Turkey Run

We're currently sitting by the fire in the Turkey Run State Park Inn in central Indiana. Abigail is finally in bed and we're letting her have some lights-out time so she can get to sleep. We hiked one of the more difficult trails today, one which involved a lot of rock scrambling, water crossing, and even three ladders. Abigail loved it.

After dinner, we spent over an hour in the pool, playing a splashing game of keep-away with a beach ball. Abigail is not all that comfortable in the water yet, so I held her the entire time, and she loved all the splashing about, especially when David and Dad were trying to wrestle each other down. She probably felt like a beach ball herself since I was throwing her around so much.

When we were having our devotions just before bed, Abigail brought up the beggars she had seen in Xi'an, China. She remembered how they would sit on the streets in busy places and wave their bowls up and down. She then described the beggars she had seen here in the states. Half talking, half miming, she made the motions of someone ringing a bell and holding a red bucket. It took us just a split second to recognize that she was describing the Salvation Army bell ringers she had seen at Christmas time. We had to explain to her that these people weren't actually beggars, but they were there to help the poor. Now that the language is coming along it makes it a little easier to get this through to her.

Three Months and Three Inches

OK, maybe a little over three months and a little under three inches, but nonetheless remarkable. We put Abigail to the measuring stick this morning and discovered that she has grown a little under three inches since we've had her. This explains a lot. It explains why the dress she's worn to church for the last couple months is now seeming a little short. It explains why she eats more than my teenage boys. She's getting taller, at an alarming rate. I told her that she is going to be as tall as Josh in a short amount of time. But she knows better.

Another remarkable thing has been her progress learning the English language. She is starting to speak in complete sentences; simple, but complete. We're working on personal pronouns right now. I can see where that would be very difficult for someone coming in from a completely different language to learn the difference between "my" and "I" and "me" and "our" and so on. And I'm sure it will take a while.

Deb has started teaching her math, penmanship, letter and word recognition, and she's learning to play the recorder, so "school" has started in earnest. Someone asked her recently how she liked school and she corrected him. "It's homeschool," she said.

Turnabout is fair play in Abigail's book. During penmanship, she has Deb write Chinese characters. "TWO times!" she tells Deb. Never mind that some of them are so complicated it takes a magnifying glass to see all the detail.

We're still experiencing a lot of firsts. She went roller skating for the first time this past week. Deb and I supported her quite a bit for the first hour, but she insisted on going it alone after that, and managed to do well. By shuffling along on the skates, she was quite a bit steadier than earlier in the evening. She enjoyed herself immensely. After that we sat in a local McDonald's and quaffed chocolate milkshakes for a while. Abigail loves to get out and do stuff with people. She is a very social creature.



Now that the weather is lurching towards Spring in fits and starts, we're starting her on a bicycle. Josh outfitted her with a bike and training wheels and we try to go out with her so she can practice riding. On the balance thing, we're starting out at ground zero, so the training wheels are a Good Thing. Perhaps she will get more practice when things warm up for good.

The rest of us are still working on adjusting as well. This little creature is such a novel thing in this house. The boys never talked about where babies came from; Abigail and Deb have had several discussions. I made her an egg this morning and we had a little discussion about the egg and baby chickens and why this egg did not have a baby chicken in it. We have an Amaryllis just blooming in the family room. It has three blossoms, opening at just slightly different times. Abigail called the large blossom the Daddy, the smaller blossom the Mommy, and the smaller bud the baby that was not born yet. She's just waiting for that blossom to be born. She may be starting complete sentences, but the large language gap that still exists makes this sort of subject a little bit more difficult.

Several people have asked us how things are going, since it's been quite a while since I've written any updates. There's a reason that the updates are fewer. Trying to absorb a 9-year-old into our family at the same time we're trying to prepare another member for college tends to soak up all available time. And the remaining child, who called himself "a low maintenance, well-adjusted child", has my entire barn filled with various parts, and is in the process of building a car--from scratch. Not just a model car, but a real-life, street-legal sports car. Right now there is an engine suspended above a frame made from steel tubing welded together, and I have been helping him try to fit this impossibly large engine into this distressingly small frame.

It continues to be quite an adventure.