bits and peices

Well, tomorrow we take the plunge. Emma starts her asian "kindergarten" program two mornings a week. I keep comforting myself by saying that she really needs to do it to learn language (which she does) and that it will be good for her to meet little friends (which it will), but I still envision myself spending every moment wondering if she's ok, wondering if she'll understand what the teacher is telling her, wondering if she'll end up hating it and never wanting to play with another asian person again...or wondering if she'll have the time of her life learning songs and playing balls and swinging and wonder why she ever liked staying home with mommy so much.

Being the over-protective mother that I am, I plan on spending the entire morning with her for at least the first four or five mornings. I want to convince myself that she will be able to get around without me having to translate for her (but, really...I think she'll get it when the other kids start eating that it's time for her to eat). We read a book about going to kindergarten today, and she loved it. All day, she kept saying, "That'll be fun for emma to go to kindergarten." I know she's super excited.

I think one layer of the excitement comes from hugging daddy every morning before he goes to school. She runs her little feet over to the door and gives josh a huge hug each day, and then she reverently exclaims, "Daddy's going to school now! Bye, daddy! Have fun!" Josh even found a Dora backpack here that she can take with her to her school, and she's been having quite the time testing it out around the house. You know, since they load up two-year olds with so much stuff, she wanted to be sure her new dora backpack was up to the task. She went over to her bookshelf and loaded every single book into her backpack, one by one. Then she turned her puzzles upside down and put all the puzzle peices inside...because, you know, you just never know when a puzzle peice might come in handy. I think mommy will probably pack her blanket, a dora doll, and an extra change of clothes, but I sure appreciated emma's suggestions of books and puzzles.

She's excited, but I already miss her. :(

Another fun thing happened last night...at about 5pm the doorbell rang, which was odd because it was sunday evening. When I opened it, I was so excited to see the delivery man who had a huge package for us! Josh's sister, kristen, sent us a great package with presents and clothes for the girls - a fun singing dora doll, lots of food for emma's kitchen, and clothes, clothes, clothes! It was such an unexpected surprise, and for it to fall right on easter was doubly fun. We all opened the package together and had such a blast!

Anyway, here's some new pictures:

Is she not just the prettiest girl you've ever seen?

This was taken last tuesday on the campus of one of the universities here. Emma had lots of fun playing in the grass and playing hide and seek in the little grove of trees behind us.Enjoying a toddler smorgasbord of food that was sent to fill up her kitchen, courtesy of aunt kristen. Some of the foods we had to sit down and tell emma about because she had never seen them before (or if she had it was a long time ago): hot dogs, jelly beans, doughnuts.

Tonight, samantha said "ball" when josh tossed her a green squeaky ball, officially cementing the fact that she is growing up and up and up. She's so funny and has such a little personality; I guess I subconsiously thought she'd just be like emma, but she's not! She plays little tricks us at dinner - like, she'll shoot us a daring look as she's dangling her drink from the perch of her high chair, and then a grin will spread across her face as she brings it back and sits it on her tray. She chased emma down the couch today in hot pursuit of a new toy from aunt kristen. She loves being held upside down and tickled on the belly, and if you hold her...oh, if you will just hold her she will be your best friend for life. Oh yeah, and she's a daredevil. This is her newest feat: climbing up all the steps of the slide, unassisted and without the slightest look of fear on her little face. Doing my best to be the picture of utter calmness, I nonetheless frantically ran across the room to her side the first time I saw her perched up there. She'll even slide down on her belly if she can't get down any other way. The picture itself is not so great because the wall was behind me and I couldn't back up any more, but you get the general idea.

And I really like this picture of mantha, except I just now noticed that a few bites of her dinner somehow evaded my wipe-job. So if you blow this picture up, just ignore those little things under her nose... :)And maybe hillaryclinton says that it takes a village to raise a child, but in samantha's experience, it takes a village just to help her walk! Our house helper was walking with mantha the other day, and emma decided that she should not be left out of such activities, so she barged right in between the two of them and helped out too. I wonder if mantha thought it was hard with so many hands around? She seems to be doing ok, though...she can stand now for 8-10 seconds at a time!And then, here's the cute girls together, watching some guys playing soccer last saturday. The weather has been nice and warm, beckoning me through my walls of windows to step out in the sun. And we have not been disappointed!