Homeschooling Days

Pearl made a sign for the sprouting acorn:  "dont step here tree growing"

If you don't home school, you might be curious about what a day looks like here. For us, it begins with sleeping in as long as possible. Once the girls get to the breakfast table, I begin to break out the books. We're working through a curriculum that walks us through history (still Pilgrims!), writing, English, and manners, but we add Bible readings (reading our way through I Samuel now) and more advanced math.  The internet has taught me how to teach two-digit addition, and she's picked it up pretty quickly despite some kvetching. Pearl tends to like worksheets printed off the internet rather than all the neat interactive math games I've picked up. I'm sure a younger sister will use those.

On Monday we saw a small window of good weather, so we moved purposefully through the curriculum while the little girls played around the house. We were able to go for a family nature walk, during which we identified a Tulip Poplar (and took a circumference reading), shelf fungus, a natural spring, and poison ivy. The little girls preferred the quarried rocks on the road, good for pitching into the creek.

We dropped Ruby off with Daddy for a nap, then I took the big girls to Chick-fil-a and on to the YMCA for home school swim.  Then we crossed the parking lot to check out some books in the library. Pearl read to me and Sapphire "read" to a huge stuffed dog toy that was interested in cows. During my dinner preparations she asked to help, so I decided it was time she learned to work the rice cooker all by herself. She can do it too, and the rice was great.

That evening I attended an adoption-support-group-for-moms, so Pearl enjoyed some biggest girl time with Daddy and watched part of an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. She's really into Errol Flynn right now, and she likes the Tudors (especially Queen Elizabeth I).  Her daddy fears she's going to need a man who will swashbuckle for her in another twenty years.

The next day, Tuesday, we headed to our co-op early. After announcements and opening prayer, we scuttled off to our assigned spots: nursery class for the littlest ones (they worked on the letter "u"), solar system, manners, then drama for Pearl, and I helped with solar system, had an hour off, then helped with karate. Usually my husband teaches that one and I stay home and revise my book, at least this semester that's how we've done it, but he had a meeting all day, so I filled in.  We all had potluck lunch together, the girls played with friends, then we headed home.

The little girls both needed naps (pretty desperately in Sapphire's case), so Pearl and I played around with fabric. We usually skip book work on co-op days, but we still learn other things. I taught her how to make napkins, and she even worked up to controlling the foot pedal and the fabric movement herself. She has lots of Christmas present plans (but these weren't for any of you, don't worry...unless you are aged 5 and your name starts with a B). Her favorite part is snipping the loose ends. Then she hand-stitched a Christmas gift while I was on the phone.

Jumping in the leaves

While I cooked she sort of entertained her sisters. Right now she's tied herself to Sapphire, and they are walking around the house as a two headed monster.

So that's two days of education here.

PS: Sapphire just told me that when her own little tiny baby comes, I will have to take her, (Sapphire) to China to get her (the baby). !

Girls' Day Out & Other Adventures

"What is your letter?" We overheard Sapphire asking another little three year old girl this question in the kids' section of Kohls. She seems to think it is a great ice-breaker. The correct answer, she said, is "3". Now she understands that she should answer "M" if anyone happens to ask her.

Our own princesses--enjoying Spiced Wafers, an Autumn treat

Last week we enjoyed our annual Girls' Day Out--Christmas Shopping Day with Nana and Aunt R. We always look forward to this. It is very doable, shopping with this ratio of 3:3. The girls looked forward to the mall playground, and they were very pleasant.

After lunch, I took the two oldest to Disney on Ice in Hershey. I didn't take the camera, but I'll just say it was a princess wonderland. We walked in and saw dozens of little girls dressed in princess dresses and grown up men wearing tiaras as they tried to sell us light up spinners and snow cones.

Once it started, the girls were pretty mesmerized. Pearl said, "I almost fell asleep. My whole body was so still except for my eyes." She was riveted. Sapphire was interested too, except she got antsy during the last half hour. Seeing Micky and Minnie in sparkly silver costumes introducing the four princess acts really made her day.

Fortunately our library gave us the coupons so the girls could fill out books they've read to earn the tickets.
 

 This is Pearl showing off a plate she made at a local pottery shop. It is perfect for cookies.

Of course, Ruby likes Spiced Wafers too. She's into anything that dips. 

The two little girls joined the Youth Group for the Progressive Dinner. We moved around the neighborhood of the church, eating a course at each house: appetizer, salad, main course, and dessert. Ruby loved the food, though she was just a little confused when we left without being completely full from the first house. She looked longingly at the food, but was happy to find more everywhere we went.

In our homeschooling world, this week we tried the Homeschool Swim at the YMCA. It worked well, and was such a deal. We all left a little tired after swimming for 1.5 hours.

We try to do a nature walk each week, inspired by suggestions from the Handbook of Nature Study blog and newsletter. Today we just walked around our yard, spied a dead mole, and planted the six bulbs from Holland (bought while we were studying the Pilgrims' sojourn in Leiden, Holland). We realized how chilly nature study is about to get!

I brought the hats and mittens down from the attic, so we are ready for the possible snow  (if Sapphire gets her way!). I've revamped our mitten station, hoping desperately that I won't have to match six mittens each time we go out

Kisses and Candy Corn, A First Halloween

After church on Sunday we had a Christmas Box party. The children filled boxes with notebooks, pens, teddy bears, and toothpaste, and I'll deliver these to Samaritan's Purse to distribute all around the world. Sapphire had a hard time putting a few of the toys in the box; she seemed to think she needed them instead. Other than that, the kids really got into it, and one thirteen year old boy told me, while he walked away from our full table of completed boxes, "That was cool." 

I especially liked the notes the kids wrote themselves to place in the boxes, notes that said "I hope you like the presints. We picked them out just for you", at least that is how Pearl spelled hers.

Ruby experienced her first Halloween. The housemother in China told us she had celebrated Christmas and Easter, plus Chinese holidays like Children's Day, but this costume thing with candy was a new one for her.  I think candy corn was her favorite.

Here we all are as princesses (Pearl was a very modern Princess Kate) along with our friend the monkey. 

I've always kissed my babies, but it was an interesting process to teach Ruby that kissing is a way of showing affection in a family. When we first met her, it almost seemed like she had never kissed or been kissed before. I would understand if this germ-carrying form of affection was skipped at the group home, where thirteen kids, staff, and a revolving cast of volunteers could make kissing almost like licking a water fountain. 

When we first got her, it was just a little too strange to begin kissing her like a newborn. She wasn't usually all that happy with us, she was pretty drooly, and we were just getting to know her too.  But as our relationship has blossomed, it has been easier to hug, snuggle, and kiss her naturally and effortlessly. Now she has it down now. Before bed, she'll pucker up as a way of requesting kiss after kiss. 

As for Hurricane Sandy, which closed my campus and all the local public schools two days in a row, I don't have any impressive photos. We have many leaves down in the yard, but that is about it.  It looks like we are in the eye of the hurricane right now. They are calling for winds occasionally gusting to 60mph and more rain, but it really hasn't been to bad up here on the hill!

Lancaster County

A photo Pearl took on our nature walk last week.

Last Wednesday we had our first post-adoption visit from the social worker. China likes an update from the agencies that place children at one, six, and twelve months, then two, four, and six years.  We will pay for the social worker to visit our home and report on Ruby's welfare each of those times. Right now they wanted to know about her immunization, her progress with attachment, and how we were doing overall.  It was a pleasant visit. We had never met this social worker before. Each stage of the process moves us to a new social worker at our agency.

Family Day this week was postponed a day due to Pearl's illness.  She is a bit dramatic about pains and sickness, enough that I know we have to steer her far away from the hypochondriac path. By Tuesday she was better, though she repeatedly reminded me she had been sick and had to take it easy. So despite the morning showers we headed to Lancaster County for a family day.

We started at the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Factory. The guide gave us a simple explanation of how the hard pretzel was discovered in the 1800s, and we got to twist some flour-and-water dough. The girls were most impressed with the giant pretzel on their sidewalk. Then we browsed the Wilbur bud museum and shop to complete our tour of Lititz.

After lunch we headed to Bird-in-Hand for an Amish buggy ride. This was a very touristy thing to do, but we thought it would be fun. An Israeli couple joined our buggy, and we took a three mile trip, stopping by an Amish farm to see the milking set up and corn harvest in progress. 

It was very similar to farms I'm used to, except they have extra lines running to a generator house. Also, after the cows are milked through vacuum pumps, the milk is manually poured from metal milk cans by each cow into a can with a vacuum tube that takes it to the 1,000 gallon tank. Their cows stay chained in the milking parlor all day, also.

While we trotted out to the main road and Ruby watched out the back window, a couple of women from Maryland with big fancy cameras parked their car to take photos of our buggy and the one coming in the other direction. We laughed to think they were out to catch the authentic Amish experience, and here they were photographing a little Chinese American girl and her family, plus two Israeli in a tourist buggy!

We had two sleepers on the way home, which was a blessing.

I'll just comment here on the reception our multi-ethnic family has gotten out and about. Usually people don't say anything to me. My husband mentioned that more people ask him about Ruby, but maybe they sense I'm not as chatty. We hadn't been very public about being in the adoption process, so our story time ladies were surprised and curious, but very supportive.  Yesterday a woman said: "Is she adopted? She's so cute!" Our Amish driver today asked where she was from, which is another common question. But usually strangers we see while on our daily errands don't say anything. That's pretty much how I like it. I think a new neighbor gave us a double-take this evening on our walk. Our pre-adoption training warned us about rude comments and overly-inquisitive strangers. Let's hope I gain some more tact before they come my way!

Daddy-style fun

Counting Our Blessings

Here's a quick look at some nature study that Pearl has been up to lately. I'm finding so much inspiration for nature study on other Charlotte Mason (that's a style of homeschooling) blogs. I love it when we stumble on something she enjoys and just runs away with, and creating crafts with bits of fall foliage seems to work. She learns plant names and seed habits while practicing for her declared future hobby of artist.   




We've decided to try to schedule a family day each week, and with my husband's duties on Sunday, Monday works best. This week saw us heading into the dark at Indian Echo Cavern. Pearl thought she had been in a cave before, but it had just been a plastic representation of a cave at a nature center, nothing like this. Ruby was unimpressed, even by the tiny but lovely underground lake/pond.









The older two were especially interested in the stories the guide created out of the Rorschach-like markings of flow, algae, and cracks. When we heard that a man lived in the cave for 18 years back in the early 1800s, that got our imaginations going too.  My husband wants a waterfall and heated bed in his cave.

We were so close to Hershey that we decided to visit Chocolate World. That was a hit for all. They experienced a kid-friendly assembly line, and then we headed up the ramp for the ride through chocolate production. Ruby danced on her seat, she loved the cows' song so much.

Sapphire and Pearl kept asking to go back through, even after the second time around! When I questioned Sapphire about why she wanted to go again, she looked at me with a serious expression and explained "I like to see how the chocolate make." This was better than what I expected: that she wanted another helping of the chocolate sample they hand out at the end. So of course we went through again. I think they enjoyed it as much the third time as they did the first.

Three springs ago we went through three times as well, at Pearl's insistence, when she was nearly 4 and Sapphire was just 9 months old.

Now that we've had Ruby for a whole two months (we first met her on August 13th) I've been mulling over all the things I had spent months praying for before we got her. Here's a list I'm pretty thankful about:

• no diseases (her recent blood work confirmed her medical file from China)
• no lead poisoning (a fairly common issue in poorer orphanages in China, but not hers)
• no horrible repetitive habits (kissing her wash cloth is the only repetitive things she does, and it is pretty cute)
• no tantrums (its been weeks since we saw an all out tantrum--she can control herself now that she feels safe)
• no hearing loss (cleft palates often lead to chronic ear infections, but she seems to have escaped this)
• no sleep issues (she is so happy in her crib, and she comes up smiling)
• she is so sweet--her behavior is perfectly normal for a 2 year old, and even kinder and more helpful than normal, I think. She always shuts her sisters' dresser drawers when they leave them gaping, and she's happy to have little tasks.
• she is attached (that's a little different, and more important, than bonding). My husband went to our adoption support group and learned about unattached children, and he came home convinced that Ruby has attached to us. He said that if the early attachment is formed smoothly before 12 months of age, as it was at her foster home, then a new attachment can happen in less than 2 months. We're so fortunate!
• the girls get along...mostly. I see more and more moments where Sapphire and Ruby can sit together and avoid screaming. 
• This week we all four sat on a couch and read books, and it was actually pleasant. Ruby is getting the hang of snugly story time. 
• she's learning to be a part of a family. When she first arrived she had no interest in dollies. Now she picks them up and kisses them, then holds them out to me to kiss too.  Not much snuggling of the dolly yet, but I think it is progress. 

Conestoga wagon at Indian Echo Cavern

So all those hours of prayer in the middle of the night, and all the prayers our friends and family covered us in during the last few months have really made a difference.  Adoption isn't always easy, and we have rough moments and exhausting parenting days, but God must have known what we were able to handle. 

Family Building

We had another fun fall weekend visiting Hurricane Hill's corn maze.  We only tried out the baby maze and the other activities. The big girls especially loved the long tube slide. They discovered that if they held on to each other, the combined weight sped up their descent.  Here's Pearl on the cow ride. We spent 2.5 hours of outdoor fun. Thanks Nana!

Ruby stayed with Popi and took a nap.

While we didn't need any more pumpkins, we did enjoy seeing the pumpkin patch. It was fairly sincere.

Sapphire enjoyed an extra treat this week. She's had some bumps in her relationship with her daddy since we returned from China. Part of it was the jealous fighting over mommy, as I was Ruby's main focus too.  That left Daddy freer to tie shoes and dress the remaining girls, but Sapphire would have none of it.  She's been a little more accepting of him lately, but at Nana's suggestion we decided to send Sapphire on her own special vacation with daddy.

Her excitement as they left Monday afternoon was so sweet. She knew she was receiving some special attention, and she must have yelled "I love you. Good bye!" from her car seat about ten times. Her daddy said she talked the whole way to Lancaster.  

The hotel pool was the highlight, and then the next day they explored the Hands on House. This was our first experience there, and they really enjoyed it. Sapphire's favorite part was looking at the plastic bugs and painting her daddy's hands with face paint. 

We always try to squeeze school in before lunch, but today we took a break for story time.  Ruby paid a little more attention today, but she's not into sitting quietly and listening to books yet.

She's started carrying around a washcloth as a comfort object. This is what she likes to kiss as she falls asleep. It really is a handy cuddly, since we've got a shelf full of them and she's happy with anything terry cloth! We're trying to pick the right name before a bad one sticks. Pearl's insisting on "Washy-clothy" and doesn't care that it is a mouthful.

Cleft Palate Clinic Experience

As we tried to corral Ruby into the pew at St. Joseph's church during Mommom's full funeral mass, I realized that being at these big family milestones was something that would tie her into our family. I think that is coming along, but it is a process for the extended family too. 

The social workers like to hear about family rituals as signs of a stable family, and we completed another fall ritual this week by going to a nearby orchard that hosts a fall fun day for kids.  Here are all three little gems riding the tractor-pulled train, wearing their matching hoodies.  Ruby really liked the goats and chickens. I think she is getting used to animals at last.

In the realm of homeschooling, I found some inspiring blogs that reminded me of what is possible.  So the big girls and I headed into the woods for a nature walk, motivated by a scavenger hunt list we found. We tracked down everything but an animal's footprint.

Here Pearl shows the variation in leaf colors we found out there, plus one mammoth oak leaf. The girls seemed to enjoy it, though after a guy working on the road warned us he'd seen tons of snakes, they stuck to the middle of the road and did a lot of fearful squawking.

Yesterday the big girls went to the cop-op with their daddy, and Ruby and I made our way to Lancaster to the Cleft Palate Clinic. On clinic days specialist in cleft issues meet with families. So instead of the family driving from speech therapist to dentist to orthodontist, to hearing specialist, to plastic surgeon, the child just hops into a dentist chair and the specialists come to her. I like the convenience, though we had a very long wait--1h 45 m--to be seen. We're fortunate that we live so close. Some families traveled for hours to be there.

We learned some of what the future holds for her medically. She'll start the first round of braces at 8-10, then a second round a little later, around 12ish. She'll have an outpatient bone graft from her hip to her palate sometime when she's around 10, and she might need tubes in her ears (though I'd like to avoid that). She could choose to have other plastic surgery, though they like to wait until the child is about 17 and the face is done growing to do that.  Just knowing that schedule really helps. We'll go back every six months, so they'll tell us when things need to happen. The specialists were all very impressed with the repairs she had had done in Beijing. It's the type of place where everyone gushes with encouragement, and I wonder if they ever have to share bad news.

Ruby bopped around the waiting room and bumped into kids at all stages of cleft-repair. There was a three week old baby, a nine month old who had just had his lip repair, a nine year old from China, and several other kids. Everyone was very gracious and kind, and they certainly loved Ruby's personality! She nearly emptied the hearing specialist's hand sanitizer bottle as we distracted her from getting earphones put in her ears for a test. The plastic surgeon's two observing interns didn't want to leave without getting high fives from her too.