A trip to Smallwood's

We've now been home from China for over one month!  We arrived home on May 17.  To celebrate being home for one month and Mo-Father's Day, we went to Smallwood's this morning.  In case you're wondering what Mo-Father's Day is, it's a combination of Mother's Day and Father's Day, which we celebrated this year because Jeff graciously suggested that I share "his" day with him since we didn't celebrate Mother's Day in China.  In reality, it was enough of a Mother's Day present to have my son with me, but I won't turn down getting to celebrate for real at home either.  So we took a trip to Smallwood's, a gift shop / fruit stand / playground / petting farm that's near Leavenworth.  We started by taking a stroll through the gift shop area.  Lately, TongJie has been loving riding in the cart at stores, so we put him into a cart and he was happy.  This picture reminds me of a picture we have of the very first day we got TongJie and went to a grocery store in China.  We put him in the cart that day too, but he was in shock and I'm sure he didn't enjoy it much.  He DID, however, enjoy the cart at Smallwoods this morning, which is the first picture:

And here's the picture from China.  It makes me kind of sad to look at some of the pictures of TongJie from when we were in China because he looked so sad, especially the first few days.  And when I look at those pictures I remember how he cried so much and how difficult it was for all of us.  I'm so glad he's a happy little guy now!

After the gift shop, we went to the petting farm.  Me and Jeff enjoyed it a lot, as they have a lot of different tame animals.  I think TongJie enjoyed it, too, but it was hard to tell.  He seemed to like the rabbits and the birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and peacocks) the most, maybe because they were smaller and seemed less intimidating or something.  We did coax him to touch a goat and a llama, but he didn't have much of a reaction.  They had a whole row of wagons, so we picked out a wagon for TongJie to ride in.  Sometimes he just wanted to walk though.

Here he is checking out the turkeys:

It's fun for us to get to see TongJie experiencing all these things for the first time.  Most kids who are almost two who have grown up here have probably seen animals like that before, but TongJie has only seen dogs and cats.  Even things like sprinklers and playgrounds are new to him, as well as a myriad of other things, so it's no wonder that he looks so mesmerized all the time when we go to new places.

They had a little bench that was just the right size for TongJie to sit on:

We also went to check out the swings.  Smallwoods has some pretty cool baby swings.  At first, TongJie was apprehensive, but after a couple of swings he decided it was lots of fun!

There's also a fenced-in tricycle and sand area for little kids at Smallwoods, so we went to check that out too.  TongJie found a four-wheeler that he liked.

 

He's starting to look bigger, don't you think?  We can definitely tell he's getting bigger!  However, I have to admit that these pictures from today are a bit deceptive because he was wearing a cloth diaper and that makes him look a lot bulkier in the rear end.  

It was a fun morning, and we'll probably go back to Smallwood's a couple more times this summer!