Michelle and her chopsticks

We took Michelle to dinner at our favorite Chinese buffet the other night. We love going there. Everyone just loves her and she gets a lot of attention. We're very proud parents. We always eat with chopsticks so we decided to let her try. She actually did better than expected. She had to pick the food up with her hands and put it between the sticks but she was able to get the food into her mouth from the sticks. We were quite impressed. A friend of ours gave us a set of training chopsticks awhile back. I think it's time to try them out.

From mother to daughter

When I was a little girl, I loved to color. I spent many happy hours with my coloring books. I came across a couple of my old coloring books that were only about half done when I was preparing Michelle's room so I put them on a shelf with her books. Now she likes to get the crayons and scribble in them. I could never have guessed way back then that someday my daughter would be coloring in those books.

How many bibs does a girl need?

If the girl is Michelle, the correct answer is 3. Minimum. She used to be able to make do with one bib until the day there were 3 bibs within view. She decided she needed to wear all of them at once. Ever since then, if we try to put just one bib on her, she looks around to see where the rest of the bibs are and points to her neck. If there are more than 3 bibs within view she wants all of them. I think one day she had 5. She keeps us laughing all the time.

A fun-filled weekend

Michelle had an action-packed fun-filled weekend. After a nice dinner out Friday evening followed by a ride at the beach in her new car (where she met a cute dog and gave him a kiss on the head) and the party Saturday, we took her to York's Wild Kingdom in Maine yesterday to see the animals. She loves dogs and ducks so we thought she'd really enjoy seeing some more animals but she couldn't have been less impressed. She had no interest in any of the animals except the ducks. She loved the duck pond but that was about it. Dada fed the llamas and she found that a little scary. Then I took her into the petting zoo to feed the baby goats and she was a little scared of them too. It didn't help that one of the bigger goats (he was a bully) grabbed the whole ice cream cone full of food out of my hand. That scared me too a little bit. It triggered a flashback to when I was 5 and a goat ate my nametag at a petting zoo on a class trip. That scarred me for life. :)

After the zoo, we went to York Beach and she loved that. She's definitely a water baby. We let her wade a little bit but she wanted to go further out so I had to pick her up. She kept pointing out to sea wanting me to go further and further out. She loved it when the waves splashed us. She squealed and laughed. She didn't really enjoy sitting on the beach and playing with her toys, though. She saw no reason to put sand in a pail or to make sand castles with the sand molds. Just get that girl in the water!

The red couch all over again

Today we went to a midsummer party hosted by one of the families in our travel group. All of the Guangxi families from our group were there. It was a lot of fun seeing everyone again and seeing how all the girls have grown and changed. They all seem to be adjusting very well. We decided it would be fun to take a group picture of all the girls. It went about as well as the red couch picture from the White Swan. Michelle cried again and wanted to be picked up and one of the other girls would only be in the picture with her mom holding her. This photo shoot may have actually been more difficult than the red couch photo because the girls were all more mobile and kept trying to escape.



The lawnchair group photo


The infamous red couch group photo

Michelle's New Ride

Michelle got a new car today so we had to take it for a test drive. She loves her car. She squealed with delight when we put her in it. It even has a horn that she can honk. This is probably one of the best things we've gotten for her. We just love seeing her enjoy something so much.

Little faker

Mornings with Michelle are getting funnier and funnier every day. She pretends to be asleep when we're trying to wake her up. She thinks we're buying her act but we know the truth. While she was "asleep" Roman asked her to smile and she smiled with her eyes still tightly closed. What a stinker. She makes mornings fun.