Saturday, November 11, 2006

Katie is doing so well, what a joy she is! Her personality is showing more each hour, and she fits in so perfectly with our family. All six of us fight over holding her, and she loves all of the attention. She doesn’t love the stroller so much, but why would she, when she has so many arms waiting to hold her?

Joe has found out most of Katie’s ticklish spots. She gets so excited when he starts making a “buzzing” noise, ‘cause she knows what’s coming next! He’s gotten some great belly laughs out of her, and, of course, those coveted smiles. By the way, Joe was carrying Katie up to the room this morning, and the difference in their sizes was incredible (worthy for a full length picture of the two of them). She doesn’t have a hope of reaching him in height, and that’s probably a good thing!

From the floppy baby of four days ago to a wiggly, standing girl…what a change in just a few days! She’s still not fond of solid foods, but we keep offering different things. We’re also adding some honey to her bottles, as we’ve been told that it helps keep things moving in her digestive system (we’ll see how/if it works!). (Postscript at 4:52pm: it worked! Thanks for the great tip, “Emily’s Parents.”)

Today we visited the Guangzhou YunTai Garden Park and what an amazing place it is! It’s the kind of place where you want to stop every 10 feet to take pictures. Because it’s a Saturday, the park was very crowded, and there were several bridal couples getting formal wedding portraits made. There were also two young women who were followed everywhere by a hoard of photographers – so we took pictures of the photographers taking pictures of one of the girl because it was so funny and because this young woman might be someone important!

I hope there will be another “free” day when we can return to YunTai Garden and it’s “Guangzhou Mosaiculture Exhibition” because we didn’t have enough time there today (postscript at 5:15: Joe says he doesn’t need to return to the park, that he saw everything and still had 40 minutes to wait for the rest of the group – I guess topiaries and beautiful gardens aren’t for everyone!).

In just a bit we will go across to the photo shop and have Katie’s visa photo taken and from there, we will walk to the Cow and Bridge Thai restaurant for dinner. We also have some serious shopping to do. I’ve been in most of the shops on the island, and have had very good excuses for never buying anything (I guess there’s more Dutch in me than I thought!).

We’re back from dinner now, and it was delicious. In many restaurants, you are served family style, and the food is put on large lazy susans in the middle of the table. That’s how it was at the Cow and Bridge. Katie tried carrots, broccoli, chips (what kind we’re not sure, but the consensus was garlicky fish/pork chips), white rice, orange chicken and beef. Of those, she really enjoyed the beef, but not much of anything else. Lest you freak out reading this, the beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the pieces were itty-bitty.

I mentioned before that Katie soothes herself by licking the back of her hand or wrist. She also does this when she’s getting too much stimulation or is really tired. At times, she reminds me of a kitten, mewing and smacking at her wrist. It’s cute, but it’s also sad to see, as I wonder how many times she had to soothe herself in the last 10 ½ months.

By the way, we found out that she’s getting another tooth. That brings the total to three (two on bottom, the new one on the top). Oh, and Grandma, she loves the blanket you crocheted for her. It’s with her whenever she’s sleeping in the crib, and she loves to rub her face on it.

Eric here---before dinner while Katie was getting her picture, Joe and I, and then Kegan and I, played Frisbee in the park. We drew lots of attention from passersby. I’m not sure if they aren’t familiar with Frisbees or just haven’t seen such exceptionally talented Frisbee tossers as us. Also while we played Frisbee, Kegan was asked by an elderly woman in high heals if she could play badminton with him. I guess he was pretty impressed with her skills.