Nihao means “hello” in Mandarin, the most commonly spoken Chinese dialect. Benjamin and I decided that since we are adopting a Chinese daughter and going to China, that it would be a good opportunity to learn Chinese! We found a great website called ChinesePod, which lets you download Chinese lessons to your iPod along with printouts containing vocabulary and pronunciation to accompany each lesson. There are various levels of lessons: Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Advanced. Right now we have started with “newbie” and have found it to be quite a lot of fun! We are using the free trial for now, and we are contemplating a subscription when that runs out.

I’ve got a secret and I just can’t keep it any longer. Actually, we (my husband and I) have a secret.

It has always been our desire to have a family. We have both felt that it is our calling to raise children. We have struggled through a high risk pregnancy, months on bedrest, and the loss of our baby. We also have struggled through infertility and specialists and all of the uncomfortable examinations, tests, medications, side effects, and emotional upheaval that come along with that. Last summer we took a step back from all of it. I stopped seeing the specialist. I stopped the medications. I stopped the tests. The avenue we were going down could only end with in vitro fertilization. I had been reading the story of Abraham and Sarah in my Bible. They wanted a child and God had promised them a child. But they could not wait for God’s timing and God’s plan. Instead, Sarah took matters into her own hands and suggested her maid Hagar as a surrogate mother. Sarah wanted a child so bad that she decided to make it happen instead of waiting for God’s perfect plan. At this point in my quest to have a child, aside from all of the moral and ethical problems I have with in vitro fertilization, I could not continue to pursue this sort of treatment. It would be my equivalent of trying to make it happen for us, rather than trusting God. We took a break, relaxed, and left the matter in God’s hands.

During that time, which included the one year anniversary of losing our baby as well as the anniversary of my due date, I struggled. I had horrible dreams wherein I was reliving the emotional agony of losing my child. They were so vivid and real that my distress even woke my husband, who in turn woke me. We talked of adoption, but had the problem of feeling like it would be “settling” to not have biological children. We had the normal fears and concerns of not having our “own” children. We prayed and left our family plans in God’s charge.

It is amazing what God can do. I have had a total change of heart regarding the “settling” issue. After much prayer and discussion, we have decided to adopt. We are adopting a little girl from China!!!!  I am so excited that I can hardly contain myself. I feel as if I am just going to burst! It is the same feeling I had when I found out I was pregnant, only – if you can belive this – I am actually more excited! It is also so easy to feel peace and trust that God has chosen our daughter for us already and is in charge of this whole process. It will be a long journey, about 18 months to 2 years, before we bring her home, but that is okay. She will be about a year old when she comes home and we pray for her even now, though she has not yet been born. I know there are a lot of obstacles ahead in our journey (expenses, mountains of paperwork, the homestudy, and things we have not yet forseen) but we know that we can depend on God and He will help us through it one step at a time. All of the obstacles will strengthen our trust in God, build our character, prepare us further for parenthood, and make the union with our daughter that much sweeter.

Because I want to be able to look back at our journey through this process, I do plan to chronicle our adoption adventure on this blog, complete with all of the ups and downs we encounter along the way. I have enjoyed reading the blogs of others who have adopted from China before me and their stories have helped me to know both what to expect and also to anticipate how rewarding it all will be in the end.

So now you know our secret.

I do not want to be silent on my progress on the knitting front. I am still working on some secret knitting right now…which translates to mean that the pattern I am working on is definately a work in progress. Every time I have ironed out one kink I discover another.  But I keep working on it and eventually I will have a sneak peak photo to share.

So to retain my sanity, I started another knitting project. (Does that make sense to anyone other than myself?) I wanted something that was nearly mindless, so I grabbed the Raspberry Mousse yarn that came in the mail last week and started the Icarus shawl from summer 2006 IK.

With my husband’s help, my blog got a new look today! I am still trying to iron out the kinks (like the sidebar being at the bottom of the page when viewed with Internet Explorer but not other browsers like Firefox or Safari), so please bear with me. Not having the date and time stamp on each post will take a bit of getting used to. You still can comment, though…just click on the title of the post and the comment option pops up at the end of the post. Hopefully I will get all of the bugs sorted out soon.

I do love the colors though, they are so bright and springy!

Edit:  The comment button is now available at the bottom of the post, thanks to my husband’s altering of the code.  I merely mentioned to him that I wished it was there and he fixed it lickety-split.  Aren’t husbands wonderful? 

It is very quiet here and all of the lights are out.  I was snuggled up in bed between my sleeping husband and the purring Dex cat.  But I felt the call…no, the drive.  It was so strong it pulled me out of bed even though it is nearly midnight.  So now here I sit in the soft glow of my computer monitor while the rest of my world sleeps.  What am I doing, you ask?  Knitting.  I snuck out of bed to sit up and knit by the light of the computer monitor where my pattern is carefully plotted out on an excel grid.  What drew me out of bed at this hour you ask?  I will share my secret with you:  I have been working to design my own original pattern.  I have been inspired by all of the lace knitting I have been doing lately and wanted to design something of my very own.  After many fits and starts, I think I finally have most of the kinks worked out of the design.  Well, maybe.  I know that I will not be able to sleep until I have it all worked out.