Double Happiness

Babies are so cute!

I made this collage with FotoFusion by Lumapix.

Mary-Mia and Gwen and I headed to our local lake to see if we could make friends with some hungry geese.

Man! These sure are some confrontational geese! We were feeding them bread and crackers (while Mary-Mia was happily snapping pictures and trying to distract them well enough that they don't notice her toes!) . Then, one jumped right up on the table next to us! Gwen was curious about her new friend but not especially overjoyed with the invasion of her personal space! Mommy wasn't so keen on it either.

So we shooed away the pesky table dancer, and thought it might be sporty fun to turn the tables on them and give them a little chase. They seemed to enjoy this game and always managed to keep exactly enough distance between us and them to avoid getting caught but their personal safety zone dropped to zero the instant we pulled the food out again! We had a full fledged gaggle of geese around us in 5 seconds flat! Since they stand eye level with Gwen, she very wisely insisted that I hold her. They honk and strut and flap about and they're really quite beautiful! But, best of alll, just look at those beautiful babies!

22 months

(UPDATE:  HA!  Yep, Gwen is holding a STICK!)

We took 167 pictures today. Thank goodness for digital cameras, huh! Of those, we got a dozen decent shots and I liked this one best. I think it really captures the personality of our little sprite!

Gwen is 22 months old and has been home for about 7.5 months. She's finally figuring out that verbal communication is a two way street. She produces a sound (a word) from her mouth and Mommy understands it and something good happens. We're so happy to have her pass this really important milestone but it's brought with it something quite dreadful: screaming

Mommy has zero tolerance for screaming. I think it really does actually make my blood curdle and I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to be good for you. I have to get her to stop it but the more serious I get with her about not screaming the more she thinks it's a game. So she'll let out little bursts of ear-piercing screams and then her little scream-hole will turn back into a mouth and she'll produce a beautiful smile like the one in the picture above.

Aside from that, life is good. Our new house will close escrow in a couple of weeks and so will our current house. Our son is doing well in school and has been accepted to SJSU. Hopefully our 171 will arrive any day now and our dossier will be on its way to China. Norman (the Director of our agency) called me yesterday and told me some very exciting news about Madeline's adoption. I don't want to jinx it by sharing the particulars here (and I also don't want to get my hopes up too much that it can actually happen) but it's super exciting and it's going to be hard to stop thinking about it. I almost wish he'd not even mentioned it until it was more certain.

Kat and Colin stopped by today to get some blogger advice and it's fun to imagine that the next time I see them, they'll have Sophia in tow! M3 and Gwen and I have a date with some geese tomorrow afternoon. I'll try to remember to bring the camera!

Gwen's new friend, Abigail!

Gwen made friends with a cute little four year old girl in the toddler play area at the mall today. Her friend's name is Abigail (Abby). Abby's mom (Joy) took this cute picture of the two girls with the camera in her cell phone.

They had a wonderful time playing together! Gwen loves older kids and Abby was just the sweetest! If this is a preview of how much Gwen will enjoy her new sister, then I'm super psyched!

"Language Littles"

Here's another goodie we purchased for Madeline's next care package: Ling from Language Littles!

She's a cute 16 inch doll that speaks 25 different words and phrases in English and Mandarin. Gwen liked her and it's possible that we'll have trouble when we finally have to shove her in the box and mail her off!

Maddy is from Qinzhou in Guangxi Province. We've heard that she very likely does NOT speak either Cantonese or Mandarin but, rather, a unique dialect to her region. So even though Ling is bi-lingual, she'll still (probably) sound totally foreign to Madeline.

If you've read our blog for a while, you know that we stroll through the local mall every morning. Even though the Mall-Moms are pretty snobbish, the vendors aren't and we've gotten to be quite friendly with many of them -- including the people who operate a costume jewelry kiosk. Gwen is mesermized by the mannequin heads and always has to stop and look at them. Over the months, I've bought several sparkley things there for Gwen and even a few for myself. It's owned and operated by a nice woman (and her father?) and she's from Guangdong Province in China.

I mentioned that we're adopting another child from Southern China and she gave me lots of information about Madeline's town and her culture. I asked her if she'd let me pay her to translate a list of questions for Maddy's foster mother and she was happy to translate the questions but insisted that I not pay her. She did a beautiful job! I'll scan them and upload them to the MSN site so other families with kids in Foster Care can print them out and use them.

Six Weird Things About Me

Tenley's Mom, Michelle, from The Taming of Tenley tagged me so I'm supposed to tell you six weird things about me. There are so many more to tell but here are the first six that come to mind:

1. My number one pet peeve is telemarketers. I thought the no-call list would end my misery but it seems companies who you’ve done prior business with are “allowed” to market to you this annoying way. Maybe it’s their special way of saying thanks for your prior business? If I’m not in a hurry to do something else, I love to screw with telemarketers. I’ll say “Uh huh” constantly while they do their shpeil and when they get to the end, I’ll say: “I’m sorry, can you please repeat that” or I’ll pretend to misunderstand that the service they’re so enthusiastically offering isn’t free. Once I actually asked if I could put them on speaker phone so I could have both hands free to finish cutting up the body (I was really in the middle of making a smoothie for my 11 year old son so I put the phone next to the blender and pressed the “puree” button while my son screamed in the background). ...
2. I put a personal ad on the internet in 2000 and got more than 300 replies. Only 1% were potential “keepers”. My husband was one of them and I still pinch myself every day that I’m married to such an amazing man. We exchanged more than 100 email before meeting in person and I never saw his picture until just before that first meeting. ...
3. I was a three month preemie. ...
4. I love black licorice. I keep a bag of Good & Plenty in the car in the summer and let it get hot and soft so I can munch it until I’m driving around in a sugar induced coma. ...
5. My fingernails naturally grow in a French manicure. I don’t know how I got so lucky. ...
6. I hate chain letters because I’m just a little bit superstitious. I resent having to worry about my luck after a friend sends me a joke with a promise that something good will happen if I forward it to 20 of my best friends. So, even though there’s no promise of good (or bad) luck if I don’t tag 6 of my buddies, I’m not gonna do it. I will post it on the MSN Adopting From China forum though!

Okay, I can't just stop at 6 so here are nine more weird things about me:

1. I was in a Folger's coffee commercial when I was 20.
2. I love the smell of burnt pumpkins! (they smell like halloween!)
3. I can put my foot behind my neck.
4. I was the first female Chinook pilot in Germany.
5. I love to chew regular aspirin even though it hurts my ears like hell for the first two seconds!
6. I hate cilantro! I would starve before I'd eat anything containing it.
7. I can't drink plain water. It has to have a flavor or I just can't swallow it.
8. I've eaten Cap'n Crunch's Peanut Butter Crunch cereal until the roof of my mouth bled!
9. I always defend the under-dog. I once jumped from my date's car and chased down a mugger in my 3 inch heels! My date stayed in his car and that was our last date.