Too much smoke!

We're getting really tired of all the smoke around here!  For those of you who don't know, we're experiencing hazardous air conditions from nearby forest fires and an inversion trapping all the smoke in our valley.  It's been going on for about a week and a half now, with seemingly no end in sight.  I've been trying to think of fun indoor activities to do with TongJie, but sometimes he just grabs my hand and leads me to the door, and then stands there pointing to the door and signing "help."  At least it's nice that he's pretty easily entertained, and even a simple cardboard box provides a great deal of fun opportunities.

I know this is kind of mean, but I just couldn't help posting a picture of whiny TongJie - he's been doing a lot of this lately!  I guess it pretty much sums up how we all feel sometimes.

We got some N95 face masks the other day, so we have been able to go outside a little bit lately and that has been really nice.  TongJie tried on my mask, but it seemed to be a bit big:

His mask fits him a lot better:

However, even the child-sized mask is a bit big on TongJie, but I think it's doing the job for the most part.  I'm not completely confident that it's making a good seal around his little nose, so I still don't want to be outside a whole lot, but it's definitely much better than no mask.  TongJie has been great about wearing it.  He lets us put it on, and once it's on he doesn't really mess with it.  That's encouraging, considering the fact that his palate surgery is coming up and he'll have to wear either arm restraints or mitts to keep him from putting his hands in his mouth - based on his reaction to the mask, maybe the restraints won't be as difficult as we're anticipating.  Anyway, he finally gets to do some more swinging, and that's fun!  Here he is modeling his mask from many different angles:

Yeah for being able to go outside again!  (Isn't he cute?)

I've been trying to get videos of TongJie using his sign language (he's up to 45 signs now, by the way), and I was fully expecting him to sign "more" in this video.  I asked him if he wanted to get down, and usually when he's on his swing he will sign "more" when I ask him that because he wants to swing more and does not want to get down.  But this time he really did want to get down, so I got a video of him signing "down" instead.  I think he wanted to get down because he wanted the camera!

I know I recently posted another picture very similar to this one, but when we're giving TongJie his bottle he just seems so much bigger now - he's grown a lot just in the past few months, and we really notice how much longer he's getting when he's sprawled out across Jeff's or my lap.

That's all for now!