Itsara

In response to the last post, Dave asked, “If you had unlimited resources to fulfill your current vision, what would you do?” That is such a fantastic question. I hope I can do it justice.

I can’t speak for Cindy, Sean, or Prang, necessarily. We all share a similar vision, but the details of it probably differ from person to person. And I like how Dave said “current vison,” because this thing changes all the time.

Our full vision, at the moment, is to fill these houses with kids. I don’t know what that means for Sean and Prang, but in our house we’re thinking 8 or even 12(?) kids. We plan on adopting as many of these as we can. We want to homeschool when possible, but Thailand has fairly strict rules on homeschooling, and we don’t want to limit anyone’s opportunities. The children of ours who are Thai citizens will likely go to Thai school, while those who take on US citizenship (i.e. those we adopt) may be homeschooled.

Of course, we’re not certain how all this (i.e. adopting, homeschooling, etc.) works, so things may change.

There’s another aspect we don’t talk about much, but it’s on the back of my mind a lot. So we want to help as many children as possible. At the same time, we don’t feel we can be effective parents to more than 8 or 12 kids, but that’s not even a drop in the bucket of the need. So the other part of the vision is to teach others to do what we do. I have no idea what that would look like, but that’s the idea.

I’m sure Dave primarily meant financial resources in his question. At the moment that’s not really what’s stopping us from fulfilling the vision. The biggest financial drain on our original vision was the houses, and we have those already. The rest is just day-to-day living, which hasn’t proven to be a problem (yet).

But there are other resources that are limited. In particular, time and emotional resources. Time, as a resource, we can handle (though wouldn’t it be nice to have unlimited amounts of it?). Limited time gives us pause, but I don’t think it’s what’s stopping us.

Our emotional resources, on the other hand, are more difficult to deal with. One of the main reasons we don’t just take in 6 more kids right now is because this is an emotionally draining job, and to take in so many at once would strain our family and our marriage – possibly too much. Admittedly, I don’t know what “too much” is (we doubled our family once before, and that turned out okay), but this is one of the reasons we are taking things slow.

It takes time to get used to a new family member, and for a child to get used to us as their home. It’s important for these kids to have stability and a sense of belonging. Change threatens that security, and too much change could destroy it. So we’re careful.

I hope that’s a satisfactory answer to the question. Go ahead and post follow-up questions if you like.

I’m committed to posting about once a week here, but there hasn’t been much to talk about lately (summers are slow like that). So you tell me: what do you want to know? You can ask about anything you like – our family, what we do all day, how to order pizza in Thai, whatever. Even religious or political topics are cool (not cuz I’m an expert, but because having long discussions on, say, evolution and the Bible is fun!).

Ask your questions in the comments and I’ll answer them in later posts.

Sean and Prang are still in America, and we only have 3 of the 6 kids, so things have been quiet here lately. Thailand just finished celebrating Songkran, the Thai New Year. We didn’t do much water-wise this year, just went to our old Mu Baan and played some (well, Cindy and Lu did anyway).

I started building more shelves, but without an orbital sander I’m temporarily stuck. I finished a draft of another novel and am in the very difficult editing stages. And a very, very, very short story of mine got published on Easter (it’s the fourth one down).

Isaac’s language skills are amazing. He’s singing the whole alphabet now on his own, and Cindy and I are half-trying to get him to recognize letters and count to two or three.

Tomorrow night I leave for Bangkok to spend a day with Whytey, so that’s exciting (except for the part where I have to leave my wife and kids). Then next week it’s back to the normal schedule. I’m gonna have to try and remember what that is.

One of my (Cindy’s) goals in this 2-week break is to post on Itsara. (Check!) So, here’s an update from me.

* Adam wants to get pregnant. I told him it’s better if I’m the one who gets pregnant. No news yet.
* I went to some free master dance classes a few weeks ago and met some other dancers. Now I’ve begun adult ballet lessons here. First time since 12 years ago. It hurts, but it’s so good.
* We are considering a trip to the US, although we fear leaving Nathan while he is still new.
* We are trying to figure out if we can adopt/get legal guardianship for Nathan and/or Lutiya. Please pray.
* Adam’s leaving us (Lutiya, Isaac, Nathan, and me) for 2 nights to visit Whytey in Bangkok. What am I going to do? Invite some teenage girls to sleep over, play games, dance, and be silly. Will I ever grow up?
* I’m going to start taking Thai classes again. I’m sick of misunderstanding people and being misunderstood.
* Nathan and Isaac fight a LOT. It drives me nuts.
* Nathan and Isaac are really loving and considerate with each other within seconds of fighting. It’s taught me a lot about forgiving and forgetting.
* Our house is so quiet with only 3 kids. (Well, it’s all relative.)
* I ate someone’s poop the other day.
* It’s not the same without the Abbotts here. We miss them.
* I am so thankful that Jamie brought real parmesan cheese from the US.
* I find a new white hair pretty often.
* I spent a lot of time this break doing Sandra’s math assignments.
* I ate my first peach yesterday in years. (It wasn’t good.)
* I do a great 3-second dog drawing.
* Adam and I are going on a 4-hour date in about 10 minutes. WOOHOO!

I like doing these summaries on the anniversary of our arrival. I especially like that it always falls on Easter, the Thai summer, and the Thai New Year. It all seems appropriate, somehow.

Year One: We moved, learned the language, worked with Im Jai, and got Sandra.

Year Two: We pulled away from Im Jai, Sean got married, we got Matt, we created Isaac and Abigail, we bought land, and I neglected to do a year-end post.

Year Three: We got Pan, Alaypa, and Lutiya. We started building our houses, and we learned a lot about loving broken kids.

We’ve been here four years now. There were a number of big things that define this year. We moved. Alaypa left. Sean started work on the rice mill business, and Park came to live with them. Nathan came to live with us. Prang was approved to visit the US.

Geez, that’s a big year already. On top of that, this was the (first?) year we went to Bangkok as a family. My sister got married in Mexico. Cindy began teaching dance afterschool. I finished a novel. And, lest we forget, Isaac got stung by a scorpion (but went back to kick that golf course’s butt).

I often feel like our life moves pretty slowly, like we do pretty much the same thing most days, but a lot happens in just a year. Counting Prang’s brothers, there are fourteen of us living here. At this rate, we’ll have twenty people and two start-up businesses come year five.