Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year!  We went to a celebration this evening with many local families who have children from China.  We had a great time!  There was a potluck with lots of Chinese food that people brought, but also some pizza for the picky eaters.  TongJie loved the rice, Chinese noodles, and the fruit.  There were some snake crafts for the kids to do, since this is the year of the snake, and also a story for the kids and mostly just a great time of hanging out with other families who we don't know very well but have an instant connection with.  Me and Jeff were both really surprised with how many families there are in the area who have children from China!  I don't know how many families were there tonight, but there were at least 15 Chinese kids, plus several biological kids as well.  Before tonight, we only knew three of the families - the Carlsons, the Davises, and the Lewises, but now we know a lot more, although it's hard to keep straight which kids go with which parents when you're first meeting a whole bunch of new people.  They were talking about having another get-together this summer, which would be really fun to get to see everybody twice a year instead of just once.  And, oh my goodness, TongJie had SO MUCH FUN tonight! He loved the balloons that all the kids were playing with, and he just had a great time trying to do what all the other kids were doing.  He's getting so much better around crowds now, and he just fits right in with all the kids.  I wish I could post more pictures from the celebration, but most of my pictures have other kids in them and I wouldn't want to be posting photos of other people without permission.  Anyway, it was a fun evening, but TongJie was pretty wound up when we got home, and even though he was in bed by about 7:30, he didn't fall asleep until 9:00!

Here are some photos of TongJie in his shirt that we got for him in China.  It's still way too big and we even cuffed the sleeves, so you can see that it should fit him for awhile.  There are pants that go with it, but they're still so big on him that they don't stay up, so he wore regular black pants to the party tonight (and no pants for the pictures at home!).

The weather has been nice so we've been outside a lot more.

Last summer, we got a balance bike at a yard sale.  It's a little bike with no pedals and is supposed to teach kids how to ride a bike without training wheels.  It looks like a pretty nice little bike, and I even went on to the company's website and looked at that model (the Mini Glider) and they're normally like $100, so we got a really good deal.  Apparently toddlers can use these bikes and some people have even said that their 18-month-olds have been able to learn how to ride them.  However, there is no way that TongJie's feet even come close to reaching the ground when he's sitting on the seat!  I mean, I know he's small for a 2 1/2 year old, but he's not that much smaller than most 18 month olds.  It looks like the seat should be able to be adjusted lower, but it can't.  Maybe that's why it was so cheap at a yard sale, ha ha!  We're a little disappointed, because if you look at the picture, it looks like he has quite a bit of growing to do before it will be useful to him, and we were hoping he'd be able to use it this spring and summer.  At least we didn't pay the full price for it!

Here's TongJie at his growth chart recently:

And reading . . . on our new couch, I might add:

Yesterday, TongJie was being silly and accidentally fell off of his little car, but he didn't get hurt.  Then he must have thought it was funny, so he kept climbing onto his car and falling off on purpose, over and over again.  He cracks us up with his silly antics!  So I got the flip cam out and recorded him "falling," and then he would fall off of his car, come over to me to watch the video (and laugh hysterically, of course), and then go climb onto his car so he could fall off and do it all over again.  I'm glad he's so easily entertained . . . and so are me and Jeff, apparently!