First Day of Spring

So much for the first day of spring. It always mocks us Minnesotans as we usually wake up to this instead:


We decided to have Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Susie, Uncle Pat and Cousin Han over for sledding.

Zooming down with Grandpa:


Our little snow angel:

Having fun with Han:



Getting toasty afterward with Grandma:


We had a fabulous last hurrah in the snow. (Please let it be the last hurrah, please, oh please.)

Worst nightmare?

A typical nightmare is when people dream that they are attending school naked. Today Jia told me she was taking her baby in the stroller and heading off to school. I said, "Aren't you forgetting something?" Nope, she's all ready. (Keep in mind that it is not tank top and short weather here or, apparently, underpants weather for that matter.)

More Jia-isms and an egg hunt

Updated at bottom of post...

We were eating dinner and our cat Harry jumped up on the table. Jia said, "Harry, please get off the table. I love you, but please get off the table." (I think she was so calm because he wasn't yet to the point of eating her food.)

They say that a kid only reenacts things she has already seen. The other night Jia was cooking a pretend dinner in her little play kitchen. She was cooking away and then started running around saying, "It's burning! It's burning! Oh no!!" Then she returned to the kitchen and said, "Oh, good! It's okay! It's okay! We can still eat it!" Hmmm, I wonder where she saw that?

We attended a Families with Children from China (FCC) egg hunt today. When the kids entered the egg hunt area, all the kids ran into the middle of it. Jia, however, took a few paces, then stopped and turned left, and found a cache of eggs all to herself. As a result, she ended up with quite a haul and a chocolate-covered dress to prove it! Here are some pics from the day. (We so rarely get good pictures of the three of us and I was disappointed the last one turned out blurry. We're going to get a new camera - any ideas are appreciated!)




Update
Some friends who attended the egg hunt took a much better photo of us with their camera so I deleted ours. Here is the one they took...


Also, thanks for the camera tips. We appreciate it!

First Ruling and More!!!

We just received word of our first ruling!!! This is a significant step in the court process. It means that the next step is a final ruling and that we will likely travel in 1-2 months!

We also received updated photos and video. She just keeps getting cuter and cuter!

Alwaysnude

Anyone watch Arrested Development? Familiar with nevernude? Well, we have the opposite, the alwaysnude.


If we put her to bed and she's not quite tired enough, she always gets nudie. When she goes from being fairly quiet to really happy, chattering or singing loudly in her bed, I know she's gotten naked. She has started to do this during naptime at daycare too. And, with the advent of being potty trained and skinny, her pants fall down all the time. Thankfully, this is the only time she shows any booty in public. Jia changes clothes constantly too. The part I think she likes the most about it is running around the house gleefully shouting, "I'm nudie!!!"

Here are some recent pictures of her clothed.

A new haircut:
Getting ready to go to cousin Han's birthday party (yes, that's a smile):


Enjoying treats with Han at his party:

On our way to the party Jia said, "Han is my favorite!!" Happy 2nd Birthday Han!

Our favorite place on-line

I have been visiting a certain website for almost a decade. It is my favorite haunt on the Internet. It's Africam, a place with live, streaming cameras focused on waterholes in spots in South Africa. They used to have many more cameras, but I think they were difficult to maintain. Now they just have a few live ones, but they're so much better! Whenever an animal wanders into view, the camera is remotely operated and tracks it around the area.

We sometimes turn the site on in the morning, click on the Nkorho Pan or Elephant Plains camera and leave it up for a while. The sounds are incredible and it seems like our living room is literally sitting in the bush. When we hear an animal snorting we run over to the computer to see what it is. This morning we saw an elephant come tromping through the trees, we saw a herd of zebra the other day and we often see lots of wildebeest, impala and warthogs.

Jia enjoys it too! I hope we can experience the real thing together someday.

Two Tigers

Thanks so much to Amanda, Brian and Laura for posting about the Chinese song mentioned in the post below. (It's the one to the same tune as Frère Jacques). It's called Two Tigers.

The lyrics are as follows (and there are different versions):

Liang zhi lao hu, liang zhi lao hu
Pao de kuai, pao de kuai
Yi zhi mei you er duo, yi zhi mei you wei ba
Zhen qiguai! Zhen qiguai!

Two tigers, two tigers
Run so fast, run so fast
One has no ears, one has no tail
So strange! So strange!

If you want to hear children singing it, click on my buddy Sarah's blog here.