My little boy is growing up!

Actually, both my "little" boys are growing up, but the one who gave me a twinge of nostalgia recently is Daniel.

Last month we were down in West Virginia trying to accomplish more cleaning and organizing of our house (which we still haven't sold).  Daniel proposed, somewhat off-handedly, that he would like to stay behind in the house when the rest of us went back to Ohio and see how he felt about living alone.  I started thinking aloud about how it could be accomplished...and much to my surprise, the suggestion started becoming a plan. 

It really was a good idea.  Daniel got to spend more time with his WV friends, and finished off some cleaning tasks that we hadn't had time to get to before we left.  After three days of "living alone" he took the train up to Kentucky, spent the night at my grandmother's house, and helped her with some tasks at her house before we arrived that afternoon to pick him up and take him home with us.  It was nothing extraordinary for a nineteen-year-old to do.

vlogging his ride over the Ohio State Fair

Except.  This is the nineteen-year-old who, just five years ago, followed me everywhere like a shadow.  He would even sit outside the bathroom door demanding a blow-by-blow account of what I was doing inside.  This is the nineteen-year-old who, even a couple of years ago, had to be convinced to go to a friend's birthday party.  This is the nineteen-year-old who had never spent the night away from us since the day we met, not even to sleep at Grandma's house while we stayed in a nearby hotel.  So spending three nights on his own--even with friends' families inviting him over for dinner and generally keeping him company--was a developmental leap.

In adoption circles, many people use the term "family age," meaning how long a child has been in their new family.  When a child is born into a family, they go through well-described developmental stages in their relationship to their parents.  In infancy, they learn that adults can be trusted to meet their needs.  Then they learn to distinguish themselves from their parents and assert their own point of view, always returning to their trusted parents as a safe base for exploration.  And so on.  When a child joins a new family, it makes sense to think that they will need to go through all these same stages, at least in an abbreviated fashion, in order to arrive at a secure bond of a type appropriate for their chronological age.  Thinking of a child's behavior in terms of their "family age" can make sense of otherwise mystifying "immaturity."  Maybe when a newly adopted teenager wants to be with you all.day.long they're not showing a deplorable lack of independence but rather diligently working their way through the infant stage of the relationship.  And maybe the most helpful response is not to tell them to go entertain themselves (although that can be helpful if it preserves parental sanity!) but to playfully fold them up along with the clean laundry they just sat in, or to indulge their desire to have you pick out their clothes for them every day.  At any rate, I have found the idea of "family age" helpful in increasing my patience with behaviors that don't match my expectations for a child's chronological age, or deciding whether or not to push participation in activities that would be typical for same-age peers, or even thinking through what kinds of discipline might work.

Daniel at age 14, hovering

And now?  Now I don't have to think about family age so often.  Our young man is, for the most part, a typical young man, working through the age-appropriate task of becoming independent.  And, like most parents, I find myself looking back with just a twinge of nostalgia.  He may not have done it on the usual time table, but my little boy is really, truly growing up.

8 years of Esther!

Yesterday was Esther's 8th Family Day.  What a blessing the last eight years with her have been!  We love this girl to the moon and back.

This year we are celebrating in two parts.  This week happened to be the dates we were providing respite care for a classmate (and good friend) of Esther's who is in foster care, so we are postponing our big family activity until next week during our open house.  But Tim and I and Joel went to Esther's school to eat lunch with her.  She always asks for bacon on her Family Day, so we brought bacon and tomato sandwiches.  Then in the afternoon we got out the slip 'n slide, which Esther has been begging to use for a few weeks now, and I watched the girls and Joel play in the water.

The day was not all roses, though.  After the school lunch, a kid from another class asked Esther (about us), "Who were they?"  It left her feeling really bad that we don't look like we match.

Actually, this has been a big year for her processing her history and her feelings about it.  When it became clear that this was something she was thinking about a lot, I read Kids Like Me in China with her and we watched Somewhere Between together.  She was intrigued that one of the girls in the documentary was able to track down her birth family and that it was a positive experience.  I really hope we can get our family back to China in the next few years, before Daniel is working full-time and before Esther becomes a teenager and has to deal with all the standard adolescent emotional tasks in addition to integrating her history with her present life.

But that is something to work on another day.

In the meantime, Esther is still our precious Esther.  She's sweet--and often sassy!  She laughs at the drop of a hat.  She lets her baby brother play with her beloved blankie...sometimes.  She doesn't like to sit still.  She does like to tease, especially her brothers.  She is physically daring, but dreads insects and public speaking.  She still isn't a fan of dresses and skirts, but she loves nothing better than to be wearing high-heeled shoes, fake fingernails, and a fancy hairdo.  She has an amazing fashion sense.  She loves books as much as I did in my bookworm youth, but instead of reading them she listens to them.  If she's not actually having a conversation with somebody, she's likely to be found carrying a listening device around with her.  I think her favorite books are the Allie Finkle series, but she enjoys a wide variety.  She recently finished Sign of the Beaver and said it was really good.  She likes to make things (like a dollhouse out of a cardboard box) and to do art.  She loves Jesus.

And we feel blessed beyond measure to get to watch her grow up.

How we spent our summer vacation, Part I

I just looked back at my (few and far between!) blogs from since Joel was born to see if I had said anything about Princess and Little Guy, our two-time foster children.  I found that I hadn't written about them, but in fact, one of the pleasures of our life post-Joel has been our ongoing relationship with those two.  After they went home for good, just a week before Joel was born, their mom was open to us continuing to see them.  In fact, they spent a couple of nights at our house when their own baby brother was born a couple of months after Joel.

Eventually we got our paperwork and training done for the mentoring program run by our foster-adoption agency and were officially signed up as their mentors.  We saw them several times a month for fun activities: a trip to the playground, our library's lifesize Candyland game, our church's trunk-or-treat, or just eating and playing together at our house.  It was the ultimate happy medium: we got to keep our relationship with them, but without the level of work and stress involved in integrating two more children into our household.  And they got to have their mommy back, but still have us around like a favorite aunt and uncle to enjoy them and cheer them on in life.  There were a few bumps in the road, of course.  Their mom changed her phone number pretty often and without warning, so then if we wanted to set up a time to see them we had to stop by their house in person and hope that someone was home.  And I was dubious about her new boyfriend, but as time passed and I witnessed him competently caring for the baby and adding needed structure to the household, I started to be more hopeful that she had finally found a winner.

So all was well, except that from time to time I would observe some little bit of information that didn't quite feel right.  For example, one day when we were dropping the kids off after an activity, Princess called me back to their bedroom to show me something and I saw that their bunk beds, bought new shortly before they moved back home, were gone.  It looked like the kids had been sleeping in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor.  Mind you, there was nothing abusive or neglectful about that; it looked cozy and warm.  But I wondered what had happened to the beds and why.  Then in February we had a weird incident when we took them to a Valentine's Day party and their mom stayed in the bathroom the whole time I was there picking them up and dropping them off.  I know she is a private person so I hoped she just didn't feel up to socializing that day, but I worried whether she was hiding something, and what it might be.  And then the weather got bad and Tim was extra busy with work and their mom changed her phone number again and they weren't home when we finally made time to drop by...and weeks went by without us seeing or talking to them.  And when we stopped by their house a second time, they still weren't home and everything on the front porch looked the same way I had remembered it looking a few days ago, as if no-one had been there in the interim.  Even Little Guy's toy plane was lying at the same angle on the steps.

It was a really scary feeling wondering if they had moved and whether they were in a bad situation and whether we would ever see them again.

After worrying and driving myself crazy, I finally made an effort to pray and put them in God's hands each time I started thinking about them, instead of endlessly turning over in my mind what could be going on.  That helped, but I was vastly relieved when we stopped by their house a third time and they were home. 

Everything seemed normal.  Princess had a few not-so-great stories to tell, the next time we took her to a park, about things that had happened while we were out of touch, but it was all behind them now.  And then one evening in the spring, just as we were putting Esther to bed, we got a call from a stranger.  He was, it transpired, friends with the kids' mom and grandma, and he had happened to stop by their house just as a situation was unfolding that required somebody else to take care of the kids for a time.  He had brought all three back to his house, but he was also caring for an elderly uncle and didn't see how he could manage three children as well.  He could take the baby, he thought, but could we manage the other two?  It would just be for a couple of days.

So they came to stay with us for a couple of days, which turned into a week.  I didn't even attempt to do school with Esther that week, given how busy I was with Joel and Little Guy.  Princess's school, meanwhile, gave us fits.  First we realized that, although we could drop her off at school (or could have if it didn't interfere with Tim's work schedule), we couldn't legally pick her up because we weren't on her emergency card and her mom wasn't available to give her permission.  This is where having a good agency is priceless!  The head of our foster-adopt-mentoring agency called the school and got permission for agency staff to pick Princess up.  Then our mentoring team coordinator, who was in the throes of planning two major special events at the time, heroically showed up early every morning to take Princess to school, and went and retrieved her in the afternoons.  So that solved that problem, but then we had issues with Princess's homework, because her backpack was at home and she had no way of getting in to get it, so she was going to lose points for being unable to complete her reading assignments.  A note to her teacher solved that problem after a day or two, and she brought home an extra reading book that she could do her assignments in.  To cap it all off, Tim had a conference planned that week.  He did go, and the kids and I did fine with a lot of help from Daniel, but Tim cut out a planned and much-looked-forward-to visit with dear friends who lived near the conference in order to get home to us more quickly.  So it was a crazy week!  We were happy when the kids' mom's situation resolved and they were able to go back home.

So then things went back to normal again...except for the occasional unsettling blip like the text message from the kids' mom worrying that they might have to go into foster care again and asking if we would please take them if they did because she didn't want them to go to strangers.  And then one night in June, just after our trip to my grandma's house for Daniel's family day, the drama resumed. 

It started with a doorbell ring.  I was back in my bedroom putting Joel to bed, and Tim and the kids were at church.  I made it to the edge of the living room in time to see the back of someone I didn't recognize heading towards a van I didn't recognize, so I figured it wasn't important enough to run to the door, and I went back and finished getting Joel to sleep.  Then the phone rang.  This time it was Tim.  When he had come out of church, he had been greeted by Princess's paternal grandmother, who had all three kids with her.  She, it turned out, had been the unfamiliar driver of the unfamiliar van.  And once again, the kids needed a place to stay, this time all three of them.  She would have liked to do it herself, she said, but she was already raising six grandkids.  Well, we could understand that!  So we agreed, but told her that we would be calling their social worker in the morning.  If this was going to be longer term, we wanted the protection and support of a formal foster care arrangement, and we also felt that someone really needed to know if the kids were going to be constantly left in a crisis.

And that is how we began our summer as a family of eight.

There's a For Sale sign in our yard!

To explain why, I have to back up about a year and a half.

Last year was Tim's tenure year.  (Well, technically this year is his tenure year, but he elected to be evaluated a year early.)  If you're not part of a university community, let me assure you: tenure is a Big Deal.  Up until that point, a professor's career progresses through something like a funnel.  He (or she, but since I'm writing about a he I'll call our Everyprofessor a he as well) graduates from college.  He decides to continue his education, while some of his fellow graduates take other paths.  This is the entrance to the funnel.  He gets accepted to a Ph.D. program.  He passes his qualifying exams.  He researches, writes, and successfully defends his dissertation.  At each step, the funnel narrows a little more.  He hits the neck of the funnel when, unlike many equally talented and hardworking peers, he achieves a job offer as a tenure-track university professor.  And then, after having several years to prove his value to the university, he is evaluated for tenure.  If he makes it, he has Arrived.  Not that there aren't career goals after that, but they are individually chosen.  Tenure is the final seal of approval on Everyprofessor's identity.  A professor he truly is, and a professor he will likely remain for the rest of his life.

So, as Tim prepared for his tenure evaluation, he naturally did some thinking about his future.  He thought about what would happen if he didn't make tenure--where else would he apply to teach, or would he look into changing careers entirely?  And he thought about what would happen if he did make tenure--was this really his calling, the thing he was supposed to do for the rest of his life?  Thinking led to dreaming led to exploring...and last February we traveled to Columbus, OH for Tim to interview for a position working with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship's Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Ohio State University. (He was ultimately offered the job and accepted, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it!)

Tim's new position will have him mentoring graduate students.  It pulls together strands from so many areas of his life up until now: his educational and work experience, his love of studying and teaching the Bible (including some seminary classes, which he took years ago in case God would ever call him into ministry), and even his two years living and working in China (a large percentage of the graduate students in the fellowship are foreign students).  It feels like this is what he's been preparing to do all along.  It is still scary to walk away from a career that he has spent so many years investing in, not to mention walking away from a salary into a job where he will have to raise his own support, but we are excited about what is to come!

So, we have a For Sale sign in the yard.  This is the first house we ever owned, and our five and a half years here hold many milestones and memories.  This is where two of our children joined our family.  This is where the morning sun streaming through our living room windows makes the wood floor glow.  This is where we've hosted family and friends, and the home base from which we made the short(ish) drive to spend precious visits with my grandmother.  This is where the hill in the backyard that is such a pain to take care of in the summer becomes a sledding paradise with every snow.  This is where we've loved three children who didn't stay with us, and seen the human complexity of poverty and generational dysfunction.  This house has been a blessing, and we are so thankful for our time here! 

Columbus will be good, too (and still close to my grandmother!), but it will likely be a very different kind of good.  We are very excited to once again be living in a place with some diversity.  Daniel can't wait for a good city bus system that will give him access to shopping, especially for electronics.  It will also give him more options for getting a job, something he would very much like to do.  Esther has already become a die-hard fan of OSU.  When we were in Columbus for the interview, my great uncle (yes, I have family in Columbus!  And Tim has roots there as well!) taught her the O-H-I-O cheer.  She and Tim watch all the football games on TV, and she drew him this Brutus Buckeye from memory.  She also harbors dreams of running into gymnast Gabby Douglas, who now trains in Columbus.

Right now, the plan calls for us to move in early summer.  Tim has already informed his university that he won't be returning in the fall, and it's unlikely they'll be offering summer classes in his subjects, so we just need to wait for the kids to get out of school and for the house to sell.  The housing market is terrible here, so that is a matter for much prayer!  Tim does not have all his support raised yet and probably won't until after we move and he has the chance to meet more people who consider OSU's graduate students part of "their" ministry field that they want to invest in.  So we are thinking that he will go part-time at first and also take care of Joel a lot so that I can work full or part time (not sure which we want yet!) and bring in the rest of the income that we need.  I am part-way through the process of getting licensed as an Ohio public school teacher, with accreditation in teaching English and Language Arts and English to Speakers of Other Languages.  I've always loved teaching English, and my experiences with my own kids have taught me a thing or two about how the system works (or doesn't) for unusual learners.  So there are some exciting changes in store for me too.

Happy 4th Family Day, Daniel!

(Note: I wrote this a couple of months ago, but the essay I wanted to include wasn't at my fingertips, and life was so crazy I never got around to posting until today!)

June 13 was Daniel's fourth Family Day.  Wow, we have come a long way in the last four years!  For his Family Day, Daniel chose a weekend visit to my grandmother to attend the family reunion of my grandfather's family (and, perhaps not so incidentally, so he could fix her antique record player with a part that had been ordered by mail since our last visit).  Unfortunately, Daniel got sick on the 13th and ended up spending much of the day in bed.  He attended the reunion briefly, thinking that he was on the mend, and then felt worse again and had to be run home.  He was especially disappointed that he wasn't able to stomach the delicious chicken and noodles dish that is one family's traditional contribution.  (Joel, who was feeling just fine, chowed down on said dish.  He also polished off most of my pickled beets.)

By the next day Daniel was feeling better and was able to enjoy a very long side trip to Best Buy on the way home, where he carefully considered several different potential birthday presents, but in the end purchased none of them.  Tim and I replaced our beloved point-and-shoot, which had recently met an untimely end when it slipped out of Tim's hands as he was photographing kids on a carnival ride.

In honor of Daniel's family day, I'd like to share (with his permission) an article he wrote in his ESL class this spring.  As he has gotten enough experience in American culture and family life to look back on his first fourteen years from a different perspective, he has become interested in sharing his life experiences with others who might find them useful.  So, here is Daniel's first autobiography:

I went to the orphanage on June 20, 1997.  I was one month old.  The orphanage was in Shandong China.  There were upwards of 300 children there.  My first memories come from 2003, when I joined a group of disabled people who were learning to sing, dance, and do comedy to perform publicly in our town of Jinan, in Shandong Province.  I sang, which was a big step for me.  I entertained in plays and with songs for 10 years, competing with others throughout Jinan.  I received honorable mention. 

The staff included many kind people who gave their time to kids unselfishly, but other staff were just interested in their pay, not in us.  Unmotivated staff just sat and watched sad, scared kids.  They were deaf to tears and crying.  They disciplined kids harshly; maybe, for example, putting them into a dark room until the child stopped crying.

I was given the name of Fu Huang when I entered the orphanage.  “Fu” was the last name of every orphan.  “Huang” means yellow.  No thought was put into this name.

Breakfast in the orphanage consisted of eggs, milk, and a starch every day without variation.  Lunch was the main meal of the day.  This was meant to impress the administration, which took the noonday meal with us each day.  For dinner, we had soup and vegetables.  Often our food was overcooked and tasteless. 

On weekends the menu was about the same, except more poorly cooked.  On Sundays, rice was serve with tomato and egg soup.

School starts in the orphanage at age three.  School is in the orphanage until age 6.  At age 3 the curriculum consists of potty training and learning to walk.  Four and five year olds learn counting numbers and basic words.  Six year olds continue to learn more difficult words and numbers.  They also learn classroom behavior.  At age 7, students go to public school.  Here are a variety of schools available.  I attended a general disability school which minimized academic challenge.  For example, I didn't learn about adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers until I came to America in seventh grade.  Until then, all we did was to count to higher and higher numbers.  I did get to continue to sing in school.

No religion was allowed in the orphanage, so in China I knew nothing about God.  When I came to America, I heard about Jesus from my parents. 

The orphanage financed itself by private individual donations.  Toys were purchased, but they were not for us to use.  They were stored in the storage room.  Because the staff was not always motivated, we learned self reliance and self awareness.  We made our own beds, cleaned our rooms, etc.

In the orphanage the schedule was fixed and inflexible.  In America, we have more freedom and flexibility.  For example, in the orphanage, lights were out at 9:00 every night.  All three meals were served at specific hours.  Chinese orphans have to eat all the food on their plate.  Even though the orphanage was a hard place to live,  it is much better than living on the street without food or clothes and shelter. 

I am happy I had the orphanage and I am also happy to be adopted out of there and taken to America.

I have vision problems.  I can see things that are very near, but I can't see far away.  People tell me, “You can't drive or fix electronic things very well.”  These people can't stop me from going farther.  If I cannot drive, I will still get where I have to go.  It might take longer, but I will get there, and I will be able to see more along the way if I walk.  I also find that I can repair simple electric items.  Again, it takes more time at first, but practice makes perfect.  Behind every cloud is a silver lining.  I always look for the silver lining.  Do you look for the silver lining when you see others?  With work anyone can reach his potential.  I believe that if I continue to work steadily, opportunities and unexpected joys will come.

School's out!

School is over for the year!  If you were in our town a few days ago, you might have heard us coming home from Daniel's final final exam at the high school--we were the ones in that worse-for-wear silver Camry with the windows open and the music blasting and an excited teenager in the front seat yelling, "No more school!  No more principal!"  (And then there's this: the music that we were inflicting on everyone within earshot was the Chris Tomlin version of Amazing Grace--does playing quality music cancel out the obnoxiousness of playing it too loud?)  I wonder if we raised any eyebrows as we went along.

But now we are home (everyone except Tim, who has research obligations this summer), and we are all enjoying the change of pace.  I think this is the first actually peaceful summer I've had in four years.  The first two summers Daniel was home, life could become a wild ride with little warning.  And last summer at this time I had two extra kids (who, at one point, we thought we were going to be asked to adopt) AND was very pregnant.  Not a recipe for relaxation.  So, this year, I am enjoying getting caught up on mending and hand-wash and cleaning and other projects around the house.  I can be out of earshot of the two older kids without worrying that they'll be at each other's throats by the time I return, and I can trust both of them with Joel.  I don't feel like I have to be on guard all the time, hoping for good but ready to respond to bad before it escalates out of control.  It's a good feeling.  There is definitely a time for taking on challenges and being stretched, but there can also be a time for consolidating the gains of those stretching times, and I think that we're in one of those right now.

Esther's 7th Family Day!

(On a side note, it is hard to believe that Tim and I have only been parents for seven years!  It feels like we've crammed a lot of parenting into that time, from a newborn to a teen, and up to four kids at once.  But this post is about Esther, not us, so on to the Star!)

Today is Esther's big day!  We will have to postpone her chosen special family activity (swimming again) until the weekend, but the new bathing suit is purchased, Tim made bacon for breakfast this morning and left her a special note, and she is in a happy, cooperative mood even though we're going back to a regular schoolday after several days out of routine at the end of last week.

Here is a snapshot of our no-longer-quite-so-little Star:

Age:  Seven

Likes:  sports, TV (especially Odd Squad and Stampy's Let's Play Adventure Maps), science, history, gymnastics, Minecraft, Frozen, playing jokes, fruit, friends, having an audience, high-heeled shoes

Dislikes:  wearing dresses; any clothes with ruffles, tight necks, or pleated sleeves; having to wait until mealtime to eat; math and reading (most of the time); being annoyed by Daniel

Favorite activities: practicing gymnastics (especially if she has an audience), playing with Daddy (they may be found with a board game or chemistry set, playing the wii, playing tag inside, or riding bikes or playing basketball outside), watching sports on TV (golf, football, hockey...she loves them all!), aggravating Daniel, listening to audio books (or better yet, being read to by a parent), playing Minecraft, playing pretend

Friends:  Her current BFF is Sarah from gymnastics.  At church, she most enjoys palling around with Katie and Emma, but also has fun with Victoria and Chad.  Princess is still her sister-at-heart--which means Esther sometimes longs to get together with her and sometimes would rather not!

Personality:  Esther at this age is a fascinating combination of feisty and insecure.  She still makes friends easily, with people of all ages, but she tells us that she's never going to marry because she wants to live with us forever.  She is outspoken, but she gets extremely nervous about talking in front of people.  We did the social studies fair again this year with our homeschool group (she portrayed Gabby Douglas) and she was proud of herself for "pushing through" her anxiety about it.  She is responsible enough to watch Joel while I'm in the shower, but she still sleeps with her beloved green blankie and wants us to pick her "uppy."  Some things that haven't changed: her curiosity, her powers of observation, her creativity, her energy level, and her sense of humor.  Earlier today she was laughing at almost nothing, and got so tickled that she fell over.  We love that girl's laugh!

We are so wonderfully blessed by this child that the Lord has entrusted to us.  We are proud of who she is growing to be, and can't wait to see what the next years bring.  Happy Family Day, Esther Si Di!

Tidbits

Daniel has been hanging out with girls again.

Esther approves of her new Elsa dress that she bought with her Christmas money...

 

...although apparently the cold does bother her (anyway).  (And if that didn't make any sense, it's because it's a reference to the movie.)

 

Joel approves of refried beans.

He also likes Daniel's new method for letting him practice sitting up when no-one is available to sit behind him in case he topples over.

Big kid update

So, what are the big kids busy with while we all adjust to life with a new baby?

Well, school, for one thing.  Esther is plugging along in reading and math, in between me changing Joel's diapers and lying down with him for his afternoon nap.  Her favorite class is U.S. history.  I am mostly reading historical fiction aloud to her (while Joel nurses and naps), with an occasional non-fiction book thrown in to cement her learning.  We love our library!  Daniel is in a computer systems networking and repair class at the vocational school next to the high school (but it is a high school class and he gets a high school credit for it), and he is loving it!  He gets some extra assistance, but at the end of the day he is expected to know and do all the same things as the other students--and he is getting an A!  We are very proud of him.

Daniel decided not to join Key Club again this year.  He loves volunteering, but he did not like being accountable to anyone for his hours.  So he does not have any regular extracurricular activities.  Sometimes that means he hangs out at home for days on end, doing projects, or, when he runs out of projects, watching long hours of Youtube, finding things he wants to own, buying them on Amazon, trying them out with great anticipation only to find out that they don't work as well as advertised, trouble-shooting on the phone with customer service, and ultimately (usually) sending them back.  In the course of many conversations with customer support he has learned how to spell things out over the phone, but he sometimes does so with a Daniel twist.  My two favorites that I have overheard are "I as in instagram" and "Q as in cute."  Other times he'll find some project outside the house which he throws himself into 100% for a time.  For example, he spent several weeks practically living at his best friend's house while he helped her father do home improvements and prepare for a yard sale.  Then he stopped and didn't go over for weeks. One weekend he spent many hours over at church helping with a fundraising bazaar.

Then in November he was the keynote speaker for an adoption celebration event!  He did a fabulous job sharing some of his story and how his life experiences have influenced the person he is turning out to be.  He had the audience touched, entertained, and thinking.  Then he capped it off by performing one of the songs that had been written for him to sing when he was in his orphanage.  The title roughly translates to "Star, bring me home," and it portrays a child longing to be united with a family.  Several of us agreed afterwards that he has career potential as a motivational speaker!  If you are interested in watching his speech, here is the link to the video.  It is 24 minutes long.  He omitted some of the grittier details of his life, but I think the tone was very appropriate for the occasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggbsqa167Nk&list=UUtNFoANZyRvWcwmnt2WN84g

Esther has been thinking about how being adopted into a family is different from being born into it.  One day she remarked to me thoughtfully, "You're not my real mother."  And more than once she has told me (but with a sneaky little grin) that she feels like a kid who was born into a family can't be sent away but a child who was adopted into it could be.  I suspect she just wants to hear my answer again: "Nope, once you're adopted you're legally part of the family the same as if you were born into it.  You and Joel are both stuck with us for the rest of your lives."  To which she responds, grinning bigger, "Aw, poopy butt!"

One day Daniel asked me where something was.  I had no idea, so I answered, "Somewhere."  He responded by singing "Somewheeeeeeere over the rainbow...".  How American!

Esther continues to work hard at gymnastics.  She is now attending class five hours a week and is competing as part of the rhythmic gymnastics team at Level 3 (the lowest competitive level).  Here is the link to her rope routine:

http://youtu.be/k_xrwnUGriU

 

And here she is receiving her award for competing.

Daniel has a girlfriend!  He told me initially that she was his "school girlfriend," and in fact they rarely do anything together outside of school.  But at his choir concert I overheard another student refer to her as his girlfriend, so it must be at least somewhat official.  He has been over to her house a couple of times.  This was the result the first time:

And as for the second time...let's just say that the rosy glow on his head in this picture is not just a reflection from the Christmas lights.  Nope, his hair is currently pale pink!

And those are some highlights of the last six months for the big kids.

Three months

Our sweet Joel boy is three months old today!  He sure has changed a lot in the past two months. 

His second month was all about communication.  He went from occasionally cooing and smiling to very deliberately catching someone's eye (especially mine) and grinning all over his face and cooing at them in an attempt to start a "conversation."  And he does love an audience.  A couple of weeks ago I had taken him out of our small group at church because he was fussing, and I was holding him in the lobby when one of the other groups got out.  Four or five ladies converged on us to make much of him, and pretty soon he was wreathed in smiles and cooing back at them.  I'm sure his grandparents will be pleased to know that I checked the baby books and he is a precocious cooer!  He is already producing sounds that 90% of babies his age haven't mastered yet.  However, lest I get big-headed, most babies are laughing by three months, and Joel didn't laugh for the first time until two days ago.  The cardboard sign Esther had laid on his tummy ("To Mommy Frum Esther") fell into his mouth and apparently he found that funny?  Meanwhile, Tim's and my attempts to tickle him under his chin or blow raspberries on his tummy are met with blank stares.  I guess we're just not as entertaining as his sister! 

During Joel's second month, he also confirmed his suspicions that people pay attention when he cries and try to fix whatever is wrong.  So now whenever he is wet, or hungry, or tired, or just wants to be picked up...we get to hear alllll about it!  Although he can't figure out why I don't rescue him from his car seat.  He will stare me in the eye while wailing, as if to say, "It's your job to fix this!  How come you aren't getting the message that I need OUT?!?"  Interestingly, his cries became less specific during his second month.  When he was a newborn we could always tell when he was hungry.  First he would bob his head against the chest of whoever was holding him (earning him the nickname "red-headed woodpecker" from Tim), or turn his head and mouth their arm.  Then if he progressed to crying, it would be a soft "eh-eh-eh" cry, progressing to a louder "unh-unh" cry and only then to a flat-out wail.  But now when he is hungry he just fusses or cries and sometimes it takes some trial and error to realize that he wants to be fed.

We went through a period in his second month where he was really fussy almost every late afternoon and evening.  While waiting for his two-month doctor appointment, Esther and I made up the following song (to the tune of "Starship" by Nicki Minaj which, no, I don't encourage my children to listen to): "Babies were made to cry, they fuss and fuss and you don't know why.  Check their diaper to see if it's dry, but don't stick a diaper pin in their thigh."  It wasn't colic, because we could usually calm him down with a change of scenery or endless carrying.  And I didn't think he had any dire health problems, since he was always happy in the mornings.  But it was rather worrisome, not to mention a nuisance.  Finally, we figured out the cause: he wasn't getting enough sleep!  I had always thought that little babies automatically fell asleep when they were tired.  Well, not this one!  He has always been a good sleeper at night (usually), but he can't seem to stay asleep during the day unless someone is holding him or lying down next to him.  So I started making it a priority to get him to stay asleep for naps, and since then we have had a much happier baby.

If Joel's second month was about communication, his third month was about expanding horizons.  He learned how to get his fingers in his mouth on purpose, and started interacting with toys.  He spent even more time than before people-watching, and we noticed that he seemed to be able to see people and objects from farther away.  He will now make eye contact and smile at me from four or five feet away, and one day when my family were visiting recently he was tracking my brother (who was wearing a brightly colored shirt) walk across the yard from at least thirty feet away.   With all these new things to learn and do, maybe it's not too surprising that he's not a fan of sleep!

And speaking of sleep, I had better start my own sleep for the night so I can be ready for my first wake-up call from a hungry baby.  Hopefully as life starts to feel a little more sane I'll be able to write an update on Daniel and Esther too.  They aren't changing quite as fast as their little brother, but they still have interesting things going on in their lives.  'Til then...

One month

Joel is one month old today!  And as I told Tim this morning, you know your expectations have changed when a total of seven and a half hours of sleep spread out over four separate installments feels like being rested!  But we are slowly settling in with our newest family member.

We have a night-time routine, sort of.  Bedtime is at approximately nine; Joel wakes up twice during the night for about an hour each time (he's a slow eater!), and then is up for the day at six-ish, though it can be later or can be as early as five.  Daytime is more spontaneous.  But we can count on Joel to nurse frequently while he is awake (some days it feels like that's all we do!), to have one or two stretches of deep sleep plus lots of catnaps, to have a period of contented alertness in the morning, and often to have a period of fussiness in the afternoon.

I have gotten a few smiles, real ones directed at me, not just the little sleep smiles that we saw when he was a newborn.  They light up his whole face!  He also coos when he is content and not eating.  His head doesn't bobble quite so much now when I carry him, and he likes to gaze at faces.  What he does not like is to be put down by himself.  Now he won't even sleep alone for a nap.  No matter how deeply asleep he may be when I put him down, as soon as he reaches his next period of light sleep he realizes that he is by himself and wakes up.  So much for my vision of teaching Esther during his long afternoon nap.  Instead, we do most of our lessons with me sitting on the floor next to her nursing him (a firm pillow helps a lot here, as it frees up my hands!), or with him sleeping on my chest.  And somewhat to my surprise, it has been working out really well!  We've done two days of second grade so far, and we were able to accomplish my goals for the day both times.  I was congratulating myself on how well we've adapted...and then Esther reminded me that in a few months he will be mobile.  Sigh.  This school year is going to be a test of everyone's flexibility!

The most amazing thing about Joel at this age is that he can make predictions about my behaviour, and he trusts me.   If he is hungry and I take him to the chair I usually nurse him in, he will often stop crying and wait hopefully while I get my clothes adjusted.  It boggles my mind that he trusts me so much to give him what he needs that he can stop crying from the need and instead act as if it has already been met.  (And, oh, he is so cute while he waits!  His eyes get big, his mouth makes a little 'O,' and he gazes at me with rapt attention and the most hopeful expression you can imagine--it's hilarious and adorable.)

Speaking of hilarious, Esther has produced some good quotes in the last month.  She has always been prone to spoonerisms (e.g. saying dullbozer for bulldozer).  (One time we were carrying trays in McDonalds and she suddenly stopped and announced, as one discovering a catastrophe, "Mommy, we forgot the check-up!"  I was racking my brains to think what doctor's appointment we might have missed when it suddenly occurred to me that we had neglected to pick up any ketchup.)  Lately she has added malapropisms to her repertoire.  The first time she saw Joel, she exclaimed, "He has dimples [pimples] on his nose!  He looks like a fruit!"  A few days later we had to take him back to the hospital lab for a blood draw and he was getting fussy.  She suggested, "Mommy, you should juggle him to calm him down."  (She meant jiggle.)  Then there was the Sunday that she asked me if I had had to milk Joel during church.

On the whole, Esther is adjusting well to sharing me with her new brother.  She complains some that he is getting more attention than she is, and in an attempt to claim her fair share of the attention she likes to hang around while I'm feeding him and ask me continuously to "Watch this!"--"this" usually being some gymnastics move that is not ideally suited to being performed in my bedroom.  She has also indulged in a little baby talk, but less than I might have expected.  On the other hand, she clearly adores her baby brother, and is always asking if she can hold him or play with him.  She can be very helpful entertaining him for a few minutes when I need two hands to get something done.

Daniel, too, has risen to the occasion.  He has actually been consistently polite to me for the past month!  And he has had a wonderful attitude about helping out when asked.  He also is good at holding and entertaining his baby brother.  I don't think he's been quite sure what to do with the time and energy he would normally spend aggravating me, so instead he's been watching way too much Youtube.  (He has, at least, learned some things from all the videos.)  Today I nursed Joel in the living room and Daniel sat on the couch with me and we talked and looked at some videos together.  I had to remind him a few times about appropriate comments and touch, but it felt good to spend normal time together.  Hopefully we will have more and more such times as we get adjusted to our "new normal" as a family.

Introducing...

Joel David, our precious (and unexpected!) gift from God!  

Joel arrived on July 9 at 11:34 PM, 6 pounds and 13 ounces and twenty and a half inches long.

 

Joel's siblings approve of him, for the most part.  Esther decided yesterday to start a journal about him.  She titled it the "Joel Love Book," and her first entry read, "He is cute and a little bit annoying but I love him."  Daniel has gotten some great pictures (of course!).  Both kids have enjoyed playing with him, though I'm sure both of them wish I spent less time feeding him and more time doing things with them!

And, of course, Tim and I are in love.  Tim has dubbed him "Joel Joy."  So far he is a contented baby who spends much of his awake time looking quietly around and only cries if he is hungry, getting his diaper changed, or doesn't feel good...or if we try to lay him down!  Daniel commented today on how much less he cries than the babies in the orphanage, and I pointed out that they were not held all the time like Joel is.  After two adoptions, it is poignant to experience "Attachment, Plan A" with this child.  Even in his first few hours of life Joel seemed to know the difference between me and others.  He could be fussing or upset from some procedure that had been done on him, but he would calm down immediately when he was given back to me, and was content to just lie next to me.  I'm used to having to earn that kind of trust from my children.  (Well, I suppose carrying him around inside me for nine months counts towards earning trust, but it feels like I just met him.)  And I was surprised how comfortable I felt handling him.  I've always felt awkward with other people's newborns and I expected to feel the same with my own, but I feel very much at ease with him.  It's hard to imagine that instinctive bond being broken for Daniel and Esther when they were just around Joel's age.  Whoever described adoption as "a redemptive response to a tragedy" had it right.

But meanwhile, I'm thankful that it is within our ability to love and care for this little one.  And we are treasuring his newborn-baby-ness: his expressive little face (especially a certain ferocious pout), the way he smiles secretly in his sleep when he has a full tummy, the way he grunts and squirms his way over to one of us and snuggles right into our side to sleep if we lay him down on our bed, the way he lies quietly and looks all around.  We are blessed!

Happy Family Day, Esther

So, um, yeah...today is not actually Esther's Family Day.  In fact, it happened back in April!  But she deserves her own post, and late is better than never.

Her choice of family fun activity this year, as last year, was swimming at an indoor pool.  We gave her the option of doing it with just our family or of going at a time when Princess and Little Guy were with us.  She thought about it, and decided that she could get more parental attention if Princess and Little Guy were not there.  So we went swimming at a time when they had a Mommy visit.  It made our swimming time a little shorter than it might have been, but we all had fun.  (Personally, I really enjoyed the feeling of having my belly buoyed up by the water instead of being pulled down by gravity!  And the kids enjoyed that I could give them piggy-back rides in the pool, which I had not felt up to doing in the air for some months.)  You can tell from the pictures what Esther thought about her swimming time:

And Daniel continues to make progress in his swimming skills!

On our way home, Esther requested that we eat dinner out as part of her Family Day celebration.  So after we were reunited with Princess and Little Guy, we went out to Bob Evans (her choice).  All the kids enjoyed that!

On a sweet side note, Esther's prayers recently have frequently featured thankfulness that she has a mommy and a daddy.  I don't know if Princess and Little Guy's situation has made her think more about family or whether it's due to our impending baby or to something else entirely, but it's definitely a topic that has been on her mind.  The other day she was praying before bed and thanked God specifically that she was adopted by us because "otherwise I might not have known this family."  Her thankfulness doesn't negate the fact that she was denied growing up in her first family, and she has the right to feel about that however she wishes as she continues to understand it better, but for now I'm glad that she's glad to be in our family.  We are sure glad that we get to know her and love her and watch her grow up!

Happy Family Day, Daniel!

Three years ago today, we met Daniel for the first time.  We walked into our hotel, about half an hour before we were supposed to meet our guide/translator, hoping we could get into our room and get Esther down for a much-needed nap before our son arrived.  And then I looked over to the side of the lobby, and there he was.  It didn't seem quite right to pretend I hadn't seen him (though I was tempted!), so I walked over and nervously said hi to him and the orphanage staff member who had brought him.  He was friendly and anxious to make himself helpful, although he had some odd mannerisms (like randomly jumping up in the air and clapping his hands!).  I hoped the mannerisms were just nerves and I was right, as they were gone by the next morning, although some hyperactivity and the need to physically handle e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. in his environment were to linger for months.

Those are a few of my memories of the day.  At the time, of course, I could only guess at what Daniel might be thinking and feeling.  Three years later, he has told me some things about his experience of that day.

Whether to lessen his period of potential anxiety or to prevent the chance of his being devastated if we didn't come after all, the orphanage did not tell Daniel he was going to be adopted until June 11--two days before he became part of our family.  They had hinted to him three months before that that they might have a family for him, but he had been skeptical, and anyway, they had not said more about it.  So the news came as something of a shock!  It also meant he didn't get to say some of his good-byes, as many of his older friends were already working or studying elsewhere and were not at the orphanage during the two days when he knew he was going to be leaving.  He didn't get to visit foster family members who lived outside of the orphanage, either.  So he spent a lot of his first afternoon with us using QQ on our laptop, informing various friends and acquaintances that he was being adopted and going to America. 

I asked him recently if he had even wanted to be adopted at that point in his life.  He has told me about an episode when he was ten, when he was recording music at a mentor's house.  When it was time to return to the orphanage he started crying and insisted that he didn't want to go back.  His mentor asked why, and Daniel told him that he wanted a family of his own and didn't want to go back to his orphanage life.  (This was about the time the orphanage submitted his file for adoption; I have wondered if his mentor pushed them to do that.)  On the other hand, Daniel had also mentioned to me once that right before he found out he was to be adopted, he had been looking forward to being the new "top dog" among the kids at the orphanage, as many of the kids a few years older than he were leaving for jobs or further education.  So I suspected that the news that he was suddenly leaving for a new life complete with a set of strangers as his new family might not have been entirely welcome.  And I was right.  He came to us willingly, but he said that it was not necessarily his first choice, he "just do what I supposed to be do and leave the orphanage."  He told his friend that he didn't want to leave, but his friend pointed out that we had already come for him, so he couldn't not leave.  His friend encouraged him that he would have a better life with us, and Daniel agreed that it was likely so.  He says that by the time he met us he was feeling excited that he wouldn't have to go back to the orphanage.  He had seen a few kids sent back to the orphanage during the first 24 hours before the adoption was finalized because their new parents were overwhelmed by their behavior, so he worried a little bit about whether we would sign the paperwork the next day and he tried hard to be "good."

And while adoption is not for the faint of heart among parents, it is even more a leap off a cliff for kids!  Daniel is glad to be in a family, and we are very blessed that from the beginning he wanted to identify with us and to make this family thing work.  But he will tell you that coming to a new country is not easy.  The language has not been easy, the culture has not been easy, education has definitely not been easy, and even learning to be a "family kid" instead of an "orphanage kid" has had its challenges.  Sometimes--oftentimes--life here is just plain hard.  There are so many new things to learn, there are higher (and sometimes confusing) expectations to meet, and every new opportunity to succeed is also an opportunity to feel like a failure.  But, knowing what we know now, if we and he had the choice to make over again, we would choose to be family again in a heartbeat.

And while we gave him family, he has given us humor, passion and exuberance.

He can look normal, too.  I promise!

These pictures were taken at youth group activities last summer:

So, today, we celebrate.  We gave Daniel the choice of what to do, as we do with both kids on their Family Days.  At first he wanted to go shopping in another city to investigate possibilities for his birthday present.  But then he figured out what he wanted and we went ahead and got it while it was on sale, so shopping lost its appeal.  Then he got excited about the possibility of going to a Go-Kart track...but we couldn't find one in the area.  So we settled on eating good food and taking our periodic trip to another town to get Asian groceries.  We will do the shopping and the eating out at Red Robin tomorrow, while our extra kids are having their first long Mommy visit of their transition home.  Meanwhile, I made Daniel's favorite noodles for dinner, and he has been happily working on a plumbing project all evening.  It's unfortunate that, like every other home improvement we tackle, it turned out to be more complicated than expected.  He would probably be perfectly content to stay up till midnight working, but some of us are thinking of our beds!  However, it will be nice to have the faucet in the hall bathroom no longer dripping, and we are proud of Daniel's good plumbing skills and the pleasure he takes in problem-solving.

Happy Family Day, Daniel!  We're glad you're in our family.