This 'n That

Today, Wynn ate a bowl of cereal for the first time.  She chose "Honey Scooters," or whatever the big bag version of Honeycomb is.  She liked it very much.  :)  These "firsts" are just cute.

We celebrated Chinese New Year this past weekend with a show and dinner sponsored by our local Chinese Association.  I think Wynn enjoyed it a lot.

My goodness, she talks a lot!  She is full of questions, ideas, and requests.  I still have to fill in a lot from context and sometimes just can't get it at all, but her communication is amazing.  It's not only amazing how much English she's learning, but also how creative she is at improvising when we're not getting it.  For example, in the van, she was telling me about mushroom picking in the mountains around Kunming.  (We will have to be sure to take her mushroom picking; Uncle Matthew will know when they are ready!)  I was not understanding what she was saying, and she was not remembering the English words, but she reached up and adjusted the radio volume to level "9" and pointed to it, saying "This one, like my birthday," so I was able to figure out she meant "September."  Yes, the mushrooms around Kunming are ready in September.  Pretty creative communication!

The other day, she told me that she had really wanted to go to her brother's store in Kunming when we were at the hotel.  He sells tea and jewelry - good stuff, not expensive - in Kunming.  Oh, I wish, wish, wish she would have told us or the guides.  We definitely would have found her brother's shop!  I am very sad that we did not. Perhaps we can find more information, and another family visiting Kunming could take some pictures of Wynn to her brother and buy something from his store that she could keep.

On a couple of occasions recently, she has asked questions about how she came to be adopted by us.  "Why you want me?"  What a natural, honest question.  What an impossible question to answer!  I don't know; we saw your picture, and you just looked like you belonged in our family.   We had not planned to adopt; we thought Ari would be our only girl, but we saw your picture, and we just wanted you to be at home with us.  "Who wanted me first?"  Well, I saw your picture first, and I e-mailed it to your daddy, and right away, he said, 'Yes, that looks like she should be Ari's sister.'  "Who didn't want me?"  We all wanted you, Wynn.  "No, who wanted me just a little."  Hmmm.  Conor and Cameron were a little bit worried about getting a sister who would be bigger than them.  They thought you might beat them up!  (Laughter.)   But now they are very happy about it.  "Really?!"  Yes, really.  Today, she asked the same questions again as she tries to make sense of what has happened to her.

This week, Gabrian's kindergarten class is studying China.  They sent a little slip home asking that if anyone had anything special from China at home, could they share it with the class?  Gabrian has been SO excited to share that he has sisters from China.  We went to Gabrian's class today, where he comfortably introduced his sisters to a group of two kindergarten classes.  The sisters promptly became unbearably shy and lost their voices. One clung tightly to my leg; one shook her head and tried to sink through the floor when I tried to get her to write the Chinese character for "friend" on the board after I had written the Pinyin.  I loved Gabrian's introduction.  "This is my big sister Wynn.  She is from China. My mom and dad went to China to get her so we could keep her and stuff." [With cue] "And this is my little sister Ari.  She was born in China and mom and dad went to get her just because."  Then, I tried to coax the girls into helping me teach a 4-line Chinese nursery rhyme to 50ish kindergartners.  Fun!  (I love kindergarten!)

It would be really interesting to see the kind of games that Chinese children play together in China, because Wynn has added a whole new element of Wild & Rowdy to my already wild bunch.  Wow.  And on that note, I need to go intervene. . .