The End of One Year, the Beginning of a New Chapter

Hi Ya'll!  It has been over a month since I last posted, but with life being hectic raising two girls, preparing for the Christmas season and making adjustments to our business matters, time passed quickly. So better late then never! The girls are growing so rapidly, Charis has finally outgrown most of her 12 month pants and Lyndsay's legs are so long she fits into pants that I was sure would drag the ground.  They are beginning to play together nicer and now Lyndsay only aggravates Charis about half the time.  I guess she is realizing that Charis is here to stay and often enjoys the companionship when she can get beyond the jealousy. They were both excited with Christmas being here, though Charis didn't understand it yet, she just liked all the excitement. We were fortunate to be able to visit some of our family and a few friends this past week and Charis thoroughly enjoyed the attention. She was in a bit of sensory overload, as she is not used to that much activity or the large number of people. Despite this she just ran on overdrive and crashed hard at the end of the day, that is, once she was able to settle down. Both girls traveled extremely well this trip, and even though Lyndsay is a seasoned traveler, we were a bit concerned due to her behavior the last few months. We were very proud of her and Charis as to their patience and contentment during the 11 hour journey. This is a good sign that we could be in good shape to travel for our spring shooting season. 

 I think everyone enjoyed seeing them and were pleasantly surprised at Charis'  progress over the last two months that she's been home.  She is increasingly more agile, is feeding herself with surprising skill and is more coordinated and "talkative".  She is very vocal, but most of what she is saying is babble with the occasional English words, sounds and singing, which sounds like Chinese. I'm understand bits and pieces of Mandarin, but I think the majority is mixed with baby babble. She is mimicking us more and is adding words often, but still is not verbalizing her needs or wants, but rather fusses to get what she wants. We insist that she "tell" us, whether through signing or words, before offering her the object of desire so she doesn't get "lazy" with using her speech.  There is an occupational therapist coming to evaluate her progress next week and they might conduct a hearing test to be sure that she is hearing well. We know that initially her hearing was impaired due to the huge amount of wax in her ears that the Dr. removed over a month ago.  After this she spoke more clearly and didn't sleep as sound, since she no longer had "earplugs".  Based on what we've shared with her, she thinks Charis is doing extremely well just with the care she's received at home. We just want to be sure we're giving her every opportunity to reach her fullest potential and not hinder her progress by inadvertently missing something.  I think she is increasingly loving music and loves playing with anything that produces sound.  She is so animated as she sings and dances, swaying exuberantly from side to side as I've seen the girls in China do. They are quite theatrical, and it's fun to watch their uninhibited ability to perform. 

A couple of weeks ago Lyndsay suggested doing photos of her, Charis and Fuji (our Shih Tzu puppy), in the studio. I had been wanting to do this for some time, but it was entirely too busy.  We've been waiting on the completion of our new website in order to load our images on line for the many editors to make their selections from. While waiting we had a temporary decrease in our workload, so we set the studio up (it lay dormant for many months) and got busy shooting. I've attached some of the many images we did on 2 different days, I hope you enjoy them.

   

Hmmm, what can I get into now?                                I know I'll blow you a kiss!