Week 17

I am starting Week 17 of this pregnancy and all is going great. I am feeling fine and baby has been kicking me reliably every night. I see my OB/GYN tomorrow and then I see my midwife later this week. I will be scheduling my big ultrasound in the next couple weeks as well.

The kids are busy with lots of things this time of year. Isaiah is working on a science fair project comparing dog and human saliva. Yes...very gross, but that's what he wanted to do. He was convinced that dog saliva was cleaner, with less bacteria, so he set out to prove it. So far, his hypothesis is correct. Our petri dish examples show that dogs' saliva is much cleaner (we tested all 6 of our dogs)against 6 humans. Isaiah, Jeremy and Oliver are also preparing for their Xmas piano recital. They LOVE the piano and practice on it every day! It is so great that I do not have to pester them to practice. They sincerely love it and do it on their own. Isaiah can pick up a melody off the radio or TV, and will sit at the piano and figure it all out on his own. It may take him a day or two, but he does it. I can't wait to see what songs they choose to do for their recital. We will also be going on a lot of different field trips this month for homeschooling.

The girls are loving ballet and tap dance lessons every week. It helps that they are in the same class. They cling together for support and it's great to see that although, Kateri will not admit she needs or wants Luanna around, I can see it in many of her actions. They play all the time together and love to be together in dance class, Chinese language class and homeschool co-op classes too, often holding hands in class. Eventually, I think they will be the best of friends...and maybe even admit it. I am taking them to the Nutcracker on November 30th! We are going as a group with all the other girls and moms from their ballet class. Kateri asks me every day..."Are we going to the Nutcracker today??" She can't wait.

On another note, I took Luanna to her Hematologist a couple weeks ago. We are scheduled to see him every 6 months, because of Luanna's Thalassemia (genetic blood disorder). He was so impressed with Luanna's good health, he said he would not believe she even had Thalassemia if it were not in her original blood gene work. He looked at her spleen, eyes, and skin color and she was just perfect. Most Thalassemia patients with her kind of gene disorder (she has 3 out of 4 genes affected!) have anemia, issues with their spleens, jaundice and have to go through painful, monthly, blood transfusions and a lot of medical care. We've been so blessed with Luanna...she has been 100% healthy and Dr. Berman does not think she will ever need blood transfusions. This is really nothing short than miraculous! I do give a lot of credit to her diet as well (being a strict Vegan). He said we no longer have to come in every 6 months. He said to just make it a yearly appt now. We were very happy to hear she was healthy, although we already knew that!

Chinese Class

A few weeks ago I signed Luanna up for a Saturday morning Chinese class, right here in South Euclid. The class consists of about 12 other Chinese-born little girls, all between the ages of 2-6. All the girls have also been adopted from China by local families here in the area. So, it's been great for Luanna to meet other Chinese-born and adopted friends. We started the class on Oct 27th and each session goes for 6 weeks. Last weekend, I also took Kateri with me to class. So far, Luanna seems to really like the class. They've learned numbers, colors, fruits and some animals in Chinese. Each week, they are all expected to count to 10 in Chinese, and they use their Chinese names in class. Kateri was so excited to go to class with Luanna last Saturday. She said she wanted to see all the Chinese girls. Luanna seems very excited to also see girls that resemble her, although she did cling closely to sister Kateri last week. Kateri loved learning the word for pink (Fen Sei) and Luanna counts in Chinese very nicely. The teacher is named Pei and she was born and raised in China. She has lived in the USA for about 10 years and makes her living teaching Chinese to kids who want to learn and also teaching English to Chinese immigrants. She was an English teacher when she lived in China. It's nice to have her teach and explain all the different tones of the language (Chinese is complicated!) vs. reading it in a book. When you actually hear the language being spoken, it's much easier to pick up. Here are some photos from the class.

Thoughts on Pregnancy & Homeschooling

It is officially starting to feel like winter here in Cleveland. Well, at least today it did. It was freezing and we actually had some hail and snow falling, with freezing winds. I am already looking forward to spring and summer. I can't believe I am heading into my 16th week of pregnancy. I sometimes feel guilty because I often forget I am pregnant still. I just have too many things going on...I just don't have time to focus on this pregnancy. I'm sure Baby T will make sure I focus on her/him when she/he gets here though! Babies are good at that! I am not into maternity clothes yet, although things have been feeling tighter lately. I'm sure I will start to pop out soon. I have been very busy homeschooling the boys and trying to make sure they get enough work done to finish early in the spring. We want to be done with the school year by the time Baby T arrives, so we can all relax for a bit. I have started thinking about next school year and how I am going to homeschool 4 kids next year and take care of a new baby and preschooler too. I am going to have to get more organized and scheduled! And, the older boys are going to need to pitch in more than they do now. I've actually considered putting the older ones in school next year, but the more Ken and I talk about it, the more we think about how much we'd miss homeschooling and all the awesome things that the kids are able to do with it. There are pros and cons to everything though. School is still in the discussion, although I think at this point we are sticking with the homeschooling option. I need to pray for strength though! We've met so many big families who homeschool. In many ways, it seems harder to do it with lots of kids, so it's weird that many homeschoolers have lots of kids. It must work out well in the long run I guess. I think one of my favorite things about homeschooling is that my kids are so closely bonded. The boys are truly the best of friends and look out for each other. I don't think it would be that way, to this degree, if they had gone to school, spending many hours away from each other. Just one of the good things I notice about homeschooling.

Next week I have another dr appt and midwife appt, and in a couple weeks I will have the big ultrasound! We've talked about it with the kids and I think we have decided not to find out the baby's gender. The kids, surprisingly, want to be surprised. We've never found out before, but Ken and I really were open to finding out if the kids wanted to. We were open to either option. Since the kids want to keep it a secret...I guess we are not finding out. Happily, Ken and I (I think!) have decided on names for the baby. I had decided on a girls name almost immediately after I found out I was pregnant, and luckily Ken liked the name too. So now, we have both the girl and boy first and middle names set, although I don't think we have full approval from the kids, but hey...it's not their decision, it's ours.

Put on a winter coat and gloves...it's cold outside!!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween celebrations to you all! We always have a great time in this season. The kids love to dress up, and we try to get out to a bunch of Halloween gatherings with their costumes. It's also fun to paint and carve pumpkins, visit local farms for "Fall Festivals", jump in the leaves and trick or treat. Here are the kids last night, as we went trick-or-treating at John Carroll University.

Vacation Photos

We are back from our 5 day vacation...came back last night. We were gone from Wed, Oct 10th, through Sunday, October 14th. Ken and I celebrated our 15th year Wedding Anniversary on October 10th! From Wed through Friday, we stayed in Niagara Falls, Canada. We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge (indoor water park) and took the kids to see the Falls on Thursday afternoon. On friday, we left Canada and drove to Watkins Glen, NY, where we stayed in a cabin/bed & breakfast at the Farm Sanctuary. We have stayed at the Farm Sanctuary about 6 times over the past 9 years. We love that place! It is a 200 acre farm, dedicated to rescuing abused farm animals. They live out their natural lives there, in peace. They are ambassadors to the world's billions of farm animals that are cruelly treated and slaughtered every year...these guys are the few lucky ones! This farm is a haven for vegans and anyone who loves animals. Ken, Isaiah and Jeremy worked on the farm one of the mornings we were there. The boys got to collect eggs from chickens and turkeys, clean out old hay and put down new hay. They also had to deal with some aggressive, but hilarious pigs, who stubbornly would not leave their pen to have new hay put in. Jeremy was able to lure them out with apples.
I took hundreds of photos, but chose these as my favorites of our trip.
Enjoy the photos!

Adoption

Those of you who know us, know how much we advocate for ADOPTION!

With this being Right to Life Weekend, I figured this was an appropriate time to post about my thoughts on adoption.
Although, we have 4 biological kids (soon to be 5), we also have an adopted daughter from China, named Luanna. Adopting her was one of the most exciting, scary, exhilarating, difficult, yet rewarding things that Ken and I have done in our marriage. I keep thinking that if more people would choose adoption, we could really cut down on the number of children who are forced to grow up in orphanages or foster homes, with no family to call their own, and feeling unwanted. Both international and domestic adoptions are great and necessary! We chose international because we found international (esp China) adoptions to be much, much easier and quicker to go through. Even though we had to do a ton of paperwork, we did not have to deal with complications from birth parents and social workers and the adoption was very quick. Once Luanna (formerly Lu Yan) was placed in our arms last December, she was ours. Because she was a waiting child and considered an "older" toddler (infant adoptions take longer), our adoption was complete within a year (paperwork and homestudy included). We started seriously looking into adoption and doing our homestudy/paperwork in early January 2006, were matched with Luanna in August 2006 and traveled to China in December 2006 to get her.

Like us, there are a lot of families out there who are choosing adoption. Not because they are infertile, and see adoption as the only way to have a child, but simply because they want to help an orphan find a better life, and they have the love and the means to provide for that. Some families are choosing adoption once their biological kids are older teens, which is great too. Here is a story about a family like that...they live in Atlanta and they recently adopted a 3 yr old boy from China. They have 3 bio kids, who are teens. They are on one of my China adoption email lists. Here is their story (see link below), which was in the Atlanta newspaper...complete with a slideshow. Get out your kleenex! Enjoy!

www.ajc.com/living

There are soooo many kids waiting out there.
Choose Life. Choose Adoption.

Tribe Time & Kateri's new haircut!

The Cleveland Indians are doing great! Ken and I took the 2 oldest boys to the game last night and they won 12-3 against the NY Yankees...the first game of the Playoffs. It was a great game to go to. Tonight, Ken went with some of my family and the Tribe won again in 11 innings, 2-1. It was a real nail biter tonight. Go Tribe!

Kateri had a little mishap with the scissors today and cut off a large portion of her hair. I had to even it up and therefore, had to cut off a lot of her hair. But, her new little bob looks adorable and so easy to comb! Here are some photos of Kateri dancing around tonight after her haircut. She is sooooo cute!!