Friday, June 19th

Today I awoke really missing your brothers and sister because we have had no internet since Wednesday morning. None.  They haven't seen us together by FaceTime yet! We leave for our plane ride to GuangZhou on Saturday. Guangzhou should have perfectly working Internet... YYYAAAYYYYY. Today we had planned to go to the Shaolin Temple, which is home of King Fu, but we decided to stay at the hotel and play. When you have many distractions, you don't look in our eyes as much or have much interactions like at the hotel, so we chose to stay here. We only got to swim on Monday when we got you because the hotel decided to drain the pool for maintenance after that day! Such a bummer!!!!  It is such a good bonding tool for us. Skin to skin contact, you always face me and look at me, and you drown me by splashing, so you're laughing the whole time. You will love Nana JO and Pop Daniel's pool!!!!! We also have a river day planned at Aunt Lauren and Uncle Lee's in mid-July and a lake day at Uncle Jason's and aunt Lory's with church in a few weeks after getting home. We can't wait! We WILL be spending lots and lots of time at home for awhile, but we need to do some things at places to give a healthy balance for you.

You love going next door to play with Sammy and Ben. They are a HOOT just like you. It's funny the bonds we have formed with many people in our group. We are like one family. We will always stay in touch and have plans for a few of us to meet when back home! 

Gum and make up are your go-to fun things. You have at least three pieces in your mouth at all times and Mama and Baba do too because you won't take no for an answer on feeding it to us.  I pretty much look like a freak here. You apply bronzer all over my face and then it won't scrub off perfectly. Orange, orange, orange. 

  First thing on the Walmart list for home is play makeup!

Today you chose to wear a dress from your foster home and a pair of panty hose. HOT!  Whatever you choose is what we go with. You fixed your own pig tails today! I tried, but you are super independent. You will let me do many things for you though, so that is good!

You also had to have the blue flower clip in as well as the veil. Haha! You have learned another couple of phrases today. You love to say "Good Morning" and "that is cool"!!! It melts me. We had a lazy day of playing, watching tv and packing to head get on your first airplane ride to go to GuangZhou tomorrow! Yipee!!!! We are excited to get to the next leg of our trip. 

You keep hitting me and pushing me away so I started calling you "Bruce Lee". You have wiped off every kiss and grunted. Tonight we took you to get ice cream. When I handed you the cone of mango ice cream you said again with big eyes "For me"??? Melted me once again. We ate the best dinner. It was actually a Japanese restaurant. You ordered the spiciest thing on the menu. I kept pointing to the peppers and you said "yes". It was a shrimp and noodle dish . You LOVED it. I got the tomato and cheese soup with udon noodles.

It.was.delicious.  It satisfied my craving for homemade veggie soup. :) we drank mango juice and kumquat juice which was very nice. :) we headed back to the hotel to pack and take baths. You love water!!!!!  At bedtime, as usual, you pushed me away and got into Baba's bed. We all laughed until we cried at you tickling Baba and giving him a wedgie. Your fingers are the most ticklish things on earth. Then, as we were settling down, you climbed over Baba to get out of his bed and climbed into mine. Melted.  You fell asleep immediately. When you awoke in the morning, you forgot to play the "hate game" and threw your arm over me for a hug and snuggle. My heart exploded! What a way to start our Saturday! 

                     Love, 

                            ️Mommy