Two years ago today we received our referral for Catherine.  What an amazing ride this has been.  It’s so hard to believe that it was years ago and not months ago.  It seems like yesterday we got these two cute little photos of her.  The first thing that I noticed was her hair.  She has soooooo much of it!  And I love it because I have so much hair too.  We were just so excited to finally see her photos and read her reports.  From the moment we received her …

Chinese New Year is only two weeks away and somehow, someway we have a CNY event to go to nearly every weekend until the end of February.  Our Families with Children From China group has an amazing group of families on the north side of Houston.  The group is so big that they have broken into smaller groups for smaller events.  Because we are friends with several families on that side of town, we have participated with them more this year.  Today the festivities were kicked off with a late …

We are babysitting John’s mother’s cat Rosie.  This cat about drives me insane because she talks non-stop (kind of like Catherine), amongst other things.  Anyway, John brought her to the house today in her crate and so she was not a happy camper.  Catherine however was only too happy to try and befriend Rosie.  I swear this child is going to be a vet when she grows up.  Anyway, here is one of her many exchanges she had while we let Rosie settle for awhile in her crate.  It’s hard …

Catherine turned 32 months today.  Will she really be 3 in 4 months??  When I was putting together the photo montage for last year, I could really see that Catherine made the big leap from babyhood to a full blown toddler.  She grew by leaps and bounds and her development has astounded me.  I wish more than anything I had taken a child development class while we were waiting for Catherine.  I felt like I would have been better prepared to handle the roller coaster ride of changes she went …

A family member recently had a baby and as I looked through the photos of the happy parents with their little, tiny newborn either laying on their chests or swaddled in a sling, I couldn’t help but get a little choked up thinking about Catherine at that age.  I felt a bit envious of the new baby, all of the cuddles and snuggles he was getting.  I felt sad thinking that this baby’s cries were answered with a bottle, a coo, or a pat on the back while Catherine’s cries …

Our dear, sweet, smiley daughter turned 30 months old yesterday.  She’s 2 1/2 and very much the typical toddler.  She is 35 inches tall and weighs 30 pounds, although I swear she weighs more than that!  Here are some of the things she is doing:

She is obsessed with Chinese lion/dragons and pretends that she is one by beating on a drum.  My parents entertain her on Skype by dangling a Chinese dragon that they bought in Chinatown.
There are three girls from her pre-preschool class that she loves to ‘talk’ about.  …

We bought a 37 pound pumpkin at the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago.  The pumpkin, by the way, is 7 pounds heavier than Catherine.  We all love a big pumpkin but Catherine was looking for one more her size, so I when we made a trip to the grocery store we picked out one that was about 1 pound.  She is in love with it and will carry it around the house.  One night while I was cooking dinner she decided she would take it for a ride …

Catherine turned 29 months on the 5th and she has been developing by leaps and bounds over the last couple of months, even more so over the past couple of weeks.  Every day I am amazed by what comes out of her mouth.  She is such a parrot.  She has been mimicking us for a long time but now that her communication is getting better, she loves to copy everything we say.  John and I will be having a conversation and she will repeat the conversation as we are talking.  …

We have had a pretty laid back summer and while I am ready for the heat to go away, I am a little sad to see the summer of 2009 fade away.  We spent quite a bit of time playing in the water but didn’t swim at the pool as much as I had hoped we would.  Catherine is such a water baby that I had figured we would have spent nearly every day at the pool.  It didn’t work out that way but we still managed to make some …

Today was Catherine’s first day of her first year of preschool.  We have been looking forward to this day for a few months now.  She has been home with us full time since we brought her home last March.  I think John and I were a little nervous because we weren’t sure how she was going to do being gone from us for 5 hours in a strange place.  Plus, she was going to have to take a nap there so I wasn’t sure how that was going to …

I now interrupt my scheduled blogging break to bring to you a few pictures and a 27 month update on Catherine.
The summer is flying by and in just a couple of short weeks, Catherine will be starting her first year of pre-school.  I know she is going to love it!  But it’s just crazy to realize how fast this summer flew by!
Today Catherine turned 27 months old.  I wanted to take a few pictures so that we can always remember this day and how wonderful our summer has been.  …

The Annual Texas A&M Municipal Fire School is going on this week.  It’s kicked off by a big expo at the Reed Arena which features all kinds of fire service companies and organizations.  The arena floor if filled with fire trucks of all kinds.  When we down on the floor we let Catherine loose and it became a fire truck playground.  She loved climbing up and down the stairs, sitting in the driver’s seats and pressing the buttons, climbing in the compartments, and running around and around.  It was fun …