Dancing into the Night

As you can see, Madelyn is the Dancing Queen! She managed to dance not only with Scott and I, but also with the bride and groom! Scott and I loved how she was completely unaware that people might be watching her... she just danced with abandon and loved every minute of it!

My Catch

Just like at most weddings, Aunt Sarah's wedding on Saturday included the traditional bouquet toss. I sent Madelyn and Gwen out to join in the crowd of other eligible young ladies, and I told them to try to catch the flowers. One of the hopeful bridesmaids caught it (I think she had a deal going with the bride), leaving one little flower girl sorely disappointed. Gwen held her little hands out and sadly said, "My catch?"

Gwen on the edge of the crowd of girls waiting for the toss!

Making up with Kim, who caught the bouquet.

Flower Girls

Gwen and Madelyn had the honor of being flower girls in their Aunt Sarah's wedding this past Saturday. Our two nieces and the groom's niece were also flower girls... so there were five! Madelyn was the oldest one, and a seasoned one at that, this being her third wedding as a flower girl. She kept the others in line, although it wasn't easy riding herd on the two two year olds! Fortunately Aunt Sarah was pretty laid back about their performance.

Here the flower girls are making their way, in a sort of a clump, down the petal-strewn stone path towards the waiting bridesmaids. Notice that Gwen is already breaking from the pack to head towards me. Scott is in the back of the group, having just sent them off down the aisle.
After the ceremony, the bride and groom pose with their nieces and nephews.
Our family... hard to get everyone looking at once!

Unconventional Ice Cream Consumption

Look at my sister Madelyn! She thought it would be fun to eat ice cream with chopsticks! She fed me ice cream this way, too! Mommy didn't mind because we couldn't eat very much at a time like this.

Artist at Work

Notice: Masterpiece in progress. Please allow the resident artist some privacy.

Give Me the Words to Say

I had quite a conversation with a five and a half year old little sprite of a girl at Seth's baseball game last night. She was petite, with curly red hair that was escaping in tendrils from her ponytail. She wore wire rimmed glasses, and had smooth pale skin with a few freckles dotting her nose. She came over to join my girls to play with legos on the blanket I brought. She was very interested in Gwen. She looked at her, talked to her, asked me her name.

Finally, she asked, "Why is her skin brown and your skin white?" I explained that Gwen was Chinese, that we had adopted her, and that she had darker skin than me. She was amazed that Gwen was Chinese, it seemed to surprise her. Adoption, she had heard of that. Someone in her class was adopted, she said, but she didn't think it was from China.

Next she wanted to know Gwen's Chinese name. A higher level of questioning began. I told her, it was Wang Yu, but that it wasn't pronounced how we thought it would be. I said it for her. It's very difficult to say correctly. Her little mouth tried to form the foreign sounds several times.

A little while later the next question came, the trickier question.
"Why didn't her real mommy want her?"

Deep breath. I can answer this question that a five year old stranger is asking me. It is a child's innocent question. Never mind that I am not in a hurry to have this question asked of me by another little innocent child, my own daughter. I will practice on the stranger. I can do it.

I did it. And I did okay.

"The lady who gave birth to Gwen couldn't take care of any baby. So she brought Gwen to a place where I could come get her and adopt her."

The little red headed stranger was satisfied. I am satisfied too. I passed the test. I will practice again, many times I hope, before Gwen asks me this question. And when she does, I know that God will give me the words she needs to hear.

Self Photo, by Madelyn

This girl is multi- talented, don't you think?! What a face! I think she may have been trying to look like Ginger, her guinea pig. :-)

Horsey Ride

One of the many duties of a daddy!
Happy Father's Day, Scott... You have definitely won the hearts of your four kids, and their mommy's, too!

Reach for the Sky...

... or for Grandpa's kites on the beach.

Six months and one day

So this is a picture of Gwen and I last December, about 30 minutes after we first laid eyes on each other. Amazing. Amazing that it has already been six months, and amazing that it's only been six months. This little black haired girl is so much a part of us that we can hardly remember what we did without her! I think she feels very much a part of us, too. A new thing she has been saying seems to illustrate this point. She'll be with me and point to Scott, saying, "Mommy, my daddy." I answer her, "Yes Gwen, that's your daddy." She does this with all of us, and it reminds me of a dream I had a little over a year ago, before we had even seen her picture. In the dream I was holding her and she was saying of me to someone else, "That's my mommy." Everything seems to be hers these days, there are lots of "mys" being tossed around, but I'm so pleased and reassured that she seems to really know that we are hers!

Family Names

Gwen hit a speech milestone the other day... after months of either calling everyone "Mom", or only occassionally getting a name here and there, she finally got them all.

Gwen has a little tradition after meals. When we are finished and I lift her down out of her booster seat, she dances. Just a little minute of spinning and jumping, with the joy of a full tummy. She is usually the first one to leave the table (although I try to keep her with us until we all finish!), and perhaps she sees it as a chance to perform for a captive audience.

Last weekend we were eating dinner outside on the deck. When our dinner was over and I released Gwen from her seat, she looked around the table at the rest of us, and one by one she said all of our names.

"Daddy, Set (Seth), Ma-a-lyn, Ca (Caleb), Mommy". It was deliberate and careful, and she looked at each one of us as she said our names to the best of her ability.

She was calling for our attention. She got it.

And then, with all eyes on her, she danced.

Hurray for Gwen!!

Gingerbread (Ginger for short)

See my sister's new pet?
I like to feed her!

We've turned the page...

... on really enjoying being read to. When we first met Gwen, she tolerated books only if she had her bedtime bottle to keep her still while we read to her. Things have improved greatly since then, and there have been a good handful of books that she's liked, but mostly those were books that had some kind of bells and whistles to keep her interest, like flaps to peek under or textures to touch.

Caleb, being the first child, was the only one who received my undivided attention as a toddler. I started reading to him early and often. I was also pregnant when he was a toddler, so reading to him seemed like a nice, sedentary activity. We had lots of time to read... and at the age of two, he would sit and listen to stories for long stretches of time, much to my weary body's relief.

This fourth time around, I have much less time to read to my toddler. Fortunately I have other readers in my house now, readers who are doing a bang-up job of reading "Goodnight Moon" and other favorites to their little sister. I am trying to give myself some extra moments at naptime and bedtime to sit with Gwen and read, because now, instead of just making it through one book on her attention span, she is lingering over pages, making extra sound effects, turning back to favorite pages, and getting up to pick the next book when the first one is finished.

I'm so thankful. I love to read to my children. I would go so far to say that for me it is one of the greatest pleasures of parenting. Even if the story is so familiar that I could recite it in my sleep...

In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon...

Just Me & My Cousin

Life is interesting when you get two two year olds together! Caden and Gwen had great fun together while we were together, with only a few "Sharing is FUN!!" reminders from Aunt Sarah!

Who is that under that hat?
Caught in the act of getting our jammies wet!
Hey, what do you think we need to do to get some service around here?
Are you sure this cute girl is your sister?
What are we doing in this chair again?!
A little music lesson in everyone's favorite store, the one full of cool jewelry and exotic stuff from around the world.
Caden, look here! Isn't the beach terrific?
What is that boy thinking now?!

More Talking!

Gwen has more and more understandable language! She has a tendancy to add "ee" to the endings of words, giving us the following cute pronunciations:

~ chippy (torilla chips)

~ shoe-y (this refers to any shoes, including sandles, which she can put on and off herself, often on the right feet!)

~ jui_y (this is juice without the "c", but means any drink)

~ s_eepy (Sleepy without the "l", of course. She says this if she sees any person or animal with their eyes closed, and today in the car she told me she was s_eepy, right about naptime!)

~ jumpy (what she wants to do all the time, now that we have our trampoline up for the summer!)

Another pronunciation that we love is "a-too". It's how she says thank you, but sounds like a sneeze!

Little Fishy

Well, Gwen turned out to be a regular fish. This being only her second experience in a pool, she performed like an old pro! It was fortunate that I had a "tube suit" for her, because she wanted to be off and swimming. She loved jumping off the side, and would do it even if no one had their arms out to catch her! It helped that one of the pools was quite warm, almost bath water... made it very easy to jump right in. Why can't I just jump in by myself, Daddy?

Caleb plays a little "King of the raft" game with Uncle MarkSarah with sweet 3 month old Alyssa, who fell asleep in this position just a few minutes later.
Throw me higher, Dad!

Bird at the Beach

This big guy stood at the edge of the surf one evening at twilight, watching a nearby fisherman and waiting for a fish to be tossed his way. Because of his singlemindedness in waiting for his supper, he allowed us to get quite close!

Critters at the Pool

The boys enjoy hunting for certain little green critters when we are on vacation... Gwen wasn't so sure she wanted to see the critters up close! Caleb, on the other hand, likes the up close and personal attentions of his tree frog. It almost doesn't look real, posing there on his face, but I assure you it is! It took us several tries to get this picture because the little guy kept hopping away.

Get that thing away from me! A lizard, captured for a moment.

Life's a Beach

Not really, but it sure was fun to hang out there last week!

How She Eats

Pretty much everything... some of the things that have surprised me are fish, raw red and green peppers, raw zucchini (yuck!), any type of soup, stew or casserole; spicy foods, and even black beans right out of the can. When were in China she ate next to nothing. I think she existed on her bottles and occassional bites of steamed egg and wanton soup. Now everything is fair game!

One thing she doesn't like at all, and I've tried any number of times: strawberries!

How She Sleeps

This is how I often find Gwen when I go to check on her before we go to bed... turned completely sideways in her crib. Is this because she had a crib mate at Ybin? Or does she just like to be cozy?

Classic Seth

Sunday mornings are busy. I usually check to make sure the boys have something clean and unwrinkled to wear, something appropriate for church, but for the most part I spend time getting myself and the girls ready... which takes a bit of effort!

Today I let the girls sleep until the last possible moment. I made sure I was completely ready before going into their room. Seth was up and ready. I had gotten a polo out for him, only to discover that he was downstairs already, wearing a red polo and some black shorts and looking fairly put together. So I went back to the girls' room, woke them, picked out clothes, changed a diaper, dressed them, fixed their hair, found sandles, and took them down for breakfast, with precious few minutes to spare. We ate a quick bowl of cereal and got in the car.

As we were pulling out of our neighborhood onto the main road, I glanced over at Seth, sitting next to me in the front seat. I realize with slight horror that his entire left knee is caked with dried blood and dirt. Lovely. This was obviously left over from yesterday, as he had not showered, and although he was working on something in the garage while I was dressing the girls this morning, I didn't think there was dirt or bodily injury involved in that project. He had gotten home at a quarter to nine last night after spending the entire day at a friend's house. Somehow the mud and blood had escaped me, and was not visible when he was standing up because his shorts covered it.

Well now, doesn't my child just look so put together and well cared for? It was too late to go back home for him to clean up, we were already a few minutes late. Really all I could do was chuckle, and tell him to go to the restroom at church and clean it off with a wet paper towel when we got there.

If I didn't miss my guess, I'm pretty sure he had yesterday's socks on too, now that I think about it. Perhaps Seth needs a little more attention from Mom on Sundays.

Circus Act

Kind of makes me wish I'd had an older brother...

We Have a Puppy

...on our street, not at our house. I haven't given in yet! The neighbors two doors down have a miniature dachshund named Taz. He's been home only about 3 weeks, and of course he's grown by leaps and bounds, but he's still pretty small. We get to see Taz quite a bit, partly because the weather's so nice and they have him out a lot, but also because the neighbors have employed Caleb to take Taz out at lunchtime for a bit of playtime since they are all gone all day. It's been great for my kids to get their puppy fix this way... great for me, too! Better it live at someone else's house! But Taz is a cutie, and it's been lots of fun to play with him.

Gwen is a dog lover, but tends to love dogs from a distance and in books (she kisses their picture!). Up close dogs are a little scary, even very small dogs like Taz. And the licking of the face... well, that's just a little too much for her to take!



Alright Taz, I've had enough of you for today!

Communication and Change

Gwen's speech is improving daily. The other three children delight in getting her to repeat things, both to hear her funny pronunciations and also to be able to tell me new words that she can say. I'm always overhearing, "Gwen, say _____". Usually she gets the beginning sound of the word and not a lot else.

However, the newest addition to her collection of distinguishable words comes across quite plainly. It's this~ "See, Mom, see." She wants me to watch her, of course. Sometimes she's wanting me to watch her vague copies of Madelyn's gymnastics moves, moves where Gwen is on all fours with one leg in the air. Sometimes she wants me to see her funny little made up dances, the ones where she spins around a few times and then does some jumping, grinning all the while.

Gwen's "See, Mom, see" reminds me of a similar phrase from a little blonde boy, our first one... Caleb. We were living in Atlanta, and Seth was literally just days away from being born. One balmy Georgia day in December, we took Caleb to Lake Lanier to play by the water. It wasn't swimming weather, but certainly a nice day to be on the beach. He was not quite two and a half at the time. He found stones on the beach, as little boys will, and discovered the fun of throwing them into the water. Over and over, rock after rock, his little voice calling out with each toss~ "Mom, watch it happen!" In my pregnancy weary state, I was almost irritated that I was supposed to watch every toss, but now... well, you know. Now that first little blonde boy is finishing the sixth grade. He is nearly my height (taller than me with his roller blades on) and his shoes are too big for me. The years are rushing by, aren't they? I've tried to "watch it happen", but I can't remember seeing that blonde toddler slip away and return as this tall, brown haired boy that lives at my house now.