Hot Summer Account

It was so hot this past week with three-digit high five days in a row. Emily enjoyed her daily indoor activities with David. She expresses more and more of her will/preference in a very subtle way. When she wants me to stop touching her hair or stop playing with her toys, she would look at my "guilty hand" and gently pat on it. At first, David didn’t know what it means. After I explained its meaning as “please don’t”, we both laughed. Emily is gentle with everything she touches, except the piano. She loves playing piano. But she couldn’t make any sound at first because her touch was too gentle. So David had to teach her to pat on it with more force. We taught her not to be gentle now and we will have to teach her to un-do that in the future. Besides piano, her favorite toy is the blue ball (yes, this little girl likes blue). She has been enjoying the ball swirl giraffe. Her expression was so animated when she tried to track the balls. Her whole body dances!

Emily definitely likes vegetables more than fruit. That surprised us since most babies like fruit. But David and I don’t like those smashed jar fruit either. I’m sure Emily will like the real fruit when she can bite off it. Talking about biting, Emily’s teething was really bad last week. She woke up twice in the middle of the night crying. The rubber spoon has helped her to relief the teething pain. Hopefully she will feel better this week. By the way, Emily's favorite words had been "Dadadada" two weeks ago. Last week it changed back to "Mamamama".

We started potty training for Emily last Saturday inspired by a book borrowed from Dawn and our friend's son who was potty trained before one year old. We were really encouraged by the results in the first couple of days. Emily is an excellent communicator. She has always let us know when she poops and she never poops when she is sleeping. It made so much easier for us to start with potty training. We caught all the poopies (although for the first one, she was already in the middle of it when we got to the toilet and it was a hussle) and one peepee in the toilet. Emily seemed to be very happy when she realized what happened. We can’t wait to use the potty chair when it arrives.

Emily seems to get over the stranger anxiety already. Now she uses her delightful smiles to bring joys to everyone she meets. This morning when David took her for the morning walk, they walked by a man. David said "Good morning! I also say hello for Emily since she can't talk yet". That man replied: "She did better than that - She gave me a beautiful smile already!!"

Robert and Gail invited us to their house for lunch on Sunday. They showed us the pictures they took during their vacation in the west several states. We really enjoyed those pictures, stories, food and our visits with Richard and Cathy too. Actually we enjoyed it so much that we forgot to take pictures. We didn't do a good job taking pictures this week. Well, below is a picture as a representative:


A side note: Many of my friends asked about my family when they heard about the riot happened in my home town last week. My family live around two hours away. So they are safe, except that I still can’t reach them by phone or email yet. My sister and brother-in-law went home for vacation ten days ago. They had booked a tour group this week. But all the tour groups were canceled because of the violence in that area. I wasn't surprised about the news because the Uighurs (Muslim) had thrown bombs and killed people over the many years when I grew up there. But my heart hurts deeply to read about how they brutally attacked so many innocent people who they didn’t even know... Remind me of 9-11. How can they have so much hatred to the passerbys and normal people on the street? I feel that it's so helpless and hopeless to instill love and peace in those people's hearts. Only God can make it happen. I can only pray that God's true love will find a place and take root in people's hearts there; and God's spirit and healing power will bring forth hope, reconciliation and new life to everyone affected ...