juggle!

Hello world! I love to eat oranges... but by eat, I mean juice. See all these orange pieces? Yeah, all the juice is gone... mommy will eat the leftover pieces, but I have made delicious orange juice in my mouth!

I'm so close.... usually I get it all right, but here, the 8 and the 7 are mixed up!

Xinyi loves to juggle! She loves asking other people to juggle too! It's the funniest thing to her and her whole body moves when she laughs and smiles to the juggling! Here she is showing off at Thanksgiving!

 Mommy baby huggies at the Fung Family Thanksgiving!

And a good picture with Great Aunt Flora!

Hi everyone!

Xinyi loves her letters! Now she's demanding to start the A, B, C recitation first now a days. She used to copy me when I would say "A" and now she goes "nonono, A!!!" Then I say A, and then she's content to say B, and continue leading me through the alphabet. She also knows the ending to the ABC song, where it goes "next time won't you sing with me..." <3.

The day after Thanksgiving, we put up our Christmas tree! Here is baby and daddy hanging the first ornament! She loves to look at the tree and shout, "Tree!" or "Ooooh light!"

And with mommy!

More sleeping Xinyi pictures! I just love them, she is so cute :).

Here are the babies at Second Thanksgiving!

Somebody likes trains!

And Grammy loves her girls!

She's started mimicking the questions I asked her every day. "What's this?" "What color is this?" "What shape is this?" "Who is this?" She'll ask herself the question and then answer it! So cute! She'll also ask me the question and then wait for me to answer! Here she's asking herself, "Who is this?" And then answering "Oscar! Seahorse! Pufferfish!"

So daddy got all creative this weekend and built baby girl her own train table! We bought a train set to go with it and she loves it! Now that she's used to the trains, Elmo, Abby, Seahorse, Mickey and Minnie have all joined the party :).

Sweet girl also understands the idea of taking turns and will ask for "baby turn" or say "okay mommy turn" when it comes to music or food or even toys! She loves to say "bye bye" to strangers, but won't say hello! She also shouts "Cheeeese!!!" at the phone when she knows a picture is being taken of her!

Happy girl with her tiny ice cream cone!

And Baby Buttercup is doing well! She's kicking and squirming and rolling around lots! Even the doctor said today that she moves a lot when we were listening with the belly doppler! We've told a few people her name and they all seem to be happy! 19 more weeks, Baby A!

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving -- we sure did -- at all three of ours! :D

baby sheep, momma sheep, daddy sheep

Xinyi finally let me put new shoes on her! The old pair have lasted so long and she loves them so much she didn't want me to put new ones on her... but finally! Success!

Here are some of her creations from art class :D.

And a selfie taken while momma wasn't paying attention... look at those cheeks!

Yeh Yeh and Nai Nai came to play with baby girl! They had lots of fun together!

She knows all her letters A through Z, and all her numbers zero through 12, loves counting and putting letters in order, and more! She also knows all her colors and is working on her shapes! They sound so cute! "Rectanle - shure - trianle - cirsle - oval" and more that I can't remember right now.

Fry in one hand, and cookie in the other. What a life :). Don't worry - before this, she had cheese, grapes, and pasta for dinner :).

Baby is watching Wizard of Oz. The wicked witch just showed up and she is very concerned...

Now for some Xinyi stories: We were reading a bedtime book that she loves and on the second to last page, there are three sheep. She points to the littlest one and says, "baby sheep" then points to the one next to it and says "momma sheep" and then points to the third one and says "daddy sheep." She understands this concept! My heart exploded <3!

She's learned Sophia's name and shouts at her. "Fiiissssaaaa, fiiissssaaaa" while trying to convince her to come and play. 

She finished her box of raisins and said "raisins done bye bye." I love that she's putting together phrases she independently understands to express a full concept she knows to be true. Raisins are all done, bye bye!

She went outside with daddy to see the moon and after a few seconds said "back mommy" because she wanted to come back inside to me.

Mommy told baby, "One more minute until bedtime." and baby said, "one minute" with perfect pronunciation. Mommy said, "holy crap!" baby happily mimicked "caapp!" Daddy said, "Be careful what you say now..." :T :D.

Xinyi always has to have whatever I'm eating. One day I was eating a cookie and she demanded the cookie so I gave it to her. Usually, I let her have the whole thing because it's usually a slice of apple or something better for her. So this time I took it back... then I gave her back the cookie to take another small bite. And repeat. And the end, I gave her what I thought would be the last piece of the cookie and turned my attention elsewhere. After a few seconds, I felt a tiny piece of cookie being shoved into my hand. She gave me the last piece :D.

She loves to say "Higi gooo baby!" which is her version of "Here you go, baby!" So close!

As a fun update requested by Grammy, we had our 19 week anatomy ultrasound for Baby Buttercup this last week! After a 45 minute ultrasound, we got lots of fun pictures, but this was definitely the most fun! A picture of her nose lips and chin! 

So of course, I had to take one of Xinyi's nose, lips and chin! She wasn't very helpful because she wanted to take a selfie, a proper selfie... so I had to distract her with Peppa Pig... :D

Baby Buttercup is the picture on the bottom, and Xinyi is the picture on the top - right around the same time! Buttercup is kicking and squirly and loves to roll around. It's fun to feel her moving!

This week is Thanksgiving and we are hosting for one of our Thanksgiving celebrations! We're so excited to have family all in our new home! Look at that polar bear on her sweater!!! :D

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Knock knock! Hmm, let's see...

Hello world, I love Elmo... This is an Elmo puppet that Xinyi runs to every time we go to Barnes and Noble. Then she carries it around until we leave... :)

Athena came over for a playdate this week! The two girls had lots of fun trying to play with the same toys :P.

This is Xinyi giving a hug to a giant teddy bear in a store... no we didn't buy it and no I hope to never have one :D.

This week, we also switched to a new Gymboree class - art class! After an initial confusion of paint for food, she got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Then over the weekend, we celebrated Yeh Yeh's last test with Ethiopian food! Yummy!!

This week, Xinyi has exploded with more and more words. She learned how to say Basket ball, Soccer ball, Football ball (yes with two balls...), happy face, pumpkin, and play dough! She also can now say recognizably elephant lion monkey and panda!

One day, baby girl went to one of the bins I store toys in and said, "open this please!" She also took her Minnie and Mickey figures and has them touch noses. That's something we do with Xinyi - we say, "noses!" and we touch noses! She still has them sit and hold hands. She clapped her dolly's hand together while listening to the song "Patty cake" too! She is getting more and more into pretend play!

She says sitting down baby, or sit down baby, and says sitting down Momma, all day. Apparently it's what I say the most to her :P. Here she is sitting down and putting her bears on letters!

Here she is running around after we took our afternoon nap. She says, "run, run run!" the whole time she runs... :D

Here is Xinyi stacking boxes for fun! Without help and without instruction!

Daddy loves to play with baby girl. He taught her how to do "I'm a little tea pot" just like when she was a baby, except now she can kind of do it by herself!

Daddy also taught baby the monkey dance, and she ran around the house saying "ooh ooh ah ah, monkey!" while dancing.

She also runs in place while saying "dance, dance, dance!"

She now says "baby Clara!" but she says it, "baby ka da"

She mimics almost everything I say, or she tries to. One day, I was shouting for Shane and she immediately said, "Shaaanne" right after me, same intonation and everything!

She can read books now - she's memorized a lot of the ones we read every day. She knows when I skip pages and goes back so we don't miss anything! She especially loves her "Dear Zoo" book where she says "Knock knock, hmm let's see" before opening any of the flaps to see the animals in the zoo! She also knocks on doors, windows, and her belly... :P. And there's another book where it says, "Oh no! The letters are falling down!" and she looves the phrase "oh no" so she runs around all day saying "oh no! oh no!" It's really quite cute!

I sneezed the other day and she said, "Bless you mommy." Then today, she sneezed and said, "Bless you momma!" and I told her no, "Bless you baby!" and she said "Ok, bless you baby!" :D

She also loves to cuddle and play guitar. Here she is playing guitar with Grampy!

You are too much fun little girl!!!