Cathing Up!

Life is full throttle around here, but things are going well. At the moment I am shirking my cleaning duties just so that I can update all of you on life here at the Harding house.

Blessing #1

Zach was calling Nate by his Chinese name the other day, it is very lyrical so it is fun to say it with the right tones. Nate replied, "I'm not Xi Wei Feng, I'm Nate". We have worked so hard to help him understand that he is part of a family, and to realize that he was given an orphanage name, the Xi is what all the babies in that orphanage were named. He is getting that he belongs, he is part of a family. He had told me recently that in his foster family, all of the children were referred to by their full names. I know that is cultural to some extent, but within families you don't call people by the whole name, that is a more formal, acquaintance practice. In my opinion it sends a subtle message, but that is just me.

Blessing #2

We have some results from the MRI. Nate has no blebs in his stomach or intestines. This means no internal bleeding worries for us. His thigh has a very large bleb in the muscle. We will be going to see a Vascular specialist at JHH in Oct. to find out our options for removal. Chris and I think it is growing. Just the other day I had to explain that he had a "sick" leg, that is why the one is so much larger. He had no idea that it wasn't "normal" to have a size difference. You could see the light go on in his head, no wonder he was mad about the MRI day and having to see all of these doctors. Depending on the type of procedure maybe he can have his scar fixed as well. He did tell me he would like that to look better. I don't blame him at all, it is terrible.

Blessing #3

He is overcoming his shyness and we haven't had a tearfilled silence episode all week long. He is also understanding that to look at Mom and Dad during correction or directions is an okay thing to do. That has been another cultural standard we have found ourselves dealing with. Teaching Nate (and ourselves) that God doesn't want us to "save face" when we are wrong, but he wants our humbleness and repentance.

The more we teach Nate about life through a biblical worldview, the more God teaches us about His desires for our life through that biblical worldview.

Prayer Request: I would ask for you to pray for Nate as he learns his letter sounds and and the names of the letters. We are teaching this while at the same time he is learning to read in the first grade curriculum. If he gets the names and sounds under his belt, I know the reading will only get easier for him. Pray for our patience and understanding, it can become easy to forget the enormity of the task for Nate and to just become frustrated with the fact that he doesn't remember the sound you just said 20x in a row.

----Susanne

Come On Let's Go School

These are the words we heard this morning as Nate stood in the garage for 20 mins, waiting to leave the house.

You may be asking your self..."I thought you said you were going to homeschool?" You would be correct, but things have changed once again as they so often do around here.

Last Monday I went to confer with the first grade teacher and Principal at the school. We started out talking about how best to include Nate in the classroom every once in a while (field trips, special days, lunch one day a week), to having him come in for an hour every morning and so on. The next thing I knew he was signed up to go to school for the first 3 days all day long. We want to see how he is able to follow along and we will reassess next week. What a wonderful blessing to find a school and people who are willing to work with you and have a desire to see Nate do well.

I was really nervous about leaving him yesterday, but the secretary was so sweet and went in to check on things for me before I officially left the campus.

All of the boys said that they had a really great first day. Nate told us he didn't understand anything the teacher said, but isn't that why he is there? We are hopeful that he will do well in the classroom environment. I am still willing to homeschool him, but I think it would lack a little something for him language wise if it was just the 2 of us, if the other boys were at home with him it would be a different story. I think he is glad to be back into a routine and to be doing something that is somewhat familiar to him.

I'll keep you posted on how things are going.

---Susanne