Some Daniel vignettes

Recently Daniel had a choir concert at school.  He's lucky that we made it, since he didn't tell us till the night before!  Apparently he had brought the announcement home with him previously, but because I was involved in a serious phone conversation and didn't immediately look at the stack of papers he shoved in my face upon his entry from school, he got annoyed at me and hid the announcement about the choir show.  Stinker!  The night before the show he asked us something about "that music activity" and when we responded with confusion, he first debated with himself out loud about whether to tell us, and then went and got the piece of paper.  So we had him to the concert on time and we were all able to attend.  One of the songs he has been singing around the house for weeks...but not with recognizable English words...so I was happy to finally know what song it is.  On the chorus for that one, I swear I could pick out his individual voice from where I was sitting in the back of the auditorium!  He does so love to sing.  And we love to hear him.  He also sang a solo (in Chinese) in church again a couple weeks ago and did a good job.


I got a bit of a reality check about older child adoption the other day.  I was applying sunscreen to Daniel when he did something mildly irritating.  I scolded him, then noticed a white streak showing on his cheek and reached over to rub it in.  He kind of laughed and said, "Oh, I thought you were going to hit me across the face."  Ouch.  That reaction doesn't reflect our relationship at all, but it does reflect his history, and nothing about his life from here on out is going to change his history.  Some of that history is good, some of it not so much, but all of it is beyond our control.  And that's just the way it is.


Daniel had a couple of days off of school recently, and devoted some of his time to fixing his translator, which had not been working.  Since the translator was bought in China, this involved a call to tech support in China.  The person who was helping Daniel asked him why he was calling from America, to which he explained that the translator was from China.  Then she wanted to know why an American living in American needed a Chinese-English translator, to which he explained that he is Chinese and his English isn't very good yet. 

Then she saw his QQ (internet chat) profile picture...






which is...






wait for it...






this:

(I'm not sure I would have posed so obligingly if I'd known he'd post it on the internet!)

So then Daniel explained that he was recently adopted from China and that his QQ picture is of his American adoptive mama.  I can only wonder what the tech support person now thinks of American adoptive mamas.


I have started reading Dick and Jane books with Daniel as part of he reading instruction.  This past Saturday I wrote an extra story Dick-and-Jane-esque story for him:

"Look, Mother look!  Come see funny Daniel and funny Esther!  Daniel and Esther can run and jump.  Little Esther can jump a little jump.  Big Daniel can jump a big jump.  Can Father jump?  No, Father must do something.  Father must work.  Father must make a test to give his students."

True story!  :-)