UPDATE ON OUR ZHEN

Last month Zhen turned twelve...or, I think in actuality he turned eleven, but we didn't figure that out in time, and as one might expect, he has no desire to lose a year now. In any case, he is a dear and wonderful boy.  A blessing.

His teacher is adorable; look how she celebrated his birthday!  He is the oldest in his class of 3rd and 4th graders and when we arrived on his birthday morning, on his desk was a birthday medal to wear around his neck, and a birthday "friend" (some little stuffed animal that spends the day with the birthday child) and a special vest to wear.  His teacher started to hurriedly assure him that he didn't have to wear the vest if he didn't want to, but she'd hardly begun when she realized he had it on!  He loves stuff like that.  As has become traditional, I took him out of school for a special birthday lunch.  He was so excited about the Asia House buffet (I did try to lure him to Noodles and Company with no success).  Getting abundant food is Zhen's idea of happiness.  He always gets enough to eat, but often seems to fear there won't be enough.

Last night we were driving to a basketball game and for some reason he started to chat about wedding cakes: HIS wedding cake would be three layers tall, and the top layer would open up and doves would fly out!  I thought it rather sweet that a little boy would be thinking about a wedding cake.  Then he pulled his recorder out of his backpack and began to play for me.  He is pretty "all-around", our Zhen.



Practicing at Breslin Center - look at the shine on that floor!!

 He's a wonderful little basketball player, he scored eight points and got any number of rebounds. I just love watching him play.  By the way, Coach Izzo's son is on Zhen's team, and they actually practice at the Breslin Center almost all of the time!  The other night he told me that they "got to go into this room wih big padded chairs, and watch [our] game video on the big screen".  Wow.  Funny thing is that Zhen himself rather takes this for granted. 

On Thanksgiving I wanted to go do something other than just stay home, and it was Zhen who agreed to go with me to the nature center.  He loves the outdoors, and particularly animals. He climbed up and ran down this hill any number of times, enjoying the challenge of negotiating (leaping over or off of) all the fallen logs and debris.

In this photo I'd just gotten Zhen his new winter boot  He realized how great the tracks were and that gave him an idea.  He called me out to see what I could make of a "crime scene".  He'd set up a scene with a number of different "clues" and challenged me to find them all - footprints (of course), but a broken stick (weapon), a "bloody" hand print, finger prints, a scrap of cloth, etc.  I thought that was a brilliant idea for a game, actually - and with almost nothing to use but the little you see in the back yard,  he called me out there several times to try my hand at finding all the clues.  Clever Zhen.  We'd just been watching Sherlock Holmes on Masterpiece Theatre.  I'm glad it impressed him.

Zhen is such a blessing, sweet, funny, honest, and spiritual to his core.  I am infinitely grateful that I get to be his mama.