Let the Demolition Begin

I'm sure it's no secret to those who have been reading our blog that the writer of all of our posts so far has been Judy. While there have been a few occasions on which I was simply beaten to the punch by Judy in her excitement to post on the most recent happenings with our adoption, I have to admit that most of the time, I have been content to let her take the lead with our posts. She is, after all, a very natural and creative writer and also seems to find a great deal of satisfaction in sharing our joys and struggles through this mode. Today, though, will hopefully be a milestone in our process as I post for the first time (please go easy on me!). I want to share some of my experience on New Year's Day working with Andrew to prepare for Szu-Chuan's arrival.

One of the major themes in our household lately has been planning for the impact of the adoption on Andrew. We anticipate the jealousy that will likely appear and the challenges he may have adjusting to having a brother sharing our time and energy. Of course, this is something that every family considers as it grows. We know that God is in control of our children's lives and will use them both to build character in each other, but we want to make sure we do our best to encourage them toward right choices and attitudes.

Practically, we have been trying to encourage Andrew to be excited about having a sibling by telling him what a great big brother he will be, how he will be able to teach his Didi all about how to play with trucks properly, and how he might educate his little brother on which vegetables to eat in order to get the biggest muscles. We even taped a picture of Szu-Chuan on the door of the bedroom next to his - soon to become the nursery - so that he could start getting used to the idea of having a neighbor.

Recently, I continued on this theme by asking big brother Andrew to help out in preparing for his Didi's arrival by assisting me with the simple renovations that I have to complete before we have to travel. Our thought is that we will not have much time or energy to be working on renovations once Szu-Chuan comes home and we also don't really want to be doing work in the bedrooms while the two children are around anyway. We can juggle Andrew's sleeping situation easily enough now as we work on his bedroom, Szu-Chuan's bedroom, and the guest bedroom by painting and doing other necessary work.

I was absolutely amazed when Andrew told me how excited he was about our work project. He then spent over an hour stripping off an old airplane-themed wallpaper border in our guest bedroom with me. He took hold of a metal scraper and gently worked at pulling the wallpaper off of the wall and dropping the scraps into a plastic garbage bag. He told me several times how much he liked helping and that if anyone needed help, he could help them.

Of course, by the end he became bored and declared that he absolutely had to take a break by sitting on a chair in the room for 5 minutes. It was truly exciting to see our little boy taking huge steps toward big-brotherhood. I can't want to see all the great things that these two little boys will inspire in each other as they grow up together in our home!