Ordinary Time

This is the language I am speaking a lot right now. Having left for China with a couple useful phrases ("I love you" and "hello" and "thank you"), my vocabulary has increased exponentially. (Of course given where I started from, I realize this isn't saying a whole lot.) I know pronouns, some verbs, and some adjectives, and if you were to see the list, they would tell you far more about my daughter than my language abilities. We all tend to learn what is useful and relevant and that is what I have done with Mandarin. Thus, I know the words for "spicy", because H. does not like spicy food and is always checking whether something is spicy or not before she tries it. I know "peanut" because H. loves peanuts. And I know the useful term, "bu shir" which pretty much means no.  And "bu" also negates things which can also be useful. H.'s English vocabulary grows each day as well. (Far faster than my Mandarin vocabul...

Scenes from our Easter celebration. We dyed eggs with the P family and H-S family. (That would be 15 children... young and old present.) Ready for Easter morning. We celebrated Easter morning. L. (on left) and G.  G. isn't really taller than L. is, she is just standing a bit closer to the camera creating an odd optical illusion. Dresses are compliments of Grammy.  Aren't they adorable? (I hesitated to take them down front for the children's message in church because sometimes I think they can be a bit of a distraction to the congregation.) We hunted eggs. We went to church.  Since the weather was so nice, we could even walk. And then we went to J.'s sister's home where we had Easter dinner and celebrated with family. He is risen!  Alleluia!

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

One of the suggestions I was given for things to write about was to ask what have we done to explain Good Friday to our young children and ways to make it understandable and accessible. First, a disclaimer. We have done a lot of things, but it is not a comprehensive list of everything that can be done to teach children about Good Friday... and many of the ideas are not original to me, but our own twist on an idea I found elsewhere. It is also good to keep in mind that there is no formula for creating faith in children. I fear that sometimes we parents act as though we believe that if we follow a certain set of tasks and activities then we can assume our children will have a saving faith in Jesus. Ultimately, a child's faith becomes his or her own responsibility; it is between the child and God. As parents we can certainly do things to help or hinder that faith, often in extreme ways, but the converse is also true, that parents can do everything 'right' and still have a chil...

Some of you may have noticed my plea for prompts for blogging posts on the Ordinary Time facebook page . I became rather spoiled in China with huge amounts to write about and now that I am home, it is proving difficult to come up with what I think are interesting posts. I know I can write about everyday stuff, but really how much do you all want to hear about doing laundry and tears over math? I know that writing about H. is always interesting, but I want to start blending her, her experiences, and her place in our family in with the rest of my children. I never want to single one child out as being more interesting or more difficult than the others, so try to be careful in how I write about them. (I'm quite sure I don't always succeed in this, but I do try.) But since there are many people out there who have either met H. in person or have followed her story and care very much about her, I will keep you all updated. I have decided to move most small updates to the blog's...

One thing I have become increasingly aware of is H.'s lack of tears. No tears of sadness; no tears of frustration; not even tears of fatigue. For a 9 year old to go three weeks without a single tear strikes me as somewhat abnormal. I don't know about you, but in my family tears are a daily occurrence. Perhaps not all from the same child on a given day, but they are certainly spread out among the population over the course of a week. So no tears at all, especially given all the upheaval in H.'s life is a little disturbing to me. I find that as a mother I am sometimes grateful for things that would seem odd at face value. Today for instance, I was grateful for a tumble off the zip line. This morning, while I was checking schoolwork, the masses headed outside to play and H. discovered the zip line we have set up. I was surprised that she tried it given her generally hesitant nature about physical activity, but tried it she did and loved it. So this afternoon, while A. was ba...

It's been a week since we came home and I think both my cold and the jet lag are finally going away. Hallelujah! I was getting tired of feeling fuzzy. Despite my mental haze, the past week has gone well.  We've had our ups and downs, but that's pretty much business as usual around here. I'm sure all the help we have experienced has contributed to our general feeling of well being. I didn't mention it before, but a friend had stocked our pantry and refrigerator with food so well, that the first time I had to go to the store was on Saturday, and that was only for essentials such as milk and cheese sticks. We still have a week of dinners being brought in, so I haven't had to do any menu planning.  We feel very blessed and supported. Thank you to everyone who has helped to take care of us. In some ways, bringing home an older child is not a lot different from bringing home a newborn.The biggest difference is that our new child sleeps well and the last babies whi...