Happy Halloween!!!

Gracie the purple butterfly

Milestones

I haven't done a milestones post in a while and since today is 5 months since we became a family it seems appropriate to do one today.

• Grace now has 8 teeth, the 8th one broke through last week.
• Grace is now walking about 40% of the time, rather than crawling. Being carried by Mommy and Daddy is still her preferred mode of transportation though.
• She continues to mimic everything we do, the latest cute thing is trying to snap her fingers.
• We currently have Grace almost totally off baby food.
• She no longer drinks formula, she is a whole milk girl now.
• She is getting really affectionate. We (including Lucy) have been getting lots of unsolicited hugs and kisses lately.
• She has outgrown her baby tub and has graduated up to the big-girl bathtub.
• Has started to drink through a straw and is doing better with her sippy cup.
• She can climb the entire flight of stairs to the 2nd floor.
• She has moved up to 18 month clothing. She still wears her 12 month stuff but some of it is getting a bit snug.
• She has the following words in her vocabulary: Ma ma, Da da, kitty (whispered for some reason), Hi (sounds more like Haaaa), and the word she enunciates most clearly is Bum (taught to her by Mommy). She also has a ton of sounds that are the makings of words, she just hasn't put them together yet.

And some pics from Uncle Joe, Auntie Cat, and Auntie Lina's visit this weekend. That is remnants of Burgundy pie on her face.

Stairway to Mommy

As evidenced in our previous post Gracie is getting to be quite the climber. Below is footage of Gracie's first solo trek up the stairs. Not sure why she needs to slap each step multiple times on the way up but whatever works I guess.

Early Morning Climb

It has been a busy week here so we didn't get a chance to take too many pictures but Jen was able to capture Grace proving that no blockade can stop her.

Gotta love the thighs on this one....

An empty box of pampers can provide hours of fun.

Road Trip, New Kicks and New Ride

We took Grace on her first road trip this weekend to visit some friends in Chicopee. It was only about 2 hours on the road but it was the longest trip so far for her in the car seat. She did really well and slept the whole way down and most of the way back.

Now that Grace is starting to walk she has been wearing shoes a lot more lately. She is getting used to them but doesn't seem to have quite the shoe fetish that her mother does (lucky for me). She does look too cute in her new Nikes, though, thanks to Tammy!

This weekend I (with her help of course) also got around to assembling Grace's new ride that she got for her birthday from Kristen, Biren and the twins. We took it out for a quick ride in the driveway and it appears that Grace will be at least as good a driver as her mother. Some pics from our week below.

First Steps!!!

Big happenings here tonight, Grace took her first unassisted steps!!! She has been toddling around using the edges of furniture for a while now but tonight was the first time she did it by herself. As soon as she did it Jen ran to get the video camera hoping she would do it again and she didn't disappoint. It is so exciting and kind of sad all at the same time to watch our sweet little baby grow into a beautiful toddler. We are so proud her. Experience her first steps for yourself below...

Grace goes to the farm

A couple years ago we babysat our three nieces for a weekend and one of the outings we took them on was to a local farm for a hayride and apple picking. We had a lot of fun with the nieces and we were especially looking forward to the day when we could take Grace to places like that. Well the day finally came this weekend. It was a nice cool New England fall day. Grace feasted on Apple Cider Cinnamon Sugar donuts, romped through the pumpkin patch and enjoyed a hayride. Some pics of our day below.

A+ in EI

Since Grace has been progressing so well in Early Intervention Grace's therapist decided to evaluate her this week. Grace scored 12 -15 months in most areas and 15 - 18 months in a couple areas. The therapist suggested decreasing EI services to just once or twice a month rather than every week since Grace has progressed so well. We decided to have her continue coming out every other week as Grace seems to like playing and we already paid for the services so we might as well get what we paid for.

This weekend we switched the car seats to forward facing. Grace wasn't sure what to make of the change at first but eventually decided that she liked her new view. I am sure in no time we will have a back seat driver and will be dodging stuffed animals and cheerios flying at us from the back seat. Some pics from the week below.

Like my new skull cap?
messy head and Lucy's best side, heh
"For me??" Opening gift from China
Cloisonne panda ornament
Teddy Rabbit and me goin' for a ride
Ocho Nueve
I am ridiculously cute in these tights

Gracie's Mom has a Birthday Goin' On

Jen put together a little photo montage of her favorite pictures of Grace over the past few months as a birthday gift to herself. I have never seen Jen happier than I have since she became Grace's mommy, see for yourself below....

Happy Birthday Grace and Mommy too

Today we celebrated Grace's first birthday. Her birthday isn't until Monday but it is Monday in China so we figured it was OK. Jen is also celebrating her birthday on Tuesday so the girls got to have a dual celebration. We had some friends and family over and it was a good day. We feel so very fortunate that we got to celebrate Grace's first birthday with her as many Chinese adoptive parents miss their child's first birthday. Hard to believe she is a year already....it is hard now to imagine our lives without her. Some pics from our day below.

Happy Family
I can't wait to hear the comments we get when Grace wears this bib at restaurants.
Mommy and Daddy help blow out the candles.
No, Jen didn't make the cakes! They were delicious though. See below:
Gracie started out by daintily dabbing her fingers into the frosting.
But then found it was more fun to dive right in!

Sanlu

We were a bit disturbed this week when we heard that dozens of babies in China were sickened and one had died from baby formula tainted with melamine. We were even more disturbed when we heard the name on the formula "Sanlu" as it was the Chinese formula that we gave to Grace while we were in China. For some reason we kept an empty container of it and still have it sitting on our counter.

Luckily we transitioned Grace to American formula pretty quickly after we got home. Grace also had a pretty thorough checkup when she got home from China and she seems to be extremely healthy now so we aren't too concerned but we will probably mention it to her doctor at her next checkup just in case.

Grace continues to amaze us. Her language skills seemed to take a turn this week as she seems to be trying to repeat everything we say. She mastered Ma Ma and Da Da a while back and is now saying cat which sounds more like gah. She also says Hi and Bye and we think she says ba ba for bottle.

Our favorite pic from this week.

More Standing

Jen was playing around with the video camera this afternoon and caught some cute videos of Grace. She is standing for a few seconds at the beginning of the video then decides to make a phone call with the remote. Oh, and don't worry Lucy isn't actually dead, she just "plays dead" so Grace will leave her alone.

Three Months Home, Reunions, Hanna and Standing

This past week we celebrated three months home as a family with Grace. It really seems a lot longer than three months. We can't imagine life without her now. She has changed so much and made so much progress in such a short time, we are so proud of her. Jen dressed Grace in one of her silk dresses from China to see if it still fits, you can really see the change comparing these two pictures. Kind of sad that she is losing the baby look and looking more like a toddler.



This weekend we also got together with seven of the families that we traveled to China with. The get together was to celebrate the girls' first birthday. It was great to see how happy and healthy all of the girls are and to catch up with all of the happy parents as well. Before we left we tried to recreate our infamous red couch photo. The results are below.

The remains of hurricane Hanna also blew through New England this weekend just as the girls' party was finishing up. This past year (see here and here)I have not had much luck with wind and trees and this weekend was no exception. Hanna took down another branch from an oak tree in our yard and dropped it in the exact same place as the last one. So my Sunday was spent with ladders, ropes and chainsaws cleaning up my yard.

Grace decided to show us a new skill this weekend as well and is now standing on her own for a few seconds at a time. I think we are going to have a toddler on our hands in no time.

A couple more pics from the week.

Followers

Since I am a computer geek at heart I get excited with any new technology or gadget that comes around and I just have to try it out. I noticed a couple days ago that blogger has a new feature called "Followers" that kind of integrates Google reader so you get updates when blogs that you read post something new. Another cool feature of "followers" is that you can add a gadget to show all the people's blogs that are following you. Unfortunately it only works for Blogspot blogs at this time.

I have added a couple of the blogs that I read regularly and I have added the gadget that will show who is following my blog. Unfortunately I currently have no followers. So if you read my blog and want to be linked as a follower go into your dashboard and add our blog and I will add yours if I haven't already.

And who wouldn't want to follow this cute face.....