Having Fun

On Sunday, Kathy & Dave took us to the Crab Pot for dinner. I had halibut and Eva ate a little of everything the adults ate. David and mom ordered the pot dinner, which entails a lot of seafood cooked together in the same pot and then dumped onto the table in a big pile that they eat out of. David said it was good seafood and a lot of it.

On Monday morning, we went to the Seattle aquarium:

We all enjoyed the aquarium greatly! They have an exhibit which holds 120,000 gallons of water and fills an entire wall. The glass wall is 12 inches thick. Eva very much enjoyed the diver getting in it. She liked the entire aquarium, except she wasn't about to touch the starfish.

The old folks all wanted a nap in the afternoon. David and Dave went out for sushi and the rest of us had dinner elsewhere. Eva fell asleep in mid chew, so we thought coming home for a nap was a good idea. However, Eva and I didn't do much napping, despite her falling asleep during lunch. For dinner, we went out to the Sky Needle and ate dinner while the room rotated. Eva fell asleep during dinner.

The challenge was actually getting Eva to wear a dress for the dinner. It helped that we visited Kathy's work earlier in the day...it helped a lot, and so my little "boy" decided she would wear a dress, as long as it was a "boy dress." We assured her it was.

View from our dinner table.

When we were at the locks, Eva decided that she wanted to ride in a boat, so on Tuesday (Today) we took the Ferry over to a local island, then we rode it back. Eva says she's had enough of boat riding and she doesn't need to do it again.

Aunt Kathy entertained Eva on the ferry ride back by letting her watch a Curious George video from U-tube on her phone.

After the boat (ferry ride) we went to Pike's market and bought some fish and fruit.

We went to Alki beach after Pike's market. Alki beach is the furthest north stretch of sand beach of its length. Eva made a crab house and filled it with bits and pieces of dead crabs, like shells, legs and pinchers. She called it her crab house and was sad when she had to leave it. She believes that a crab will crawl onto the beach and see it, and all the pieces of its dead friends, and will fill at home. Thus it will want to move in and enjoy its new little house. Kathy said that it looked more like a crab altar with sacrificed pieces of dead crab.

For dinner we cooked up the halibut and made blackberry cobbler. It has been a good trip thus far. Eva has enjoyed herself immensely and did not want to leave the beach. Tomorrow we head down for Oregon. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday we are staying at the beach in Seaside. The beach there is a little more sand and I am looking forward to it.

Eva has been having a lot of fun, however, she has been homesick a few times. I didn't expect that. Her routine is messed up and perhaps that has been a bit of a stress on her.

Trip to Seattle

We left for Aunt Kathy's house at 1:00 a.m. on Friday. The train was very late, we didn't board until 9:45. We spent a long time waiting at the train station, and Eva was so excited and couldn't wait. She was very dramatic about it. Although, she waved as hard as she could at the Engineers as the train pulled up...they waved back at her. Then a whole bunch of other people waved too. Eva promoted all of the stewards and porters and train workers to Engineer while on the train. If they wore an uniform and they were on the train, they were engineers. She loved the train ride, and didn't once complain about being bored. She watched movies, read books, played with her sticker book, played with her toys, pretended to be a train engineer, looked outside, colored pictures, talked to mommy, talked to daddy, talked to mommy some more, visited granny and talked to granny, and then talked to daddy some and finally, talked to mommy. She insisted on wearing her sunglasses in the tunnels...loved the tunnels by the way. Okay, she simply loved the train.

She also really likes Aunt Kathy's house. She says it is pretty. She very much likes Uncle David's car; she likes Uncle David's squirrels; she likes Uncle David's curious George; she likes Uncle David's games; she likes Uncle David. Eva thinks he is cool.

So today, we all got up at 4:11 a.m. (time change puts us 2 hours earlier than home), and after breakfast we went to the International district. There was the most amazing bookstore I've ever seen with many books written in both English and Chinese and Korean and Japanese, etc... We bought some really cool books, Eva picked out a magnetic book about Kung Fu Panda, we shopped at the Asian market and ate at the indoor food street. Then we walked around the area and happened upon a street show of martial arts exhibition and a lion dance that was being put on in honor of a local politicians visit. It was cool, and despite the loud drums and firecrackers, Eva fell asleep during the lion dance. We visited a tea shop and did some more walking around. We would have stayed longer, but Eva is heavy and had to be taken to the car early on. We felt sorry for David sitting in the car with her, so we left and went to the Locks.

At the Locks we saw some boats passing through, which was really cool. And the king salmon are running up the fish ladder at the time. Eva had a really good time...she's been enjoying everything. However, she has decided that she must go on a boat, so I think we're going to take the ferry tomorrow, someplace so that she can go on a boat. For dinner tonight, David got to go out for seafood... Kathy and Dave took us to The Crab Pot: They cook it all up and pour it on the table. I didn't take part of it though, because I still haven't got to the place that I want to eat seafood. But, I did enjoy my halibut a lot.

Eva is very much enjoying our vacation. I would write more, but it is past my bedtime. I've been up for 19 and a half hours now and I need sleep.

Summer fun

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted. I don't think that's possible. I'm sure that I have been in a time warp bubble and it's really only been a couple of days...we'll go with that one.

Eva and I have been having a lot of fun spending time together this summer. Albeit, I no longer have a little girl, she is now a boy. She insists vehemently that she is a boy, will only wear boy clothes (unless I insist otherwise) and is nagging me to cut her hair like BaBa's. I guess that at school she even lines up with the boys when they tell the boys to...I am very much hoping she outgrows this soon. My best guess as to the reason for it is that there are mostly boys at daycare and she wants to fit in. Or, she wants to be like David or she's just decided she can do whatever she wants to, even declaring becoming a boy.

Eva did get her hair cut...it's a cute little bob. Since she doesn't let me comb it, I had to get it cut short. And after much insistance on her part that she and I needed to have the same hair color, I even died my hair black to make her happy. She absolutely loves it.

We had a good conversation a week ago about her birth family. She brought it up again. I enjoy talking to her about it, but my heart hurt when she asked me, regarding her birth mom, "Who is she?" and I had to tell her I didn't know. I wish I could answer all her questions for her. She asked me if I saw her birth mommy when I was in China. I told her that I have never seen her, but she has when she was very young. So then she asked me if she waved at her. I told her probably not, but that maybe she smiled at her. Eva decided that she did in fact wave at her and informed me so. I didn't argue.

Eva is constantly having "good ideas." Yesterday she told me that we should have two bath tubs right beside each other, then mommy could use one and take a bath at the same time that Eva was taking a bath. I told her that sounded like fun, and she replied, "Yes, it is a good idea." Eva happens to think all of her ideas are really good ones. She'll start a conversation with, "Mommy, I have a good idea..." and then out something comes. I absolutely love her good ideas, and tell her so for each and every one of them.

She's been going to vacation bible school from 10:00 - 12:30 every day this week. Last night she asked me a bunch of questions about God. I should have been expecting them. During the day yesterday, she told me she wanted to hear some Jesus music. So, I got out one of my cd's and she put it in. She liked it, but it wasn't really what she wanted to hear. So, at church last night, they had a program based on the vacation bible school. Eva refused to participate in the program because she wanted to be with me... she was very upset that I left her with the teachers prior to the program starting "Don't give me to someone else mommy!" and when they walked out, she spotted me and made a bee-line straight for me. So, she didn't participate. In any case, as soon as the music started, she looked at me and said, "This is the Jesus music I want." So, I was able to purchase a cd for her. When we got home she insisted on playing it. Instructed me and David on the proper way to jump and clap to it, and then started asking me some questions. One of the songs has the lyrics "There's power in the blood of Jesus." So, Eva asked me "Why there power in the mud?" I corrected her that it said "blood" and that Jesus gave his blood for us so that we might have life and that is the power of the blood. So she asked me "Why there power in Jesus' nose?" I asked her what she meant and she said "Jesus have a bloody nose and give it to us?" I realized the misunderstanding and told her that no, Jesus is God's son and He died for us so that we might live forever and that is how he shed his blood, not through a bloody nose. So she asked me, "Who is God?" I told her that God is the Creator and that He made everything and everyone. So she asked me "Does God have a bloody nose too?" I explained it to her again, and I thought she understood it, until she was on her way to bed and I heard her telling David that she gets bloody noses like Jesus. I'll try again another day.

In the meantime, we have experienced some firsts this past month that are worth mentioning. Eva got her own drink of water all by herself for the first time. She can unbuckle her car seat as well as buckle it and she took her very first bath by herself of her on volition (where she asked to take it.) She also had her 3 year well-ness check up (It's a little tardy) and she is 39 1/2 inches tall and weighed 35 lbs on that day. Some days she weighs 36 lbs. In any case, she is in the 90th percentile for caucasian kids on height and the 80th precentile for caucasian kids on weight.

We had our families with children from China meeting last weekend at the lake. That was a LOT of fun. Eva was very afraid of the water at first and didn't want to go deeper than her ankles. By the time we left, she was walking in water that went up to her chest and exclaiming that she was very brave. I thought so too. It was really a lot of fun to spend time in the water with her.

We're going to be leaving in a couple of weeks to Seattle for a vacation to visit Aunt Kathy. I am really looking forward to spending some time on the beach. We're taking the train and Eva is very much excited about that. I will post pictures of our trip. Also I'll try to remember to put up a picture of Eva's new hair cut. Until then, I'm very busy being a mom.

Dim Sum

As part of our adoption day celebration, we took Eva up to Chinatown in Winnepeg just for lunch. We enjoyed our Dim Sum lunch... the waitresses all fawned over Eva. They told us that she is very beautiful. We already knew that.

pictures

Eva can write her initials. Her "E's" still have extra lines, but I think she does pretty good for just having turned 3.

I made this guitar for Eva... she absolutely loved it. She called it her "Better guitar."