Pictures from Camie's birthday party

These pictures were taken last week at Camie's birthday party (Thank you Cathy!!)
 
Isn't Quincy growing into a handsome young man?!?!?

Starting to remember the orphange...

Over the last week or so, Quincy has started talking about the orphanage.  This may be disjointed, but I want to list out all of the references, so that we can help him remember later, if he forgets...
 
While I was giving him a bath a couple of weeks ago, the drain was kind of slow and I said I would have to fix it, and he started miming snaking a drain and clearing out a clog. (Things he's never seen with us...)  I asked him where he saw that, and he said "at his house before Mama and Baba".
 
We asked him one day about the day that we met, and if he remembered meeting Mama and Baba and he said he got in a black car with the ai yi and took his medicine and came to find Mama and Baba. 
 
A few days ago, he asked Baba about TianTian, with no prompting and asked if she could come on the airplane.
 
Yesterday in the car, he started talking to Baba about how he had to say goodbye to all of the kids to come find Mama and Baba.  He again talked about TianTian specifically. 

It seems like the newness of his life in America is starting to wear off, and he's starting to remember, the "house before Mama and Baba with all of the kids".   He also has a big enough vocabulary to be able to talk about it now...   I really wish I knew how he felt about it all.   We can't even tell him that we are working on adopting TianTian, because it may not be possible, and we can't get his hopes up.  Even if it is possible, there is no telling how long the wait might be.  And to him, the idea of a year is VERY long and pretty much incomprehensible...
 
 
 

Back to Blogging!

Okay, so it's been a long time since we posted to the blog... I'm resolving to do better, and I will try to post at least every few weeks.  I had pretty much resolved myself to leaving the blog where it is, as a journal of our trip to China.  I wasn't planning to continue it until we go back again.  Why the change, you ask?  I looked at the blog today and realized that I'd already forgotten many of the things that were on it.  I always had the idea that if things were important, I would remember. But I guess that's not necessarily true... So I'm going to attempt to keep an online journal. Also, any of you interested in the mundane lives of the Laflins can share in our continuing journey.

 

I can't really talk about ALL of the cute things that Quincy has done in the past 4 months.  They're just too numerous to count.  He's wonderful, and we're finally getting pretty adjusted to this parenthood thing.  Settling into the rhythm has been harder than we expected, but it's totally worth it, and we are madly in love with this whirling dervish we call Quincy.

 

So I'm going to start with today.  He thought of a new way to try and get his way this morning.  I asked him to put his pants on when we were getting dressed, and he said "No."  I told him to listen to Mama.  He said, "No listen mama, listen grandma!" I told him that he had to listen to me, and eventually I did get him dressed.  When my mom showed up to baby-sit this morning, I told her about it, and she said that yesterday she had a similar episode. She told Quincy to do something, and he said "No listen Grandma, listen Baba!".  Since Baba was right there, he told Quincy to do the same thing that Grandma had told him.  Then he said "No listen Baba, Listen Grandpa!" and went in to the other room to get Grandpa, in hopes that the results would be different. Unfortunately for him, the adults maintained a solid front, and he had no choice.  But not for lack of trying.  Maybe he'll be a lawyer one day... Finding loopholes like that seems pretty advanced for a 4 year old...

 

Bridget