Keeping Up With The Smiths

For some reason, a lot of our posts tend to be about our children doing one of two things, eating or playing. We’ll start with playing. Since we moved to this neighborhood three months ago, Callie and Zane have had a blast going out to play at our neighborhood playground. Since Zane isn’t walking yet he still just kind of sits in the stroller and watches, but he seems to enjoy being outside. He loves to chew on the stroller straps and smiles and coos at anyone who stops to pay attention to him.

We’ll tell you now the playground is a little on the beat-up and dirty side, but hey, that’s life in the place we live. Callie doesn’t know the difference and nor do the other kids. Here is a pic of her with two of her friends riding on the horsey.

As for food, Zane began eating solid food a few weeks ago. That was quite the adventure. At first he still thought it was like nursing and couldn’t really get the handle on it, but now he is a little more adept. Here is a video of him eating for the first time:

Callie’s latest cute word is ‘blueberry’. In the past, it has been extremely rare that we ever found blueberries in our part of the country, but just recently we discovered a large wholesale store in town selling frozen blueberries for a reasonable price, so this is a step up from before, although fresh would be the best! Anyway, here is a video of Callie saying ‘blueberry’, which sounds like ‘boo dee dada’.

The last thing we’ll say in this post is just a reminder that our trip back to North America (Raleigh first, then Edmonton) will begin in less than 5 weeks from today! Get excited! - We are.

Whew! It's been over a month since our last post, so we've got several pics and a bunch of stories for y'all. The first thing is something that we have really enjoyed so far. In late August, Callie & Zane began sleeping in the same room. We were going on a trip and were only going to have two rooms total in a hotel, so we tried it out at home beforehand and it worked great. Ever since then, we've had them both sleeping in their room every night, which frees up our guest room / study, which means that we can actually hang out in there and/or have overnight guests, which we really like to do. Here are a couple of pics of them the morning after their first night sleeping in their room together.

Here is a pic of their two beds in the same room:

Also in the poast month or so, Callie has begun to recognize people by name, but of course at her age she still can't always say their name properly. Her friend Brennan is "Bebo", which is funny b/c "bebo" is also her word for bellybutton. Her friend Kayleigh is "Kaykee", and similarly her friend Bailey is "Baby". Other words she is saying in very cute ways happen to be cookie "koo-gee" and granola "gaga". Here is a video of her saying "koo-gee:

For Zane, one of his latest antics is that he absolutely hates being in a stroller. One time while we were out of town in late August, Jeremy was pushing him in the stroller and it began raining (sprinkling really) unexpectedly, and so Jeremy went as fast as he could to get Zane back to our room, but he screamed the whole way and after that has just screamed bloody murder every time we put him in a stroller. In the past week or so, though, he has started to get used to it again, but that little bit of rain really served to prejudice him against strollers. Since we never took any pic of him screaming in the stroller, here is a cute one of him in his little seat at home.

The last two things we wanted to share about the children have to do with Callie. One morning, as Anita was giving polyvisol (vitamin supplement for babies and toddlers) to Zane with a dropper, Callie grabbed the entire bottle of vitamin and started guzzling it. It was especially funny because Zane can't stand the stuff, fussing and spitting out as much as he can every time we give it to him, and Callie loves it so much that she downs it when we're not looking! Callie's last antic we want to share reminds me (Jeremy) of a picture of me as a child wearing my dad's boots, which were way too big for me. This is a picture of Callie wearing Mommy's red shoes, which of course, are way too big for her.

Just to compare, here's that pic of Jeremy wearing his dad's boots:

That's all for our pictures for now. We just wanted to share also that we will be visiting the US & Canada this holiday season. On Thanksgiving weekend we plan to arrive in Raleigh and stay through Christmas, which is also Callie's birthday, and on into the first week of January, at which time we plan to head on up to Edmonton and brave the cold with Anita's family until the end of that month when we'll return to East Asia. Remember to check out our photoshare on the right side over there for many more pictures. These here are just a few we wanted to feature.