"Joseph, can you say ...?"

Lar and I have been working a lot with Joseph to have him make and control his sounds.
"Joseph, can you say Ma Ma Ma Ma?"
"Joseph, can you say La La La La?"
"Joseph, can you say Moo Moo Moo Moo?"

You get the picture.

Abigail, ever the good big sister was just overheard saying
"Joseph, can you say Algorithm?"

The dynamic duo, in the split second Joseph realized that
he was mere inches from grass and plants and I was
just out of his reach to save him.  (It was a very quick picture!)

The Birth of a Broadway Baby!!

Super excited about the show

Last night Abigail got to enjoy her first Broadway show.  We did not make it all the way to the Great White Way, but the Lion King was at the Kennedy Center and we have had tickets since the day they came on sale.  (First Row Mezz: Best seats in any  house, I swear by it!)  In fact, the tickets went on sale the same time we accepted Joseph's file, so we had no idea when we would travel to China and wanted to guarantee that we would be in town for the show, we bought TWO sets of tickets:  one for the 1st week and one for the the last week of the run!!


For those of you who may now know, until Abigail entered our lives, we have had a slight Broadway obsession, seeing over 33 shows each in NYC, plus numerous traveling shows.  Abigail has put that on hold, but we were both over the moon last night to share this love of ours with her.


AND SHE DID AMAZINGLY!!  She was polite and rapt way past her bedtime!

Family pic (sans Joseph)
outside the Kennedy Center before the show

Abigail behaved better than many older children we saw there.  When we told her that people usually dress up for theatrical shows, she said that she wanted to wear her Chinese silks!  (We met a family outside the Kennedy Center with a now 14-year-old who was adopted long ago in Guangzhou and they delighted in seeing Abigail and her chosen outfit!)


Abigail now can correctly use the words "playbill" and "intermission" in a sentence.  She said she wants to see more Broadway shows, which, of course, warms the hearts of her theatrephile parents!  Her favorite part was when Mufasa died.  She wanted to stay to the end because she wanted to see the "human in a costume" who played Mufasa come back for a bow.  Her second favorite part was when Scar died.  She explained matter-of-factly that she loves when things die.  (Do we need to see a child psychologist with her?  There have been so many times that I have deeply missed my father-in-law and now if one of those times!)

"Look Mama!  I fold up!"

We absolutely cannot wait until she is 5 or 6 and we can take her to Times Square and catch a show in NYC and go to Pomme Frite on 2nd Avenue!!  

Oh my. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words.

Most relaxed kid.  Ever.

Seriously chilled out.

Junior Kindergarten "Graduation"

Abigail "graduated" from Junior Kindergarten today.  What I loved about the program was that they didn't pretend that it was something that it wasn't.  They didn't dress the kids up in gowns and cardboard hats and parade them around to Pomp and Circumstance.  The teacher said some wonderful things about "returning" the kids to us, a few pounds heavier, a few  inches taller, with a few letters and sounds in their minds and a few more social skills in their repertoire.  It made more than half of the room of parents and relatives tear up at least a little. It was very sweet, nostalgia-inducing stuff.

Then the kids sang some songs about things they learned ("I can sing and I can paint; I know to say not instead of ain't" and "I'm ready to learn to read and write; I learned to share and not to fight!").  Adorable!!

Abigail and her best friend, singing together
We hope they stay friends for 13 more years: the other girl
is SUCH a good kid and we love her so much!!!

One song that they sang was apparently a big secret (they were instructed not to practice it at home) called "The World Is A Rainbow" with some wonderful lyrics for children about acceptance and love.  ("Now you be you, and I'll be me; that's the way we're meant to be... The world is beautiful when we live in harmony.")  Super sweet, innocent, child-stuff and I got to live blissfully in that virtuous, wholesome world again for 30 or 40 minutes this evening.  

Sunday Snapshot: New Bike

With some gift card money we recently received, we bought a Cozy Coupe for Joseph, slide for Joseph, and Abigail got her first bike (with training wheels).  All she wants to do is ride it!!  (We do make her wear a helmet when she leaves the driveway so no criticism on that front.)

Pool's Open

Last year, our pool looked like this all summer:

(Larry can't believe I even
took a pic of this frog habitat)

I am usually the person who is the Cleaner around the house.  (Larry is the Takes Care of Icky Stuff and the Chef.)  But I just didn't care to learn to take care of the pool; it could have been torn down as far as I was concerned.  So Larry did his best and that was it.






Now, however, he has figured it out and I am SOOOO glad that we didn't tear it down.  Look at these happy faces.

Still too cold for me, but kids are impervious to cold
and Larry eventually got off of his tippy toes.

Here comes trouble!

Nom nom nom

Afraid of grass but fearless in the pool
Abigail is hanging onto his boat as a float.  It was pretty funny.

We are so happy she found her pool confidence last year.
Larry thinks he may be able to relax on a raft a little this summer!!

He thought it was fun when his sister shot him in the face.
It made him giggle.

See?  Happy happy kid!!

It was such a relaxed, fun afternoon.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

Joseph loves noodles.  Noodles and rice.  So, Larry is finding new ways to cook his favorite Asian staples to hide good food in or on or among them so that he can get some nutrition.

In China, and after we brought him home, many people thought he looked like a Buddha, with his rotund abdomen, but today, after a successful dinner of noodles with spinach, artichoke hearts, and mushrooms, we think the little tyke is more representative of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, not the Enlightened One!  But hey, he lives in an open-minded family.  We don't mind.