Almost spring

I guess it's been nearly a month since I've posted anything on here.  We've been having all sorts of fun lately, especially since we've had some really nice days and have been outside a lot!

We went to the loop trail and even walked out onto the dock.

Poor Albert wasn't brave enough to walk on the metal grate, so we had to leave him while we checked it out.

TongJie and I went to Smallwood's last week.  It's a local farm with a gift shop, petting farm, play areas, and all sorts of cool stuff.  TongJie loved pushing a little cart around in the gift shop.  He never put anything in his cart, but he happily pushed it all around.

Then we went to the petting farm.  TongJie liked these goats the best:

He liked the sheep at first, especially since he's been into sheep lately.  He always wants us to sing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and he looks through all his books for pictures of sheep.  However, these sheep were greedy and snatched the entire bag of food right out of TongJie's hands, and after that he didn't want to have anything to do with them.  I managed to rescue some of the food, but TongJie clutched the almost-empty bag close to his chest and walked around for a long time not wanting to give any to any of the animals.  I kept asking him "do you want to give some to the llamas?" (or the chickens, or goats, or whatever), and he would politely answer "no" in his sweet little voice and clutch the bag tighter.  He finally shared a little more with his favorite goats, and then saved the rest by scrunching up the bag and stuffing it into his pocket.

Those greedy sheep!

Here's TongJie on a child-sized bench at Smallwood's:

And here's a picture of him on that same bench when we were at Smallwood's last June.  He's grown a lot in the past 9 months!

Speaking of 9 months, TongJie's last day of his Isoniozid pills for TB exposure was last week.  He took a pill every day for 9 months.  When we first started giving him the pills, it seemed like 9 months was such a long time for him to have to take them, but now it has come and gone . . . another example of how fast time goes.  About the TB pills, we would crush them and sprinkle them on his cereal, yogurt, or applesauce for breakfast every morning.  At first, I tried to be discreet because I was afraid he'd not want to eat the food if he saw me putting something in it, but we soon learned that he didn't care, so we started referring to the pill as his "sprinkles."  He would take a scoop of food with his spoon and hold it out for me when he saw me crushing the pill so I could sprinkle it right on his spoon and then he'd eat it right up.  So the pill must not have tasted too bad.  I took a picture on his last day of eating his sprinkles.  Yum, yum.

Most weeks we get fruits and vegetables from a food co-op.  We pick up the produce on Saturday afternoons at a location that's not far from our house.  Now that the weather has been nicer, we've been walking with the wagon.  TongJie loves bananas, so he's always so happy when we pick up our food and there are bananas.  A couple of weeks ago, he triumphantly held a banana high above his head and announced "NANA!!" to all the people within earshot, as if he'd won some sort of coveted prize or something.  He's so funny!

Here are some other pictures of what we've been up to.

TongJie has some interesting fashion ideas with his accessories.  He put a belt around his head all by himself and proudly wore it around for quite awhile.  And you might mistake the thing around his neck for a necklace, but to TongJie it's a microphone.