Too much!

Sophie is eating nicely with her fork and then celebrates with a funny face. Her sense of humor is really too much.

When You Wish Upon a Star...

This past week, Sophie made her first trip to Disney World. We spent the weekend at Crazy Nana's and had a fun time with her, Aunt Carin, Uncle Chris, and cousin Joshua. One of the highlights of the trip was spending time at Disney with the Howe family, a family that traveled with us in China.



Some other highlights (see below):
-Aunt Carin LOVED the Dumbo ride.
-I don't think Sophie knew what to make of Mickey.
-Joshua definately likes his tubby more than Sophie does.

It was as magical as all of the commercials told us it would be.

Enjoy the pics.

-Chris

Chinese New Year Part II

Celebrating the Chinese New Year would not be complete without attending the annual Families with Children from China (FCC) dinner. This is the annual event where the local adoptees from China are put on parade (literally and figuratively) for all of the other parents to see.

Against my better judgment we made the trek to a restaurant in Chinatown and joined an intimate gathering of 200 or so other families. Sophie had a ball with her two favorite pastimes - eating and dancing. Once she found her way to the stage, she couldn't be stopped.

Note the final picture of this blog. It is Sophie wearing the hat that goes with her New Years outfit. This is the day after the big dinner, where we couldn't do anything to coax her into wearing the hat. It goes so well with those jammies!

Stay tuned for tomorrows blog of Sophie's "once in a lifetime" moment - her first trip to Disney World. It is so cute, I promise you will lose control of all of your bodily functions. So grab your depends and log on tomorrow to enjoy the fun. Sophie's bean stuffed face and amazing dance moves are nothing compared to her reaction when she first met Mickey.

Happy New Year

We celebrated the Chinese New Year with two families we traveled with in China, Marianne & Glen, and Fran & Bob, and their children at Marianne and Glen's home in Chicago. Sophie got dressed in a traditional outfit and seemed to enjoy the mounds of food that everyone prepared. We had dumplings, meatballs, noodles, and Glen's secret recipe orange chicken. Everything was great.

The girls, Sophie, Lia, and Anna all posed for pictures - can you tell which one was NOT being cooperative? It must be the couch - I am sure that any photo on a couch brings back a wave of terrible memories for an adopted girl from China (see blog on Day 15 - 7.20.05 for more info on the joke).

We will continue our celebration of this year of the dog tomorrow night with an intimate dinner with hundreds of adopted children in Chinatown. I swore that after witnessing the insanity of last year's New Year's Dinner that we would NOT be going. I guess I don't win all of the arguments around here. Either way it will be nice seeing everyone. More pictures to come.

-Chris

Christmakuh 2005

Ileana, Sophie and I celebrated our holiday with a gift exchange on Thursday morning. Sophie is now officially a couch potato and has perfected her slouch on a new overstuffed chair. She now “holds court” each evening in this position and we bring her food, drink and toys. She is trying to figure out how to get Princess to join her but I doubt that will ever happen.

The holidays would not be complete without our annual trip to Syracuse to spend time with the Paynes. Sophie did pretty well on the drive and with the marathon meet and greet at various family households. She met her two great grandmothers and also got to meet her grandfather (seen here with both Sophie and cousin Lauren in his lap). She took to everyone very well and particularly loves all of her cousins.

One of the things that fascinated Sophie on our trip was the stairs. We live in a flat so her only previous experience with stairs was on the outside of the house. We first saw Sophie’s fascination with stairs a few weeks ago while visiting friends here in Chicago. This hardly prepared us for what it would be like staying with people with open staircases. She was very bold and walked up, down, and up, over and over again. Needless to say, by the end of the night there were makeshift barricades in that area of the home.

While on our short vacation, we also learned one of the advantages of our camera. My brother John pointed out to me that since our view screen swivels, we can take very clear pictures of ourselves. Imagine how Ileana and I felt as we are now plagued with about a hundred off-centered pictures of us in various locations in China. Morons. Hint to anyone about to travel: get to know your camera and video equipment prior to going to on a big trip.

The highlight of our Christmakuh celebration was when Sophie and cousin Ryan lit the menorah. It was only the first night of Chanukah but since we wouldn’t be in Syracuse for the remaining seven nights, we decided to light all of the candles. Ryan, age five (he is "so not four"), has been egging his parents to let him convert for over a year now. Since Christmas and Chanukah coincide this year, Sophie’s Aunt Lisa relented and finally bought a menorah.

All in all, it was a nice holiday. Sophie got lots of big plastic crap to litter the rooms of our house with. Hell, I only stayed up until 11:30pm last night unloading it from the car. I know I need some exercise but 8 trips up and down three flights of stairs in the middle of the night isn’t quite what I would have chosen for a work out. I am sure Sophie loves every last piece of that stuff and all of the beeping and bopping noises it all makes. Perhaps one day she will thank me for all that hard work.