Some thoughts and updates on our family. Well,... we made the front page of our newspaper, thanks to a good friend who follows our blog. It cracked me up. Front page... ha ha. I have to admit, I about died when I heard it was the front page. Remember our dragon? My friend really liked the dragon and informed the newspaper of our visitor in our frontyard. THey came out and took pictures while Erin was home alone. SHe never answered the door because all she saw was some man with a dark briefcase coming up to the door. She knew not to answer. Then she saw him taking pictures of the dragon and put two and two together but still didn't answer the door. The next morning I got a message on our answering machine that the photographer wanted to take a picture of our family with the dragon. By the time I had called him back, he and the editor had decided to run it as is. My kids think the Panda was much better and wish that one had been in the paper instead. They crack me up.

Yesterday, SAm did a career shadowing of a geneticist in Cleveland. THe little ones and SAm and I headed out at 5:30 yesteday mornign for a full day. We dropped him of at 8:30 and began to figure out the rest of our day. We spent most of it at the Great Lakes Science Center. THe little ones loved playing there. Once we finally picked Sam up (3:30) we headed home, knowing we had 2 band concerts ahead of us. Sam and Jacob had concerts. I asked the kids if they wanted to come with me to the concerts or stay home with the girls. Elizabeth said she wanted to come with me and naturally, Ri followed her and said the same. I knew the best thing for both of them was to stay home, so I told them that it was fine to come with me, but they would have to sit still. Then I chuckled because I said "sit still" and Elizabeth proceeded to explain to Ri.... "Ri, we haf be quiet, O-tay?". I couldn't believe she made an interpretation of my words. Cracked me up! Ri's response?... "O-tay".

They are doing very well. Ri is growing like crazy. He is now only 7 ounces shy of Elizabeth. He is our little chunck-a-monk. It is so fun to have watched him put on the weight. He weighs 31.3 ounces. When we brought him home from China, he weighed 22 pounds. On February 21st, he will have been our son for 9 months! Oh how thankful I am that God chose us to be his family!

A little bit about our son... he is ALL boy! He is the biggest tease I have ever seen with his sister. He knows what will make her scream and he loves doing it... ALL DAY LONG! I am doing much better at dealing with that. For the longest time, I just got mad. Now that my sanity seems to have returned, it kind of cracks me up to see how he thinks. He isn't doing it to be mean... he just likes her response. Now she is the one getting disciplined because her responses are just not good. He looks at her with the ornery twinkle in his eye and she knows what might happen or at least what he is thinking and she screams as if her life is about to end. Other then that particular situation between the two, they play absolutely wonderfully together. Ri mimicks anything and everything she does. Luckily she is a pretty good teacher. It is important to Elizabeth to follow my rules, so she is often correcting Ri on her own. (she's a little mommy... well.. maybe a little bossy too). More often then not, he excepts her correction and does the right thing.

Ri is a great thinker. He can solve puzzles pretty easily, put together things that are messed up or broken (like toys). He seems to love fixing a problem. We were at the speech therapist a few weeks ago and he and Elizabeth were playing a game. They had to match the color and put it in place. The way the pieces were aligned, it is very difficult for kids that age to put them exactly lined with the page. All kids just lay the piece on the right color and it usually is upside down with the piece. Ri instantly placed it perfectly aligned with the color shape. The therapist was absolutely shocked. She said in all her years, she has never had a kid do it. I wathced Elizabeth, and sure enough.. when she laid it down, she did not place it aligned with the color. Ri did everytime. WHen Elizabeth saw Ri doing what he was doing, she started to fix hers. But each time she did it, her first instinct was to just lay it down. I guess you would have to see it to understand what i am talking about, but the bottom line is.. he is very advanced in that type of skill.

As for eating.. he is the best of all my kids. He'll eat most anything I give him, though vegetables are still somewhat of a struggle. He is potty trained (and often dry it the mornings). He will finally finish his meds for latent TB this month! Yeah! 9 months of meds is no fun. He is running much better. Yesterday I even thought his run looked like a normal child's run. It was such a joy to seem his feet moving so smoothly in a run. He is our only natural cleaner. Yeah - finally a neater kid:)

Well, I need to get going. Just wanted to update a little on our baby boy.