I am so very grateful for our church and all the outreach we do in our community. From the KIDS HOPE USA program to prison ministry we are out there showing love to our neighbors. On the flip side of that we have parties like this which are a chance for our sweet little church family to celebrate together. This family Valentine’s Party is called Heart to Heart and it was such a nice time.
The band playing after dinner.
The kids dancing.
It was way too loud for the girls so they moved over to the kids tables to play with the stickers.
Then they decided to play with Daddy.
Stupid Cupid was in the house reading his very silly Valentine’s messages. This made everyone laugh, especially the children. Then he handed out bags of Hershey Kisses to all the children. We love how much fun Pastor Darwin has with the kids.
It’s amazing to us that it’s been 1 year since we adopted Amelie in Yinchuan, China.
Our first family photo.
Amelie’s swearing in day shortly before we left China.
Amelie has come so far in the last year that she hardly seems like the sad little toddler we met one year ago. She has grown 10.5 pounds and grown 4.75″ in the last year. Yes, you read that right. In China she was wearing 18 month footie jammies – last night she wore 4T footie jammies to bed. Now she is lean and strong and does everything in her power to keep up with Nadia. She doesn’t let her hands slow her down one bit and really I don’t even think of it as a special need. Amelie is very smart. In so many ways she was like a 12 month old the day we got her, but she has grown by leaps and bounds in every way. Now some quick stats about Amelie that I don’t want to forget.
She sucks her thumb when she goes to sleep. This is a vast improvement over her sucking her thumb 90% of the time when we got her.
She loves food. She still cries over food a lot, but instead of every meal every day it’s more like once every couple of days.
After 11 months with us she finally told me at a meal that she was full. It was startling since I didn’t think she would ever say that.
She loves sweets, especially chocolate. But eggs are her favorite food. Someone asked her that over the weekend and she said, “eggs!” right away.
She is a snuggle bug.
She loves music – any kind of music.
She loves to color and play dough.
She loves “choo choo trains”
For 7 solid months, every time we drove past a car dealership she would yell “balloon” (or at least her variation of it)
Now she obsesses over when we pass bodies of water or playgrounds and asks, “go? go?”
We see her smile so much now and she is even starting to make jokes.
She asks me everyday to do “cool cool” (school) so I have a set of toddler activities I pull out for her and she feels very important and says, “big guurrrlll”
She asks Mike everyday to do “woo back” which is a phrase she made up that involves being thrown up in the air and flipped. She would let Mike do this until his arms fell off.
She LOVES to be outside. And in fact asks to go outside constantly – rain, shine, day or night.
Books are her favorite toy. She will say, “ree ree ree” to anyone who will listen while trying to get a book in their hands so they can read to her.
She is stubborn and tenacious and feisty. And some days that really wears Mommy out 🙂
Click on the photo to see album
This was a couple weeks after we got home – she is thinking of giving me a smile.
April 3, 2011 – Amelie’s baptism day.
April 6th – about to have surgery.
The cast is off! Look at those fingers set free.
First trip to the zoo.
Mother’s Day 2011.
Banana themed 2nd birthday.
First trip to the beach.
4th of July.
Water table fun for hours.
First Halloween.
First Christmas and all the fun that comes with that time of year.
After getting her lizard “Wonder Colors” for her birthday I knew the next unit study for us to do would be “Goofy Gecko” which we bought from the Amanda Bennett site. Earlier in the week I did a separate post on our field trip to the zoo. Here is a break down of the days:
Day 1: What is a Gecko?
Day 2: Getting to know Geckos.
Day 3: Where are the Geckos?
Day 4: The Science of Geckos
Day 5: Cool things about Geckos
We learned so many cool facts about Geckos. The videos were really cute and both girls loved them. Each day featured a certain Gecko that we learned about in detail and then the child is supposed to draw them. Nadia was really creative and hers were really cute. My favorite of the 5 Geckos was the crested gecko. They are so cute and COOL! If you want to see a large variety, go to JB’s Cresties. A fun fact is that the Crested Gecko was thought to be extinct until they were re-discovered in 1994. Nadia’s favorite was the Web Footed Gecko.
We were able to get a lot of great books about Gecko’s and other reptiles at the library. And we found out that our Green Anole “Wonder Colors” is actually the smallest iguana in the world. Cool, huh?
Here is Nadia’s completed lapbook. What a fun study this was! Next up is a Unit Study on Valentine’s Day!
