Well, it has been a long time since I have posted, but any of you who has spent any time with Amy knows why.  SHE IS A BUSY CHILD!  She does not stay still for any length of time, so I miss some of my old activities just because she needs to move around alot, but she is such a blessing that I am adjusting and appreciating my new life. 

 

Amy's English is coming along marvelously.  We must be especially careful both how we say things and what we say because she is such a sponge.  Her latest thing from Zoe is  "whatta het..."  which translated is "What the heck .."  She also says,  "Good grief"  alot!  The funnest new thing in language development is her ability to translate back and forth from English to Chinese.  She tells us how to say things in Chinese or what a Chinese character means. It is important that she retain her Chinese, so we have found a tutor to continue the Chinese language lessons.

 

We had the wonderful blessing of traveling with my parents on a road trip for most of the month of August.  We saw relatives in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan and traveled through 9 states.  It was awesome!  Amy even got to meet her great-grampa and her new cousin Madison who was adopted from China the week after we were there. She had a terrible time keeping everyone straight, but was thrilled to know that all these people were her family. It inspired her to tell me one day that when she got bigger, she wanted to get married and have 2 sons and 2 daughters.  

 

School is going wonderfully.  She has learned the alphabet and the sounds of most of the letters and can read some small words.  The math is amazing.  We are almost done with the 1st grade textbook.  She is quick to see patterns and follow examples.  Well, she is just plain quick.  The other day Zach came to me with a handful of our calculators.  He said, "Mom, you might want to hold on to these, Amy is doing her math with the calculator."  Yikes!

 

She has been swimming all summer in our little pool. Because she is so tiny and muscular, she has had trouble floating so most of the swimming is underwater.  We call her "the little otter".  She whips around and round under water completely disregarding all the water going up her nose.  OUCH!  Anyway, one day at one of the hotels we were staying at, she started swimming the front crawl in the pool.  I was amazed to see her turn her little head to the side and take a breath and then swim a couple of strokes and do it again.  I asked her where she learned to do that and she said,  " I see it on TV."  We like most of America, had been watching Michael Phelps in the Olympics. 

 

Okay, before I close I just have to let everyone know about the special prayer request that God answered for us.  When we started this adoption, we hoped that it would be especially good for Zoe to grow up with a sister. We hoped that the girls would be close.  Zoe was worried that perhaps her new sister would be "a girly girl" and she would not have much in common with her.  I have to tell you -  These two girls are SO different.  Their beginnings were worlds apart.  Zoe comes from a village where their major form of transportation is still horse and carriage.  Amy comes from a city that is more like Plano, Texas.  Anyway, with all these differences.  They are still BEST FRIENDS.  They can play together for hours and when I do hear them bickering it is because they are pretending to bicker in their play time.  We are amazed and blessed by God's goodness!!!

 

Because of Him,

Kim