A singer in our midst

Last Thursday, TongJie and I went with Jeff to his music rehearsal at the church.  TongJie watched with rapt attention as Baba (Daddy) played guitar and sang into the microphone, along with the other musicians.  Today, five days later, he was playing with a pen with a suction cup on the bottom of it, and I guess it must have reminded him of the microphone from last week because he began to hold it up to his mouth like a microphone and "sing."  He continued singing into his microphone for a good 45 minutes to an hour, even while we went to Safeway to pick up his TB medication.  Jeff captured some of it on video.  Notice how he's even tapping his foot - we thought the whole thing was just hilarious!  And I guess now we know how Jeff's singing really sounds to TongJie!  I've never posted a video on Blogger before, so I hope it works.

Last week, I got a package of "Gerber Graduates" toddler cookies.  I think they're banana flavored.  The first time I gave one to TongJie, it took him about five minutes before he could finally bring himself to take a bite.  Every time he got it up to his mouth, he would start smiling and laughing and looking at me like if he thought it was something he wasn't supposed to be allowed to have.  We'd never given him anything sweet like a cookie before this, but I'm not sure if that's what caused his reaction.  He's also never really had anything big like that to take bites of before, except for his baby mum-mums that are really thin and basically just dissolve in his mouth.  Usually we cut or break up his food in bite-sized pieces for him, so the "cookie" size might have been intriguing to him as well.  Who knows.  Anyway, I've given them to him a couple times since then, with the same reaction (except now he gets to eating it a lot faster).  In fact, sometimes he'll take the cookie to a corner or something like he's trying to hide.  Maybe he thinks it's just too good and somebody might try to come and take it away from him if he's not careful.  We've started calling them his "funny cookies" because he laughs so much when we give him one.  I tried to take a couple pictures of him eating one yesterday.

Yesterday was a nice hot day, and after TongJie's nap we were in the backyard watering the plants and TongJie took a great interest in the water for the first time.  He liked touching it when it was coming out of the nozzle, and then he held the hose himself.  It's a good thing he couldn't pull the trigger on the nozzle or he would have sprayed himself in the face!  I don't think he would have liked THAT very much!

I decided to try letting him dip his feet in the sprinkler turned on really low, so I took off his shirt and shorts so they wouldn't get wet.  He enjoyed getting wet in the sprinkler, but I don't have any pictures of that because I had to hold him and couldn't take photos at the same time.  After Jeff got home, I was able to take some pictures of TongJie in just his diaper and you can see he's getting a fat little tummy.  Looking back at some of our pictures from China, we can definitely tell that he's gaining some weight!  Even his legs look a little more filled out.

I was going to delete the following photo, but Jeff wanted me to post it on the blog, saying it's the most "white trash" picture of him ever.  We couldn't stop laughing, looking at the expression on Jeff's face.  I must have just caught him at a weird moment, because he wasn't really mad or anything.

This afternoon there was a short downpour, so I took TongJie outside to see it.  I don't think he was that impressed.  We got kind of wet, so I took the opportunity to give TongJie's wet hair a stylin' hairdo.  What do you think?

Finally, one last picture that I just thought was funny.  This is the same place TongJie was sitting when he was singing in the video, except this time he was "reading."

It seems like every day, we're seeing more and more of TongJie's fun little personality and sense of humor.  He's just been so much fun the past few days.  That's not to say he doesn't still have his difficult moments, but we can tell he's so much happier and he's getting used to this being his home and us being his mom and dad.  It's great!  Tomorrow is the last day of school for Eastmont, and then Jeff will be able to be home for the summer.  We're looking forward to lots of family time and lots of time outdoors!  I'll try to remember to keep taking lots of pictures.