Happy Family Day, Esther Si Di!

Four years ago yesterday, a tiny baby with wide observant eyes and a shock of black hair changed our world forever.  One of my fondest memories from that day is of her falling asleep in my arms on the way from our meeting with her to our hotel. 

(I'm having a hard time believing Esther was ever that tiny.  Or that it's already been four years!!)  So, yesterday we celebrated!

In the morning, Tim and Esther and I went to the huge playground at a county park, then had a picnic, and followed up by going for a walk, on which Esther threw rocks into a river.  In one picture she's holding up four fingers to signify four years together (her idea).

Then last night we all went out for dinner, at Esther's request.  I brought the camera but forgot to take any pictures.  Both kids maintained good manners throughout, to my pleased surprise.  We still haven't had the cake Esther originally requested for her family day; maybe tonight?

We are so blessed to get to know and love this girl as she grows up.  I love too many things about her to count, but here are a few:

Her sense of humor.  Esther has the best laugh, one that make you want to laugh along.  And it doesn't take much to tickle her funny bone.  One day she was complaining that her leotard had a funny smell, and I told her (somewhat tartly) that she wasn't going to be wearing it on her nose.  She laughed so hard she literally fell over!

Her curiosity.  This is a girl who finds interest wherever she looks.  Lately we have been watching birds building their nests in our yard.  One day while watching a robin go by with twigs in her beak, Esther exclaimed, "Mommy, I think there's going to be eggs in a few whiles!  They're materialing!"

Her energy and athleticism.  Esther is go, go, go kind of girl!  She has been in gymnastics for a little over a year now, and it is the perfect sport for her, drawing on her energy, her strength, her coordination, and her fearlessness.  She is pretty good at it, too!  She can already do a respectable cartwheel, and she loves trying to use a ribbon or a hoop "like the big girls" (our gym specializes in rhythmic gymnastics).

Her persistence.  When Esther wants to do something, she keeps working at it.  That's how she's able to do a cartwheel!  The preschool class at her gym is about having fun and learning pre-skills, but she really wanted to do an actual cartwheel, and she kept working at it until she could.  She's also working on a handstand, though with a little less success so far!

Her compassion.  Esther can be territorial and aggressive with the best (or worst?) of them, but if someone (that she's not fighting with) is sad or needs help, Esther will be the first to notice and try to make things better.  Most of the time, she is very, very sweet, and we love loving on her.

I could go on, but daily life is calling me.  But I just couldn't miss the chance to give my special girl her very own blog post as we celebrate the fact that she is in our lives.

Good Friday

My Master Was So Very Poor
-- Harry Lee

My Master was so very poor,
A manger was His cradling place;
So very rich my Master was,
Kings came from far to gain His grace.

My Master was so very poor,
And with the poor he broke His bread;
So very rich my Master was,
That multitudes by Him were fed.

My Master was so very poor,
They nailed Him naked to a cross;
So very rich my Master was,
He gave His all, and knew no loss.


Love (3)
-- George Herbert (italics mine, for clarification)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
          Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
          From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
          If I lacked anything.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
          Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful?  Ah my dear,
          I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
          Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
          Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

          My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

          So I did sit and eat.       

Just in case life wasn't interesting enough

Last week we got to watch a toddler for a couple of days (and nights).  I arrived at two conclusions:

1.  Babies really are addictive!  There's just nothing like feeling a little one securely squashed into your lap, absorbed in a book, or watching him spinning in circles cracking himself up.  And I wasn't the only one who thought so, either.  :-)  Every single member of the family was quite taken with our little visitor

2.  Babies really are a lot of work.  This is especially true when your house isn't babyproofed.

We only had about an hour and a half's notice before our little guest arrived, so we managed to get the living room picked up and some toddler toys installed, but the kitchen remained in its usual state.  So it was nearly impossible for me to cook until Tim could watch him: either I was listening to him and Esther in the living room and checking on them every three seconds to make sure they were still playing safely, or I had him with me in the kitchen and every time I turned around he was taking the cap off of a whiteboard marker or investigating our (not recommended for children under three!) refrigerator magnets.  One night I finally got dinner on the table about 7, only to have the baby spit up his froot loops.  I finally ate my dinner at ten, after administering a bath, rinsing neon colors out of toddler clothes, brushing several kids' teeth, giving medications, getting two little ones to bed, and helping one big kid process a tragic event that had happened at his school that day.  I was so thankful the littlest one had daycare during the day so I could recover!

We did have fun with our little guy, though, and I loved watching how our two kids interacted with him.  Esther, as I would have guessed, wanted to help him and play with him and tell him what and what not to do.  She was really quite helpful, though she had to be reminded not to pick him up.  He is used to having other kids around, so her antics were what cheered him up when he first arrived and was not happy about being left in a strange place, and they really had fun playing together.  What surprised me was how much Daniel also liked him.  Daniel didn't interact with him as much, but liked to watch him, and made several comments ("I heard him say Esther's name, but he hasn't said my name yet.") that made me realize that he was quite attracted to the baby.  When the baby left, Daniel wanted to know when he would be coming back, and seemed rather disappointed when I told him the baby wasn't going to be coming back.  At one point Daniel told me that it would be good if we had a kid around that age in the house, so that Esther would play with the other child and leave Daniel in peace.  But then later he got annoyed at Esther bossing the baby around, so he came over and told her to shush, which of course led to her shushing him back, and the two of them started going at it so loudly that they even had the baby frowning and shushing them.

Oh, he was cute!!  But on the other hand, I can't say that I'm sorry to have my life back.  :-)  And although he addressed me as "Mama" and wanted me to hold him when he was sad, I'm confident that he was happy to leave and go back to his own familiar people and routines.

spring pictures

I did my annual spring photo shoot a week or two ago, when everything seemed to be in bloom at once.  Good thing, too, since everything also stopped blooming about the same time!  Esther at first was adamant that she was not going to wear a dress, but I bribed her with the prospect of putting on my makeup after we were done (I don't even wear makeup these days, but Esther found some old stuff in a drawer and has been bugging me to let her wear it).  Once the photo shoot started she was pretty good-natured, even when it dragged on and on due to me having forgotten to charge up the camera the day before, and to Daniel developing his own ideas about what we should photograph!

The weeping cherry:

Goofy Esther:

The daffodils:

Esther putting flowers in Mommy's hair:

The Bradford (I think) pear:

The forsythia:

The promised reward:

siblings hitting their stride

It seems like in the last month or so, Daniel and Esther have figured out their roles.  It's not that they haven't been relating to each other for the past nine months.  They have always had times where they really enjoyed each other, as well as times that they picked at each other or were very jealous of each other.  But it feels like something has changed.

When Daniel came into our family, Esther became both a sister and a little sister for the first time.  The little part didn't seem too painful, although naturally she did not feel (or act!) particularly nurturing towards this intruder who was twice as big as she was and allowed to do things that she isn't yet.  But I believe it was only a little harder than being "displaced" by a baby would have been.  Meanwhile, she blossomed whenever her new big brother paid attention to her, and loved for him to carry her piggyback or to share a treat with her.  One of my fond memories from our early days home is the time Esther somehow talked Daniel into "playing baby" with her--I will never forget her looking sweetly up at her teenage brother saying, "You be the mommy!"  When he did not pay attention to her spontaneously, she tried to get his attention by whatever means came to mind.  Unfortunately, these means often involved being aggressive towards him (you know the stereotype of the little boy who pulls the pigtails of the little girl that he likes? well, that would be Esther and Daniel, just with the gender roles reversed) and bossing him around loudly.  And the above scenarios all assume that Esther and Daniel were the main players in the interaction.  Throw in a parent and things could get ugly.  One of my not-so-fond memories from early on is when I was giving Daniel a little TLC after a particularly frustrating math session.  Esther (who had been fine up until that moment) first tried to push him out of my lap so she could climb in herself, and then, when that failed, burst into heartbroken tears that demanded to be comforted...except that I already had my hands full.

For Daniel's part, he just wasn't quite sure what to make of Esther.  He had, I believe, been considered one of the more responsible of the kids in his age range at the orphanage, and was often asked to watch groups of younger kids for a period of time.  But these kids were still older than Esther, and in any case he had been acting in a capacity as a junior caregiver, not a family member.  To do him credit, he was quite willing to learn to be one of two kids in our family rather than the kid in charge.  But he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with this other kid who was sometimes really fun, and sometimes walked up and hit him or yelled at him for no apparent reason.  And just as Esther was jealous of him, he was jealous of her.  Not only did she sometimes take our attention away from him, but our closeness with her was a reminder of all he missed by not being in our family since babyhood...and of the ways in which our relationship with him is different.  So we went through cycles with the two of them.  Sometimes they would treat each other nicely and enjoy each other's company for several days at a time, and other times there would be long stretches where Esther would be aggressive and territorial towards Daniel and Daniel would be over-the-top annoyed by everything she did.  During the latter stretches every once and a while Daniel and I would have these heart-to-hearts where Daniel would share all the injustices that Esther had brought into his life and voice the wish that he were our only child.

But now, although they still have spats, they seem to be operating from a stable base, a base in which they know they love each other and belong together.  The other day at the dinner table, Daniel was making faces at Esther.  She yelled at him, "STOPPING!"  Instead of reacting to her tone of voice, Daniel just grinned a little.  And pretty soon Esther grinned a little too, and started making faces back at him.  Meanwhile, Daniel said to me the other day, "I know Esther likes me and wants to get along with me and be friends with me."  And Esther tells me that "Daniel loves me because he helps me tickle you."  So while I don't think the territoriality and jealousy are entirely gone, these siblings' relationship has gotten much bigger than that.  It includes aggravating each other for entertainment, but also includes helping each other and enjoying each other.  And we can live with all that!

Me first smart!

Oh, what a long way we've come!  I remember when I first started doing math with Daniel that he just went to pieces if he didn't understand something instantly and clearly.  To him, that seemed to be a confirmation that he was stupid and couldn't learn, and he couldn't take it.  Gradually he started stretching his ability to tolerate uncertainty and to believe that he could figure things out.  But he still complained about math, and I still got comments like, "Why do I have to learn how to do multiplication?  It's useless!"  (I encourage him to use math to answer his own questions, like how many weeks he will have to save his allowance to buy a certain object that he desires, so I think he now knows what multiplication is good for!)

Last week I was explaining to him something about fractions, and he figured out the next step before I even told him what to do.  Apparently he was pleased with the experience, because this week when we were doing math I started to go on to the "next step" and he interrupted me with a very peremptory "You no talking!  Wait a minute!  Me first smart!"  He then proceeded to launch into doing--or trying to do--a type of problem that I had not explained yet.  Unfortunately he had no clue what he needed to solve for, and did not succeed in figuring it out.  (I had left out an intermediate step in the problem-solving process, which didn't help.)  But Daniel did not go to pieces, and we went on to have a successful finish to our math lesson.  And I was tickled pink to see that he wants to learn, and that he is starting to think of himself as the kind of person who can learn, at least in math.

DC trip

This past weekend [Okay, two weekends ago now] was the second time we've made it up to DC since Daniel has been in our family.  The last time was in October, after we picked up Daniel's certificate of citizenship in Pittsburgh.  This time Tim had a conference which was held at a hotel in downtown DC, and we pulled Daniel out of school for two days so that all of us could go.  Like every other trip we've made back since moving away, it was tiring and we didn't get to see everybody we wished we could have seen.  But it was a very good trip.

Between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon we got to spend time with 6 sets of dear friends, plus briefer encounters with other friends at our old church; we attended our former Chinese fellowship; we saw the White House (by night), saw and toured the Capitol building, and watched money being printed at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing;  the kids and I rode the metro four times; and we stopped at four different stores to buy food items that we can't get here in our new home.  Tim missed out on a few of the above activities since he was working during much of our visit.  Daniel had periods of being loudly grouchy (traveling seems to really take a toll on him) and Esther had periods of bouncing-off-the-walls tiredness, but for the most part I was really, really pleased how well both of them handled the trip.

Some highlights:

Top of the list, of course, was conversations with dear friends.  We had/have such a special community in the DC area, and we treasure any chances to catch up and renew those connections.

Grace Fellowship (our Chinese fellowship) is always meaningful for Daniel.  He loves the Chinese food and the Chinese conversation, and being part of a group that is worshiping and studying the Bible in a language he can understand seems to be water to his soul.  I do so wish we had a group like that here.  But it was really neat to watch Daniel sitting up front, closely observing everything that was going on and participating as much as he was able.  And I just loved how the fellowship absorbed him into it.  There wasn't any feeling that people were making an effort to make him feel welcome, he just was.  (Although there was one funny episode--Daniel helped the song leader set up the projection equipment, then proceeded to use the wifi on their laptop to check his QQ account.  When I went over to ask him what he was doing and if he had asked permission, he hastily minimized it but failed to log out.  So in the middle of the worship time we heard a buzzing sound--one of Daniel's QQ contacts was trying to initiate a chat with him.  Oops!)

On Saturday morning, the kids and I went to see the Capitol building.  It was a beautiful (if cold and windy) day and we got some great pictures out front.  I had been under the impression that it was closed to tours (which it was the last time I wanted to take a tour there, but that was some years ago), so when I saw that tours were offered I was intrigued and went to find out more information.  I was a little dubious about actually trying it with my two, but the information person said that we could leave the tour at any time if we felt the need, so I decided to give it a shot.  First we watched an introductory film which managed to cram a lot of American history into a fairly short film.  I couldn't translate all of it, but I leaved over every little bit and whispered to Daniel what the images were.  ("This is when the United States became a country."  "This is when the north part of the country and the south part of the country had a fight.")  So he got a little outline of American history, which he had not known about before.  Then we were grouped together with a tour guide who took us into several areas of the building.  He obviously loved small children, and Esther and another little girl about her age attached themselves to him.  When we walked into the rotunda, Esther looked around and exclaimed, "This is the place that I saw in the movie!"  The rotunda was very beautiful.  Daniel also talked to our guide a couple of times, mostly about the headsets we wore during the tour.  :-)  Both kids seemed to enjoy and be interested in the tour, somewhat to my surprise.  The highlights for me were the beauty of the rotunda, getting to hear the acoustics in a different room (I have no idea what the room was called, but the guide gathered us around a particular spot, walked about twenty feet away from us, turned his back, and spoke softly--and we could hear him!), and learning that each state has two or three statues of its famous people in the Capitol building.  Oh, and getting to do a cultural/educational activity with both kids where they were engaged and not running wild!!!  I'm so excited now about doing more things with them in the future!

On Saturday afternoon while we talked with friends at their house, Daniel was acting so clearly tired that Tim said something about moving to another room and letting him fall asleep on the couch.  Our dear friends promptly offered one of their childrens' beds, and Daniel slept for two hours.  After that he was in a much better mood, was very polite about a dinner that he didn't much care for (I was so proud of him!), and willingly sang a song for our friends at Tim's suggestion.  The husband of this family is very musical, with as good an ear as anyone I know, so he got out his guitar and started accompanying Daniel just from listening to the melody he was singing.  Daniel was seriously impressed and wanted to know how he did it, and it was so neat to see them bonding over music.

On Saturday night we spent the night with other friends who have four kids and a dog.  Esther of course was whisked away by their two girls (one of whom used to be her babysitter), but Daniel surprised me by also going off with the kids, and particularly getting on with their 13-year-old son.  Both kids loved, loved, loved the dog--I had a hard time getting Daniel away from him to go to bed.  It was all so normal and appropriate!  And I must say, I loved getting in some adult conversation while knowing that our respective kids were also having fun socializing with each other.

 We are just so blessed.  Blessed by the friends we have, blessed by each person who is a part of this family, and blessed to be able to see our dear friends and our dear son beginning to form their own relationships.