Love the long weekends

yes, we need more holidays that fall on Mondays - visual examples why:

Bike Rides

Family parties and pig roasts
not such a good weekend for this guy

and of course, time for gardening

and tree climbing

9 months today

To all the families in our group who 9 months ago in the blistering heat and smog of China got their little ones - congratulations.

Lucy Updates

Lucy is a big helper. She loves to be outside and follow us around everywhere. She was in charge of watering the flowers. She did a pretty good job!

She still gets so excited when someone comes to visit. Even if it is a repairman of some sort. She starts signing friend and has a big smile on her face. She has grown so tall. We both notice she reaches all the doorknobs now and I can just pick her up no bending really.

She is getting more and more affectionate. If you sneeze she will run a grab you tissue of some sort. If she sees a boo boo she wants to kiss it. Even if you burp or cough, she pats your chest and back. so cute. We hope that she will want to be a nurse when she grows up so she can take care of us! ;)

If you ask her for a kiss she will give you one but if anyone else is next to you, she will make you kiss them too! It is funny to see her make my mom kiss john!! right grandma?? ;)

Since her speech is not really progressing too much, our service coordinator for the Early Intervention program suggested a few things. First, we are switching her Speech Therapist over to one that has many years with CL/CP children. No one with this type of experience was available 6 months ago. We are also reducing her one hour to 2 half hour sessions per week. This was definitely a need because of her short attention span. However, I feel that her Occupational Therapist has made some improvement with her 'busy-ness'. Karen her OT, is helping me learn skills to use with her to help her not be so distracted and all over the place. So I feel good about the changes and hope that this will help her develop her speech- SOON!

We have been busy with our yard as you can see and have so many projects half done. That drives me crazy! I need to get alot of them done before the first week of June when my lil sister and niece Penelope come to visit from California. My mom is with them right now! having a good time I hope. :)

Anyways, on the health front we both are extremely fatigued still. Hope the sunshine and warm weather will help. Now if it would just STAY WARM!

ok, better go rescue john- he has been taking care of her all morning.

Too Too Long since last post

Ok, so I just spent the last hour bugging my eyes out and cramping my hands 'finishing' a photo book. The site(artscow) does not auto save so as you can guess- my browser decided to flash a message that a problem occurred and it needed to shut down. All my work lost!!!! oh my goodness I am 'madder than a hornet' as my dad would say.

So instead of doing my work AGAIN, I wanted to post some new pics of our big girl. She is super sweet and naughty (with me) just as a 2 yr old should be. She is making more of an effort to use a voice but no clear words except: momma yaya(da da) gramma, 'ahh unn' (all done) ump (up) and still signs. We keep being told this is ok because she understands everything we say but we would like to see a big improvement soon to make us both feel better about it.

WARNING: SUPER CUTE PICTURES AHEAD!


The official leotard picture! First gymastics class.


Waiting for daddy to come home to take her to her 2nd class.


This is her face when 'I know I should not be on the table but decided to be anyway'

She loves to run!
Learning to kick her legs on the balance beam. This is her best routine.
I put this pic in for my lil sister. Lucy has developed a habit of putting the house phone in her shirt and we are dreading knowing where she learned this from. snoop snoop.


It is great to have a 2 yr old that likes to do the dishes.