Hope Li Mei

When selecting her Chinese name we chose carefully. 

Li Mei - L. M. are my initials and we chose the Chinese characters:

Li - Beautiful
Mei - Rose

She truly is our beautiful rose!

Happy Halloween!

2 Years 5 Months, Home 17 Months

 Leaps & Bounds... Our sweet girl is coming along.  It seems like these past 5 months she really has grown and up so much.  She is talking more, bonding has grown and she is coming out of her shell a bit.

She has never been very friendly with strangers.  Sadly, frowning at them while Kate steals the show with her outgoing grin.  This week she walked up to a complete stranger who said hi to her and gave her a hug and a kiss! Luckily, I was there, the woman was a mom and came down to her level and thankfully gave her her cheek, otherwise Hope was going to plant a wet one right on her mouth!

Hope is doing very well in speech therapy, sleeping better, eating well and has been generally healthy except for a pesky runny nose in January and the stomach flu we all got!

She is beginning to sing and LOVE's dancing...

Our CNY this year was just a simple dinner in with neighbors.  I decorated our kitchen from our CNY box and dressed the girls in outfits we purchased while in China.  I was thrilled that they still fit.  We decided that we would try and find a CNY event to attend next year when Hope is 3. She is still unsure of new situations and crowds so we decided to wait until she was a bit older. Didn't want to scare her with a giant dragon!

Catch Up Slide Show

Check Out Another Post Below... with an Update!!!

Season of Hope... Merry Christmas

I feel bad that I don't find the time to post more often. Having two busy, 2 years olds in the house can be a little crazy! (There aren't any books on parenting Virtual Twins!) Impulse control is limited, sharing is rare. Screaming and taking toys away from each other is a regular occurrence and climbing onto furniture is a constant battle! The second I leave the room they climb on the couch or try to play with the computer or printer... We call them little termites!

If two year old twins isn't enough... Chris is in High School now, in drivers training, (!) dating (!) and just quite busy. My husband is working 11 hours a day and has an hour commute each way (13 hours away from home a day!)  He is home only for a few hours before the girls are in bed, making for a super long day for both of us. We always KNEW that until the girls were both 3 and potty trained... this would be the most difficult period of raising them. It's just a season... a busy time all the way around.

PLAY
They love to play with blocks... it really is uncanny. My son NEVER played with blocks when he was little. Kate and Hope will build towers together, put blocks into buckets and carry them around, dump then in and out and build again.  Hope will hand Kate a block and then Kate will build, then they will knock them down and laugh like crazy.  We have several different sets, I swap them out every few days.

READING
They both DEVOUR books!  Sadly... literally.  When Chris was two, we had a routine of reading several times a day.  It was dreamy to sit with him on my lap and snuggle with a story.  Kate and Hope chew on books.  I have so many beautiful books that have been destroyed.  Hope likes to peel board books too... Now I have a special basket full of ABC books (Already Been Chewed) those are the only ones they can have unsupervised. Sadly reading to them has been difficult because they fight over who has control of the book, what page we are on etc... I have found that reading to them while they are in their high chairs or in the tub is a way to keep them from grabbing the book from each other. I just feel sad we are missing that wonderful snuggy reading time.  I know it will come later when they are a little more mature.

SINGING:
Hope LOVES music.  It is one thing that will always calm her down. Just when you think she isn't even paying attention she will yell  "Yeah!" and clap when a song is over.  No matter where she hears it, on TV, on the radio, in the store, at church.  It's super cute.


Kate loves music too and has started to sing.  She tries to sing along to any song she hears even ones she has never heard before.  She can sing ABC's all the way through and is cracking us up with "Dingle Bells"!

DANCING
Both girls love music, I tape 'Dancing with the Stars' just to watch them dance around while watching.

Hope has this hilarious wiggle.  She keeps her body completely rigid, arms down at her sides with her hands flexed out, then she starts wiggling at the shoulders... it's hilarious!

Kate will move around waving her hands trying to pirouette like a ballerina and she will bow at the end and laugh her big laugh so proud of herself.  Need to get them into a dance class this winter.

SPEECH
Hope was assessed in her 2 year appointment with speech delay.  After many weeks of appointments and delays we were able to get her into a speech therapy program. I'm not really sure how much this program is doing for her speech but I can see it will be a great help to acclimate her to a classroom setting and transitions. We tried her in 'Come Play With Me' in September and it was a disaster.

That said, since September we have seen her speech develop.  The concern was that she was only saying the first syllable or last syllable of most words. She was calling everyone Mama, including herself. (however her Chinese nickname was MungMung so I have always thought that was what she was saying)  Now she calls herself Hope and even says Me. Daddy and Chris are finally happy that she is calling them by their names too!

She is repeating well now and recently started saying words that end in TS, BS, PS.  Like bibs, oops, poops, wipes, boots. (We get the giggles when calls boots, boobs!) She knows MANY animal sounds but can only say some of their names... I believe she knows what they are but just can't say the word and their sound is much easier to say...

Kate - is speaking in full sentences with an amazing vocabulary and hilarious mannerisms.  She watches (too much) Little Bear and I see that she has picked up a lot of his expressions. She will cup her hand on her chin and say "Hmmmmm, let's see.  I know! How 'bout (then whatever she wants)"  Last night at dinner after taking a bite she yelled out "Delicious!"  She likes to say, "Amazing!" and we think she is!  We love when she will yell "Come on Hope, over here!!"

One day she was snuggling on my lap and I asked her if she was my Little Bear, she said, "Mama? Hope, your Little Bear too?" LOVE.
 
FOOD
2 year olds eating...
Kate will eat bread, pasta, rice, crackers and fruit and very little else. Picky like her brother...She is my challenge. She will eat some raw veggies, tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber, but her protein is limited to turkey sausage, hummus, peanut butter only if jam is with it. I hate that she won't eat eggs.

Hope will eat anything that isn't nailed down.  We finally took her pacifiers away when she was biting the nipples off and chewing off the plastic.  She is like a Golden Retriever puppy. This is also a challenge!


CHUBBY BABIES
My girls are both petite... in height.

My vision of Hope was always a little waif of a thing but this was not to be.  Again with the Golden Puppy analogy, but she has the biggest feet and hands and the chubbiest cheeks!! Her chest measurement is bigger than Kates and she feels like a ton of bricks to lift. I'm guessing she is at at least 32lbs now.

Kate is a bit more willowy all over except she maintains her big round belly! Must be all the carbs she's eating!

MILESTONES
Sippy Cups vs. Cups: When they stop throwing their cups on the floor when they are 'done' I will switch.

Potty Training: I'm going to start with Kate in January, she is probably ready.  Hope can play along too but I don't think she will be ready.

Big Girls Beds: Here is something that if I had ONE, I might consider it... but they share a bedroom and go nutty in there when they first go down for nap and when they wake in the morning... Hope is not a deep sleeper and needs much less sleep.  She has ZERO impulse control, she would be all over that room and jumping on Kate... We might wait until Chris goes to college in 4 years... then they can have their own rooms... I think at 6 they should be ready?? : ) Just kidding... I think....

CHRISTMAS -
This year we are decorating on the light end... 4' tree on a table in the kitchen. A few knick nacks on the mantle, wreath and done.  Again, Hope does not understand the word, NO and does not stop even when you are telling (yelling) her to stop. So to keep her from getting hurt or destroying anything we are waiting another year to get the big tree back into the living room.  Last year we had the little tree on a table in the living room behind the couch... I don't even trust her with that this year she LOVES to climb on the couch.

I got them these adorable smocked dresses for a song! I can't wait to take them for pictures!

I bought the KidsCraft Pink Retro Kitchen set for them this year and am adding a bunch of toy pots and pans and play food.  They are getting Little Mommy Dolls and a few things to go with them from my mom and that's really about it.  Trying to keep it simple this year. I can't wait to play house!

So whether you read all my ramblings or not...

Merry Christmas and I pray for you a Season of Hope. God is Good, His timing is Perfect and His Love for you is beyond measure...

Happy 2nd Birthday Hope!

September 5, 2005 - Jim and I had our first serious discussion about adoption.

September 5, 2008 - Lin Yan Mung (Hope) entered the world into the arms of her first family, who loved and cared for her during her first 3 weeks.

September 5, 2009 - Jim, Chris and I stood on top of the Great Wall of China and thanked God for the amazing journey He led us through.

Happy Birthday my sweet Hope!

Wild Abandon

Click to enlarge

Hope's Baptism

Looking forward to next Sunday when we will finally Baptize our baby girl!  More to come soon!

Hope and the Jelly Beans!

DSCN2998, originally uploaded by irwinfamily22.

Love this little video of the girls eating jelly beans! It's hard to capture Hope's smile in a snapshot...Watch Hope's little smile and wiggle through this whole video!