Forgot to mention Sarah’s reaction to our cats on Thurs. night. Shortly after we got home, Abby & Lucy came to greet us. Sarah took one look at them and started to slowly back up. Not sure if she’d ever seen a cat before. She’s fascinated by them and follows them around the house pointing and calling out “meow, meow”.
One of Sarah’s favorite activities is playing with the kid’s dishes and play food. The first thing she played with was the tea cups and saucers. Sarah likes to put the food on plates or into the play refrigerator. She talks and sings to herself in Chinese as she plays. Tim recorded her as she was talking and singing. We want to get it down on video in case she forgets her Chinese language.
We’ve taken the kids on a couple of walks around our neighborhood in the burley. They both love it. It’s been fun to take an evening stroll and introduce Sarah to our neighbors.
On Saturday, we spent the afternoon outside so the kids could play in the back yard. We have lots of big plastic toys – a climber with a slide, a small slide, 2 teeter totters, and 2 kid’s play houses. Sarah loves going down the slide and climbing back up it. She’s a very active kid, just like
Jenna.We made pancakes tonight for supper. Jenna loves them. Judging from the photos, Sarah seemed to enjoy them, too. We’ve been working on
her table manners. She’s used to stuffing her mouth so full of food that she can’t even chew it. She ends up spitting it back out. Same thing when she’s drinking beverages. She likes to gulp down the whole 
glass in one big swallow. It’s been a battle to get her to slow down and eat one bite at a time or take a small sip of liquid. She’s getting better at it every day. It was bath night at our house. Sarah is still adjusting to sitting in a tub full of water. She fusses getting her hair washed. We know she’s used to giving herself a sponge bath with a wash cloth. After the bath, the kids had a dish of ice cream. Don’t know if Sarah has had much ice cream. Dairy products aren’t a big part of the Chinese diet.
For our bedtime routine, we’ve been reading 2 books downstairs and then going upstairs to bed. We sing a song and then give hugs and kisses all around. Tonight, Jenna decided to take her shoes upstairs. Of course, Sarah had to do likewise and then decided she wanted to wear her shoes to bed. We told her “no” and she had a major tantrum. Tim tried his best to soothe her, but she worked herself up into quite a state. After crying for 15 minutes, she threw up ice cream on herself, Tim, and the bed sheets. There was a silver lining to it though, because the two of us were able to bond a lot more. Sarah let me clean her up and rock her while Tim put clean sheets on the bed. The rocking seemed to soothe her and she fell asleep in my arms. I tried twice to transfer her to bed with no success. She woke up both times, took my hand, and pulled me back to the rocker for more rocking. The third time was the charm. Hopefully, she’s down for the night. It’s now 12:30 am.
Tim and I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I think we’ve been averaging about 2-3 hours each night. We put the kids to bed and stay up to get things done around the house and have some quiet time to ourselves. The kids are still waking up around 2:00-3:00 am every morning. Tomorrow, we’re planning to let them nap for an hour in the early afternoon so they sleep longer at night.
A BIG THANKS to everyone that’s provided meals or will provide meals for us. It’s so great to have supper without the meal preparation as we’re adjusting to our new family dynamics and trying to get settled into a daily routine.
I also want to give a super big “THANKS” to my brother for updating our blog and posting photos while we were in China. There would have been no trip entries without his help. We were able to send him our blog info and photos via e-mail. We were so bummed out that we couldn’t access our own blog during the trip. While we were in Beijing, Tim talked to someone from the U.S. about our blog. He was told that China’s government had curtailed access to all blog sites.
Margaret
P.S. We’re hoping to put additional photos on our blog. Check back to the earlier entries in a couple of days for new photos.
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