Greatest...Wife...Ever!

The original title of this post was My Wife Is Better Than Your Wife, but then I realized that it is not a competition (although at our house we can make anything into a competition). I can hear the naysayers already who are wondering about how bad I screwed up to necessitate such a brown nosing post, or who are guessing that I am only just hoping to get lucky tonight - to you doubters I will tell you that my wife does not even read this blog.

Living in China presents a certain set of challenges. We have no car. Our kids do not go to Chinese school. We have no dishwasher. Our grocery store does not carry any products made by Kraft, Campbell's, or Betty Crocker. The butcher does not understand words like "Ribeye," "Roast," or "Bacon." These unique obstacles make wifehood and motherhood, and any 'hood for that matter, much more difficult in China.

Now, in all fairness to your wife, mine does have few advantages. We have an Ayi (Chinese word for "aunt") who helps us out as a housekeeper three mornings a week. Also, for most of the month of August I did not work due to the fact that the kids and staff at the orphanage went to visit their hometowns. However, in spite of these couple bonuses the scale still dips heavily to the challenges side.

Last night we had sesame chicken with mango salsa and coconut rice for dinner - it was 特别好吃, or as the kids at my house say, "scrumdiddlyumptious". The day before we had chicken tacos with half a dozen ingredients where the only thing that came from a can/box/bag was the black beans. She even made a cilantro and lime ranch sauce for the tacos. You can't buy ranch in our town so she first had to make the ranch from scratch and then make it cilantro and lime ranch. She had a hankering for green bean casserole last week and due to the absence of all things Campbell's she first had to make cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup plus she fried her own onion rings just to use as ingredients in the casserole. (Explanation - many of these ingredients can be purchases at the foreign grocery store, but the downsides to that are that you have to pay imported prices and the store is located in East Beijing which would be and hour and a half away if we had a car...did I mention that we don't have a car?) Then, to supplement that night's watching of Glee, she made an apple cake with brown sugar glaze. Sure, it could be argued that much of this effort is self-serving since my wife loves to eat more than just about anything, but many people would intimidated to the point of surrender when presented with challenges so daunting.

"I make things from scratch all the time," might be the argument that I hear rising from those trying to make a run at the top spot. But do you do it while homeschooling a 2nd grader AND a kindergartener? Oh yeah, and did I mention that our youngest (8 months) is now displaying all of the facets of sin nature that we read about in Genesis 3 -he never wants to be where he is allowed and play with what is his, he wants only wants what he can't have and to go where he is not permitted.

Did I mention that she does it all while looking radiant! While the radiance is always there, the delight sometimes wanes. There are moments of frustration, to be sure, but the joy with which she does it all is the prevailing attitude of her efforts.

How does she do it, you ask? I say she does it by the power of He who calmed the waves and hushed the storm. She would add that regular mani/pedis are an indispensable secret to her success. Even though she has always wanted (and undoubtedly always will want) a girl, it is obvious that she, like my own mother, was born to be the mother of 3 boys and the wife of 1, but to do it all in the context of China, with all its challenges and disadvantages, gives her the title Greatest...Wife...Ever!