Linnea and I made apple crisp from some of the apples that we picked at the orchard. She was proud of the result and happy to be able to share with Uncle Tim and Aunt Julie when they stopped by for a visit. We all enjoyed the apple treat and then had fun playing together for a while. Alyssa loves to grab hands and walk back and forth, sort of swaying back and forth with her feet on the ground.

A local garden store had a pumpkin patch party recently and Alyssa and I took a “field trip” there on a recent sunny day. She enjoyed bowling with small pumpkins, doing the bean bag toss and throwing velcro balls at a target. She has quite an arm on her and, although she seems more right-handed, she enjoys throwing with either hand.  They also gave away balloons, popcorn and cider. I was able to get a few good pictures of her at several “photo stops” that they had set up around the area. I’m not sure why she had her mouth open so wide on one of the pictures below but I thought it was cute.

Once again it has been a while since my last post. It has gotten harder to get time on the computer lately as Alyssa wants to hit the keyboard or screen any time I use the computer when she is around. It’s challenging just to keep up with my email much less find “extra” time to post to this blog. Also, as I’ve mentioned before, I often fall asleep when she goes to bed since I lay down with her to help her drift off. I figure that I’d better take advantage of this while I can since I’ll be going back to work before too long and I won’t have the option of going to sleep as I’ll likely have work to complete after the girls are in bed.

On to the actual post!

We’ve been enjoying the fall weather and the changing colors of the season. Last week we visited an apple orchard with our playgroup and the kids had a blast picking apples, running up and down the rows of trees, sampling apples, playing on the haystack and seeing the assorted animals (goats, turkeys, a miniature horse, etc.). I took a lot of pictures, especially of Alyssa since she doesn’t readily smile for pictures on demand so I have to try to catch her expressions as they naturally happen. Linnea did a great job of showing Alyssa how to pick apples. We split a bag of apples with the other families in the group so that each of the kids (there were 9 there that night) could pick a few apples to bring home. They also each got to eat an apple while we were at the orchard. Alyssa nibbled at her apple for about an hour and wouldn’t let me take the core away from her when she had eaten most of the “good” part of the apple. When she was done all that was left was the stem, which she handed to me. Some of the kids were rather concerned that she had eaten the seeds but I figured that they just added to the roughage.

Alyssa continues to take everything in stride. She has had a lot of new experiences and we try not to overwhelm her but she seems up for just about anything. This week our playgroup went to an indoor playground and she loved running around, climbing up the stairs and going down the slides. There were quite a few kids in a rather small area but she completely held her own and ignored the little bumps that she got throughout the evening. I was very pleased to see that she would check in with me occasionally, sometimes just giving a glance and smile my way and sometimes running over to me. I feel that the attachment/bonding process is still going well but I’m guessing that there will be some challenges when I go back to work and she starts daycare.

When I look back at referral pictures and photos of Alyssa from the first few days after we met her I can tell how much she has changed in such a short time. I’ve read a lot of blogs that talk about how a child seems so right for the particular family that they were matched with and we certainly feel this with Alyssa. I’m not sure what led the CCAA to match her with our family but it seems like a perfect fit. We love her to bits!

Her personality has really come out and our outgoing little girl is doing more and more every day. She continues to babble quite a bit, especially when we are at home. She says the following words/phrases: mama, mom, baba, dada, uh oh, wow, jie jie, nana, yeah.

Things she currently loves to do:

- Go up and down stairs/hills/slides/ladders- She will do this for as long as we let her. I’m usually ready to move on after only two or three times up and down stairs or a hill. She went up and down a slide at the park this past weekend at least forty times! She is fairly fearless so we have to watch out to make sure that she doesn’t climb too high.

-Swing!- She would also be happy to swing for what seems like forever. She smiles and giggles quite a bit at the start and then can look quite serious or even dazed. Several times I’ve made the mistake of thinking she looked like she was ready to stop but got screamed at when I tried to take her out of the swing. She will sometimes make the “more” sign when she is already swinging. This indicates that she wants me to stop her and then start her swinging again. She seems to like it when I pull the swing forward and count before releasing her to swing again….lots of giggles!

-Reprimand her sister- Several times when we have been out somewhere I’ve called over to Linnea to let her know that we will be leaving soon (or giving her some other information). Alyssa will then run over near Linnea and emphatically babble off a long string of “words” that sound like “ba ba ba ba ba ba mom ba ba ba ba” to me. It can go on for a while and it seems clear that she is telling Linnea to listen to me or to do something that I’ve told her to do.

-Play with blocks or anything that she can stack, connect or put in and out of containers- She is good at playing with du-plo blocks and can put them together or take them apart fairly easily. She has a long attention span and can play with one thing for quite a while. Putting things in and out of containers can be tons of fun for her and she is good at helping to put things away when it’s time to clean up.

-Eat like a “big kid”- She wants to use her spoon, fork or pair of chopsticks all by herself even though it is hard for her to get the food to stay put on the way to her mouth. We continue to help her eat by using another spoon, fork or pair of chopsticks that is under our control. She wants to drink from a regular cup although she just slams down whatever is in the cup. This usually results in most of the contents going down the front of her. I’ve compromised by letting her us a cup sometimes but I only pour a small mouthful in at a time. I even got her to drink some whole white milk today by letting her drink it herself with a cup!

-Wave and give “high fives” or “fist bumps”- Alyssa is very social and will wave at just about anyone. She will sometimes continue to wave until they see her and wave back. If she is comfortable she will give friends “high fives” which delights Linnea’s friends and others that she meets. One of my friends taught her how to bump fists last week so that is her latest interaction. After her first few attempts we taught her that it isn’t actually hitting the other person with your fist but just gently touching your fist to theirs. [Linnea was also a big "greeter" at this age!]

-Hug her new puppy- This is somewhat of a breakthrough as she didn’t give hugs to stuffed animals or dolls until fairly recently. We helped to teach her how to hug and kiss instead of throwing the toys to the ground. When her Nana gave her a new stuffed puppy last week she immediately cradled it, kissed it and carried it around for a while (before throwing it to the ground ). She seems to be growing more attached to the puppy and holds it now for longer amounts of time. We are hoping that she will use it (or something similar) as a comfort item when she goes to daycare.

Well, to start with, Linnea now has three fewer teeth than she had a couple of weeks ago. The Tooth Fairy may need to take out a loan if she keeps losing them at this rate

She lost her first tooth several months ago and one of her top front teeth had been wobbly/wiggly since then so we thought that would be the next tooth to go. We were surprised when she came home from school one day and she had lost another of her bottom front teeth. A couple of days later she came home with a big gap in the top of her smile and a large tooth in a plastic tooth necklace. The wiggly tooth kept getting in her way so she finally fiddled with it enough that it was almost out and she gave it one extra yank. Two days later she started wiggling her other top front tooth and yanked that one out as well. We suspect that it would have taken a couple of weeks for it to fall out on its own but once she felt that it was a bit wiggly it was hard for her to leave it alone. In the midst of all of this she had her school picture taken so it will truly commemorate a short window in time when she was missing only one of her top front teeth.

School is going well for Linnea and she seems very happy. It’s hard to get many details from her at the end of the day but we do know that she loves music, art, library visits and the time that is set aside almost every day for the students to draw or write as they create their own books. She is also having success as she spells and reads simple words.

Linnea is quite creative and loves music. She enjoys playing our electronic keyboard and it’s fun to hear her making up songs, sometimes with lyrics to go along with the melody. She doesn’t take piano lessons but she is able to pick out simple songs by ear and has a sense of what sounds good as she is playing. She enjoys the freedom of using the keyboard as her musical playground. Her violin lessons are going well but she sometimes feels restricted by the structure of having to play a particular way. She has an excellent teacher who is good at encouraging her and keeping her moving forward.

Her other main love right now is horses. She, of course, wishes that she could have her own real horse like the girls next door but she has to settle for a growing stable of stuffed and plastic horses that live in her bedroom and around the house. We had a scare last week when she left her two favorite stuffed horses in her backpack at school overnight and we couldn’t locate it right away in the morning. Luckily, someone had moved the backpack to a secure area and her horses were safe and sound. They’ll be staying home for a while until they get over the trauma of being away from Linnea for the night

Linnea has had a bit of a rough time getting used to being a big sister and having to share time with Mom and Dad. Every week things get a little better as we all adjust to being a family of four. The girls do enjoy being with each other (most of the time!) and it’s fun to see them playing and giggling. Linnea has had to do more things on her own as well as help out at times with Alyssa which has been good for her, although she may not always agree with me on that. 

It’s been a long time since my last post! My intention is to post at least once a week but the days just seem to slip by. I feel as if we have settled into a pretty good routine and Alyssa continues to be healthy, happy and energetic. She doesn’t like to sit still for very long and continues to love to get outside and go places. Linnea is fully in the swing of things at school so her days are very full. I often fall asleep when lay down with Alyssa at night to help her fall asleep.

We recently joined our local FCC (Families with Children from China) group and have had a chance to meet other members at several recent events including a garage sale, a party at a farm and an informal playgroup at a nearby park. The group has already been supportive in welcoming Alyssa and our entire family to the local adoptive family community and several members gave suggestions regarding daycare for Alyssa for when I return to work in a couple of months.

Things continue to go quite well and we are almost all adjusted to the time change. Last night all of us slept through the night (only waking briefly before falling back to sleep) and felt pretty good during the day.

Linnea went “swimming” in a small inflatable pool in our backyard today and Alyssa thought it looked like fun and wanted to join her. I also put on my suit to cool off in the water and keep everyone safe. The girls had great fun playing with plastic stacking cups and a plastic tea set. Linnea and I even did some small science experiments with the stacking cups that each have a small drain hole in the bottom. We made small bubbles, big bubbles and fountains by holding the cups underwater different ways. Dave came out and took a few pictures just before we got out. Alyssa was getting cold by that time and does not yet have the automatic instinct to smile when a camera comes out. Linnea on the other hand hammed it up.

After dinner tonight we looked at a “lift the flap” book for the first time and for just a few minutes. The book has pictures of little kids and one page, for instance, has a child with boots on and says “Under my boots I have….. (lift the flap)….toes.” About half an hour after looking briefly at the book, Alyssa was playing with her shoes and brought them to me to put them on her (she hands them to me and promptly sits down and lifts up her right foot). I put her shoes on and she walked right into the living room and returned with the book. She sat down in front of me and handed me the book. We started looking at it and when I read the line about the toes she lifted up her foot and indicated that she wanted me to remove her shoe. We looked at her toes that had been hidden by the shoe and then I put the shoe back on. She then lifted her other foot and had me remove that shoe and “find” her toes. This went back and forth until we had looked inside each shoe at least four times. She amazes us every day with the new things she is showing us that she understands.

We had a leisurely morning on this bright, sunny day in Guangzhou. We enjoyed our last trip to the breakfast buffet and then packed up most of our belongings so that we wouldnít be frantically doing that tonight. We also needed to find out if we needed to purchase another bag to check due to gift purchases. Luckily we didnít have to do that since most gifts we bought were quite small and we are using a sturdy shopping bag as an extra carry-on bag for all of our food supplies for the trip. Alyssa has mostly been eating table food but we need to be sure to have snacks that she can eat easily and, in a pinch, she can survive the trip on rice cereal, formula, dried apples and Cheerios.

Linnea, Dave and my Dad went for one last swim in the beautiful pool. They had fun although Dave discovered later that he got sunburned on his shoulders. We haven’t had to be diligent about putting sunscreen on here since we have not often been outside for long periods of time and when we have been out it has usually been quite cloudy and/or shady. Shamian Island, where the White Swan Hotel is located, has a lot of trees so you don’t have to be out in the direct sun very often. Of course, as Dave discovered, the pool is not very shaded.

While they were enjoying the pool, my Mom, Alyssa and I took one last opportunity to do a little shopping. I had a chinese-style jacket made so we went to pick it up at ‘Susan’s Place.’ I may have already mentioned this but Dong, Susan’s husband, is from Wuchuan, Alyssa’s orphanage city. He is very friendly and remembers everyone’s names. He invited us to sit and have tea before we got down to business. The procedure for preparing tea here can be rather elaborate so it was interesting to sit and watch and chat while we waited for the tea to be ready. The jacket was made to fit and they did a good job so now I have something dressy to wear when my two girls wear their silk dresses. I also bought Alyssa a couple of pairs of dressy shoes to match her growing collection of chinese outfits. Yes, she is being spoiled already

Dave, Linnea and I had lunch at Lucy’s where we ran into a couple of other families with newly adopted children. This is a very common occurrence here on the island since so many families stay at the White Swan. We also started chatting with three women at the table next to us and found out that one of them worked for (actually was the founder, I believe) of a charity called the Good Rock Foundation based in the UK and Hong Kong that helps orphanages in Xinjiang province which is in northwest China. She was happy to hear that I had been to the store ‘A Gift From China’ that is located here on the island and had liked (and purchased) some of the products there. The proceeds from the store go to orphanages in Xinjiang. The store has many beautiful handmade items including quilts, blankets, padded jackets for children and an assortment of clothing for American Girl dolls along with many other things. She was also happy to hear that I had heard of the store before coming here by reading about it on China adoption forums and blogs and that I felt they had a positive reputation from others who have been here.

This afternoon we all loaded onto a bus and traveled across town to the US Consulate (which used to be located within a couple of blocks from the hotel here on the island). Once we got there it took less than half an hour for our relatively small group of about twelve families to go through the final process required here in China. We each had to present copies of our passport and our child’s passport to prove that the right parents each had the right child. There was then a very brief oath ceremony where we each had to raise our right hand and simply affirm that all of the information in the documents submitted was true. The ceremony was brief but emotional for many of us. The consulate official then made a special point of going around and speaking to each of the families individually. She said that this consulate “duty” was one of the favorite things for them to do. We now have a sealed packet of documents that we need to present to customs officials when we reach the United States. Alyssa also got a US visa in her Chinese passport so that she is approved to enter the US. In fact, once she crosses the border she will officially be a US citizen.

I’ve just included three pictures with this post to highlight the changes that we have seen in Alyssa since we met her. She continues to feel more comfortable with all of us and shows more exuberance all the time. It is hard for me to take a picture of her standing still since she runs toward me whenever I take the camera out. This is similar to what Linnea used to do when she was this age. It is wonderful to hear the giggles as the girls run around together. Alyssa is definitely starting to enjoy playing with her big sister (most of the time) and will often chase after her as we leave the room to head for the elevator. The picture of the three of us girls was taken shortly before leaving for the US consulate.

We have to be up and out of the room before 5:30 in the morning to get to the airport in time for our flight. Almost all of the families from our adoption agency are on the same flight with us so we won’t be the only ones with a baby. Based on what I know about her, I think that Alyssa will do alright on the flights as long as we can get up and walk around once in a while and we keep her well supplied with snacks. She often falls asleep when we are on the bus or she is being carried around so I think that she will sleep quite a bit on the flights…..at least I hope so!

For those of you waiting for us back at home… we look forward to seeing you all soon!

[I'd like to say a special thank you to my friend, Lynne, for posting all of my messages and photos on this blog while we have been in China. She readily agreed to help but I really didn't think that I would be totally blocked from accessing WordPress while here. XIE XIE!!!]

This was another day without much scheduled time. Our adoption agency representative went to the US Consulate this morning on our behalf to present all of our adoption paperwork. Everyone in our group will go the consulate tomorrow (Wednesday) to complete the process and have an oath ceremony for the babies. They will get US visas in their Chinese passports but, I believe, will not be considered US citizens until they enter the United States.

We had a leisurely breakfast… we are going to miss the elaborate buffet breakfast they have here… then went back up to the room for a short time. Dave needed to stick around the room for a while in case any questions came up during the reps time at the consulate so Linnea, Alyssa and I headed out for a short shopping trip to pick up some more gifts for the girls and family/friends back home. There are lots of shops around here that cater to the adopting families. It is easy to find children’s clothes (both traditional and modern), artwork, jewelry, etc. etc. We finally made it to a store called ‘A Gift From China’ that I had heard about. It donates all of its profits to orphanages so it is a popular place for adopting families to shop. Their selection isn’t huge but they have some beautiful handmade items.

Back at the room I fed Alyssa some lunch (baby-food prunes and rice cereal with some formula mixed in) and tried to get her to take a nap. She was much more interested in playing than in sleeping so I put her in the hip carrier and took her for a walk… a sure-fire way to get her to nod off to sleep. It was fairly warm today and extremely humid so I was happy when it started to rain a bit although it didn’t last long. After the walk (and some more shopping ) it was back to the room for a while before getting everyone ready for pictures and then a dinner cruise on the Pearl River. The girls both had on their traditional red chinese dresses for the occasion. It is a tradition to take pictures of the adopted babies on some red couches that are here at the White Swan Hotel. Most of the babies were quite fussy as they haven’t been out of their parents’ arms for much of this first week with their new families. They also have to put up with the paparazzi parents all swarming in front of them trying to get a good picture. Alyssa did fine as long as we kept her distracted by handing her toddler puffed cereal bits.

We also took pictures of each individual family and then the entire group in an atrium with a waterfall right in our hotel.

After that we headed out for the dinner cruise. We can see the lit up tour boats going past our hotel every night so it was fun to try it out for ourselves. The boat wasn’t too crowded which was good because there was a big swarm for the food when it was put out and I don’t think we would have had much of anything for ourselves if the boat was full. The food was served buffet style. Chinese people do not always wait patiently in line so it was really every person out for themselves and you had to be quick if you wanted to get something that was popular. This was very evident at the end of the serving time when they brought out a rather small amount of watermelon considering the number of people present. It was gone within about one minute. Dave did manage to secure one small wedge by being assertive and making his way through the crowd. The top of the boat was open and it was nice to go outside after the meal to enjoy the many lit up buildings along the river.

Alyssa has made many changes over the past few days. She is now babbling quite a lot. When I was putting her to bed tonight her ‘talking’ was keeping Linnea from falling asleep herself. This is a big change from the little girl who didn’t utter a peep other than crying or laughing during the first six days that she spent with us. It is such a joy to see her become more comfortable with us and to see more of her personality emerging.

Here are some other things that are new in the past couple of days:

She can blow kisses.

She gets quite active at bedtime and it takes a while to get her to calm down. She tosses and turns now before getting comfortable to sleep.

Getting her to eat is not much of a problem. She seems to love almost anything we have her try.

If she doesn’t want a food we are putting to her mouth she will firmly turn her head away.

If we want her to eat congee (rice gruel) at breakfast we have to give that to her first before getting her any eggs, otherwise she will refuse to eat the congee.

She continues to have a temper if something she wants is taken from her.

Both Linnea and I have been bit by her in the past few days. In my case she was just waking up so I don’t think it was an intentional bite. In Linnea’s case she was pushing Alyssaís boundaries and patience a bit too much and Alyssa bit the front of her shirt and happened to also catch some skin. Painful! We’re working on helping her understand that this is not okay.

She loves playing games where we imitate each other. Today she was blinking hard for several seconds and then laughed hysterically when I did the same. This was, of course, repeated multiple times.

Only one more full day before we leave China! It will be nice to get back home but weíll miss this concentrated time with Alyssa and the camaraderie of being around so many other adoptive families.

It has now been one week since we first met Alyssa Chunhui and boy has she changed! She is much more animated, has started talking a bit around us, gives ready smiles, runs, clutches my hand and won’t let go when we are out walking, etc. etc.

After a late night we all slept in a bit. We are going to miss the breakfast buffet here at the hotel. It is very nice to roll out of bed, get dressed and head down to a huge assortment that could please any tastes.

A post-breakfast stroll through a local park gave us a chance to see many people playing with shuttlecocks…like playing with hackysacks. The biggest difference is that you see people of all ages playing her as you can see in the pictures. Linnea was quite a celebrity with her blonde hair. There was a group of about forty students (upper high school or college) who were taking a drawing class. I think that almost all of them had their picture taken with her. Several of the students took the opportunity to practice their English with us and, as always, were amazed when they heard my parents speaking Cantonese.

It’s too late to write much more tonight…….

Some other highlights of day:

–dim sum treats at a local restaurant for lunch

–a walk to a nearly local shopping area (street market) that had all sorts of pets available for sale. Another section had dried fish/seahorses/sea stars/scallops/ginger roots/saffron/etc…

–some more local shopping and conversations with friendly store employees (they all love that Linnea is so outgoing!!)

–dinner at a Cantonese restaurant in the hotel

–Linnea and Alyssa trying on their new dresses

This was a long day with a fairly early start and a long bus ride to visit the orphanage where two babies from our group lived before being adopted. The orphanage is in a town about three and a half hours southwest of Guangzhou. Although only two of the families have children from this orphanage, four families decided to go on the journey in order to see a bit of the countryside and get an idea of what orphanages here are like, in general.

Alyssa slept for about the first hour and a half of the bus ride. I think that the motion of the bus helped to relax her a bit. We didn’t take too many pictures from the moving bus but shot some video that we will edit when we get home. Most of our journey was on a major highway similar to any interstate highway you would see in the states. There were a lot of trucks, buses and newer looking cars (quite a few Buicks). The first part of our trip passed through a major industrial area with many factories that had something to do with porcelein or ceramics. Most large factories also have an apartment building or two next to them to house most of their workers, many of whom come from poor areas in the country. They come to the city to work and earn money to send back to their home.

It took quite a while to get beyond the city limits of Guangzhou but it wasn’t that long until we started seeing small plots of land being farmed. This area has a lot of rice fields so that was a very common sight. Most farming that we saw was being done by hand. Rice is planted twice a year in this area and July through early August is a prime time for the second crop of rice to be planted so we saw many people out planting. Rice is started from seed in a small paddy, then the shoots that are growing densely are plucked from the ground and replanted in other paddies with more room between the plants. It looks like back-breaking labor. We saw quite a few water buffalo along the way but not that many compared to the number of rice paddies. We also saw banana palm trees, lots of criss-cross “fencing” used to hold up plants (such as cucumbers) on vines, fish ponds, and lots of ducks and geese.

We finally made it to Yangxi county where the orphanage we were to visit is located. We stopped off to pick up an orphanage assistant director and then headed to the orphanage, also known as a

“social welfare institute.” The grounds and orphanage building were quite plain which matched the rest of the town. I was a bit surprised at the number of run-down looking buildings next to newer fancy-looking buildings. I noticed this as well in a video we saw of the town where Alyssa’s orphanage is located. There seem to be a higher percentage of poor looking areas here than I have seen in the States. This is not that surprising considering the density of the population and the changes that have occurred here over the past fifty+ years.

When we got to the orphanage we were directed into a reception room right off of the driveway/entryway. We all sat around a large conference table while our fabulous local guide, Molly, spoke to the orphanage assistant director. It was quite obvious that Molly had to convince her to let us go upstairs to see a room that had children in it. We were told later that the assistant director was saying that she didn’t want us to disrupt the children’s nap and that this “wasn’t a good time” for us to be there even though the trip had been arranged for this time. In any case, we were eventually brought upstairs but told that only one person from each family could enter the children’s room. I felt bad for the families whose children had come from this orphanage and thought that they should be given priority. In the end it didn’t matter since very few of the children were sleeping yet and many were being spoon-fed congee (rice gruel) by the nannies in the room. I counted 22 children in the room we saw. They appeared to be between the ages of about 6 months old to 2 years old. They each had a small metal-bar crib with a wooden “mattress.” They said that they also put down a very thin mat at night when the children go to sleep. Since it didn’t seem that we were disrupting the children much, we were all allowed to enter the room. It was hard to see all of the children who were still waiting for families. Linnea got quite upset when she tried to talk to one of the children and touched her/his? hand and the child screamed. She ran out of the room and was hard to console. My guess is that the child had never seen anyone with blonde hair before so was surprised and perhaps a bit scared by her. [This has been a fun but challenging trip overall for Linnea. She has done so well overall and truly loves her new sister but she is also expected to be on her best behavior so much of the time and that can be hard. My parents have been a huge help in giving her extra attention and being sounding boards when she needs to talk about how she is feeling.]

After visiting the orphanage we drove to the locations where the two Yangxi babies were found and the families were able to take pictures of those places. Then we went out to lunch at “KLC,” an obvious attempt to imitate KFC which is a popular franchise in China. We got chicken sandwiches, fries, vegetable & egg soup and dan taats (sp?) (egg custard tarts). The custard part of the dan taats (a dim sum favorite of ours) was okay but the crust was very greasy… I compared these fast-food desserts to the apple pie at McD’s, only somewhat related to the real thing.

We walked around the town for a little while, stopped off at a fruit stall and then visited a local park before getting back on the bus for the same drive in reverse. The journey home was about an hour longer due to some road construction (you can never get away from it!) and rush hour traffic. Alyssa was fussy for quite a while on the way back . Her feeding and nap shedule was pretty thrown off and she also just wanted to get down and walk around which she couldn’t do on the bus. It did give us a chance to see what she may be like on the plane rides home. I hope that the other passengers are sympathetic.

We eventually got home after 7:00 p.m. and made a quick stop in our room before heading out to an Italian restaurant, “La Dolce Vita,” for dinner. The food was excellent. We got a wood-fired pizza, spinach & ricotta ravioli and plain spaghetti (for Alyssa). The waitresses spent a lot of time doting over Alyssa who was very animated and smiling at everyone. The Italian owner/chef stopped by and made it clear that he was happy that Alyssa was eating pasta. He said that one meal a day of pasta will make a person big and strong. Linnea got Alyssa to give her high fives repeatedly which delighted the wait staff. Many of them came over to get their own high five.

Getting Alyssa to sleep was a bit of a challenge after eating so late. She started babbling a bit today (her first vocalizations other than crying or laughing). Dave thought he heard her say “mama” this morning just as she was waking up. [Of course, he also likes to say that she then (ahem) "cut the cheese."] In any case, she has a sweet, high voice and said something like “ow” and “aba” quite a few times tonight. She tossed and turned and made it hard for me to keep her on the bed and finally, finally fell asleep. She woke up again at about 12:30 and tossed and turned again until she climbed down off the bed (with help), lay down on the floor and promptly fell into a deep sleep. I left her sleeping there since I didn’t want to wake her by moving her back into her crib.