17 months old!

Sara turned 17 months on Saturday, which means she has been with us for 5. It's hard to remember life before this precious little girl. Here are some things she does:

Vocabulary:
She says "good girl" (my favorite), Gigi (the dog), doggy, puppy, mama, daddy, dada, baby, that, guys, yeah!, uh-oh, thank you, hi, gentle, gotcha.

Food:
Wow! Does she love to eat! Some of her favorites are-
chicken, rice, noodles, edema me, cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes, ravioli, egg rolls, cheese, cheerios. She does not like red meat, which is very funny, because Mommy does not eat red meat.

Play:
Sara LOVES to play outside and is mainly interested in the neighborhood dogs. We are dying for the weather to get warm. Our neighbors gave us a Cozy Coupe and she LOVES it. Every time we go to put her in the car seat, she tries to get down so that she can play with it. She loves other kids and babies, although she can be a little bit aggressive at times. As I have mentioned before, she could spend hours buckling the buckles on her stroller and now she can buckle her car seat. She has a play stroller that she pushes around all day long, putting anything she can inside. She also likes to put things inside other things.

Sleeping:
Sara is an amazing sleeper. She naps for about 2 hrs/day and sleeps about 12 hrs/night. We never have any trouble getting her to go to sleep. We just say "night night" and she waves to us and we don't usually hear a peep out of her until the next morning.

Other "Sara things"
She gives kisses, she LOVES animals, she seems to adapt to everything. She is pretty much happy all of the time and has quite a sense of humor. She loves her bath and loves to run around naked before and after while we chase her so she doesn't pee on the carpet. She does not like to cuddle too much, she is way too busy, although mommy is always trying. She is VERY social and pretty much has no fear. When she knows she's not supposed to do something, she shakes her finger no, no, no. We have decided that we got the perfect child for us. Now only if she would stop drooling and putting everything in her mouth.

Kona matches Sara's room!! She loves any house with a dog!!

Our Jewish Vietnamese American Princess with Bunny ears. She loves her friend Caroline!!

Post-placement

Saturday we had our Post-placement visit for Sara with a Social Worker. I think she was pretty impressed with Sara's adjustment and her vocabulary. Going forward, we are required to send written reports twice a year for the first 3 years, then once a year with pictures until she's 18 so that the Vietnamese government can see how she's doing. Other than that, not too much is going on. We found a new child care provider for Sara. This is her last week at the current sitter's house, which is sad. We thought Sara would be there for a long time.

Dancing Queen!

This weekend was our nephew, Robbie's Bar Mitzvah. Sara had a great time and she LOVED the dancing. It was so great to see her with friends and family. Gary's parents came in town from California. They hadn't seem Sara since we brought her home in November.

Ready for the big day
Sara was the center of attention and LOVED it!
The Bar Mitzvah boy with his sister, Shaina
She was a little unsure at first, but it didn't take Sara long to start dancing
With Grandma and Grandpa Macklis

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!!

Good news: Mommy was supposed to work and got to stay home! Daddy got help taking care of Sara.

Bad news: at least 15 inches of snow and blizzard conditions.

I have never seen this much snow since the Blizzard of '78! We are now under a level 3 snow emergency, which means only emergency vehicles are allowed on the road.

The front yard. See the house across the street?

Our back yard:

Gary spent 2.5 hours digging out a path in the driveway so Sue could go to work tomorrow.


By 5:45 PM, the sun had come out showing off the beautiful dunes that formed in the front yard.

Finally!!!

Those of you (if you are still out there) loyal readers are probably wondering when we were going to post new pictures!! Sorry! We have been very busy. This working full time and being a parent stuff is harder than we could have ever imagined! There are just not enough hours in the day. On top of that, our sitter quit! Sooooo, after 1 month, we will have to find a new daycare. We are very stressed and upset about this!!

But, today was the perfect day! We had warm weather (50s) and we decided to get an early start by going out to a nice breakfast. Then we headed over to Great Grandma's house. She is always very eager to see Sara. She can't get enough of her! It was so cute. Sara spent most of her time with the buckles on her stroller. She could spend hours buckling buckles. She can actually get things fastened, but she can't unfasten them, which frustrates her to no end. I think we have a future Engineer on our hands. Anyways, I would say, "Sara, can you give Grandma a kiss?" and she would stop what she was doing and run over to her with a great big smile and give her a big kiss. Great Grandma loved it of course. After her nap, we took Sara to the zoo, which she LOVED!

Here are some pictures over the past month or so
We went to a Tet Celebration with other families with Children from Vietnam
Sara would not sit for the picture
Paige is just 2 weeks older than Sara! Notice the lipgloss in her hand!
Waking up from her nap!
I don't know if it was this Backpack or the animals, but she was literally SQUEALING at the zoo!