The Holidays!

Here we are, once again, getting ready to celebrate another Christmas. It was just about this time of the year in 2010,when we decided to adopt Sam and Leo. We decided to adopt Ben and John just before Thanksgiving in 2008. The holidays obviously affect my decision making! No, I'm not about to announce another adoption is on the horizon. I wish. We just don't have the money anymore. Adopting four kids in two years, and six kids in private schools, has emptied our bank account. However, our house is all decorated, the tree is up, and we've been teaching the "reason for the season" to our new sons. Both Sam and Leo were absolutely ecstatic when they first saw Christmas lights on the houses. "Look left! Look, look! Christmas!" I think it's simply amazing that our sons (home seven months) even know left from right, much less understand the birth of Jesus. But they do. We don't teach our children about Santa Claus (although we watch tons of Christmas movies that extol Santa's virtues) because we want to focus on the spirit of Jesus's birth. Yes, our children receive a ton of Christmas presents, but they all come from MOM. We tell the kids that the wise-men brought Jesus presents on his birthday, and I give the presents on Christmas so that we can remember to celebrate Jesus. In fact, I video-taped Sam singing the song "Happy Birthday Jesus" the other day on my cell-phone. I wish I knew how to upload it to my computer and post it here. I am technically challenged. I learn just enough computer stuff to get by, and that's it.
On Saturday, Sam had a strange virus hit him suddenly. I heard him crying at 6:00am, and when I got him out of bed he was sobbing that his head hurt. The crying, pounding migraine-like headache and then vomiting lasted for over two hours. I was eternally grateful that I could be there to hold him, rub his back, wipe his face and rock him. I kept wondering if he'd be left to suffer alone if he was still in China. Any family, even a dysfunctional one, is better than no family at all. I don't care what the anti-adoption factions say. Every child needs a family. Our foster child lives in a bad, bad situation, with parents who are less than stellar, and yet he still says that the thing he's most thankful for (on Thanksgiving) is his family.

On another note, on Thursday we have the first meeting with the committee on special education for Sam. I'm really interested to hear what types of recommendations the teacher for the visually impaired has. Most of the time, most people wouldn't even guess that he's blind. His dark tinted glasses (orange) look like sun glasses, and people just assume he's being cute, wearing his sun glasses inside. The orange tint does seem to help him see better though. Whatever it takes. For the last two years, Ben has been receiving extra help in reading and receiving speech therapy. This week we received a call that Ben has met all his speech goals and no longer needs speech therapy. Hooray! Also, Ben's spelling list has been increased from ten words to fifteen words weekly. We used to spend (no exaggeration) ten hours a week working with Ben on his spelling list. We now spend 30 minutes a week, and Ben still gets 100% on every test. Yippee. Soon Ben will be reading confidently at grade level (3rd). I can not tell you how pleased we are with our children's education. The school has bent over backwards to help our boys, and the results are worth every penny we pay in tuition.