Happy 4th Birthday Qi Qi Min

Some things in life are inevitable, like your children getting bigger. I wish I could just turn the hands of time and slow the process down but I can't so my little Peanut turned 4 today. Four? How can it be that this baby is 4?

Rose was excited beyond belief, we had to count down sleeps to this day and I of course failed to add in yesterdays nap and she woke up after it and yelled, "Am I 4 now?" That took some explaining. But this morning she woke up, a little later than usual because this ear infection is kicking her cute little bum and knew immediately that today was the day.

She started her day with breakfast and prizes and then I decided that she just wasn't well enough to go to school. That news made her so sad. She was going to have a party lunch and had hand picked and packed every single goody bag. I was the worst Mummy ever. Since Lily's school and Rosie's school are close after we dropped off Lily we shot over to her school to see her teacher before the rest of the class arrived. We made the decision to bring Rosie back at lunch time. That way she could have her cupcakes with her friends and hand deliver all of her goody bags. She was fine with that idea.

We went to Publix to get a few things and Rosie announced to anyone that would listen that is was her birthday. The produce manager heard and she left there with the biggest balloon bouquet I have ever seen. Driving with helium balloons is fun....not!

She was really rather shy when we got to school. Her teacher, the ever fabulous Ms. Ria gave her a gift that she loves. Only Ms. Ria can be so in tuned to her kids. All the kidlets sang happy birthday and Rosie was finally able to hand out her goody bags. It was time to leave then as she was fading fast.

After a quick nap we picked Lily up from school and the birthday fun started all over again. We ended the evening having Chinese food and she got to blow out her candles, again. She will be blowing them out again on Sunday when she has her party.

Many times today my mind wondered to China and thoughts of her birth family would stream into my head. I wonder if they remember what day today is? Do they think about her? I will never know but if they do think about her I hope they realise that the baby girl with the heart defect is now a happy and healthy 4 yr old living a wonderful life filled with happiness and love.

Happy birthday to our sweet little Peanut. You must have said 100 times today that is was your birthday and that you were 4. You really loved it. Each day we watch you grow and learn and it brings so much joy. Watching you blow out your candles and eat that one tiny piece of cake was such fun. I think that when you are bigger you will love cake and ice cream but for now I know that you would rather have nuts or strawberries instead, but Qi Qi, you just can't put candles in a bowl of pistachios and cake is a tradition.

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Rosie and her teacher

daddy and Rosie getting ready to blow
Rosie loves it when we are at school
Happy girl with her favourite teacher.
Ms. Lynn, the best teachers aide there is.

I just like this one! She is very proud of being 4.

Balloon bouquet
This one is huge

At dinner this evening. The scratch happened late this afternoon when a friend stopped by with her dog and the dog jumped up on Rosie...scared her silly.

A lack of party hats caused the girlies to improvise. If Lily knows the flash is going to go off she closes her eyes!
Ahh hah, another party hat sighting



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Who knew a taste of cake could taste so good...it's all fake, she hates cake!

oopsie, your hat is slipping.
Now icing is sort of OK but not that good

Gung Hay Fat Choy

Chinese New Year starts tomorrow but we chose to celebrate early for 2 reasons. The first, it is already tomorrow in China and more importantly, it's Rosie's birthday tomorrow.

Since we always have our park playdates on a Wednesday I just decided to turn it in to a CNY party here at the house. We bought some fortune cookies and then dipped them in melted chocolate and covered them in sprinkles. All the kids have enough to take to school with them tomorrow to share with their friends. They had lots of fun doing it and they got might chocolatey!

Getting started

Yum...chocolate


Goo Goo bought these outfits back from Macau last month. I love the edging on them it makes them stand out.
Goo Goo and Father Joe came over to wish Rosie a Happy Birthday for tomorrow and they gave her a musical card, she loved it.
I have such a bad migraine tonight, again, that I am ending this post here and will add to it tomorrow

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(yeesh I didn't even manage to put a period at the end of the last sentence, I needed to get to bed fast)
I saw this idea on another blog, not sure which and new immediately we had to do it. On that blog the fortune cookies were all perfect and the photos were amazing. Not so much on this blog, the kids did everything themselves and we ended up with chocolate and sprinkles everywhere.

Rosie ended up at the pediatrician today. She woke in the night with a fever and she only just had one that lasted for 4 days. We ummed and ahhed about taking her, good thing we did she has an ear infection and is on antibiotics for the first time ever. As you can see by the photos she doesn't feel ear pain apparently.

Identity Crisis

I think Lily was 4 when she painted and decorated this little birdhouse. It has been hanging on the fence for years now waiting for an occupant. It barely survived Wilma when she blew threw and sustained quite a bit of damage. Jacob put it back together as best he could because Lily was so sad.

Lily is now 8 and still we are waiting for a bird to move in. Today as I was in the kitchen I looked up and noticed something in her bird house. I dashed to the window and this is what I saw.

A lizard! Yes folks she now has an occupant in her birdhouse, an occupant who according to hubby, is having an identity crisis apparently.
Perhaps he thinks if he pretends to be a bird he won't get eaten by one.

The photo isn't very clear as we didn't want to get too close because that would scare him. About an hour later he was sunning himself on the roof.

King Mango Strut Parade.

A couple of weeks ago Lily bought a form home from school requesting permission to participate in a parade. It was not a school involved parade but a parade that her art teacher has been putting on for the past 25 years. It coincided with the Miami ING marathon which her P.E. teacher wanted her to participate in.

I said I would talk to Jacob but ultimately the final decision would be hers if Daddy was OK with it all. Daddy was fine with either and she chose the parade.

This morning at 10.30 we met down a side street with her teacher and other parents and kids. There was a huge VW car show going on and apparently this year the King Mango Parade was going to be a flash parade and the group was going to just start parading down the street. You can read about the parade here

Lily was part of the, "Next BP Oil Slick". She loved it. Even Rosie got in on the action as she was chosen to sport a sign that read, "I put the piano on the island". Perhaps by chance you have not heard about the grand piano that showed up on a sandbar in Biscayne Bay, in which case you can read about it here. ( the first search I did showed a paper from Ontario, which is why you may have heard about it because it has been all over the news with people claiming "they did it")

Jacob was asked to carry the sign along with another dad to introduce the oil slick and I pushed Rosie in her pushchair. I have never seen so many camera lenses and T.V news crews direct cameras at us before. If I saw them aiming at us I dodged and left Rosie in the spotlight.....it was her, after all, that did it! We had so much fun and both kids loved it. Jacob and Lily made the news this evening much to Lily's delight. Rosie and I dodged that one but were interviewed by the newspaper and I gave permission for her photo to be in it so tomorrow it might be her turn.

These ladies were form the South Miami Farmers Market and I loved their "corny" signs

Miss B.P. covered in oil and tar.
Little Barack Obama
Lily, centre, in her oil slick
The perp.

Jacob with Lily giving a goofy grin over the top of the sign

Meeting King Mango
A juggler
Getting the slick ready

About 20 minutes before we were due to leave I had this hairbrain idea to make a picnic that we could eat in a park, any park, somewhere, after the parade. That my friends proved to be a stellar idea. We ate at Kennedy Park in Coconut Grove and then walked down to the Bay. It was gorgeous, absolutely glorious in fact.

Lily by the bay

Silly girls. Look at the colour of the sky, is it not beautiful?
Way to much of a zoom for my little camera but this was the view during lunch
Freaky, that just looks like it hurts
Another view on our walk around the park

I kill all plants so I was amazed to see this little shrubby thing growing quite happily out of a piece of coral

Lily and Rosie were throwing stones into the water and then Lily found some coconuts...they made a bigger splash and got the biggest giggle out of Rosie
Waiting for Daddy to hand them some throwing stones.


It was a perfect day and the end to a perfect weekend. The last weekend I will ever have with a 3yr old child. Gulp.

House Of Sick

Not much going on around here that is blogworthy. I'm quite sure you don't want to know the details of Rosie's fever that lasted for days or the river full of snot that she has been producing since her fever broke. I can't see the point in blogging how she shared the crud with her sister, which I find ironic as she is not the best sharer in the world. I of course came down with it next, no fever, she only shared the ability to produce a river of snot with me but she shared the fever part with her dad. He probably will end up with the man flu....heaven help us all.

Since I cannot possibly jinx anything at all with this statement I will say in a loud voice...we don't get sick. We never catch colds, what is going on? I have had 2 since Christmas. The ironic part is I started taking vitamins, as per, Doctor Nasty Pant's, orders at the beginning of December and have been sick since then. I'm thinking it is better to not take supplements and just continue to eat well. I also started a much more rigorous workout schedule. Huh all the things that are meant to keep you healthy appear to be doing me in. LOL

If I am going to point the finger here I shall point it directly at Rosie, that kid has bionic snot! When I picked her up from nursery the other day I scooped her up and planted a big kiss on her face only to find out she had a runny nose and I kissed the schnoog. I placed her down gently (dropped her like a hot potato) and instantly purelled my mouth, including my tongue.....just in case. It didn't work so next time I will try Lys0ling my mouth or perhaps Clor0x!

The other evening, before the plague visited us, we went to a spaghetti dinner at Lily's school. It was a fun evening they had prizes for the kids and contests etc. The turn out was poor due to inclement weather that blew through just as it was about to start. As a thank you to all the kidlets that did show up the Principal gave them a homework pass. I'm not sure who was more thrilled about it, Lily or myself. Third grade homework is not for sissy's.

Here is a picture of us at dinner that night.

My Girls

Since we knew about three seconds after holding Lily (well Jacob did) that we would be adopting again I saved some of Lily's clothes, that were my favourites, to pass down to her sister.

Forgive the not so fetching photo. This is Lily at 19 months wearing an outfit from Nannis and Grandpa

Here is Rosie today, at 47 months wearing the same outfit.
The clothes are 18-24 months. Rosie sure is a tiny peanut.

This was rather fun to compare them in outfits I will have to make sure to take more photos when I know Rosie is in a hand-me-down.

Ha....I did it!

I grew up in the shadow of a very athletic older sister. Sally could play all sports and excelled at them. I on the other hand, not so much. Sally could fly over a vault in P.E. whereas I could crash into the side of it. Sally was a fast runner, me, not so much. Things changed by the time I became a teenager and I left school holding the title of "sports girl of the year". In fact my school took on my sisters school in a netball tournament and we beat them. They had never been defeated.....ever, I played that game!

There was one thing that I just could not do and those were the ropes in the gym. I swear they were at least 80 feet high and we were supposed to climb to the top of them. Firstly, and please excuse me, the ropes were shoved between your legs and you had to pull yourself up by using your arms, fireman style. Those ropes had been glued to the crotch of every single student in the schools history and they ended up being right in your face as you climbed.....ewww, that is disgusting! They were really nasty. I would grab on for dear life but could barely get off the ground. I have never had huge amounts of upper body strength. Try as I might, monkey bars have also always defeated me.

I have been really trying hard to get into better shape. I don't weigh very much and am pretty thin but that does not make me fit. I am extremely hyper and have tonnes of energy but again, that makes you skinny and not fit.

Today the girls and I were at the park and nobody else was there. I was playing on the swings, the slide and all sorts of other things with them, heck I even did a couple of cartwheels and a handstand or two but I stayed far away from those nasty monkey bars. Lily was hanging upside down by her knees and swinging herself along (much to my panic) and then flipping herself over and swinging from end to end with great ease.

Jokingly I said to her, "move over it is my turn". I have tried loads of times and fallen flat by the second bar which causes us to laugh hysterically. I grabbed hold and went for it. You can tell where this is going can't you?

I MADE IT! I finally did a set of monkey bars. Yay me! What I didn't know was that Lily had the camera and was frantically snapping photos of my grimacing groaning self!

Not very graceful but I never said I would grow old gracefully.

I can't believe I was staring at her and didn't realise she was taking photos. Must have been the concentration I was using to stay up!
I think I am whining here about how much it hurt my soft little hands.

My girly girl tomboy is always up a tree

Well if Lily can do it so can I, Mama.
I love how this shot turned out.
Do you know anyone that sits on a swing like this...my pretzel child.
This is how odd she looked from behind.


I am off to bed now so that I can think about what's next on my list....I can guarantee you it won't be those smelly ropes!