Sophia hiding

Lately Sophia goes to her play room area and backs herself into the corner and just stands there, thinking she is hiding. Here I am 'discovering' her.

Goodies from the US

A package arrived the other day with goodies from Poppy and CC. It was filled with all kinds of good stuff. So good in fact that a rat decided to help himself to two packs of muffin mix while the package was still at the post office. We were sad, but glad that everything else was fine. Thanks so much poppy and cc for sending Sophia her toys (this was their birthday gift to her, to send her toys).


The muffin mix was everywhere, can you tell, thats it on the bottom. It was a spectacle at the post office as they shook white powder out of the box, while I was assuring them it was a cake mix. At that point I did not know that a rat was the culprit so I was trying to get them to stop shaking it all out so I could salvage it, then they assured me I would not want to eat it!


Here, we call 'stuff' dongxi (dongshee), it is such a good word that we have replaced it for the english.

Also in the packages were some incredibly sweet cards from granddaddy Johnson, and Grandma Pinnie (Sophia's great-grandmother). Thank you so much!!!

can you tell she loved this card! Thanks Granddaddy!


As a side note, David and I love Indian food, we both have spent time in India and our first discussion ever was all about India. A month ago I found these two boxes of Indian food, they just happen to be our two favorite dishes, Dal makhani and Palak Paneer. I found these at the import store, no they were not cheap but they were worth it. We waited for the perfect time to eat them--Right on the down hill stretch of our language review sprint (we have just a few days left). It was delicious. We were commenting how glad we were we didn't live in India or we would be so fat!

Shoe fetish

She is becoming a real lady, lover of shoes and all. In the past few days she has started to really try to put on my shoes. The custom here is to take your shoes off right as you enter the house, so she always sees us take shoes on and off right by the door. She first started to try my shoes on from there (the door area) and it was a little unstable (my shoes are about an inch and a half or so high). She ingeniously decided to pick them up and take them in between the ottoman and the couch so she could balance better while she did this, and it worked. David says, very humbly: 'she's a hair shy of genius.' :)

Check her out:


a first try, a little unstable


much better

ah ha! I did it.

more cuteness

this is her look of contemplation turned to sheer determination, our goal as parents is to guide this determination wisely, so she will use it wisely, not foolishly. What a task!

Weary but progressing

We are exhausted. We are in the middle of a four week intensive language review/study. A series of wonderful events (Sophia's birth, Stateside, etc), has made our Mandarin somewhat slack, so we decided to go full steam and basically start over with our intensive method that works wonders. It has been so helpful, to review tones, hone in vocabulary, etc. But it takes its toll on the brain. I will post a daily schedule later. I have never done this with a toddler, so every minute of my day is taken, until about now (9pm). We will not go at this pace forever, but slowly taper off. David is busy with about a hundred different things, half of which are languages :), I am not sure how he is staying sane, but he is. On Sunday, we did take a break and had a family outing to the stadium, where we were able to watch our city's men's soccer team play another city's team. David inquired about playing (these guys were okay, but David is way better), they said he could join them and would give him a call, we will see if that happens, hopefully it will.

And what you have been waiting for....pics of our girly girl. She really makes us laugh so many times a day. She can throw a fit too, but she really seems to be a jokester, who loves to laugh and hide and talk, talk, talk. She has been fighting a cold, and now has a cough, so for a few days she was clingy, she would just lay on my chest and cuddle, I cherished this time because I know tomorrow she will be sixteen. She is so much fun, here is why....


The Peanut butter snack I dread, can you see why?


she kept her hat and shades on for a long time, it was an incredibly bright day


Hey daddy, I can see myself in your shades. I think we kinda look alike.


this pic is not great, but she looks like such a little girl, where is the time going?


(Sorry about the shadows) Sophia wooing her way to some free watermelon (which she did receive no matter our protests, along with two bananas)

Quakes Quakes go away...

The night after the earthquake we experienced another tremor, we ran downstairs again (we had our 'earthquake' bag ready), but people on the first floor hadn't felt it, our across the hall neighbors and others had. We stayed out for a little while but not long. This is actually helping us bond with our neighbors! The following night David got a call from his friend who lives in a village not far from here saying that an official had come out there and told them that an earthquake was going to happen that night and they were worried about the structure of the village homes. He called us to make sure we knew and would be safe. This freaked us (me) out, for three nights in a row, come on! We thought we had missed an announcement or something. We called a few people, talked to some neighbors, no one had heard this, we felt much better, moved Sophia back into our room and went to sleep (sort of).

Since then we have learned various things of what to do in an earthquake, like don't run down stairs. There are people here in our hospital from the town where it hit, mostly broken bones. Thousands of people have been affected, we are trying to see if there is any way we can help, we will see.

earthquake link

since this may not be making news over there here is a link to an article about the earthquake.

Earthquake

Last night was one of the scariest nights we have had. Ever. It was about 8:30 pm, K and I were studying together in our office while David was trying to catch the track and field relays. I felt the bed shake and thought it was K (to find out later she thought is was me), then it happened again. Then the entire room shook and things rattled. We immediately jumped up, ran out, David ready to go too, we grabbed Sophia and ran down the four flights of stairs, our neighbors doing the same. Everyone gathered around outside away from the taller buildings. We stayed out there for an hour or so. This was our earthquake. We heard things here and there that night and many things were confirmed today. The Epicenter was in a town about 3.5 hours over some mountains from us. The earthquake there registered a 5.9 on the richter scale. We heard some small houses had fallen, and that three people had died (in the other town). An official came from the provincial capital today to assess the situation. We also heard that the border town had an official evacuation between midnight and two a.m.

We are so thankful for so many things. We are resting in our Father's love and goodness, seeing life as a vapor more and more these days.
We moved Sophia's bed into our room, and I think she is the only one that slept. When we grabbed her (she had been in bed an hour), she did wonderful, no tears, no fussing, Just hanging out with us, while we waited for our legs to stop shaking so we could assess what to do next.
Anyway, that was our exciting, and thankfully safe night. hope yours was much less eventful.