Up up and away

We are heading off to Shanghai for my next class in about an hour. I'm so glad that Tovina is such a good little traveler. With any luck she'll get us upgraded to 1st again!

So this TV thing...

We are still working on the monthly collage, so as a stopgap we present you with this. I call it, 'Tovina discovers the remote control'.

Notice the one raised eyebrow in the first pic.

501

This is our 501st post. Wow. I really wasn't sure if we would keep this up after our first few months in China but apparently we are.
Thanks for visiting out site and reading about our family and China and all the various things we are learning and seeing. As I've mentioned, its new years here in China so this blog seems very well timed. Now if I could just capture the sight, sounds, and feelings of all the fireworks being set off in the surrounding neighborhoods, this post would be really spectacular.

Since I've had no luck capturing that on video, we will simply have to celebrate the passing of the year by sharing a video that is now 1 year old.

Here is one from last February of the kitties.

Back together again

We had a great birthing group last spring and this weekend we got all of us together again for some quality baby play time.
Here you can see all 4 of our little ones. From left to right is Gabby (the oldest) with Sophia in the back, then comes Gus, and finally Tovina in the green seat.


Here are Sophia and Tovina mind-melding.
And the 3 girls just hanging out.

This is why we have cats (Warning: dog owners may find this offensive)

It came up in conversation the other day that there is not a good expression in English for helping a baby fall asleep. This does not seem to be a weakness in the English language regarding sleeping so much as a weakness regarding references to the end of pet's time on earth.

Since both Michael and myself have both felt vaguely uncomfortable 'putting her to sleep' and 'putting her down' even if only for the night, we have decided that in the future, when it is time to help our little one fall asleep, we will simply say, 'time to kill the dog.'

Assisted steps

Tovina is doing her best to become extremely mobile.
In this clip she was all dressed in red for the Embassy New Years Party. As it so happens, her red turtleneck is also her dock worker/money collector/general thug shirt but that really had nothing to do with the holiday.

Zhao ayi is the person holding Tovina up.



You may also notice in this piece that the kitties and Tovina now interact. It is hard to see her expression here, but usually when a kitty walks into her line of sight Tovina becomes VERY excited. She also tries to pet the cats now. So far, they have not minded... or at least we thought they hadn't. But we now fear that Roxanne's actions at the end of this video may in fact be a sign of protest. Throwing her body down in front of the path of destruction as it were.

Or she is asking for belly rubs.

You decide.

Corrections

Michael pointed out that we have had the cats for over a year so they were clearly around for the 2007 Chinese New Years. However, last year I do not remember them being scared by the fireworks. Admittedly they only seemed really startled once last night, but still it was odd behavior. Then again, these are odd cats.

I am also happy to report that Tovina slept just fine last night. Tonight might be trickier as there are considerably more fireworks going off, but I've got a good feeling about this sleep momentum that she has been building up. Unfortunately, the other thing she has been building up is her ability to talk to dolphins using her supersonic vocal range. Her capability is a thing of terror especially because she usually hits the really high notes when she is happy so I don't really want to shush her when she is so ecstatic.

Happy New Years!

Chinese new years has started, or at least the fire crackers have made their loud appearance. What I remember most from this holiday last year was being woken up at night by all the noise. Now that Tovina occasionally sleeps 6 hours at night, all I can think of is that if someone wakes her at 1 in the morning with some fireworks... well, its not going to be a good start to their year if I get a hold of them.

And to add to the fun, I believe that the blur of fur that just ran by was meant to demonstrate that the cats don't particularly care for loud exploding noises either. This is also their first time with this holiday.

To make it even worse, the new buildings going up next to us now block most of our view, so we don't even get to see the fireworks that we hear.

New tricks

Early on we brought home a swing for Tovina. At times she has been amused by it although she has never been the huge fan like some kids we know. Well the other day she seemed to have developed a new opinion.


I guess we should just be thankful that the swing motor isn't stronger.

ps. i had heard that some people were having trouble viewing the videos I was embedding so I'm going back to using youtube. Please let me know if this works better or worse for you.

6 months

Our little one is 6 months old now. Here are some of the things we learned in the last half a year:

• Sophisticated discussions of poop no longer seem oxymoronic
• Sleeping more than 3 hours at a time is not actually necessary to function as an adult (though it is useful to function as a logical adult)
  
• It takes different muscles to remain in a sitting position than it does to pull/push oneself into said position
• Being flipped through the air is really fun (though we thought that might be the case even before Tovina agreed with us)
• While swallowing pureed foods looks easy, it is a surprisingly difficult skill to master
  
• Hair is not required for a person to look really cute (Who loves ya, baby?)
  
• If you suck on your fingers a lot and accidentally push them too far into your mouth, you may regurgitate a little bit
• "Little" is a relative term
• Repeated face-planting is a required precursor to crawling (at least we hope that is why she is doing it)
• One big dimpled smile is enough to enforce how truly lucky we are to have such a wonderful child