Videos from Birthday & Beijing

Two videos for you- Beijing and Finley's 1st birthday. Better late than never, right? I realize my posts have been a bit short recently. Give me another week, then I'll be finished with this semester's classes and I'll have time to write more and fill you in on what Finley is up to these days.

More Walking

Just to show how much Finley's walking has improved in a mere 2 days, check out this video... Amazing!

Walking

Here's a quick walking video for you!

Happy Birthday to Finley!

One year and one week ago, we were blessed with the birth of our precious Finley. Happy 1st birthday, Finley! Nate and I can't believe how quickly our baby has turned into a toddler!

We had a fun birthday party for Finley last Sunday at the school. It was supposed to be on the playground, but there was severe rain that afternoon, so we moved it into the gym. Here are some of the photos. I'm only including the ones of Finley or us, because this blog is not password protected and I'm not sure that everyone wants their photos on it. So if you want to see them all, you'll have to check out Facebook. There is also video, but I haven't had time to load it on the computer or edit it yet.

Working on the party favors: sugar cookies with lemon royal icing. Way too time consuming. Not sure what I was thinking.

The cake I made. Finley didn't get to eat it, though. I made him his own separate muffin/cupcake that was made with no sugar- just fruit, wheat flour, flax, baking soda and milk. Some of the other babies had the cupcakes, too.

The birthday boy, wearing his shirt from Aunt J & Uncle B.

Letting it all hang out with Daddy.

He looks so old standing there!

Trying out a dumpling.

Quick break from climbing on the mats to take a photo.

"Happy birthday to you..."

Finley got a little scared of the 40-50 people staring, singing, and taking photos.

But then he got excited!

Mommy and Daddy got to blow out the candle for surviving the first year of parenthood!

Finley tasted some of his special baby cupcake. He didn't eat it, just put his hands in it.

Cutting the cake

Catching a ride with Dad

Growth Stats & Cowboy Photos

Finley went in for his 12 month vaccinations yesterday and got measured and weighed for the first time in a while. He's currently topping the charts at about 31 inches tall (80th percentile) and 23 pounds (50th percentile)! Needless to say, the doctor was happy with his growth. Just as a reminder, when Finley was born he was about 20.5 inches and a little under 9 pounds. My, how this baby has grown!

Here are a few photos from our friends' birthday party a couple of weeks ago. The theme was cowboys and cowgirls. The children were given bandanas upon arrival. Finley's quickly turned into a drool-soaked bib!

Beijing, Part 1

We went to Beijing over Spring Break last week, and now we need a vacation from our vacation. We figured it was about time to go to Beijing since we've been living in HK for almost 3 years now. What people don't understand, however, is that it is not easy or cheap to go to mainland China, even though we have a HK ID. We have to get a visa (in advance) which is very expensive compared to any other country we've ever traveled to.

We really enjoyed seeing the history of Beijing, however it is definitely not somewhere we would consider living. Beijing was extremely crowded and much bigger than we expected. Somewhere around 22-25 million people live there. People also spoke way less English there than in HK, and you know there's no hope of us becoming fluent in Mandarin. On top of that, we went during the windy season, and there was lots of dirt and dust in the air, blowing in from Mongolia.

It was somewhat stressful having Finley with us, because people were so intrigued by him, and everyone wanted to take his photo or touch him. He was constantly pointed at, stared at, and talked about (though I couldn't understand what they were saying). People would point at him and say, "Angel!" (How they knew that particular word, I don't know.) Our tour guide to the Great Wall called him "Dumpling" the entire day. One afternoon, we stopped to feed Finley in a pedestrian street and sat down at a bench in a relatively uncrowded area. Within seconds, people started gathering to watch the spectacle of this amazingly pale, blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby eating. We ended up with a crowd of a good 15-20 people completely captivated by his eating. At that point, I gave up on trying to discourage people taking photos of him and just had to laugh at the situation.

All that said, we still enjoyed the trip and are definitely glad we went. How could we pass up the opportunity to visit such an important historical place via a 3 hour plane ride?

This is outside the entrance to the Forbidden City, where the emperors lived. (Tiananmen Square is right across the street.)

The next few photos are inside the Forbidden City.

One of the streets where we had lunch. The bright red lanterns are such a contrast to the grey city.

View from a pedestrian bridge over the street. There was usually way more traffic than this.

The rest of the photos are from the Summer Palace, where the emperors would go for a retreat from the city during summer.

We climbed up to the top of this tower.

Elaborate roof.

A rare thousand-handed Buddha inside the tower.

Beijing, Part 2

Here's the 2nd batch of photos from Beijing.

This is Finley's (early) birthday gift from my parents. I was blowing it up and he decided to join in and help. Well, he really just wanted an excuse to chew on it.

Playing in the indoor pool at our hotel.

Finley loves his birthday present! It was definitely his favorite part of the trip!

This is "snack street" where you can find all kinds of yummy creatures to eat. You pick out what you want and they'll fry it for you. The scorpions were still wiggling on their skewers, by the way. Very fresh.

Now, on to our photos from the Great Wall. This was definitely the part of the trip about which I was most excited. I did not anticipate how steep the climb would be! Just a little info- the Great Wall was begun in the 200's BC! Pretty amazing to be around something that old!

Finley has walked on the Great Wall at the mere age of 11 months. Impressive.

A nice tourist offered to take our photo.

Corn on the cob is a very popular snack in China. You can see tons of corn cobs here people have tossed down from the Great Wall.

This last photo, as you may have guessed, was at our apartment before the Beijing trip. Beautiful clouds that day. We will probably never have a view this good anywhere else we live.