Our youngest child turned one today. Today is doubly special because it is also our sixth wedding anniversary. I still remember the time in the hospital trying to give birth to Calissa while looking at a huge clock right in front of me. I only had several minutes left to have her on our anniversary and she managed to come into the world with just four minutes to spare! She was born on May 19, 2006 at 11:56 pm. She was indeed a special anniversary gift, and continues to be so!

Among our four children, Calissa is by far the most sweet-tempered child. She’s amazingly contented and calm. While all of our other children were crawling and/or standing by their first birthday, she seems more than happy to sit on the floor and watch all the action in the house (plenty of it!). She is also probably the most unequivocally loved child in our house: all three of her siblings love her without reserve and adore giving her kisses and hugs.

We are so blessed to have Calissa in our lives. Here are a couple of photos from today’s small family birthday celebration!

For school today, I had Matthew start doing story narration. I have him read a book and then he is to close the book and tell the story back to me in his own words. While he’s retelling the story, I type out each word. He was so enthralled by the fact that I was typing each word that comes out of his mouth that he narrated four books in one sitting. He wanted to do more but I had to put a stop to it because I was tired. What a boy!

Here is a sample of his narration of The Clown of God by Tommie DePaola. The words are exactly as he spoke, verbatim, without correction and without any prompting on my part:

The story tells that Giovanni can juggle. He made the people laugh and then they threw rocks at him. He ran away for his life and he said goodbye to the people in the store. Then he set off for a journey and he fell asleep in a corner of a church. He said to Mary, “I wish I could give your child something.” He juggled for the child. Then his old heart stopped and fell down dead.

This narration is shorter than the others but he nailed the story for the most part. This book tells a very heart-warming story about a man named Giovanni who offers his best juggling act for the Christ child. I would recommend it for those who are interested.

I want to continue story narration with Matthew and as we practice more, I will encourage him to refine his story telling. Narration is a very simple and good technique in finding out whether the child understands what he reads. If he can retell the story, he understands it.

I was asked to share about our adoption of Emmaline with my Mom’s church fellowship group, but I had many reservations because I was not ready to share. Much of my hesitation was due to our still working through various problems we have encountered along the way.

Thankfully, I was able to share with some 15-20 women today. After I shared some prepared content, the time was opened up for questions from the group. Below are the questions they asked me along with my answers. I hope that the below will help others understand more about our experience adoption. As I shared with the group, it was my utmost desire to glorify God in what I said and be completely truthful to the group.

Q: Why did you choose to adopt even though you already had two young children of your own at the time?

A: Both my husband and I believed it was God’s will for us to adopt when we read and considered James 1:27 concerning caring for widows and orphans in their distress. We felt burdened to give an orphan a future and a loving home. Just as God has adopted us through His saving grace, we too wanted to show this kind of love to an adopted daughter.

Q: Were you and your husband in agreement to adopt?

A: Yes. Both of us felt burdened at the same time. After discussing the possibility of adopting, we both decided it was perhaps not the right time yet. However, after deciding not to pursue adoption, on the following day both of us, separately, felt deeply burdened to open up our home to a needy child.

Q: What kind of problems does your daughter have?

A: When we adopted her, she was nine months old. Because she was in a orphanage for the first 9 months of her life, she did not have proper emotional and attachment development so she did not trust us when we brought her home. It took about a year for her to learn how to trust us. She also has chewing and eating problems for which we are seeing a feeding specialist.
We discovered when she was 17 months old that both hips were dislocated (out of joint) which required two surgeries to correct the problem. After the surgeries, she was placed in a full body cast for 9 weeks and then a soft brace for 3 months. She’s now walking almost normally, but we continue to monitor her progress in this area.
Q: Did you know beforehand that your daughter had physical problems?

A: No. None of the problems we discovered was known to us. There was no way of knowing.

Q: Even though you requested a healthy child, how did you feel or think that you were given a “special needs” child instead?

A: It has been very hard, and at times, I’ve questioned our decision to adopt. However, we know for sure that it was the Lord who gave us our daughter. He was the one who brought her into our care. We had always said that no matter whom we’d get, we would accept her. Adopting a child is not like buying merchandise where we can simply return or exchange it if we don’t like it.
Q: Have you and your husband disagreed or fought more because of her?

A: Yes. Our adoption experience had been difficult and we have had many disagreements along the way. However, we see this trial as a sanctifying process from God so that we may grow as Christians. We have learned much through this painful process.

Q: Did your parents disagree or agree with your decision to adopt?

A: Both sides of parents did not accept the decision, especially initially, though for different reasons.
Q: Do you have to discipline your daughter differently from the other children because of her background?

A: No. However, each child is different, so I do end up disciplining and training according to each child’s personality and uniqueness; not related to whether that one is adopted.
Q: Will you tell your daughter that she is adopted in the future?

A: Yes. I have no problem in explaining to her that she’s adopted. I will only plan to explain it to her when she feels securely rooted in our love for her.

Q: Do your children understand that she’s adopted and how do they treat her in light of that?

A: My oldest understands while the other two are too young to grasp the idea. Whether they understand or not, they all embrace her as a real sibling. They don’t see her any differently.

Q: You have four little ones, how do you manage everything?

A: I do a lot of multi-tasking. Whenever I’m homeschooling my oldest in the morning, I’m usually feeding the baby or the two-year-old at the same time. I make sure the younger three take their naps everyday, and I usually use this time to homeschool my oldest. All the kids go down around 8:30 pm and after that I can clean the house, work on the computer, chat with my husband, or read.

For our homeschool today, we went on a field trip to the historic Santa Clara Railroad Depot. The program was arranged by a local homeschooling field trip email group, and we signed up several months ago. Our boys are train enthusiasts so this field trip piqued their interest. We toured the train museum and saw some fabulous model train layouts.

As usual, leaving a fun place was hard for them and was accompanied by tears, but they did enjoy the displays of signals, model trains and even a really long freight train that punctuated the end of our visit.

For our field trips, I ask Matthew to write a small report and here is what he wrote. While he got some help with spelling, the content was entirely his!

We spent 4 days vacationing at Yosemite National Park this week and had a wonderful time. In fact, our three year old cried as soon as we pulled in to our driveway. It was then he understood that our vacation was over. I told my husband that this was our first successful vacation because all the kids behaved (for the most part), we all had a relaxing time enjoying the beauty of the Yosemite valley, we weren’t stressed at all, and we all had the same sleeping schedule (sleep is really hard to come by for us so this is indeed a blessing).

As soon as we drove into Yosemite Valley, there was one thing I noticed: people there were so relaxed and nice. What a stark contrast to where we live. Wherever we went we had many people looking and smiling at us. I think they found it hard to believe that we had so many small children with us. We had so many comments such as this: “You have a beautiful family and all your kids are so cute. They are so well behaved. You are very blessed.” Living in a culture that seems so often unfriendly towards [many] children, I was pleasantly surprised to hear such comments. As I reflect on this, God was kind in using these people to encourage me because mothering is not easy and I continue to struggle. I am truly thankful for being able to go on a vacation and I believe all of us have been refreshed.

We were blessed to take a family vacation to Yosemite this past week. We stayed at Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, which is in the heart of Yosemite Valley, and had a terrific time. Yosemite Falls, as well as the many other waterfalls at the park, were in full display and absolutely beautiful. Here’s a sampling of the photos we took, both of the landscapes and our family enjoying it! Click on any photo to see a larger version.

Matthew with El Capitan in the background on the left:

The children by Happy Isles, near Vernal Falls:

Lois and me with Yosemite Falls in the background:

The children squeezing into the bike trailer:

Matthew proudly displaying some excellent crayon work:

Lois and Calissa in the woods near Lower Yosemite Falls:

Half Dome:

Lower Yosemite Falls in full grandeur:

So I brought home some churros for the kids as a treat for after dinner.

Matthew: I’m full and I want a churro.

Mom: That doesn’t make any sense. If you were full, then you couldn’t eat a churro.

Matthew: Hmm… I’m done then.

Clever boy.