So tired...

This is how I feel right now. I need my paci(fier) and want to go to bed.

Back in State College, the girls tried to catch a nap in the middle of the day by sneaking off with their pacifiers and finding an abandoned couch in a quiet room. Unluckily for them, we caught them at it, forced them to look cute, took pictures, and then revved them back up.
Notice that Tovina has 1 soother in her mouth, 1 in one each hand. 3 is a magic number.

More of the Bobbsy Twins

There was some mighty impressive sharing between the two girls.

Followed by some more spinning of the heads.

Luckily, though both girls had consumed at least 10 cookies a piece by the time these photos were taken, the head twirling only led to more giggles.

Matched set

Tovina renewed an aquaintance at a Christmas Eve party we went to in State College. These little blond twins were quite the pair.

And they quickly bonded over some heartfelt spinning and fistfuls of cookies.

Luckily the children found themselves almost as amusing as the adults found them.

Positively Natalie

Remember when I mentioned that Natalie had visited us? Well she wrote and pictured about it on her blog.

Tourists

One of the unexpected joys of having Natalie visit is that she actually wants to see Cincinnati. While it is shocking that there is anyone who doesn't just want to spend the entire day basking in the glow known as Tovina it has been much fun to actually look around the city. We've been down to Fountain Square downtown Cincinnati and explored the main street of downtown Milford which I have driven through many many times and never managed to stop in. We've eaten some yummy food and checked out some little stores. Its been very educational. Who would have guessed that all of that was so close by?

Golden children in Florida

One of my goals for a while now has been to try to get Tovina to enjoy pools. We have been make slow but steady progress. While in Florida huge steps were taken in the backyard of some friends.
Here are 3 munchkins sliding, splashing, swimming (yes, apparently that was possible in 6" of water), and generally enjoying themselves.
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Tovina was queen of the slide!

Getting ready for some quiet time after an exhausting day of carousing. On the couch are Tovina (wearing Austin's pajamas), Austin (of said pajamas) and Abby.

And here are the 3 wee ones all tucked in - they were preparing for some snugly TV watching.

Katherine and Tovina

Made it home but pretty darn tired. In place of words, here are some shots of Tovina and her new friend Katherine. (Katherine is just 2 months older)

Katherine is the only person I know who wanted to puch more than T wanted to swing. Amazing endurance!

And here are the 2 princesses all dressed up!

New stuffed animal

Last night we went out for dinner. Towards the end of our meal, while Tovina was fidgeting next to our table at the restaurant, a boy about 6 or 7 years old came over.
He was holding a bumblebear. (Well, what else would you call a stuffed bear that was wearing a bumblebee outfit including an antenna headband?)
"Your baby can have this if she wants," he told me.
"Wha?" I replied intelligently.
"I won it in the game over there and she can have it." He was holding the little animal out to Tovina.
Tovina, convinced of her rightful place in the world as the owner of all cool things, calmly accepted her rightful offering and hugged the bumblebear to her chest while looking at the boy intently.

I had a quick discussion with the boy's dad a few minutes later as T started roaming about the restuarnt with her new acquisition firmly encircled by one arm. It turns out it was all the boy's idea. He was just that kind. I'm very sorry we didn't get his name. Tovina and myself did thank him a few times. Also, a live singer/guitar player started performing so T danced (with the bumblebear) right in front of their table. I like to think of her performance as her own special form of thank you.

One of the dance highlights was when she had one arm around the bumblebear's waist and had the animal's other hand clasped in her other hand. then she turned around in circles. It looked like they were ready to tango! That's my girl!

Friends with cameras

Thanks to Josh and Carolyn and Sophia for sharing photos.

Rabbi G. Marx

Actually it was Rabbi Peretz but either way he was still very capable of bringing a smile to Tovina's face. Peretz was one of the reasons we had that retreat a few weeks back (have rabbi will pray) and he was also the man who gave Tovina a naming ceremony last fall.

We were able to steal a dinner with him while he was visiting the last time and Tovina made it pretty clear that he is her favorite rabbi.

Passover

One of the members of our community wrote this article about Passover in Beijing for her paper back in the States. Given the questions we often receive regarding our Jewish community, I thought I'd share it.

This year we did not attend the community sedar and instead spent both nights the homes of our friends.

Chag sameach!

Tovina celebrated her first Passover this past weekend. So far this has mostly meant that she has gone to bed really late. (She made it almost to the 4th cup of wine at 10:45pm on Saturday. If you check out this Passover sedar (order) you can see that the 4th and last cup of wine is drunk way at the end of the evening.)

Tovina did get to try some traditional Jewish foods like tzimmis made by one of our non-Jewish friends. She gave it 2 teeth up!

Tovina also has a new frog mobile in honor of her incredible assistance in locating the afikomen on the first night of Passover. The frog motif was in honor of the 10 plagues and today she was commenting extensively on their appropriateness. One could argue that this early bent on deeper interpretation that she is displaying indicates her penchant towards being a Torah scholar.

Another possibility is that she was giving a discourse on the fact that the frogs are green.

In keeping with most great Jewish debates, its open to interpretation.

All in all, I’d say her first brush with Passover has been a success.

*Chag Sameach = Happy festival

Cooking -or- Are you sure we have time for this?

As you may recall, Michael and I use to cook all the time. In the last 8 months our number of self-cooking nights seems to have fallen off. Really it had fallen off before, when we started asking our ayi to cook for us, but something seemed to change last August that made our lack of cooking much more noticeable.

However, about 9 weeks ago we had a party for some friends of ours and their soon-to-arrive new family member. (Since it has taken me 9 weeks to blog this, Zach is no longer a soon-to-arrive but now an arrived-and-kicking.) We were pretty darn excited for them so hosting this small gathering, or as some might call it - baby shower - to bring a few of their friends together so we could all congratulate them made us feel very happy.

For the get together we made koftas and mango salsa, chocolate cupcakes and icing, spicy popcorn and nut mixture, meringue cookies with and without coconuts, chocolate no-bake cookies, wheat bread, and a banana loaf. The veggies, cheese, and crackers were purchased and required no extra effort on our part.

What was fun, other than sharing the day with friends and eating food, was that it reminded us that we like cooking and we should do more of it.

Shanghai friends

More Shanghai pics for you.
Here is Tovina with her babysitter of the month. So far she has had someone new each time other than last month. Luckily she is a pretty easy going child. But we think that the same ayi will be able to join us next month again!

And here is Tovina with Wolfram. Tovina is smiling because she was enjoying learning some German to compliment her English and Chinese.
Well, that and she really adored Wolfram.

Check up

Tovina got all checked out today for her 6 3/4 month check up. She is now 17 pounds and 12 oz and 27.25" long. This is right around the 75 percentile which is where she has been since she started these checkups. Unfortunately, the other thing that happened today was that she got her next round of shots. Poor thing. luckily her short term memory is still short enough that it only takes about 1 minute after the shots are administered for her to forget about them.
We were actually a little surprised that she was still around 75% because there is this other little girl we know who is a month younger but slightly bigger. By comparison, we thought that Tovina's growth might be slipping, but clearly its just that Tovina's friends are really gifted. Its good to see that she is already forming a network of such advanced friends.

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.

Sophia and Tovina together again

It has been 2 months since the last time these two girls got together and there are some noticable differences.
Now Sophia (a month younger) is slightly bigger so we are lucky she is such a sweet and happy little girl otherwise she might have gotten annoyed when Tovina started sucking on Sophia's arm. By next month we figure Sophia will be doing the same to Tovina!

Party Time!

We decided to have a community party to celebrate Tovina's first 100 days! (well almost 100 days. Actually it was more like 93, but that was when we had time.)

She was a great sport and allowed herself to be passed from person to person, sharing smiles and in depth conversation all the while.

Neck and Neck (or is that head to head?)

Sophia and Tovina got together for another play date today. You may remember their first play date when our little 10lb Tovina looked like a giant. Considering that old picture, its amazing how similar in size the two of them are now.
I tried to tell Tovina that she needed to start packing away the milk if she wanted to stay ahead in this race. Her response seemed to indicate that she was not prepared to take me seriously.

That's us he's talking about!

ImageThief is a friend of ours and we were at his 40th birthday dinner last week. In fact, we gave him the bag with the M&Ms, white rabbits, and peanut butter that he talks about in his blog.

Here is Imagethief, his wife, and Mari.
And here is Bob (who was visiting from the states) with Tovina. And finally, here is Michael with his little girl.