Mei Mei Beibei: August 2012

It has been a little over one month since we arrived home with Mei Mei. The sibling rivalry went into full swing after arriving home, much more than we had expected but they do love each other. We have been working hard to spend some one on one time with each girl and assure them we love them both and things have been improving.
We celebrated Bei Bei's 2nd Birthday with a trip to Chinatown after her check up at Wood International Adoption Children's Health Clinic at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Sarah's check up at Shriner's. We went to Lan Zhou Noodle House, our favorite US noodle house. We also had a small party the following day at home. Emily loved her cake but didn't like waiting while we sang. She takes eating very seriously. Getting her to drink milk was not easy but with a couple drops of Hershey's Chocolate syrup and water added and much encouragement we are now having a hard time keeping up with the milk consumption.
Jie Jie (older sister) has been busy teaching her Mei Mei (younger sister) lots of parent annoying phrases for example, "Not meeee!" and "Seriously Baba!". They both know many Mandarin songs and sing together which is so much fun to hear. Bei Bei has been singing Happy Birthday in "Chinlish" ....half English half Chinese. We were told Emily spoke Cantonese but were thrilled to find that she understood many Mandarin phrases, sang Mandarin songs and recited a poem in Mandarin. We do get to use some of the little we have learned in Chinese School. We are blessed that both of our girls are bright and learn amazingly fast. Emily is already singing the ABC song and everyday she uses more and more English phrases appropriately.