Asian boy Shirley Temple

I have the cutest boy known to man. This boy is seriously an Asian boy Shirley Temple. He's got the curls and the cute factor and he has a boy version of her absolutely adorable voice and giggle. Jamie, forgive me if you're reading this later when you're a teen or a man, and you are all boy in manner and actions, but somehow, you constantly make me think you're like Shirley Temple! Everyone else, forgive me for indulging in gushing about how adorable and cute my son is, lol. I hope I haven't already written about this as I have a sieve for memory, but lately Jamie is eating more vegetables and fruits. YeeeeHAWWWWWW!! Been a long time coming. He still isn't open to a ton of variety, but I'll take what we have! Part of what got him into it was this whole role play thing we do as good knights vs bad knights trying to steal the castle. Jamie always is the good knight of course. I make a galloping sound and pretend to be a bad knight and say, " I am here to take the castle good knight!" And he says, " No!" and puts his arms up and trembles in an 'I am so strong' kind of way. Then I say, " Uh oh. You look strong. Are you strong?" He answers that he is strong and I'll say, " Oh no. You haven't been eating your vegetables and fruits, have you? Green beans (or whatever veg is on his plate) make you super strong!" He says, " Yes, me eat green bean!" then I shout, " Run away! I shall run away. You are too strong! I will not take your castle!" Then Jamie has started saying lately, " It's okay bad knight. Me nice knight. Come for dinner." then I thank him and pretend we're eating dinner together at the castle. This single role playing act has worked now for over two months nearly every single night! He goes from saying no after one green bean to then wanting to be the one to eat the most! (He is very competative by nature.) He has eaten full servings of veg or of fruit nearly every night! If your toddlers don't like veg and are imaginative maybe this game will work for you. I don't know how long it'll last but at least he's getting used to flavors and textures. I cannot wait to put up pictures or videos. We will try to buy a new camera cord if we can't locate it. We cannot find it anywhere!

33 months going on 5 today...

Maybe I'm wrong, but what Jamie did a couple of times tonight sounded to me more like something 5 year olds come up with. He lied on what seemed like a 5 year old level. (Heh heh, not something I"m bragging about obviously, but I did have to leave the room b/c I started laughing.)

Last night, Jamie got in trouble for deliberately throwing a flashlight when he was angry at me for telling him to do something. Oh man, I was so not happy about that. Besides getting a time out for it I told him that he may not play with the flashlight today or tomorrow and for a few more days after that b/c he didn't take good care of it so I can't trust him with it. I was very clear and made sure he understood. Flash foward to today. A few minutes ago Jamie asked to have all of the lights turned off and asked for the flashlight. I reminded him about last night, "Remember Jamie, what did you do with the flashlight last night?" " Me threw flashlight." " Yes, that's right, Jamie. We don't throw flashlights. That wasn't good. Remember I told you that you would not be allowed to play with the flashlight yesterday or today because of that?" Jamie replied with, " Mommy, me no hear good. Me no hear you." I'm thinking, wow. That sounds like the 5 year olds I used to teach! I had to walk out of the room b/c I was starting to laugh.

Then a few minutes later we sat down for dinner. He had his favorite, shrimp and fish sticks as part of his dinner. We were telling him he needed to eat some orange if he wanted dessert or he couldn't have any. He ate two little pieces and asked for dessert. I told him he'd need to eat a lot more orange before he would be allowed to have dessert after dinner. He replied, " Mommy, too much orange, me choke. Me no eat too much orange. Me choke." He was trying to get me to buy into the idea that he could only handle eating one or two pieces total of orange. ;-) And believe me, he knew I didn't mean all at once b/c I am *always* telling him not to put too much in at once or he could choke.

I'd like to add some pictures but we can't find our camera cable again. Ugh!! We do have some recent pics to add that are cute!

Jamie just told me he wants to say hi to his Pop Pop on here.

Jamie says to Pop Pop, " Pop Pop. Bobadah. Me pet ownah (owner.)"

Jamie is now playing Duck Duck Goose with daddy and his stuffed bear. By the way, we brought him to a bounce house w/ a friend the other day and he LOVES jumping!! He's a regular jumping bean! I told him that and he said, " Mommy, what dat? Jumping bean?" After I explained about the worm inside the bean he later told daddy about the worm in the jumping bean. I asked Jamie if he was the worm in the bean. He said, " Yep!!"

Good luck, mommy!

Jamie is on a ' good luck' kick lately. He wished our city good luck on a drive the other day with his Mimi (D's mom) and yesterday he had David and I in stitches b/c as David was getting ready to take Jamie to a playground and leave the house, I said, " Goodbye and have fun. Mommy is going to stay here and clean the house." Jamie replied, " Bye bye, mommy. Good luck!" If you knew how messy we tend to be you'd be laughing at Jamie wishing me luck on the cleaning. I had a good laugh.

Last week was the beginning of Chinese New Year, as Jamie calls it, " Bunny!" the year of the rabbit. We went out for Chinese dinner with my parents and had Jamie dressed in some beautiful clothing that Mimi picked up in Hong Kong last year (nice silk outfit w/ gold dragons.) My parents came along for the dinner and David and Pop Pop were playing games with Jamie while we ate. David was starting to the play the 'got your nose' game and then Pop Pop said to Jamie, " Got your ear!" and pretended to take his ear. Jamie said, " No, Pot Pot (pop pop), too hard ear." Then he demonstrated trying to pull his ear off/tugging. He said again, " Too hard! No work!" He was so cute tugging on his ear saying it doesn't work and it's too hard. ;-)

On Chinese New Year, family members give children red envelopes with money inside. We all gave some dollar bills to Jamie this one, one per envelope. I asked him what he wanted to buy with his new year money and he said, " White choc choc momahley (money.) Buy white choc choc momahley." So today I took him to buy his own bag of Lindt white chocolate balls. He chose the variety then handed the cashier his three dollars. He seemed to enjoy doing it all himself.
I don't have any pictures to add yet b/c we've had some technical difficulties w/ taking pictures (haven't since Christmas basically) but we'll get it up and going soon again.

Christmas snow! Ho ho ho!

Ack! I remembered to video a lot of Christmas morning and day events but I completely forgot to take actual snap shots. Oops. Sorry! Well David forgot too so at least I'm not alone. I was enjoying the events and didn't want to have to miss anything to take pictures. So these are the day after and a cute one from yesterday at the end.

We had snow this Christmas! What fun! Jamie's second snow event where we could sled this winter. He is getting to be a pro. Well except for the fact that he rocketed down the hill straight into a bush. He he. Yeah. The second time he went by himself David and I wised up and David stood where the sled should stop to prevent that from happening again. We were joking that the social worker would just love being there that moment when our son careened into the bush. ( You reading, W?) ;-) Thankfully he was laughing the whole time.

Jamie adores the new play food he got for Christmas from his cousin. He especially likes to pretend to cook hotdogs (there are a lot of plastic hot dogs in the package for some reason) and Jamie's mom mom (my mother) told me that the other day he was even placing plastic hotdog buns on top of the lid to 'steam' (he watches me put them over the pot of boiling water to steam the buns on a cake cooling rack while the hotdogs cook.)

Jamie's language is really coming along from where it was. Yesterday he asked for more pretzels and actually said pretzel! Up til now it's been peh peh. He is growing up so fast. He has always been a chatterbox. It's nice to be able to understand even more of it. He is also really developing imaginative play so much more extensively now. One of his favorite things is to have David or anyone else make his stuffed animals come to life and talk to him and play with him. This is a nightly activity at our house with his stuffed dog GoGo and his stuffed cat. Mandy, if you're reading this, Jamie just adores that orange striped Ikea kitty you sent him. That cat and his stuffed dog are his constant companions when he's playing at home. He's playing with them right now as a matter of fact.

Jamie is enjoying ballet right now (winging his bent leg out behind him for a split second) and loves to pretend to do monster truck ballet with his monster trucks. " Moh moh truck...balllaaaay" he says. What an adorable age he is getting to now. He seems to be becoming more reasonable than he's been so far, thank God. He's usually quite reasonable for a 2.5 year old!

Pop Pop likes to play a game with Jamie where he pretends to steal 'Ham'. Ham is the name Jamie gave to his blanket, I think I've mentioned before. Jamie likes the game sometimes but then becomes fixated on whether Pop Pop might steal ham and he says, " No Pot Pot Haaaam." Pop Pop came up with a solution. He brought out a towel at his house and showed Jamie and pretended that it was his own blanket named pork chop. It is a riot to hear Jamie saying, " No Pot pot Ham. Pot Pot powk chot!"

For a few weeks leading up to Christmas Jamie was often saying, " Ho ho ho! Meh meh Kih Kih!"

I'm sure there are many more things I could write but that's going to be it for now.

A few amusing things Jamie said recently

There are so many funny things that Jamie says and does and I find I forget them as time goes on since I don't write them down. (I haven't journaled in years.)

On Thanksgiving morning as Jamie prepared to watch the much anticipated parade on tv, I went in the living room to see the highchair in there in front of the tv (at a good distance.) I figured David had brought it in for Jamie to sit in and eat breakfast in while he watched the parade but he said, " No, I didn't." Jamie said, "Me!" very proudly. He had dragged the chair in and he insisted he wanted to sit in the highchair to watch the parade. Okay...so we let him. He sat slack-jawed, forgetting to eat the breakfast in front of him as the parade started. I don't think he even so much as blinked. ;-) When the parade show cut to a commercial and I fast forwarded past the commercial (we had dvr'd the first 15 min of the parade so we could fast forward through at least some of the commercials) I accidentally forwarded a bit past the last commercial and into where it was showing an aerial view of central park. Jamie immediately said, " No mommy! Back!" and was so serious and gesturing with his hand in a backwards motion, essentially telling me, " Hey mom, don't leave a second out of the parade. Can't you see you just fast forwarded too far? Sheesh!" Then a few minutes later, while there was a marching band playing, David started talking, asking Jamie if he remembered the time that...(I forget what he was asking him) and Jamie actually cut him off by doing the quiet gesture with finger pointed on lips and told David, "No talk, Daddy." Jamie's brows were knit with seriousness. It was so hysterical how serious he was. He didn't want to hear David wax nostalgic about some fond memory he shared with Jamie. Nope. He is a little man with his definite priorities!

Tonight we let him watch some Bob the Builder, one of his favorites on tv, and I was excitedly talking to David about something kind of loudly, even though both of us were sitting there with Jamie in the living room. Jamie turned and did the serious quiet thing w/ his finger over his lips and told me, " Quiet mommy. Lou (loud)!" Oops. Sorry, Jamie! lol.

Recently David was trying to get Jamie to stop whining (unfortunately something Jamie specializes in even though we don't put up w/ it) by saying, " I hear somebody whining." Jamie enthusiastically pointed to himself and said, " Me!!" lol!

We have a kitten photo card that if you pull a tab causes the cat mouth to open and it sings meow meow meow meow to the Happy Birthday tune. It is an adorable card and Jamie is smitten with it. He finds it as adorable as I do! The other day he picked it up and pulled it to start the song meowing and he leaned over and kissed the open mouth of the cat. It was so precious! Then he started kissing the cat ears and cheek, etc. That kitten card is simply adorable. Then a couple of days later David pretended to be the cat singing the birthday song and told Jamie to pull his hand to start the song. Jamie did that and bent down and kissed David's hand. :-D

Jamie was so precious today. It snowed a little today so Jamie got to really experience the snow with us. What a great time we had! He enjoyed putting snow balls that we made into a little stream of water in front of our driveway and watching them turn yellowish from the water that was trapped under fallen leaf debris (tell me that is why it was yellow!) And best of all, he LOVED sledding down a hill for the first time! What fun that was watching him discover.

Thanksgiving. BOOM!!! BOOM!!!

For the couple of weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, any time Jamie heard anyone (even in the grocery store) say the word Thanksgiving he would rouse himself to hollaring, " Boom! Boom!!" and marching around while appearing to clap imaginary cymbals together. Jamie was born to be a marching band leader, apparently. He has found his calling in life. That or trash truck driver. Jamie adores marching bands and daily (many times daily) acts out being a band leader with us marching behind him playing imaginary or real toy drums, flute, tuba or trombone and cymbals. He does not grow weary of this, I'm telling you. Just come over and see!

Jamie could simply not wait for the parades coming on tv on Thanksgiving day! Yeah Yeah, daddy, the pilgrims....BOOM BOOM!!! Thank you Jesus for....BOOM BOOM!!

I didn't take many Thanksgiving day photos but here is one of him enjoying the finger 'hat' olive. He didn't care for the taste so it became pulverized olive on a napkin shortly afterwards.

Wonderful friends and a cool connection!

We had a wonderful opportunity that is rather rare for China adoptive families. After meeting another adoptive mom online whose son is also from the same orphanage at the same time my son was there (which in itself is a gift just having these connections online), we got to go and spend a 3 day weekend with them in their city a week ago. It was simply wonderful! Thank you so much, Elizabeth for having us!

What a blessing for us both and what a future cool connection for our boys--neither of us has any info about birth history/families so the boys will grow up w/ this connection to each other--having been at the same place at the same time as little babies and young toddlers. Their son came into the orphanage only about 2.5 months before our son did. They're just 2 months 3 weeks apart with little Will being older. They got their son just 2 weeks before we got Jamie. We found out the boys were taken care of at the orphanage by different nannies and by comparing our pictures with each other no kids are overlapping in the background in the photos so they were in different groups at the orphanage, but it is so cool they shared that commonality and they can continue to be connected! We hope to see our new friends 1-2 times a year (if you'll have us back up by your place we thought it was one of our most enjoyable vacations! How about next fall?)

We drove up one day and spent the night at a, as Jamie would call it, teh tell (hotel as we would say.) I loved him saying teh tell over and over. He was delighted to have that experience with us but it was hard for him to sleep at night w/ our snoring. Oops, lol. Poor boy. He had a great time anyway. Will has 3 siblings aged 7 and under (and a couple of older sibs in their 20's.) It was so cool to have Jamie with the four other kids all under 7 playing together for 3 days. They had a blast! David got right in the fray---he entertained the kids and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Elizabeth. Elizabeth had some great outings planned that the kids loved. There was a great apple cider mill & farm that was having their annual fall festival type of thing where kids and parents can go through corn mazes, and small hay bale mazes for the little ones. Lots of things to do including hay rides, a large slide down a hill lined w/ hay on burlap bags, etc. We all had a great time and I loved getting to know my new friends. Man, I wish we all lived near each other b/c I love you guys and Jamie is still smiling when he sees Will's picture! We hope to see each other each year and keep this connection for the boys as they grow.

What cute kids, eh? By the way, Will is so smart & so laid back and easy to please (kind of Jamie's opposite on the laid back quiet and easy to please part, lol.) I couldn't get enough of watching our two adorable boys together. Will taught himself the whole ABC alphabet song just by listening to his 4 year old sister Ana! He is really something!