Another Summer Music Camp Season Comes to A Close

Today, we went to the final performance of Summer Music at Stanislaus 2008. Hannah had a great time attending her fourth concert! Due to the length of the concert and it's occurrence during nap time, we only stayed for the pianists. (Nicholas was very disappointed that we didn't stay to hear the "big, big drums.") The pianists performed on the first third of the program; it lasted "only" an hour and a half. This year we had a record number of high school students so I ended up teaching more than we had originally planned, but Hannah did great with Dan while I taught. By the end of these past two weeks, she seemed quite at home on campus though we still held her everywhere we went. 

I had a wonderful time teaching this week. The high schoolers are more focused than last week's junior highers to a point where I had to encourage a few of them not to take things so seriously! I taught three classes a day. One master class I taught had four Chinese students.  I asked them if they had lots of Chinese families where they lived to which all four responded with a resounding yes. One girl told me that there are more Asians in her school than Caucasians. I shared with them my experience of being one of two Asians in the whole entire school--the other Asian was my brother which doesn't really count. The mass response was, "That's really bad!" Growing up, it was bad. I'm over it now though.

Those of you reading from afar we are having a large number of wildfires here. Please pray for the wildfires to become under control and the quality of the air to improve. It's pretty awful here in the Central Valley. Many organizations have cancelled their outside activities. Think Beijing without the smokey smell. It is smokey, just not the Beijing smoke that follows you inside. Oh, I should share that we aren't anywhere near the wildfires right now; the wind carries it to where we live. However, a few weeks ago we did have a wildfire about one mile where we live. Fortunately, it was brought under control rather quickly. Praise God because it stopped within 100 yards of two very nicely sized propane tanks located at a local business. 

Just another funny: Nicholas has been waking up very early because Dan has been leaving early and he doesn't want to miss out on seeing him in the morning. I was telling him that he hasn't been getting enough sleep so he has bags under his eyes. Before going to bed, he was looking in the mirror at himself and he said, "Mommy, do I have bags under my eyes?" I replied, "Yes, you do have bags under your eyes because you have been waking up too early in the morning." Nicholas replies, with a voice of wonder, "Well, Mommy, where ARE the bags? I don't see them!" 

One more funny: The other day I was cutting hair. Nathaniel sits down and announces, "Mommy, I think that I am getting too big for this!" He is all of six years old! Nathaniel's new term for tacky glue is "taxi" glue! 

I will try to get new pictures up some time this week! 

Hannah's First Concert

I took all the kids to the camp concert today. It was the shortest camp concert yet coming in at just a hair over and hour and a half. We were concerned about how well Hannah would do considering that she babbles all day long and when we ask her to be quiet she looks at us and continues talking as if she has no idea what we are saying--which she does. She did really well. There were just a few times when she would say "MA!" and then remember that she was to be quiet. She LOVED the music. She conducted, bounced up and down, swayed back and forth, and played with her shoes the entire time. OK....there were a couple of restless moments. Once I thought that she was going to have a tantrum, but she managed to pull herself together and move on. She loved clapping when the pieces were over. She was also a bit anxious the whole time and started her self-soothing action which involves a lot of scratching; she will scratch herself until she bleeds. We try to distract her which only works some of the time.

Today's concert was performances by all the small ensembles. Tomorrow, we get to go to another concert which will be all the large ensembles performing; the pianists will be playing their solo pieces that they worked on all week. This particular group of Junior High pianists has been fun to teach. I judged a competition this past spring and many of these pianists were in that competition; it was fun for me to get to know them outside of the "competition arena." This group seemed to be more about having fun than focusing on their piano playing, but they will leave tomorrow having made new friends whose interests match their own. Actually, a few of them don't want to leave tomorrow. Most of them plan on returning next year, it is always rewarding for me to see them return and hear how they have grown during the school year.  

This week and next week is CSU's Summer Music Camp. Dan is the director and the two weeks are very full of non-stop activity. I teach every year and this year we debated the wisdom of me teaching but in the end decided that if I didn't teach our children would never see Dan because he watches our children while I teach. We didn't want Hannah to forget who Dan is in her life.

Hannah is still uncomfortable in public places. Men still frighten her. Certain situations still are scary for her. This week at camp we've seen many Asian people and she was terrified, particularly when they came up to me and began to talk to me. 

Despite the above, she is trusting us more and more which is great! The downside of trusting us more and more is that she is acting up. It appears that the acting up is coming out of an "I wonder if I behave badly, if they will still love me?" and "I wonder if I have the same rules as the other children?" type of attitude. Interestingly enough, the first morning after the almost nightly "standoffs" began, I was expecting the usual grumpy, cute, little girl to greet me, but she was as happy as could be! Praising God for His goodness. She calls me MaMa many times an hour, seemingly to test out how nice it sounds! What a lovely sound to me as well!! 

We have several friends waiting for their last documents before travel--they are adopting from China, one family adopting a child from Uganda, and one family finalizing their adoption from the US (They already have their child.) Please pray for these families waiting for these last papers to arrive in a timely manner so that they can travel to get their precious ones. May God pave the way for them in the coming weeks and may God prepare the hearts of their little ones to receive their forever families! 

Just An Update

A couple of posts ago I asked for prayer for our two younger children. This is how God has answered that prayer request. A couple of days ago we were eating dinner when out of the blue Nicholas announces, "We need to go to China to get another baby!" Then, today while our children were putting their allowances in their wallets, Nicholas asks, "Does Hannah have a wallet?" I said, "No, she's too little to have a wallet." To this, Nicholas replies, "We need to get another baby before she gets bigger! Then, we'll have two babies!" I am so grateful that God has been revealing Nicholas' heart to us in this way. We still pray for softened hearts. Based on the little things we see, we know that one day they'll be the best of friends! Watch out world!! 

Each week we see Hannah coming out of her shell more and more. She is becoming physically more sure of her steps. When we brought her home, if we walked by her, she'd fall down which would lead to an impressive display of emotion on her part. She now can spin, walk and change directions without falling, get on and off of the rocking horse without help, and run!! Running is new just in the past couple of days. Her verbal skills are catching up; she has lots of Chinese sounding words and some Chinese words that are pretty clear. Lots of baby signs. She now has three English words! Bird, Poppy, and the new one.....drum roll please......... NO. We think that it is really funny that every time we say dog (We have a dog next door) Hannah says dog in Chinese. We ask her, "Say dog" Hannah says dog again in Chinese. She is starting to wake up happy and ready for play! She knows that if Dan or I leave that we will be back. Big milestone because for awhile I couldn't leave her. She squeals with delight when we come home. Another huge milestone is the tantrums have become less and less. 

As I think of all our joy these last few weeks as we have welcomed Hannah home, I can't help but remember the grief and pain that Steven Curtis Chapman and his family have been facing. Please continue to pray comfort and peace on this family who lost their five year old daughter, Maria, to a tragic accident. The Chapman family founded Shao Hannah's Hope, named after one of their three Chinese daughters. Shao Hannah's Hope offers grants to families that are adopting children. They have helped more than 1600 families bring their children home. Because of their visibility, many other families have stepped out to adopt children. Their latest project is to come to completion this summer as they build an orphanage for special needs children in China. If you'd like to learn more about Shao Hannah's Hope, please visit www.shaohannahshope.org

Four Weeks Ago Yesterday

We received Shao Rui Hannah four weeks ago yesterday! Gotcha Day was an experience! The poor thing just cried and cried. We finally got her all calmed down and asleep and they wanted to take a picture of the three of us with her eyes open! Literally, I think she was asleep for all of three minutes, and we had to wake her up again. In the midst of her crying very loudly, really it was more like wailing, we were filling out paperwork. About two hours of papers. We are amazed at the amount of paper that we have accumulated! Not complaining because we'd do it again in a heartbeat! I know we'd all move mountains for our children! 

I have to share with you what she was wearing! She was wearing yellow long johns that we had sent her during that cold, cold spell in February. Over the long johns was a pink and white striped, spaghetti strapped-like dress, complete with pink tutu. On the body of the dress in silver letters was written the word, "Diva." She had on squeaky  blue sandals. I wish that we had taken a picture of her in it, but she had wet her clothes so I had to change her into something else. She was just too cute!

Today, we had an appointment with the International Adoption Doctor in Oakland. She was very helpful and affirmed some things that we had already been thinking and doing and gave us some suggestions. Most children who come from institutional care and foster homes are somewhat developmentally delayed but catch up quickly. Shao Rui Hannah has already made leaps of improvement in so many areas; we are sure that she is just the brightest little 22 month old from China. We knew that Shao Rui Hannah probably wasn't going to like going to the doctor, but she REALLY REALLY doesn't like doctors. She was so wiped out from wailing that she fell asleep after Dr. Curtis was done examining her. Fortunately before the wailing began, Dr. Curtis was able to see Shao Rui's happy self. Interestingly enough, when we came home she seemed to have taken a step back in that she wouldn't let Dan hold her. She would play with him but just wouldn't let him hold her. I don't know if she was just mad that he didn't stay with her at the doctors office--Dan and the big kids went to the museum during Shao Rui's appointment--or if she just wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to leave her. I did try to sneak out to do a quick errand tonight, but she wasn't going to let me out of her sight so she went with me. 

Funny story....we had to wake our children up early this morning to get to Oakland for the appointment. When we were in China, we had three out of five flights that left very early in the morning. We would have to wake up the three sleeping children, when children should not be awake--neither should adults--to catch the these flights. This morning as we were eating our very early breakfast, Nicholas pipes up and says, "Are we going to China?"