Quest)

This isn't an album I would have sought out and bought for myself, but it's one I'm quite glad I now own. Let me try to explain that. This is a collection of quite pretty songs inspired by and dedicated to children adopted from China. Some of it is done very much in the Amy Grant/Christian Contemporary mold. I'm not a big fan of slick production and those new-Broadway/Little Mermaid-style pretty melodies - as far as lullabies go, the ... more

So, the other day, Daughter and My Callipygian Spouse were in the store and Daughter's eyes fell, as they do, on this doll. The one being held by that dashing man in that picture off to the right there. Normally, the eyes fall on something, Daughter makes a remark, and that's that. But on seeing this doll, she insisted she had to have it.

"Mama, Mama!" she said. "I love that Barbie! Look at her hair! Look at her color! She looks like me!"

So of course, My Munificent Spouse had to buy it for her. The reasoning behind Daughter's fascination seems a little... more

I've just been pointed toward a post on the Adoptive Parents-China yahoogroup (also known as "the big group") wherein is advertised the creation of a rather interesting, smaller group - the China Birth Family Search group. Some people, you know, have already gotten in contact with birth parents in China, despite all the odds against it. You might already have read some birth parent... more

While browsing the adoption forums, I came across a notice about Arthur. If you have a child under 4, you probably already know Arthur, his relentlessly upbeat Ziggy Marley theme song, his gang of animal friends and his occasional nuggets of only-parents-will get this cleverness. Well, now Arthur is doing adoption.

Yep, Arthur's buddy Binky* is getting a baby sister named Mei Lin. There... more