And finally something besides birthday pics.

Matt has been out of town this weekend, so that's given me an opportunity to catch up a little. Here are a few random pics from the last couple of weeks.

Do you see the windows on the porch? We just had those installed a couple of weeks ago. We had become concerned about Vera's safety as the only thing between her and seven stories to the ground was a few iron bars. We have three porches, so now one is a storage area, one is the laundry "room", and this one has a little tent, chair, and basket of books. We had the tent up before Kai was born, but with all of the baby equipment, there just wasn't room in the house. She was very excited to wake up one morning to find her tent back up.

















This is Xiao Huan. She spends the day with us on Mondays to play with Vera. She is incredibly gifted with children and we love having her around.

















Is he handsome or what? Kai loves sitting up in his stroller. If I have him lying down, he does all he can to try to pull himself up.

















This is what happens every time I take him out to the courtyard for some fresh air...a crowd gathers around to look at the foreign baby.

Birthday Videos

I wanted to post a couple of videos from Vera's birthday parties. The first is from her party at home and the second from school. I'm not sure if it was a cruel trick or something we will treasure, but we ended up giving Vera a surprise birthday party. We hadn't planned to do that, but Matt had a fever the day before the party. We weren't sure the party was actually going to happen until the day of the party. I was going to tell Vera after picking her up from school, but I knew she would get so excited that she wouldn't take a nap. As I was making her cake during her nap, I thought it would be fun to just surprise her. Matt took her to pick up the pizzas while the guests arrived. When she walked in the door she was definitely surprised, along with embarrassed, nervous, excited...a whole range of emotions. Her reaction is pretty cute in this video. Once she realized what was going on, she looked at Matt and asked, "Daddy, am I three now?"



This video is of her class singing Happy Birthday in both Chinese and English. I don't think anyone besides the teachers knew the words, but it's still pretty cute.

School Birthday Party

We brought a cake to Vera's school on her birthday. The kids were all very excited. Here are a few pics.

Vera got a wonderful birthday present. After nearly a month of not seeing her best friend because of vacations and holidays, Xing Xing returned to school.


































Kai spent much of the morning being held by Mrs. Liu, one of V's teachers.

















Disaster nearly struck as we were waiting to start the party... One of the little boys touched Kai. Vera is VERY protective of her little brother.

















Anxiously awaiting the cake!

















OH, WOW! I wish I had a video of the childrens' reactions. Can you tell Vera picked this out herself? Cakes here look impressive but are not very sweet. I would take an ugly American cake over a pretty Chinese cake any day.

















Vera helped Ms. Zheng cut and serve the cake.

















Little boys enjoying their pink cake.

















"Po Po" eventually held Kai and put him to sleep. "Po Po" is the word for maternal grandmother. This is Xing Xing's Po Po. She brings Xing Xing to our house about once a week to play with Vera.

Happy 3rd Birthday Vera!

I can't believe it's been three years since we were blessed with our wonderful daughter, Vera! Here are a few pictures from her birthday party.

Yummy pizza at Vera's new table.

















She was very specific that she wanted a chocolate cake.

















All of her friends that came. The cool thing is that when we moved to Xiamen there weren't any other foreign babies. Now, there are five in the picture and one more on the way (not ours).

















After most people had left, we brought out her "big" present. She had to cover her eyes.

















A pink bike! She's been talking about a bike for the last 6 months. Now she finally has one.

















Family pic.

















This is where we found Vera about an hour after putting her to bed. Her legs were hanging off the end. The sugar high must have kept her moving even after she was asleep!

Vera's 3! Look at how she's grown!

At some point after getting to the hospital for Vera's birth, I put on Matt's Bryan College t-shirt. I was wearing it when Vera was born. We took her picture in the t-shirt on her first birthday and have made it a tradition every since. Look at how she's grown!

Just born!

















1 year old! And what stands out more than Vera in this picture?

















2 years old!

















3 years old! The shirt no longer drags on the floor!

Light at the end of the tunnel!

Two things have changed with Kai's sleeping over the last few days and you can see them both in this picture!
















First, the swaddling blanket. When he was born he loved being swaddled. He outgrew the size small swaddling blankets, but was able to "break out" of the large ones. See his hand? I was thinking that might be contributing to him waking up so many times at night, so we decided to put him down with his arms out of the blanket. He had a hard time sleeping that way for a couple of days. After waking me multiple times a few nights ago, we finally decided to just let him cry. I had been worried that he would wake Vera, but I decided a few nights of her awake was better than a few months of him waking and crying multiple times a night. The first night was difficult! The first time he woke, he cried for 30 minutes. That is not easy to listen to! The second time he awoke he cried for 45 minutes, then slept for the rest of the night. The turning point, though, came at the end of that time. He started sucking his thumb! So now, when the pacifier falls out of his mouth, he puts his thumb in. I know that's a more difficult habit to break than sucking a pacifier, but at this point I'm very thankful that he is able to self-sooth. The second night that he "cried it out" he only cried one time, though it was for 45 minutes. Last night was the third night and he didn't wake up at all until 6:15 this morning! I've read multiple places that for a baby it takes three nights of "crying it out" to learn to sleep through the night. It was really hard to listen to him cry and know that if I chose to I could stop it. But, to have his sleep through the night is worth the couple hours of difficulty. I know it may still take a few days before things are stable, but I'm holding on to hope that we've reached a turning point!

Visit with Uncle Mark

My brother came to visit for a couple of days this week. It was great to see him!