First Day with Emily

Today is the first day Emily and I spent after David left. Yesterday I worried about how Emily would do without daddy and how I could make the temporary transation easier for her. Now I can tell you that she is just the easiest baby that we can have! David and I got up at 4:30am this morning to get ready. After double-checked everything, loaded the three suitcases and one camera bag, David went in to get Emily. He was surprised that Emily opened her eyes right away when he picked her up. She wrapped the blankets tightly around her body so David didn't even have to get one. On the way to the airport, Emily was greeting the stars with delight and watching the street lights all the way. David checked in the luggage and came out to say good-bye again. After he talked to Emily in her car seat, he told me, "Well, she doesn't care!" :-)

I was surprised that Emily kept singing and talking all the way home without falling back to sleep. We had an early-than-usual breakfast and played with her toys after that. She took a nap at 9:00am. It was the golden time for me to work a little. Before David left, he cleaned the whole house, cooked a week's worth of food, did the yard work and grocery shopping so that I didn't have to do any of these! The clean house and the full refrigerator just made me miss him even more! What a wonderful husband God has blessed me with! Emily woke up at 10:45am. We played a little and then had lunch together. She ate all the fruit, vegetable, chicken and yogurt I gave her. Then we walked and played in the backyard. She took another nap at 1:30PM. After she woke up, we took a stroller ride in the neighborhood. Emily enjoyed watching a neighbor's boy practicing soccer with his dad. So when we finished walking, I sat her at the garage door and played the basketball for her in our drive way. She giggled when I hit the goal and she giggled even harder when I missed the goal... Don't you love to have this type of audient all the time? We spent some time walking the stairs in the front yard. Again she laughed hard when I occassionally lost my slippers. I wished I could record those laughters for David. Later in the afternoon she kept wanting to go out. So we spent half time in and half time out. Until 5:30pm, she had bread, vegetable, egg yolk, grapes, and some puffs for dinner and then went to bed at 7:00pm after walking, bath, and some milk.

I have been reluctant to think about these two weeks without David. But Emily made it so much easier for me to get by than I anticipated. David will arrive in Beijing in a few hours. On one hand, my heart longs to be there with him; but on the other hand, I know our day would be so much different and could be more difficult too (especially for Emily). I pray that David will have a great meeting with the Hills and have a good rest afterwards. Thank you, all our family and friends, for praying for and with us!

Lamentations 3:22-23 (New Living Translation) "The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning."

(Sorry that we don't have pictures these couple of posts! We forgot to download the pictures before David packed the cameras. We'll make up later.)