Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas ...a bit belatedly. Again the internet has not been our friend but is finally letting me upload some pictures today.  The week before Christmas was a bit busy but Christmas Day was relaxing and fun together.  Sunday the 23rd Austin got a migraine at church, threw up in his Sunday School room and came home, missing his school performance.  When I arrived there with Bennett, they said "Oh no, Austin was supposed to sing a solo.  The first verse of Joy to the World, in Chinese.  Then we waited through 2 hours of performance and Bennett did not ever go up to sing.  I never fully understood but apparently he did not always want to practice during school so they did not force him.  But he obviously thought he was and was a little sad.  

 Christmas morning by the tree...everyone is excited.  Bennett was so cute.  I think he did not remember  much about the present aspect of Christmas morning.  He was most excited for Austin to open his gift from him and to eat cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole.

 Notice the scary looking man in the center.  Chris decided to tease me and scare children with that mustache.  It did not last into the evening however.

 Lucy's gift...a little pink stroller.  We are hoping this will encourage her to walk.  It has not yet, but she does like pushing it around and putting her doll and animals in it.

 Lucy opening a gift from Great Grandma...a musical one which she loves!

 The very scary man again...he shaved part of it off into this look for about 10 minutes, when I told him I could not look at him anymore. :)

This is what Chris calls her sassy look...a new sweater from Nai Nai with her mini-skirt from Nana and leggings to boot.

Now all I can think about is warm weather and Thailand...still a couple of weeks away but not that far. The kids will finish out school on Monday and then we will not send them the rest of January...they would have only gone 5 days because of the New Year's break (January 1 break) but we will save the tuition and stay home.  With the cold weather, now driving our friends' car which is stick shift and new to me....I am ready for a break in carpooling.  Happy New Year!

And the Christmas season is upon us

I guess the Christmas season has been here for awhile, but this week the crunch of activities and gifts to prepare has hit. I am really looking forward to the quiet family celebration of Christmas Day.  However, many of these things are good and meaningful too.  Lucy was sick this week with a fever and cough.  Fever is gone but the cough hangs on and on.  After 3 nights of waking a LOT she seems to have returned to only once a night waking.

Here she is all decked out in a new Christmas dress from Nai Nai. Lucy will be 15 months on the 29th...still no signs of really wanting to walk. She will stand independently and has taken 1 or 2 steps but then always drops to her crawl.  Hoping she might walk before we travel to Thailand...not looking forward to containing her from crawling all over the dirt in hotels and airports.

Bennett and Lucy had a rough patch where Bennett's love was a bit too overwhelming and she would scream whenever he would come near.  Sad for Bennett.  They seem to be doing better and playing more and Bennett is (slowly) learning to be more gentle.

It is COLD and white...we have had several snows over the past two weeks and very cold temperatures.  Even if we get no more snow it will probably still be white (or at least grayish colored) on Christmas. A couple days the roads were icy and scary to drive on.  Now the roads are clear and fine but ice and snow on the sidewalks.

Today the boys and I were able to join other members of our international fellowship to deliver the Angel Tree Christmas gifts to a group of migrant children.  We went to the same center that Chris helped open with an art and music festival two years ago.  Austin remembered helping to paint the murals.  It was SO COLD I thought the boys might not make it through but in the end they did and did great job passing out gifts, speaking to others in Chinese and enduring lots of attention that they don't really love. It was good to give and precious to see the excitement on the kids faces.  We were able to share a little of the Christmas story and sing a few songs.

 The center with the murals painted two years ago.

 Austin helping pass out gifts.

 This girl in the pink was SO excited to receive her gift she was literally jumping up and down with excitement. It is quite likely she has never gotten a Christmas present and probably very few presents in general.  These kids are children of migrant workers...parents who come from the countryside to find work in the big city.  But they have no benefits, very little pay and very meager housing.  Glad we could bless them in a small way. The boys know the three kids we gifted by name and are praying for them at night.

The boys' have a school performance tomorrow afternoon. I think they are singing a few songs, but you never quite know what to expect.  Hopefully Lucy will be able to last through church and a potentially long afternoon of performing!

A lump of coal

I am not sure where the traditional "lump of coal" for the naughty children tradition came from, but I realized what a different view of that I find here.  I recently reconnected with a small orphanage I had volunteered at a few times my first year in this city.  Back in 2007, this orphanage had just been started by some local moms who had a burden for orphans with medical challenges.  Big challenges usually, but ones that could be treated and hopefully help these children have a shot at being adopted.  I lost touch with them after birthing 2 more children and after they moved far away in the city. But I recently discovered they had moved back to my area of town and have been wanting to see their situation and how our family might be involved.

Austin and I went Tuesday morning... a mere three subway stops away.  It is in a very run down area, but once we were inside the gate we discovered they actually had a large-ish stand alone house with a yard.  This place has now grown to have around 45 kids, all with special medical needs.  After talking with a woman who works there, we were allowed to observe and play with a large group of the kids.  Most of the ones we saw were young...between one and four years old.  I was very impressed with the care they get, but still there were always at least one or two crying and needing more help than hands available.  When they went outside, they were dressed in whatever coat looked like it might fit from the big coat bin. Austin was so excited to go and said before "I will play with all the kids" but once we got there he was understandably a bit overwhelmed.  Some of the kids were happy to be held, some obviously preferred their known ayi and wanted nothing to do with us strangers.  One boy who smiled and stuck with me the whole time I was there once I held him looked about 2 and 1/2 to me, but seemed developmentally about where Lucy was.  Before leaving he waved goodbye and I discovered from a worker that he was 5 years old. Probably has little hope of being adopted.

In situations like these the needs always seem overwhelming and you feel so small and helpless to change the tide of abandoned and needy children without families.  But I also discovered my desire to help doesn't always go along with what the needs really are and what is most helpful.  I asked them "...what do you need?  How can we help? " They said honestly they don't need people to come in and play with the kids that much, as much as that might be what I want to do.  Outsiders bring germs, are strangers and it takes a lot of time to know each kids unique needs. They have plenty of toys and clothes.  But what they really need are help with ongoing expenses and daily living needs.  The biggest need this winter?

Coal.  Yes, lumps and lumps of coal are what they most need to heat the large house in this cold weather.  While coal is the cheapest source of heat around( and yes, not good for environment or for breathing, but it heats the water system that heats the floor of the house) they still spend close to a thousand dollars on heat per month.  Plus food and the ebb and flow of hospital visits, medicine and surgeries that most of the children need at one time or another.

It was good to see the faces of the needy, good for Austin to see the sad reality some children face, good for my heart to hold that little five year old boy.  But that is not what these children need the most.  For now, they need coal and gifts from our rich pockets.  Of course, what they really need are families. Families to love them and belong to.  I struggle often to want to bless others in tangible ways, yet often don't know how or want to do it in my own way or the way that gives me a "do-good" buzz to be completely honest. But I was struck with knowing the needs are overwhelming, but the cost of really helping is not occasional.  It takes a LOT.  More than I can give to this place at this stage of my life.  However, my other thought that I have had often over the years, is that what they really need is a family.  Chris and I have struggled and prayed about this and we still are.  We don't know God's desire for our family or if adoption is what He is calling us to.  But we know He might be.  We are willing or want to be willing. Austin asked me later if we will ever adopt a child.  (He also asked lots of other questions like " Will you ever not be able to take care of me?  What if you and Daddy die, what happens to us?" and fun questions like that I tried to answer as best as I could.)
I told Austin we pray about this and invited him to pray about it too.  We don't have answers for the long term, but for now our family does want to bless this orphanage with coal for the winter.  As many lumps as we can for Christmas.

Third day of snow here today...I kept Bennett home from school and we had a "snow day".  Lots of fun for us...but certainly cold for so many here without good heat.

Christmas is coming...

 We got the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, but the rest has been slowly appearing.  If you look closely you can tell the bottom of the tree is rather sparse...kind of a necessity with a one year old in the house.  Though she is getting pretty good about not touching it.  You can also see our new wrestling mat red rug.  We all love it.

 The other "tree" on the table is our Jesse Tree, as we do Advent Jesse Tree devotionals. They start at Creation and trace the story of Jesus from the beginning through Christmas.  We have printed out, laminated (ie very simple and kid friendly) ornaments for each day to hang on the tree.  This is a repurposed "tree" (sticks in a wine bottle)...it was our Thankfulness tree we used around Thanksgiving and was immediately transformed for December.  Still LOVE these stockings I got off Taobao from Pottery Barn kids two years ago.

 And we made cookies on Saturday.  Saturdays are a long day for me...Chris is usually gone most of the day and evening and while I know we do not have traditional weekends, it still feels like it should be.  So i decided we will do some Christmas activity every Saturday this month and we started with a small batch of cookies and made salt dough ornaments and painted them.

 Yum!

 Poor Austin had another migraine today...kept him home from school and he threw up tonight ...off the top of his bunk.  He was trying so hard to not throw up on his bed but couldn't make it down the ladder...unfortunately though from that height it ...well...went everywhere. I will not describe anymore, but it was a long clean up.

Lucy's contribution was eating cookies (unfrosted ones for her). I think it is safe to say she liked it.

My day with Lucy

Today the boys had a field trip with their Chinese school. I must admit, it was rather glorious.  I am so thankful I get to spent most every day with them and I love them and am thankful...but a day every once in a while where they are gone all day was really a gift.  It was quiet.  I had Lucy's nap time all to myself.  And I enjoyed some fun time with Lucy, who is changing so quickly and getting big.

What did I do with all this free time?  Well, I had a longer-than-usual time with the Lord, which was quite refreshing. I did my PT exercises, which I have not done in 2 months probably...definitely fell off that wagon.  I made granola ( we finish one batch every few days now), made some sugar cookie dough to freeze so we can pull it out throughout the month, printed and laminated our Jesse Tree devotional and ornaments for Advent season (from Ann Voskamp, a new favorite writer - author of 1000 Gifts- and homeschooling mom blogger), read to Lucy, took her for a walk on her new pink trike, worked on pizza night, listened to Christmas music...and some other things I am sure.  But it was a nice day.  Keeping up with Lucy is no small task these days either.  Here are some shots of what she is into ...

 I am no longer afraid she will be illiterate...she really likes books these days as well as climbing up and sitting in this little chair.  She can turn the pages, chatter as if she is reading, point and make the right animal noises...so cute.

 She can also climb up on the couch now.  Not so excited about this new feat....it is still difficult for her, but she can do it. Note about this outfit.  Yes, she is wearing a shirt and tights.  I was planning to take her out and her thick pants to go outside were still drying so she played in tights for awhile.

Well, she has this love/hate relationship with shoes.  She doesn't really like to wear them and bunches up her toes when you try to put her shoes on.  Drives me a bit crazy now that the weather is so cold and shoes are necessary.  But if she finds them, she acts like she wants you to put them on.  Or she will try to put them somewhere near her feet.  As you can see she is wearing one pair and mad because I will not put the other pair on. Such a girl!

 Uh oh Mommy, it came off (b/c you bunch up your toes and they won't fit).

She is in a rather destructive phase...at least destructive to any attempts at cleaning the house.  She loves to empty the hat and glove basket, pull all the books off the bookshelf, ransack cabinets and close doors (and nearly pinch her finger or get stuck in a room since she can't open them.  She is keeping me on my toes.

 Here she is on her new bike.  She seriously loves this thing...more than her brothers ever liked bikes at this age.  If the front door is open, she makes a beeline for it in the hall.  Today I took her out for a little walk in it.  It was SO cold, but she just makes these singing noises and rocks and bounces happily in it the whole time.

 Her doll.  She has loved this doll (and all dolls and stuffed animals, but especially this doll ) for several months now. She has to have it when she wakes up and gets out of bed.  Loves and cuddles and kisses it. Sleeps with it.  Such new territory in our house!

Sweet sleeping face.  Another new development is her reaction to the word "no".  She sometimes ignores you at first but if I raise my voice even the slightest bit when she is into something she shouldn't be she gets this trembling lip and tears fill her eyes and she gets SO sad.  Twice Chris has said "no" very firmly (but not loudly) and she will put her head down on the high chair tray and just SOB.  Totally bursts into tears and needs lots of comforting.  Chris turns to putty instantly and gives her hugs and kisses. Wow, quite the drama queen already and much more sensitive to being told no than her brothers ever were.  Or knows how to work it, hard to tell at this point, ha. Not that it keeps her out of mischief, but she does seem to pick up pretty quickly on what she can and cannot do.  After a few days of telling her no, she mostly is already leaving the Christmas tree alone, which I thought might be impossible.

Tomorrow we start our first day of Advent reading, are planning to make some salt dough Christmas ornaments... posts of our tree will come.  Good night.

Thankful

Again our internet has not been very user friendly lately...so I am very far behind in the blogosphere. We had a nice Thanksgiving, though I must admit the time seemed to fly by.  I really love the Thanksgiving season of being grateful, but did not meditate on that as much as I would have liked.  One thing I am very thankful for is a good health report for Austin.  The Friday before Thanksgiving he    started a headache.  He has started to get headaches occasionally and unfortunately has probably inherited both his parents' tendency to get them. I started at age 5.  But Saturday he still had the headache and Sunday he woke with a headache, fever and neck ache.  Not very good signs so I took him in to the doctor (and we unfortunately had to miss one of Chris' big events of the year, The Gift charity bazaar and concert). His good response to advil and ability to move his neck made the doctor think it was not something serious.  So we went home.  No fever Monday but still the headache, Tuesday, Wednesday still had a headache.  We went back to see my favorite pediatrician ( I am so thankful also for the doctors in this city).  She thought most likely it was a virus causing the headache, possibly even a mild case of viral meningitis, but wanted to do a CT scan to make sure.  This doctor does not quickly prescribe any medication or treatment unless she really thought it important, so we did.  Austin did great though I got a little choked up seeing him lie still on the CT bed. He lay very still like they told him and it lasted less than 3 minutes.

He got a great report from the CT scan the night before Thanksgiving, so we think it was a virus.  He still says he has a very mild headache ever since then, so I don't really know what to think of that.  I have had a lot of headaches these 10 days too and am wondering if the weather, pollution, etc is also affecting us.  We are not too worried about anything anymore but I am sad that it seems like headaches will definitely be in his future.

 We made a turkey snack...we just happened to have one or two candy corns that Austin received at Halloween, completed by raisin feathers and cheerio eyes glued with peanut butter.

 Some of our Thanksgiving spread...we celebrated Thursday with 4 other families in our neighborhood.  It was a nice time, simple and definitely more restful than last year when I decided to cook the entire meal myself.

 Lucy was dressed in her "snow elf" looking dress...isn't she cute?

 The four families (including ours) have a total of 13 kids.  Five of those kids were added in the last year and a half!  

The goobies (as Chris often refers to the boys) eating their meal.  The boys loved the meat (turkey and homemade ham by Therese) and the bread mostly.  And pumpkin pie.  But neither like mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole or green bean casserole.  Not even Lucy would eat the mashed potatoes...guess that is not a winner in our house.

Still here

 Sorry if some of you might have thought we fell off the planet.  We are still here. And our internet seems to be at least working decently, though I still would not call it fast.  How is it almost Thanksgiving?  Our October flew by with trips and visitors.  And here November is half way over.  We have celebrated two more birthdays in the past week, so I will document here.  There is plenty more to blog about but that will occupy enough for one night.

So Lucy's first birthday celebration was put off again and again by our crazy travel schedule in October.  I spontaneously decided last Friday that we must celebrate before Austin's birthday or it would never happen.  She is only one and will not know the difference now, but I did not want to slight her when she is bigger without a first birthday celebration.  It was VERY simple.  Friday was pizza night.  The Hunemullers were already coming over.  We added Rebecca's family and it was a party.  It lasted about 30 minutes.  First up was the "what will you be when you grow up" game.  You put lots of toys representing different professions and the one she goes to first... is what she will be. I think this is a Chinese game, but we love it. She immediately went for...the guitar!  Takes after her daddy.  If her doll had been out, she probably would have grabbed that but we could not find out.  She does love music and bobs along to any tune she hears.

 I made a "Lucy bug" cake since that is what we call her.  She wasn't sure what to make of it.

 She started out with very dainty little bites.  Really she was so dainty at first with just the tips of her fingers in the icing.

 Then she seemed to like it more...check out that tongue.  Reminds me of Austin who still does a "Michael Jordan" tongue out whenever he is concentrating on something.

 Ok, I think this is pretty good.

 And she managed to have a messy cake face...though much neater than her brothers' first try of cake.  That was the end of her party.  Earlier we got her a little pink tricycle that can be pushed and steered by an adult.  She loves it.  Whenever we open the front door she wants to go out in the hall and sit in it.  We didn't wrap it or give it at her party...third child without as much ceremony.

 And wow, I have a 6 year old!  Hard to believe he is getting to be such a big kid.

 For months the plan was to have a baseball party.  Which we did, but it was SO SO cold and windy the game was rather short.  I took a few pictures and had to take Bennett and Lucy and a few other little ones inside.

 Austin running home.

Quite the blower (it was more like spitter) as he blew out the candles.  We also had a "6" pinata and otherwise was pretty simple.  We are so proud of Austin's thoughtfulness to others, especially his siblings, his growing mastery of Chinese and willingness to use it more, his quick mind, love of story and creativity.

Now we are birthday'd out and starting to think about Thanksgiving! Ok, better hit publish while the internet is working.

Hoping this works!

Internet speed has been, well, not speedy lately.  Blogging has been almost impossible but tonight it seems like it just might work.  This will be brief in hopes that it will be a go.  Since returning from our crazy trip, we have had a fun visitor (my good friend from college, Diane), two Halloween parties, a new round of colds, nice fall weather and then Sunday morning we woke to several inches of snow!  And no heat on yet.  The heat is now on a low setting and it takes the edge off, for which I am very thankful. 

 Took Diane to a trendy hotpot place around here...they have a playplace with childcare, free fruit and appetizers while you wait, this hip hop dancing noodle maker who makes your noodles before throwing it in the pot, free manicures and of course, yummy hot pot. Oh and ayis who will walk around and entertain your one year old for a long time!

Halloween (or actually, ahem, Harvest Party you dress up in costume for)..party number one...Chris gets points for getting the kids dressed up and taking them to the homeschool party by himself. I was out with Diane...he even cut out the black dots from construction paper for the little ladybug's costume.

 Great Wall...the three of us went.  It was fun, but we went to the closest part of the Wall.  I had not been to that part since 1997...for a reason.  SO SO crowded,ugh.  But still beautiful.

 Neighborhood party... number two.  Austin changed costumes as you can see.

 The Hosts with the Most...our neighbors Therese and Jim threw another great party..more perfect for our fam with a smaller crowd.

 These Dads (aka mummies) did a dance routine that will not be soon forgotten!  Chris "won" the contest. 

 Yes, early November snow is becoming a trend.  Lucy wasn't sure what to think of it. Bennett wanted to go in about ten minutes after we got outside. Austin would have stayed out all day i think.  

She could barely move in all her layers.  As Chris said, she now looks like a Chinese baby in September...ha ha.