Getting settled in

Chinese New Year Party

Artists at work

Crayons keep her busy when I'm cooking or washing dishes

We're coming 'round here. Today we managed to sleep in until 5:30 am and are slowly working our way out of living like nocturnal creatures. I will be so glad when I finally wake up to see daylight instead of darkness. Both girls crash early, and I'm wiped out by 7 pm. Katie Mei falls asleep anytime we ride in the car.

Katie Mei is shining more and more each day. She's finally patting the cats and say "guh" whenever she's around them. This is actually her baby pronunciation for the Chinese word for dog (guo), but it's close enough for me for now. At least she's petting them instead of screaming and trembling around them, so I'll let her call them whatever she wants. She saw a little bear on her diaper today and called it "guh", too.

She is following me around a lot, but is starting to be content to stay where she is if Merrilee is in the room with her. Merrilee has been a HUGE help to me, and I cannot fathom how I managed Merrilee at 14 months alone. Merrilee used to follow me everywhere and beg for me to pick her up. She'd cry if I walked into the next room even if she could still see me.

Fortunately Katie Mei doesn't cry much, but when she does get mad she's got a temper that brings down the house. Neither one of our other two had this kind of temper, so it's an interesting first for me. I'm glad we don't see it too often. A couple days ago I put her in her crib for naptime and she went berserk. We had tried before, but didn't let her cry too long. I'm afraid of letting her get too worked up. But I've noticed she's starting to take advantage of that and starts to pretend cry whenever she doesn't get her way. So I held out and made her stay in her crib. After about 10 minutes she gave in and fell asleep. The next day I again put her in her crib and followed the same procedure of lying her back down whenever she stood up. It took only about two minutes of crying for her to realize we were repeating the previous day's experiment, so she just gave up the fight and put her head on her pillow and went to sleep. I'm hoping that means she's a quick learner or at least realizes who's in charge here.

Yesterday it snowed and Merrilee went outside to play. I decided to let Katie Mei go out for a little while just to experience it for a bit. We don't get snow often enough to let an opportunity pass by. She seemed accepting of it, and we even got a couple smiles when she was pulled in the sled. Merrilee loves being the big sister and getting to pull the sled.

We'll see what today holds. Without a routine yet, each day is a surprise.

Love,

Petrie