Sunday, February 25, 2007

Fun in the snow

We just got back from 5 wonderful days in southern Ontario. My brother, who lives in Beijing, was home for a few days so we took the opportunity to re-connect with him and set out last Tuesday evening for the trek to my parents place. The trip down was okay, the girls slept most of the way, but they did wake up every hour or so. But now that we have the van it was easy to get back to them, and they went back to sleep pretty quickly. And when we arrived at my parents place at about 2 a.m. we had no trouble getting them back to sleep. Today we drove back during the day and I expected it to be a horrible trip, but it went surprisingly well. The girls were content most of the drive, although we did have to stop more frequently than we did in our pre-kids days.

When we went to southern Ontario DoT packed the two-seater sled we now own thanks to our wonderful friends (M&M). And the weather in Shakespeare was warm enough to get out with them. Up until now the only winter weather the girls had experienced was the little bit they got going from the vehicle to the house, mall, grocery store, whatever, and back again. Now they've spent some time in the sled, and a bit of time in the snow when DoT tipped the sled a couple of times. They seemed to like it quite a bit. DoT is going to try to get them out a few more times before the snow melts (which incidentally the lady at the local pizza place told me was going to be soon -- she says spring is going to arrive by March 15th. I doubt she's right, but I hope she is!).



One final picture I'm putting on the blog shows A with her fangs showing. :-) Those of you who know my secret love of BTVS will appreciate this one.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

gong xi fa cai!

Or "xin nein kuai le!" or "Guo Nian Hao"... I'm not sure which. According to my two minutes of googling, all of these three phrases mean "Happy New Year". Actually, I think the one used in my title means something about wishing you prosperity, but is a typical Chinese New Year greeting.

Today is the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year. So, last night we went to two Chinese New Year parties -- had to put those awesome Chinese dresses to good use. The first one we went to was at the home of someone I used to work with. We didn't stay long, but boy I think we could have stayed a week and not wanted for anything to eat. Tanya and her mom made a tonne of food, and it was all great. And the wines. If only I'd had more time to sample them all.

The second party we went to was at the home of one of the other Ottawa couples (Kohji and Tamara) who travelled to China to adopt (daughter Kiyomi) at the same time as we did. There were six families there (unfortunately one of our group couldn't make it) and I think we had food for about twice as many. It seemed that way. Tamara ordered lots of food from a great Chinese restaurant, and it was all fantastic. I took a whole bunch of pictures at the party (for once I remembered my camera), but most of the pictures are of the backs of kids heads. I have a real knack for missing great shots but getting pictures of the split second later when everyone looks in another direction. And although you would think my memory is improving, since this time I at least brought the camera along, I still didn't remember to put it on red-eye reduction setting, so lots of my photos have possessed looking kids in them. :-)

Before everyone left, we put all the kids on the couch for a group shot. Of course, it's almost impossible to get a picture of young kids where everyone is looking towards the camera, and no one is crying. This was the best one that I got. Unfortunatley, not everyone is clearly visible. I think we did well though, getting everyone onto the couch... spacing we'll worry about another year. :-) The little girl in the middle in the overalls has only been home in Canada for a few weeks! She's doing amazingly well.





I'm also putting up this pic of E and A sitting on the life-size lion at the party. They were quite facinated by it and liked climbing on it.




On a final note, I understand that some of you are having trouble commenting on the blog. (I'm chosing to believe that's the reason I get so few comments.) I'm not sure why that is. I put up a test message a few days ago and it worked fine for me. And that's the extent of my troubleshooting. Send me an email if you're still having trouble and I'll try to investigate a bit further. That's it for today. If you want to know more about Chinese New Year, check out the wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

Sunday, February 11, 2007

I have nothing to say

Some days I know just what to talk about on this blog... usually it's after the girls have been to the doctor and we have new stats (weight, height), or they've done something spectacular like crawled or walked for the first time. The rest of the time I put off sitting in front of the computer because I know I'm going to have nothing very interesting or enlightening to say. Today is one of those days.

Not much happened this week. E is now a true toddler. She walks everywhere. No more crawling for her. A, on the other hand, is getting more and more steady but if she wants to get somewhere in a hurry she still drops down on all fours and crawls.

Of course, now that I just said that, DoT has walked into the office and handed me the camera where he just a second ago took a video of E and A walking, and just to prove me wrong A walks for quite a little ways. For those of you who can get to the videos, here it is... (it's very dark, but hopefully you can still see them)




DoT also got a few pictures this week of the latest great game here. The 'push your sister around in the laundry basket' game. She's not strong enough to push her across the room, but E does like to spin A around in the laundry basket. They are also both very fond of the 'take the folded laundry out of the basket and fling it around the room' game. The 'put the dirty clothes into the laundry basket' game and the 'pick up all our toys' game just haven't caught on as I'd like them to.


DoT thinks we need to do an image make-over for E because everyone seems to think she's such a serious girl and doesn't smile as much as A does. That may be the case in unfamiliar settings but at home, with just us, she's generally a pretty happy kid. So I'm including this picture of her as a first step in her image make-over.

I'm also including a pic of A and E in their snowsuits, 'cause they're just so darn cute.

:-)

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The day we decided to wear our pants on our heads...




I'd love to chalk this up as a point for the 'nature' side of the nature vs. nurture debate and say that they must have inherited this type of behaviour from the birth parents. Sadly, I'm not too sure about DoT's family, so I can't really say.

In other news... they are both walking pretty well these days. Although they still fall a lot, they both now seem to prefer to stand up and walk to wherever they're going. Unless of course they're in a hurry. Walking requires periodic pauses to re-balance. But they're getting faster every day. Look out, Abby. :-)