7 Months, Wide Eyed and Livin' Up Life

Jada just turned 7 months, has time gone really fast to anybody eles because I can't believe our baby is that old already? She is just over 14 lbs or 6.5 Kg and 65 cm tall. She is still small for her age, especially here in china. Babies here are just huge. Jada and I ran into this other young family with a little boy 1/2 month younger than her. He looked really skinny to me for a chinese baby, average for a caucasion baby, than I came to find out that he is 9 Kg and he is younger than my 6.5 Kg baby. She is at such a fun stage, constantly entertaining everyone around her. Her favourite sound that she has learned so far is a high piched screech, she practices that often. She has said a few words just immitating us such as hi, baba and Jada. If you try to teach her a word or other sound she gets a really determined, concentrating look on her face and twists her mouth around trying to immitate it. A lady on the bus the other day was trying to teach her to click her tongue. Jada was trying so hard but couldn't do it so I told her to show the lady what eles she could do and she immediately starts doing that lip vibrating bubbles thing. The lady loved it. Another thing she had been doing that is really recent is a head bobbing dance. I will have to catch it on video because it is so cute. She was doing that for an audience on the bus coming home today. She is so much happier now that she is getting some mobility. She hates laying down for very long unless she is tired. Now that she can sit up she has a great time talking away to her toys which gives me some free hands to get chores done. A friend gave jada a walker and so she can stand up and walk around the house. I love seeing her so thrilled with being able to move around more. It has a tray on it like a high chair and so I was feeding her in it this morning and was doing a balancing act of dancing, singing and eating all at the same time, a number of spoonfuls ending up on her nose instead on her lips.
There are three families in the ward who have young girls all about a year older than Jada and they have all said that they are going to give us baby girl stuff when they leave. We haven't had to worry at all about clothes or toys for Jada, pretty much, because people are always giving us stuff. Too bad all the babies younger than jada are boys, I would love to be able to pass on the favor. A number of women in the ward are pregnant though and I know of at least one that is having a girl. One of my visiting teachers just lost her baby within days of her due date, it is so sad, such a hard thing to go through. She noticed the baby wasn't moving and so they went to the hospital and the doctor couldn't find a heartbeat. She still had to go through labor and birth. He is number 4 in a trend of J names in the ward ever since Jada. Jada, Jack, James and Jacob.

Last day of the 'War'

So Today is the lantern Festival. Last day of the Chinese New year. It is also the last day for people in Beijing to set off fireworks, so they are going off a lot! Almost as much as the first day of the New Year. The last week, things have slown down a lot, and then tonight, bam! Huge amount! In fact, just a couple minutes ago we had a bunch go off right in front of our window!
We have gotten used to the noise so much that perhaps tomorrow will seem weird when there are no fireworks going off anywhere. It has been a lot of fun to see this. I think that everyone should do see it at least once.
Not much else is going on. As you can see from the last couple of posts, Jada is growing and is quite happy.
I was able to play Rail Baron on Friday with some friends from the Branch. I didn't win, but it was a lot of fun! I had a string of bad luck, with the dice and destinations... I'm just glad I could play! As the other people were learning, I gave a lot of advice at the start on what rails to pick up and how to connect the network. Chelsey did not play, but wanted to. It can be hard to play a 5 hour game when there is a baby. So we had 3 people playing. Chelsey made us some food (THANK YOU!) and everyone had a good time playing.
One of the people I taught how to play found a copy here in Beijing (used) and was able to pick it up for only a couple of dollars. How random and amazing is that? To give you an idea how random it is, this game has been out of print for over 10 years. As well, a good copy on Ebay can go for over 200 dollars!!

Thats all for now
mikey

Video Moment with Jada

This is'nt as good as in person but it is in some ways better or different then skype. It is hard to catch Jada in her cute everyday things on Skype, you just see her in one setting so I thought I would share this adorable video with you'all, especially those grandpas and grandmas that don't get to see her often.