Ni Hao

I'm sitting here on Sunday night listening from the other room as my husband chops vegetables for our Sunday Chili.  It's a tradition...nearly every Sunday for 8 years we've made chili and had a date night at home.  Josh has the recipe perfected- it is his shining moment in the kitchen each week.  After the kids are in bed we curl up on the couch with a bowl of deliciousness and talk.  Back when we had our tv we'd sometimes watch movies, but now we mostly talk and it is so nice to have this to look forward to every week.

Right now I can hear the meat sizzling to the sounds of "Ni Hao" and "Putong qua"...Josh is practicing Mandarin as he cooks.  It is simultaneously sweet and silly, the strange sounds coming from the kitchen.  He makes me smile.

A week ago Josh ran out to pick up some take out Chinese to celebrate getting our LID- the start of our official long wait to hear that Zachary is ours.  He burst into the house practically beaming- he was so excited!  "Rene, they speak Mandarin!" he told me enthusiastically..."I actually spoke with the lady at the front...she smiled and told me I spoke good!"  His Mandarin was intelligible and brought a smile to the face of the normally stoic lady who runs our favorite Chinese restaurant.  It felt like a huge victory and we just laughed at the craziness of it all!  We have a Chinese son waiting for us...in China.  And we're trying to learn one of the most incredibly difficult languages.  My sometimes reserved husband is eager to speak it with strangers because he is already so in love Zachary and just wants to be able to communicate with him when we meet him.  Who would have thought we'd be here!

Asher and Laurel are using the mandarin words for thank you and excuse me as often as the English ones.  And the other night Asher and I stayed up late because he was determined to learn how to say, "I am your brother" in Mandarin for when he meets Zachary for the first time.

Two cultures are colliding and it couldn't be more beautiful.  Adoption is already stretching us and growing us, so much to learn and be thankful for.