Snow!

They are utterly nuts about snow. This was back at the beginning of December.

I think I used to be this excited about all those frozen flakes. Now that I'm old though, snow seems awfully ... cold.

I did go and buy some snow pants for myself in case of any sledding or skiing that may happen this season that might involve me. On this particular day, however, I was quite content to take the photos from inside the house.

Kai and Rowan tried surfing/snowboarding when I wouldn't let them sled off that five foot wall behind them. Jazz was content to examine the snow close up and eat it.

Playing with Water Prism

We have a glass water prism hanging from our south facing kitchen window. It was made by a stained glass artist selling at the Ren Fair a few years back. Since it's in the south facing window, we only get rainbows in the winter. Jasmine discovered this winter's first rainbows. She calls them "Beautiful Princess Rainbows." She tried to hold it, look into it, color her body with it and see if it would cancel out the wacky colored stripes she was wearing. This was a batch of pictures where I actually had too many to choose from rather than the typical one-in-one-hundred problem.

(I don't know why there is a big gap between the writing and the pictures. Weird.)

Birthday Girl

Jasmine turned 5 this November 19th. Amazing. Here she is reading her new (sigh) Barbie book. Her interest in Barbie has skyrocketted since receiving one from her babysitter as a birthday present. Every night she asks where her Barbie doll is so she can sleep with it. In the picture below, she's testing out the fairy wings and tutu she received. She is such a girlie-girl. Oh well. If that's what she wants for her birthday, who am I to argue? At least she likes to do all the same sword and gun fights, wrestling with her brothers, playing cars and playing with bugs.



It's strange to think that she's been with us almost as long as she'd been in the orphanage. This is about the time for Jasmine when adoption experts say that kids adopted from orphanages will be caught up to their peers. That is, one year at home for every one year in the institution. That's not quite been our experience, but then Jasmine had many extra obstacles to overcome. She's sort of a three-thru-five year old.

I've been pondering how many delays were due to lack of care, food and resources and how many were compounded due to her lack of vision. For instance, when we were teaching her how to chew I needed to get about an inch from her eyes, chew open-mouthed, and allow her to put her fingers in my mouth. This is when she actually figured out what to do with all this solid food. How much did this compound her malnutrition?

When we're working on sounds, the same thing applies, I get very close and make a sound (lately the "th" sound) and I point out key features like the fact that my tongue is sticking out from between my teeth. She feels and looks carefully and only then does she really get what she needs to do to make the sound. Basically, we need to do a few extra things to get her to the same skill and knowledge point as a normally sighted child.

It doesn't take much effort to get her up to speed, but it is a different method than what usually goes on. I don't think enough effort and acceptance is given to difference. Many people demonize the homogeneous culture of China for the rejection of people who aren't the norm. But, here in America we have similar attitudes. It isn't as severe, but sometimes (speaking as a weird, atheist geek) it seems the only reason is that there is an American reputation and Constitution preventing people from acting on their instincts.