Wow what a Difference 3 months makes!

Hello,
It has been awhile since my last post. We have been so busy since Shaela started school in August. My rhythm is to wake up before the sun comes up and go to the gym and work out before Shaela wakes up. I usually get home around 7:45 am and find Justin with a very sleepy Shaela having a bottle on the couch with the big red silky comforter. Then it is rush, rush, rush (while giving Shaela all the quality of time and presentness she demands) getting her to school by 8:40 or so) on Mon, Wed and Fridays. We then head off to work. Shaela is done around 3:00 pm and Justin usually picks her up and later picks me up at the clinic. On occassion, Justin and I will have a free morning with each other. We have planned to see a matinee several times, but there are usually no good movies playing in the morning and we usually opt for doing unencombered errands. We go home and make dinner, feed the dogs and play with Shaela until her bedtime, around 7:30 or 8. Then we are exhausted and just want to veg in front of the TV or catching up on cleaning and paperwork. Often times, Justin and I will head up on the roof or in the hot tub and look at the stars and catch up on things. It is amazing how there is so little time in communicating messages and thoughts during the day, we have to write everything down, or else it is lost in our very compartmentalized "mommy and daddy brains."

Shaela is growing up soooo fast. She is talking non-stop now. She makes sentences and can communicate even better. These last three months, her language has accellerated exponentially. She is mimicking everything and everyone, it is quite funny to hear different sounds and laughs. She is having fun with us being "contrary", telling us she wants "down" and then "up" when we put her down and continues on like that until we get her to laugh (its no use getting frustrated). She is drawing shapes (circles, ovals, spirals, almost "s", and some triangles) and is very methodical at the little doodles she creates (no scribbling indiscrimnantly). She loves to find "indents", "hanging", "hammocks", "spirals" and "ovals" in everything. She is always asking me to cup my hands and make a "hole" so that she can put things in it. She also likes to hang any hanging objects on Mommy's or Daddy's finger. She knows the name of each finger. She knows her left from her right. She seems to know the way to school already, letting us know what direction we will be turning. She remembers almost everything we teach her. I am trying to teach her things that people often have trouble with (like left and right, and counter clockwise and clockwise).

Shaela knows all the ABCs and is just starting to be able to recognize words. She wants me to write her name. We draw "S"s on the foggy shower glass door with our fingers. We had taken a hiatus watching the Mandarin DVD "Muzzy", but now she has a renewed interest in seeing the alphabet spoken in Mandarin. I hope we can teach her Chinese so that she will be more adept as an adult.

Since August, we have travelled quite a bit. We went to Aunt Nancy's Birthday Party in Mendocino and met Shaela's cousins and Chinese family on the Chao side. She had a great time and really bonded to cousin, Noah. At one point, Shaela had three of her older boy cousins "doing her bidding" as she would throw little rubber balls all around and they would scramble to get them for her. Samantha her girl cousin did not participate and said ("she thinks we are dogs"). Then we went to Colorado to see my parents and our Italian relatives, Zia Rosa, Francesca, Carmine and Anna Ciara and went to a fun Ranch-park. Shaela had a great time bonding with YeYe and going through the "tunnels" to get there. Unfortunately, Nonna got hurt right before we arrived and was bedridden after an operation on her ankle.

In Sept, we went to Meg and John's magical wedding in Taos, NM. It was the perfect wedding for children, as it had a circus theme (it was like going to Cirque du Soleil). There were flowers hanging on ribbons, hanging on trees, and "hanging" things are Shaela's joy. They had a separate room for kids with jugglers and magicians and lots of toys. there were acrobats and people on stilts. At the reception, there were hoola hoops with the brightest colored ribbons suspended from the ceiling of a tent. Shaela was dancing all night under them. We all got to bed around 10 pm.

In October, I went away for the first time on a long weekend seminar in Portland. Justin did solo parenting. I got back to "hit Mamma!" Shaela was mad. I had to redeem my status of Mamma with a lot of love and attention, but she really milked it. Then the following week, we all drove to Sedona, AZ and stayed one night at our friend Shaida and Raven's. Justin dropped me off for a weeklong seminar and headed down with Shaela for Green Valley to see his father and Bev and Alverna. Thank goodness Shaela loves family. She had a great time with Grandpa Paul and Grandma Bev and Great Grandma Alverna. I kept telling her that she was going to "come get Mamma in 5 more days", and counted down from there with each call. She did really well, since I wasn't the one leaving and she seemed to understand the concept, plus she got lots of attention from her grandparents.

Shaela enjoyed her first "trick or treating" Halloween. She had on a cute orange shirt with a ghost saying "Boo!" on it . (She doesn't like wearing costumes yet). We went to our gym, who had 5 stations for receiving candy. After her first taste of an M&M she was hooked. She wanted "More! More! More!" the whole night. I had to slow her M&M intake for fear of her blood sugar spiking, so I made her guess the alphabet that comes next. She did pretty well.

She has been fighting a cold for awhile. We've been giving her Esberitox and Thymactiv (some natural children's herbs and homeopathics that boost the immune system). She actually asks for them by name! She also knows and says "phlegm." (It is really cute to a naturopath).

One of Shaela's favorite cartoons is called "Futurama", there was one episode where the word "erotica" was mentioned three times in a row. Shaela parroted "earotica, earotica" and pointed to her ear. We will have to monitor what she watches now more closely. In the Muzzy DVD, there is a song in Chinese that has "wo shi ni ma", which sounds like "Nemo" at the end. Shaela found this funny and amusing since she also loves "Finding Nemo." She is amazingly 0bservant and makes correlations with everything. The other day we were at the clinic in the musical instrument room. She picked up a noise maker that sounds like thunder, and said "thunder!"

Shaela likes to hang everything. Thank goodness for a very large rubber band that can hang balls and books, etc. She also likes to balance things on end. She has balanced things that I didn't think were possible. She is also doing a lot of imaginary playing which is so sweet to watch. She pretends to go to sleep on the "big ah ah" (her silky comforter) and then says "wake up time for school" (from Nemo), gets up and says "crying", "bad dream." I'll kiss her and she'll say, "all better."

The other day, Justin found her with a heap of paper towels from a roll under the sink saying "only one, only one." She was technically taking "only one."

Justin just got back from a three day trip to AZ for a seminar and I got to be single Mom. Shaela missed him very much and was very angry that he went away and was showing me by saying "Mamma go away!" and "hit Mamma!" She is so much better and more loving now that we are all back home.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We look forward to hosting our first Thanksgiving in our new home. YeYe, Nonna, Michelle, Tom, Sophia, Patrick, Ali and Hermes will be joining us next week. We'll see how Shaela shares her room and things with the family.

Love and Blessings,
Debbie