Picture Quest

I had to snap a lot of pictures...





But I finally got it - Hayden sticking out his tongue.

Playing with Caleb

Caleb is my cousin's son, he's the same age as Lizzy, so I was really looking forward to having them play together. They hit it off really well and became literally inseparable. Everywhere they went, they had to hold hands.







But alas, the four-year old nature kicks in, and sometimes Caleb doesn't always do what Lizzy wants, and the holding of hands gets somewhat violent...




Towards the end, I was getting really tired of Lizzy bossing Caleb around and me saying, "Lizzy, you can't make Caleb do what he doesn't want to do." After we got home, we were looking at a picture of her and Caleb, and her lips start pouting, and her attitude starts rising,

"Mommy, why isn't Caleb smiling? I want him to smile!"

Even in the picture, she wants to boss him around. I'm going to feel really sorry for Lizzy's future husband.

Proud to be Chinese

Happy Lantern Festival!

Yesterday was Lantern festival - a festival that marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebration. I'm not sure what the origin of this holiday is except that it involves lanterns and you eat yummy rice balls filled with sweet stuff. Since this is the year of the pig, here's Lizzy with a big pig lantern wishing you happy holidays.



Since we're putting up pix of Lizzy with A-ayi, here are some more.




Yes, A-ayi loves to buy Lizzy clothes and she always buys her clothes that are her style. Well, this trip back, A-ayi saw something in Lizzy's wardrobe that she liked, so she went to the children's store and bought matching outfits. Only A-ayi is skinny enough to fit into children's clothes...

Bye-bye Daddy

Daddy went to Thailand today - we're going to miss him so much - we pray God will take care of him, help him not to get sick. Goodbye Daddy!

Lizzy is four

Yep, my little girl is four. To all who have little babies: you've all heard it before but I'll say it again - time goes too fast!!! Hold your little ones as much as you can, for they will turn four someday. Thank you to everyone who celebrated Lizzy's birthday with us, she is very blessed to have that opportunity. Thank you for those who weren't there but remembered her and sent gifts. And thank you to wei-ying ayi for taking pictures, if you want to see more pictures of her birthday party, I have uploaded them to my yahoo photos, you can view them at

new.photos.yahoo.com/cindybrandt33

We're back to Tianjin!!

We're back! It's really good to be home. Our trip was fairly uneventful. One incident worth mentioning: because Hayden ran out of soy formula, we've had to switch him to regular formula in Taiwan the last few days - it's caused some diarrhea. Well, mommy should have been thinking of this and prepared an extra outfit for him for the trip. You can see where this story is going. Here he is playing at the airport playground and by that cute expression you couldn't tell he's done a big explosion in his diaper:



Luckily, Mommy had ah-ma to help out, she went off to clean out the shirt that had been big time soiled, while Daddy ran off to buy a shirt for him,


Apparently, Hong Kong airport don't sell apparel for babies, all we could find was a size S at the Disney store - still a few sizes too big for Hay