Miss Smiley

 It seems whenever Lucy is smiling I often refer to her as "miss smiley"...I was somewhat aware of this, but became more aware of it because of Austin. He often calls her this now, but also he and Bree have some game where they talk about "Miss Smiley" and laugh and make funny faces.  I heard them doing it for several days before I connected..."oh, you got that from me I guess".

At any right, she has been smiling a lot lately and is so cute!  I feel like I am really getting to enjoy her a lot at this stage...maybe more than before.  Perhaps it is the fact that she is sleeping well at night, or that she is the third and I am more relaxed..but we are all having lots of fun. Austin talks to her and gets her to smile all the time and Bennett showers her with lots of kisses.

The Gift

Last Sunday was The Gift, a charity shopping bazaar that Chris is part of organizing.  It brings together local artists and artisans selling unique gifts and all or a portion of the proceeds go to benefit 8 different charities, helping local orphans, migrants, exploited women and so on.  It is a very fun event with live music (Chris is in charge of that part), good food (including a new southern barbeque restaurant), great shopping.  Chris performed several times and here is a clip of the boys (with Bree and Jesh) dancing...they were a bit crazy with the dancing.  Jason (Bree and Jesh's dad) also joined Chris on guitar for several songs and did a great job.

We joke that Bennett was more "moshing" than dancing.  He was his recent-intense self at this event, and had been a little sad that Austin was more interested in dancing with Bree than with him...so I think he was letting some emotion out with that dancing.

 I think Austin and Bree never let go of each others' hands while dancing.

 Bennett spent a lot of time playing with this car that a friend gave him.

At the end of the day Chris was part of a jazz trio...they sounded great.

Happy Thanksgiving

 Wednesday night...

 

To Thursday evening. We had 10 friends to celebrate the meal with us, both American, local and one Japanese friend.  It was a fun evening though we miss our family a lot.

 Lucy in a new dress from Nai Nai...she was the cutest one there. She even wore tights.  I found myself wondering...do they go over or under the onesie? So many new things to learn with a girl :)

 Look at that face...who can resist?

 The boys pulling the wish bone.  In the end Bennett got frustrated because it was too greasy and slippery and Austin and Chris did it...Austin "won" the big end. And yes we kept Bennett in pants but that was as clothed as he was for most of the night, despite starting it in a very cute red sweater.

 The boys had lots of fun with "Coffee shu shu" (his last name is pronounced Coffee, though spelled differently).  He always wrestles them or plays some active game when he comes over...obviously Bennett was having a great time.  This "game" was played by the boys asking if this scratch on his face was bleeding (it was from Bennett, not sure how that happened) and then they would get close and he would yell and grab them, causing extreme giggling and fun. Coffee Shu Shu is a drummer who often plays with Chris.  From Atlanta and also pronounces pecan as "Pee can" like my husband.

The family shot...Bennett still shirt-less.

It was a good day but today I am exhausted.  Chris let me sleep in though and so I got some rest today.  Thought we might decorate the tree today, but probably will tackle that tomorrow.  Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family that we could not be near!

Getting ready

Wow, so many posts to write in my head but so little time!  This is a week of cooking, activities and trying to parent three kids, all of whom have been rather demanding this week.  We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for a mix of local friends, single Americans and others...meaning I am pretty much doing all the cooking.  Tonight...pumpkin pie, pecan pie and apple crisp down.  Lots more to go.  Lucy is currently crying in her bed and the boys have been arguing all day (make that month).  So...look for some singing and dancing video from The Gift (Chris helps put on this event every year), our Thankfulness Tree and more in future posts, but I don't have energy to upload a video tonight.  More to come.

Ayi

We love ayi (auntie), otherwise known as Xiao Chen or Chen Ayi.  She certainly makes my life much easier with all she helps me with, but she also is becoming a good friend.  The boys love her and will eat almost anything she cooks.  Her husband and two teenage daughters moved her this fall, after living apart for almost 10 years.  They stayed in her hometown, where they have a house and cheap education and access to medical care, things they would not have in the big city as non-residents.  But we were all excited for her to be able to be together with her family again. 

However, it has been challenging.  There are some different family dynamics after living apart and she and her husband have especially had some challenges, though her daughters are thrilled to be with their mom again.  They had to move this summer because her old housing was being torn down.  Now, their current living space is also scheduled to be torn down sometime in the near future.  She is even contemplating moving back to her hometown, though that is not her desire.

 We had them all over for dinner the other night

In the midst of these challenges, we have been encouraging them to attend a local marriage conference this weekend.  Her husband at first did not want to go and refused several times, but finally on Tuesday (perhaps a bit pressured by Chris) agreed to go.  Chris drove them there tonight.  We are really praying it will encourage them and help them...please join with us tonight and tomorrow.

Fun in the leaves

For most of my life in China, playing in the leaves is just a distant memory from childhood.  There are usually not that many leaves around and if so, they are scattered and not raked into nice, jumping piles.  But this year the leaves seemed more plentiful and colorful and this week was "rake the neighborhood" week.  So yesterday we went out to scout out piles of leaves that were all over the complex.  I hoped none of the groundkeepers would get mad...and they didn't.  The boys had lots of fun. We tried to not destroy the piles, but just land in the middle.

Bennett actually surprised me yesterday, saying he wanted to go outside.  Usually I have to drag him out...he has not been an outside fan lately.  Then he actually was excited to race Austin.  Usually he just wants to hold my hand and stay with me.  They had lots of fun and I was so glad they were burning off some energy outside.  We have had a bit too much energy in the house going towards jumping on the couch, climbing cushions and getting owies.

Austin turns five, take two

Monday was Austin's actual birthday. After SKYPing with grandparents and having fun opening more presents, we headed to a new-to-us restaurant. It is called the Filling Station and is a diner-type restaurant with a great kids playplace inside. It had slides, a ball pit, some cars you can ride and was great fun for the boys. They ate hot dogs and the manager gave us a free slice of chocolate cheesecake, complete with 5 candles.



Then he went to school and our family joined him at school for snacktime, bringing with us 24 carrot cake cupcakes to share with his friends at school. The teachers also had a small present for him, sang Happy Birthday and gave him a crown to wear. All in all it was a good day, though I think by the end of the day he had had a little more birthday excitement than he could handle and was ready for bed early. We are so proud of our big five year old. He is reading really well, loves science and learning though doesn't really love to be taught, has a very sensitive heart, is speaking Chinese really well and learning lots at preschool and making friends.

Austin passing out cupcakes to his friends and classmates. We all came to celebrate, so of course Lucy came too. She was quite the sensation among the kids and teachers alike. Most of the kids have no siblings and therefore have very little interaction with a tiny baby. One of the boys asked me if the baby's name was Jesus! I thought that was pretty funny...I guess he was thinking about Christmas time?

Happy Birthday, Argh!

Thanks to Taobao, I got 12 sets of these for 3.8 rmb each! Here is my favorite 5 year old pirate!

Can't be a pirate without a sword fight...Austin kept insisting they needed swords and I could not think of a "safe" way to give 9 children swords...until I remembered we had these balloons. Perfect.

The cake...really not hard at all. Complete with gummy sharks in the dangerous waters.

What a family...led by Captain Austin Blackbeard...though we had such a funny face most of the night because he was worried about getting the black on things. I tried to get him to take it off but he refused.

My favorite part of the pirate ship cake was the "cannons" on the side.

This is supposed to be a picture of Austin opening his presents, but I just laugh each time I look at Bennett. What a goof.

Wow- several of Austin's friends went in together to give him a real, child-size guitar. He loved it of course. He will grow into it...yet another birthday with a musical instrument for Austin. Hmmm, how many instruments are now owned by our family? I don't even want to know.

No birthday is complete now with the "Veggie Tales violin" as Bennett has named the bass. We did sing "The Pirates who don't do anything" song and more veggie tales.

Not sure who is more excited about this teaching opportunity...Chris or Austin.

The pirate party is over and I am beat! It was a great party though with no "too much birthday" breakdowns. Well, I already stayed up too late to do this post...off to bed!

Big owies

In addition to our boughts of sickness, we have had a couple of "big owies" here lately.

Bennett fell and hit his head on the metal fixture on our coffee table-trunk. I was not home at the time...Chris got to deal with the blood. He is fine, though I wondered if he might need a stitch. I had some butterfly bandages and it seems to be healing fine now, though he might have a small scar.

This was the "card" Austin wrote for Bennett. A very sweet gesture...but not exactly a Hallmark greeting. :)

Austin also got a big owie...slammed his finger in the metal door in our outer hallway. He did it right before school and ended up coming home early from school b/c it was hurting. He is also fine now, but has a purple finger...hoping the nail will not fall off.

Totally random, but I found cheap, locally grown okra pods at our foreign import store this week. I knew Chris would be ecstatic...this is not an easily found food in Asia. I made my first attempt at fried okra...it was pretty good.

Lucy is still getting over her cold, but doing ok. Most of the time I still think she looks like Austin, but lately a little Bennett is creeping in. I especially think this picture of her looks more like Bennett as a baby...I think it is the cheeks and nose.

Well, gotta run. Austin's birthday party is tomorrow (Saturday) and Chris has 2 really busy weekends in a row, so lots to do. He wants to have a pirate party...thanks to Taobao (our Amazon.com) I was able to get some fun party things. Pictures to come!

Fall comes to me

Today I finally was able to stop a few minutes and notice the fall weather around me. Somehow fall has come while I have been busy feeding, diapering and it almost has gotten past me. Which would be such a shame since we actually have lots of colors on the trees this year- not always something you see inside the city that much. Today we went on a short family outing to the Forest Park, where there are actually a lot of trees. It was a quick trip- by the time we got everyone in the car (with two trips back to the house with things we forgot) and got there we had about an hour. But we had a picnic, Chris and Austin threw a mini football, Bennett found sticks and I found a isolated place to feed Lucy and watch. The only pictures from the park are on Chris' phone, so that may take me a few days to get on my computer.

But here are some more pictures...some silly boys and Lucy. She is really starting to wake up and notice things more. She is now very interested by the playgym and stares at it, especially at the mirror on the belly of the turtle. I guess that starts early for little (and big) girls, huh? Pray for Lucy, as she has a cold (as do the boys) and is rather pitiful. She has a stuffy nose and keeps looking at me like "What have you done to me?". Hoping it will pass quickly. I guess with 3 kids and one in preschool you just have to expect to have someone catching something in cold weather.

Shirt on your legs and pants on your head...what could be more entertaining and hilarious?

5 Weeks

Lucy is now 5 weeks! She and the boys all had good check ups last Monday. Lucy is doing well in the weight gain category- weighing 4 kilos (8.8 pounds) at one month and she grew 6 cm since birth. The boys both got a good report. Both are in the 15% for height...Bennett surprised me a little with that...but looking healthy. Everyone got shots- I was so thankful Chris was there too. Lucy is definitely starting to smile too. She seemed to have some real smiles around one month- technically too early, but for sure now she is smiling. So fun.

In not so fun news, our sickness strikes again. Lucy had a great night Thursday night- she slept from 11 pm to 5:30 am! Just as I was feeding her and thinking what an amazing night that was...Austin runs in our room with that "deer in the headlights" look. I said "Are you going to throw up?" and he ran into the bathroom and threw up...into the toilet, fortunately. He continued to throw up for the early morning. At 8 am Bennett woke up, did the same thing. Ran into our room, with that same look and actually made it about halfway into throwing up into the bathroom. So Friday was spent watching lots of videos on the couch and taking long naps. Today was better, though this stomach thing seems to follow with a runny nose for both boys. Again Lucy seems to be ok, but we will see.

We tried to get her smiling. We couldn't get a straight-on shot, but she really was smiling.

In the day or two the boys were healthy, we took some "bao bao" (hold) shots with the boys. They definitely love her and love to give kisses.

Bennett is loving her, though not loving that Mommy is pretty busy with her. The other day he was playing Legos and pretending these 2 giraffes were Mommy and Bennett. The Mommy giraffe kept saying "Just a minute Bennett. Just a minute". I have been saying that a lot lately. Poor guy. He is also hilarious these days. He calls upside down "ups my down". While he said this word correctly for most of his life, he suddenly has started calling excavators "sexcavators". No idea where that came from. Last week he and Chris went to church, while sick Austin stayed home with me. It was Family Sunday...meaning no Sunday school class. So Bennett was in the service and did great. But at the end in those 5 seconds of silence between the last Amen and the crowd getting up Bennett says in a loud voice "Now can we go to Starbucks Daddy?". It got lots of laughs. We have been talking about Africa a lot lately, since Charlotte and John are there. The other night at bedtime Bennett decided he picked the song "All Creatures of Africa" (usually All Creatures of our God and King) to sing. He is also testing limits and learning a lot about discipline (he is sleeping without Jimmy Doggie tonight).

Well, Lucy is down to bed so I better get there too.

Happy Halloween

Our neighbors Therese and Jim hosted a small but fabulous Halloween party last night. It was the perfect thing for our family- just four families involved, right next door and it was lots of fun. They went all out with a decorated house, a tunnel for the kids to enter into their house, "creepy" looking but yummy snacks. After they kids "trick or treated" to our four homes and we were back by 8 pm. Austin kept asking why you have to say trick or treat...the whole holiday is pretty foreign to the kids since it is not something you do here. I have always had ambivalent feelings about Halloween anyway, but this was the perfect way to celebrate.

Here is the whole crew...they were all so cute!

Here is my fireman, Thomas the Train engine and little Carpenter- Cardinal. Lucy slept the entire time.

The littlest Cardinal...her outfit came off of our "Austin Carpenter" build-a-bear that Austin made at last summer's Cardinal's game. It was more of a halter top on her, but it fit.

Snacks...fingers (shortbread with almonds) and eyeballs (peanut butter filled- delicious!)