Elise is 6 Months Old!

Little miss Elise is 6 months old!  Here are some photos I took to commemorate the occasion.  Such a sweet girl.  We thank God for her every day!  

At 6 months old, Elise is:

• 15 lbs, which is 25th percentile (the doctor wants us to fatten her up a bit)
• 26.5 inches long, which is 75th percentile
• Blue-eyed with dark blonde hair
• Crawling!  Already!
• Really good at grabbing whatever she wants and putting it to her mouth
• Currently toothless, but doing some serious drooling and gnawing
• Loving her bath time (she gets excited even when we start undressing her for a bath)
• Sleeping through the night much of the time (hallelujah!)
• Has tried eating rice cereal, carrots, squash, green beans, and pears 
• Able to "razz", which she unfortunately does while eating
• Making lots of sounds like ba, da, ga, etc.
• Active, energetic, and pretty even-keeled 

Easter

A little Easter fun.  Trying to get these photos posted quickly before we're off to Thailand in an hour!  Finley kept calling the Easter bunny "the rabbit" this year.  So cute!

Also coming soon: Elise's 6 month photos and stats...but that might have to wait until we're back in HK!

Funny Finley

A few cute Finley sayings for your entertainment:

• We usually all say a blessing together before dinner, but Finley wasn't in the mood to say it with us tonight.  His remarks: "I didn't say the bless you."
• It was barely sprinkling as we were walking to the grocery store.  Finley had on a rain jacket so his top half was dry, but he was wearing shorts and his legs were getting a little wet.  He declared, "Mommy, my legs are raining!"
• We were going to have an Easter egg hunt and lunch with friends after church yesterday, so naturally Finley wanted to just skip church and go straight to the egg hunt.  His comment: "I don't want to go to Monday school!  I want to go to the egg hunt right now!"  (And he then proceeded to call it "Monday school" about three more times. :)

And guess what sweet baby girl is 6 months old today!!  A separate post on that coming soon...

Miscellaneous March

Here's a little assortment of photos and videos for you from the past week.  First, a video of Elise trying some of her first solid foods.  She's just recently started, so she's only had brown rice cereal and carrots so far.  She seems interested in food, but we have a difficult time keeping her hands out of her mouth when we try to feed her!  She is also getting up on all 4's now and on her way to crawling soon.  Click here to see!

Here are a couple of photos from after church last Sunday.  Finley was entertaining Elise.  She already looks up to her big brother!

And lastly, a few (poor quality) photos from the HKIS fundraising dinner dance.  Generous parents sponsored Nate's and my tickets.  Nate has already been to a few events since Elise was born, but I felt like this was my debut back into the real world...at least for one night!  We had a blast dancing all evening, and barely took time to stop for photos.  

Long Lost CNY Photos

Okay, so these photos are only a month late being posted...oops.  They were on Nate's phone and I totally forgot about them!

The first photos are from dim sum lunch with HKIS folks for Chinese New Year.  As you can see, Finley was too busy tearing into the xiao long bao to smile for a photo.  It was all we could do to keep the child from climbing up onto the table to help himself to the entire bamboo steamer full of them.

In front of the restaurant, with the dragon.  We actually have a children's book about this dragon and a little mouse, called Chopsticks.

Nice morning at the playground, enjoying the swings.

Spring is in the Air

The weather over the past couple of weeks has been absolutely gorgeous, and we can't get enough of the sunshine!  Spring is in the air!

With all this amazing weather, we've been spending some time on the roof-- playing, eating, and attempting to grow a few plants.  (Admittedly, we know nothing about gardening and have no gardening supplies, so we're happy if anything survives.)  Finley's personal favorite is our little tomato plant.  He refuses to eat any tomatoes...unless they're from the tomato plant.  So guess who has eaten every single one of the 10 or so tomatoes he's harvested?  That's right, Finley!  He gets so excited to check the plant and pick and eat the ripe tomatoes.  And Nate and I are so excited anytime he eats fresh fruits or veggies, so this plant makes us all happy!

Finley's eating is getting more and more adventurous with time.  He will now actually eat pasta with sauce, curry chicken, broccoli soup, muffins with veggies in them, and last night he was all over the feta cheese in our bulgar salad.  We just never know what he'll eat and what he won't, but we encourage him to at least taste most foods.

We've also enjoyed a couple of brief beach trips this past week.  The beach is such a short walk from our apartment (about a football field away) that we can just go for an hour when we have time.

So what's going on with Elise these days?  Well, we're savoring her final weeks of being mostly immobile.  She can turn herself around in circles, push herself backward, and occasionally go forward a  bit by using her toes to propel herself...but she's definitely not crawling yet.  Life will get significantly more difficult when she is, but it will be exciting as every milestone is.  I'm just soaking up Elise's baby-ness, and trying to enjoy every sweet moment.  Here's a video of our 5-month-old little bug.  Click here.

A Return to Cooking

For the first few months after Elise was born, I hardly had any time to cook.  I love cooking, and I love trying new recipes.  It's my creative outlet.  Now that Elise is taking naps in her crib (instead of on me) and learning to put herself to sleep (praise God!), Finley and I have a little time to do some cooking.  Often cooking with Finley is just trying to keep him helping me instead of eating all the ingredients before I can get them combined and baked, but at least he's interested and trying new foods (like flour, haha).

Here was a little project last weekend when Nate was busy working...homemade whole wheat soft pretzels!  They turned out pretty good for a first attempt and were a nice (and healthy) surprise snack for Nate when he got home.  Doesn't it look rustic and yummy?