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!

Staying inside

We've been seeing a lot of this lately:

And look how tall he's getting - he can easily reach the doorknob now, but he can't turn it.

TongJie really wants to go outside, but the air quality is so bad right now (actually considered hazardous) from the nearby fires that we have to stay inside.  It's too bad that I just put up his new swing and now he can't use it.  He sometimes stands at the door doing the sign language for "outside" and "swing," looking longingly at his swing hanging enticingly from the tree limb, and he doesn't understand why we can't go out.  So, we've been doing some fun things inside instead.  Today we went to a thrift store and found a little car and a cool ramp for marbles and stuff.  We got both of them for a dollar.  The ramp kept TongJie entertained for a long, long time.  He was having so much fun putting large marbles down it and then going to chase them.

He also continues to love playing with his cars (of course!) and blocks.  He can stack blocks all by himself now.  When he first got his wooden blocks for his birthday, he had kind of a hard time stacking them because he kept trying to push on them to make them stick together like his interlocking Mega Blocks do, but he's figured out the difference now and he's getting quite good at making little towers.  I tried to get a video, but once he sees the camera out, he gets too distracted to keep doing whatever he was doing before.  However, you can still see his tower that's a few blocks high.  He wouldn't have been able to do that just a couple of months ago.

Speaking of being able to do new things, TongJie now has a sign language vocabulary of over 40 words!  And that's just counting the words that he uses correctly on his own, not the signs that he simply copies when we model them for him.  It's so nice to be able to communicate with him that way, and we're anticipating him picking up a lot more before he starts speaking.  It really keeps us on our toes with learning new signs to teach him all the time!

And here's a little video clip of TongJie eating oatmeal all by himself today at lunch.  He's getting pretty good with a spoon, huh?

New swing!

I finally put up our baby swing yesterday.  It's a hand-me-down from my sister, and we've been wanting to put it up for awhile because we have a great tree for it in our backyard.  There has been a different swing there, from before we moved in, so I just cut the rope and attached strong s-hooks so now it will be easy to change back to a regular swing when TongJie outgrows the baby one.  Anyway, he's been having a great time with it, and once he gets in his swing he does NOT want to get out.  I pushed him in it for probably almost an hour this morning, and every time I asked him if he wanted to get down, he would sign "more" because he wanted to keep swinging.  When it was finally time to go inside, there were tears.

What else have we been up to lately?  Well, TongJie is slowly adjusting to having Daddy gone all day during the week, but he's still not happy about it.  Whenever he hears a car outside our house, he signs "daddy" and opens his mouth wide in excitement, hoping it's Daddy coming home from school - even if it's only 8:00 in the morning!  It makes the weekends all the more special when TongJie and Jeff get to play together all day.

 
We're still getting lots of good use out of the wagon, as you can see!

We recently moved up the seat of TongJie's highchair to make it like a booster seat so he can actually eat at the table.  He thinks that's pretty neat, except now he can grab more stuff so we have to keep everything far out of his reach.  Our friends the Weldys gave TongJie a really cool plate and utensil set a couple months ago that we've been waiting to use.  The plate was too big to fit on TongJie's highchair tray, but now that he's sitting at the table, the plate works well.  Also, now he's more interested in using utensils to feed himself, so he's a lot more motivated to use it.  As you can see from the picture, the utensils look like construction machinery, and they include a spoon, a fork, and a "pusher".  TongJie has not attempted the pusher yet, but he likes to use the spoon.

Oh yeah, you may have noticed that it looks like TongJie has a black eye, and that is correct.  He hit his face on the corner of the sound booth at Jeff's music rehearsal at church on Thursday evening, and it swelled up and was a shiner the next morning.  It's looking better every day, so he should be back to normal soon.  That is, until he gets his next injury.  He's one tough little kid.

My aunt and uncle gave TongJie an outfit for his birthday and I had to take a picture of it because it's so cute - there's a monkey on the seat of the pants.  We were happy that they gave us something in size 12 months, because that's the size he actually wears right now but we're too cheap to buy him 12 month clothing ourselves because we keep thinking he'll be outgrowing it anytime.  We do have other 12 month articles from hand-me-downs and yard sales, and he actually fits into 18 month shirts now, so it's not like we don't have any clothing for our child - it's just fun to have something new in his size!  Once he gets a little bigger, he's going to have a lot of brand-new outfits that we got as gifts when we first came back from China.

I had some bags lying around that I made, so TongJie picked all four of them up, plus his own green bag that I previously made for him, and walked around the house carrying all five of them and waving goodbye.  He knows that when he gets his green bag we're usually going somewhere, so I guess he was trying to tell me he was ready to leave.

The birthday boy

Saturday, September 1 was TongJie's 2nd birthday!  We all had a fun day.  Here is a picture of the birthday boy at breakfast:

After breakfast, we walked to the park with Albert.  TongJie had fun playing on the playground and on the swings.

He likes to look up when he's swinging.  It must look interesting from that angle.


We tried to get a birthday picture of TongJie standing at his growth chart, but he didn't want to cooperate.  Silly kid!

We had a family birthday party at a different park that evening.  It was just family, but it was a pretty large group of people.  Besides me and Jeff and TongJie, there were eight other adults and five other kids.  It was a fun party, and we had blueberry muffins and "cake" made out of watermelon, pineapple, and cantaloupe.  Jeff and I had made the birthday cake the night before after TongJie went to bed.

TongJie didn't quite know what to do with the gifts.  It was nice that we had lots of helpers, otherwise it would have taken forever to open them!

TongJie was worn out by bedtime, but the next morning he was all ready to play with his new toys.  He wanted to get down from his highchair before he'd even eaten all of his breakfast, because he could see his new cars and blocks and wanted to play with them so bad.  So he played for a long time, still in his jammies.

 
And here is a final picture of the 2-year-old.  He's been wearing his hat like this lately, with the bill flipped up!

Back To School

Well, Jeff went back to school today, so I guess summer is over.  In honor of Jeff being back at work and no longer home all the time, here is TongJie's sad face:

TongJie has this book with pictures of all sorts of different things, and one picture is a boy crying.  When we point to that picture, TongJie scrunches up his eyebrows and gets his sad look, as you can see from the video.  It's hard not to laugh.  He also uses that same look in conjunction with his sign for "hurt," but it doesn't necessarily mean that he's physically hurt.  It could be anything from not wanting to get his diaper changed to actually bumping his head or pinching a finger.  It's nice that he has such a diverse range of facial expressions!

Waterville Fair

We took a trip to the fair in Waterville yesterday morning.  TongJie traveled in style in the wagon.  I think it was a little overwhelming for him, especially in the animal barns where it was crowded and noisy, plus many of the animals were big and he'd never seen them before.  There was a model train exhibit that seemed to be his favorite.  It was in a nice, quiet room with very few people, and TongJie was happy to watch the trains go by again and again, waving as they passed.  I have been woefully delinquent at taking pictures, and the one picture I took while we were at the fair didn't turn out very good.

On the way home from Waterville, TongJie kept busy in the car with his new yard sale find.  We call it his "laptop."  Looks like a pretty sophisticated piece of machinery, doesn't it?

Finally, here is a video of TongJie cleaning up this morning before church.  He had been picking up his toys and signing "clean," and then I got out the flip cam and was able to capture a little bit of it before he started whining to be picked up.  Unfortunately, I was talking over him saying "all done," but you can still see him doing the sign for all done as he says "ah ah," and then he signs "clean."  He does the signs fast, so you might not know he was even signing if you didn't know to look for it, but he definitely knows what he's doing.  He has been doing so well with signing.  I'm trying to get more videos of him signing, but once he sees the camera out, he usually loses focus on whatever he was doing.