Our legal adoption of Ginger and Maggie was 6/24/09, so we're right on one month together. Overall, I would say that God has done "exceeding abundantly over what we could have asked or imagined." The girls have bonded to our family and we have bonded to them. While we were in Guangzhou, we got our family picture taken and we ordered a charcoal drawing of us. It just arrived today, and I think it's beautiful - as I look at it, they just look like they have belonged with us always. They have laughed hard, played hard, and thrown themselves wholeheartedly into our family a hundred different ways and made us laugh that many times as well. I came home today and Ryan was lying on the floor letting them put his hair into TWENTY tiny ponytails all over his head. It almost looked like we had a big black baby in the family except that the hair was RED! :o) Never a dull moment. Last night I had to get up and remind Tony as he was stirring them up at bed time and Maggie's volume got louder and louder that we have to LIVE with her habits for a long time and to cool it! That girl has a set of opera lungs on her. Women in my family are loud, but she is the LOUDEST - I would place a large bet on it! We just had dinner; food is going much better, and I just came home from our Asian supermarket with a HUGE 25 pound bag of white rice because I am tired of buying little 5 pound bags that are gone in 4 days! People ask how we communicate all the time, and I would say that it "just happens"! Sometimes with gestures, sometimes showing them with our actions accompanying our words, sometimes with a Chinese-English dictionary, sometimes with actual real learned English words (and a few Chinese words) being exchanged back and forth! You can always tell when real communication has been accomplished by their bright eyes, their smiles and their cooperation, OR their confused, blank expressions that tell you that you need to try again!
We have had some up close encounters with the "darker sides" of their temperaments; lest those of you in the process of adopting think that everything's beautiful all the time! I've already written about Maggie's (and my) mini-meltdown the first week. The second week, I would summarize as a mini-showdown with Ginger. I have definitely encountered her strong will that Michael told us about. She has tried twice now to give me the silent treatment - it started when I was home schooling her and she wouldn't answer me. She is normally a bright, attentive, helpful student, "firing on all pistons", so this was a huge contrast. No amount of talking would bring her out of it, and she was willing to suffer hunger rather than answer me with a "yes please" when I asked her if she wanted lunch, as well as isolation in her room. We talked through it the next day (I was quite impressed with myself as a teacher and I know they got it because of their reactions). I thought we could scratch that lesson as complete, but today, 5 days later,I encountered the same thing. After speaking quite clearly to her that rudeness will get her nowhere in this family except lost privileges (which again, she was willing to sacrifice for whatever her "cause" was), I decided to try another method with her; the idea of which came from a book I recommend highly for adoptive families called "The Connected Child". I decided that if she was going to not speak to me, that she was going to have to do it while in my "kind but firm" presence, working by my side with extra chores. She helped with laundry, bringing in groceries, putting them away, peeling potatoes, taking out trash. I actually caught her smiling at one point, showing her icey heart had cracked once again. She's back! And she's great help, by the way! And I'm only half-exhausted from her, and half-exhausted from my miserable cold!
We also have experienced an encounter with what I believe was a fear and anger-induced reaction from Maggie. She has been doing fine with riding in the car, as long as the window was down and she was in the front seat. Tony, Jenna and the girls went out for dinner last night, and Jenna decided she was going to pull out her "I'm the big sister" card and get her front seat status back as they went from Zaxby's to Chick-Fil-A for ice cream and to see Joel there at work. As soon as they stopped, Maggie jumped out of the car and went running away as fast as she could, right along 141 which is a very busy road. Several yells and a minor car chase later, she was back under control and in safety. Wow! What was that? As I thought about it, I believe she truly is afraid of being sick and was angry that we were subjecting her to it. I think we need to do a better job of communicating our idea that she can actually learn to sit by the window in the 2nd seat and not have any trouble like that again.
I will close my novella with a request that you keep us in your prayers, and not just to cover any future escapades like I have told above. We will be working on our final education decision for them next week, as well as their first American pediatrician appointment. We truly believe they are older than their records indicate, and want to see how they graph out on the Asian growth chart as "just turned" 10 year olds! I am placing my bet right now that they'll be completely off the chart huge for that! We do have the option of changing their birth year as we readopt them in the U.S., so pray for wisdom in both of these "gray" areas.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
The biggest surprise!
The past 5 days have gone so well and have been full of more home-cooked meals around the table, fun preparing food together, and relaxing and having fun outside than this family has seen in awhile! We spent all evening after their birthday celebration discovering that Hopscotch is a universal game, these Chinese girls can hula hoop effortlessly and almost with no movement while their new American family looks SAD in their attempts, they can jump rope backwards, (but mom can still make it down the driveway and back jumping rope and almost have enough oxygen at the end...) Jenna still remembers her girly days making hopskotch "marathons" down the entire driveway that proved to be hilarious fun as well as a way to work off the birthday cake! Our neighbors, the Thames, spontaneously came over to join the fun with some fresh blueberries and lemon-blueberry bars for us, and we honestly hadn't spent any time with neighbors in quite some time. Tony sat outside with Jenna and read a book while Jenna made her chalk masterpiece and the girls and I made dinner. As I took this new pattern emerging and pondered it, I thought that it can only be in God's Kingdom where the first is last and the greatest is a servant, that you can actually add 2 more children from an entirely different culture and language, become a large family, and actually slow down and relax more! I love the dynamic that younger kids adds to the family, and I have part of my faith in that verse of "Blessed is he whose quiver is full of them (children)" turning to sight in this 2nd week home. Once again, join me in praising the One who has given His life to restore us to abundant life!
Friday, July 10, 2009
"This one has an attitude..."!
God is faithful to answer our needs. Praise Jesus for the Chinese Body of Christ and those who are bilingual! We planned an outing to see my friend, May Chun. She and her husband, Tin Chee, lead the ESL ministry at our church where many come from our community to be taught English. I have volunteered as much as I could there the past year to serve as well as develop a network for this Chinese endeavor. I got to teach quite a few times with a firm but gentle push from May Chun!. I have met many dear people there, and at the top of the list is May Chun. She is a mother of 2 older children, one college graduate working and one in her Junior year of college. She invited the girls and I to lunch at her home, 5 minutes away from us, and then we were going to go to Super H Mart, a large Asian supermarket 5 mintutes from her home. Maggie resisted getting in the car, and she wouldn't drink the Coke I offered her because she saw that I put a little Ginger Ale in it. Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn!! And Michael told me Ginger was the strong-willed one...! She sat in front, window down, and has learned to keep her eyes on the road and she seemed fine. We arrived to May Chun's, and again, Maggie was very silent (she is definitely shy). May Chun began very sweetly welcoming them and talking to them in Chinese, and Ginger began smiling and interacting with her. Maggie not so much! It took about 5 minutes before she turned to me about Maggie and said, "This one has an attitude!" She proceeded to give what I call "May Chun Therapy". She is a no-nonsense, truth-speaking, Spirit-filled believer who gives potent doses of truthful correction all wrapped up in laughter so you don't really realize what's happened. I watched my girls transformed into laughter, smiles, and talking, even Maggie! After lunch (it made me feel better that they really didn't eat her cooking very well either. What we found out is that they ate very simply, very little meat, and they don't like too much - which since their last 4 years have been in an orphanage, is understandable.) We then prepared to go to the store. She talked to Maggie about her fear of the car, and explained that there is no choice but to get used to it and work through this problem, because they're in America now. We arrived at the store and she was fine, but she sat down on a grassy median in the parking lot and didn't want to go in, saying something about the smells. Again, she explained it wasn't safe to stay there and she had to go in, and she did. We then proceeded to have a 2 hour walk through the supermarket where she found out what they were used to and we found some good solutions to get us through until they fully become used to American foods. We made it home, and I sensed we all needed some downtime, so the girls watched a DVD of Chinese TV and I took a little power nap! Afterwards, the girls and I made a dinner and I discovered they are very good little kitchen helpers. They chopped up potatoes, meticulously like shoestring potatoes, green peppers and onions to stir fry, we steamed rice, and added fruit and watermelon. The 6 of us sat down to the very first vegetarian meal at the Amburgy's, and we had a delightful dinner. We've had good attitudes since!
Adding the girls has already transformed our family into something new and better - our older kids have the gift of having new little sisters to share and pour into, and giving of one's self is always a beautiful thing. Mom now has extra motivation and extra help to make real dinners happen, which any of us would tell you that's a welcome addition. And our faith has been built, seeing first hand that when God calls you to something, He will make a way over the bumps, and our character gets improved along the way. If you have made it through to the end of this blog, which is really a therapeutic way to journal for me, join me in praising Jesus for His loving care over ALL His children, old and young, Chinese and American!
Adding the girls has already transformed our family into something new and better - our older kids have the gift of having new little sisters to share and pour into, and giving of one's self is always a beautiful thing. Mom now has extra motivation and extra help to make real dinners happen, which any of us would tell you that's a welcome addition. And our faith has been built, seeing first hand that when God calls you to something, He will make a way over the bumps, and our character gets improved along the way. If you have made it through to the end of this blog, which is really a therapeutic way to journal for me, join me in praising Jesus for His loving care over ALL His children, old and young, Chinese and American!
Their first home school, visitors and gifts....
The morning started with my repentance of my American attitude, and praise God for the filling of His Spirit and those new mercies! Home school started with the girls learning the words "yesterday, today and tomorrow" as I prepared to teach them the wonderful world of English verbs that change for everything (Chinese verbs are beautifully simple and never change from different tenses or nouns.) The first sentence I wrote was "Yesterday was a bad day"...."Today is a new day!" We were off to a good start. The girls are bright, disciplined and capable students, and I had fun teaching them. We even looked at a manners book and practiced meeting new people, because they will certainly be doing tons of that! I encountered the first of difficulties when Maggie just didn't want to do something I asked her to do, while Ginger took off with the task. It had been a long morning, so I pushed her to do it (so we end on a positive, obedient note) and went downstairs and introduced them to Air Hockey!
They fell asleep right after that, and 3 hours later, they are still out cold. Dear friends were coming to deliver two gifts, and unfortunately, I didn't get them wakened as early as I could have, so they were still a little out of it when they arrived. Ginger jumped to the challenge, but Maggie dashed up the stairs running away. Yes, understandable in her circumstances, but not acceptable behavior, so I gently went up to escort her down and get them to interact a little with Marlene, my dear, dear friend who has sacrified to buy them "Mei Mei" dolls (mei mei means "little sister" in Chinese and these are precious dolls that say 25 phrases first in Chinese then in English.) Well, poor Maggie just sat there like a silent bump on a log, even though Lissa Hopwood, who has lived in China for 5 years, was speaking very sweet Mandarin to them, explaining how she felt when she first moved to China. My friends were very gracious and understanding, while I searched for wisdom in the balance of giving her understanding on the one hand and correction for her rude behavior on the other. I'm truly trying to not fall off either side! They also got very cool Bible story books in English and Chinese, New and Old Testament. It was very cool to see them playing with Ryan when he got home from work, having the doll talk and reading the book that shows the phrases, teaching each other the pronunciation. They also read 3 stories together. They definitely love their brothers and miss Jenna. Hmmm....what to do with Maggie. Tony and I have started getting up and having some good quiet time together and pray to start off our mornings. Maggie was definitely a part of our petitions to our Father!
They fell asleep right after that, and 3 hours later, they are still out cold. Dear friends were coming to deliver two gifts, and unfortunately, I didn't get them wakened as early as I could have, so they were still a little out of it when they arrived. Ginger jumped to the challenge, but Maggie dashed up the stairs running away. Yes, understandable in her circumstances, but not acceptable behavior, so I gently went up to escort her down and get them to interact a little with Marlene, my dear, dear friend who has sacrified to buy them "Mei Mei" dolls (mei mei means "little sister" in Chinese and these are precious dolls that say 25 phrases first in Chinese then in English.) Well, poor Maggie just sat there like a silent bump on a log, even though Lissa Hopwood, who has lived in China for 5 years, was speaking very sweet Mandarin to them, explaining how she felt when she first moved to China. My friends were very gracious and understanding, while I searched for wisdom in the balance of giving her understanding on the one hand and correction for her rude behavior on the other. I'm truly trying to not fall off either side! They also got very cool Bible story books in English and Chinese, New and Old Testament. It was very cool to see them playing with Ryan when he got home from work, having the doll talk and reading the book that shows the phrases, teaching each other the pronunciation. They also read 3 stories together. They definitely love their brothers and miss Jenna. Hmmm....what to do with Maggie. Tony and I have started getting up and having some good quiet time together and pray to start off our mornings. Maggie was definitely a part of our petitions to our Father!
Their birthday....postponed! :o(
Tuesday was the girl's birthday, and we started out with the plans to go food shopping with the girls and later go by Target to get some things to have a little family celebration of their birthday. Well, I guess two of us were just due for a mini-meltdown, and the birthday celebration was postponed, to be done with Jenna's birthday (she turns sweet 16 July 11th) when she returns from her Senior High outing. It was just not a day to be celebrated. We had food issues - I made Asian Rice noodles for them and they tasted really good - they looked Chinese to me! But the girls wouldn't even try them. I was getting ready to leave anyway to get a head start before Tony later brought the girls to a store, but I was glad to be leaving, because them not trying to eat what I had prepared, in quite simple terms, made me MAD! I'm not sure if they understood those words and the accompanying body language that went with them, but I'm pretty sure they did! Next, Tony made it to the store where I had found a Chinese employee that was helping me. The girls arrived but would not really answer his questions or offers to help. Then Maggie got car sick, and I tried to get her to drink some Ginger Ale to settle her stomach (after researching possible coping solutions to car sickness), but she refused. Although I know she's experiencing so many changes and challenges, this also really frustrated me. They immediately ran upstairs and went right to bed, and I was glad to let them! Hmmm....maybe this is the first "bump in the road" that I knew was coming, but you never know how it's going to truly look or feel in new situations, and I can't say I really liked the bump. Exhaustion on everyone's part was also shutting down our "shock absorbers" for this bump. There were some tears shed, as well as simple communication with them that I loved them and I was sorry for the bad day, and I reached out to some people on my support team. I also made a handy list of that support team and phone numbers, because I could see that it was going to be needed to help combat those honest, inevitable thoughts of "What have we done?!!!!!!!!!!!!" even though I know we followed His clear plan for our family. I decided the final solution was for this mom to hit the TV and sofa at 6 pm and sleep as well!!! If anyone ate anything that night, it certainly wasn't because mom fixed it!!! As the beautiful verse in His Word says, "In the morning, His mercies are new"; I just started night early on this day so that I could get to those mercies!
Thursday, July 9, 2009
What jet lag feels like....
...it feels like a train hit you at 6:00 pm and if you don't lay down on the sofa now you will fall on the floor
...for 2 little girls, it feels like sleeping ALL the time during the day at different times, no set patterns, and having this new person in your life you are calling mom wake you up all the time by making you sit and stand up in a vertical position, because absolutely nothing else (loud noises, shaking, tapping, name calling) will wake you up.
...lest you think this new mom is cruel waking up these girls who have never lived on this side of the time zone, these wake-up sessions come after a sleep from 1 am to 1 pm, or 11 am to 3 pm after they woke everyone up that morning that dared sleep after 5 am !
...it means that if you go to bed at a normal time, like 11:00 pm, that you will be awake around 3-4 am, and if you are under the age of 12, it means that you can only stand it so long before you are in your brother's room bouncing on the beds.
....it feels like it will never leave, but praise God, we all had sleep inside the range of NORMAL last night on our 6th night home, so I think it's getting tired of our family and ready to go pounce on some other home and family that dared travel 7,000 miles in a 14 hour time period.
The next enemy to fight is how to feed our new multi-cultural family, because all attempts to be Chinese thus far (stir-fried rice, noodles, Chinese vegetables, Chinese take-out) are not working! They are getting stocked up on Vitamin C with an overdose of fruit - watermelon, cherries, grapes (peeled, mind you) bananas, and peaches are the only sure-fire things that we can get down them. Fortunately, we have resources that are being called in!
...for 2 little girls, it feels like sleeping ALL the time during the day at different times, no set patterns, and having this new person in your life you are calling mom wake you up all the time by making you sit and stand up in a vertical position, because absolutely nothing else (loud noises, shaking, tapping, name calling) will wake you up.
...lest you think this new mom is cruel waking up these girls who have never lived on this side of the time zone, these wake-up sessions come after a sleep from 1 am to 1 pm, or 11 am to 3 pm after they woke everyone up that morning that dared sleep after 5 am !
...it means that if you go to bed at a normal time, like 11:00 pm, that you will be awake around 3-4 am, and if you are under the age of 12, it means that you can only stand it so long before you are in your brother's room bouncing on the beds.
....it feels like it will never leave, but praise God, we all had sleep inside the range of NORMAL last night on our 6th night home, so I think it's getting tired of our family and ready to go pounce on some other home and family that dared travel 7,000 miles in a 14 hour time period.
The next enemy to fight is how to feed our new multi-cultural family, because all attempts to be Chinese thus far (stir-fried rice, noodles, Chinese vegetables, Chinese take-out) are not working! They are getting stocked up on Vitamin C with an overdose of fruit - watermelon, cherries, grapes (peeled, mind you) bananas, and peaches are the only sure-fire things that we can get down them. Fortunately, we have resources that are being called in!
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
