Happy Birthday to Joshua!

On October 18th, we celebrated Joshua's 7th birthday. We thought this was a good time to have a celebration to recognize his joining the Aldrich family, so we invited (or tried to -- sorry if we missed some people) everyone we could think of that had encouraged and prayed for us along the long journey to bring him home. It is probably a good thing that not everyone could come. As it turned out, we counted 128 guests that came to our open house. We had another little miracle that day in that the sun decided to shine and the kids were able to play outside. The day before had been an amazing rain storm, so the sun really felt like a miracle!

Joshua thoroughly enjoyed the day. He started out by putting on the new shirt he had picked out himself using birthday money from Grandma and Papa. He went to church in the morning while his sister Sarah, her friend and I decorated and prepared the house. He, dad and the other kids then picked up his birthday cake that he had picked out at Costco and some noodles from Panda express. Sarah and her friend decorated over 100 cupcakes and also helped me prepare a LOT of food. Joshua came home to a house of balloons and cupcakes. He was thrilled. He seemed to enjoy every moment of celebrating with friends and meeting a few people that he didn't know, but that had prayed for him. He was sort of a celebrity for a day.

As I was putting up pictures, laying out blog posts and the very thick book of paperwork that helped bring him home, I had some very surreal moments as those things took me back in time to the many, many months of waiting and trusting that God really had a plan here. Joshua is such a testimony of God's grace displayed and poured out on us here on earth. There are so many miracles marking the trail.

Joshua has come so far in such a few months. He is impressing people everyday with his use of English and his abilities. He has really done well with soccer. On Saturday, I watched the game he and Mark were in for a while and then walked over to the field where little sister was playing. When he came out of the game, he ran over to tell me he had scored 4 goals after I left! When I walked back over, everyone on the sidelines was also telling me about his 4 goals!

Tonight, we had an impressive and captivating display of his English ability as he opened a window into his past for us. Over dinner, we started talking about food and food he had while in China. Joshua was in a mood to talk and finally found enough words to tell us more about his life in China. For about 20 minutes, we all sat around the table completely captivated as he told us all about the "big house" (orphanage), how it was arranged, who was there and their daily schedule. I asked him if he remembered his first day there. To our amazement, he went on to describe the day that ended with arriving at the orphanage in great detail. He clearly has very, very vivid memories of that day. We had always wondered how much he would remember. We also found out he remembers a great deal about his home and family prior to coming to the orphanage. I tried my best to sit down and type out everything I could remember that he had told us -- including his very animated story about a mouse in the house!

We are constantly amazed at this sweet little boy's trust in us and take every opportunity to assure him that he is forever and completely a part of our family.

As he was recounting the details of the day he came to the orphanage and telling us how he didn't sleep well that night because he was scared, I kept thinking about how God knew even then that he had a plan to prosper and not to harm this child. As we were waiting to bring Joshua home, I had wondered about the day he came to the orphanage and had looked back in my journal to see what we were doing. On the morning he woke up in the orphanage for the first time, we were in the home of friends praying for the orphaned children in China. It was just a few days after we had first heard about Anna. We could not have imagined that three and a half years later, we would be bringing a 6 year old boy home from China, but God knew the plan already.

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Home Three Months!!!

Celebrating Joshua!

Sunday, October 18^th is Joshua’s 7th Birthday! (Although he insists he will be 8...we're still trying to explain that age is counted differently in China...) He is very excited about “Happy Birthday to Joshua.” To celebrate this event and his arrival in our family, we are inviting friends and family to an open house on Sunday, October 18^th. We are so thankful for the friends and family that prayed for him for the many long months we waited to bring him home. He has been blessed to be welcomed so warmly.

It is amazing how much a child can learn in a three month period. Joshua has been learning English, American Culture and the Aldrich Family Routine at an amazingly rapid rate! We are endeavoring to keep him using Chinese as often as possible, but he is clearly more motivated to master English. Today, when we met with our dear translator friend, Bonnie, he really just wanted to talk in English. Our hope and prayer is for him to be fluently bilingual. We will have to be very purposeful to help him keep his Mandarin. He adds new English phrases every day. One of his new English phrases this week was, “Anna, no whining…”

He is doing very well with school work. I think he’ll be ready for some more challenging work soon. I’ve intentionally tried to keep it simple enough to avoid frustration. He has been doing addition or subtraction sheets each day, some pages that review concepts like – up/down, right/left, between, etc., has two workbooks that teach phonics and one that has cutting, pasting and coloring activities. He has gotten a bit bored with his Go Go Learns English DVDs. When I flipped through the books the other day, I realized he has mastered most of the words. We have been using an Explode the Code book. He really likes it. It has been great for learning new vocabulary words. He was also interested in the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book that Anna does with me and was especially interested when he learned there is a prize for completing the book! He has completed the first five lessons. I think he will be able to learn to read English at the same time he is learning to speak English. This is pretty amazing to me.

Joshua has been watching the other kids play instruments. I’ve told him that once he can read a book, he can try music lessons. He really enjoys drawing and does amazing work. I’ll try to post a picture of one of his drawings here. Despite the physical challenges of his wrists and hands, he actually seems less fatigued by writing than his older brothers. His surprising passion has really been his interest in sports of all kinds – really, all kinds. His latest interest is basketball. He watched a video about “Pistol Pete” and has been dribbling basketballs around the house ever since. He likes to get us to watch him while he stares at us and dribbles so that we see that he isn’t watching the ball. Try dribbling with the back of your hand sometime – not a simple thing! We expect this interest in sports to continue motivating him to work with us on treatments for his arms and hands.

Joshua still has occasional episodes where he withdraws. They are much less dramatic than they once were and to an outside observer would really just appear the behavior of a child pouting for not getting his way. He (and we) are able to work back out of them much easier. He is always back to his happy, fun and affectionate self when it is over. He is very generous with his hugs and “I love you”s. He seems genuinely happy to be part of our family. We try to talk about China with him and think those memories will be important for him to preserve in some way. Most of the time, he seems uninterested in talking about his life there, but once in a while he will decide to share some memories.

He and Anna are getting along better. They are very much like you would expect siblings to behave when one is only five and still learning how to consider the feelings of others. Most of the time they have great fun together and other times they provoke one another. Anna is learning to be “gracious” and very proud of her efforts. Joshua and Mark are having more and more fun together. One day, they were watching Rachel and James practice a fight scene for their upcoming performance in The Hobbit. A little while later, I saw them rehearsing their own fight scene. Joshua’s English may be limited, but he was able to direct Mark in just where to thrust his sword and when to turn and fall. What a dynamic duo they will be one day. As I’ve been watching Rachel in her first debate season, I can’t help but picture a debate team of Mark and Joshua one day.

Rachel, Sarah and James also have very good relationships with Joshua. He seems to look up to and respect them. James has really taken on the role of big brother, guide and peace maker. He is very quick to notice if Joshua is starting to get upset and possibly go into withdraw mode and has become very adept and diversion tactics.

It still amazes me to look back over the journey that brought us here. Joshua is such a testimony of God’s grace – as is my life and our family as a whole. I surely was not qualified for this and have to live on grace every single day. I’m so thankful not to have missed this adventure.

Rachel's Blog

There is a link to Rachel's blog on the left -- It is currently called "Carrying the Torch", but I think I heard she may change the name. It is fun the read and she posts a bit more frequently than her mother....