Feet Redux

We are back from our three weeks in Connecticut.

Ellie didn't like sand or grass on her feet, but she continues to think they might be a part of a balanced meal. Sometimes she even puts both feet up at dinner.

We didn't get any photos of the sand, but it looked alot like the grass experience, only with a beige background.

Proud Sister

Ellie helped Alex celebrate his 5th grade graduation. She dressed up in her baby finest and looked so beautiful next to her handsome graduate and her baseball brother!

Little Feet

Ellie loves to sit in her high chair and tease us by putting her feet up. We've tried to explain that it isn't polite to have your feet up on the table, even when you aren't yet walking on them, and even when they are really more like food than transportation. But she doesn't listen. She smiles mischievously and puts the back up on her high chair tray.

Alex's Ellie haiku

I am a baby,
I'm trying to go to sleep,
warm hand on shoulder
eyes now closing sleepily
FINALLY, asleep

Teeth

Leslie: Have you read the Series of Unfortunate Events? Little Sunny Baudelaire is a baby and her attribute is her teeth, which come in handy in crucial situations. Ellie is like Sunny. When we got her, she had two teeth on top and two on the bottom. I let her bite my finger once, thinking she needed something to soothe tender gums. She bit hard enough that I thought she'd drawn blood. She didn't want to soothe gums, she wanted to try out teeth!

Now she's got two more on top. She bites everything. Our chair has bite marks. Phil's belt is a favorite chew-toy. She bites on a cup so that it cups her lip and nose, with no hands. She bites on the spoon and bobs it up and down with her teeth (again no hands). She's bitten every rail on her crib and on our bed. She scorns soft baby toys, opting for anything hard instead. She sucks her thumb and sometimes so hard that her sharp teeth created a blister on her thumb. We tried to get her to use a pacifier so that her blister could heal. She wasn't so interested, so I thought perhaps if she saw the boys with one, she'd get the idea. Alex gamely volunteerd for binky-duty. Ellie got the idea -- but decided that she prefered the hard plastic end. So when Alex had it in his mouth, she'd grab the other side and pull! If she gets ahold of paper, she rips it to shreds with her teeth. Obliging baby, she's figured out that when she's got paper in her mouth and I am coming purposefully towards her, it is time to offer the wet mass up to me, so she positions it on the tip of her tongue and gives it to me that way.

Earthquake

Leslie: A lot of people have asked me about the earthquake in China. This link to a US government map shows the area that was affected. http://www.earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/pager/events/us/2008ryan/index.html It is sort of lozenge-shaped, and Chongqing, the capital of Ellie's province, is in the "moderate" area. I've not heard of any damage in Chongqing, though they felt the shaking. We were on the 30th floor of a hotel, and one wall of our room was glass, so had we been there, it would have been pretty frightening. But no damage. Ellie's orphanage is to the southeast, up in the mountains. Someone on the Xiushan yahoo group found out that they didn't even feel the shaking, and knew about it only because they lost phone service.

Had Chongqing been closer to the epicenter, I can't even imagine what the death toll would have been. It is an enormous sprawling city, but with the density of New York. Many buildings are 20 or 30 stories. They are lucky it hit where it did, and that the area was lozenge shaped. Enough families have lost their one child.

Naturally, there are orphanages in the areas that have been hit. We don't know any details, but our adoption agency is helping with relief efforts: www.chinesechildren.org .

Ellie at the Zoo

Yesterday Ellie had her first trip to the zoo. She seemed to like the animals, and even looked where Jeremiah was pointing!