Happy Valentine's Day!

Life is flying by, and a week passes before I know what happened! We've had some company over for meals in recent weeks, and Brant and I were able to go on a date on Valentine's day. There is an American family that lives near us, and they have 4 children, one of them being a teenage girl who has agreed to babysit for us now and then. So, for the first time, we had her come over on Saturday and watch the girls while we went out for a Valentine lunch! It was sure nice to get out like that. We went to a new buffet here in the city. It's a huge place, and they seemed very busy in spite of the fact that we got there a little before 2 in the afternoon. We had a nice time out although it was very hard to find a taxi to get home! We made it home at just the right time though. I have to admit that I was very very curious as to how Nita did with Katelynn the babysitter. She didn't seem too thrilled when we left, but apparently everything went fine. Eden was very excited to have "Katelynn with the pink coat" come and babysit. We came back during Eden's nap, so when she woke up, Katelynn was gone, and Eden seemed a bit disappointed about that.

Brant is still on vacation for the Chinese new year holiday. I guess school doesn't start up again until March 9th! He's been doing some work here at home, doing some visiting with friends/acquaintances, helping some people with English, and preparing for the next semester. He also has been spending more time with Eden, whether taking her out as he runs errands, visits people, or works in his office. He has even had her take her afternoon naps in his office since he has a sofa in there. A few times now while she was sleeping in his office, one of the office building door guards came loudly knocking and boisterously chatting with Brant even though he saw Eden napping on the sofa. I guess that was quite a startling wake-up for her!

Eden has been playing with her big fuzzy fish pillow/stuffed animal a lot lately. As you all know, dogs say "ruff" and cats say "meow"....well, apparently Eden has been listening to how fish speak, and according to her, they say "rab." Her fishy has been doing a whole lot of "rab rab rabbing" lately. That's not the only word that she has made up. One of her signature words is "boogum". She's been using that word since she first started talking, and we're still not quite sure what it means. Somehow it makes sense to her though. It's not an object....it seems more like an adjective. Some things are just really boogum, ya know!?

Today Eden was playing with her animals and had her mommy bunny ask me how long the baby was in my tummy...."was it 7 minutes or 5 minutes?" I was laughing so hard and wanted Brant to hear the question too, so I told her to go ask daddy. Well, she had mommy bunny go and ask daddy bunny, and he answered the question, "it was 7 minutes!"

Anita is doing well. We started her on solid foods a month ago already. Since then she has seemed so hungry at times, and she gets 3 good meals a day plus nursing! But she's still a skinny little gal. She has been growing so fast lenghthwise though. She now can do a little kiss sound by sticking her tongue out and smacking, but she rarely wants to take the time to do it because she's so busy looking around and especially watching Eden. Sometimes she'll stick her tongue out to make the smack, but won't get around the making the actual noise. She has this air about her that says, "I can't be bothered with this silly thing." She loves to watch Eden and sometimes laughs at her antics. I love to watch the girls interact! Sometimes Eden will "read" books to Nita too, and she often gives her hugs and kisses. Fortunately she knows her limits and so hasn't tried picking Nita up or anything like that....yet!