Thomas's new song

This afternoon I overheard Thomas singing--it went something like this "Jingle Bells, we love God, God loves me."  The song stopped because I grabbed him and hugged him.  It was so sweet to hear his little song and the love in his heart. 

Happy Birthday, Therese!

Today our future daughter is 4 years old.  We are sad that she has to spend this birthday in the orphanage, but at least this should be the last one as an orphan.  To try to give her a little birthday celebration, we sent a care package to her, through Ladybugs n Love.  If the orphanage accepted it, she will get a cake, and these things in the picture.  We are sending the camera and film hoping that they will take pictures of her first birthday cake and give us the film when we go to China to get her.  We can't wait to meet you, little girl!

Hello, I am your camel.

I bought this book so I can learn some useful phrases in Chinese before we travel.  (I know travel is a loooonnnggg way off, but I like to be prepared.)

This book is simple and short, and it has all sorts of phrases you won't find in a regular travel phrase book, like "I am your mother"  "Do you need to go to the bathroom?"  "We will take good care of you."  The problem is that I am having a very hard time pronouncing Chinese words.  I still can't say Therese's Chinese name correctly, and I have been working on that for quite awhile.  Since Chinese is tonal, you could be saying a totally different word if you get the tone wrong.  I used to teach English to international students and remember how hard it was for them to pronounce certain sounds in English.  I have personally studied German, and a little French and Latin.  There are a few sounds in German I never got completely correct, and I had a bad habit of using German sounds when I tried to use French.  (I'm sure that French people would have LOVED that.)  My sisters will probably never let me forget the time when we were in Germany together, and I asked that my bread be circumcised, when trying to remember the word for sliced.  There are only a couple of letters different in those two words, which really make a different meaning, ha ha.   But, Chinese is by far the hardest for me.  I want to be able to say a few soothing phrases, and of course saying the poor girl's name correctly would be good too.  Unfortunately, I have noticed in my very limited study that the word for mama and camel are the same--they just use different tones.  I'm afraid that when I finally get to China, I will meet my child and say in a gentle voice, "I will take good care of you.  I am your camel."  She will be so confused.  Even though she lives near the Gobi desert, I'm sure she has never met a camel, and certainly not a camel that looks like me.

The best thing a Mom can hear....

The other day I was getting breakfast ready and a little boy in Thomas the Train pajamas came in, wrapped his arms around my legs, and said, "I LOVE you, mommy!"  So sweet--I love my kids.

Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!   Today is an especially important holiday for Hispanic Catholics.  You can read about it here or here.   In spite of marrying into a Mexican family, I have yet to get up at dawn to sing Mananitas, but this afternoon we will definitely be listening to some mariachi bands playing them.

Hooray for some good adoption news!

Our homestudy has been approved!  I'm so excited! I'm getting my immigration forms out and ready so they will be ready to go as soon as we actually get the notarized homestudy in our hands. 

Gaudete! The Third Sunday of Advent

My kids call this "pink candle Sunday", because this is the day we start lighting the 3rd, rose-colored, candle on the Advent wreath.  It is also called Gaudete Sunday because the Introit in Latin begins "Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete."  It is from Philippians, chaper 4--rejoice in the Lord always: again I say, rejoice.  Gaudete Sunday is a time of joy in the midst of our Advent preparations, because we know the Lord is coming!

We had a very nice evening with some friends who have 3 children adopted from China, and one from Congo.  Both of our families are working on adopting our 5th child, from China.  All together, last night, there were 8 children from 2-13, all playing happily.  My kids didn't want to leave, even though they were so tired and it was past their bedtime.  The van was full of gentle snores by the time we got home, and we could barely get the kids in their pajamas they were so tired.  It is nice to have fellow adoptive families who understand what going through this crazy process is really like!

Yesterday was just one of those days......

First of all, I woke up with the beginnings of a cold.  I had those tell-tale signs--tired, achy, sore throat, runny nose.  I got everyone dressed and breakfasted, got our reading and catechism done, and then the kids wanted to draw with markers.  I set them up at the table and Fermin was writing everyone's name.  I was impressed.  Then he wanted to cut his paper with scissors.  So I let him have the kid scissors and decided to rest and check my email before getting lunch on the table.  As I was at the computer, I heard Fermin's voice say, "cut off another one, Catherine."  Those words got me into the kitchen to investigate without delay!  Catherine had cut off several of her little curls.  I know all kids give themselves some kind of a haircut.  I still remember when my younger sisters did that.  It is almost a rite of passage.  But I love my girl's curls.  I spend a lot of time fixing her hair.  It is so curly that when it is dry you can't tell, but when wet it goes halfway down her back, so each of these little locks are quite a length of hair if you stretched them out. 

Fermin gave himself several nearly bald patches, right in front where it is the most noticeable.  He also gave his little brother a patch at the crown that is almost like a tonsure.  We are one week away from violin recital, where the oldest three will be playing and also getting their holiday pictures taken.

As you can tell, Fermin was not embarrassed at all at his appearance.  Jose didn't snip much of his hair, but he suddenly was wearing a cap.  Hmmm.

So there was marker all over the table (marker, not markers, which were mostly on the floor) I had kids whose hair looked moth-eaten, and I had to get ready to leave for my physical therapy.  I had such a nice quiet break at physical therapy, but I worried about what my little zoo was doing, left with their very gentle Grandma.  It would help if she had a little more drill-sergeant in her.  Anyway, I came home and found the house a wreck.  There were toys everywhere and you could hardly walk in the boys' room because there were blocks covering the floor. 

Part two of the day was trying to get the kids to clean up.  I was on my own because Mr. B. was out of town for the day doing his simulator training.  The kids hate cleaning up their messes.  It would be easier to do it myself, but we put the effort in to train them to clean so they won't grow up to be slobs.  At least that is the theory.  I have trouble with kids going AWOL from their assigned task.  Once as I tried to catch an escapee, I slipped on the debris and fell, hard on the floor.  I landed on a wooden block.  It knocked the wind out of me.  You would not believe how much a wooden block can hurt when you fall on top of one.  The rest of the evening I felt a little shaken up, my ribs hurt, and anytime I lifted my arms I had sharp pains up my back and side.  I managed get the kids to clean up, gave shorter haircuts to the moth victims, and got them bathed and ready for bed.  When I combed out Catherine's hair in the bathtub, a whole handful came out.  They had been cut but stayed on her head all day.  She has some serious gaps in her hair.  I'm not going to attempt trimming hers yet.  I think making multiple braids will cover up the holes. 

 Mr. B came home about 9:30 to a clean house and children, but a somewhat sore and flustered wife.  I took some cold medicine and went to bed.  Jose's shorter hair cut took care of his self-trim, but Fermin has three nearly bald spots.  I wonder if I could fill them in with black marker for the recital?

November 30th--Toilet Tea

I finally got these pictures out of the camera, so this story is from a few weeks ago.

In the morning the older two boys decided they wanted some fruit tea.  They did some (unauthorized) rummaging in the cabinet and found some they wanted to try.  I said that if they were very good, we could make the tea after schoolwork.  Well, the tea got made, but I guess they didn't want to rely on good behaviour to get it.  They came up with a totally new way of entertaining themselves: making tea in the toilet. They used the herbal tea bags they filched from the kitchen, and when I heard a lot of laughing and went to investigate why all 4 kids were in the bathroom with the door shut, they quickly flushed it.   They had opened the tea bags to mix it in the bowl, so tea particles were all over the toilet and the floor. No one admitted to tasting the toilet tea.   The next day when I got around to cleaning up the tea, I found that tea particles stain grout.  So now the grout has tiny purple and pink spots.  At least they aren't yellow.  You really don't want yellow stains around a toilet.  I wage a constant war on those with Comet!

Life in an Orphanage

For an inside look at life in a Chinese orphanage, this book by Kay Bratt, Silent Tears; A Journey of Hope in a Chinese Orphanage, is a real eye-opener.  You can read an excerpt on the author's website.  I have been reading about adoption for many years, but I wanted to know more about what life in an orphanage is like.  None of our adoptions up to this point have involved at child who has been in an institution.  During our Guatemalan adoption process, we paid for our boys to live with foster families, and we brought Catherine home from the hospital where she was born.  Now that we are in process to adopt a child who has lived her entire life in an orphanage, it was important for me to understand where she is coming from.  This book is one woman's experience with one orphanage, but it gave me a good idea of what Therese's daily life could be like.  I'm glad that the other moms who have adopted children from Therese's orphanage have said that while their children were quite malnourished, they felt that people there had cared about them, and they have attached well to their new parents.  Children from poor orphanages who had loving caregivers do better than children from well-funded ones that didn't have it.

Silent Tears shows what it is like to be a small child who was discarded by their family, living in an institution where there are too few nannies, sometimes not enough food to go around, and where some children just lie in their cribs, only to be taken out for baths.  I have heard that the death rate for infants in many orphanages has been up to 80 percent.  For a child with a disability like a cleft lip/cleft palate that made feeding difficult, simple starvation was more likely than possible.  Many children are abandoned because they need medical care, and orphanages often lacked the funds to provide surgeries, or were forced to choose only a few to send to the hospital.  After reading about the babies in the book who had heart problems, many of whom died because they did not get surgery, I am thankful that Therese's orphanage sent her to the hospital for repair of her spina bifida.  Lack of heating and hygiene issues caused illnesses to spread rapidly among the babies, especially in the winter.  Of the many sad things in the book, the most tragic lack for the babies was lack of love.  Some of the children just gave up their will to live, with no one ever touching them or showing them love.  In many orphanages, conditions have continually improved, partly because of the required orphanage donation that all adoptive parents pay.  Only about half of orphanages in China are involved in international adoption, so information about conditions in the others is probably inaccessible.  Since we just finished orphan awareness month in November, it is important to make people aware.  I recommend this book--not all of it is easy to read, but it shows how a group of expatriates living in China were able to make a difference for many of the children.  Not everyone is called to adopt, but we are all called to do something. 

Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent

Excita, Domine, corda nostra ad praeparandas Unigeniti Tui vias: ut per ejus adventum purificatis tibi mentibus servire mereamur: Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum.  Amen

Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to prepare the ways of Thine only-begotten Son: that through His coming we may deserve to serve Thee with purified minds: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.  Amen.