We have been home for five months as of today. I've tried to blog updates on our monthly anniversaries but have missed a few. Today seemed like a big day in lots of little ways, so I'm glad I remembered to write.

One of the parents at pre-school asked me a funny question a couple weeks ago. She asked, "So is it what you expected?"
I know it doesn't seem like a funny question, but it made me stop and realize, I really didn't know what to expect before we got him. I think I was actually afraid to expect anything. Of course I had fantasies about reliving all the fun toddler stuff we did with Cam and Ben, but I consciously prevented myself from creating too many expectations. I do remember being more than a little scared as we boarded the plane out of Seattle. "What are we doing?" I thought. "What if this is a big mistake?" "What if he has serious problems?" "What if he doesn't like me?"

I think if you've been following along on here for a while you probably know that none of these fears were warranted. In many ways it has been like a fairy-tale. Hui-Hui is an amazingly affectionate and joyful little guy. It amazes us how cuddly he is!

I'm not going to tell you that every single second has been sunshine and roses, we do have some concerns. Developmentally Kai has delays, particularly in the large motor and language areas. He still won't eat any solid foods. We worry we don't know enough about his thalessemia. We haven't decided for sure whether or not we are going to have anything done about his hand.

But all in all, things are going well and the progress he has made so far is amazing. The big news today was that he actually used the potty! This was something that we didn't even really try with him at first. We got a potty for him when he first got home, and he knew what it was for, but never produced anything on it. Then tonight when Tina was changing him into pajamas for bed he said, "pee mamma". This is not a routine, we ask him occasionally, but I had pretty much figured we would just wait till summertime and weren't even trying. But Tina asked him then if wanted to pee, and he went into the bathroom. So Tina went in and put the little potty-seat on the toilet for him and sat him down on it. At first it looked like he was just going to sit there and do nothing, but then after a little prompting he peed! Tina yelled for me to come in and we were both praising him big time. Then I said to Tina, "now if we could only get him to go poo on the toilet." And then as if on cue he got that look on his face. Yes, THAT look! And he pooped in the toilet!!! I know this was probably just a miraculous bit of luck as he shows few signs of being ready but it's a step in the right direction!
(for those of you wondering why I don't write much about the older boys on here, they just don't seem to want me sharing these types of details regarding them with all of you)

Now even better than potty achievements, when he and Tina were on their way home from the store in the car, he was chatting away as usual, (he usually talks away about cars, lights, bikes etc.) but he had a funny giggle and was covering his mouth and being silly. Tina asked him what he was talking about. He giggled and said, "Ai ni Mama, ai ni!" and giggled and covered his mouth again!!!! He said, "LOVE YOU MAMA, LOVE YOU!!!" Now, we've cajoled and tricked him into saying Wo Ai....but never Ni! If we say, "wo," he will repeat. If we say, "ai," he will repeat. When we say, "ni" he will just stop or laugh and turn away. And it's never self-initiated!

The following set of photos were all taken in our front yard. From the look of these pictures it appears that Hui-Hui lives in an enchanted forest. It's actually just a quarter acre lot on a suburban cul de sac. Still we do get a fair amount of wild life. Nothing terribly exotic, big gray squirrels, stellar jays, etc. Last week we saw a big red-headed woodpecker, and on Saturday we had these four deer wander through. We have a little clearing in front where I laid out a 7-circuit Cretan labyrinth a few years ago. The deer looked quite magical out there. It's been such a wet winter that Hui-Hui hasn't gotten out there much, so today I took him out to walk the paths and look for gnomes. He almost caught a couple!

Our older two sons make fantastic movies with our video camera. I thought it would be great fun to make a movie about Hui-Hui's friend "Stinky-Mouse". But I couldn't really think of a story line and don't have time to film it, or edit it. (I should be editing the rest of our video from China) Then I learned about a really cool piece of software called Comic Life from our online friends Karen and Scott. So I spent this evening cranking out the following...

Blogging that is…
Why exactly am I still writing this thing?
It began a little over a year ago as a way to journal our adoption experience. As we began the process we became connected to other families who were all at different steps along the way of bringing a child into their lives. These connections were forged through Internet discussion forums. There are a lot of these focused specifically on adopting from China. Tina was more active on them than I was at first. The one she got really involved with is our agency’s forum for families adopting Waiting Children. She dabbled around on a few other ones and happened to find a brand new one that a woman named Donna in California had formed. I started reading that one and got hooked. It turned out that Tina and I got to actually meet Donna and her husband Andrew on a trip we took to San Francisco last year. That made our online friendship even stronger. Donna, as well as a number of other online friends, were writing blogs about their adoption experience. As a certified computer nerd (it’s true, I actually have certifications) I felt this was something I had to do as well. So I started journaling the process we were going through.

It took us 9 months to adopt Kai. That’s counting from the date we turned in our application to our agency, to the date we received him in China. This is actually quite speedy, because Kai was a “Waiting Child”. As we checked items off our adoption “to-do” list we obsessed over other adoption blogs. Truly, the highlights of these are the travel stories. We constantly checked TheStoryofYou site, wondering as read how those stories would compare to ours.

I am very glad I made the effort to journal our trip in real-time. It is by far the most interesting part of this site, and an important part of our family history. After we returned home I didn’t want to stop writing, so I kept going.

Now it’s become a full-fledged hobby. When I began, I didn’t really care who looked at this. I also didn’t allow comments. But now I’ve put on all the bells and whistles: RSS feed, commenting, a hit-counter that gives me all kinds of details about who is visiting the site.

I’m still a very small player in the “Chinese Adoption Blogging” world. It amazes me when I see the hit count on some sites – they should start selling ads. It cracked me up when this site got mentioned on one of the really popular sites last week and my site traffic went up by 50%! Yeah, I actually watch that kind of thing. What's even cooler though, is when this thing connects us with someone. An old friend from college got in touch with us through the site. And then we got a comment from somebody in ShijiaZhaung (the city wee stayed in while adopting Kai), this gentleman wrote:

“After wiping away the tears, and due to the lack of a proper PC to trackback to find your names, I just wanted to say a heartfelt thank you for restoring some type of kindness in this world. I am an English teacher in ShijiaZhaung, I have been here for 10 months now, and living here when you were here. My flat is not to far from the Century hotel, so possibly I passed by you on my way to school. I am not sure what drew me to read your blog as I rarely read them, sort of a uninvited guest syndrome. But as I sat there reading it I found that I was touched in ways I had forgotten that I could be touched. Hui Hui, is a very beautiful name and a boy, I surely will pray that he is beyond your wildest dreams. I will continue reading and thank you from the bottom of my heart for touching this mans life.”

That’s the best comment I’ve gotten so far, and is reason enough to keep posting for a while.

Blogging isn’t just writing though, it’s reading too. I keep up with a bunch of blogs. My “Real World” friends are always telling me how great this blog is. I always have to tell them that it only seems that way to them because they don’t read any other adoption blogs. So this will give them something to compare with. These are most of the adoption "related" blogs I regularly follow (but only a VERY SMALL sampling of how many are out there)...

Adoption
American Family
Ashley Rose Ring
Attachment Parenting
Baby Girl Bainbridge
Bringing Liam Home
Brinley Elizabeth WeiYa
China Adoption News
clueless in carolina
Davis Days
Do They Have Salsa in China?
Double Happiness!
EmpressElizabeth
Family of 4 and a cat
The Grouchy Ladybug
Jenna Joy Elizabeth Wells
Journey to Charleigh
keiraxingfulynch
Ken, Ellen and Bei in China
Letters From the Zoo
Loving Lydia
LWB January Trip to China
Macy Day
Mager Madness
Mindful Parenting
Morgan Lela Qian
The Murphy Adoption Adventure
The Naked Ovary
OmegaMom
Once upon a Cadence
Our Adoption Journey
Our Journey for Sarah Grace
Research-China.Org
The Smith Family's Adventures
So, it's come down to this
Spilling my coffee/beans...
TaiwanIndependence's Xanga
The Taming of Tenley!
Twice the Rice
The Vickerman's China Adoption
Watching China

Many of these bloggers keep what's called a "Blogroll" on their site, in which they list all the blogs they follow. I don't do that because I don't want to have to maintain the list, weeding out sites that become extinct, etc. Though I have to admit that I get an ego boost when I see our site on someone's list (it's on a couple). So how does anybody keep up with this many blogs? The only way to do it is a site called BLOGLINES. It keeps track of all the blogs you read and lets you know when they're updated so you don't have to keep checking on them when there's nothing new to read.

So I guess that kind of answers why I'm doing this. If you're enjoying it stop and comment. If you're blogging and I didn't list your site above, please link it in your comment so I can check it out.

One of Kai's friends from pre-school is a little girl named Yoshimi. Yoshimi's mother Shuhsin is from Taiwan. Their family visits there often and had been there for Chinese New Year. They brought Kai back a souvenir from the 2006 Taiwan Lantern Festival.

Kai got a real kick out of this little lantern...





I thought it was pretty cool too, so I fired up Google to learn more about it.

This logo was printed on the top of the lantern.
I had not heard of the Taiwan Lantern Festival before. It looks like a pretty cool event. You can see the official website by clicking on the logo.
On the site I learned that these little lanterns were passed out free of charge to children. "They are named "Mechanical Dog" and are designed to inspire an interest in science, technology, and mechanics among children in this new technological age. These lanterns exemplify the concepts of environmental protection and safe toys. They also represent the pursuit of newness and change."

Below are pictures of the event's "Theme Lantern" which according to the website:
...is titled "Pan Hu Re-creates the Heavens." (Pan Hu is a divine hound of Chinese mythology.) This huge lantern masterpiece is in the shape of a mountain with three dogs perched on its flank. The male dog, eyes to the front, is in a powerful and majestic pose as the protector of home and country. The female dog sits with an affectionate attitude at the side of her mate, while their pup plays with a globe-shaped holographic lantern. The idea is to portray a land of stability, ethnic harmony, prosperity, peace, and happiness.

CLICK HERE to see a cool video of the fireworks display at the event!

I'm really hoping what they say about asian boys being good at math is true. I gave him the receipts and he seemed to really enjoy the task. I'm going to have him look over my 401K plan to see if he has any suggestions on that too.

For those of you living in warm sunny places, maybe you're used to it this time of year, but here in the Pacific Northwest it's been WET! In January it rained, and it rained, and it rained. We didn't get 40 consecutive days and nights, but we got 40 out of 43. I don't mind the rain most the time, but that's because normally it doesn't rain MOST of the time! Even up here north of Seattle, sure it rains, but not ALL the time. Okay, you probably get the point now, it's been wet.
But it finally stopped, and the sun came out to remind us why we live here; because when it's sunny here, it's the most beautiful place on earth! So here are some pictures of Hui-Hui playing outside this week...

Click on the picture to go to the slideshow...

I wish this was my original idea, but I'm not that clever. We got this idea from the blog of one of our online friends. You can see theirs HERE.
I used THIS WEBSITE to build the caricatures. Cam was very pleased with his; apparently whoever built the website has similar taste in music as the "Children of Bodom" t-shirt was actually a choice on the site. I had to touch up the teddy-bear option to make it look more like Stinky Mouse.

I've been surfing around on youtube.com's site because there are a number of China adoption videos on there. While I was searching through the site I found another interesting clip I wanted to share with you. This is a video of the China Disabled Person's Performing Art Troupe presenting a modern Thousand-hand Guanyin, or Goddess of Mercy dance. All the dancers are deaf. The laser light show backdrop gives it a bit of that odd "asian-disco" feel, but it's still very beautiful with a hypnotic, other-worldly quality to it. This performance troupe is a branch of the China Disabled Persons' Federation. I was not familiar with this organization before, but am very interested in it now.
If you have followed this blog you probably know I am very fond of Guanyin Pusa. Pusa, is Chinese for "bodhisattva", a soul who, through compassion and altruism, has earned the right to leave this world of suffering and enter nirvana, but has chosen instead to stay on Earth to instruct others to until all beings are enlightened.
Hui-Hui really loved watching this video. He moves his hands in patterns like the dancers. While watching it he also spontaneously started a gesture we call "pray to Buddha". This consists of him putting his hands together and raising them up and down while "singing". He has done this since we got him in China. Ben's the one who named it and was able to get Hui-Hui to do it by simply saying, "Pray to Buddha."
I would like to find other videos of this performance company. From the pictures on their website it looks like they do some amazing things.



(Oh, if you're one of my workmates trying to watch this at Premier, our web filter blocks the "You Tube" site so you'll have to watch it at home... sorry!)