{"id":1426,"date":"2011-02-26T05:19:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T13:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?p=1426"},"modified":"2011-02-26T05:19:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T13:19:00","slug":"state-of-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/?p=1426","title":{"rendered":"State of the Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are all doing really quite well for only having been a family of seven for eight days!\u00a0<\/p>\n

That being said, here is what that really means:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Samuel is becoming more needful of Steve and I to be in close proximity to him.\u00a0 He becomes more concerned if one of us has to leave the room.<\/li>\n
  2. Samuel is eating and sleeping marvelously.<\/li>\n
  3. We are completely out of his element and he hears people speaking about his legs a lot.\u00a0 We fill him with as much love and reassurance as we can about our pride\u00a0in his abilities and appearance.<\/li>\n
  4. He is baby and he is boy – all rolled into one.\u00a0 Diapers and\u00a0cooing.\u00a0 Preschool songs and bossiness. Needful of snuggle time and wanting to test the limits of his strength and agility.<\/li>\n
  5. He\u00a0is most definitely a dominant lefty – Grandpa H. rejoices (it only took 2 kids and 8 grandchildren!)\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n
  6. Faith is having\u00a0a great time in familiar territory and yet is needing Mom and\u00a0Dad to be close.<\/li>\n
  7. Faith has really shown more interest in this little person than I have ever seen her take interest in a child before.\u00a0 She’s really enjoying being a part of caring for him and\u00a0playing with him.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n
  8. James is struggling with the fact that he has a fair bit of independence on this trip and yet\u00a0still needs supervision.\u00a0 Boy – Man.\u00a0\u00a0It’s a tough place to be.<\/li>\n
  9. James loves his new brother.\u00a0 Samuel reaches for him and asks\u00a0for him to carry him.\u00a0 Steals his glasses and James grins.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  10. Grace is doing really very well.\u00a0 She’s remembering amazing details suddenly about our adoption trip (we stayed in this same hotel) – things she adamantly refused memory of before haev now been brought to the surface.\u00a0 She’s rolling with it very well and we are seeing our daughter blossom into a new settled place at times.\u00a0 Amazing.<\/li>\n
  11. Grace is very patient with Samuel.\u00a0 This surprised us as we thought there would be more jealousy.\u00a0 Samuel loves to stroke her hair but often will add a playful tug to a handful and she scolds him gently.\u00a0 Today she told in a very mature way that she doesn’t mind him playing with her hair, but that we just need to work on helping him not pull it.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0<\/li>\n
  12. Garnet is having a tough time shifting up a rung on the family ladder.\u00a0 He is super kind to Samuel and goes out of his way to share with him and be kind and play. However, he sidles up to me whenever given the chance for an extra snuggle or a game of chopsticks.\u00a0 It’ll take time and reassurance.\u00a0 I also believe the visit to Yinchuan next week may help him too.\u00a0 He’s anxious about the unknowns.<\/li>\n
  13. Garnet is a super sharer.\u00a0 He lets Sam have the last bite of a snack.\u00a0 He wants to play on the floor with him.\u00a0 He teaches him silly faces and like to make him giggle by tickling him gently on his little legs.\u00a0 Samuel calls him Gege and that goes a long way in Garnet’s books.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  14. Steve had a new experience today.\u00a0 Samuel was in the carrier at the Dirt Market and wet through his clothing, the carrier and Steve’s jacket and shirt.\u00a0 We happened to be in our favourite shop and the proprietor had remembered our family.\u00a0 We were chatting and then she offered for us to change Samuel’s clothing and diaper right on the framing table (it’s a photographic print shop).\u00a0 She even offered her winter coat to change him on and hand carried the stinky diaper outside to the trash by hand.\u00a0 She was very sweet!\u00a0<\/li>\n
  15. Another vendor saw Samuel’s runny nose (it was cold – it snowed today in Beijing!) and offered some of her toilet paper for his nose.<\/li>\n
  16. The taxi driver we took back to the hotel cooed at Samuel in Chinese.\u00a0 He also narrowly missed rear-ending a car when said car slammed on its brakes in order to avoid a bus at 80 km\/hr on 2nd Ring Road. He saved us 27 RMB over our family’s other taxi by speeding and dodging though.\u00a0 hehe<\/li>\n
  17. One of the other children in our group calls Garnet “Barnacle” much to the chagrin of her parents.\u00a0 She’s terribly cute.<\/li>\n
  18. The\u00a0kids are missing\u00a0their cats.<\/li>\n
  19. Grace has asked after home a few times. Such nice things to hear from a little\u00a0girl who wasn’t sure\u00a0which place\u00a0she wanted to\u00a0call home a short time ago.<\/li>\n
  20. Have\u00a0I mentioned that Samuel is FAST!\u00a0 Oh, and agile?<\/li>\n
  21. At the Dirt Market: Grace\u00a0spent $14\u00a0Cdn (5 items – pretty and mostly wearable), Faith spent $11\u00a0Cdn (4 items – dainty and decorative), Garnet spent $1.50\u00a0Cdn (1 item that frightens me to no end – can you guess what it was?), James spent $30 Cdn (a pair of somethings that may or may not be removed by customs from his checked bag – any guesses?)\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n
  22. Our trip to the countryside is cancelled tomorrow.\u00a0 We are visiting a new butterfly gardens here instead.\u00a0<\/li>\n
  23. Your prayers, comments and e-mails have meant so very much to us.\u00a0 Keep them coming!\u00a0 We’ve been praying over things you’ve shared with us too.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Off to bed after some quick laundry in the tub at our 5 star hotel.\u00a0 Motherhood…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We are all doing really quite well for only having been a family of seven for eight days!\u00a0 That being said, here is what that really means: Samuel is becoming more needful of Steve and I to be in close proximity to him.\u00a0 He becomes more concerned if one of us has to leave the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,44,16,17,54,15,29],"tags":[63,41,56,57,5,55,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningtogetherathome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}