Six Months Worth

Good gracious!  I haven’t posted a new blog update in about six months.  Well, here’s a recap of the past half year.

February:

I don’t quite remember what we did for Valentine’s Day, but here’s a cute picture of the girls.

 

Dorothy turned 70, so we had a fancy tea party birthday celebration for her.  Rebecca did quite a nice job with the decorations and delicacies. 

March:

Mei Li got the flu over Spring Break.  That canceled our plans for a trip to Waco to meet new baby Lanie and visit with the rest of the Balches.  Thankfully, though, no one else in the family got sick.  That was a HUGE blessing!  Mei Li and Lily got to lie around for several days watching DVDs.  Well, what else are you going to do with a sick toddler?  Lily just reaped the DVD benefits without actually being sick.

We went strawberry picking at Frobergs with some friends and family.  Mmmm…freshly picked strawberries. 

April:

Mei Li dyed and hunted her first Easter eggs this year.  (Well, I’m just assuming she didn’t do those things in China.  I think it’s a safe assumption…)

David and Emily came to town for an Easter visit.  We got to meet Lanie and see Joshua and Ellie again.

May:

Allison came over one morning and the girls all played in the pool.  It was a bit chilly, but they had fun.

June:

We bought a new house!  It needed a LOT of work.  Not as much as our first house (not by a LONG shot); but, well, you can see what color the living room started as.  That’s just a sample…

The Waco Balches came for another visit.  It’s always a lot of fun to visit with them when we are in the same city!

July:

Lily turned four!  I can’t believe she’s so big!  Here she is at the family birthday dinner we had.  Homemade pizza and strawberry shortcake.  Mmm…

And here is the reason we needed a new house with an extra room.  He should arrive in October, hopefully not looking so much like a Halloween skeleton.  

January Happenings

I’m trying to keep a list of some of the entertaining things the girls do each day, so I can make them a part of my blog entries.  Here are some things that have happened since my previous post.

Funny Happening #1

The setup: Lily and Mei Li were playing in their bedroom.  After a few minutes, I heard Lily crying.  She was pretty loud, but it sounded pretty fake.  (She’s really good at fake crying.)  Anyway, here’s the exchange that took place when I went to check the situation out.

Me: “What happened, Lily?”

Lily: “I didn’t hurt her head.” 

Lily immediately stopped crying after saying that, so I left the room (thinking that she just sounded SO guilty of doing something she shouldn’t have).   I was next door talking to Andrew when we heard the following.

Lily: (whispering ) If I hit you Mei Li, you cannot hit me back.  It is not okay for you to hit me back.

Mystery solved!  Andrew and I got a good, silent laugh out of that.

 

Vocabulary Happening (Mei Li’s Shubbie)

“Ba-um” is Mei Li’s “shubbie”.  When she was younger, Lily used the word “shubbie” to refer to strawberries, strollers, shovels, and one other thing I can’t remember.  So far, Mei Li has said “ba-um” for buckle, tomato, bubbles, potato and sweet potato.  It’s cute when she says it. 

Funny Happening #2

Lily put her little, pink toy thermometer up to my ear.  She held it there for a minute, then said, “You’re 86 dollars.” Yeah, she’s pretty funny.  

Holiday Happening

We celebrated Chinese New Year by going to the Lunar New Year festival at the Houston Chinese Community Center.  We’ve gone for the past few years, and it’s always fun and very, very crowded.  The food and the dragon dance are always highlights for the Pace family.  This year, they had a zodiac dance.  It was pretty entertaining with a handful of animals from the Chinese zodiac dancing around.  The costumes were much larger than the people inside, and it was hilarious to watch them awkwardly dance around, almost falling over sometimes.  I especially enjoyed the giant pigs.

 It was hard to get a good photo of things happening on stage - we were sitting pretty far back, and there were SO many people.  Below is an attempt to capture part of the dragon dance.

Lily seems to be going through a phase where she enjoys plopping all her food into a single bowl and eating everything together.  Sometimes this looks yummy, but I'm just not convinced about the macaroni and cheese (which already had tomatoes, spinach and chickpeas added by me) into which she added raw carrots (okay) and blackberries (not so sure about this addition).  She said she thought it tasted good, but I don't think I'll be trying it myself!

Two Years

Today is Lily’s second Gotcha Day.  She has officially been in our family for two years now.  Wow!  Time flies.  Lily is such a joy to have in our family.  She is smart, silly, sweet, kind, creative, cute, funny, fun-loving, and just plain loving.  God was very generous to choose us to be the parents of such a great kid, to borrow her from Him for a while.  I’m not saying that Lily doesn’t have a touch of dramatic flair when it comes to reacting to frustrations or perceived injustices.  I’m not saying she doesn’t have crazy moments (which, really, just help her fit into our family better!).  I’m just saying she is a perfect fit for our family.

So, for her Gotcha Day dinner, Lily requested dumplings and grapes.  Dumplings just seem like a very appropriate meal for the anniversary of her adoption from China.  Dumplings are a very Chinese thing to eat.  Now, grapes, well…she just likes them.  (And, of course, she just requested the dumplings because she likes them, too.  I don’t think she thought about what food would go well with her Gotcha Day from being adopted from China.  She’s a thinker, for sure, but I just don’t think she thought THAT much.)  Anyway, she enjoyed her meal.  

For dessert I made a banana raspberry smoothie.  Tonight was Mei Li’s first smoothie experience.  She’s refused all the previous smoothies that I’ve made and I think I’ve figured out why.  She absolutely will have nothing to do with drinking from a sippy cup.  In China, she screamed bloody murder when I tried to get her to drink from one.  (Hmm, talk about dramatic flair.  Lily may have a touch of it, but Mei Li has it in spades.)  Each time I’ve presented her with a smoothie at home, it’s been in a sippy cup.  (Well, they ARE much less messy to drink from when you’re two.)  She’s never even let the smoothie touch her lips.  Tonight, however, I was daring and let her drink from a cup with no lid.  She enjoyed every drop.  Go figure.  (And, yes, she did end up with a bit on her shirt.  Worth it, though.)

No big Gotcha Day outing for us.  Lily and Mei Li played at home.  In an empty diaper box.  Mei Li goes through a ton of diapers and we just had a large box delivered by the UPS guy tonight.  Fun times.

I made everyone sit for a family Gotcha Day picture to commemorate the second anniversary of the day we met our first daughter.  Of course, I forgot to do it until a good chunk of our family was in their pajamas.  And, embarrassingly (or not), I’m wearing the same hoodie I was wearing last year on Lily’s first Gotcha Day.  At least I’m not in my pajamas.  

 See, same hoodie...

Daily Stuff

Nothing really newsworthy has happened yet in 2012, but I want to use my new blog, so here are a few things about our year so far.

First, Mei Li is mostly well.  She's been on breathing treatments since Christmas and is sounding much better.  The doctor thinks she may have something like asthma, and just gets sick often in the winter months.  We're putting her on preventative meds until March.  Hoping she gets healthier in general or outgrows her asthmatic tendencies!

Second, Lily and Mei Li enjoyed some time outdoors today.  Yes, I let Mei Li out in the cold, even with her lungs the way they seem to be.  I did bundle her up well, though.  And they were only out for a few minutes.  I'm gonna be really happy when the spring weather arrives! 

Well, besides Andrew being back at work after the holidays, that's about it for things "new and different" with the Paces.  Until next time...

New Year, New Blog

Happy New Year!

2012 isn’t even 24 hours old, so there’s not much to write about this new year yet, but I thought I’d get started with our new blog site with an inaugural blog…just to see how things go.

Lily and Mei Li are napping now.  Andrew got all the boxes down from the attic and I need to be repacking them with our Christmas decorations (much easier, I’m sure, when the girls are not trying to “help”).  I’m blogging instead, which is more fun.  But it’s January 1^st, and really Christmas decorations after that are just gauche.  I mean, I’m not judging you if you still have decorations up…I’m just sayin’.

Well, after that pep talk I think I’ll get up and pack some Christmas ornaments and stuff.  Just so sad to turn the tree lights off and put it all away until the day after Thanksgiving 11 months from now.  Ho hum.  And happy 2012 to you!!