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.