Friday fun

Tonight we headed over to G's favorite friends house to hang out. G is
totally into food and play cooking. She served me four plastic potato
chips and took her time to use a fork pretending to put some dip on
each one. She even served them to me on a plate. Then she decided to
share my chips with others. :). Here she is jamming herself into a toy
pack and play! That thing is dangerously unstable.

Can't believe S has been gone for 6 days. She's called me every night,
even said goodnight to G together.

Playing airplane

The first photo shows G being helpful and putting her potato head toys
back; she's been pretty wild today though. The second one was where I
made a Lego plane for her and played airplane with her, making
wonnnnnn nnnnnnn diving and swooshing sounds. She loved it, grabbed
the plane and proceeded to run around, making her own noises.

G is doing well in general but really wanted to see Mommy, and got a
chance today when we were able to video Skype! It's amazing that S
has been in Thailand every day and we've been able to talk every day.

G has woken up past midnight these last few nights but gone back to
sleep. Not sure why.

Finally we have been just blessed by so much food, between the Wu's
giant ham and all the curry and other food S left behind, that we are
still eatin leftovers. Tonight I made fried rice with bell peppers,
carrots, ham, and other Chinese leftovers. Probably not as good as the
fried rice S makes.

Second day

Today I went back to work. Awesome to have Grandma watching G at home. I was talking to my friend whose wife is also gone to Thailand. He is working from home, and even though his aunt came over to help, he still had a hard time trying to feed his baby and work at the same time. Anyways an anonymous friend came over and brought this awesome huge roast ham. What awesome friends we have!

G had to be bribed again during dinner to eat her veggies. She loved her rice and ham. She played a lot, and while putting her to bed, really loved to play with me and push my head around like her new toy.

I redid yesterday's post. It got messed up when posting from my iPhone. Learned my lesson - sending in an email post while mixing text and photos doesn't work.

The first 24 hours without Mommy

In the morning I started hearing "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" uh-oh, she knows now I thought. Turned out to be her normal cry for attention. As usual she had thrown everything out of her crib during the night, and I was too tired last night to pick it back up. It's Sunday morning and I went in to get her up. I put a long sleeve with snow pattern blue (can see it in the first photo, where G is feeding grandma a cheerio), warm brown pants, and tied her hair into two ponytails with blue hair thingies. I fed her yogurt - breakfast is the easiest meal of the day.

At church I dropped her off at Nursery without a cry. In fact she didn't even look back! This pix is actually from Saturday when we were at church for Operation Christmas Child.

We went home for lunch to have leftovers. I must say it's such a blessing to have grandma here. She fed her noodles for lunch and has really taken care of the hardest thing - feeding her. And much more. Grandma is doing all the driving since I can't drive.

G was tired and we had to wake her from her nap to drive over to tai-gong and tai-pos house. She was very shy, refused to let them hold her (even in exhange for a cracker) and kept hugging my leg.

G kept wanting to "mo mo" (feel) their dog and said "kai" - wanting me to open the door, but whenever I did she would get scared!

We went out to dinner and G had a hard time. Very fuzzy and clingy, making a big mess. Grandma did most of the feeding.

Overall G seems well adjusted and herself mostly. I think Mommy is the one who has it hard for these first 24 hrs, sitting in a cramped plane seat for 13/18 hrs, then arriving in 90deg humidity.

Two weeks without Mommy

So Mommy just left for two weeks on her missions trip to Thailand. This is going to be interesting. G has been more clingy lately, and friends ask me if she knows. I reply that she sorta does, but they think she has no idea. We just came back from the airport sending the whole group off (it's an entire team from my church) and G dozed off on the way home. She could just as well be thinking, like some other nights when Mommy has dinner with friends, that Mommy wasn't around when she fell asleep, but she still expects to see Mommy the next morning. The real test will thus come in the morning. When I left for China back in April, G cried every morning for a few days.

So begins two weeks of single parenting -- well I have it pretty good actually. Grandma came this week to help out for a week. The following week my company happens to have a shut-down, just when Grandma will be leaving, so I can take care of G during the day. My church is doing a "meals for dads" program so I won't even have to cook some meals. Not that I mind cooking when I don't have to work - it might even be fun. There will be other dads around who are single parenting - our wives all went on the trip -- I've made plans with one to visit the zoo.

Let the adventure begin. In the meantime, it's off to bed for me. It's been a long week with lots of late nights.

long overdue update...

I don't even know if anyone is checking this anymore... the quick update is that G is now 20.5 months. She knows about 15 words in sign language, about double that in Chinese, and double that in English! She continues to amaze us every day by how much she is absorbing! She has also started potty training herself, telling us when she wants to sit on the toilet. G continues to go to Little Gym class, where she is now learning how to rotate around the high bar, as well as swing/hang on it by herself. Her balance on the balance beam is also getting really good, where she can walk with very little support.

In other news, G is going to be a big sister in January, just shy of her 2nd birthday. We do not know whether it will be a didi or meimei. Also, I will be heading to Thailand for a short term missions trip in a week, where I will be working with women and children who have been or are at risk for being sex-trafficked. I'm excited but also a little sad to leave G and Evan behind for 2 weeks, but I know they will be well takedo itn care of, by G's Wai Po who will be helping us the first week, and also by all the church family we have supporting us.

Here she is as an octopus for Halloween.

This is from the summer, from our church youth group picnic. She was a bit young, but enjoyed playing with the leftover water buckets and water balloons.

This was from we wedding we went to in Santa Barbara in the beginning of October. She preferred walking around the lawn rather than sitting through the beautiful outdoor ceremony.

17 lbs 4 oz

Hey, this is E, writing my guest post after coming back from three weeks in China.   When I left, G was just starting to stand on her own, and we were trying to encourage her to take a step.   I carried her photos and others on my iPhone and constantly and very proudly showed them to my tripmates.  Skype is the best thing in the world, being able to video chat once or twice was a treasure.  When I came back I felt she had changed SO much:

• She's gained weight (17 lbs 4 ounces!), and her legs feel chubby!
• she loves to drink (more water than milk) and can hold her water bottle, I get scared how much she drinks.
• She was walking!  (Though expected)   Last weekend we went to the park, held her hand and she walked around for a long time.
• She is so opinionated now.  She points to every different thing in her room and tries to tell me what it is.  At the dinner table, she makes it very clear when she doesn't want something and sharply points to what she wants.
• She can stack blocks -- we have these big foam blocks.  I would then hide on the other side, and she loves to knock the blocks over so they fall on me.  She gets a big giggle out of it -- a few days ago she became really upset after dinner but I played this with her and got her to laugh
• She's gotten into reading, particularly her "Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "Jesus Loves Me" books - sometimes by herself, and when I come into her play area she hands the Caterpillar book to me.

Perhaps I feel the change because I've been away and working with very malnourished, disabled kids in China.   I remember S and I stressing about G's being at 0% weight curve and frying her egg yolks in butter, and we still stress about her not finishing her food sometimes and get tempted to force feed her.  After seeing the kids in China,  I assure you that G has nothing on them.   G is so healthy, moving around, getting into books, just developing in every single way, and we are so fortunate for that.    In China, the kid I worked with was 5 and could not even sit up, I would have been happy if she was able to track finger movement with her eyes -- a milestone here for one-month-old infants.

I realized while overseas that as parents many of us get stuck into the parenting rat race.   We ask ourselves, why isn't our kid walking yet, look at our friend's!    We get stressed if our infants don't roll over at 3 months, don't sit up by 6 months, don't clap by a year-old, and the development timetable is drilled into our heads by pediatricians, by parenting books, by other friends's kids (probably subconsciously).    It took being away and working with disabled kids to shift my perspective.  Kids here are blessed in ways that most people overseas cannot even imagine.

"Which of you by worrying can add a single day to their life?"  --Matthew 6:27