Welcome Helen

As promised, here are a few Helen videos. The organization that set her up with us asks that we not show pictures or videos of her publicly without blurring or blocking the eyes.



Helen will be 1 year old next Monday, but she's developmentally more like a 5 month old. She had surgery to remove a large something (not sure if it was a tumor, sack of fluid, or what) from the back of her skull, and the bone still hasn't re-formed back there, so she's really sensitive on the back of her head. She also has a shunt (don't worry, I had to look that word up, too) in her head that drains the excess fluid down into her stomach. Because of her special physical needs, she's been in foster care since her surgeries. We're watching her while her American foster family is out of the country for a few weeks.

She sleeps most of the night, which is good. But she can get fussy during the day. 'Fussy', for the uninitiated, means she may cry and scream for 2 hours with no apparent reason. But like most babies, when she's happy and sweet, you forget the fussy times:

Helen Arrives

We got our foster baby today. Helen will be with us for 2 weeks. She'll turn 1 year old on the 28th, had surgery a few months ago and is with us while her foster family is overseas for a few weeks. We'll try to get some pictures and videos posted soon. Right now we're a little busy with our trial run at parenting :)

It's crazy (Rob's reflections)

Something I have found morbidly entertaining in East Asia is that whenever someone commits or attempts murder (including suicide) or causes some other atrocious, headline-grabbing spectacle, the news reports that the person was later determined to be suffering from a mental disease. When you press the issue further, you find that this is a society that believes you would have to be mentally messed up to do anything like that. It's a real, live Catch 22.
"Why did he stab his boss?"
"Because he was crazy."
"How do you know he was crazy?"
"Because he stabbed his boss."

Well, forgive my naivete, but could there be another explanation? Could the reason be (warning: four-letter word ahead) EVIL? For years I have brushed this off as an quirk of East Asian culture. But then, a few weeks ago, I read an opinion column on the Fort Hood shootings, and within a few sentences the author said he "takes for granted" that anyone who would shoot other people has a mental disorder. Have we gotten to that point? Has evil been factored out of the equation? How long until we realize that, without that component, the equation will never add up?

One thing I appreciated about George W. Bush was his unabashed re-introduction of the concept of 'evil' into public dialogue. He spoke of certain people, actions, ideologies and even governments as just plain evil. He also took a lot of flack for that, but I for one admired it.

C.S. Lewis, 60 years ago was writing about the danger of seeing criminals as nothing more than mental/emotional/social problems that just need to be 'fixed'. is it too early to call Lewis a prophet?