Christmas

This has been a doozy of a vacation.  Esther has just recently started sometimes wanting to go off and play by herself, but Daniel is not there yet.  And they have been doing a lot of picking at each other this week.  So that means that either one of us watches them together (and gets exasperated with having to constantly redirect them), or we each take one.  So we have pretty much devoted ourselves this week to Being With Kids (while trying not to get too far behind on the laundry and dishes).  This has no doubt been good for bonding, but tiring!

Christmas Day, though, was all we could have hoped it would be.  Well, except for the waking up part.  Esther was awake for a while at 3 AM, and staved off boredom by (apparently) hyperventilating.  I have heard her do that before when bored so I didn't pay much attention, but it woke Tim right up and then he was awake for a while.  Then Daniel woke up at five...and again at six...and finally just past our designated minimum wake-up time of 6:30.  So Tim and I and Esther were awakened by Daniel at 6:34.  We all put on our robes (Tim's and Daniel's being Christmas presents that they had opened the night before) and went into the living room for stockings.  The kids had mostly the same things: a bottle of foot lotion, a bag of potato chips, a pack of gum, a glow stick, a squishy light-up toy, and one individual gift (a wallet for Daniel and a bottle of bubble bath for Esther).  Then we let them each pick out one gift to open.  Daniel picked one from our home study agency that he had been ogling and fingering every chance he got since it arrived in our house.  He was convinced it was an MP3 player, and much to my surprise, he was right!  After that we stopped for breakfast and the kids played with what they had already opened.  We didn't want the kids to open gifts so fast that they didn't have time to enjoy them, so we would open a little bit, take a break to do something else (like take a shower and get dressed for church!) and then open a few more.  We had opened most of the presents before we got to church, and then opened the big joint gift from Tim's family (a Wii!!!) after we got back.

I was so pleased that both kids cheerfully accepted the pauses to the opening, and were happy with what they got.  Some of Daniel's favorite presents were: the MP3 player, cash, a check, a visa gift card (so he has something to swipe just like we do!), a fat pillow (he likes to have his head up high when he sleeps), and a portable speaker for his MP3 player.  Oh, and definitely the Wii!  The present he most wanted, Windows XP for his computer (an old one that a colleague of Tim's scavenged for him), did not arrive in time, and in fact we are pretty certain that the company never shipped it and just didn't want to admit that.  So we canceled that order and are working on getting Windows from somewhere else.  Daniel has complained a little, but really has had a pretty good attitude about the disappointment.  Some of Esther's favorite presents were: the gymnastics shoes and ribbon that she has been anticipating for months, lace-up sneakers (so that she can learn to tie her own shoes instead of making knots in everyone else's!), the Wii, and, much to my surprise, a Snow White kid doll.  I really didn't think Esther was all that interested in dolls, so it's not something I would have thought to get her (it was also from our homestudy agency), but Esther asked to bring Snow White to church with her on Christmas, and has played with her lots since.  Today I walked into our bedroom and saw Snow White on our bed, wearing one of Esther's pull-ups, which was filled with small stuffed animals.  I'm not quite sure if SW was supposed to be pooping or pregnant, but it certainly looked funny.

I also loved that Daniel took the initiative to make presents for Tim and me.  One day a couple of days before Christmas, when he had been uncharacteristically not hanging around me for a while, I went to check on him and found him in his room.  When I asked him what he was doing he quickly said, "Nothing!" and appeared to be holding something behind his back (or possibly sitting on it).  Tim peeked in after me and smiled, so I figured it wasn't anything I needed to worry about.  After that Daniel shut the door and did not reappear for a long time.  (And yes, we enjoyed the peace!)  When he did reappear, he came to tell us teasingly that there were two more presents under the tree.  He had made one for each of us, and labeled them To: Mommy (and Daddy); From: Iloveyou Daniel.  Some other family members will be getting similar items, so I won't say just yet what they were.  :-)  But I was touched that he would think of making us something all by himself, and then carry it through.  We had the kids get each other gifts at the dollar store with their allowances.  Esther actually had a good bit of money saved up, but Daniel was nearly out after buying several coveted electronic items.

On Christmas afternoon Esther took a nap and the kids took turns playing the Wii either alone or with Tim.  They especially enjoyed a racecar game and a trampoline game.  In the evening we had a large and rather late dinner.  And then our Christmas was finished, a peaceful day enjoying family and being thankful for the love we share with each other and for the love God shared with us in sending his Son.

Advent

I love Advent.  I like the idea of setting aside a period of time to prepare for remembering and re-welcoming Jesus' coming into our lives.  And I love the symbolism: light gathering, week by week, dispelling the darkness; the rhythm of waiting, reminding ourselves with each night's reflection what is to come.  We have taken Christmas traditions from both our families, but our Advent wreath is one that is mostly our own (although my family did celebrate it some years).  I can't remember if we started having an advent wreath at the very beginning of our marriage or not, but certainly we have been doing it for a number of years, and it is different every year.  A few years ago I spent hours putting together an elaborate series of readings, one for each day of Advent.  I hope to return to them someday, but now that we have kids who are old enough to understand something of what we are doing, but who would disconnect from words upon words upon words, we are putting away those pages for a while.  This year, because of Daniel's language barrier, we decided to go simple and repetitive.  Each week we all learned one memory verse (in English and/or Chinese) corresponding to the theme of the week (we do Hope, Peace, Joy and Love), and sang one song.  So every night we lit the appropriate number of candles, practiced our verse(s) and song for the week, and prayed.  If we had enough time I read a Bible story that went along with the week's theme, and summarized it in Chinese for Daniel.  I was pleased that he could very nearly tell me some of the stories if those events had been included in the Jesus film.  I was also pleased that Esther was familiar with some of them.  Both kids did really well with learning their Bible verses (and Esther can do some of them in both languages!).  I hope that they absorbed the meaning of the verses as well as the words.  Last night, on Christmas Eve, in addition to our regular Advent routine, we watched the first part of the Jesus film, up through Jesus' birth, in Mandarin.  Then we lit the Christ candle in the center of the wreath.

This has been an especially fun Christmas for us, as we share everything with Daniel for the first time.  We have loved hunting down just the right gifts for both kids, and imagining their faces lighting up on Christmas morning.  We have loved watching them examine presents that had newly appeared under the tree, and teasing them (especially Daniel!) about what might or might not be inside.  We have gotten full mileage out of Christmas lights and decorations, and the excitement of putting up stockings.  But we don't want to teach either of our kids that Christmas is about how much you can get.  Going out of routine, lighting candles, and especially blowing out candles, are exciting in and of themselves.  But we pray that something we did these past four weeks...watching light push away darkness...repeating daily that our hope is in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of all believers...that we may have peace in Jesus, and we can take heart in the midst of the trouble of this world because He has overcome the world...that He has made known to us the path of life and will fill us with joy in His presence...that the greatest love of all is to lay down one's life for one's friends...even just the act of setting aside time each night, no matter what else is going on, and making this important...we pray that something will sink heart-deep into our children, that the excitement of the Christmas activities will not be all that Christmas is about for them, but merely an outward expression of our celebration that God is in our world and in our lives.

Challenges and Blessings

There are all sorts of things I could/should be doing right now.  But Tim and Esther are out of the house on a "Daddy date" and Daniel is at school, and this blog post has been rattling around in my head for a while.  So I am going to let the dishes and laundry and photos and cards and packages sit for a while, and write!

Before adopting Daniel, we of course did a lot of reading and studying about what things can be like with the adoption of an older child.  We are so blessed that so many things have gone well, but as with raising any child, there have also been some expected and unexpected challenges.  So today I want to make a list of ten top challenges (in no particular order), and the blessings that more than make up for them.

Challenges:

1.  Boundary testing:  This has gotten better, but for a while I really felt like I had two four-year-olds in the house!  Like the time in China when we had just finished disciplining Esther for jumping on the bed, and Daniel decided to jump on his bed!  The boundaries he pushes are generally minor things, but he has made me prove over and over that when I say no I mean no.  One recent afternoon he came home from school while Esther and I were playing outside and decided to join us.  We had a very fun and healthy hour of playing, but in that hour I also had to correct or redirect him six times for behaviors he knew were not allowed in our household.  Once every twelve minutes doesn't sound like much if you've ever parented a toddler, but the need to be on the alert for problem behavior can be tiring.

2.  "Pian"ing:  I'm using the Chinese word that Daniel uses because I'm really not sure what to call this in English.  I define "lying" as "communicating something that is not true with the intent to deceive for one's own advantage," and that is not what Daniel does.  It doesn't even qualify as the "crazy lying" that many adoptive parents report, where a child will do something in front of the parent and then deny having done it.  What Daniel will do is tell me that he did something that he thinks I won't like (or failed to do something that I had required of him), and then watch my reaction.  He used to routinely come home from school telling me that he had lost his jacket (when he actually had it in his backpack), or that he had thrown away his math worksheet (when in fact he had worked hard on it and brought it home).  He told me that he didn't use any English in a presentation that he did for English class, when in fact he did use a few words.  So I never know whether or not to believe his reports of what he did at school.  To the best of my knowledge, he has never misreported someone else doing something "bad," and never lied to me in order to get out of trouble.  Of course I can't confirm everything he says, either...but I'm pretty confident he is truthful in other arenas, he just likes to give me the impression that he's been naughtier than he has been.  Strange, huh?  Part of this "pian"ing is that he, like a couple of people in my family of origin, has a personality that enjoys "pulling someone's leg" or "getting a rise out of someone."  But that doesn't account for all of it.  And the rest of the reason?  My best guess is that it is a safe-ish way for him to test out my reaction, to figure out what I will do when he displeases me and what actions on his part will displease me.  But I really don't know.

3.  Language:  I know people manage to adopt older children without a language in common, but it boggles my mind that that can work!  Daniel and I have adjusted well enough to each other's mode of speech that we can communicate everyday needs and wants and also have pretty deep conversations about things of emotional importance.  But there are times I just get weary trying to explain something (a math concept, retirement income, governmental regulations, why we won't give him our computer password...) when I don't know half of the words I need, and I'm not sure if the words I've chosen are communicating the nuances that I intended.  So there are a lot of things I would love to say to Daniel that I don't.  And there are times that he wants to tell me something and I don't understand, and he gives up.  And oh, yes, then there's the whole translation thing.  It gets really old being asked by Daniel to translate any conversation that I have with Tim, whether or not it concerns him.  Meanwhile, it gets really old for Tim having our dinner table conversation taken over by Daniel in a language Tim barely understands.

4.  Rudeness:  I don't think Daniel was ever taught to speak to people respectfully, nor accustomed to having people speak respectfully to him.  I was rather disconcerted one day early on when I looked up a word in my dictionary that I had heard Daniel using a lot, and discovered that he had been calling me "stupid"!  He hadn't been saying it with any particular malice, and after listening to him talk to his friends back in China in the same way he talked to me, I concluded that that was just the way he talked.  (And he will call himself stupid as cheerfully as he will call anybody else stupid.)  But it is not the way we speak to people in this household!  I really do believe that one's feelings about people and about oneself can be shaped by the words one uses, and the words Daniel was using were not leading him in a good direction.  We are making great progress in this area (more on that in another post, I hope), but in the meantime, there are times when I have been really happy that I am the only one who can understand him!

5.  Poor boundaries:  This has been a biggie.  And part of it, I'm sure, is cultural confusion.  China has a much, much smaller sense of personal space than the U.S. does, so there are many kinds of touching that are taboo here except for intimate relationships, but would be just fine in China.  However, Daniel's issues go beyond that.  If someone doesn't like how Daniel is touching them, his attitude is not that he needs to respect their wishes but that they are being too sensitive and they need to get over it already.  I'm sure that was people's attitude toward his wishes when he was a kid in an orphanage.  But he could get in sooooo much trouble as he grows up if he doesn't learn to respect "no!", especially when it comes to touching girls.  He has already had issues at school with hugging girls who didn't want to be hugged (and hugging at school is against the rules anyway).  After weeks of being understanding and making allowances, his teachers have finally started holding him accountable to the same rules as everyone else.  Since he understands the rule and is quite capable of controlling himself, this is working well.  He may not believe that other's boundaries are important, but he does not want detention!  Not all of this issue is about hormones, either.  One example from his early days home is that several times a day he would try to forcibly wrench my socks off and rub my feet.  Now there's nothing wrong with offering a footrub, but it is very annoying to have a footrub forced on one!  I have also been mortified on a couple of occasions when he has rubbed the bellies of some of our heavier friends, and then made hand motions indicating how impressed he is with their girth.

6. Possessiveness:  Daniel really, really values my attention.  This is good.  But there are times, like when I can't have a short conversation with Tim without Daniel interrupting to start his own conversation, or demand a translation, that I wish he didn't want my attention so much of the time!  It can also be a problem when I'm talking to someone on the phone and Daniel demands to know what's going on while I'm still in the middle of the conversation...and occasionally picks up another receiver and starts talking to me in Chinese over top of said conversation.  He also monopolizes me if we go to a group function where he doesn't know anybody (although he does fine at church, where he has his own relationships with people).  We have severely limited social situations like the above, but we don't want to be hermits either.  And then there have been times where, say, Esther and Daniel and I were sitting on the couch and Esther put her head in my lap, so then Daniel had to put his head in my lap, and then they got into a shoving match and we ended up with nobody happy.

7.  Role confusion:  Daniel has had a number of female caregivers and/or mentors, several of whom he calls mama.  But he still seems to have some confusion over what exactly a mama is, and how he should relate to one.  There are times when he very much wants me to baby him and do the things for him that I would have done if he had come into our house in infancy.  Some of those things, like helping him brush his teeth and pick out his clothes for the day, are perfectly fine and I'm happy to do them.  Others are not so appropriate for his age and gender.  I'd love to be able to go back in time with him, but some of those windows of opportunity have already been missed forever.  And then there are the times when Daniel tries to treat me like a peer.  To give one persistent (and annoying!) example, he frequently addresses me by my first name.  For the last five months, unless the matter is especially urgent, I have been ignoring him until he calls me "mama" or some variation thereof, but he still hasn't given up on calling me other things.  Finally, there are the many questions of how to be intimate with a mama.  In families, for example, is it appropriate to wear one's underwear around the house?  And how does one show physical affection?  And when, as a parent, do you teach your child behavior that is appropriate to their chronological age, or allow behavior that is appropriate to their emotional stage?  Trying to figure out where our own boundaries lie, and then communicate those to our son, is an ongoing challenge.  And this is an issue where having Esther in the house didn't prepare us, because things that are appropriate for a four-year-old are sometimes not for an adolescent, especially when that adolescent is busy attaching to the opposite-sex parent.  So we can't just teach house rules we already had, we have had to figure some out from scratch.

8.  Self-image:  Daniel's first month home, he drove me crazy talking about how "tiaopi" ("naughty, mischievous") he was.  Many times a day he would say, "Mommy, look, I'm being naughty!" or "Mommy, I'm a really naughty kid, huh?"  He seemed to take great pride in this identity.  I believe that the way we talk about ourselves can become a self-fulfilling prediction, so I really worked hard not to agree with his insistence that he was "always naughty," and to find other words to use to describe him to himself.  Now, he almost never talks about being "tiaopi."  From time to time he will talk about how much he wants to grow up to be a good person and how he feels that he is getting a little better every day.  So now the negative self-concept we are working on is "stupid."  I think we have made a little progress here too, but we still have a long ways to go.

9.  Into everything:  One of the first rules that we had to use with Daniel, starting in China, was "If it doesn't belong to you or you don't know how it works, don't push buttons or take it apart!"  In China, he grabbed a friend's cellphone to examine it and flipped a random switch at the medical clinic in Guangzhou.  On our first day home, when our social worker dropped by to call hello to us as we worked in our front yard, he inserted his entire upper body into her car window and started checking out the levers and switches inside.  In his first week home he set off our carbon monoxide detector, accidentally set the alarm on our weather reporting station, which woke us all up at 3 AM, and flipped one switch on and off so rapidly that he blew a fuse.  (This in addition to many other explorations that did not have disastrous endings.)  And waiting with him in a doctor's or dentist's office near all that expensive, attractive equipment was a nightmare.  He has come such a long way in this area.  He is still extremely curious, and he still learns with his hands, but those are good qualities.  He has now learned to (mostly) leave other people's stuff alone, or at least to ask permission first.  I was so proud of him recently when he had a dentist's appointment, for which we ended up having to wait in the room with all the equipment for an hour, and the only thing he played with was pushing the buttons to adjust the chair!  Okay, so I'm sure most people don't allow their teenagers to play with the electric chair, but considering everything else he could have been doing (and would have been doing back in July or August), I thought he was being a pretty good citizen.

10. Need for direction:  My least favorite question these days is, "Mama, what am I going to do?"  This child does not make plans for himself.  He may reject every activity I suggest, but he usually leaves it up to me to do the suggesting.  (And if I get fed up and refuse to suggest anything, he will either hang around me and complain or start taking something apart.)  He also does not "do" hanging out in his room, and is quite self-limiting on computer time.  These are very healthy qualities for the amount of time he has been in our family (and probably in general), but I have to confess there are times I wish he would just go entertain himself for a while instead of depending on me to do it!

I could have included health and school on the list of challenges, but those are pretty obvious ones that you could figure out for yourselves!  Of course he has medical issues (there is at least one more besides the low vision and the cataract that I think we will need to get checked out), and of course a kid who is six years behind in school is going to take some extra thought and support to get caught up.

Blessings:

1.  Trust:  When I read about attachment, the first and foundational phase of attachment consists of a child learning that the world is a basically safe place, that adults are trustworthy, and that his needs will be met.  Daniel has no trouble with any of this.  He may still be working through aspects of some later phases of attachment, but he came to us expecting that we would keep him safe and meet his needs.  He has his share of anxieties about life, but for the most part they are not traumatic for him.  It is a great foundation for learning to be a family together.

2.  Insight:  I have said this before on this blog, but Daniel has an extraordinary ability to understand and articulate what he is feeling and why he is acting the way he does.  His insights are helpful to us as his parents, since he can usually tell us what emotion he is feeling and what is going on inside, but they are also extremely helpful to him.  They allow him to process the hard parts of this transition bit by bit rather than by burying everything until it explodes, and they allow him to correctly connect cause and effect rather than blaming us for problems that are coming from somewhere else.  It is this quality in him, as much as anything else, that makes me picture him growing into an adult that I will be proud to be related to.

3.  Acceptance and Identification:  Daniel came to us totally prepared to accept us as his family and to take on our family identity.  He wants to understand our values and standards, and has mostly taken them for his own.  (I will be interested to see if he goes through a later stage of questioning and picking and choosing, like most adolescents do.)  He wants to please us and to be one of us.  And boy, if even half the stuff he has told me about the trouble he got into in the orphanage is true, I am ever so grateful that he wants to please!  Because if he wanted to displease, this household would be mayhem.

4.  Humor:  Daniel loves to laugh, and he loves to make others laugh.  Shared laughter has done wonders in growing all of our relationships.  And shared laughter can defuse tensions.  Best of all, laughter is fun.  And it's natural to fall in love with a child when you are having fun together.

5.  Communication:  I am so grateful for every iota of Chinese that I speak.  Every time I can answer one of Daniel's questions with information that is valuable to him; every time I can listen to a story of his life in China and remember this piece of who he is; every time I can provide for him something that he told me he needed; every time I can prepare him for something that is going to happen by telling him what to expect; every time that I can explain why we do something that seems strange to him, it builds his feeling that we are trustworthy and helpful, that we can come to understand him and he can come to understand us.  And it helps us, as well, to understand where Daniel is coming from and some of what is going on inside.

6.  Desire to love and be loved:  Daniel should have never had to wait for a family.  No child should have to wait for a family.  But I am grateful that Daniel was loved by various people while he was waiting, and that he came to us fully ready to give and receive love.  Yes, he is ornery, but he is also affectionate and can be very sweet.  And it is easier not to get fixated on the orneriness when it is balanced out by sweetness.

7.  Competence:  It is just plain hard for anyone to come to a place where the language is different and all the rules have changed.  It can really do a number on one's self-esteem, particularly if it isn't strong to begin with.  We are grateful that Daniel brought with him some things that he is good at, even in his new environment.  He is still good at singing.  He has done the special music in church several times (in Chinese), and is looking forward to doing it again.  His choir classmates all think he has a good voice, and he has a great relationship with his choir teacher.  He is also still good at all things involving electricity.  He has done a staggering number of projects around the house, many with great success, and he is always proud of himself when he is finished.  And letting him work on projects with Tim is great for their relationship.  He will proudly say things like, "Dad and I are both really smart when it comes to electronics!"  And, Daniel is still good at helping.  He used to help with a lot of things at the orphanage, and now he loves to help out at school.  It just makes him feel good to be able to reconfigure a teacher's computer the way she wants it, or help the janitor collect uneaten food in the cafeteria.  So even when Daniel is having one of those days where it feels like his classmates will never understand him and he will never learn multiplication, he still has some skills that make him feel competent and gain him respect.

8.  Personality:  I have heard the word "charismatic" used to describe Daniel more than once.  His teachers say that he is a delight to have in the classroom.  His vision teacher described him to me this week as "an adventure rolled up in a child."  There's just something about Daniel that is hard to resist, especially when he's smiling.  I forget that sometimes when he's testing limits, or being rude or demanding.  But then there are the moments like when he saw an inflatable Halloween decoration in the grocery store--a ghost that went in and out of a pumpkin holding bags of brand-name candy--and started jumping up and down in the middle of the store exclaiming about how beautiful it was, and I couldn't help but respond to his delight.  Some parents on an internet group I belong to were sharing how they handle parenting difficult children, and one mom said that one of the things she does is to take pictures of her children when things are going well, and look at them to remember the good times when she is going through a hard time.  Daniel has given us lots of good times to reflect on.

9. Optimism:  I remember hearing once that most people have a "normal" happiness setting.  It may be interrupted by events that nudge their happiness level up or down, but soon enough it will settle back into its normal.  I don't remember the source of that idea, but I have noticed that Daniel's "normal" setting seems to be calm and optimistic.  He may get wildly excited about things like discovering that our neighbor has a video security system (I think those particular neighbors already thought we were crazy, but I'm sure they do now after watching Daniel jumping up and down in their yard while shrieking in Chinese, "I want one of those!  We should get one for our house!"), or he may get angry and discouraged about struggles with learning math or a conflict with a friend at school, but give him some time to settle down and he will go ahead on with hope that things will get better.

10.  Support:  This last reason is not something about Daniel, but it is nonetheless a gift!  We are so grateful for an extended family that welcomed our teenager unconditionally, for friends who asked searching questions, listened thoughtfully to our answers, and supported us 100%, for church family who are fine with us being "different" and who have included Daniel in his own way in everything that he can be a part of, for a school system that has embraced the challenge of educating a child unlike any other they have ever experienced, and for a social worker that we can tell anything to without worrying that she'll over or underreact.  And of course, for God, whose idea I firmly believe this was in the first place.  We had no idea how blessed we would be, but He knew!

Joy

Appropriately for the week of Advent in which our family celebrates "Joy," we had a wonderful weekend.  On Friday afternoon we had our six-month post-placement visit.  Daniel has been part of our family for six months today!  [Note: this was written yesterday, Dec. 13, but I didn't get it published until today.]  On Saturday, Tim and Daniel went shopping and had some good bonding time.  The whole weekend, Daniel and Esther got along fabulously.  They did not just tolerate each other, but did things together and had fun.  On Sunday morning, I was on nursery duty and got to hold a baby while he feel asleep in my arms.  :-)  The afternoon was peaceful (it helped that Esther took a nap!).  We had a church fellowship dinner that evening and I had to make dishes that were gluten and dairy-free for Tim, and that would give him enough food so that he wasn't hungry.  I made three dishes and got them all done on time, and the new recipe that I tried for gluten-free dairy-free zucchini bread turned out fabulous, up there with any zucchini bread I've ever tasted!  When we got to church, Daniel was invited to sit with a friend at a table full of kids, but decided he would rather sit with his family.  :-)  He sat down next to Tim and not me, and I actually got to enjoy a meal conversing with the adult friends across from me rather than being buttonholed by my son.  (And can I just say how happy it made me to see Daniel seeking out Tim?  He likes his dad, but isn't quite sure what to do with him when the situation doesn't involve handyman projects, and their bond has been slower to grow than his bond with me has.)  Both kids were reasonably well behaved and social in (mostly) appropriate ways throughout the evening.  Our table was assigned "Four Calling Birds" in our annual Twelve Days of Christmas sing.  Daniel sang our verse in English the first  eight times, and we all sang it in Chinese the last time.  The confused look on our songleader's face was classic.  Then Daniel had his first encounter with Santa Claus.  I find Santa's presence at church mildly incongruous myself, but it's a tradition and we go along with it.  So both kids received presents from Santa (that they had helped us bring from home and put under the tree at church).  Daniel was hilarious.  He had encountered the song "Santa Baby" at his school choir concert when another grade performed it, and so he greeted Santa with an enthusiastic "Santa Baby!  Santa Cutie!"  He sat on Santa's knee, grinning from ear to ear (and oh how I love that smile!) and was pleased with his gift (a color-changing nightlight) and also rather tickled at how we had hidden from him that it was going to be his.  Esther was thrilled to get her present, but after she opened it she came running over to me with a huge pout on her face and said, "This isn't the one that I wanted!"  Once I explained that the gymnastics shoes she has been begging for for months will be in a Christmas day present, NOT a Santa present, she decided that her no-tip bubble tub was a pretty good gift after all.  After the festivities all the kids were gathered together for a photo.  The photographer instructed them to say "One, Two, Three, Santa!"  And my ham in the back row (that would be the taller sibling, they're both hams) yelled out, "One, Two, Three, Walmart!"  Oy.  I don't know if he understood the joke he was making or not, but I thought it was pretty funny.

I have no idea how or whether this video will come through to people who get this blog through e-mail (so please let me know!), but I couldn't resist leaving you with this taste of what was going on in our house on Friday afternoon.  Check out how Esther is copying Daniel!  And I do apologize if you end up with "Santa Baby" stuck in your head for the rest of the day, like I did.

Geography project, by request

It's a little touchy deciding what to blog about when your kid is old enough to have opinions on what they want other people to know about them, but not experienced enough to understand exactly how a blog works.  I have been more frank on this blog than I am in conversations with people that we see every day, because it's read by people that either a) I would talk about these things with anyway because they are close friends or family members, or b) they are part of the community of families who adopt older kids, and this stuff is somewhat familiar and very relevant.  But I didn't want to be blogging behind Daniel's back, so to speak, so I have tried to explain to him what a blog is.  I told him it is kind of like QQ (the Chinese social networking site that he uses), except that people tend to write more and you can't live-chat.  He thinks QQ is far superior.  But he has enjoyed looking at pictures of a former orphanage friend whose family's blog I follow, and one day he suggested to me that I should put pictures of his (Daniel's) geography project on my blog!  So here is the first blog post not only permitted by commissioned by Daniel.

This was his first school project ever, and it was fun to get to do it with him.  The assignment was to make a relief map, in color, depicting a labeling at least 15 different geographic features.  Daniel's teacher said that she would accept any number from him.  He is not being graded in his class, but it was a project she thought he could do, and so she suggested it.  Since he does not have experience with projects, he had no idea where to start.  I helped him with it more than I would have for a middle-schooler who had grown up with me, but he did enough to "own" it and we had fun!  I suggested eight geographic features, which he agreed to, sketched out the boundaries of his map, made the dough, and gave him some help in filling the map in, especially with things like building up the mountains.  He did most of the filling in, and all of the painting, and practiced saying the names of the geographic features in English.  His teacher and I were both thrilled with the result.

Here is the construction process:

And here is the finished map:

Daniel labeled himself, too, just in case anyone was wondering.

And the most fun part of the project:  Destroying the map when it was all over!!

Road Trip, Part 3

I am finally getting back to finishing up the story of our road trip back in...oh, October?  Yeah, I'm a little behind!

That Friday night at Grace Fellowship was a really significant time for us.  On Saturday morning we got up (Daniel did not want to get up!) and after a delicious breakfast with the friends who were hosting us, we headed out to the zoo to meet up with another family.  The wife and I have been good friends since high-school, and their older son is one of Esther's very best friends, whom she was very sad to leave behind her when we moved.  It turned out that my dear friend had a conference and couldn't come, but her husband and two boys made it.

When we got to the zoo, we arrived at just the right place and time to see two orangutans crossing the O-line.  This is always one of the highlights of the zoo, and I was thrilled to have caught it!  That was one of the few fun parts of my morning, though.  Daniel was briefly interested in the orangutans, then wanted me to give him change to put into the vending machine.  A couple of times he has put money in just to make change and gotten more out than he put in, so he was convinced he could make some money.  I refused to give him my change, and he got highly irritated.  I think he was already exhausted from the intensity of the couple of days before, and hadn't gotten enough sleep.  I had envisioned the zoo trip as being us adults chatting and getting caught up while kids ran around and enjoyed animals, but it happened to be an unusually warm Saturday and the zoo was as crowded as I have ever seen it, so the kids had to stick close to us.  And I discovered that Daniel couldn't actually see some of the animals.  The half-grown lion cubs were out and were chasing each other, batting at things, and acting like playful kittens--but Daniel literally could not see them.  They were only about 30 feet away, and he was using the zoom focus on our camera to try to figure out where they were.  He did manage to make out the elephant later on (and I was delighted to see the new habitat!), but he was not having a particularly good time and made sure I knew it.  So for me, most of the zoo trip was occupied by Daniel hanging onto my arm, voicing a steady stream of complaints, and making it very difficult for me to talk to anyone else.  Tim and our friend did get caught up, and Esther loved, loved, loved seeing her good friend.  They grabbed hands almost as soon as they saw each other and held hands most of the way through the zoo.  Soooo cute!  So we were glad we came, but sorry we couldn't show our friends the funny, friendly side of our boy.  By the time we were walking back to our parking lot, he was lagging about ten steps behind me (no matter how much I slowed down!) and walking like a zombie.  He and Esther both fell asleep promptly in the car.

We went straight on from the zoo to a Sichuan restaurant to meet our good Chinese friend from the night before.  She treated us to a delicious lunch, which Daniel especially savored.  Daniel did not have any more profound problems or observations that he wanted to share, but he did perk up and was pleasant to be with.

We had been going to try to do an afternoon activity with the friends we were staying with, but by the time we got back it was late afternoon and we ended up just hanging out at their house instead.  I'm sure that was better for Daniel.  There were lots of other people that we really wished we could have seen while we were in DC, but we had to accept that we couldn't see everyone in one short trip, especially not without stressing out both kids!

We had debated going to our old church on Sunday morning, or trying out a Chinese church, but decided that that would be too much for this point in time.  So on Sunday morning we set out towards home.  We managed to make a quick detour to see a good friend and her baby.  Daniel was, once again, not his most pleasant self, but it was a short visit.

On the way home we decided to cut over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for part of our drive.  It was close enough to fall that there were some beautiful leaves, while the weather was still warm and pleasant.  Daniel was quite grumpy about our stops at first, and insisted that he would stay in the car.  But at one stop we wanted to go for a little walk, so he decided to get out with us.  At the edge of the parking lot there was a bear-proof garbage can.  Daniel, naturally, noticed that the can was different from ones he has seen before and wanted to know why.  I replied that it was because there were bears in the area and the can was specially made so that they can't get into it to eat garbage.  He was amazed.  "There are bears here?  Who put them here?"  (Can you tell that he's a city boy?)  I explained that the bears just live here.  He wanted to know what they eat.  I explained that they eat lots of things that they can find in the woods, like berries from bushes or fish from a stream.  Again, he was amazed.  "There are fish in the stream?  Who put them there?"  Hmm, it seems to me that somebody needs some natural science education!  He did seem to find the walk interesting and pleasant, so maybe there's still hope that we can turn him into an outdoors boy...at least a little more than he is right now!

Later we went for a walk that included a bridge over a fairly big river, and Daniel particularly enjoyed watching (and listening to!) a motorboat zooming under us.  That was the stop where, when we got back in the car afterwards, we had an "incident."  The kids had been picking at each other the whole drive and making both of us crazy.  Esther was fueling a great deal of it, by contradicting every. single. thing. that Daniel said.  (If he said, "I'm hungry," she would say, "You're not hungry."  Very annoying.)  So at this stop, just as Tim was getting ready to pull out of our parking spot, Esther let loose with a blood-curdling wail of anguish, which seemed to be directed at Daniel.  Once she calmed down enough to talk, we discovered that it had to do with a rock.  I had given her permission to keep one of the pieces of gravel that she had picked up on the walk.  Daniel had seen her holding it, assumed it was not permitted in the car, and taken it upon himself to grab it from her and toss it out the door.  So we retrieved the rock, suggested to Esther that using her words to tell us about a problem was preferable to shrieking, and suggested to Daniel that it would be better to tell us if he thought Esther was doing something she shouldn't rather than taking care of it himself.  Argh.  Helping kids who are not used to having a sibling relationship learn how to navigate one is hard!  Not that sibling relationships are easy to start out with.

After that incident the rest of the trip went pretty smoothly.  And by Sunday evening we arrived home with a very full and mostly good four days behind us.

cataract surgery date

We have a date--January 12th.

We will start putting eyedrops (anti-inflammatory and antibiotic) in Daniel's eyes several days before the surgery.  On the night before, we will drive up to the city where the surgery will take place and spend the night in a motel.  Daniel cannot eat or drink anything after midnight.  We are due at the hospital at 6:30 AM.  The doctor will likely give Daniel something through an IV to make him mellow, and then give him a light general anesthesia.  While he is under anesthesia, his nystagmus (small, jerky, involuntary eye movements) will stop, so the doctor will take some final measurements of his eyes to make sure the lens implant is matched to his good eye as accurately as possible.  (Both the doctor doing his surgery and the doctor who will be fitting him with contacts in the future feel that it will be best to have his eyes as similar as possible, so that they won't have vastly different scripts.)  Then the surgery will take place.  The doctor only expects the surgery to take about twenty minutes.  Afterwards they will send Daniel to recovery and monitor him for a while to make sure he isn't reacting badly to the anesthesia.  We can expect to be out of there by noon.  However, the surgeon will see Daniel again in the same location the following day, so between that bit of scheduling and the possibility that Daniel might not be feeling like a long car ride on top of everything else, we will spend that night in a motel as well.  If Daniel feels up to it, there are a lot of fun things that we can do in the city that afternoon, especially a children's science museum that I have been looking forward to taking him to. 

Daniel will need to patch his eye overnight the first night, use eyedrops for a couple of weeks, and avoid heavy lifting and gym class for a couple of weeks.  And then the surgery will be over, as far as he is concerned!  I gather that it takes about ten weeks for the eye to heal and adjust completely.  So in April or so we can start thinking about the next step: tinted contacts!

sentences

Daniel's English has made another jump forward.  We are hearing more and more sentences out of him, like the following just now as we put him to bed:

My feet smelly no good, Daddy no like, yes-no?

Which translates to, "Daddy doesn't like the way my feet smell, right?"  (He had some foot lotion on them, and Tim indeed does not like the smell of that lotion.)

He also was sitting on a heater at church last week and announced to the college-age girl I had just been talking with, "My.  Bottom.  Hot!"  To which she calmly replied, "Of course it's hot, you're sitting on the heater."

Oh yes, and he wanted to tell me that he had put a wallet on my bed, but didn't know the word, so he called it a "money backpack."

In other news, I have finally finished the writing project that has been occupying my (abundant--not!) writing time over the past several weeks, so I may be able to get back to blogging again!  Stay tuned...

cataract surgery

The title of this post is a little misleading, because we don't have the date yet.  But we did have our appointment with the ophthalmologist we were referred to today.  We picked up Daniel from school shortly before lunch, rushed him home to scarf down some leftovers (that he didn't particularly like), drove over to Tim's work and dropped Esther off at her daycare, and headed on up to the larger city north of us where the ophthalmologist has one of his satellite offices.  We had gotten paperwork from them ahead of time which said to allow at least two hours for a first visit.  I thought that sounded like a lot, but--we were there for just over two hours!  It was a very good call not to bring Esther, especially since the waiting room was not child-friendly.

We had gotten some information mailed to us after Daniel's first eye evaluation.  I have put in some time over two days looking for it so that I could write the name of our referring doctor on our form (with all the information I had been trying to absorb at our last appointment, I had completely forgotten her name; rather embarrassing!). I never did find it, so went without it, recalling that the people from the eye evaluation had said they would mail the information on to this ophthalmologist.  Well, they hadn't.  Actually I don't think his doctor needed it today, but I had been stressing about the appointment all morning and not being able to produce such an important piece of paper when they asked me about it made me feel rotten.  Like, what kind of mother just loses her child's important medical information??  (I know, I know, I'm not the only one out there!)  So the appointment did not get off to an auspicious start.

Meanwhile, Daniel is not a big fan of medical appointments and can be rather stressful to wait with.  So I asked the receptionist how long she thought it might be until we were called, and she thought 20-30 minutes.  Daniel has been wanting me to help him stop biting his fingernails and toenails (did I ever mention how flexible he is?), and has been very interested in buying something bitter to paint on his nails.  I remembered passing a pharmacy on the way in to the clinic, so asked Tim if he would be up for taking Daniel to the store to look for fingernail stuff rather than waiting in the waiting room.  Tim graciously agreed, and they managed to not only get the fingernail stuff but fill the car up with gas and still get back a few minutes before Daniel was called.  By that time Daniel and I were both in a somewhat more peaceful frame of mind, and the actual appointment went fine.

First, we were led to a room where Daniel was examined by...a physician's assistant?  I have no idea what her job description was; she was competent but clearly junior to the doctor.  Anyway, she went through many of the same tests we had done a few weeks ago to determine his visual acuity.  She did do a few tests of his field of vision (i.e. how much peripheral vision he has) that I don't recall them doing last time.  (And by the way...how in the world do parents of older internationally adopted children do medical appointments when they don't speak the child's language?  I was challenged enough conveying directions verbally; I can't imagine having had to do that through a translator or through pantomime!  I guess most kids know more English by this time out than Daniel does.)  Once that set of tests were over, we waited for a few minutes.  Daniel did a pretty good job keeping his hands to himself while waiting--he has gotten so much better at this!--but I did at one point threaten to call Tim in to keep him in line.  Daniel decided he liked that idea, so he went and got Tim, and we were just settling in for a long wait when the ophthalmologist himself arrived. Tim and I both liked him, and he interacted really well with Daniel.  He did some more tests which mostly involved shining lights in Daniel's eyes.  Then he put drops in Daniel's eyes to dilate them and told us he would call us back in after half an hour.

So Daniel and I went out to the car for half an hour and kept ourselves entertained by painting the no-bite nail stuff on Daniel's fingernails and toenails, and by eating potato chips.  Tim stayed in the waiting room and did some work, while keeping one ear out in case they called our name early.  As it happened, we waited nearly another half an hour after coming back inside.  But Daniel flipped through a couple of magazines and talked to me and was pretty agreeable, so that was fine.  (Back in July it would have been misery!)  Then we were called back again, and the doctor shone some more lights in Daniel's eyes.  Poor Daniel hates having his eyes dilated, and of course hates having lights shined in them while they are dilated, but he cooperated.

Then we got to hear about cataract surgery.

First off, the doctor shared that Daniel's type of cataract is not a typical cataract.  A typical cataract forms on the lens of the eye, and cataract surgery involves removing the lens and implanting an artificial lens in the same place.  I'm kicking myself for not asking the doctor more specifically the names of the parts of the eye that he was talking about, but basically, Daniel's cataract is attached not only to his lens but also to the part of the eye that rings the lens.  The cataract may detach easily from this structure--the doctor has experienced that before--in which case the surgery will proceed just as with a normal cataract.  But if the cataract does not detach easily, then the lens capsule may rupture, and the doctor will have to implant the artificial lens in front of where it would normally go rather than in its current location.  Apparently that is not a huge deal medically, but the best case scenario would still have Daniel's implant going in the same place as his natural lens.  The type of cataract that Daniel has, while not typical, is not uncommon in people with albinism.  Tim and I both think the doctor said something about the extra glare experienced by people with albinism (because their irises are not pigmented enough to block all light) contributing to the formation of this type of cataract, but we have no idea how that works.  However, apparently Daniel is at no more risk than anyone else for developing a cataract in his other eye.

I did a little research before this ophthalmologist visit, and discovered that there is more than one kind of implantable lens.  Some really high-end implants are supposed to be able to focus, but most can only focus at one distance, and so you have to decide before the surgery which distance you most want to be able to see clearly at.  I gather that it is common to choose a lens which gives the wearer clear distance vision, and then they can use reading glasses (or their good eye, if they have one) to focus close up.  But because Daniel's eye is not capable of clear distance vision no matter what kind of lens is in, and because he does discriminate quite well close up, the doctor suggested that he choose an implant with a focal point that lets it work well at a similar distance to Daniel's right eye--that is, quite close up.  I had already thought about this issue and reached the same conclusion, so I was very happy to agree with that reasoning.  Daniel is already in the habit of using just his right eye, sometimes with a magnification device, to see things at a distance, so I think a nearsighted lens in his left eye will get much more use than a farsighted one would.

Finally, there was the matter of the surgery itself.  The doctor wants to put Daniel under general anesthesia for the procedure.  He is not sure of Daniel being able to hold still enough if the procedure is uncomfortable, due to his age, but even more importantly, Daniel is incapable of consciously halting his nystagmus (small, involuntary back-and-forth movements of his eyes).  And with the operation being potentially even more delicate than usual, it is vital that his eyes be still.  So, we will be going to the city of this doctor's main office for the surgery.  Even though it is general anesthesia, it will be "light" anesthesia, which means we should only be a few hours in the hospital.  However, the hospital is a good hour and a half drive away from us, and Daniel will be scheduled at 7:30 AM, so we get to choose between making an hour and a half drive during a time when we would normally be sleeping, or staying in a hotel the night before.  And then we get to make a similar choice about the night after, because Daniel will need to be seen the next morning to make sure everything is going smoothly.  We also have to have a pre-surgery visit at some point to let the doctor get some more measurements on Daniel's eyes and to discuss plans with the surgery coordinator, at which point we will choose a surgery date.  We can probably take care of that pre-visit while on our way to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving, since we will be driving through that city anyway.  The doctor said that due to Daniel's age, removing the cataract is not urgent; that is, having it there is not going to change the way Daniel's brain processes visual input, it is just going to mean he has less visual input than he might otherwise.  However, we will probably try to get it out in January before Tim goes back to work, so that we can move on to the business of fitting tinted contact lenses.  Daniel will only need to miss a couple of days of school, which he will be disappointed about.  :-P  He should not be in pain after the surgery, and recovery will mostly involve remembering to use several different kinds of eyedrops and making sure that he doesn't pick up anything heavy (like his little sister!) for several weeks.

After our appointment was over, we stopped by McDonald's before heading back to pick up Esther.  Daniel was very hungry by that time, and enjoyed the treat of a hamburger and french fries and soda.  I told him what the doctor had told me about how the surgery would work.  He was interested and positive, although dubious that he could go to sleep unless they gave him a comforter to sleep under.  (I had described anesthesia as "they will give you medicine that will make you sleep and not wake up when they are taking that thing out of your eye.")  I sure hope he's happy with how his eye works after the surgery is over!!

Insight

Shortly before we left for China, we got a call from a social worker at our placing adoption agency.  (They have families speak with social workers at several different points, partly of course to help families prepare for meeting their child, but also I think to help lower any psychological barriers to calling the agency for help if there are problems once the child is in the family.)  Anyway, at one point during the conversation she asked me if I had noticed the part in our son's video interview where he described himself as "bad-tempered."  I said we had, and told her how we thought about it.  She said she was glad we had noticed and added, "That's a really good sign that he has that kind of insight."  I had not thought about that before, but she had a good point: some children from difficult backgrounds have never learned to think about themselves in that kind of way.

I have thought about her comment many times since, as we have gotten to know Daniel.  He has definite ideas about who he is and what he is like.  He has an ability to put himself in other people's shoes.  And, he is very insightful.

Early on after coming to the U.S., Daniel started noticing the differences between children raised in a family and children raised in an orphanage.  He doesn't just react to the differences, he can describe them.  For example, watching a friend of Esther rip through her presents at her birthday party, he commented, "Children in families just glance at their presents [literally: look at them with one eye!] and leave them on the floor.  Children in an orphanage would never do that!  They know someone might take their present, so they will hold on to it.  But in a family, you can leave your things on the floor and nobody will take them."  He has also commented on the developmental differences between children raised in different settings.  He almost invariably winds up his observations by commenting, "It's better to be raised in a family."

And then there was the comment he made over the phone to a "teacher" (not sure whether she was one of his school teachers or a senior staff member at the orphanage; he has stayed in touch with adults of both varieties and gives them all the title of teacher).  He mentioned something he does sometimes which is young for his age.  She apparently told him he was too old for that behavior, because he replied, "When I was little I never got to do that with my mother, so now even though I am big I want to do it sometimes."  How does he know these things??  There are so many adults out there who don't understand what is triggering the things they do, and yet here is this fourteen-year-old with no special training who has a very clear perception of what is going on emotionally in our relationship.  I absolutely agree with his assessment...but I had no idea that he knew that!

Not that I'm in a hurry for Daniel to grow up, seeing as we only just met each other, but there is some remarkable stuff inside of him (layered in between the boundary-pushing and the smart mouth!) and I can't wait to see what kind of a man he grows into.

Road Trip, part 2

So after we got Daniel's Certificate of Citizenship and took a few photos, we left Pittsburgh.  This was easier said than done, since our internet directions sent us down some small and not well signed streets.  But eventually we made it to the highway and started our drive to D.C.  All three driving days of our trip were marked by beautiful weather and lovely scenery, but this was the day where we saw the most fall leaves.

We stopped at a gas station part-way.  I remember this stop for two incidents.  One was that a group of men eating in the little cafeteria section were making me feel vaguely uncomfortable by watching me.  I was trying to think, with just a little irritation, why in the world they were staring, when it occurred to me that it just might be because Daniel and I were speaking in Chinese!  Ha.  It surprised me that I noticed, though; sometime between my childhood in Thailand, when I hated being stared at, and when Tim and I went to live in China as adults, I just stopped paying attention.  Daniel is pretty oblivious too, because he can't see very far.  But Esther does notice, and doesn't like it.  She also gets prickly when total strangers come up to us to gush about how beautiful she is.  Anyway, the other memorable incident from that stop is that Esther, rejoicing in being allowed to wear a pull-up for the first time in several months, decided she was not going to sit on the toilet, and showed her determination by writhing, kicking, arguing, and laying dark plans to cut my head off.  Not fun to be having a major confrontation with your child in a public restroom!

The rest of the drive was, thankfully, pleasant, and we arrived at our friends' house mid-afternoon.  After just a little shyness, Esther started having a great time with her good friend A, who is just a few months older than she is.  Eventually she and he and his mom and I ended up outside playing with balls and riding toys.  Daniel had been dinking around on the computer in the living room, but, never one to enjoy solitary pursuits, he found his way outside, too.  First he wanted to ride A's training bike; then, when I refused to let him (for fear he exceeded the weight limit!), he settled for borrowing some tools and adjusting the training wheels so that the bike would work better for the little kids.  Then he pulled out A's little sister L's old toddler riding toy (the kind you push with your feet) and (with permission from our friend) started zooming down the gentle slope of their cul-de-sac like a wild thing, over and over.  Esther got into the fun on a Big Wheel tricycle, and they played that game for a very long time.  The weather was balmy, and it was such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon after a long drive!

As evening approached, we gathered everybody up and set out to join our old Friday-night Chinese fellowship.  Daniel was, at first, not happy about going.  I think part of it was that he was more tired and stressed from the trip so far than I realized.  But part of it was that culturally, when you visit someone, you stay with them, so he thought we were being weird and rude by going off to do our own thing.  So he spent a good part of our hour-long drive complaining, with occasional breaks to admire the city lights, the traffic, and the smell of the air.  (He is a real city boy!)  Once we got to Grace Fellowship and Daniel realized that our Chinese friends were, in fact, Chinese--as in, everyone was from China and everyone was speaking Chinese--he warmed up rapidly to being there. 

One interesting incident happened early on.  A man spoke to Daniel in English, and Daniel asked (with a suggestion of irritation) why he hadn't used Chinese.  The man responded that he had heard Daniel speaking Chinese and thought he spoke Chinese like someone who is used to speaking English.  Of course, Daniel still barely speaks English!  But it made me wonder if he has been mirroring my stilted Chinese and is starting to sound less like a native speaker after all our hours of conversation together.  He has told me that he already feels like he is losing some of his Chinese, which surprised me given that that is mostly what he speaks!

Over dinner, Daniel happily chatted with our table companions and scolded me a little for using English with them rather than Chinese.  (However, I think that one of their goals was to practice English, so I kept right on speaking English for the most part.)  I realized that my Chinese has gotten not only much faster since Daniel has been in our family, but also better.  I understood more of the language that was happening around me (as opposed to what was being directed to me) than I ever have before, and also had my first-ever experience of a situation where, given a conversation partner who could speak both languages (but English not well), there were times when it was easier for me to say something in Chinese than to figure out how to say it in English in a way my partner would understand!

After the dinner there was a time of worship for the whole group, and it did my heart good to see Daniel so engaged!  He couldn't read the words of the song that were being projected onto the screen upfront, so he went up on his own initiative to look at the words on the computer screen, and participated in the singing.  One of the music leaders let Daniel play her tambourine for the last song, which he did with a good will and a reasonable sense of rhythm.  After the singing, Simon, the leader, introduced the day's memory verse: Romans 3:23.  Daniel was obviously tracking with him as he explained it, and even interjected a comment or two.  (And a couple of times since that night, Daniel has recited it for me, including the reference!)

A few days earlier, Simon had asked me if Tim and I, as former members of the fellowship (where we used to lead the English group) would be willing to share with the group about our trip to China to adopt Daniel.  I asked Simon if I could speak in English and have someone translate, partly because I knew there would be people there who would have a hard time understanding the English, but mostly because I wanted Daniel to know what I was saying.  I had told Daniel what we were going to do and he said that was okay.  So I began sharing, with Simon translating.  I talked about how we had wanted to adopt another child from China, but didn't think we had the time or the money to do it last year.  I told about the amazing circumstances of our learning about Daniel's existence at a time when we weren't even "looking" for a child from China, about how hard we prayed to discern God's will, and about how God led us to commit to adopting Daniel.  I shared about paperwork that got done more quickly than is normally possible.  And I shared how much we wondered about what Daniel would be like, and what it would be like to have him as part of our family.  Now we can see so many ways that he fits into our family, but we didn't have any of that information prior to meeting him.  We had no way of knowing that we were the right family for Daniel and that he was the right child for us, but, I said, God knew!  And while the things God calls us to are not always easy, they are always worth doing.  Much of this story was new to Daniel, as it was beyond my vocabulary in Chinese.  I could see him looking happier and happier as I talked and Simon translated, especially when I got to the part about him being just the right child for our family.  :-)  

After I shared, Simon was just gearing up to have everybody pray for us when Daniel said to me that he wanted to say something, too.  So I conveyed that to Simon, and he was happy to let Daniel have the microphone.  Daniel stood up and said more-or-less the following:

It's very xinfu [remember that word?  It means something like warm, happy, and authentic] to have a family.  My Dad and Mom have taken me to be their own child.  Whatever problem I have, whether it's small or big, they take care of it like I'm their own child.  I wish every child could have a family.  Some kids who look for a family and never find one grow up to have some problems.  My Mom really loves me.  Sometimes I do some things or say some words that aren't good, and she teaches me how to do things the right way.  She really loves me and she is really patient with me.

I had noticed a few teary eyes by the time I concluded my bit of the talk, but there were quite a few more after Daniel spoke, including mine!  It was good to know that when he is being serious (and not in a snit about something!), that that is how he feels.  And oh, how I join him in wishing that every child could have a family!

Afterwards, Simon had everyone lay hands on us and pray for us.  Unfortunately, Tim and taken Esther outside to play (she was not handling the stimulation very well) and missed the whole thing!  I hadn't called him when I talked because he already knows the story, but I would have if I had known that Daniel was going to talk!

We had been going to leave as soon as the fellowship divided into small groups for study, but Tim got a phone call about that time from a special friend of ours who has helped us in a number of ways during this adoption (and is the main reason I kept my Chinese up the last few years!  I had no idea how thankful I was going to be for that!) saying that she would be there soon.  So we went into the kids' room and chatted with a couple of other friends while we waited for her. 

When our friend arrived, Daniel poured out into her ear all kinds of thoughts and feelings that he had apparently been saving up.  He started out by asking her to ask me how well I think I know him.  I responded that I really didn't know, because I think it takes several years of being with a person to know whether you are really seeing them as they are or whether you are just seeing what they are letting you see.  He seemed to find that answer satisfactory.  Then he went to great pains to have her explain to me the role that fighting played in his life at the orphanage.  He said that he fought a lot, with all kinds of different people, and that sometimes the group of boys that he lived with would get into fights for no more compelling reason than that they had just been told they would have an exciting activity the next day and they needed to let off steam.  His goal seemed to be to get me to understand just what an achievement it has been for him not to get into a single fight, either with Esther or at school, during the time he has been with us.  I wonder also if he was doing a little pre-emptive damage control to make sure we won't be too disappointed if he loses control of his temper at some point!  One he had covered that subject, he devoted a very long time to complaining about Esther, and how she will hit him or kick him or step on him if she thinks I'm not looking and she can get away with it.  This has been a tough issue for us, because she is at that age where she will lie through her teeth if anyone accuses her of doing anything wrong, so we get into a he-said, she-said.  But even though we know she is likely to be the one at fault, I don't want to make a policy of taking his word over hers because if she should ever be hurt by someone (whether him or someone else), I don't want her to believe that it's not worth telling us because we won't believe her.  But on the other hand, I can understand why Daniel might feel that we're playing favorites!  And it is so hard to prevent--they can both be in the same room with me, but if I happen to be looking in a different direction when the altercation starts, I really don't know who did what to whom.  We didn't reach any resolution on the Esther issue, but Daniel vented for a while and then we reached the point where we really had to go before Esther got any more tired.  So we headed back to our friends' house and feel into bed, after making plans to meet our Chinese friend for lunch and more conversation the next day.

What makes you feel loved?

A little background information:  When Tim and I talk about "love languages," we are referring to a book (now a series of books) by Gary Chapman.  He theorizes that each of us is innately inclined to give and receive love in a certain way, and we are most likely to feel loved when others demonstrate their love for us according to our main "love language(s)."  He identifies five "love languages," which are: time spent together, affirming words, physical touch, gift-giving, and acts of service.

So the other day we were discussing the way that Daniel frequently hangs off of me, and Tim said (only somewhat sarcastically), "Do you think touch could be his love language?"  I agreed that that is very probable (although there may be other dynamics going on as well).  And then while I was on the subject of love languages, I realized that acts of service seem to be important to Daniel as well.  Again, I don't think it's the only dynamic going on here.  Helping people out--which Daniel loves to do!--allows him to be competent, no small matter as he's adjusting to a new family, language, culture, and--oh, yeah--adolescence.  And having me do things for him that a mother would normally do for a much smaller child allows him to experience "growing up" in our family, which he very much wishes he could have done.  But a couple of incidents recently stand out to me.

Back in the early fall, I had bought five or six long-sleeved shirts for Daniel.  I didn't want to overbuy, since I don't know how much he will grow this year.  And at the time he was only changing his clothes every two to three days, so I thought the number of shirts I had bought would be more than enough.  But now that he has discovered the joys of a morning bath, he is changing clothes at least once a day, and if I don't keep a close eye on my laundry schedule, we are in danger of running out!  And on one particular evening, I discovered that Daniel had no clean long-sleeved shirts.  T-shirts, yes.  Sweatshirts, yes.  But nothing that would be just right for the next day's weather.  So, shortly before bedtime, I headed downstairs to start a load of laundry.  It was a nuisance, but nuisances come along with the territory when you're a parent.  So I didn't think much of it, but when I told Daniel that I was doing laundry so that he would have the right kind of shirt to wear the next day, he looked super happy and told me "thank you."  And it occurred to me that before he became part of our family, he probably wore whatever happened to be available when he got up, even if it was not quite the right weight or size or style.  (He has told me--when I asked--that in the orphanage the kids didn't have individual wardrobes; they all shared a pool of clothes, and he didn't like it because some of the kids didn't keep the clothes clean.)  So it seemed to mean a lot to Daniel that I would do extra work just so that he could wear a just-right shirt.

This thought was reinforced the next day when, without being asked, Daniel finished loading up the dishwasher, ran a load of dishes, and then put them all away.  This is a chore that he will do when requested, but I know he doesn't enjoy it.  And when I thanked him, he said, "Because I love you."

Road Trip, part I

Oh! My! Goodness!  (to quote Daniel)  I am so far behind on blogging!  I haven't even finished writing about our China trip yet, and I don't think I've devoted a single post to our fun summer activities (unless you count enrolling Daniel in school as a fun summer activity).  Nor have I managed to share much of what I've been learning about raising and older internationally adopted teenager.  Somehow, there is always something else that needs to be done.  I still have hopes of getting to those posts sometime, but I really want to write about our road trip last earlier this month before I forget all the details.

This whole road trip started because Daniel had his fourteenth birthday in China.  You see, when we adopted Esther, she became an American citizen upon going through immigration at our port of entry to the U.S., and some while later we got her certificate of citizenship in the mail.  Easy.  Daniel also became a U.S. citizen upon arrival, but instead of getting his C of C in the mail, we got a letter from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services informing us that because our child was over fourteen at the time of immigration, he had to come in person to swear an oath of renunciation and loyalty to the United States and to sign his name on his C of C.  And apparently the closest place we could do this at was Pittsburgh!  I knew from another mother-of-teens' blog that there was no way around this, so we didn't bother fighting it.  However, it would have made an incredibly loooong and stressful (what if we got stuck behind an accident and missed our appointment?) trip to get there and back in one day.  So we picked a time when Tim had a couple of  free days and just pulled Daniel out of school.  The deal was somewhat sweetened by knowing that Daniel's former orphanage roommate, adopted four and a half years earlier, lived near Pittsburgh.  So we planned to drive up on Thursday, get the boys together Thursday after school, and have Daniel's citizenship appointment on Friday morning.  At first we thought we might go on to DC before coming home, then we got in our car accident and weren't sure if we were going at all, and then we bought a long-talked-of second vehicle while we waited for our car to be fixed, and resurrected the DC trip at the very last minute.

We bought our car on a Wednesday morning.  On Wednesday afternoon, Daniel helped put gas in it and it overflowed.  On Wednesday evening, the "check engine" light went on.  So on Thursday morning, instead of helping pack for the trip, Tim took the car back to the place we had bought it from and got their help in checking out the "check engine" light.  Everyone concluded it was probably a gas sensor reacting to the previous day's overflow, and we could drive the car on a long trip without (too much) fear of being left stranded by the side of the highway.  So Tim came home and we finally got started a couple of hours later than planned.  About two and a half hours into the trip, already running late for our rendevous with Daniel's old roommate, I realized that I had not brought the printout of our appointment letter that I had so carefully set aside several days earlier...nor the original letter telling us to report to Pittsburgh...nor Daniel's Chinese passport with the immigrant visa in it that proved he was supposed to be getting his certificate of citizenship and--oh yeah--is the only form of government-issued ID that we have for him.  I thought I could reprint the appointment letter if I could just get a hold of Daniel's A-number (the number which identified him as an immigrant).  That still left several reasons that the USCIS officer could decline to process us, if they were feeling picky.  But if we turned around and went back for the documents that would not leave any time for Daniel to get together with his friend, besides adding five hours of driving to our day.  So we decided to push on to Pittsburgh and hope for the best.

We arrived at our hotel and I started getting on the internet while Tim and company unloaded the car.  A phone call to our (always helpful!) adoption agency (WACAP) yielded Daniel's A-number, though not the photocopy of his immigrant visa that I had been hoping I had sent them.  (I remember copying it, but apparently it was for something else.)  So I re-generated our appointment letter and left it up on the computer until such a time as we could print it, the hotel not having facilities for printing.  Meanwhile T and his dad arrived.  T has forgotten much of his Chinese, and at first did not seem inclined to talk at all.  Since the plan was for him to hang out with us for the evening while his parents took siblings to their activities, I was not quite sure how we were going to manage with two silent boys!  However, I had had Daniel bring some pictures from the orphanage to show his friend, and they connected over those while I finished up a few things on the computer.  Then we headed out to a hamburger place, finding out only after we had started to order that T is a vegetarian!  Oops.  At first conversation was a little awkward.  Part of the time the boys tried to talk to each other, periodically asking me for translation help, and when they weren't talking, Tim or I tried to engage T in conversation.  But as the evening went on, T and Daniel started talking more and more independently.  (I think a good bit of T's Chinese must have returned to him, since they were getting along just fine in conversation by the last hour of our time together.)  After dinner we headed out to a store to print our appointment letter, only to have T offer that we could go back to his house and print it on his computer.  So we did that.  After a while, Tim took Esther back to the hotel to sleep.  Daniel and T and I continued hanging out at T's house for another hour or so, and then T's dad drove us back to the hotel.  I found it really interesting to talk with his dad, and find out that some of Daniel's quirky habits are ones that T also had when first adopted. Daniel found it really interesting to compare notes with T on allowances (T's is bigger) and household technology (T has a laptop and an ipod!).  Daniel said to me (while trying to suppress an ornery little grin), "T's household is so xinfu.  I wish our household was this xinfu."  (I'm using the Chinese word here because xinfu doesn't seem to have an exact English equivalent.  I've read/heard it variously translated as "warm," "happy," and "authentic.")  Seeing the grin, I asked him what made T's family so xinfu.  Turns out that if you really want an authentic, warm, happy home, you need a laptop and an ipod!  Ha.

So, the next morning we got up super early, gave ourselves three times as much time as the driving directions recommended to get to our appointment, breezed through the first few miles and thought we were going to be early, crawled along in rush-hour traffic for the next few miles and thought we were going to be late, and finally arrived at the office just in time.  In order to get in we had to show adult IDs but not Daniel's (phew!).  When our name was called for the appointment, I explained the situation.  The officer asked if he could see the letter instructing us to make this appointment.  Umm, oops, forgot to bring it.  Well, then could he see Daniel's green card?  Daniel doesn't have a green card, as he is actually a citizen already, but I could have shown you his immigrant visa...except, oops, I forgot to bring that too.  I offered Daniel's A-number (or maybe the officer asked), and he thought he could find Daniel's file with that.  (Thank you, God, and kind officer!)  So after only a little delay, Daniel got to sign his certificate of citizenship (good thing he knows how to write his name in English!).  Then it was time for him to take the oath.  Although we were the only people in the large room, our officer had Daniel come up to the front podium and stand by the flag.  He had to solemnly promise: (1) to support the Constitution of the United States; (2) to renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen; (3) to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; (4) to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and (5) (A) to bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law, or (B) to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law, or (C) to perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law.  The oath, of course, was in English.  But there are some words in there (abjure? potentate?) that I'm quite confident Daniel does not know in Chinese, nor would most 14-year-old native speakers of English know them in English.  The officer asked me to translate.  Woo-hoo!  My translation went something like this: "I will help the rules of the United States.  If I was the citizen of another country in the past, I am not a citizen of that country anymore, only a citizen of the United States.  I will always help the United States and not other countries.  [I had explained to Daniel before the oath that as long as there was not a conflict of loyalties, he could help other countries as well, but the United States now had to come first.]  I will always be loyal to the United States.  If the rules of the United States tell me to be in the United States army, I will be in the United States army.  If the rules of the United States tell me to help the United States army, I will help the United States army.  If the rules of the United States tell me to do work to help the United States, I will do work to help the United States."  Thankfully, Daniel was not  asked to repeat the words in English, just to raise his right hand, listen to the officer reading the English and to my mangled translation, and then at the end say "I do."  Then the officer gave Daniel a mini U.S. flag and congratulations.  (It did not seem that there was any standard procedure for administering the oath to a non-English-speaking adoptee, but that it was up to the officer's discretion.)  Daniel had been a little nonplussed about renouncing his loyalty to China when I first explained it to him, but he seemed to be fine with taking the oath.  (And I pray he will not run into a conflict of loyalty between his two countries!)  Esther was quite envious of his flag, so the officer found one for her too.  And after another wait for (I assume) paperwork to be completed, we were handed Daniel's certificate of citizenship and we were on our way!