Our first two weeks at home....

We're all settling nicely into our new life as a family. Everyone is acclimated to the eastern time zone now and we're into (mostly) a schedule of wakeup-eat-play-pee-play-pee-pee-eat-nap-pee-play-poop-eat-pee-pee-eat-bath-brush-read-bounce-sleep (approximately).

As part of our assimilation, we've done a lot of just hanging out at home, resting, lounging, playing and trying to figure out our routine. But we have had a few outings, most being quite successful. Last Friday we went out to a restaurant with our good friends, Carlos, Susan and Julian, for Paul's birthday. We had a wonderful time and Hui-Hui was a very good restaurant patron. She interacted well with our friends and the restaurant staff and enjoyed everything she ate, including the color crayons. Here is a picture of Paul and Hui-Hui at the restaurant.

On Saturday we went to "Dairy Days" at our local food store. Does life get better than sampling free yogurt, ice cream, pudding, cookies and fruit, plus horsedrawn carriage rides and a kids fun tent?

Saturday was actually a double header with dairy days in the morning and a party with our friends, who are families with children from China, in the evening. Hui-Hui was only slightly shy at the beginning and then warmed up to everybody there. Everyone was so sweet and welcoming to Hui-Hui, especially all of the wonderful girls. One of our favorite 4-year olds, Alice, handmade a touching card for Hui-Hui, pictured at the top of this post. Here are a couple of pictures from the party.

On Father's Day, we took dada to our favorite diner and then a little bit of antiquing. She's a good shopper! Hui-Hui enjoyed her meal and got her first "antique" toy - a block-eating riding hippopatamus.

Hui-Hui has been making great improvements in her walking. For the past 3 days she has been playing with her new wooden push toy. It gets her giggling and it has really helped to improve her walking control. It won't be long........

In preparation for her first official dr's appointment this Friday, Hui-Hui had blood work drawn today. Ok, so not every outing is all happy and smiles. No pictures because it took dada and mama everything they had to hold her and keep her as calm as possible. Whew, we're glad that's over.

We think she's going to change and grow fast, so we'll post as often as we can. ......but we have to admit that this little rascal has consumed us and we don't know where the time goes in the day. We'll do the best we can.

Thanks for watching.

Love,

p&c&h