Chinese New Year Get Together

A Chinese New Year celebration with Tanith's buddies Erin, Maddie, Meghan, Lucia,and new BFF Olethea was held at my parents house on Sunday. I am glad that my parents had the opportunity to meet everyone and interact with all of the families. We had a wonderful time, great food and lots of new memories. All the girls dressed up for the traditional group photos and my parent's presented the girls with special Chinese dolls. They also got a cute bunny cup from Margot and Carmen gave the girls some CNY gifts.

We also welcomed new family Stephen, Diana and Olethea to our growing circle. It was nice to have them join us after meeting them at the CNY FCC function earlier this month.

The girls are all growing up so fast. Each get together I am noticing something new in each of them. Love this!

Looking forward to our next get together.

 

Chinese New Year in Chinatown

What a wonderful event in Chinatown that we had the pleasure of attending to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit. We meet up with one of Tanith's Jiangxi "sisters" Meghan and had a wonderful evening at the Empress Pavillion. The banquet was hosted by the FCC group (Families with Children from China) and what an event it was.  It included a 10 course meal, lots of dancing (Tanith is a little dancing machine), performances and activities for the little ones. Tanith was the youngest one there and everyone who attended the event were wonderful and friendly.

Special thank you to Margot and Donovan for a great time. Looking forward to celebrating the new year with the rest of her Jiangxi sisters at the end of the month.

            

19 Months Today!

Tanith is 19 months today and is doing great.

Tanith Update:  She has now added "Hi", "Xie xie" (thank you in Chinese), and "oh oh" to her vocabulary and we couldn't be more happier. We know that she will be speaking a lot in no time...she is definitely trying. She is also trying to sing...the words are her own, but she is definitely signing. She has continued to try to climb up onto everything in the house, so we do need to keep a watchful eye on her. I actually wish I had eyes in the back of my head...she has been a little stinker climbing up on to anything. Hide-in-seek is now taken to a whole new level. She loves to hide (yes we can still see

her...but she does not know it) and cracks up laughing when we come after her. Sometimes she even turns her head away from looking at us...yes she thinks she is hiding :)

She also had her Wellness Checkup a few weeks ago and she came in weighing 22 lbs 11 oz and is 31 inches in length. She received a few more shots and even got her ears pierced...which was very hard for me. I am so glad daddy was there because I could not watch. It took minutes, some pain and a lot of tears, but she looks beautiful. She seldom plays with the earrings and lets us clean and turn them. We did not realize how much work was going to be involved...three months worth of cleaning and turning.

Her appetite is still good and will eat anything. Her new way of eating is with two utensils in hand...fork and spoon. We also found out that she loves salsa. We were out to eat and she could not get enough of it (check out the video below). We have been keeping her busy with play dates with her cousins and her new friend Alyssa. We are still trying to learn how to share during play time and that she cannot have everything when she wants it...Really? She loves playing with her kitchen that her grandparents got her and is super cute as she play cooks, eats and even washes the dishes.

Newest nickname:  our little ChinaLatina (pronounced "cheena latina")

We also had her 6 month post adoption meeting last month and everything went well...one more meeting in another 6 months and then we are done with the adoption process.  Well sort of, the next step will be the process to Re-Adopt. This is optional, but it will make her life so much easier later in life. It means that she will have a birth certificate issued in the U.S. and will not always need to have every piece of adoption documents translated and notarized when personal information is required as she grows up.

Looking forward to a busy month as it is the Year of the Rabbit.  Chinese New Year is on Feb 3rd and we have a lot of activities planned for our little girl this month.