Merry Christmas

Taking a few minutes after 1:00 am on Christmas day to say, Merry Christmas! Winter season is surely here in Shanghai. We can feel the cold here and have turned into wimps. The temperature is still above freezing, but it feels much colder. So now I am being told to bundle up the kids more. There is usually something with how my children are dressed. Either too warm, too cold, or something is too long or too short...or maybe not fashionable? I don't always know whether I am translating it right. The other evening on our walk home from the Christmas Eve service, I thought I heard some girls saying that I was too small to carry Sayde in my baby carrier! Maybe so...compared to my very tall, 6'4 husband walking next to me :)

Our family is still celebrating the birth of Jesus this week. Had some adjustments with the kids, being too loud at the service and having to leave early when they couldn't sit still in their chairs. But we were there for the best part at least, hearing and singing Christmas carols in Chinese. Singing Silent Night on Christmas Eve in China is very special.

It has been a rough couple of weeks with heater going out, electricity out, cold water, and workmans at our apartment to fix things. Hudson has taken up an interest, sometimes concern, in plumbing. He says he wants to grow up to invent some drains that will help save people from being flooded. He really is concerned over any drain that gets backed up and always listens to the bathtub draining, just to make sure the water isn't going to come back up. He is starting to open up more and both of them are truly getting into the sunday school program for kids at our international church service each week. Before we moved here, Hudson had just left the nursery back home. This has been huge for him! I would like them to be able to sit still through a grown-ups service too sometime though.

And Sayde is a very sweet, independent little 16 month old. She can say so many words in English, not to mention that her first two Chinese words are "hao" and "yu" (fish). She was a given a little stuffed animal fish and we play "where is fish?" with her. Whenever we say "where is something" in Chinese she answers "yu?" In English, she can say "play" and "people," and will look out the window to look at people.

Jeremy and I have been able to go on a few lunch dates since we have our ayi who watches the kids for us while we are gone.

I am struggling lately with my time. I can't fit everything into one day all that I want to! I want to homeschool my children excellently and do so much with them. At the same time, I really want to learn the language here and I don't mean just speaking it. I love to study reading and writing in Chinese and really want to become fluent... It is a danger that many moms who homeschool their children in the home in other cultural and language contexts never end up learning the local language.

Jeremy needs to learn the language well too, but that is also hard for him when most in his office will communicate with him in English.

Well it is now 2:00 am. Here are our recent pictures...