Auntie Krisanne and Uncle Paul

My girls have come to several conclusions over the past ten days, and one of them is most certainly this: they just can't get enough of their Auntie Krisanne and Uncle Paul. They have had so much fun together, and we are excited that in a few short months Krisanne and Paul will join us on this side of the world - a few countries south, but pretty darn close compared to most of our family.

Krisanne and I are already dreaming up plans of our families meeting in Bangkok for a long weekend of fun together .... hopefully sooner rather than later :)



Lydia says "Paul" and sometimes manages to say something that sounds a lot like "Uncle Paul".


It is so fun to watch the girls and their Auntie Krisanne & Uncle Paul!

PS - I made the hat that Lydia is wearing in that photo, and one for Julianna too. Here's a photo where you can see both of them wearing their new hats -

M&M you

Two of Lydia's favorite phrases are definitely "hold you" and "help you". I love it when my little girl walks up to my knee, reaches out her arms and says "hold you hold you" and I remember feeling a tinge of sadness when Julianna left that stage behind and started using the grammatically correct "hold me".

Sweet Lydia has taken the "verb + me" phrasing to a new level though. Last night in the car on the way home she looked right at me and said "M-n-M-n you"!! We've had a bowl of M&Ms out for snacking through the holidays, and Lydia loves to hold an M&M. [No, not eat an M&M, but hold an M&M. Weird, I know. I, personally, would much rather eat M&Ms! But Lydia just likes to hold one between the tips of her fingers and show it off to everyone around her.]

She calls them M-n-M-ns and though I've never heard M&M used as a verb before, it was clear what she meant when she said "M-n-M-n you"! Unfortunately, there were none available for the holding - maybe next time, Lydia!

We are having so much fun with all our family here! I'll try to download some photos and get them posted later today - for now, it's off to church!

Merry Christmas!

Gosh, where do I even start? We've been celebrating and eating and opening presents for 48 hours! Here are some of my favorite photos ....

Krisanne and Lydia reading books on Christmas Eve -


Earlier in the day on Christmas Eve Luther and Julianna enjoyed some quiet time working on crafts with Julianna's new stamps (thanks Kim!)


Jan made us all matching pj pants and we wore them Christmas morning :)

The girls finally opened the BIG BOX that they've played with for weeks and it was full of..... dress up clothes!


This might be my favorite photo so far (but I must admit that I haven't even finished looking at all our photos, so I might choose another "favorite" in the next few days!)

What a GREAT Christmas celebration! We have loved every minute :)

Happy 3rd Birthday Julianna Faith!

Today is Julianna's 3rd birthday - I had a great time looking through photos of her birthdays, starting with the day of her birth....


And her first birthday....


Here's 2 year old Julianna!


Now she's 3!


Oh, what a sweet little girl she is and what delight she brings our family!

birthday cupcakes

We celebrated Julianna's 3rd birthday today (her birthday is the 23rd) and it was SO FUN! The highlight for her (apart from all the presents!) was probably making and decorating and eating cupcakes.

Last night she and Grandma made up the cupcakes.....


Then this morning before lunch there was a big cupcake decorating session - Krisanne spread icing and then Julianna, Paul and Grandma used candy to make faces on the cupcakes.


They got really creative - I was envisioning the basic eyes, nose, and mouth arrangement but they went way beyond my expectations and even added hats, beards, arms and legs. Here are a few of the finished products.... see the guy at the bottom of the photo with glasses and marshmallow ears?


And, of course, the best part was probably the cupcake eating!


We had a great day celebrating together!

they're here!

Just a quick update ... our 4 guests are all here! We had a great time at the airport picking up Krisanne and Paul -


And Jan and Luther got in late last night after a smooth (but long) trip! They all managed to sleep late this morning, so we are just hanging out and enjoying a slow morning before the festivities start!

family on their way!

Today is a big day in our household! We've got family coming to town! Now, if you lived somewhere "normal" like, for example, America, family coming to visit wouldn't be so news-worthy. But when you live in China, this is big stuff. Matt's sister and brother-in-law, Krisanne and Paul, arrive this afternoon. And..... his parents arrive tonight!! 4 visitors!!!

[Thanks to my parents recent visit, my girls know exactly what to expect from a grandparent visit and they are READY!]

I am especially excited that Krisanne and Paul (who have been traveling in Asia and spent last night in Kuala Lumpur) arrive in the afternoon. Because of flight schedules, folks arriving from America do not get to our city until really late (usually a little before midnight). So the girls have never been to the airport to welcome visitors. But not this time! All four of us are heading to the airport to meet Krisanne and Paul. Don't worry, I'll be toting the camera (of course!) so I'll get some pictures.

long days, short years

One of my favorite "mom-quotes" came from a friend of mine a few years ago - "The days are long, but the years are short."

Goodness knows, we have our long days. But, wow, the years are short!

This photo taken yesterday...



reminded this photo taken last December.


Of course, buried under the mounds of little girl in the top photo is another baby (boy? girl?) .... I can't wait to see what my lap looks like next December! I am sure there will be some looooong days in 2009. But I know the year will be short, and oh how I want to enjoy my gifts :)

Christmas tree compromises

Lydia and I have come to a few compromises regarding the Christmas tree. She still loves to re-decorate the branches. My love for finding ornaments strewn all over the apartment is waning. Time for compromise #1: I find the ornament, I re-hang the ornament. My height. She finds the ornament, she can re-hang the ornament. Guess who finds more ornaments?

The result?


....a very densely decorated Christmas tree. At least the top part is - the bottom section just gets emptier and emptier. (Funny comment from Julianna the other day: "Our Christmas tree just gets prettier and prettier!" I laughed, because in my opinion the lop-sided ornament placement does not make for a pretty tree. Functional, yes. Pretty, not so much.)

Lydia also can't get enough of cute little presents under the tree. She's not very gentle though, and the paper gets ripped time and again. I can't re-tape every gift 17 million times between now and Christmas Day. Which led us to compromise #2: I put all but one present in a cupboard that Lydia can't get into. The one remaining present? A large gift for the girls. They LOVE to play with it. And, yes, I re-tape it. But at least I am just re-taping one present! Matt and I even considered wrapping the entire box in a layer of packing tape. Another advantage? The box is too big for Lydia to move - she tries to pick it up and says "heavy heavy" but she can't drag it more than a few feet from our tree. Perfect.


Julianna loves the big gift too. In fact, if you walk in our front door between now and Christmas Day, I'd bet there's a 99% chance she'd introduce you to the big box. "Come look at our big present. It's for me and for Lydia."

What's in the box? Well, you'll have to wait for Christmas Day photos to find out!

donkeys donkeys everywhere

Every now and then we see donkey-pulled carts - carts loaded with people, fruits and vegetables, furniture, whatever. [Please don't get any crazy ideas about us living in the middle of nowhere, cooking over an open fire and getting around on donkey-pulled carts. We live in a city. We usually ride around in a shiny black Volkswagen Santana. But every now and then we see a donkey pulling a cart. It's part of the story, so stick with me.] When she was much younger, Julianna pointed at one of those carts and said, "look, a horse" and Matt corrected her, "Honey, that animal is not a horse, that's a donkey". (The donkeys are pretty rough looking, and "horse" is definitely a stretch - Matt wanted to make sure that Julianna wasn't elevating the donkeys to a level of the animal-kingdom that they didn't deserve to inhabit!)

Well, brilliant child that she is, Julianna concluded that all horse-looking animals were donkeys. We didn't bother to correct her on that one. So when she wears a shirt with the little Ralph Lauren logo she says, "oh, I like to wear shirts with donkeys on them." And I laugh, and wonder what Ralph Lauren would think if he knew that my daughter referred to his famous label as a "donkey".

And my mom sent her a box of "My Little Pony" band-aids. Only thing is, Julianna has never seen or heard of My Little Pony. So she calls them the "donkey band-aids". Again, I laugh, and wonder if the marketing folks missed the boat on this one - my daughter could care less about the My Little Pony theme, what she wants is some farm animal themed band-aids.

We have story books about kings and princesses and knights in shining armor... and, you guessed it, she thinks they all ride donkeys.

So, after months of mis-naming horses, the Christmas season is upon us and donkeys are everywhere! Our advent calendar, nativity scenes, Christmas tree ornaments, all our Christmas story books.... donkeys, donkeys, donkeys! It's fun to finally have some legitimate donkeys around here :)

sisters. buddies.

Yesterday during the girls' naps I re-did four black and white frames that hang over the dresser in the their bedroom... the photos were getting a little dated (two of them were of Lydia at the hospital the day she was born) and I figured it was a good time for a change.

I chose these four shots from the past year.....








From the day I learned I was pregnant with Lydia I started praying that these two would have a sweet sibling relationship. Once I found out Lydia would be a baby girl, I prayed even harder... sisters! A built-in buddy for my little Julianna! I was thrilled. I have prayed and prayed and prayed. And God has been gracious. These two little girls can't get enough of one another. As I type they are laughing and giggling hysterically, playing in their room together. (I can never seem to figure out what is quite so funny but these girls are convinced that their sister is the funniest person in the world - they laugh all the day long!)

We have our rough spots, of course. They can treat one another with amazing amounts of disrespect. But, for the most part, I am thrilled with how they look out for one another, take care of one another, and delight in one another. What a gift their relationship is - to each other - and to me as their mommy.

In the past few days I've started thinking about adding #3 to the bunch... wow - our dynamics will be changing, won't they? So I pray. And trust that this new little one will be yet another sweet addition to their sibling bunch!

my "crafty" little Julianna

Julianna is a craft queen! She loves to come running to me to ask if we can "do a craft together". Lucky me, her standards of what constitutes a "craft" are pretty low - get out the crayons and paper, toss in a pair of kid scissors and a glue stick, and she's ready to go!

And she's training Lydia to follow in her footsteps. "Come on Lydia, let's do a craft", she says. Lydia is slowly moving into the "mostly colors with crayons" category but is just a few steps out of the "mostly chews on crayons" category, so I wish Julianna weren't quite so intent on sharing the craft experiences :) But I do love to see them play so well together, so it's worth it. I think.

Anyways, the girls got this great new set of table and chairs from my parents. It quickly became known as "the craft table" and the girls just love it!


Matt is headed out of town for a few days, so it's just me and the girls here at home! I'm not exactly sure how we'll spend our days, but I can almost guarantee we'll be doing some soft of craft :)

laundry day

Mondays and Thursdays are my laundry days. I like to get started early in the morning and plow through the loads like clockwork - lights, darks, pinks, towels (Monday) or sheets (Thursday). [It's not really that we generate that much laundry, but my washing machine is not that big! But, it's a whole lot better than hand washing, so I try not to complain!]

I always find interesting little "treasures" in my lint filter ... today's treasure? STICKERS!

born to decorate Christmas trees

Lydia is a natural at Christmas tree decorating. Seriously, there must be some magnetic pull between her little body and our cedar tree - she cannot stay away from it! I would love to know what percentage of her waking hours are spent with an ornament in hand :) She trots around the house with them, usually depositing them in all sorts of unusual places, and occasionally returning them to the tree branches.

Here she is ready to pluck another ornament from the branches (notice how bare the bottom third of the tree is - you get a really clear idea of just how high she can reach based on which branches have been stripped of ornaments!)



See the delight on her face! With one ornament in hand and another lying on the floor beside her foot, she's ready for action!


One of my favorite things about Christmas is the glow of a lighted Christmas tree in a sun-not-up-yet-still-dark living room. I love watching both our girls enjoy the tree too - in their own special ways! Of course, when I trip on yet another ornament in our hallway, I start to wonder about Lydia's method of "enjoying" the tree :)

dropping tempertures and eating strawberries

In the past few days the temperatures have really dropped around here and it feels like winter! I'm running all our heaters and just blew a fuse for the first time this season. Ahhh, the joys of living in an apartment that wasn't wired according to my electrical needs!

This afternoon the girls and I bundled up and headed outside. Technically speaking, I think the bundling and un-bundling took almost as long as the total time we spent outdoors. But it was worth it :)




In stark contrast to the cold temperatures, strawberries (grown in local greenhouses) are coming in season... they've been around for a few weeks or so, but the price has just started to get "reasonable" and pretty soon the streets will be full of strawberry sellers. Today I paid 10 RMB for a kilogram of strawberries... that's about 75 cents a pound. And the price will drop to half of that at the peak of the season!

In her little play kitchen Julianna has been making strawberry pie, strawberry cupcakes, strawberry everything - it's definitely the current cuisine theme :)

Oh yeah, I never buy less than a kilo at a time. The four of us can consume a kilo of strawberries in less than 24 hours :) Who wouldn't - with a basket of goodness that looks like this on their kitchen table?!?!?!

preschool update

Well, three months have passed since Julianna's first day at local preschool and I thought it might be a good time for an update. The short version is: She's doing great! If you want more details, keep reading :)

Julianna attends local preschool two mornings a week - it's the only preschool in our little town and located about a ten minute walk from our apartment. Matt and I prayed and talked and talked and prayed before sending her this fall. (If you are really interested, you can read more about our decision-making process here.) And, time and again, we have seen that it really was the best decision for our family.

The highlights? Julianna's Chinese speaking ability has sky-rocketed! She is getting quite good. The best part is that her confidence in speaking Chinese has increased to the point that she'll try to tell just about any story or recount any event - in Chinese or English. She's a great example of good language learning technique... she doesn't have any inhibitions about trying to say anything, and she'll launch into any dialogue, regardless of whether or not she has the vocabulary to make it through. I wish I had been less concerned about "looking stupid" or "knowing all the right vocab" when I was first learning Chinese - I would have been a much more effective learner.

A second highlight is that she really LIKES it at school. Her face is full of joy as she gets ready to walk out the door on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. "See you later Lydia", she calls as she walks out the door. Her teachers are super patient with her, and she obviously enjoys her classmates.

Another highlight? She's learning all kinds of little social games and songs - starting to "fit in" with the neighborhood kids. Kind of like a foreigner growing up in America would need to learn how to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and how to play "Ring Around the Rosy". I'm not going to teach her those "culturally linked little children games" - I don't even KNOW them myself! But she learns them at preschool. And I love seeing her have more opportunities to connect with local kids outside the classroom now that she is learning some of their language AND culture!

But it's not always a walk in the park. The worst part is that she has brought home every possible virus and germ and shared them with the rest of the family. Yuck. But doctors assure me that this is a normal thing (and maybe even a GOOD thing, as her body learns to fight off these viruses). But there are days it just about drives me crazy as a mom!

Still, it's worth it. What a great experience for all of us! Thanks for praying for her!

flying home

[updated! I got the photos to load this morning, so enjoy the pictures of our "first 2008 Christmas celebration"!]

Mom and Dad left this morning - all four of us went to the airport to see them off. What a GREAT time we all had together! The girls are definitely missing their playmates, and we're adjusting back to life as "just the four (almost 5) of us".

Yesterday morning we celebrated an early Christmas and the girls had a blast! Julianna finally got to open some presents after waiting an entire week! Now she's got three more weeks to wait til Christmas Day when she can open the rest of them :) Of course, with a December birthday, she's not hurting for presents, or present-opening opportunities!

so I went back to the doctor...

and I got another ultrasound...

and the ultrasound tech says....

"maybe a BOY... but it's too early to say for sure."

Are you kidding me? Sounds suspiciously similar to the "probably a girl" that I heard about 6 weeks ago. At 24-plus weeks the tech should be able to make a clear call, don't you think? Matt (who also got a look at the computer monitor) still thinks its a girl. He also thinks we should go ahead and choose a boy name AND a girl name. Not a bad idea. Of course, we are notoriously slow at the name choosing process, and I hope to get yet another ultrasound in a month, so stay tuned...I haven't given up yet :)

Thanksgiving photos

We had such a great Thanksgiving Day with our friends. Julianna likes turkey and Lydia's favorite is definitely stuffing!



After lunch and naps Josh played some kids songs on the piano while Julianna and her friend Kayleigh had a little sing-a-long. It was so fun!


At home we've been doing lots of decorating. The girls are fascinated by the tree and the gifts underneath :) This morning Julianna asked again if she could open one of her presents. The answer was, again, "no". So she changed her tactic, and asked if she could open one of Lydia's presents! What a thoughtful sister :)


Lydia loves to unpack the boxes and set ornaments on the branches. It doesn't make for very stable decorating, so for almost every ornament she sets in the tree, at least one falls off!

Thanksgiving celebrating

We started our big Thanksgiving celebrations last night with a turkey dinner and all the fixins... sweet potato casserole, corn pudding, broccoli salad, stuffing, gravy, the works! Yum! Mom and I cooked for a group of local friends and it was a lot of work, but a lot of fun :) Oh yeah, we made pies too - pumpkin, apple and pecan!

There was only one minor snag in the cooking process - no water! Argh! It is uncanny how often we have a water or power outage on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, my first three Thanksgivings in China were consecutive power-outage-Thanksgivings - how likely is that?

Each year the story is a little different. This year's sounds like this: Tuesday mid-afternoon a work crew finally shows up to work on a bad water leak in our apartment complex. I mean, BAD water leak. Basically, what used to be normal ole ground cover has turned into a gushing fountain.... and it's been gushing for over a week. So, the rubber-booted work crew shows up, turns off the water line, and starts digging. At nightfall they leave their big hole in the ground for more (hopefully better?) tools and assure us the water will be back on by midnight.

Fast-forward to Wednesday morning. No water. A quick glance out the window assures me that the hole is still big and deep and the workers are conspicuously absent. Uh oh. All morning long I keep hoping for some workers, and some water. Nada. We cook anyways, and wash dishes using bottled "tong" water from our water machine. Xiao Li washes and washes and washes..... the rinse water becomes toilet-flushing water, and Mom keeps cooking!

At noon on Wednesday we hear water in the pipes. What? The workers apparently came back, turned on the water, and the hole is filling up but we don't care - we're rushing around the apartment flushing toilets, running the washing machine, taking showers and doing even more dishes!

Water stayed on til 5, when it was off again for an hour or so. Came back on and, as far as I can tell, was on all night long.

The confusing thing is that the leak is still not fixed. But the water runs. And for that, this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful. Today would actually be a great day for those workers to get their act together and fix that pipe and fill in the hole - we'll be in town all day celebrating with some friends and eat more turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

guess what we did yesterday??

We bought our Christmas tree! Yay! As usual, it was quite an adventure and we didn't get exactly what we wanted, but it was lots of fun none-the-less. [For more details on Christmas-tree-shopping-a-la-China check out this post and this post I wrote last year.]

Here we are with the tree we bought - it's not a fraser fir (like they sell in the States) or even a pine (a close approximation)... it's a cedar - tall and narrow, and it smells great!

Tonight we put some lights on the tree, and the girls started in on some of the decorations. Julianna kept saying, "oh, it's so pretty", and Lydia really enjoyed pulling ornaments out of the box and carrying them over to the tree.

I'll post more photos tomorrow :)

Grandparents are for spoiling

Well, Mom and Dad have been here for a week, and the girls are definitely LOVING life with their grandparents. There are just so many fun things to do - and their grandparents make great playmates! Here are a few of the ways they spend their time:






It will be a tough adjustment back to "real life" when their grandparents leave :) In the meantime, they are enjoying every single minute!

photos at the park

We took a few photos at the park yesterday afternoon and I can't resist sharing them.

I just LOVE Lydia's expression in this one!


And I thought the hand-holding was especially fun :)


We're still wondering about baby #3 and I keep thinking I'll go for another ultrasound any day now. I will be 23 weeks tomorrow, so hopefully the baby will be big enough the ultrasound tech can make a confident decision about the sex - I've lived with "probably a girl" for over a month now!

hand-me-down happiness

When I was a little girl I was a part of a long hand-me-down-clothes-chain made up of all my little girl cousins.

Lucky me, I was near the top of the chain, so the clothes still looked pretty decent when they arrived in my drawer :) Next in the chain was my cousin Julie. She's 13 months younger than me, and for most of our lives, we both lived in NC. I wore a pink striped bathing suit one summer, the following summer it was Julie's. My winter boots? Destined to one day be on Julie's feet :)

The next generation has arrived, and the hand-me-down chain continues - in reverse order! Julie's little girl Caroline is 14 months older than Julianna and we're on the wonderful receiving end of some super cute clothing! My parents arrived with a suitcase full of 3T clothing and I loaded up Julianna's dresser. She's worn 'new' clothes every day since!

Julianna picked out this little dress for preschool on Tuesday morning.....

and opted for a more casual sweatsuit and bunny rabbit slippers yesterday.....

before snuggling into some new pjs last night!


Thanks Julie and Caroline! We are LOVING all the fun clothes, and I love watching my little girl run around town (or the apartment) and knowing she is part of a "hand-me-down" chain just like her momma was years ago.

[Actually though, I guess my "chain" isn't officially finished either.... my new favorite maternity jeans are borrowed from guess who? That's right! Julie!]

my busy, busy Lydia

A few weeks ago Lydia (without my consent) signed herself up for the "world's busiest 15 month old contest" and she's busy practicing her moves. Her transition from hesitant walker to everywhere-and-back-again-baby was almost instantaneous.

It's amazing to watch her move. Xiao Li joked that Lydia must spend her day thinking up new reasons to walk somewhere. If you watch her closely, you'll notice that occasionally she walks in a complete circle - just walking for the sake of walking.

Her new moves need a little perfecting however, and she's sporting some pretty serious bruises on her face - but in my opinion, they just add to her overall cute-ness factor :)



Yesterday Matt and Dad took the girls out for a picnic lunch. A belly full of lunch just revved Lydia up for some more adventure!



After lunch she had one of her characteristic missteps and face-planted onto the ground in front of her. Luckily, it was grass and she rolled over for an awesome view of the big blue sky.... And a little rest from her weary-ing prep for the "world's busiest 15 month old" competition.


It's so fun for me as a momma to watch her enjoy this new stage of life. She is so fun :) [And so opinionated, but that's a whole 'nother topic!]