17 Months

Today Grace turns 17 months old, she is just growing so fast. This weekend I was organizing some of the pictures on my computer and I was just amazed by how much Grace has changed. So I figured it would be fun to do a then and now post.

This pic was taken in China, her hair was so short.

This pic was from a few months after we got home.

These pics were taken today of Grace enjoying a cupcake after dinner. Unfortunately the sugar in the cupcake had Grace pretty wired all night.

Big Bird In China

We recently received this DVD as a gift and we were pretty excited about it. Grace was pretty excited too as her new thing seems to be bringing DVDs over to us to to watch. The movie follows Big Bird and Barkley as they travel through China to find the legendary Chinese phoenix. Along their journey they are escorted by a cute little Chinese girl named Xiao Foo who translates for them. They are also helped on their journey by the Monkey King who kind of freaked Grace out. He was a little scary. It was nice to see some of the places we visited on our trip like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. There are also a couple songs throughout the movie used to teach some simple mandarin phrases.

The DVD is about 75 minutes long which is about an hour longer that Grace's normal attention span for this type of thing but she did stay pretty interested for about a half hour. I think this is definitely a DVD that she will enjoy as she gets older and will be a good tool help us introduce China to her in her younger years.

The original movie was produced in 1983 (which shows in some areas) but won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The story was actually pretty interesting, I was pretty impressed that it kept my attention as sometimes these Sesame Street productions can be pretty mind numbing for adults. Overall we were pretty impressed with it. Thanks B!

Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day

Hope everyone had a good day with their special Valentine. I was extra lucky this year as I had two special girls as my Valentines this year. We played it pretty low key, no flowers or chocolates. Jen and I did go out for dinner and bottle of wine. But we missed Grace and spent the whole time recounting the funny things she did over the past week.

Day With Daddy

We had a pretty eventful week this week. Grace had her last Early Intervention appointment, really wasn't an appointment just a follow up from her final evaluation. Grace scored at or above her age in all areas. In retrospect, we don't really think Grace needed EI services but we figured they couldn't hurt and she seemed to enjoy them.

The winter we have had this year seems to be worse than anyone can remember. Not only have we gotten a ton of snow but the temperatures have been extremely cold. Until this weekend that is when it warmed up to 50 degrees. Which means the snow on our roof is melting, really fast, and leaking into our windows. We ended up sleeping in the spare bedroom last night because the drip, drip, drip in our bedroom was driving us a bit batty. Seems to have stopped for now though.

The weather is getting to Jen a little bit as well, being cooped up in the house all week with a 16 month old can drive one a bit insane. Luckily she had a play date planned with Kris, Karina and Kathryn that broke up the week a bit for her. Jen also had a get together down in Connecticut with some friends from college. She had a great time catching up and I got to spend the day with Grace.

We started the day with a visit to my mom's and spent the afternoon just hanging out at home. I decided to be a little daring and attempt a dinner out in a restaurant with just Grace and I. I decided to go with a family friendly place so we went to Fuddruckers. It worked out pretty well except for the fact that there was no waitress service so every time I needed to get up for something I had to unstrap Grace from her chair and take her with me. I also had a minor panic attack when I realized that if either Grace or I needed to use the bathroom I may need to take her into the men's room with me. Not sure if Fuddruckers has a family restroom but luckily we didn't have to find out.

Some pics from the week below....

Crackers and Mommy's Feet

So I just had to post some recent video that Jen took. The first part of the video is Grace saying her new word "cracker". Although she doesn't get it quite right. Not sure how to spell the sound she makes for cracker but it is pretty cute.

The second part of the video requires a little explanation. When we are getting Grace ready for bed we go through this little routine where we take off her socks, smell her feet and yell peeewwww!!! She seems to really like it. I was pretty surprised a few weeks ago when I was sitting on the couch and she walked up to my foot, smelled it, waved her hand if front of her nose and yelled pewwww!!! Now it is one of her favorite things to do. Enjoy.

Lots of Fun

We attended our adoption agency's Chinese New Year Party yesterday and had lots of fun. We met up with many of the families from our travel group, all of the girls are getting so big. The party itself is pretty chaotic, there had to be hundreds of families at the party with kids of all ages running around. The highlight of the party was the lion and dragon dances that Grace seemed a little freaked out by. The party fell right about the time where Grace takes her nap so she was getting pretty tired by the end of the party but she was quite a trooper. We also got to meet a couple bloggers in real life so that was pretty cool.

We also hit a pretty significant milestone this past week. Grace has now been with us as a family longer than she was in China!!! Some pics of the past week below.