New State, New Home

We have now made it to our new home in Colorado Springs, and we absolutely love it. We live in the southwest part of town overlooking the mountains; the view from our balcony is amazing! There are also an unlimited amount of trails here. Within one week, we can run on a different trail each day.

View from our apartment





Our apartment is slowly coming together with furniture, paintings, and simply finding a place for everything to go. The next step is finding out more about the community. Taelyn and I will attend baby library time soon and look in to other baby activities such as swimming lessons. So far, our favorite outing as a family has been at the Jack Quinn's Irish Pub 5K run on Tuesday evenings. Every week, the pub hosts a 5K run followed by pasta and salad. We bring Taelyn in the baby jogger for the run and have a great time hanging out afterward with other runners, good food, and great Irish music.

Summer Time

After a busy and eventful summer, I am finally updating our blog again. Our family went through quite a lot this summer between seeing lots of friends and family and introducing our little Taelyn to everyone, a baby shower, baptism, and Kate and Brad's wedding. Taelyn went through some major changes as well. She went from sleeping through the night in China for about 5-7 hours straight to waking up every 1-2 hours during her entire 4th month! One reason for this change was that she was getting adjusted to a 12-hour time difference and was always stimulated with new faces every day. But the biggest reason for the night waking was probably due to her teething. At the end of the 4th month, Taelyn got her first two teeth within a couple of days from one another! Once those teeth broke through, Taelyn found a new fascination - she couldn't stop playing with them with her fingers and tongue.

Life got quite a bit easier at the start of Taelyn's 5th month, after the worst of the teething was over. She weighed 17.4 lbs. at 5 months and was 26.8 inches long.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Taelyn - 4 Months

Taelyn had her 4 month check-up a week early, just a few days before leaving China to go back to the US. She measured 14.9 lbs, 24.4 inches long, and a head circumference of 16.3 inches. Her length and head circumference were still in the average range, while her weight was at the 75th percentile. Taelyn was full of lots of smiles this past month, and she even had her first giggle on the plane ride over to the US - sparked by her daddy, of course. Here is a little recap of some of her best moments from the month.

Make a Smilebox photobook

Goodbye China!

We are now back in the States! It's good to be back, but we are struggling with the time change. I was looking over some of our photos from China, and here is a glimpse of some of our most memorable moments in China that we will never forget.




Our Apartment - and Taelyn's first home






View of Hong Kong







Ralph & Snowball










Bamboo Construction









Communist Bill Boards

The Best and Worst of China

Now that we only have a couple of weeks left in China, we have started to reflect on our time here. Here is what we have come up with.

Things We Will Miss About China:
* 70 minute foot massages for $4 (this has been a weekly treat since we first moved here two years ago)
* Simplicity of life - no bills, no car, we would simply just walk to work together in the morning, and then go home afterward and spend the evenings together. Time outside of work is always "quality time."
* Random Chinese people saying "hello" while we are on a run. They will even call out from the 10th story of a building to say "hello" to us.
* Traveling at least five times a year. During our time here we went to: Hong Kong, Xian, Yangshao, Beijing, Macau, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia.

Things We Will Not Miss About China:
* The extra step - whenever we are getting a service such as eating out at a restaurant, there is always an extra step. Ex: when going to the doctor, first you go to a desk to pick up a service card, then you see the doctor, then go back to the front desk to pay, then back to the doctor to get the service, and finally back to the front desk to return the service card. Do you really need to go to the desk three times??
* Sidewalk chaos. With 14 million people in Shenzhen alone, you would think there would be some organization on the sidewalks (stay to the right, no sudden stopping/starting, etc.) but people seem to wander from side to side, push and shove, and dart in to oncoming traffic (people and cars) at any time. Just this morning, I took out a woman with the baby jogger on my run because she wasn't looking and made a sudden move to the side as I was running by.
* No personal space. If you are not touching the person in front of you in a line, then someone will cut in front of you!

Taelyn Rolled Over Today!

It all started after Taelyn was screaming for a good half hour. This is very unlike her. She will usually get a little fussy when she is hungry or tired, but light crying is very different from screaming. I tried all the basics to soothe her: feed her, rock her, put her to bed, but nothing seemed to work. So I decided to go through the bedtime routine to calm her down. First I gave her a bath (which she loved but started screaming again once I took her out), then I put her on her tummy and gave her a back massage. During her massage, she kept leaning more and more to her right side and my anticipation rose. I started leaning to that side too, just waiting and hoping for her to make the next move. Then before I knew it, she leaned far enough over that she rolled right over on to her back - amidst the continual screaming! I put her on her belly one more time, and she did the same thing! So it is official: Taelyn has rolled over (twice).

I never did find out what she was screaming about. I thought she might be teething, so I gave her a cold wash cloth to suck on which helped for a little while. I also thought she might have some gas, so I tried moving her legs and bouncing her to move it out. That was a temporary fix too. Eventually, she was so exhausted from crying that she fell asleep in my arms. Oh well... at least something exciting came out of it!

Taelyn - 3 Months

Taelyn is growing more and more each day, and that has been pretty fun to watch. She now weighs 13.4 lbs., is 23 inches long, and has a head circumference of 15.75 inches. What has been most exciting this month is how Taelyn is revealing a bit of her own personality. Here are a few examples of some of her finer moments:

1. Her favorite color is red, and she will fixate on anything that color for long periods of time. She especially loves to stare at her red paintings on the wall. Needless to say, those must now make the trip back to the US with us when we leave China.

2. She loves it when we play contact games like blowing on her belly or "Got Your Nose." The best is when we kiss her nose and say "got your nose" out loud. Then she wants to do the same thing, so we give her one of our noses, and she loves to suck on it. This game always generates a big smile.

3. Taelyn smiles and talks often throughout the entire day. She is even starting to put the two together and will talk during a really big smile - mostly a lot of "ooh's" and "yah's." She is on her way toward laughing but is not quite there yet.

4. When laying on her back, she now likes to lift her legs in to the air, and she is really close at grabbing her toes with her hands.

5. Sometimes Taelyn will cry when she doesn't feel like she is getting enough attention (although I don't really see how that is possible!). This usually means that she wants to play "Got Your Nose" or that she wants someone to look at her only inches from her face.

6. She now loves to splash her hands and feet in the water during bath time. It's no wonder she had such a good time swimming in Bali.

7. She loves her soft, purple blanky. She will often snuggle with it up against her face and occasionally chew on it too.

8. Taelyn hates the hiccups (just like her daddy) and will definitely let you know this when she gets them.

9. She loves to play the piano with her mommy. She will sit on my lap, and I will take her hands and push down the keys for her. Then she tries to do it by herself but can't push the keys down quite hard enough to make a sound. She has a very intense look of concentration when she does this, though, so it is obvious that she wants to play by herself.

10. And our personal favorite.........

At least once a day, Taelyn will give a little smile and then turn really red and grunt as she's pushing out a big poop!