Together at last, together forever

I am just amazed at how well Kai Wei is doing. I can't imagine being as young as he is and as far away from anything I'd ever known, and still being so happy. He is so curious about his new family and his new house. He wanted to know how many computers we have since he kept seeing our laptops all around. He commented on all the cars we have, so we told him who they all belonged too. Jonathan said when they were out playing later he remembered who everyone's car was excpet my Grandma's. He loves to keep track of where all the animals are, telling us when he finds the cats, Hagar and Chloe, in unexpected places (like under my bed or taking a nap with someone!) He isn't as sure about the dogs. He really enjoyed playing with Holly today (our Grandma's little dog that we are watching), but was afraid of Java, our larger dog who is still a puppy. When Kai Wei first came in yesterday Java jumped on him to say hello, which startled Kai Wei. Once Java was out of his crate today, poor Kai Wei jumped up on the couch and kept saying "No Java no!" He fluttered his hand over his chest like a heart beating fast and told us he was scared. By this evening he was a little more comfortable around Java after he gave his balloons to Java to chase and pop. He even got close enough to Java to pet him and tell him "guai Java" (good Java).


We started this morning early at Daniel's basketball game. Kai Wei enjoyed cheering for Daniel and pointed him out to me everytime he had the ball. I think he will really enjoy when he starts playing too.


Rebecca and Kai Wei at the basketball game


Jonathan and Kai Wei watching basketball


After lunch Tim took all the boys to Toys-R-Us so Kai Wei could get a dart gun of his own. He was pretty happy when he got back with a battery operated dart gun that holds 20 darts! Our house was crazy for awhile after that with 5 dart guns in action at once. Kai Wei divided everyone up into teams- He and Daniel and Jonathan against Tim and Rebecca. Since Tim and Rebecca each had the guns that only hold one dart at time, it didn't seem quite fair....



Evenutally Kai Wei got brave enough to venture back out into the cold snow, where we had to convince him that the ice was NOT thick enough to stand on. We've told him about ice-skating, so I'm sure when he saw the ice, he just assumed it was okay to walk on. He was about ready to walk onto it, so Jonathan and I both told him "no", but he still looked skeptical as if we just didn't want him to do something fun. So, Jonathan reached down and kicked the ice, which of course broke completely. I think that convinced him.

He explored the whole yard and was excited when he found a bike (not sure why that was out in the snow...). Jonathan helped him ride it, and then we walked over to a dead end street so he could ride it a little more than in the snow covered yard. I'm not sure if he's ridden a bike before. he got on very confidently, but needed help to get started and was very wobbly everytime Jonathan let go. He never got very far. He certainly had fun though!





It's been a very full day and Kai Wei has done amazingly. He's very patient when we don't understand him, and trys again, a little slower. Most of the time, after a few tries we get at least the gist of what he's saying between the combiantion of the Chinese words we know, the motions, and the context. My Mom and I are really glad we learned some Chinese.