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Of Peer Pressure,
Piercings and Presents
Hannah came to us with at least 3 wishes that we have been able to decipher so far. She has been talking about these wishes to anyone who knows Chinese and English and can translate that she needs these things. One, as you already know was a computer. That wish came true. The second was a trip to Disney — this from a girl who gets car sick every time we're in the car and gets over-stimulated from shopping at Target. We will not be going to Disney for a very long time. The third wish was to get her ears pierced. This wish was granted for her 10th birthday. A mall is not a place we have attempted to take Hannah before. Like I said, she gets over-stimulated in Target. Apparently the only place besides a tattoo parlor to get ears pierced is the mall. So, off we went. Hannah is kind of a wimp for everyday things. For instance she screams when I brush her hair, when something cold touches her, when you tie her shoes too tight, and when the tag on her shirt irritates. For the big things like getting teeth pulled, getting shots, and getting her ears pierced she is a trooper. She held on tight to my hand and sailed right through it. The drama came afterwards with the cleaning. The cleaning fluid is apparently too cold, and my gentle dabbing at her ears is too hard. For her birthday we got her a Barbie cake and went to McDonalds with grandpa and grandma. For the record we offered to take Hannah to any restaurant she wanted, but McDonalds prevailed ... again. Anyway, along with the bike and the ear piercing she also got a new Sponge Bob Lego set and a pink (of course) beanbag chair. After she assembled the Lego set we gave her on the first day of school, she told us that Sponge Bob and his friends needed the Lego house that she had seen on an earlier Target visit. She was very excited to see that she got it for her birthday. Grandma and grandpa also gave her (among numerous other things) another Sponge Bob Lego set. She was thrilled. Two of her favorite things — Sponge Bob and Lego’s together — life is good! But wait there's more. Next weekend the whole family will be getting together for a birthday celebration. Hannah also started her second week of school. I have to say that it is doing wonders for her. Peer pressure is very much working to our advantage right now. After only 5 days of school our picky eater asked if she could buy lunch at school. Yeah! She never eats anything we ask her to eat. In a few years we will not be so excited that peer pressure can influence her so strongly but we might as well use it for now. One more first for Hannah this week was getting her first piece of mail. On Monday, there was a birthday card waiting for her in the mailbox when we got home from school. When I gave it to her, she looked puzzled. When she opened it and found money inside, she was so excited. She pointed to the names on the card and asked me who it was. I told her that it was sent by a woman from work and her son. She looked at me like, "Why would someone at your work send me money?" We unsuccessfully tried to explain the reason these people would send such a gift. In the end it was enough that the cold, hard cash was in her hands. Thanks, Anne and Matt.
(Posted: 4/30/2009)
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So you don’t like learning at home...
... we’ve got the perfect solution for that. Hannah had her first week of school this week. She was scared for her first day. Scared on Hannah looks like all quiet, no giggles or smiles, no ear piercing screams. We brought her into the school and her ESL teacher greeted us at the front door. Hannah met her when we toured the school a week earlier and remembered her enough to give her a tentative smile. The ESL instructor brought us to Hannah’s room to meet her 3rd grade teacher. Hannah was shown where everything was and met some kids near her desk. We then left her classroom and went with the ESL teacher to her office. She offered to let us stay and peak at Hannah in gym class which started about 20 minutes later. In the meantime, she explained the course of action she was going to take with Hannah and showed us some of the materials she was going to use. After that it was time to peak in on Hannah who was happily running around the gym with the rest of the students. We left then feeling confident that she was fine and that she was in good hands. When we met Hannah with her ESL teacher at the end of the day, Hannah was all smiles. She was definitely happy to see us and ready to go home, but we could tell she had a good day. She met a girl in her class who moved from Korea a short time ago and they are apparently fast friends now. It seems that Hannah is a good influence on her according to her teachers. We are hoping she will be a good influence on Hannah as well, motivating her to learn English quickly. We decided to present Hannah with a gift in the car when we picked her up from school. OK, before everyone gets upset about bribing to go to school, it was really more of a "what a brave girl" gift. When we got to the car, she started squealing when she saw the present — a small Sponge Bob Lego set. This was a good week for Hannah to start school. She went full days on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday was our appointment in Indy at the International Adoption Clinic. Thursday was a half day, and on Friday Hannah spent a good portion of the day in a park for Arbor Day. We are already noticing a difference in Hannah even after this first short week. She is more willing to work with us on her English and other homework, is definitely speaking more English, and is also much less bored. Quite an accomplishment for one week. Here are some pictures. I had to post another one of the cat because not long after the photos with Hannah freaking the cat out, we got this picture.
(Posted: 4/26/2009)
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I Have A Dream
Hannah had two dentist appointments last week. The first one was a cleaning that we found out is going to require more than one session. The second was to get 3 teeth pulled. She did really great for both of the appointments, and we were very impressed with how brave our little girl was. When we got back from having the teeth pulled, we tried to tell her about the “Tooth Fairy”. Here is the message that finally gave us a decent translation via Babel Fish:
"Hannah, when you lose a tooth, the tooth princess visits.
You hide teeth under your pillow tonight.
Princess comes and gives you money while you sleep.
Since we do not have your teeth, we make teeth.
We will make teeth out of paper."
We had to use princess instead of fairy because fairy translated to monster! We took some clipart teeth and printed them. She cut out two sets — one for the tooth fairy and one for Grandma and Grandpa (who will give money with proof of tooth). Now, normally it is impossible to get Hannah out of bed in the morning. First we have to wake her up, let her snooze for 10 minutes, and then drag her out of bed at 7:30 in the morning. For some reason, it was not a problem to get up at 6:00 that morning. We finally know what motivates Hannah — MONEY! She was so excited to get the money. One of her first questions after she woke up was when she could go shopping. That’s our girl. Of course, it was a totally different story when she had to pull out her money to pay for her toy. The other night my cousin and her husband and daughter came over. They had an old laptop that they wanted to give to Hannah all fixed up with her Chinese QQ (think Chinese Skype). When they gave it to her, she was very excited and started to type them a message to translate. The translation was a little fuzzy, but it sounded something like this, "In China I always wanted a computer and you made all my dreams come true!" Don’t we feel silly right about now. Enjoy a photo from Easter and a couple of how the cat is adjusting (or not) to Hannah.
(Posted: 4/19/2009)
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A Season of Firsts
Some people wonder why you would ever adopt an older child. Part of their argument is that you miss so many "firsts" with your child. Well, we may never see her first step or first tooth but there are so many other "firsts". Last week was her first snow. I can’t imagine getting any more excitement from a toddler than we got from Hannah. We have had a few more "firsts" this week as well. She did her first Easter eggs, survived her first family gathering, opened her first wrapped gift, and had her first dental appointment. Before Easter, Hannah’s cousin Amanda wanted to color Easter eggs with her. We tried to translate this to Hannah, but of course she didn’t understand. Who would color eggs and why? When we started with the eggs, she tentatively colored one but still seemed a little leery of the whole business. After a couple of tries, she was a pro and wanted more eggs to color. We ended up doing 3 dozen eggs -- we don’t even really like boiled eggs. At her first family gathering, she charmed everyone. She wasn’t shy around anyone and happily played with all the cousins. It helped that my nieces and nephews brought their Wii. Apparently no English was needed to communicate there. My cousin and his wife brought a gift for Hannah to the gathering. It was very appropriately wrapped in Disney paper. When we gave her the presents to open, she didn’t quite know what to do with them. We tried to pantomime opening them, but she didn’t seem to get it. I think part of the problem was that she didn’t want to rip the paper. Being the smart kid that she is, Hannah eventually figured out what to do to get at the loot. Her first dental appointment was not nearly as exciting. We were very concerned about her teeth because at her check-up in Guangzhou, the first thing the doctor said was that she had cavities. It was plain to see once we looked in her mouth that she had some serious cavities. She did great at the dentist, though. She needed a very thorough cleaning that will take 2 visits to complete and she will have 3 baby teeth removed. The dentist said that these were loose anyway and all of them had bad cavities. Unfortunately, all this means at least 3 dental visits in the next couple of weeks. Hannah will begin school next week. This has been a point of great debate with us. We want her home so we can spend time bonding, but she isn’t learning any English this way. Any time we attempt to teach English to her she completely zones out. We think that the structure of school will beneficial. We know that she has expressed concern for learning the language but it is not accompanied by any desire to learn, hence the reason we’ve enrolled her in school. They have an ESL program at the school so she will not be in all the regular classes. She will be pulled out on a daily basis to have some one-on-one time with the ESL teacher. The school administration also thinks immersion in the student population will encourage her to learn English. Hopefully the seven weeks that remain in the school year will give Jon and a tutor a good base to work from during the summer. Please pray for Hannah during this time of transition. Enjoy the photos.
(Posted: 4/15/2009)
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Hannah's Winter Wonderland
Well, we’re finally starting to get into a groove here at the house. Every day Hannah’s sleep pattern gets a little more normal. Food is still an issue though. Other than McDonalds there are not too many other foods she is willing to try. Ramen noodles are still the favorite, but we’re slowly expanding on that. Hannah had her first snow the other day. Who would have though that she’d see snow when we came home in April? The night that it snowed, Hannah had one of her no sleep nights. She got up at around 2 AM and told Jon that she was too excited about the snow to go back to sleep. The next day when we were going out she had to play in the snow. As soon as she saw Jon with the shovel, she wanted to shovel too. The problem was that the snow was heavier than she was. She couldn’t push a full shovel so she ended up with a hoe kind of thing that was more her size. She also tried her hand at a big snowball. It didn’t take long before it was heavier than she was and she couldn’t push it. We felt a little bad that we were taking our girl from subtropical Nanning to Northwest Indiana but it seems like she loves the snow! We read on the blog of one of our travel group who also adopted a 10 year old that their daughter expected to be entertained all the time. That is exactly Hannah! As soon as we are done with one activity she expects to start another one. The minute she doesn’t have something to do she is bored. To that end, we have been trying out different games and crafts. Things are interesting to her only the first time she does them and then she is bored. She tried to tell us she wanted crafts to do but none of the ones we showed her seemed to interest her. A couple of days ago we went to our local elementary school to check into ESL classes for her. While we were talking to her teacher, she sat at a table where they had paper, scissors and glue. She happily made a 3D paper table while we talked. After all our shopping for toys, clothes, and crafts the $10 we spent on paper, scissors, and glue was money much better spent. Well, enough chat, here are the pictures that I know is what most of you want to see. We also have a video of Hannah attempting to shovel the snow. Her performance is worthy of an Oscar.
(Posted: 4/11/2009)
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Family Updates For April 2009
Here are the current happenings in our family:
