Huffman Coding

My wife is in charge of family time on the weekends. This is good because I, if not challenged, would just as soon flop on the Lay-Z-Boy and read magazines endlessly.

My wife instigated a trip to a local park’s sledding hill on Saturday. She sat at the bottom of the hill with a lump of outergarments rumored to contain a toddler, while I walked up and down a hill releasing a couple of screaming Kindergarteners at the top and recovering them at the bottom. Daddy got some exercise and the older girls had fun, but t was hard to gauge the toddler’s enthusiasm from her blank, and mostly hidden, facial expression. I think she was too busy absorbing it all to muster an opinion.

Sunday, word came down that we taking the girls ice skating. As a snow storm was coming that evening, I was less than enthused. But Chris was the motivator. As always, it took an eternity to bundle up the girls in their snowsuits. Neither parent happened to notice, until we got half way to the rink, that we had loaded Claire in the car in her stocking feet.

No matter. We were going to put ice skates on her anyway. At the rink, the attendant indicated that they did not have any skates her size. Hmm. Could it be because babies under two can’t skate? Naw. But we took the smallest shoes they had for her.

Now I skate about as well as I golf: horribly. Claire, of course, could not even stand up on her skates. This meant I had to bend over, hook my arms under her armpits, adjust my center of gravity, and drag her around the rink. Slowly, while my back killed me. Again, I have no idea whether she enjoyed it or was annoyed by the experience. From my vantage point, I could not see her face and she can’t talk yet.

My wife realized, after one lap around the rink, that she no longer knows how to skate and sat out the rest of the afternoon. This meant I was the Kindergarteners had to hang onto me as they skated. It affects your balance, especially while dragging a third. And I have trouble skating alone.

Mercifully, it did end. With the snow storm underway and my daughter back in her stocking feet, I tucked Claire in my coat and carried her to the minivan. Three tuckered women followed.

My youngest daughter is from Fuling, China. The city is famous for Zhacai, a pickled mustard tuber. Evidently many Chinese know the local manufacturer’s commercial jingle.

While we were at the orphanage this past March, the director gave us a gift box of the delicacy. The box was quite decorative–it looked like a box for fine chocolates–but since I cannot read Chinese, we took the director’s word of its contents and never opened it when we were over there.

Last week, my wife sorted out the souvenirs of the trip and finally opened the shiny green box. It contained six small vacuum-sealed pouches, each with a sticker (in Chinese of course) indicating its flavor. In a word, it looked: peculiar. But my wife had a gleam in her eye. She would save it for a party hosted by one of our fellow adoptive parents. Chinese new year was around the corner and the hosts’ daughter, our oldest daughter, and a third family’s daughter, all Chinese, had January birthdays. My wife thought it would be a hoot if the husbands (not the wives) would sample the food stuff.

So at the party, after the lasagna but before the German chocolate cake, my wife cut open a pouch and squeezed it out on a plate. Dig in guys. With a diet coke and napkin at the ready in my left hand, I stabbed some Zhacai with a fork. It had the consistency of fat, overcooked bean sprouts and the approximate taste of saurkraut. A little spicier, thinker, very limp and cold. My wife chose not to splurge on 20 seconds in the microwave.

Zhacai

While no one joined me when I took a larger second bite, we still have five pouches left if anyone is interested.

Last October I posted an entry mentioning that parents, even in modern America, have a slight preference for boys. Well, it turns out that is only true for biological children.

The U.S. Census Bureau has a special report comparing the ratio of boys to girls, for adopted, biological and stepchildren.

The ratio of girls to boys for biological children is 100 to 105. While I was aware for the slight preference for boys, I’m surprised the ratio is not more even because I never thought biological parents had much control over the situation. But, here is the stunner: The ratio of girls to boys for adopted children is 100 to 89. It is even starker a ratio if you consider only International adoptions (where there no re-adoption of biological step-children): the ratio is 100 girls for every 56 boys.

It is not because of the availability of foreign girls: it turns out that most adoptive parents, unlike prospective biological parents, want girls. And adoptive parents have the power to choose gender. An article in Slate by a fellow adoptive parent tries to analyze the bias.

He conjectures that husbands want to procreate and wives want to nuture, and with the procreation “bath water” tossed out, it is the nuturing wives who take the lead in the adoption process and they are the ones who want girls.

While it is true, at least from the adoptive parents I personally know, that is almost always is the wife who takes the lead, I think it is a little bit of a stretch to assume that 1) Women think girls are more nuture-able, and 2) Husbands have no say in this step of the adoption process.

Remember that study that indicated that slight parental desire for boys (regardless of whether they were adopted)? I cannot see how an adoptive mother would feel that much different that biological mother when it comes to gender and nuturing. I mean, that can’t explain why the adoptive/biological ratios are that out of whack.

And for the record, my wife did consult me all three times when selecting a preferred gender. (Personally I prefered a girls because I figured I, as a pretty geeky dad, would be better at teaching piano than football.)

Here is my theory. One of the major differences between adoption and biological parenthood (other than stretch marks) is that the child exists prior to being part of the family. Yeah, that is obvious, but follow me here.

Most adoptive parents believe this is entirely the wrong way to look at it, but at least some [pre-]adoptive parents believe, perhaps only subconsciously, they are rescuing a child from a life more difficult that it should be. Perhaps girls are more rescue-able. Little damsels in distress as it were. All parents want to nuture, but only adoptive parents feel they might rescue. This is especially true for internation adoptions. This might explain the gender imbalance.

Another theory? A perception that more girls are available. I, for one, did not know that is was not true for Cambodia. Perhaps there is a simple desire, after years of trying biologically, to go for the presumed expediency. The wait for girls is assumed to be shorter.

I don’t recall my agency allowing me to select first available: I’ll take three non-smoking girls, please.

My older daughters got a ceramic cat to paint for Christmas. The execution of this craft had to be carefully timed as our youngest daughter has a nack for obstructing almost any task. So while our 20 month old napped, the other two started painting. The cat came with gray, orange, white, and black paint to match any feline motif desired. It also came with red and green, perhaps for Martian cats. Because the target media was ceramic, the paints in question were permanent. This was clearly labeled on the package and my wife dutifully expressed what this meant to our children: Take of your shirts and don’t get paint anything but the cat.

While my kindergartener can do second grade math, she apparently left no room in her brain for common sense. After only a few short moments there was paint on some inapropriate surfaces, including kitchen chairs and our off-white family room carpet. There was also a tennis ball sized green circle on our cat. Not the ceramic Christmas gift, but rather one of the family’s live, previously tan, domestic shorthairs.